They’ve been delayed coming back from Stockholm, I mumbled, I haven’t spoken to them, I said, I think they’ll be back sometime tonight, I said.
Well, then they’ll be back in time for our party on the twenty-third, Mum said, what would Emma like for Christmas? She was addressing Søren, who grew uncomfortable and hesitant. Don’t worry about that now, I said, don’t waste your strength on that now, I said.
Such things don’t waste your strength, Åsa said, they give you strength, she said.
Yes, Mum said, how true, Åsa, such things don’t waste your strength, they give you strength, what does Emma want for Christmas, a doll, a dress?
You can’t go wrong with a dress, Søren said.
A dress it is, Mum said, beaming.
Dad loved living in Bråteveien. Dad was delighted to move from Skaus vei to Bråteveien, as was Mum. Mum once said that she had never regretted the move from Skaus vei to Bråteveien, that she hadn’t missed Skaus vei for one second. And no wonder. Who wants to live at a crime scene?
The married man got a divorce and became mine. In the years I was with him, I didn’t see a lot of Bo and Klara. I devoted myself to the man who was finally mine, my salvation. Since then I’ve thought that if I had seen more of Bo and Klara in the years when I was with him, my salvation, then I might not have been with him for as long, perhaps our relationship might have ended before it became destructive for us both. In the years I was with him, my salvation, I spoke to Klara on the phone and sent postcards when I was abroad, when the professor, my salvation, lectured at universities and colleges in Norway and abroad and I didn’t have the children and could come with him and work on my Ph.D. on contemporary German drama. Klara organised poetry recitals at Café Eiffel in Copenhagen and had started writing a book about Anton Vindskev. But when my relationship with the professor, my salvation, ended, when I finally lost him after many good years and some destructive ones, I went to see Klara in Copenhagen. When the relationship broke down, when it foundered at last, I went to see Klara. Before I went, I had a session with the psychoanalyst because the pain of my broken heart felt unbearable. When I told him that it was over, my relationship with the professor about whom he had heard so much, my fellow soldier who wasn’t one you would take to war said: So you finally put your foot down?
I understood that he saw it as a sign of health and that was what I wanted to hear, that my pain wasn’t an illness.
My pain wasn’t an illness, but it was all-consuming. I went to Copenhagen to see Klara and Anton Vindskev, who knew what to say to someone like me, what would help. Being an outsider makes you resourceful. Loss makes you resourceful. Poverty makes you resourceful, as does fighting with the tax office, being oppressed makes you resourceful. If you’re lucky enough to be successful, you mustn’t forget that, the skills you acquired when you were utterly miserable.
We put on our coats and went out into the cold, it was growing dark already or maybe a storm was brewing, it got darker as we stood outside the pizzeria and said our goodbyes. It was the kind of darkness that falls, the kind of darkness that flows and spreads, that penetrates buildings and houses and takes over no matter how many lights you turn on, no matter how many candles you put on the table and in the windowsills, no matter how many torches you light and put at the entrances to shops and malls and along the drives of houses throwing Christmas parties. A darkness that didn’t come from above, from the sky, but from below, from the cold ground where the dead lay rotting in the darkness, a darkness that poured out from the icy, shivering, black, stiff branches of the trees and the small ugly bushes, a darkness full of knives, a darkness that cut body and soul, a darkness that didn’t leave visible injuries but knotted scar tissue and lumps which prevented the blood, the lymph and the thoughts from flowing, which chopped and stopped and built up in tight, unsolvable puzzles. I wanted to go home, Søren wanted to go home, Åsa wanted to go home, the darkness was upon us, we were outside the pizzeria saying goodbye, but Mum and Astrid dragged it out. It was nice of you to meet with us, Mum said. Don’t mention it, I said, we know this is important, I said, something along those lines, carried away by the moment. I hope it’ll be a good funeral, Mum said. I’m sure it will, I said, I wanted to go home, I had to get out of there, Søren wanted to get out of there, I could feel it, the darkness was getting to him, Åsa wanted to get out of there. Do you think so, she asked, looking me in the eye. Yes, I said. She looked me straight in the eye again and repeated as if seeking reassurance. Do you think so? Did Åsa think that I would ruin the funeral, make a scene, make a speech? Yes, I said, I wanted to get out of there, I wanted to go home, I had reached my limit, the darkness had got right inside my brain. I’ll stay close to Bård, I said. It’ll be fine, I said, the darkness reached my bone marrow, penetrated it and spread out, I had sacrificed enough.
We hugged one another and walked back to our respective cars. It’s done, I said. I’ve seen her now, I said. She hasn’t changed, I said to Søren, but you’ve seen her more often than I have.
He said he would be willing to take Emma and Anna to Bråteveien for the party, if Tale refused to go.
