Will and Testament

by Vigdis Hjorth

  Astrid wrote to tell me that Dad’s death notice would be in Monday’s newspaper. It’ll be in on Monday. Bård wrote to tell me that it was short. It was short. No adjectives other than dear. They were meeting Bård and me halfway, I thought, they didn’t want to provoke Bård and me, they wanted the funeral to go well, with dignity. Astrid wrote to tell me not to worry about flowers. I hadn’t been worried about flowers. Were they afraid that I might turn up with a wreath with inappropriate words? Were they dreading the funeral just as much as I was?

  The night before the funeral I had a dream about going to the funeral. I sat in the front of a car next to Astrid, who was driving, Åsa was in the back. She said: We must remember to hug one another. It mustn’t look as if we’re hugely relieved.

  My window was down, Dad was standing outside, I said while I looked at him: But I am relieved.

  His face contorted in anger and pain.

  I realised that I had laddered my tights and that I was wearing a white jumper, I had to change my tights, change to a black top, did we have enough time? Yes, if I went straight from Skaus vei to the church. I got out of the car, Dad saw me leave and thought I was walking away from it all, he said: Is that the kind of daughter I raised?

  I turned to him and with forced calm I said: Yes!

  Then I carried on, still with forced calm, with forced confidence, but dreading him coming after me. I made myself walk slowly, but all I could think about was whether he would come after me, I turned around after a while to see if he was coming after me, and he was. But there were people about, surely he wouldn’t hurt me when there were other people around? He came after me, getting closer all the time, gaining on me, he was right behind me, he bent down and picked up a heavy metal pipe, he raised it ready to strike me and I thought: Surely those people will stop him! And then: If he hits me, I’ll die.

  By the time the Balkan Wars broke out Bo Schjerven and I had become good friends. Bo loved Yugoslavia and it broke his heart when Yugoslavia fell apart, when people who had lived peacefully side by side started killing one another. How could it have happened? Every morning he would run down to the Narvesen kiosk on the corner and buy a copy of every single Norwegian newspaper, but he didn’t buy their coverage of the Balkan Wars. Something didn’t add up. He tried working out what it was, he sat tirelessly in the University Library from morning till night reading foreign newspapers, German, French, British, Russian, and became increasingly agitated and morose, drowning in copies of articles from foreign newspapers which he had underlined and commented on in the margins. He submitted outraged articles to Norwegian newspapers criticising their coverage of the Balkan Wars, but they rarely published them. I edited quite a few of them and toned them down, and occasionally some made it to print. Then important people would write that Bo’s observations were pertinent, and that made it all worthwhile, Bo said, although it didn’t change anything. Bo Schjerven’s articles being published changed nothing, but he said citing the philosopher that he didn’t write to convince those who disagreed with him, but so that those who agreed with him would know that they weren’t alone.

  ~

  Bo’s perspective was different. Bo considered things from another angle. Bo didn’t just say: This is true. But he went on to ask: What else is true?

