Will and Testament

by Vigdis Hjorth

  Yes, I said, why were you so worried about me?

  I wasn’t worried about you, she snapped back, but if there was one thing that everyone in the room except the accountant knew, then it was that Mum had always been strangely worried about me, that Mum had had one fit of hysterics after another when I was young and was late coming home from something. Because it wasn’t easy being Mum back then, to know what had happened to your oldest daughter, but not what to do about it because Mum was at Dad’s mercy in every possible way, Mum had four children, but no education, no money, what could she do? I thought about going to see the vicar, she had said to me back when she asked me if Dad had ever done something to me when I was little, back when my story was useful, back when Mum had hoped to divorce Dad in order to marry Rolf Sandberg because if my story came out, divorcing Dad wouldn’t be an act of betrayal on Mum’s part, but a virtue. You were so strange when I came back from Volda, she said. I thought about going to see the vicar, she said. But why go to a vicar, what kind of worries do you take to a vicar rather than a friend or relative? But Mum didn’t share her suspicion and her worries with the vicar when she came back from Volda after leaving Dad alone with Bård and me in Skaus vei, when I acted so strangely after she had come back. Mum didn’t go see the vicar just like I didn’t go to the police with a case that had passed the statute of limitations. Instead Mum sent me to piano lessons and ballet lessons, something which she never did for my sisters, probably in the hope that I could be fixed in that way, no wonder she had worried about me. Even back then, when the i-word was pronounced with an h, people knew that children who had been subjected to what I had been subjected to might experience problems in later life, become promiscuous, oversexualised, abuse drugs and alcohol, that was what Mum was scared of, what might happen when I became a teenager, that I might start to drink or sleep around and get pregnant at fifteen and take drugs, Mum sent me to piano lessons and ballet classes, something she never did for my sisters, Mum didn’t go see the vicar, but instead gave me a copy of Tove Ditlevsen’s novel about child abuse, A Child Was Hurt, which I didn’t read, which I stuffed into a cupboard, filled with foreboding. Mum watched me like a hawk, scanning me for signs, smelling me when I came home at night to see if she could detect smoke, trying to sniff out if the catastrophe had set in.

  I won’t put up with this, Mum shouted, as she headed for the door in the meeting room, and Astrid got up to follow her and told me that it wasn’t just me who had suffered, she too had suffered, it hadn’t been easy for her either, having to cope with two such differing accounts, to be caught between a rock and a hard place.

  And you, Mum said furiously, now addressing Bård, you were in France and you didn’t come home, you didn’t come to Bråteveien, you didn’t visit me, your old mother, you didn’t give me a hug! Mum had hoped for visits, Mum had hoped for hugs, Mum had hoped for all the things which presumably go on in a normal family, she couldn’t see or she wasn’t willing to accept that the family she had helped create wasn’t like that, normal, but that it was abnormal, destroyed. And you sent a horrible email to Dad, she carried on still addressing Bård, a dreadful, horrible email, and Dad was thinking about replying to that vile email, but never managed to because then he died. Mum went up to the accountant and asked if she could annul the will.

  Can I annul the will?

  And the cat was out of the bag.

  Mum and Dad had been hoping to buy us off, to buy me off, that was why we were told that Christmas three years ago that they had made a will, that everyone would get the same, apart from the cabins, in order to shut me up, to silence my nasty story with money, then that didn’t happen, then I refused to be silenced and the intention of the will was lost, it hadn’t worked. Can we annul the will, Mum asked the accountant, but the ashen-faced accountant replied that she couldn’t. Later I have often thought about it, how trapped Mum suddenly was. The will was lying there and it was valid, and the expressed intention of the will was for the four children to inherit equally so that was what must happen even though the real intention had been that Bård and I would shut up, be silenced, complicit and kind and quiet, but we weren’t, so it hadn’t played out the way they had planned, so they didn’t get to do what they wanted with their money, with their will, and now it couldn’t be undone, now it was too late.

  I’m disappointed in you, Mum hissed at me on her way to the door.

  Do you know the first thing that springs to mind when I think about Dad, Bård said, and carried on without waiting for a reply. I was nine years old, we had gone fishing in Hardangervidda, but I wanted to go home and turned around. Dad came after me, he grabbed a stick and beat the living daylights out of me. That’s my most vivid memory of Dad.

  He only did it because he was scared that you would get lost, Mum screamed, thus revealing that she was familiar with the story, so Bård must have confronted her or them with it at some point. You would have done the same, Mum screamed at him, you told me so yourself that you would do the same had it been one of your children!

  What? Bård said.

  Yes, you told me so, Mum said.

  No, Bård said.

  Oh, yes, you did, Mum said, and looked at me again: I’m really, really disappointed in you!

