The Helios Disaster

by Linda Bostrom Knausgaard

  Her gaze seemed to get stuck, so I looked out the window again at all the snow that lay there outside like it was waiting for me. That’s how it felt. As if it were waiting for me.

  I was placed in a home. I should be glad, said the social-services lady. I should be glad, Greta said later, in the waiting room.

  ‘You couldn’t have gotten a better family. A family is like a little flock, and they stick together and love each other,’ said Greta. ‘I’m going to give you a dictionary. Can you read?’

  Read. Flock.

  I knew I had to get home to my father. That was the only thing I knew. I would find that place and lead him home. I could tempt him with reindeer meat if he wouldn’t come on his own, I thought.

  I was to wait there and they would come to get me. They had already been contacted. Even if they had probably been picturing a younger girl, they were happy. Birgitta did embroidery for the handicraft lottery. The dad, Sven—it stung me when she said that word, dad, even though I had never heard it before—was an art teacher, a real personality in the village.

  I cried. The tears were both warm and cold. The warm ones were for my father, whom I would never see again. Was that so? Was that true? I dug deep into myself and asked the question once more: Would I ever see my father again?

  The cold tears were because I would be cared for after all. The cold tears were for the village and the community lottery. The promise of an evening meal and the two boys they had. Would we like each other?

  I realized that I had to grow up. Grow up to be able to visit my father at the hospital.

  ‘You don’t want to try one last time to tell me where you come from?’ the lady asked, trying to look trustworthy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  Greta sat there waiting. She was truly kind. She would have been home by now if she had left on time as she had planned.

  ‘Go into the bathroom and wipe your face,’ she said.

  I went into a small room, and inside I was drawn to the mirror. My face wasn’t foreign, like everything else. I ran the faucet and washed away my tears. Rinsed my hands with the warm water for a long, long time, and the warmth that spread through me did me good and I realized that I had been cold. I never wanted to stop, and finally Greta knocked on the door and I went out. I left the room with the red-and-grey-spotted linoleum floor. I shut the door so hard it echoed.

  ‘Are you angry?’ Greta asked.

  I sat down on the sofa.

  ‘My name is Anna,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a good name. Anna. It suits you.’

  ‘Can’t you just go?’ I said, looking at her. ‘I think that’s enough of everything anyway. There’s nothing in here.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, reaching for her coat. ‘Goodbye, my friend, I’m sure things will go well for you.’

  ‘Is this hell?’ I asked her suddenly. I don’t know where it came from.

  She became frightened, I could tell. Was I the one who scared her? But I wanted to know so I shook her arm.

  She pulled her arm away.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘This isn’t hell.’

  They picked me up at the social-services office. The dad and the mom and their sons, Urban and Ulf. I didn’t dare to look at them, because I thought that they would see in my eyes that I wouldn’t stay with them. That they weren’t getting me the way they thought. I sat on the red sofa looking down at my hands. I didn’t know what I should do with them, so I just looked at them. Maybe that was proper, I thought. They were still bloody, even though I’d washed them. I smelled the blood, which had dried and was dark red in the lines that ran along my hands, and the sweet, slightly burned smell calmed me.

  A black exhaustion swooped down on me. I fell over, down into the exhaustion, which was black and red at the edges. I could feel them carrying me, carrying me like a child to the car they had waiting out there. From far off, I felt Birgitta and Sven lay me across Urban’s and Ulf’s laps in the back seat.

  I slept for three days and three nights. When I woke up, I was in a bed and Ulf was sitting next to me and smiling with his face, or with his mouth and eyes, was how he was smiling, and he told me about the doctor who had been there and done tests while I slept, and then he said two things: that I was a real beauty and that I should stick with him.

  ‘You don’t know anything, after all, and I know everything. Urban knows a lot too; he has more soul, but he’s quieter and stuff and I need a sister who can help me. I have an awful lot to do, you see.’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ll get to that later. We’ll get to all of that later. Remember, you don’t know anything.’

  I thought of the snow and noticed that I became angry. ‘Can you take me to the house where my dad lives?’

  ‘All of that is simple,’ said Ulf. ‘You’re going to help me with the really hard things,’ he said.

  I fell asleep again. I saw sleep coming and it was like green fingers stretching into my head and on down into my body. I couldn’t move. I sank through the mattress and lay under the bed for quite a while, looking into the slatted bottom of the bed and at the dust bunnies, until I got up again and floated up beneath the ceiling. I looked down at Ulf, who was still sitting at my side. I saw myself with closed eyes and I tried to get back down to where I was. Because I could see it, that I was lying there. The green pulled me back and I crashed down into myself like when you dive into the sea.

  -

  ‘I VOW TO do my best to promote the goals of the IOGT as they are written in the principles and programmes. Therewith I pledge to live a sober life; that is, I will not imbibe alcoholic beverages with greater than 2.25 per cent alcohol by volume, nor will I use narcotics, or other poisons with intoxicating effects.’