  We mustn’t be late. I begged Søren and Ebba not to be late. Tale delayed her return to Stockholm in order to attend the funeral, we mustn’t be late. We left in plenty of time, but I didn’t want to get there too early either, I didn’t want to stand on the steps to the chapel, greeting people and making small talk. I mustn’t be late, I must get there right on time, I was dreading it. When we were nearly there, we were much too early, we didn’t want to be at the chapel as early as that so we drove to the nearest petrol station and got some coffee. We sat in the car, drinking coffee. We didn’t leave the petrol station until we absolutely had to, so we got there as late as possible while still on time, I was terrified. We pulled into the car park, I dreaded who I might meet there, I spotted Bård with his wife and their children. I imagined they had also wanted to get there as late as possible, but still on time. We got out and said hello, Lars arrived, I was fraught. Karen arrived, Klara came running, my ex-husband and Ebba arrived, I wanted to tell them about my dream and the iron pipe, I talked too loudly about my dream, together we walked towards the door, but I didn’t want to go in straightaway. Other people went inside, most of them must be inside already because there was no one chatting on the steps outside, a couple I didn’t know rushed past me and went inside, Søren rang and said he couldn’t find it, I had to explain to Søren how to find it, Klara said I had to go in now. Bård and his wife and children had gone inside, my ex-husband had gone inside, I grabbed Tale’s arm. Klara said I had to go inside, but Søren didn’t know how to find the chapel, I had to explain to Søren how to get here, I wanted to tell Klara about my dream, Klara snatched the phone from my hand and said that she would explain to Søren how to get here, she insisted I went inside, they dragged me inside, Tale, Lars and Ebba dragged me inside, I didn’t look right or left, but marched as quickly as I could up the central aisle to the front where I was forced to sit so that everyone could see me. Bård sat with his wife and daughters on the first pew to the right, Mum sat on the left side with Astrid and Åsa and their husbands and children and the pew behind them was full as was the pew behind it, most pews on the left were full, but there was no one sitting next to Bård and his wife and children, nor on the pew behind them and only one man was sitting on the pew behind that, but then I came, then the rest of us came. I took a seat next to Bård, Bård’s wife and Bård’s daughters, and my children sat next to me and Lars squeezed himself down between Bård’s children and me, we filled the first pew to the right, while the pew behind us remained empty, people didn’t want to sit on our side, people didn’t want to side with us, but those who had come in last, my friends, who would have preferred to sit in the back because of their peripheral relationship to my dad, were told by the chapel usher to take the second pew to the right, which she had noticed was empty and it didn’t look good that it was empty. My friends came and sat in the pew behind Bård and me, on our side, siding with us, and Søren arrived in time in his thick quilted jacket and was the tallest one there.

  Lars nudged my side with his elbow: Someone’s trying to get your attention. He nodded toward the first pew to the left, towards Mum who was staring intently at me, around her neck she wore a scarf I had given her one Christmas. I had no choice but to go over and say hello to her and hug her in full view of everyone, I went over there and I hugged her and I hugged Åsa and Astrid as quickly as I could, then I stopped, enough was enough, I wasn’t willing to hug the whole pew, Astrid’s and Åsa’s husbands and children, so I returned to my seat to the right, now it was all about surviving the service, getting myself out of the chapel, back to my car, driving off and being done with it, then heading out to Lars’s house in the woods, surely it couldn’t take more than an hour. The photograph on the order of service taken maybe thirty years ago had Dad sitting bare-chested in a boat on Hvaler with his hand on the outboard motor, I didn’t like seeing him so undressed, so much exposed flesh; on the back page there was a poem which Mum had written for Dad about how she liked lying close to him. Now he was lying in a white coffin under the flowers, they had organised the flowers, four floral hearts from his four children lay around the altar, our names and those of our children printed on pink silk ribbons, I visualised Dad wielding the metal pipe.

  A funeral celebrant entered, welcomed everyone and read aloud Mum’s poem to Dad, which was printed on the back of the order of service. She had written it on an early January morning, he said, Mum had woken up before Dad, got up and sat by the window and written this poem, which was about her longing to lie close to him and about spring in January. The celebrant would return to this theme many times, spring in January, as the time that would follow Dad’s death, to the month of January, which was nearly upon us, as soon
as the day after tomorrow. Mum’s life after Dad, about everything that would start over, the celebrant talked a lot about that, I’m guessing on orders from Mum, who was probably hoping for spring in January. We sang ‘The Day You Gave Us Lord, Is Ended’, and I joined in to show that my voice wasn’t trembling, I wondered if the family thought I was going to be a part of this new life-after-Dad that had just been announced, spring in January, Mum’s, Astrid’s and Åsa’s life after Dad’s death, if they really thought that we could start over, as if history didn’t exist, as if history could be forgotten, erased, even though every war ever fought on this earth has proved that you can’t ignore history, sweep it under the carpet, and that if you want to reduce history’s destructive impact on the future, everyone’s version of what happened must be brought out into the open and acknowledged. Åsa gave the eulogy and said that Dad had loved Mum. I think she was right about that, that Dad had loved Mum, given how furious Dad would get whenever he doubted that he was loved back by Mum, given how furious Dad would get whenever he thought he detected signs of a lack of devotion from Mum, and how furious he would get if Mum rejected him sexually or in other ways, Dad loved Mum to the extent that he hated and got furious with Mum and all other women, anyone female, if he felt rejected by Mum, Dad was so vulnerable in his relationship with Mum that he reacted with rage and aggression whenever he felt rejected by her, Dad loved Mum so much and so obsessively that he wanted to own and rule over her and control her, and Dad had pretty much succeeded in that respect, but he could never know what Mum felt in her heart of hearts and it tormented Dad that Mum’s private thoughts couldn’t be completely controlled one hundred per cent. It caused Dad to suffer and to hate Mum for it, as he had hated his own cold mother he could never reach, who had rejected him, he had said so many times, whom I had myself experienced as cold when I was a child. That was my analysis of Dad, strongly inspired by Freud, but I believed it to be true, I felt it. Mum would be made to pay the price for the coldness Dad’s mother had supposedly exhibited, unless she surrendered one hundred per cent to Dad and so she tried to do that, she had no choice, but Dad could never feel safe, he could never be sure that the surrender was complete, there might still be half a percentage point in Mum of distance towards him and he couldn’t bear that, deep down Dad hated Mum and all women because they eluded his total control and because he needed them so badly. Poor Dad.

