Will and Testament

by Vigdis Hjorth

  Morning, 5 January. Darkness, sleet, fog. I lay under the duvet not wanting to get up, reeling as if I’d been in battle. It was how Lars had put it when I had rung him on my way back last night to say I felt battered, that I knew I would be going to war, and in every battle you take some knocks. It was true, that was the other face of war. The desire for war and the excitement you feel when you fight for something you believe in was one face, the exhaustion and shaking that followed was the other. I had been in battle, that was how I felt, dazed, battered and tired to the bone, I had drunk red wine in bed until I fell asleep and woke up, heavy and shaking on 5 January to darkness and sleet. The house was cold, I could tell that from my nose which stuck out from under the duvet, I didn’t have the energy to get up, I didn’t have the energy to stay in bed, I didn’t have the energy for silence, I didn’t have the energy for sound, but I needed to talk to Klara. I turned on my mobile, which I had turned off last night so I wouldn’t call anyone or take any calls when I was so mentally out of it, I entered the PIN and got a message telling me that it was wrong, I tried it a second time and was told again that it was wrong, although it wasn’t, I was sure that it was right, I re-entered the PIN and got a message saying that it was wrong and that my phone had been locked and couldn’t be unlocked for another hour, but I had to speak to Klara! I remembered that Søren had recently upgraded my phone contract, had got me a new SIM card, what an idiot I was forgetting that now that it really mattered that I remembered it, what did I do now? My mobile was locked, my mobile didn’t work on the very day when I needed it most, that was my punishment for what I had done, making Mum run around the accountant’s office, wide-eyed with terror like an animal that knows it’s about to be tortured and killed. Poor Mum. I went to my Mac and saw that it was already twelve noon, but my watch showed ten, my watch had stopped again, nothing worked, I emailed Søren asking him what to do about my phone, he told me to go down to Elkjøp and get them to sort it out. I got dressed, I hid behind my clothes. Fido didn’t want to go outside in the rain, I forced her outside, I was mean, it felt as though I was staggering, I hadn’t eaten anything for a day and a half, I must stop off at Kiwi for some groceries. The rain was pelting down, lashing us, Fido hated it, I dragged her along through puddles, I was merciless, water was thrown back from the road, spraying us whenever a car drove by, wearing waterproofs made no difference. We were soaked, Fido’s tail was dripping, I walked right past Kiwi, I didn’t have the energy to face people, didn’t have the energy to pick out groceries, I wasn’t hungry. The rain turned into snow as we walked, we waded through slush, I dragged the dog after me through the cold slush and tied her to a post outside the watchmaker and ran inside to drop off my watch so it could be fixed and continued onwards to Elkjøp where I tied Fido to a fence outside, dogs weren’t allowed inside. Fido had to wait in the cold slush, shaking, poor Fido, she looked at me with reproachful eyes. I promised to be as quick as I could and ran inside and found I had to pick a number for the queue and wait although I wasn’t able to wait. I waited, I tried my best to cope with it, I waited forever, no one hurried up for my sake, finally it was my turn after what seemed like an eternity and then the assistant said that I had to wait, that they couldn’t help me until an hour had passed, that the mobile couldn’t be unlocked until then. I’ll buy a new one, I said, if he could guarantee that the new phone would work immediately, he said it would so I bought a new mobile. He found me a new mobile that he guaranteed would work immediately and set it up for me as quickly as he could, he could sense the urgency, I paid and went outside and untied the dog from the fence and called Klara and the phone worked immediately. Klara picked up and I headed back in the rain, in the slush, still on the phone to Klara and I didn’t have to explain the state I was in, she could tell from my voice. Why did I really do it, I asked. What was I hoping for? Surely I knew all along that they wouldn’t accept my version of events? Was I simply being wicked? Did I just want to drop the vase?

  No, Klara said.

  Had you wanted to be wicked, you could have done much worse. Your words were restrained. You said what they deserved to hear. Why should they get away with swiping those cabins for next to nothing without any negative consequences? They’ve treated you appallingly for years. Astrid and Åsa have benefited from your parents’ generosity for years. They’ve had more than Bård and you for years, emotionally and financially, why should they get away with that without you, without the two of you, retaliating? It has been five against one for years. You’ve seen it as five against one for years because you didn’t know how Bård felt. Now it’s three against two and that’s new, they weren’t prepared for that, but they’re still the majority, and they have each other. You’ve no reason to feel ashamed. It was a healthy thing to do. Yes, Lars is right, you’ve been in battle, you’re bruised and battered now, but you’ll feel better in a few days, it’s usually gets worse before it gets better.