When my relationship with the man I had longed for for so long and lived with for so long ended, I went to visit Klara in Copenhagen. My pain wasn’t an illness, but it was all-consuming. Klara dragged me through the parks of Copenhagen and stuffed food into my mouth. When I wanted to call the man who was the cause of my grief, she hid my phone, and she hid pills and knives and anything else people use to kill themselves, and she wrote invitations to a New Year’s Eve party and sent them to sixty-three people in my name. Sixty-three people accepted an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party in my house, comprising a three-course dinner and fireworks at midnight. I had to hire tables and chairs for sixty-three people and shop and organise, I spent six weeks planning and organising the party and woke up on 3 January after a three-day New Year celebration with Klara and three remaining guests from Renna in a trashed house. Klara and I spent three days tidying up and cleaning and woke up on 6 January to a clean and tidy house. I woke up on a cold, clear and fresh morning, and realised that I hadn’t thought about my pain for six weeks and six days and that now it had come back, but it was noticeably weaker. Klara had given me a New Year’s Eve party as medicine.
That morning, that cold, clear, new January day as we sat in my neat and tidy kitchen drinking tea, Klara learned that her book about Anton Vindskev had been turned down. She hadn’t heard from the publishers since she sent in the manuscript several months ago and she had been reluctant to call them because she knew what their silence meant. But this cold, clear January day as we sat in my clean kitchen drinking tea, she called them and was told that they didn’t think her book about Anton Vindskev would be of interest to the Norwegian market. She buried her head in her hands: What am I going to do?
She had hoped for a big advance from the publishers, had based her finances on it, she was broke, what was she going to do now? If it wasn’t one thing, then it was another. As soon as one problem was solved, another would rear its ugly head no matter how hard she worked, she would never be safe no matter how many New Year’s Eve parties she organised, rejection slips and tax bills were waiting to ambush her, danger lurked around every corner, soon she would probably fall in love unhappily or get hit by a car, there was never any respite and how would it end—with death, of that at least she could be sure.
Well, she said. Endurance is the first duty of all living beings.
Mum was pretty. Of her sisters, Mum was the pretty one. The others had different talents, Mum was pretty. That was what people said about Mum, that she was pretty. She knew that it was true, it’s hard to dismiss objective expressions of beauty. Mum’s identity was tied to her beauty, she staked everything on it. Mum was shapely. Shapely was Dad’s word. Beauty and shapeliness were Mum’s aces. But those are the very cards a woman is sure to lose, so she can never become complacent. The young and pretty woman knows it; whenever she photographs hers
elf naked or half-naked because she’s proud of her body, she’s also pained and haunted by this fact obvious to everyone, that the very thing that makes her visible and desirable is transient and will be lost one day, then what? That’s the fear beautiful women live with, especially this beautiful woman whose only asset was her beauty. She doesn’t feel good about herself. Mum didn’t feel good about herself. Mum was pretty, but had no education, no experience, no money, Mum was Dad’s possession, Dad was proud of his pretty possession, Mum radiated fear. Mum was innocent in the sense that she was inexperienced and naïve. Many men prefer and are attracted to inexperienced and naïve women, simple, childish ones who are easy to impress, awestruck, devoted, sincere, needy, those who don’t use irony, who don’t hold back. Mum was inexperienced, childish and chose to remain a child. If Mum had chosen to grow up, her reality would have become unbearable. Mum was the kind of woman many men wanted women to be back then, a skylark at the end of the skylark era, and the dilemma which Mum faced and which could have made her grow up and become a free human being was harder to resolve than the one faced by Nora. Did Mum make a choice? Did she decide not to jump ship, but hope for the best, not to react, is that a choice? To be like a child and not understand too much. Try to stay buoyant, put on a smile, do the best she could, given where she was, knowing she didn’t have the strength to leave, after all, she had tried. Nora had the strength, Nora left, but Nora wasn’t real, Nora was a man’s invention. Mum was real, a vulnerable, shapely woman for as long as that lasted, it doesn’t last, it fades and younger, more attractive women appear; she can even give birth to them herself.
Tale and her family arrived from Stockholm. Tale hugged me as though I might be upset and possibly tearful, but she soon realised that I wasn’t, that I was relieved but still anxious about what lay ahead, the party on 23 December and the funeral. Ebba arrived in the evening and hugged me and she was tearful and wondering whether I might be upset because I might have been waiting my whole life for an apology from Dad and had realised now that I wouldn’t get one. But I’d had no such hope. I told her that I was relieved and hoped she didn’t think my words hard and cold, didn’t think me hard and cold, as Mum had found me hard and cold, who had called me hard and cold ever since I was little because I had always disagreed with her.
We did the usual Christmas things. An excess of shopping, organising and wrapping. The day of the party arrived. Tale didn’t want to go to Bråteveien. Søren offered to take Emma and Anna, but Tale didn’t want him to. I was secretly wishing she would let him take Emma and Anna to Bråteveien because then something which would have been seen as an issue could have been avoided, but I didn’t say anything. She doesn’t want to be infected by Bråteveien, I thought.
