A House in Norway

by Vigdis Hjorth

  She got to work immediately. Changed the square metres from 50 to 47.5 and added that the measurements didn’t include the terrace or the shed, inserted a clause stating that snow clearing wasn’t the landlord’s responsibility, but as she revised the agreement, she realised how flawed and amateurish it was. She would be better off using the template agreement provided by the National Landlords Association because it stated explicitly that rent arrears were grounds for eviction and was generally drafted with the vulnerability of the landlord in mind. Then she would have to cross her fingers that the Pole would sign it. And while they were at it, she would ask for a deposit because it was blatantly obvious that it gave the landlord security and she was an idiot for not having insisted on it before. While she worked on the contract, a friend called to thank her for the card from Fredrikstad and asked if she was back yet, and Alma could confirm that she was and then she held forth about the letter from her tenant, read it aloud and for the third time that day had to explain the background to the strange sentences, but her friend seemed uninterested and reacted as if she found Alma harsh and unyielding. So when their conversation was over Alma called another friend who rented out her holiday cabin in the winter and when she heard the story, she took Alma’s side completely and said ‘wow’ and ‘really’ and ‘what a bitch’ about the Pole and that Alma should throw her out. But Alma was scared that even if she gave the Pole notice, she would stay put all the same, only without paying rent because it would be difficult for her to get something as reasonably priced or even cheaper, and then Alma would have to take her to court and that would be expensive and exasperating and unpleasant and could take years. So it would be better if they could reach a compromise. Oh well, her friend said, good luck with that!

  Alma wrote a calm letter to the Pole informing her that she would draft a new tenancy agreement with the correct number of square metres. She included a copy of the floor plan she had found which stated that the apartment measured 47.5 m². Then she wrote that she wanted them to open a bank account for the deposit of two months’ rent as was standard, to protect the landlord against damage to the property. If it was correct that there was a hole in the kitchen floor, she wrote, she would get a carpenter to take a look at it. As a matter of principle, she wrote, they ought to inspect the apartment together and agree work to be carried out, as well as what would be hers and what would be Alma’s responsibility. According to the National Landlords Association, she wrote, it was not the responsibility of the landlord to clear snow or put up letter boxes. I have agreed with the postman, she wrote, although this wasn’t true, that the letter boxes will be put up again once the road works are finished. As far as the mice were concerned, she wrote, she had offered her mouse traps which had helped Alma herself to get rid of her mice. ‘But as I understand it is not possible for you to use them. I am willing to pay for poison, as I have done before.’ Then she suggested three possible times for such an inspection, and asked for confirmation of which one suited the Pole. She received no reply to her letter, no text message. She heard her leave in the morning in the darkness and return home with her child in the darkness in the afternoon, she had to give her time. But she did call a carpenter to inspect the alleged hole and texted the Pole to say that he would be there on Thursday at six o’clock, was that convenient? And the Pole replied immediately that it was, and Alma was overjoyed. Everything would work out just fine! When the carpenter arrived that Thursday at six o’clock, she directed him to the apartment without accompanying him. He returned after just twenty minutes and said there was no hole in the floor, just an exceptionally large gap where the water pipes came through and that food scraps had fallen through it. He had lifted up the nearest floorboards and had his suspicion confirmed, this was the cause of the mouse problem. The Pole had to wash under the floorboards. He could do nothing more up there, he said, given the state of it. He seemed to think the place didn’t look all that good. Perhaps it’s time to replace the kitchen, Alma said. Probably, the carpenter said, and Alma felt bad and guilty for the Pole and decided there and then to replace the kitchen. The Constitution tapestry was almost finished and then she would take on a lot of banners and other jobs to pay for it, and borrow money from the bank. She was so delighted to have good news for the Pole that she instantly sent her a text message and asked when it would be convenient for her to be without a kitchen for a few weeks so that the old kitchen could be replaced with a new one. And the Pole replied immediately that she would be happy to have a new kitchen, but it would have to wait until the summer when she was in Poland because Izabela was ill and required a special diet, so she needed constant access to a kitchen. Alma wrote that that was fine, obviously, and her tenant replied ‘super’, and that ‘under floorboards was dead mouse. Later cleaned up and washed. Thanks for your help.’ Thanks for your help, it said and Alma was thrilled that they were friends again and that they had made plans all the way to summer, and though she was sad to hear that Izabela was ill, it wasn’t something she wanted to know or have to think about.

  December’s rent reached her bank account as usual and Alma printed out two copies of the National Landlords Association’s rental agreement, which she hoped would apply from 1 March. She filled in all the fields and signed them, all that was missing was the Pole’s signature, but she decided not to send them off until after Christmas. It would be a white Christmas this year, it would appear, because snow had already fallen, but fortunately not so much that she needed to clear it. Alma washed her curtains and cleared out the laundry basement, returned bottles for money or recycled them, the Pole would see how Alma had cleaned and tidied the laundry basement so that it was now cleaner than it had ever been. And she cleared out the other basement room and put up new shelves, so she could organise her clothes, making it harder for her children to borrow or nick them. She washed her towels and folded them in piles according to colour and threw away those that were threadbare or stained and did the same with her bed linen, because she knew it was harder for her children to help themselves when everything was organised in neat, clear piles. She prepared for their arrival and worked a little on ‘How it should be between people’, but without passion, without urgency; she stitched her boyfriend with his mobile pressed to his ear as he told her to take it easy and conduct a purely business relationship with the Pole. She had yet to open the square from Soli. She needed distance in order to see what it lacked and she wasn’t due to submit it until 1 March, so she had plenty of time.

