She wandered up and down the old streets, which hadn’t changed and looked just like she remembered them, and the memories came flooding back, as the saying goes, and she realised that the version of her childhood which she had preserved inside herself and put a lid on, wasn’t true. So what was the truth about a person’s childhood and was it ever possible to establish it, and if it was, what would she do with it? She was so pleased to have put her childhood behind her, why would she revisit it, if she didn’t have to? Then again, she was about to make a tapestry for a new sixth-form college and ought to have some idea of what people aged sixteen, seventeen and eighteen needed to see every day when they arrived at a place they believed they had to go to. She made a tentative start. She drove to her childhood home which had been rebuilt, extended and recently painted, and fortunately it was almost unrecognisable or she was immune to it, hopefully the latter. The whole neighbourhood seemed to have been renovated and extended and smartened up. Perhaps it was the spring light. The fresh leaves on the birch trees, the apple trees and the cherry trees in the gardens quivered in an unreal shade of green, happy and proud; when she looked back at her childhood, it was mostly November she remembered. She parked the car and walked the route she used to take from her old home to the sixth-form college, it took her fifteen minutes. Unless she was very much mistaken, she used to meet her friend Anne at the junction practically every school day for three years. They had walked those fifteen minutes together, chatting about what? She could vaguely remember her worries from those days, most revolved around food and clothing and love, in reverse order. Control over food and access to clothes equalled desirability, which was the means to achieving the third thing: getting a boyfriend and finding love. It was a brutal fact that the road to the ultimate goal was paved with banalities: diets, clothing, hairstyles. Oh, what a small-minded time it had been. She was embarrassed to think of how she had squandered her energy and her time on such trivialities because she hadn’t known any better, because no one had taught her any better, and she would later lecture her own children about this so that they wouldn’t waste their energy or time. Then she passed a building they used to call the old people’s home, but which was now called a care home and where she and Anne had both worked shifts in the holidays. And then she no longer felt quite so petty because presumably they would have talked about the work there, which was challenging and meaningful. She had fond memories of the old people’s home and went up to the entrance, which was still the same, and she went inside because she remembered that there used to be a small café; she had worked there one Easter and learned how the warm rissole sandwiches were made. She looked around for the works of art which are normally found in such places, and yes, on one wall there was a picture of some glazed rocks. It looked like a wave, and quite right, it was called Wave, she read when she stepped closer. And it struck her that she was probably the only person who had noticed this wave for years, perhaps ever since it was first hung there. But who could say if it worked its magic quietly without those affected realising it, the way architecture works, the way our surroundings have been proved to affect us, though we’re unaware of them. Though she had to admit that she would like to make something which was noticed, which opened people’s eyes to something they hadn’t seen before, so they would understand something they hadn’t previously understood. Disseminate her cosmic experience of life, although the cosmos she inhabited might not be very big, in order possibly, possibly to create something that made people behave differently after they had seen her picture. Oh, these were grandiose thoughts and too much to hope for, but at least her intentions were good. She walked around the building and reached the terrace that overlooked the well-kept lawn and she thought she heard a band playing in the distance, and she remembered something she probably hadn’t thought about when she worked here aged seventeen and eighteen, because back then she had pushed her childhood far behind her out of necessity. A band practising for 17 May, Constitution Day, was approaching. When she was a child and joined in the 17 May Parade, they would walk from her school to the old people’s home where they would give 17 May speeches and play their recorders for the old people who had been wheeled out on the terrace and sat with blankets covering their legs. And on one Constitution Day Alma had been picked to read a poem to the old people, she had stepped onto the makeshift stage and recited it. Do not crush the grass, those tender blades, let them grow, while all the local children stood on the lawn doing precisely that. Perhaps it had delighted the old people or brought back memories, or it had had the opposite effect, making them realise how much everything had changed since they themselves were children, who knows, who knows. Back in those days there had been a close relationship between public institutions, Alma thought, between the old people’s home and the school, so that the children who had just been enrolled in the machine, which was the education system, could view the institution where they would eventually be rolled out on Constitution Day. You went in one end and came out the other. Unless you took drastic steps along the way and ended up in another country, for example. Alma hadn’t done that, she hadn’t made a