You’re making it more difficult for us, Ebba said. What do we say when they ask us why you’re not there? Do you want us to lie?
I agree, Søren said. You’re making it more difficult for us. You make it easier for yourself by not going, but harder for those of us who bother turning up.
You don’t have to lie, Tale said. I’m happy to tell them why I won’t be coming.
My children argued about going to Bråteveien. The sins of the father, I thought.
Ebba and Søren went to the party. I wasn’t nervous as I had been the last time they went to Bråteveien, on the day they celebrated Mum turning eighty and Dad turning eighty-five, five days after her overdose, the day that Rolf Sandberg’s obituary appeared in the newspaper, because Tale was with me as was little Emma who was almost five, and little Anna who was almost two, and my dog. We went for a walk across some open ground which the pram could handle, it was snowing and everything turned white again. The dog chased the falling snowflakes and the approaching darkness didn’t hurt like the sharp darkness from the other day. This darkness felt like soft fabric that erased us and the forest around us, it covered everything in a cool, protective cloak and it felt fine, light.
By the time Søren and Ebba came back, we had lit a fire and opened a bottle of red wine, Emma and Anna were asleep. It had been fine, they said. It had been like it always was, they said, except that Dad had died. Mum had found some old family photos and they had looked at them together and laughed and cried because everyone looked so young all those years ago and wore such funny clothes. Somehow the mood was lighter, Søren said, when Dad wasn’t sitting silent and glowering in his armchair. I wondered if Mum was relieved that Dad had died. And that perhaps she wasn’t the only one. What if Dad had been a problem for people other than me, maybe Astrid and Åsa were somehow also relieved that Dad was dead after years of him sitting in his armchair silent, depressed and gloomy, dampening the mood. What if all of them, but especially Mum, believed that Dad was the cause of the problem when it came to Bård and me, and so they thought that when Dad was gone, we could start over, perhaps it wasn’t just Mum but everyone who was hoping for that. The mood had been good, Søren said, it had been light, he said, and although they had shed some tears when they looked at the family photos, they had mostly laughed.
As Søren and Ebba were about to leave, Mum had followed them out to the hall and asked after Tale and her great-grandchildren, Emma and Anna. She had tried calling Tale many times, she said, but never got an answer and Tale never rang back, she never heard from Tale. It’s probably her phone, Ebba said, it might be because it’s a Swedish number, because she’s on a Swedish network. Try her again, Søren said. Mum had played dumb, he said, as they stood in the hall covering up for Tale, pretending and lying.
The street of my childhood, Klara said, quoting Tove Ditlevsen, is the root of my being. It anchored me on a day I was utterly lost. It sprinkled melancholy into my mind on a rainy night. It threw me to the ground to harden my heart, before raising me gently and wiping away my tears.
On the morning of Christmas Eve I stopped off to see Karen and Klara as I always did. They both treated me with kid gloves. I told them I felt relieved because now there could be no more unpleasantness from that front. They said they knew what I meant. I told them I dreaded the funeral, they said they knew what I meant. We discussed the best way to handle it. When I came home the aroma of roast pork was wafting through the house, Søren and my son-in-law were bent over saucepans in the kitchen, the tree had been decorated and my grandchildren were toddling around the presents, I asked for the music to be turned down, for silence, there was something I wanted to say before we sat down to eat. I wanted them to know that I accepted whatever position they adopted towards the family in Bråteveien. That as far as I was concerned, it made no difference which stance each of them took, if they chose to see a lot of the family in Bråteveien, a little or nothing at all, that I loved them all the same, that I hoped that in return they would accept each other’s choices. And now, let’s talk no more about it, I said. And so we talked no more about it, we celebrated Christmas and I felt grown up.
Klara had no father. No children and no siblings, but she had Anton Vindskev and she organised poetry recitals for him and some Danish poets at Café Eiffel in Copenhagen, she thought things were going quite well. I visited her in Copenhagen and attended a poetry recital with Anton Vindskev and his Danish colleagues; apart from Klara and me the audience comprised only two paying members. It’s back-breaking, she whispered, but meant ground-breaking. Aren’t we lucky, she whispered, elbowing me in the side as Anton read aloud, and she glowed.
My children were having dinner with their father on Christmas Day and I was due to have dinner with Lars. His son, twelve-year-old Tor, was there when I arrived. I realised immediately that he had been told that my dad had just died. He looked sad and anxious, curled up in the far corner of the sofa, he was reluctant to look at me and come near me although I knew him well. How was he meant to treat someone who had just lost their father, the worst thing that could happen to you, how do you greet someone who has just experienced the worst that can happen? He was desperate not to get it wrong. And then I turned out not to be in the state that he had imagined. Because La
rs had never told him how I felt about my dad. Tor was relieved that I didn’t looked distraught, that I was myself because then he was free to be himself, too, and enjoy his Christmas dinner, but he continued to peer furtively at me, what kind of person was I really?
Will and Testament Page 11