  Her children arrived with their boyfriends and girlfriends and their children, and more snow fell and turned everything white, and her son-in-law cut down a small spruce tree in the garden, which was to be their Christmas tree, while her three-year-old grandson looked on, and the mulled wine was hot in the pot and someone baked gingerbread biscuits, and Alma thought that she could cope with it for the week that it lasted. When her son-in-law came in with the Christmas tree and her grandchild, he mentioned that it looked as if Alan, the guy with the chipped tooth, was back. He had seen him in the living room, he said, while searching for a suitable tree. Alma looked out of her kitchen window and saw an unknown Polish-registered car in the very spot she had asked her tenant not to park. Nor did the car disappear that evening, but stayed there overnight, Alma could see, she had sat up long after everyone else had gone to bed to get some peace and collect her thoughts and see for herself if that business about Alan could really be true. And the next day when Alma got up, her daughter said she had also seen Alan, that it had to be him, although he had walked with his face averted, seemingly sneaking about. He had emerged around ten o’clock and driven off. And when they ate traditional rice pudding with the almond prize later that evening, the same car had been parked where she had specifically told her tenant no one should park, and everyone raced to the window and hid behind the curtains in order to have a good look. Yes, there could be no doubt that it was Alan walking as quickly as he could from the car up to the apartment with his face turned aw
ay. What was going on, what was happening? And her daughter, whose room backed onto the apartment, now refused to sleep there in order not to hear any rows and would rather share Alma’s bed; besides Alma would be staying up late anyway to keep a lookout with her mobile to hand. Alma wrapped the socks and hats and scarves she had knitted last week in Christmas paper and wrote to and from tags, and went regularly to the room backing onto the apartment to press her ear against the wall, but she heard nothing. His car was there all Christmas Eve, though they never saw the Pole until she knocked on the door and said there was no more hot water. But there had to be, Alma insisted, because she had just had a shower and there had been plenty left then. In order not to miss out, she had made sure to be the first in the bathroom, so the Pole had mistimed her complaint and was wrong-footed by the sight of Alma in her dressing gown with a towel wrapped around her head, claiming there was plenty of hot water. She flung up her hands in resignation and shook her head, before walking back to her own place. And that evening, while everyone was in the kitchen being too many cooks making too much broth, they all saw through the window how her tenant tottered in high heels down towards Alan’s car, and right behind her Alan walked with Izabela in his arms and they all got into the car as if they were a normal family, and perhaps they were. Alma didn’t like this turn of events.

  After Christmas when everyone had left and Alma was alone again, she put the two completed tenancy agreements from the National Landlords Association in an envelope with an explanatory letter in the Pole’s smart letter box.

  Alan came and went. He would park and walk with his head bowed and turned to one side from the car to the door; Alma had yet to bump into him, look him in the eye, and see all of his face; perhaps it wasn’t him after all, he was avoiding her. But his car was there the day she had a text from the Pole, a Sunday. She had read the letter, she wrote, but wouldn’t sign, because Alma had already had two months’ deposit. ‘And that is the reason you must change the contract.’ Signed with her full name: Slawomira Bogumila Trzebuchwskai. Alma was in the hall with her coat on about to go to the café to draft the letter that would accompany the Constitution tapestry, but she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on that now, she realised. She opened the door a tad, looked left and right, then she ran through the snow and she didn’t slow down until she reached the bus stop. The snow would probably need clearing soon, she thought, but that wasn’t the landlord’s responsibility, that idiot Alan could do it, given he was here most of the time, parking where he shouldn’t and lying to her. She had never had a deposit, there was no deposit account; it had said in the contract she had printed out and presented to him originally and which they had both signed, that the deposit was two months’ rent, but no money had ever changed hands or been paid into a bank account, they had put off sorting it out until sometime in the future, which never came, and then they had forgotten about it. Besides that agreement was no longer valid, it was the one the Pole had signed in the presence of the social worker and the interpreter that applied and the paragraph about the deposit had been deleted because the Pole didn’t have any money. Alma had looked for that agreement and not found it, but she knew that she had it somewhere. However, if the deposit clause in the new contract was a bone of contention for the Pole, Alma would consider dropping it. She would rather have a signed agreement than fall out with the Pole. Besides, it was odd to ask for a deposit after so many years, she could see that. When she was at the café, she wrote the Pole a text message saying she would like to reach an agreement and suggested that they met quite soon, preferably with an interpreter present, so they were sure to understand one another. She wanted to ring her boyfriend and ask if that was OK, but she couldn’t get hold of him, so she saved it as a draft, having learned her lesson the hard way. She got hold of him the next day and he thought the message was absolutely fine and so she sent it. She got no reply and that troubled her so much that she was unable to compose the letter that would accompany the Constitution picture or take the tapestry out, even thinking about it made her feel nauseous. She tidied up her sewing basket, knitted slippers she could sell to Husfliden craft shop, and went to the café in the evening for a change of scenery and so as not to be in the same house as the Pole and possibly Alan. At the same time it worried her as she sat there that the Pole was alone in the house, or worse, with Alan, the criminal, by her side, and had access to all of Alma’s rooms through the basement. The mornings were better when there were no cars outside, and on one of those nice mornings the regional archivist from Østfold called to say that he had new information about Johanna, which he thought Alma might be particularly interested in; she had told him about the Constitution exhibition, which would visit Østfold and Soli Brug Manor, and the archivist had been incredibly helpful. Alma stared at the plastic wrapped square, so here it was, the moment of truth.