long, physical journey; though she no longer lived in the town where she was born and raised, she lived only a short distance away. However, she had undertaken a considerable spiritual journey, in her own opinion, from being an unaware, self-obsessed young woman to a responsible member of society, who cared about the future, though it was terribly difficult to know what to do in order to avoid all the doomsday scenarios, apart from sorting your rubbish and driving an electric car. She wondered what kind of poems they would read to her on Constitution Day when she was in a care home, which was where she was most likely to end her days, that is if Constitution Day was still celebrated then. She wouldn’t mind if it disappeared. She had never liked it as an adult, especially not after she had children. You had to get up at the crack of dawn to iron the creases out of flags and dress up the kids and take them to school and stand there shivering while you listened to predictable speeches in stilted Norwegian and mouthed along to the national anthem. But she’d had no choice. Parents of Year Four children were responsible for organising the celebrations, so for three years Alma and her then husband had attended countless planning meetings during winter and spring, and the day before the big event they had made sandwiches and baked cakes and got up even earlier than on normal Constitution Days to drive to school with the sandwiches and the cakes and put up chairs and tables and set up stalls inside marquees in case it rained, and they had sold sandwiches and cakes and coffee and fizzy pop and held a raffle and organised games before clearing everything away again, the tables and the benches and the chairs and the marquees and counted up the money before collapsing in the evening, dreading the moment their next child entered Year Four. But then Alma got divorced and without it ever being discussed, her ex-husband took on Constitution Day because he liked national costumes and songs and flags. A couple of times she tried to join in the parade and walk behind the rather gaudy banner of the school orchestra, which Alma would have been delighted to replace with her own work, had anyone asked. She had, however, felt a little excluded because her ex-husband had a new girlfriend. Alma concluded that everyone, apart from her, must be in a relationship because people who got divorced remarried straight away so as not to be alone on days like these, then again she didn’t think she could organise her life purely with Constitution Day in mind. She wasn’t wearing national costume nor was she carrying a flag and she thought people were looking at her with disapproval, but it wasn’t a silent protest on her part, it was simple forgetfulness. And besides, she had heard from a friend that ‘hurrah’ was originally a Turkish war cry, which meant ‘kill’, so there was no reason to join in. Ever since that day she had made sure to be away on Constitution Day. There was nothing better than a Norwegian airport on 17 May. No queues, everything open and quiet. Few passengers on the planes and thus better service; on the napkins they had printed a small Norwegian flag in the right-hand corner and
once, when she was on her way to Copenhagen, she was given a free miniature bottle of champagne to celebrate the occasion. The sun had been shining, she remembered, and as she drank her champagne high up in the blue spring air, she had come close to tears. So she probably was fond of Constitution Day, in her own way.
She crossed the lawn behind the care home, which had brought back the memories of Constitution Day, and continued onwards to her old sixth-form college. A low brick building that seemed strangely deserted because today was a Sunday. So this was where she had spent her formative years, she thought, and approached it pensively. Back then chaos had reigned inside her, of course it had, the usual but otherwise undramatic sort of chaos. Her whole life had been relatively undramatic, she concluded, as she returned to her old stomping grounds. She entered the schoolyard and headed for the shed where she used to hang out during break time, but it was in the shade, so she went over to the wall by the bike racks and sat down there instead. It was true that many terrible things had happened across the world during her youth, there had been domestic and international political challenges, and occasionally Alma had taken part in debates, invariably siding with the underdog, but she had never experienced any personal upheaval. Norway was a peaceful and wealthy country; it was hard to feel outraged by or passionately committed to the causes that had featured on the political agenda at the time. When she went on to study at the Arts and Crafts College, one option was to become a Communist, but on that subject everything had pretty much been said. She joined study groups on Marxism where they played the guitar and sang Rudolf Nilsen’s radical workers’ songs, and there had been times when she had approached a conversion, but the feeling always passed quickly. Yet the works she had made back then, her first tapestries, were highly radical in their themes, women’s liberation and peace work, but the time for that seemed to have passed, although wars were still being fought and Norway now took an active part in them. Besides, Communism was no longer an option, rather it had become a universal joke. Funny really, she thought to herself, as she lay on the low brick wall peering up at the sky, how much anti-Communism was being preached now that Communism was dead. For several years she had celebrated May Day despite her ex-husband rolling his eyes; she had gone to the centre of Oslo and joined a demo under an international banner. Her husband refused to fly the Norwegian flag on that occasion, and her children refused to come with her, no matter how much she pleaded with them, and eventually she gave up. But when someone put up a big banner at the bridge to the island where she lived, with the wording: ‘Don’t forget: Explore the island on May Day! We meet outside the shop at 12 noon’ Alma lost her temper and that same night she drove down to replace it with one saying: ‘Why don’t children on this island know why we celebrate May Day?’ Because only a few of them did. They would appear to think that May Day was a chance to get to know your neighbourhood better. Alma had divorced by then or she wouldn’t have dared to do it. But even her passion for celebrating May Day had had ebbed away, she thought, as the clouds drifted lazily above her. She was definitely more at ease with herself now than she had been back in sixth-form and at the Arts and Crafts College, so where had it ebbed away to? She sat up and kicked her heels hard against the wall. Common sense told her that the need for radical change was just as great now as it ever was, but she was unable to summon up much enthusiasm, and was disappointed at herself for this and fretted about it. Because she had a nagging feeling that there was drama all around her, that a decisive battle for values was being fought nearby, only she couldn’t decode the situation and so couldn’t take a stand, get involved or fight, everything was fog and confusion. She jumped down and walked across the schoolyard to the main steps, tried the heavy entrance door, but it was locked, of course, so instead she sat down with her back against it. She looked at the windows of the art department where she had struggled to draw lifelike hands. What would she have said back then, had she been told how her life would unfold? It wasn’t easy to connect with the person she used to be, but she guessed that she would have been quite pleased. Purely and simply at having survived for so long. And she hadn’t done so badly for herself, either. After all, she was able to earn a living, she had children, a house. That was no mean feat for someone with Alma’s personality or indeed for any textile artist. Her ambition matched her talent. The fact that in her work she strove to address big issues, that she wanted to promote good causes on a slightly more circumspect scale than when she was a new graduate and young, was also a good thing. Or was it pretentious self-delusion? The thought dampened her mood somewhat; she got up and returned to the shed where she used to spend her breaks with Nina and Åshild, two friends from her art class, who were good at drawing hands, she remembered, along with other equally irrelevant details that now came back to her. She stood with her back against the wall, closed her eyes and tried to open herself to the past, but nothing happened. That was another thing she could philosophise about: how the past closes in on itself and dies and yet according to psychoanalysis, it works away inside us all the same. A little like a virus. It is active, but not as a living organism, that is to say, it can’t reproduce itself, which is the definition of life, but has to attack another living cell in order to do so, destroy in order to survive. Like human beings need to forget in order to survive. To the extent that she felt anything, it was a sense of gloom and disappointment at realising, as she stood here in the shadow, that she was no more engaged now than when she was a student here. And that her days of being an activist at the Arts and Crafts College and the years afterwards had slipped away without her realising it, barely even registering it. That being a responsible citizen was little more than paying your taxes and obeying traffic regulations. She knew and wanted to do the right thing, and was prepared to do it as long as it didn’t inconvenience her too much, but she wasn’t a firebrand. Then again, you can’t be on fire all the time, she thought, and opened her eyes, because then you would burn up. But her flame ought to burn more brightly, she thought, as she walked slowly back to the car, instead of leaving it to everyone else to grasp the nettle. Perhaps she could draw it. The tiny flame inside human beings, the latent fire in the chests of young people, in the hope of drawing it out. She would need to draw people, she realised, faces and hands, which she hadn’t done since her failed attempts during sixth-form art classes. She had chosen to focus on trees and houses, words and symbols, but had the time for human beings finally come? Yes, it had, she made up her mind there and then, because humanity is endlessly preoccupied with itself, and she decided to be more committed from hereon in, familiarise herself with difficult issues and contribute not just in art, but also in real life. Join Amnesty, which she should have done ages ago. Yes, this was the vow she made to herself on her old school route in her hometown, she would move from trees to people. She had a sudden sensation of the leaves falling, which was bizarre because it was spring. But school days are inextricably linked with autumn, that must be the explanation. She liked it when the leaves fell and turned the streets yellow, the drive yellow. She rarely raked up the leaves, though she was perfectly capable of doing so. Occasionally she would do it in the cold and clear, purifying October air, but it wasn’t high on her list, it was at the bottom. The Poles, however, took pride in having a swept path to their door, and a clean and neatly dressed daughter with pink ribbons in her hair.