  Mum had undoubtedly been the love of Dad’s life, Åsa said, but she also said, phew, that having Mum as the love of your life could be something of a challenge, she was referring to Mum’s affair with Rolf Sandberg, which everyone knew about. Then she came to us children, Dad’s four children. She said that Mum and Dad’s genetic mix had produced very different children. She didn’t want to be compared to Bård and me, so she took us in turn. There was Bård, who had excelled in many types of sport and made a career for himself as a lawyer and investor, she must have read Bård’s email to Dad and was now giving him the recognition Dad never had, they were hoping for spring in January. Then there was Bergljot, she said, getting to me, number two, I tensed up. Bergljot, she said, had always been very keen on theatre, on drama. Bergljot had directed all the kids in the neighbourhood in her own theatre productions. Bergljot was creative and imaginative and was now a theatre critic and a magazine editor. Then there was Astrid, she said, number three, who like Bård, had also been very good at sport when she was younger, but now she worked with human rights, while she herself, the youngest, who had always been shy and was therefore regarded as the most intelligent, she said, she meant it as a joke and we laughed, she now worked for the civil service drafting legislation, she liked being in the background, analysing, reflecting.

  Then she talked about how kind Dad had been to Granny, towards his mother, when she got ill in her old age. It was true, I had completely forgotten that, how Dad had visited his old mother when she fell ill, how Dad would drive to the care home where she lived several times a week to help care for her. Åsa went on to say that Dad had arranged for a family member to visit his mother every day. I didn’t remember that either, I hadn’t been a part of it, or perhaps that had happened after I had left home as quickly as I could after finishing school at eighteen, when Astrid and Åsa were still living at home, perhaps it had been the four of them as early as that. Why had I forgotten that Dad took such good care of Granny, of his mother, when she fell ill and had visited her in the care home several times a week? Was it because it didn’t fit my image of Dad? Hadn’t I just concluded that he hated all women because of his cold mother, because she had rejected him? I had tried to analyse Dad, but did he elude analysis? Or was Dad making amends, not to those he had betrayed, but towards a harmless, sick old lady he no longer feared? Dad was given an opportunity to be kind, to show that he cared, and he needed so badly to be kind and to show that he cared, and it was simpler to care for his sick old mother than those he had betrayed, whom he feared, who were growing up, who had become adults and might one day prove dangerous, isn’t that often the case?

  Åsa turned to the coffin, to Dad, and said goodbye to him in a thick voice, I looked towards Astrid, who was sat leaning forwards with her head turned away, Mum seemed composed.