  As it happened, he began and asked Alma if she was sitting comfortably. No, Alma wasn’t. As it happened, he said, he had come across a document that had been unknown to the authorities, including Johanna’s husband and the doctors at the psychiatric institution, for quite trivial, practical reasons because one of the police officers looking for Johanna on the highroads near the Swedish border had left Fredrikstad sheriff’s office for a job in Halden after Johanna’s arrest and the report he wrote never reached Fredrikstad. In that report, which the archivist had now managed to track down and had in front of him, it said that Johanna had thrown her child from a bridge when she realised that she was about to be caught, in order to be able to run faster. The child survived because she was found and rescued by the police officer, and Johanna was later arrested. Alma had her worst fears confirmed: new information could appear at any time and upset the whole story. Now what would she do with the few, but crucial, tender scenes she had drawn. The mother’s joy at her new-born baby, unchanged throughout the ages, would she have to unpick that? She felt faint at the thought. Why did the archivist have to go and stick his nose into that silly story, wreck the whole project? He would undoubtedly visit the opening of the exhibition at Soli Brug Manor and point out that Alma’s picture lied on a vital point because Johanna wasn’t the victim Alma had turned her into. Shit! But, she thought later the same evening when she had looked right and left, checked that the coast was clear and run through the snow and reached the café, the dramatic act on the bridge proved only how distressed Johanna was, it was the desperation of the suffering, it showed that nothing good ever came from suffering, that suffering didn’t purify, it benefited nothing and no one, suffering distorted and destroyed; it required hard work to turn suffering into something of value for this world, and who could expect such an achievement from a powerless, suffering woman, from Johanna? And besides, sacrificing your child for your own survival isn’t as uncommon as people think, it happens all the time, sometimes consciously but often unconsciously and in subtle ways.

  She had her defence ready. Later when she was able to think about it more calmly, she thought how capricious life is, how like a toss of a coin, how random. How easily the child, Ninja B., could have died when she was thrown or drowned in the water or not been found, and then there would have been no pamphlets about incarcerated women, and Alma wouldn’t have been inspired to create her tapestry. And Alma’s own existence was just as random. Not that it would be a great loss to the world if she hadn’t existed, but to Alma, it would have been strange not to. Except that non-existence surely can’t be felt. Or maybe Alma’s feeling of being alive might then have existed in another body, a black body in Zanzibar or a yellow one in Shanghai, and the feeling might have been quite similar yet at the same time different, and she would have articulated it in another language, if she were to articulate it, and drawn completely different pictures. But Alma existed as Alma, and Ninja survived being thrown from the bridge and wrote her furious pamphlets on dubious grounds because she never knew about being thrown. Had she known that her mother threw her from a bridge in order to save herself, what difference w
ould it have made, would she still have written her pamphlet? Alma thought about all the things she herself didn’t know, the critical knowledge that people don’t have. She could include that in her picture as tiny but powerful black bombs. When she came home, she unfolded the tapestry and studied it. Yes, black bombs of unknown knowledge were what it was lacking.

  She heard nothing from the Pole and grew increasingly anxious. One evening, as she walked to the café, she decided to drop the deposit requirement in order to get the agreement signed. She felt immediately that it was the right thing to do and wanted to text the Pole straightaway to relieve her unease, she could hardly wait, but it was too long for a text message. When she came home so late that the lights were switched off in the apartment, she sat down at her computer. Hi Slawomira. I hope that we can soon sort out the tenancy agreement. When would it be for convenient for you to meet? I am free any time. We can drop the deposit paragraph if it is difficult for you to get the money. But, she added, I think you misunderstand what the deposit is. It’s not money for me. It’s your money paid into a separate bank account and it will be returned to you when you no longer want the apartment. Just like when you put a ten kroner coin in the shopping trolley, which you get back when you return it. She liked that image. Then she wrote that when Alan and Alma signed that agreement six years ago, no such deposit account was ever opened. They never went to the bank. But please text me when you want to meet. Best wishes, Alma.