Alma hadn’t asked, but she guessed that the Poles must be in Norway to make money before going back home because it didn’t seem as if they were trying to learn Norwegian; their Norwegian was no better after two years than it had been when they first arrived. They seemed to have only Polish friends; she had never seen a Norwegian-registered car in the drive visiting them. They were keeping all things Norwegian out, Alma thought, while they earned their money. Perhaps they spoke ill of and mocked all things Norwegian as filtered through their own Polishness. Did they despise the rich Norwegians, the stuck-up Norwegians who thought they were better than everyone else, who acted as if
they were better than everyone else, who were friendly and yet looked down on the Poles who fitted their bathrooms and built their fences, but were a nation without the Poles’ proud and shocking world-changing history? Poland had truly experienced the war, survived paradigm shifts and defeated dictatorship through a popular uprising. No, she didn’t think that was how they saw it, besides she was convinced that the young Polish woman wouldn’t know what a paradigm shift was. Or perhaps it was in her blood. So many things are. But even so, they couldn’t fail to notice how Norwegian society treated the Poles who came here for the money, who sold their manual labour to the Norwegians and depended on Norwegian tolerance and goodwill, which explained why they had to be subservient. They depended on the Norwegians and on Alma, and hated the Norwegians and Alma because servitude makes human beings miserable. They despised Norway in general and Alma in particular, a messy woman with a cluttered laundry basement, who owned a big house she didn’t deserve and let it fall apart, who left leaves on the drive until the snow covered them, whereas the young woman raked the small path going from Alma’s door to hers. If the Poles had had a big house, they would have looked after it; Alma had a hunch that they thought it was unfair that those who would have appreciated a big house, who would have taken care of it and maintained it, repaired and improved and tended to it, didn’t have one while lazy, impractical people like Alma did. But they couldn’t criticise Alma or shake their heads at her while Alma was looking, because they were her tenants, they depended on messy Alma. The Poles would like to be independent, proud, and walk tall, but it grew difficult as their numbers swelled, and they hid behind the trees. The older woman, the child’s grandmother, would smile timidly and cast down her eyes, should she happen to bump into Alma on a summer evening, but that was rare, the Poles avoided her, they tiptoed about, sneaking out after Alma had left; if the older woman ever bumped into Alma, she reacted as if she were afraid of Alma, felt guilty at meeting Alma, expecting Alma to reprimand her, to snap at her: you’re not my tenant. But you shower in hot water that I’m paying for. She considered increasing the rent, her tenants used a lot of electricity and hot water, and their visitors stayed for such a long time, and the radiators were on full blast the whole winter, she would notice if she came over on a January night with a message, how the Polish woman wore a sleeveless vest indoors, while Alma herself wore an extra sweater, socks and woolly scarves – one around her neck and another around her waist – to keep warm and save electricity. But she didn’t. She got het up about it, but she never said anything in order not to make a scene. She got her rent on time, and that was the most important thing. Spring turned into summer and the grandmother arrived from Poland, and many Poles would sit on the terrace, which would become increasingly cluttered with every imaginable kind of colourful plastic toys for the small, pink-clad girl. When autumn came, the visitors left and the air grew sharper and clearer, and the leaves turned yellow, then flame red, before floating from the trees and filling the air like a scene from a play; they would land on the ground, turning it yellow and red and slippery, and the Polish car disappeared for a long time and Alma didn’t see her tenants, but she wasn’t worried because it was less than a month since she got her most recent rent money. Besides, their things were still here, plastic garden furniture on the terrace, an old rocking chair with a cushion, a plastic paddling pool, a play kitchen, an exercise bike, winter tyres for the absent, battered, Polish-registered car, and a collapsed clothes horse. She presumed they must have gone on an extended visit to Poland, but when she hauled her own garden furniture into the garage, and more than a month had passed since she last got any rent, and even longer since she had seen signs of life, she grew increasingly uneasy despite their belongings, and rang the telephone number Alan had written below his name on the tenancy contract, but no one answered. They must be in Poland, she surmised, they’ll be back soon. Then late one afternoon in October, she saw a police car on the drive and next to the car, two police officers were standing with their arms folded across their chest. Alma retreated instinctively, but they didn’t head for her door; one made his way towards the entrance of the apartment, so Alma ran outside to find out what was going on and when she reached the officers, she saw the Polish woman dashing back and forth between the rooms up there with the front door wide open. She was grabbing her things, stuffing them into bags, she seemed fraught and didn’t look at Alma, who asked the officers what’s going on, just what is going on, over and over. She asked her tenant as well, in English, what’s happening, but her tenant pretended not to hear her or to understand, and Alma asked in a louder and sharper voice, demanding to know what was going on, she owned this house, the Pole was her tenant, and one of the officers said that they had a duty of confidentiality. And Alma said, well, fair enough, but what about me, where does that leave me? And the other officer, the one nearer to her, was clearly uncomfortable and understood Alma’s need to know and nodded in the direction of the frantically running but still uncommunicative Polish woman and said that she had moved to a shelter for victims of domestic violence with her child. That was all he could tell her. What, Alma exclaimed. A shelter? So what do I do? He didn’t know, he shook his head. His job was to protect the Polish woman while she collected her belongings; Alma gathered she needed protection from her husband, Alan. Seeing Alma was there anyway and had every intention of staying, the police officer asked if she had ever heard arguments coming from the apartment. No, Alma said, she hadn’t. But then again she was often away, and none of her children lived at home any more, but no, she had never heard anyone arguing in the apartment. Then the officers left with the Polish woman, who didn’t look at Alma and said nothing and left Alma in limbo, now what?
A House in Norway Page 3