  I’ve been disappointed in you for years, I said, Mum was standing by the door now, her hand on the handle, Astrid and Åsa had got up to leave with her.

  You can’t direct us to believe you, Åsa said to me, using the theatrical expression she had also used at the funeral. I’m guessing it was a reference to me directing her as a child when she was in my theatre group, her big sister’s theatre group, how she must have hated me even then. I replied that I knew that, but that I wanted my account to have a life. They were by the door now having put on gloves and woollen hats ready to leave, and Åsa said that this whole performance showed exactly why the four of us couldn’t share the cabins on Hvaler. She refused to share a cabin with any of us, she said, and then they walked out, the three of them, and Bård and I were left behind with the accountant.

  We sat in silence for a while, then the accountant said that this had been a surprise, that this had been unexpected.

  If you hadn’t been here, Bård said, Bergljot would never have been allowed to finish.

  He was right about that. If the accountant hadn’t been present, they would have left before I had finished reading.

  I was exhausted. My legs were shaking. We sat in the meeting room for a while and the accountant asked us questions, including some about the family, but I was incapable of speaking, all the air had gone out of me. Bård talked, explained our view of our family, how we had experienced our family as children. The accountant listened and was sympathetic, yet Mum was paying her bill, the accountant said that it couldn’t be easy to be widowed at the age of eighty, and that was true, the accountant was right about that, it couldn’t be easy to be widowed at the age of eighty, we sat there about half an hour, then we left, I’ve always wondered if the accountant billed Mum for that half hour.

  We left. We made our way to Bård’s car. Bård said he would give me a lift to the Indian restaurant where I was meeting Ebba. I said that I preferred to walk, I needed to feel the wind on my face.

  Klara found a Danish publisher willing to publish her book about Anton Vindskev. Klara is like a cork, Anton said, the longer you keep her down, the higher she jumps back up again. Klara is like a palm tree in a hurricane, he said, it’ll bend right down to the ground, but once the wind dies down, it’ll jump right back up. Klara celebrated the acceptance of her book at Restaurant Hong Kong in Copenhagen. On her way home, she saw a man who was drowning in a canal. She threw herself down on the ground and grabbed the man’s coat by his shoulder pads and called out for help. He probably weighed a hundred kilos and he was wearing a thick coat and heavy boots, she could only just keep him above the surface, she cried out for help and people gathered around her, but they merely looked on as if it were a film. Help, Klara called out, help me keep
him up, but the people were drunk and thought they were watching a movie. Help me, she called out, I’m losing him or I’ll fall in myself, I’ll be dragged into the water, sit on my legs or he’ll drown or we’ll both drown, she called out, then an ambulance, some paramedics and two divers arrived and got the man out alive.

  She called me in the middle of the night. Why do people keep trying to kill themselves? I haven’t got the energy for any more suicides! I haven’t got the energy to save people all the time, it’s robbing me of all my strength.

  I found the Indian restaurant although I was beside myself, as if I was an evil robot on autopilot, although my heart was beating too fast, although my ribs were groaning and aching. I gulped, my mouth was dry and parched, I felt nauseous, but I couldn’t bear the thought of drinking anything. It was obvious that what I had just participated in, the meeting with the accountant, had affected me mentally, yet what surprised me was how my body reacted independently of my mind which had wanted this, I had wanted this. I didn’t get to the restaurant on time, I was late, the meeting with the accountant had taken longer than I had expected, I had to talk to someone urgently, to Ebba. I found the Indian restaurant and she was there with a Cola Light on the table, and I ordered a beer and it couldn’t arrive soon enough, and I got it and I drank it, it was a disaster, I said. Then Tale rang me, it was a total disaster, I said, they went for my jugular, I said, Mum got up to leave before I’d even got to the second paragraph, I said, and when Bård asked why I would say it if it wasn’t true, she hissed that it was to get attention, she actually hissed, but I’m with Ebba right now, I said, I’ll call you back, I said, I said the same thing to Ebba, it was a disaster, I said, I drank beer and ordered some food, but didn’t eat any, I drank another beer, I won’t drink much, I said, you need to look after yourself, Ebba said, perhaps I looked more upset and distraught than I felt, although I felt very upset and distraught, what had I expected, but that was the whole point, I hadn’t expected anything, I had deliberately chosen not to think about the consequences, of their reactions. Lars rang and I repeated that it had been a disaster, that Mum had wanted to leave before I even got to the second paragraph, but I’ll call you back later, I said, I’m with Ebba. Poor Ebba sat there with her distraught mother, whom she didn’t know how to help, caught up in her mother’s history, which she didn’t know how to handle, but which had invariably become her history. She drank her Cola Light while her mother drank beer and spoke on the phone because then Søren rang, it was a total disaster, I said. Did you read your text aloud, he asked, yes, I said, but beforehand I asked Bård if he thought I should read it, and he thought I should. It was a good idea to ask Bård first, he said, but I’m with Ebba, I said. Ebba asked me to tell her everything right from the beginning and I tried to start at the beginning, I ordered a third beer and asked for the bill at the same time to signal to the waiter and to Ebba that it would be no more than three beers. Then I had a text message from Bård. Well fought, congratulations, he wrote, love, your brother. I showed it to Ebba, she nodded cautiously, poor young, innocent Ebba. Likewise, I replied, love, your sister. Then we left, Ebba took my arm, let’s just forget all about the family, she said supportively, to her mother, woven into her mother’s story. Yes, I said. She asked if I would be all right for the rest of the evening and said that I was welcome to stay at her place. Lovely Ebba, worried about her mother, just like Astrid and Åsa were worried about and looking after their mother. I’ll be fine, I said, I won’t go out, I said, I’m going straight home to drink some red wine and then I’m off to bed, I said.

