— Hey, Dad?
— Yes?
— If — and I only mean if — we’d bought an amethyst in Kongsberg that was much, much bigger than the one I got, it wouldn’t have made any difference. I would just have kept it.
— OF COURSE, I REPLY.
— Of course they’re genuine. Why would anyone take the trouble to hide treasures deep inside a secret grotto if they weren’t genuine?
This chain of reasoning appeals to you, and you agree at once. Carefully, you carry the newly discovered treasures out in the daylight to examine them, check that they’re undamaged and complete, and nod your head in acknowledgement. We were pretty lucky today.
Then you open your chest. You lay the latest treasures inside separately and cover them over with a silk rag. I suggest we should perhaps take some of your other treasures and hide them, now that we’ve been lucky enough to discover this secret grotto. That seems a great idea to you, and you begin to pick out precious stones and pearls, bracelets and coins. But then you hesitate, put the agate back inside the chest, and choose a plainer crystal.
— Because what if some mean and dishonest pirates come and steal my agate?
The choice made, we carry the treasures into the grotto, and you place them deep down in the hollow space at the back, before wedging the rock back into place. We blow out the candles, each take hold of the handle on our side of the chest, and set out for the boat and the sail home.
Treasure Island gradually disappears in the evening mist behind us. You sit in your usual seat in the bow and keep a lookout for unknown shores. Suddenly you turn toward me and shout, so that I can hear you above the drone of the motor:
— Hey, Dad?
— Yes? I shout back.
— I know we’ll have to wait and see, but what do you think? Do you think maybe we’ll find some treasures next time we go to the grotto?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Winter is on its way. It’s cold and dark and wet, so Mom and I have a suggestion:
That party you talk about so often, Gabriel, let’s have it! Let’s invite the whole family and make your favourite food, dessert too, and let’s decorate for a feast! Let’s invite everybody, twenty-three people big and small, and rig up a long table all the way through the living room for everyone to sit around. Let’s make a fire, and buy flowers, and light candles in brightly polished candlesticks, and place burning torches outside. Let’s set the table with our finest china, silver, and crystal, and dress up in our best clothes. Let’s have a banquet!
You exult, even though a party, at least in principle, implies that you have to help vacuum and wash and tidy your room. You love having a party, having the house full of people, especially the family, for you feel safe and happy when you’re surrounded by the people who define you, who frame you and who unconditionally — as you take for granted — love you, because they appear as a seamless extension of Mom and Dad.
First we have to get the invitations off to the ones who live farthest away: Aunt Ingeborg in Geneva, Aunt Liv in Los Angeles, Granny and Granddad in Oslo, and Uncle Trygve in the North Sea. It doesn’t matter that they’ll have to travel a long way and that it’s expensive, because your piggy bank is full of money and you can buy them tickets, you can even buy a whole private jet that they can sit and relax in and eat and watch films. The others too will get invitations — Grandma and Grandpa, Kai Henrik and Kristina and their gang, Alexander and Annette, Aunt Bessie and the kids, and Deborah — but they don’t live that far away, so they can drive their cars or take the bus. And Balder and Tina and Balthazar, though of course dogs and cats and roosters can’t read, so we don’t need to make invitations for them, nor for the rabbits or the guinea pig that died. And we who live here, we surely don’t need invitations — although, why not? Let’s make some for ourselves too, Mom and Victoria, Dad and Gabriel, that way it’ll be the same for everybody.
What about the food? What shall we serve? Not fish, at any rate! How about chicken soup? No, they once tried to make that at school, but it didn’t work out, you recall, because there was no chicken in the soup, it had flown away. It’ll have to be spaghetti, your favourite, with meat and tomato sauce and basil and oregano and bay leaves and stuff, only we don’t eat the bay leaves. And a salad, of course, but not with tuna fish. And pannacotta for dessert, with strawberry jam! And cakes and cream buns. And an appetizer — or no, let’s not bother, otherwise we’ll get so full we might not have room for dessert.