  The entire assembly mumbled this pledge. There were many teetotallers in the village, and people even came from the city and the other villages. Sven stood at the very front, at the wood-coloured podium, looking out over the members who had gathered that Saturday evening to avow sobriety and its benefits. I had grown used to calling Sven ‘dad,’ because the word ‘father’ hid inside me like a secret. I was taking care of the coffee things with Birgitta and the boys. Birgitta had been baking buns all day, and Ulf, Urban, and I had run around the village knocking on doors. ‘It’s time for temperance,’ Ulf said, and Urban stood behind him, watching with that expression he had. The one that immediately made you want to do as he wished. I hadn’t grown used to this, and I stood farther back, on the street in the snow, watching, but they still wanted me to come along.

  ‘It’s more convincing with a girl,’ said Ulf, who was the one who did most of the talking.

  He was a fast talker, and he could make his eyes and his words glitter, even though he was firm.

  We were gathering members for IOGT, and on the same street, the pastor’s children were gathering members for the Pentecostal church. Most people were in both. When people weren’t professing faith in sobriety or God, they did sports. I had learned to ski in the tracks in the woods, and it was like flying. Flying, that’s what it was like. The snow, the skis, the ski wax, and out in the tracks. One might say that I lived for my skis. That they were my best friends, that we belonged together, and that was clearly how things were between us. It wasn’t something I needed to learn, like the vow of temperance, which I mumbled along with but didn’t understand while I lined up plastic cups as quietly as possible on the long table with the paper tablecloth.

  My father existed somewhere. He lived and breathed there. Did he ever think of me, his daughter? Did he yearn for me?

  ‘Ulf,’ I said as quietly as I could, but without whispering. ‘Do you know Conrad?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I know people who know.’

  ‘Soon I’m going to tell you something important,’ he said. ‘It has to do with what we’re going to do, the two of us. You and me. T
here’s not going to be anyone else, understand?’

  ‘If you help me with Conrad,’ I said, ‘then I’ll do what you want. But it has to happen in that order.’

  ‘The order doesn’t matter to me. I’m patient,’ Ulf said, placing the pump thermoses on the table. ‘You know I go driving at night.’

  I did know. Sven hid the car key under his pillow, but he slept so deeply that it didn’t matter. Ulf just lifted up the pillow and then it wasn’t long before the car started. Where he drove, I didn’t know. But after a few hours the car came back. I heard him pulling up. He didn’t do anything to avoid being heard, he wasn’t careful or anything—in fact, the brakes screeched and I thought he must have been going fast.

  Ulf put back the key and went to bed. The only problem was that it was hard to wake him up later in the morning.

  ‘I know who knows,’ he said again. ‘You know Greta, of course, but we can’t ask her, but there’s Rolf in the next village.’ Ulf put the buns in baskets.

  *

  No one talked to me except those in the family. Birgitta in particular was worried about me. And she must have been disappointed, too. She had wanted her own girl, who could be like her. Just like her, sitting next to her on the sofa after dinner, doing needlework or just talking. I never talked, or almost never, even though I knew all the words and even though I sounded like everyone else now.

  I tried sitting next to her on the curved leather sofa with my teacup, making an effort. I ate the cookies with a good appetite: almond cookies, thumbprint cookies, Finnish shortbread. The crumbs got caught in the corners of my mouth and she frequently wiped them off with a napkin and asked me to be a little more careful.

  ‘Be a little careful with yourself,’ she might say. ‘We only have one life, and it’s important to take care of ourselves, you see. You ought to brush your hair and shower every day. It’s important, you see. Just as important as everything else.’

  ‘What is everything else?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s your emotions. What happens inside you when you’re in the world.’

  ‘Like when I’m skiing and the memories come?’ I asked.

  ‘Which memories?’ she asked. ‘What is it you remember?’

  Here I thought carefully. Which memory should I give her, so as not to scare her?

  ‘Like my memory of Father,’ I tried, even though I knew it was the wrong memory.

  ‘Well, that memory is yours alone,’ she said. ‘We can never understand that memory. You have to gather up other memories. The ones that are here. Think about your room, for example. About what is there.’

  I did as she said. I moved to my room with the bed and the floral duvet cover and the brown roller blinds, the blonde-wood nightstand that Sven had made for me. It was like a little cabinet with a door and a knob, and inside it was the book I read at night before I went to sleep. The book about God I’d received from the social-services lady, like a sort of farewell gift.

  ‘You’re a beautiful girl, you know. And with beauty comes certain privileges.’

  Privileges? I thought. And I devoured the word from beginning to end.

  ‘Yes, advantages. It’s easy to be liked. Even if you have to make an effort.’

  Make an effort, I thought, wiping my mouth with the napkin.

  I realized that this conversation was important to her, Birgitta. She wanted to get to know me. But I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t want to know.

  I walked around and around in the house. Everything was made of blonde wood: the kitchen-cabinet doors, the beds, and the stairs down to the bedrooms and the ping-pong room. The sons had put up stickers all over: ‘Orienteers ditch the booze’ or ‘Skiers ditch the booze.’ I had a sticker, too; it was round, on the headboard of my bed: ‘Gymnasts ditch the booze,’ and I felt like that sticker had been chosen just for me by the sons. I was going to be a gymnast, the sticker seemed to be saying.