  I went home as quickly as I could, first by train, then by bus. Karen rang to ask how it had gone and I repeated yet again that it had been a total disaster, I couldn’t say it often enough, that it had been a total disaster, it was as if it made it a little easier to deal with. Karen thought Bård’s questions had been spot on. When would be the right time? Why would she say it if it wasn’t true? Yes, why would you say it if it wasn’t true, Karen said, you’re not the kind of person who tells lies. No, I wasn’t. They had probably talked about it, my friends, throughout the years, what to make of my story and had concluded, fortunately, that I was credible. That was good, and no wonder that they had presumably discussed in private what to think about my story, you can’t swallow whole everything people say about their childhood.

  When I got off the train, I went to the station café and had a glass of wine while I waited for the bus. I called Klara. It was a total disaster, I said. She had imagined the confrontation, she said, it was hideous, she said. And I was so pleased that she had met Mum once on Hvaler when Mum had asked if I had given Tale and her friends ecstasy, so she had some basis on which to imagine it all.

  It was the fact that she had wanted to let go, Klara said, the day after she had saved a man from drowning himself in a Copenhagen canal. It was the fact that she had felt a wicked desire to let go of the stupid, heavy man and watch him sink to the bottom. It was like that poem by Tove Ditlevsen about the little girl who is tempted to pick up a big, beautiful vase, which she knows she mustn’t touch, she wants to pick up the forbidden vase, which is big and heavy and ornate like a piece of jewellery, and because it’s forbidden she picks it up and stands for some endless, exciting seconds feeling the weight of the vase in her hands, how heavy it is, how big it is, and the girl is so small and to smash the vase would be wicked and utterly wonderful, and she hears a voice saying: Why not do something awfully dangerous now that you’re home alone? And she lets the vase go, and in that moment the world becomes wicked and joyless, and on the floor lie a thousand shards which can never be put back together, and the good angels turn away and weep.

  But what if the world had been wicked and joyless all along, only she had to break the vase in order to know it?

  One day I’ll let go, Klara said.

  Before I stopped seeing my family for good, I tried for a time to have a small amount of contact with them for the sake of my young children so that they would get to see my family and because I thought that having a minimum of contact with my family would be less stressful than being subjected to Mum’s enormous pressure, her threats of suicide, her accusations: How can you be so cruel? Mum’s letters listed everything she and Dad had done for me over the years. In spite of everything, it was easier to show up for a sixtieth birthday party with my boyfriend and children, stick it out for an hour and then collapse afterwards. As long as I did that the pressure eased off, the suicidal phone calls stopped as long as I gave Mum enough to make us look normal to the outside world, enough so that she could say should anyone ask: Bergljot is writing her Ph.D. on German drama. Bergljot has been to Berlin. During one of those periods Mum called and suggested that I might need a car, that Dad would like to buy me a car. I thought about it and accepted the offer because I did need a car, a car would be good for the children, and I regarded the car as an apology from Dad. Or I wanted to believe that it was because I needed a car, and surely Dad wouldn’t give a car to someone he felt had unjustly accused him of sexual assault. I accepted the car and considered the car an admission and an apology from Dad. Some months later, at Åsa’s fortieth birthday party, which I went to because Mum and Dad weren’t going to be there, Astrid told me later that night when everyone was drunk, when I was drunk, when Astrid was drunk, that Dad had asked her and my siblings if they believed my allegation. Bergljot says that I sexually assaulted her, do you believe her? She didn’t say what she and my siblings had replied when Dad had asked them the question, but I’m guessing that they replied no. That they had stood in the hallway in Bråteveien one Sunday afternoon, and Dad had asked with a grave face if they believed the monstrous allegation I had made. They had said no because they couldn’t say yes, and as they said no, they picked their side, they denied me. Dad forced my siblings to deny me. So the car wasn’t an admission and an apology, but a bribe. I staggered out of the function room and deep into the forest, I ignored the coach, which was waiting to take the guests back
, I didn’t want to share a coach with people who had said no when Dad asked if they believed me. I hated Dad who had given me a car and hated myself, who had bowed and scraped for the car, for being stupid enough to think that it was an admission and an apology, while behind my back Dad had forced my siblings to deny and betray me, I hated myself for accepting the car because I had tried to forgive Dad, because I thought the car was Dad was admitting and apologising to me, and then it was all a ploy and a lie. I got lost on the forest paths in the morning fog, I didn’t get home until dawn, out of my mind, overwhelmed, overcome, overwrought and overlooked, to make matters worse I called Mum and told her what Astrid had said, was it really true that Dad asked my siblings such impossible questions behind my back? Mum told me not to be so self-righteous. That morality had wrecked her life, that human beings were nothing but animals. Human beings are nothing but animals, Bergljot. I would appear to be naïve if I thought anything else, I was a naïve moralist who didn’t understand that human beings are animals and at the mercy of their urges, a naïve Sunday schoolteacher, who couldn’t get over something as trivial as her father snogging her a few times, and then Mum said something reminiscent of what Dad had said to me back then: If only you knew what happened to me on the boat to America. When Mum and Dad were newlyweds, they had worked their passage to the US on the America ferry. I hung up. Why had I called her? What good had I ever thought would come from calling Mum?