  ~

  I went to see Lars. He said that he had warned me that it might go like that, get worse. We mustn’t drink. I couldn’t be as shaky tomorrow, 6 January, as I was today, the fifth, I had meetings. Bård wrote to me in the evening: How are you feeling? It was a precise question. I replied that our mum and sisters were good at shirking responsibility, that they made me feel as if I was the problem, that the unpleasant scene could have been avoided if only I had behaved differently, I said that I realised that. But, but, I wrote. He replied that he’d had a lawyer go over the will and this lawyer thought that it stated clearly—twice—that the intention was that everyone would inherit equally and that we would win a subsequent court case, if the cabin valuations weren’t increased. The question was how to communicate this to Astrid and Åsa. I said that I trusted him, that he would have to do it in whichever way he thought best. He could probably hear that I was exhausted, he was probably exhausted, he said that our mum and sisters probably found this just as exhausting as we did. I believe that they find this just as exhausting as we do. Did Astrid and Åsa also find it exhausting, did they feel anything other and more than just anger and outrage? Did they also experience something akin to grief, and which had nothing to do with Dad?

  We didn’t drink, it took a long time before I was able to fall asleep, I lay in the darkness behind Lars’s back, trying to get in contact with Dad. Wherever you are, if you’re anywhere at all, we draw a line now, I said, I forgive you, I said. I thought he replied: Well fought, Bergljot, but I think I got that line from Festen.

  During the period I tried to have at least some contact with my family for the sake of my young children so that they would get to see their family, their grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins, I would occasionally meet with Mum in town. Mum wanted to see me, and I would meet her in town. Her speech would be rather hectic when we met, rushed, she would chew gum and be restless, squirming on her chair while we sat in Baker Hansen. She worried about the elephant in the room. She wanted to see me so that she could tell other people, friends and acquaintances, that she had seen me, but she actually dreaded seeing me, I could sense her anxiety. She was terrified of accidentally mentioning anything that might relate to the elephant, any mention of media reports about sexual crimes and the mood would instantly become silent and awkward. So she made up her mind, I think, to talk only about safe subjects, the weather or my siblings and their families, it was a rehearsal so that everything would sound normal when she spoke to other people. And yet it wouldn’t surprise me if she came to Baker Hansen nurturing a faint hope that our differences might suddenly have evaporated, only to be disappointed that they hadn’t. Before we parted, after half an hour, say, she would give me two thousand kroner in cash. I thanked her and took the money with a feeling of unease because I needed the money, and how would she have reacted if I had refused it, it would only have added to the awkwardness. Then we would go our separate ways, each relieved that it was over.

  Once during such a meeting at Baker Hansen, Mum said: Many people think that Dad is funny.


  Why did she say that? To defend her still being with him? Did Mum deep down find it humiliating that she was still with Dad, that she hadn’t managed to leave him? I was only one issue, I could be rejected and dismissed as having an overactive imagination, besides they never talked about me, another matter was the family and friends and acquaintances they had made over time, whom they couldn’t have avoided making over time, and that Mum, once she was back with Dad in Bråteveien on his terms after the scandal with Rolf Sandberg, was being beaten up by Dad. They drank and argued and one day Mum had a broken arm, she had fallen down the stairs. One day she had a black eye, she had walked into a door. One day she had lost a tooth, she had slipped on the ice. Many people think that Dad is funny, Mum said.

  Another time in Baker Hansen, Mum said: Dad is very clever.

  What was I supposed to say that? That it made everything OK, Dad is funny, Dad is very clever, so we’ll just forget about the other stuff?

  A genuine conversation between Mum and me was impossible.

  We left Baker Hansen, sad and relieved.

  Because we didn’t drink on the evening of the fifth, the morning of the sixth was better, the sky was blue. My meetings before lunch went well, perhaps I should quit drinking, perhaps that was what was needed. Tale called at lunchtime. She had been out with a friend the night before, someone who also had a difficult relationship with their family, someone like Klara. She and her friend had got themselves worked up about how people who could and did put themselves in charge of family gatherings and provided the premises because they were adults and had the power, refused to give up their own power and to give their children choices, regardless of the pain it caused them. Tale and her friend had decided to fight back, to say no, to stop playing along with it, and they had both gone home and written emails. Tale had sent emails to Astrid and Åsa and put the same wording in a letter she had posted to Mum, who didn’t have an email address. I was welcome to read it, but I wouldn’t be able to change anything as it had already been sent.

  A minute later it was on my screen.

  To Inga, Astrid, Åsa

  After your reaction to Mum’s brave account the other day, it has become more important than ever to tell you what it feels like to be Mum’s daughter and Inga and Bjørnar’s granddaughter.