  Åsa’s daughter came up and placed a red rose on Dad’s coffin, the celebrant, who had so far resorted to neutral terms now employed Christian ones, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He threw earth on Dad’s coffin three times with a spade and must have pushed a button because the coffin was then lowered and when it had disappeared, the floor closed with a thud. We sang another hymn, and I sang loud to prove that my voice wasn’t trembling, surely it had to be over soon, then when we had finished singing, the celebrant walked from wreath to wreath reading aloud the names on the ribbons, he walked from heart to heart and read aloud our names and those on the other flowers and bouquets, the names of people I didn’t know as if to point out that many people had loved Dad and were now missing and mourning him. When he had finished reading the names it was over, the bells started tolling and the doors behind us were opened, Mum, the widow, left first down the central aisle, then Åsa and Astrid followed with their families, everyone seated on the first pew to the left, then it was our turn, our pew, Bård with his family and then me with Lars and my family, there was no way of getting round it, I grabbed Tale’s arm and headed down the central aisle in plain sight, people were staring at me, I guess, but I didn’t meet anyone’s gaze, I walked as quickly as I possibly could with my eyes fixed on the back in front of me, Bård’s back, towards the light beyond the door, the clear December light outside. The celebrant was standing on the steps waiting to shake hands with us, I shook his hand and said it was a fine service although I didn’t think so, I said to Åsa, who was standing on the steps that I thought it was a fine eulogy, I told Mum that it had been a fine service and continued down the steps so they couldn’t ask me if I was coming to Bråteveien, so I wouldn’t have to say no, so they wouldn’t implore me, to avoid shocked and horrified reactions from the mourners pouring out of the chapel, greeting and hugging Mum, Åsa and Astrid, I clutched Tale’s arm and we walked towards the car as quickly as we could without running, we reached the car and I got in on the passenger side, Tale would be driving because I had drunk too much wine last night, I asked her to start the car and leave, then I remembered that Klara had my mobile and I asked Tale to go get my mobile, quickly before anyone came, but fortunately Klara had already come down to the car with my mobile and said it was right for me to leave, and Karen came and I hugged them and thanked them for coming, but that I had to leave now, and we left.

  One Easter, I might have been eleven, the whole family was crammed into the tiny cabin my parents used to rent before Dad bought the ones on Hvaler, we were listening to the radio, to a programme about telepathy. We tried to read one another’s minds. Bård pulled a card from a deck, looked at it and thought about the card while the rest of us had to guess which one he was thinking of. None of us could guess it. Astrid chose
a card and thought about the card, but none of us could guess which one she had chosen and was thinking of. Dad took a card, looked at it and sent thoughts about the card to all of us and his thoughts reached me loud and clear: The ace of hearts.

  I was right. Dad turned over the card, it was the ace of hearts, I was so happy! The ace of hearts from Dad to me.

  Klara rang me on the night of the funeral, I was alone in Lars’s house in the woods. What a bizarre performance, she said. Whose idea was the floral hearts? And reciting Mum’s poem about lying close to Dad. And the reading aloud of the names on all the wreaths and bouquets and Åsa’s eulogy describing you as someone who liked drama and directing everyone, while painting herself as the insightful analyst who prefers quiet reticence. She has no idea what you’re having to deal with, Klara said.

  That night I dreamt that our extended family was carrying out an experiment where we would be sharing a house for three months. The house was full of relatives, my sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles who talked and laughed and were effortlessly together, while I was ill at ease, an outsider who was trying to drag an awkward suitcase up to my room. The others were busy planning trips, everyone was excited, animated, all except me, everyone was looking forward to it, all except me, they worked closely together, but ignored me, no one offered to help me with my suitcase. I decided to ask Bård for help, but I couldn’t find him.

  That’s how I was with my family, I thought when I woke up, especially during the holidays when there was no school, when the family would gather together in the evenings on Hvaler. Bård had gone out in the world, Bård wanted out, he was always off sailing, dating girls, while I stayed at home with my family because Mum worried about me to the point of hysteria and her anxiety rubbed off on me. During the day I would run around alone on the rocks, finding caves where I could hide and make my own, I knew Hvaler like the back of my hand, but in the evenings, I had to stay inside with my family, confined to my family, my tummy hurt, I had a lump in my throat, my chest felt tight, I used to watch Mum and my sisters, but they couldn’t possibly have felt the same way. I didn’t watch Dad, we never looked at one another unless we had to, but Dad was always on the periphery, Dad probably felt the way I did, alone with his unmanageable baggage.