  I got on a plane to San Sebastian to get out of the country, to get away from it, but I didn’t get away from it although I was abroad, it was eating me up, and then I did something I had never done before, I called Mum from San Sebastian in anger. I called and I screamed at Mum, not at an answering machine, I didn’t write a text message, I called Mum and Mum picked up the phone and I screamed at her, for the first time in my life I screamed at Mum, I screamed that her bloody irresponsible behaviour was driving me mad, that she belittled everything I told her, how angry it had made me that she had started talking about herself and the America ferry rather than listen to what I, her daughter, was telling her, and when she tried to reply, I screamed at her to bloody well shut up, it was bloody well her turn to listen to me, I screamed that I felt like the central character in Festen, whose family ties him to a tree in the forest so they don’t have to listen to him, I screamed as I’ve never screamed at anyone before, as I’ve never screamed at anyone since, I screamed that listening to her terrible, corrosive rabbiting drove me mad, I screamed myself empty and dry, then I rang off and turned off the phone. Then I turned it back on and called Klara, I walked along the San Sebastian seafront and told her about my furious outburst at Mum, which had taken me aback and shocked me once it was over, it had left me empty and weak and exhausted and trembling and infantile on the bench at the marina in San Sebastian, I needed comforting. I can’t keep on doing this, I sobbed, what am I going to do, it’s going to kill me, I sobbed. Oh, no, Klara said. Oh, no, it isn’t, she said. You’re strong, she said. But you have to realise this is war, not a tea party. It’s a matter of life and death. There are no peace negotiations, it’s a battle to the death for honour and legacy, she said. I had to give up thinking Mum would ever understand me. I had to give up thinking Mum would ever accept me. I would get nothing from Mum and Dad unless I gave up my truth. Mum and Dad would rather see me dead than acknowledge my truth, they would sacrifice me for their honour. This is war, she said, and I had to become a warrior. Not view myself as a victim, but as a fighter, be devious and tactical like a soldier, not think of appeasement, but war. And as Klara spoke, I began to grasp it, and it changed me. I understood that I wasn’t negotiating a peace, I was at war, I understood that I wasn’t going to be a peace broker, but a soldier. And slowly my body turned into that of a soldier or so it felt on the bench in San Sebastian where I had collapsed sobbing and from which I now rose. I raised my head and transformed my hysterical, grieving, pleading victim’s body into that of a warrior. My feet suddenly connected more firmly with the ground, my legs carried me more safely and my chest lifted, and everything twisted and tangled and soft inside me disappeared, my stride lengthened, I walked along the seafront, brisk and full of purpose, I knew where I was going and swung my free arm as if to hit back and defend myself, as if it were a weapon, as if I had become a weapon. If you want war, war you shall have! I thought. I’m prepared, I thought, when I had rung off and turned off my mobile. I’m sharpening my weapons, I said to myself, I whispered it out into the darkness, and it felt much better to be a fighter than a supplicant child, one you could treat with diffidence because she always came crawling back, in pain or drunk. I had become a warrior, they would finally see what their daughter was made of, they would taste my strength, I’m not scared of you, Dad, I’m not scared of you, Mum, I’m fit for battle!