YOU LOOK FORWARD TO IT. You look forward to it with a great and unabashed sincerity that is always a pleasure to witness. But you don’t see. You have no idea, no suspicion that this party of yours, which we’ve promised you, and which we will have, is not something we look forward to. Because there are times, Gabriel, when we’re so unspeakably tired. There are times when we don’t know if we can cope.
I have to say this as it is, my friend, because otherwise I’d be lying, and we won’t do that to each other, we’ve promised. I have to tell you that we feel it’s hard, Mom and I. Sometimes we feel it’s so hard that we almost can’t take any more, because we’re exhausted and just want to give up. You occupy every hour of our waking lives — and often the nights too — with demands and expectations that even you find complicated and inscrutable, and that we don’t always have the strength to understand, far less meet. You demand and you insist, but we don’t always have any more to give — of high spirits when you’re sulking and depressed, of desire to do things and go places when you’re bored and nagging, of patience to accompany you through your mental labyrinths when you get lost, of surplus energy to help you when you can’t find your way out and get stuck and everything goes black, and you yell and punch and kick and bite and shove and smash, when you’ve been howling and screaming all day, from the moment you woke up, no matter what we’ve tried to say or do, until you fall asleep late at night, exhausted by your own unfathomable rage.
Then we sometimes get so tired, Gabriel, so full of despair that we can’t even sleep. And so we vent our despair on the other, quarrel and blame, turn silent, cold backs on each other, say ugly and hurtful things that we might not mean but feel a need to mean, and we have to say them to someone, and there isn’t anyone else to say them to. And it gets late, but we can’t face the thought of going to bed with all this, at least not together, even though we know that one of us has to get up with you, you wake up at first light regardless of how long you’ve slept, and then that too becomes a discussion, and one of us volunteers in a way that makes the other feel guilt, yet more guilt, we never seem to get enough.
And because you’ve had so little sleep you’re bad-tempered and grumpy from the moment you open your eyes, and you waste time and won’t wear the trousers I’ve found for you, and you don’t like the breakfast spreads and throw your slice of bread at Victoria, because she’s grumpy in the morning too and has just tossed off some sarcasm at you, and the jam splashes all over the table and the wall, and finally I explode in a rage that I cannot and don’t even want to control, because this is too much. I give you both a thorough scolding with ugly and unfair words, and Victoria shrieks that she can’t stand any more of this madhouse, this insane family, and runs off weeping through the door and forgets to take her lunch pack, and you’re howling because you don’t understand why everyone is so angry, and Mom wakes and gets up, even though it’s her day off, and she comes in and hisses at me with contempt in her voice, because she can’t or won’t control herself either, that I’m behaving worse than a little child, and she comforts you and tries to rescue the start of this sad day, and I don’t know what to do with all my dreadful conscience, I don’t know what to do with myself, so I go into my study and close the door and try to sit completely still and do nothing at all.
Then the taxi arrives and it pains me, my whole body aches, because I can’t just let you go after this, but in the hallway you won’t ev
en look at me, you just sniffle and tell Mom that you think I’m stupid, that you want another dad, and Mom dutifully says that’s no way to talk, you don’t mean that, and she follows you out, and you don’t even hear my faint, guilt-laden attempt to shout sorry and goodbye.
Days like this, Gabriel, drain us just as much as you. And they don’t just drain our strength; they also empty the house of everything that makes it a home, love and trust, goodwill and joy. Days like this threaten us, and if there are too many of them in a row, they fill us to the brim with a need and a desire to flee, to move, to live another life. Even though we know that there is no other life. What would that be? A divorce, a broken home? The great defeat, a betrayal of you and Victoria, of ourselves and of each other? It’s a thought we back away from, refuse to think through, but sometimes we give way to temptation and think it anyway. When we see nothing but exhaustion and aversion and ashes in each other’s faces, and imagine that the world out there is full of enticing vitality and playful smiles, full of other lives than this. Then it’s sometimes best, after all, to go away for a few days, Mom to a close girlfriend or to some unnecessary seminar in another town, me to an old friend who doesn’t ask questions or a quiet hotel room in Oslo. So that afterwards it will be possible to come back home, to you and to Victoria and to the other one, who has held the fort and made the flight possible, and who has also had a chance to be alone. We’ve talked about this, Mom and I, and we agree that we couldn’t have made it together without being so much apart.
