Will and Testament

by Vigdis Hjorth

  Right, now we’re all here, the accountant said, and asked if we wanted something to drink, she nodded to a tray with mineral water, thermos flasks with coffee and hot water for tea. I fetched a bottle of Farris mineral water, I was restless, I asked if anyone else wanted a Farris, Mum would like a Farris, I opened a bottle of Farris and put it and a glass in front of her. I opened a bottle of Farris for myself, took a glass, then went to my seat next to Bård, sat down, poured the mineral water and drank it. The accountant started, she listed Dad’s businesses with which the others, my siblings, appeared to be familiar. The accountant gave a PowerPoint presentation of the business accounts which the others seemed to know about. Someone had to serve as directors, the accountant said, Dad had wanted all four of his children to be directors, probably an expression of a hope of reconciliation once he was gone, he had given up hope of reconciliation while he was alive, wasn’t able to, he hadn’t been strong enough to reconcile while he was alive—who would have been—but he had hoped for reconciliation after his death, spring in January, that his four children would all be directors of the businesses which carried his surname, our surname, and become friends again. Astrid said that she was happy to be a director, they had probably agreed in advance that she would volunteer, the only one of my siblings who had had any contact with me until two months ago. Bård said that he, too, would like to be a director. Åsa said in jest that being a director probably wouldn’t interest me very much, and we all laughed, everyone knew that I wouldn’t want to be a director, they knew me well enough after all. Perhaps they had noticed that there were two folded pieces of paper in front of me, they looked pristine, but the blank side was upwards so they couldn’t know if there was something on them or whether it was paper I had brought along with me to take notes. The others also had paper in front of them, except for Mum, blank sheets of paper they had taken from the middle of the table where there was a pile of them and several pens, while I would appear to have brought along the pieces of paper which lay in front of me. Did they see the papers in front of me and did they fear them? The accountant pointed to some numbers on the PowerPoint slide, Bård had said that we weren’t talking large sums and it didn’t look like it either. It took just over an hour, a straightforward review, no one had any comments. Bård had a couple of harmless questions, which the accountant cleared up. That was it, the accountant said, turned off the PowerPoint presentation, leaned slightly across the table and added that she was aware that a dispute had arisen about the cabins on Hvaler. And even before Mum started to protest, I turned over the papers lying in front of me on the table in order to get started, to get it over with, waiting had been unbearable, I had to have my story translated from paper into words, to get it over with, I spread out the papers and looking only at them, I read:

  I, and especially my children, have often heard my mother and my sisters talk about the happy times they have had together on Bråteveien and on Hvaler over the years. Heard how nice and kind my sisters have been and so on. As my son Søren observed after having been to Bråteveien some weeks ago for my parents’ eightieth and eighty-fifth birthday party, if you didn’t know your parents had two other children, it would look like just another happy family.

  At this point Mum cut me off. She said she refused to listen to this and got up. That was how bad it was, Mum said, she wasn’t going to listen to this, she was leaving, she said, I imagined she knew what was coming. Astrid got up and put her arm lovingly around her, and it was then, at that point in the meeting, that I raised my voice for the first and only time. Are you too much of a coward, I challenged her. You’re the coward, Mum retorted, but with Astrid’s calming arm around her, she sat down again, reluctantly. Now is not the time or the place, Astrid said, shaking her head, I imagined she knew what was coming as well. I continued, somewhat rattled, but with forced calm and probably rushed it in order to get through my text before anyone else exploded or stormed out, to say out loud something which throughout my whole life, to this day, right up until now, I had felt was absolutely necessary for me to say, so that I could be done with it. And that’s how Astrid, Åsa and Mum want it to look, I read on, but there are these other two, troublesome children who ruin the picture. Do they just happen to be unpleasant people? Or is there a reason why the two eldest of Mum and Dad’s four children haven’t been to Bråteveien and Hvaler like the two youngest?

  Shame on you, Mum said, shame on you.

  Reconciliation, and my sister Astrid must know this, I carried on, because she works with human rights, I said, can only happen when all parties in a conflict get to tell their story, and she must also know, given that she has worked with the Balkan conflict, that a story doesn’t get old. Yet only the other day Astrid told me that she couldn’t understand why Bård, who is nearly sixty, couldn’t move on from his childhood, completely failing to grasp that his past, his childhood lives in him as the story of his life. His own, the only one he has.

  Shame on you, Mum said, what nonsense, what lies!

  Now is not the time or the place, Astrid said, Aunt Unni ought to be here.

  I’ve been scared of Dad my whole life, I continued. I didn’t realise how much until 17 December last year when he died. I experienced a physical sense of relief. When I was between five and seven years old and repeatedly sexually assaulted by Dad, he told me if I ever told anyone, then he would go to prison or Mum would die.

  You’re lying, Mum shouted.

  I didn’t say anything, I said, I repressed it, I was silent, but my life became increasingly difficult, I became increasingly self-destructive and chaotic as everything that I had repressed began to surface. I realised that I needed help and I got it, after several tests I eventually qualified for free psychoanalysis. Twenty-three years ago when I told Mum what had happened, she refused to believe me. As did my sisters. I became an outcast who threatened the family honour. My speaking out in public at various events became a problem and a threat, as Astrid responded once when in despair I said that I felt Mum and Dad would rather see me admitted to a psychiatric ward than become a writer: Well, it would have been easier.

  Now is not the time or the place, Astrid said for the third time and shook her head, and with the accountant present!

  The accountant sat at the end of the table, speechless.

  You’re lying, Mum said.