  I’ve seen Mum as broken and distraught as a human being is capable of without dying; so destroyed that very few would be able to get up again. I’ve seen Mum struggle to learn to live with her past. I’ve seen Mum hold on to her pain so as not to pass it on to her children. I’ve seen Mum seek refuge in alcohol, in literature, to escape reality, to escape her memories. I’ve seen Mum unable to sleep sober because she still fears the night, the bed, the loss of control. I’ve seen Mum work her fingers to the bone.

  I’ve seen Mum constantly trying to understand.

  I’ve seen Mum say sorry, it’s my fault, not yours, take away my shame like she wishes someone could have taken away her shame. I have seen Mum fight, try, hope and give up.

  I’ve spent time with Granny and Grandad and felt like a hypocrite. I’ve seen them pretend that nothing is wrong and I’ve done likewise. I’m ashamed of that.

  But I didn’t know how deep these self-deceptions went and how far you were willing to go to maintain them. Now I’ve witnessed you denying events which in every possible way have been so present, so pivotal and so decisive for Mum’s life, and thus mine too. I’ve witnessed you not taking it seriously. I don’t understand how that’s possible, and it makes me angry. Not only on Mum’s behalf, but because it also denies my experiences, my history: I’ve seen her struggle, her loneliness, how small, damaged, vulnerable and alone she was.

  Mum didn’t become the person she is today because she had a happy childhood; Mum has all her fine, strong qualities in spite of it. In spite of a father who sexually abused her and a mother who let it happen; by denying this, Inga, you only reveal your own failure to take responsibility. And you lose not only a child, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren as well. How sad.

  ~

  I wept. It was terrible to see it, but it felt so good to be seen. To have someone hold up a mirror that didn’t lie, it was so painful, yet so good that she saw everything so clearly. It is terrible that someone who has been destroyed spreads destruction, and how hard that is to avoid. Dad, who had once said: If only you knew what happened to me when I was a child.

  I called to thank her, she could hear that I was moved and said that she hadn’t written it because she was a good person, but because she was upset and angry; besides she wasn’t sacrificing or risking anything because she had a life in Stockholm, she didn’t need the family in Bråteveien, they couldn’t hurt her, she was no longer scared of them, it was a political act, she said, because what would happen to the world if everyone behaved like the family in Bråteveien and got away with it. She wanted to free me from gratitude, I realised, but I felt it nevertheless.

  Once during the period when I had a minimal amount of contact with my family for the sake of my young children, so that they would get to see their family, Mum called and told me that Rolf Sandberg was retiring, she was still in contact with him. Rolf Sandberg was retiring and had to clear out his office where he kept all of his and Mum’s letters. He couldn’t bring them home and Mum couldn’t keep them in Bråteveien, she asked if I wanted them, they must be quite interesting to a theatrical person, she said. Perhaps they might inspire me, perhaps they might make a play one day, could I keep their letters in my basement?

  If this had happened before I understood my past, I might have said yes, I usually said yes to Mum, I tended to comply with her wishes although I tried to keep my distance because she had no boundaries, but I still depended on her because she was all I had. Had it been before the moment of truth, I would probably have said yes and Mum would have driven the steamy love letters which she and Rolf Sandberg had exchanged to my home and probably showed me some of the more poetical ones, read them aloud to me, and I would have listened and felt uncomfortable, but I would have listened to her, I was still so enmeshed in Mum’s life at that point that I didn’t know where hers stopped and mine began.

  That was the childhood I had been given and to begin with I never questioned it, never realised that I had become enmeshed in Mum’s life because I hadn’t had a proper father. Thus Mum’s way became the norm, I knew no other, I didn’t know what normality was. But it was madness that was presented to me as normality, madness that sprung from desperation, only I didn’t know that then.

  Astrid had replied to Tale quite quickly. With more of the same, Tale said. Astrid opened by saying no wonder that Tale had suffered, that everyone had suffered, that she and Åsa had suffered, but especially Mum and Bergljot, me, I was suffering now. She had thought hard about it, she wrote, she had thought very hard about it for more than twenty years, and she realised that Bergljot, there I was again, suffered because she, Astrid, hadn’t taken a side, but if she had done so, it would have been on flimsy and unreliable evidence. She thought it was time for reconciliation. In conclusion she asked if Tale had also sent her email to Mum. When Tale replied that she had posted a copy to her grandmother, Astrid asked if it was all right if she removed it from Mum’s post box. She was scared that Mum couldn’t take any more. Tale said they could do whatever they wanted, she wasn’t taking the blame for any suicide.