  The house had been built on a hill, so on one side, toward the street, it was one storey, but in the other direction it was two. It was called a ‘daylight basement,’ Sven had said. Sven had built the house himself from the ground up. I realized by the way he spoke about it that the house was the most important thing that had happened in his life, and I thought that it was different, what was important. After the hill came the sheep pastures and then it was open all the way to the river that ran through there, and that overflowed in the spring. That’s what Urban had said, and that’s where he was most of the time, at the river, and he told me about the summers when it dried out and the bottom was visible for several weeks.

  Sometimes I got to go with him. We walked together in silence; Urban carried the fishing rods and I had the plastic bag with the thermos of coffee. Urban was fifteen, and he already drank coffee and thought I could learn too, so I drank small sips out of the plastic mug when we took a break. I liked the smell more than the taste, but mostly I liked the warmth, so I drank quick sips so the coffee burned my mouth and numbed the roof of my mouth and my tongue, and then it didn’t taste as strong. Urban taught me to cast. Sometimes we fished with flies, but occasionally we had live bait. Urban stood behind me and we held the rod together and it danced with us and in the air until the fly hit the surface of the water. I liked standing so close to Urban and I would lean against him and his patience, which never ran out. Again and again I got to learn how the line would dance. He probably noticed that I pressed against him, but he never let it show. Whether he liked it the way I liked it, or whether he was just letting me have my way.

  The water sparkled and the current was strong. We slowly walked along the bank, rods in hand. Following the current and not saying anything for several hours.

  He also smoked cigarettes with his coffee. Took a pack out of his pocket and lit one. I looked at him; I was surprised, because I thought about the vow of sobriety and everything else one wasn’t allowed to do, but I didn’t dare to ask; but he must have seen my look the first time it happened because he said, ‘It’s for my thoughts. And this thing about intoxicants,’ he said then. ‘Sven is misinformed. Intoxicants are the best thing ever. You just can’t use them too much and you have to choose your timing carefully. And it takes its toll, being drunk. You have to be sure you have plenty of time, both for the drinking itself and for afterwards.’

  I didn’t dare to ask if I could be there sometime when he was drinking. But I tasted the cigarette he held out. Drew in the smoke and held it in my mouth, before I spit it out.

  ‘You should pull a little down into your lungs, but be careful, starting out. The smoke should go down and fight with your lungs. The battle is what’s so nice about it, and the nicotine, or the poison itself, goes right up into your brain, pulling your thoughts straight. You’ll like it.’

  ‘Yes, next time I’ll do it right,’ I said.

  Urban had never before spoken to me for so long, and I needed to sit with the words for a long time, turning them over. What was it he had told me?

  Did he keep secrets from the family?

  ‘Does Sven know about all of this?’ I asked. ‘About the smoking, and that you drink?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Does it upset him? Since he believes in sobriety so much?’

  ‘I suppose Dad is upset. But that’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Where does Ulf drive at night?’ I asked him then, because it seemed to be the right moment to ask a question like that.

  ‘To see a girl in the next village,’ he said.

  Birgitta was going to Umeå to buy new patterns in the needlework store. I was going to go with her, and she dressed me in a loden coat and Lovikka mittens. I had received a white fur hat too, and I thought I looked like a little girl when I saw myself in the mirror. Like she probably wanted me to be. The car smelled like gum, because Birgitta was always chewing it. She had her good coat on, and she had curled her hair. She wasn’
t wearing a hat, even though it was below freezing. She probably wanted to show off her hair. The car ride to the city took forty minutes, and Birgitta listened to music the whole way. I had heard the organ playing in the Pentecostal church, and it was a sound that shook me until tears came. And the pastor, who sang with his deep voice while the choir followed him with their high voices. We would play with the pastor’s sons, but they didn’t like the church itself, Sven and Birgitta. They had their own beliefs, after all, I thought. But I had kept the music.

  Birgitta listened to music from the fifties, she said.

  ‘Back when I was young and went to dances they played these tunes. This music makes me happy, you see?’

  I understood that it made her happy, because she sang along with the choruses, really belted them out, and I thought about the way everyone in the family acted different when they were by themselves, or when Sven wasn’t there. The snow along the road was dirty. Birgitta let the car race on.

  Later, in the store, she asked to see the new patterns. The woman who owned the store proudly brought out the carton and showed her: a white moose in a forest, fairies dancing in a misty meadow, a wreath of roses that said ‘a day of plenty is never blessed, a day of thirst is always best.’

  ‘Which one should I pick?’ Birgitta asked.

  ‘The white moose,’ I said.

  ‘Then I’ll embroider that one for you. And I’ll take the wreath of roses for myself,’ she said to the lady in the store.

  I looked at the pattern with the white moose. Was it going to be mine? Something so beautiful? My eyes burned and I was glad when we left the store and the tears that threatened to fall from my eyes disappeared in the dry air.

  ‘Let’s go to the bookstore too,’ Birgitta said, taking my arm.

  It was clear that she enjoyed being in the city. I didn’t know how I should feel. Like a friend or a daughter, but of course I was neither, so I straightened my back and pulled away until she let me walk on my own.