  But it wasn’t as easy as that, I read aloud, I carried on. Dad is dead. Dad demanded my silence and I’ve been silent for a long time, but I can’t accept that the family silence must be extended to my children. I have, as I said, tried to tell my family my story many times without being heard, but I’m forced to do so now, so that my story as well as Bård’s can be acknowledged and form a part of this settlement, which isn’t just financial the way I see it, but a moral one. That’s why I’m here.

  I looked up.

  Now is not the time or the place, Astrid said for the fourth time, shaking her head.

  When would be the right time, Bård said.

  Liar, Mum hissed at me. Pointing the finger at your dad, what do you think it was like for your dad to be accused of something that awful, and then came the i-word with that strange pronunciation of hers, inchest, she said, with an h, what do you think it was like for your poor dad, how do you think it was for him and why didn’t you confront him, why didn’t you go to the police, you should have gone to the police if what you’re saying is true, but you didn’t, you didn’t go to the police, and you never confronted your dad.

  I’m not surprised she didn’t confront Dad, Bård said, who might have been just as scared of Dad as I was, and who didn’t know because I hadn’t told him, because I couldn’t tell everyone everything, couldn’t expose the most intimate details to everyone, for my own sake, for their sake, that I had made an attempt to confront Dad when I realised what he had done to me and was in total meltdown twenty-three years ago.

  I had called the Support Organisation for Victims of Incest back then and asked if I should confront my parents
, and they said they didn’t give advice on individual cases with which they weren’t familiar, but advised me that if I confronted my parents, I would lose my family. Ninety-nine per cent of children who confront their family lose their family. But I had already lost my family, or so it felt, so I had nothing to lose, I called Mum and confronted her and she must have spoken to Dad, I don’t remember the details, just that some turbulent days followed, some distressing days, some agitated phone calls, then Dad wanted to meet with me in Bråteveien. And I went to Bråteveien, I actually had the courage to go there, I remember thinking on my way to Bråteveien, that I had to see this through, don’t back down now, be brave, have the courage to go to Bråteveien and meet with Dad. I remember what I was wearing, a blue silk dress, I remember my footsteps going up to the door, I remember ringing the bell, but I can’t remember what I had been expecting. Dad opened the door, he was the owner of the BMW outside the house, he had bought the Volvo for Mum, which was parked next to the BMW, Dad showed me into his study with the green leather Chesterfield sofa in front of the fireplace and the large desk. I walked through the impressive hall, down the hallway and into Dad’s study and Dad sat behind the mighty desk and gestured for me to take the chair in front of the desk, and I sat down like a prisoner who was about to be interrogated, I had already lost, I was already beaten and neutralised, I was in Dad’s power, and he knew it. But at least I’d had the courage to go there, I was there, at least I had made a fragile, if failed attempt at confrontation.

  I didn’t commit inchest against you, Dad said in his patrician voice, he uttered the word in that strange foreign way in which Mum had just said it, perhaps that was how the word was pronounced back when they learned it and they hadn’t heard it or used it since, they had closed their ears to that word. I was incapable of saying anything, paralysed as I was in my blue silk dress, it was summer, it was warm, and as I sat there in front of Dad, I realised that the silk dress was a mistake, that I should have worn something with more coverage, but instead I had put on my best summer dress, I had made myself look nice before going there, to Dad’s, I was so naïve, so trapped, so in Dad’s power, I didn’t have a Klara in those days, I barely knew Klara back then, I threw away the dress after my meeting with Dad, my favourite silk dress, my meeting with Dad had soiled it. I don’t remember much of the conversation, but I do remember that he asked me the same question he had asked when he had stood by my bed the morning after he had read my diary when I was fifteen years old, when he went out and got drunk and came back drunk and sobbing and said that it wasn’t easy to be human, and proved it by loving me and caring about me and worrying about me, that was how I had understood him, how I needed to read him, when he asked if I had bled when I first had sex. He must have meant when I first had sex with someone other than him. It never even crossed my mind that I could choose not to answer, that I could say it was none of his business, I said no, that I hadn’t bled, and that was progress from the previous time he had asked me when I was fifteen, mortified and had been unable to utter a single syllable. No, I said, because I hadn’t bled as far as I could remember, but that wasn’t in itself unusual. Afterwards, even as I was leaving, I realised that he might not have been aware that it had gone as far as it had, but that he had been afraid that it had gone as far as it had, that Dad had been so drunk that he couldn’t remember what had happened back when he hadn’t done what he usually told me to do to him, that on this one occasion he hadn’t done solely what he usually did to me, but had got on top of me and had full intercourse with me, but that he feared that he had. And I remember Dad saying as I was about to leave, leave his study, leave Bråteveien, I was walking quite quickly, that if only I knew what had happened to him when he was a child.

  Why didn’t you just go to the police, Mum screamed, and before you told me it was just the once, and now you’re saying it happened over and over.

  But it was you who asked me if Dad had ever done something to me when I was little, I said.

  And you said no! Mum said.

  Then why did you ask me in the first place, I demanded to know, and why didn’t you ask my sisters the same question.

  This is not on, Åsa stopped us. It’s all wrong, Åsa said.

  Why would she say it if it wasn’t true, Bård said.

  To get attention, Mum said, she sits in cafés all over town, drunk, talking about her secret, it’s dreadful, shame on you!

  Do you remember? Mum asked, looking at me with narrow, furious eyes, previously you told me that you didn’t remember.

  I remember, I said.

  Mum got up, Mum wanted to leave, Mum shouted: You would never have got to where you are today if you hadn’t had a safe and happy childhood in Skaus vei. And you got so much attention, your siblings were jealous of you because you got so much attention.