But of all this you know nothing. Nor do you know about Victoria, how difficult she has found it. Not only to be dethroned as a princess because a little prince was born, but at times to feel neglected and ignored because it was you who needed and got all the attention. How difficult it has been for her to understand that her sweet, lovely little brother wasn’t like other sweet, lovely little brothers, how afraid she has been of this that made you different and that no one, not even Mom and Dad, could explain to her, because they didn’t understand it themselves. How ashamed she has been when you’ve embarrassed her and made her feel awkward in front of her pals at school and her boyfriends. How she has fought tooth and nail out there to defend you if anyone gave even a hint of criticism or made a sarcastic remark. How she has brought boys home with her to test them, and rejected them without a second thought if they failed, if they couldn’t deal with you, or dealt with you in the wrong way, cocky and immature, because she saw in your eyes that you didn’t like them and therefore she couldn’t respect them.
You only know that she loves you, boundlessly, that she is on your side in the world, and that happiness is a cuddle with her on the sofa, and perhaps, perhaps to be allowed to sleep with her in her bed. You have a mother and sister who love strongly and unconditionally, Gabriel, because the Lord was reckless and prodigal with love the day he created them, and you have me.
AND HERE YOU HAVE the rest of the family!
First, a little shaky on their feet but with an imperious indifference toward the body’s infirmities, Grandpa and Grandma make their entry — Sonja and Harald, as they’re called. It’s a standing joke, but (yes, I know you don’t understand how a joke can stand, but we’ll let that lie for the moment) it’s not their fault they have the same names as the King and Queen of Norway. Right behind them in the crush by the front door come the excited youngsters, Malin, Michelle, and Jeffrey, and after them, with considerably less impatience, your big brothers with wife and girlfriend, and the other young ones. Bessie and Deborah make up the rear, laden with plates of cake. The long-distance travellers that you’re bringing over in your own private jet won’t arrive for another half-hour yet.
You stand in the doorway and are supposed to greet and welcome everyone, but then you don’t have the time. You’ve got a decorated banquet table to show off, you’ve got treasures on display for all to see, and dessert glasses with pannacotta in the fridge, and the guinea pig that died. Before the guests have taken off their overcoats you’re on your way to the table, and before the last ones have arrived your mind is on the cakes.
Your time is faster than ours, Gabriel. It gets done with things quicker, its content needs refilling more frequently than ours. To a certain extent it’s because you’re a child and lack the adults’ patience to wait, but mostly it’s because your empirical time is somehow out of sync with the time of what fills it. You concentrate on people, objects, and events with a rhythm and intensity that are different from most other children’s and adults’. I see it when you dance, I see it when you open presents on your birthday, when you play, eat, and dress yourself. I see how your attentive time rushes ahead, or stretches across slow eternities — how it almost never coincides with our empirical time when we dance or eat or get dressed in the morning.
But who can take your time away from you? Who can say that it’s wrong? Our use of time is not ruled by laws, only by habits, but because we so easily make our habits universally valid, we forget that time has many speeds, and that your sense of time drives your attention at a tempo that is different from ours. We forget that a glance is enough for you in situations that to us seem to call for a half-hour’s deliberation, and that to you an hour might seem barely adequate for something that we’re done with in five minutes. When you ask me, as you often do, how long it is until something you’re either dreading or looking forward to, you really only want to know whether it will be today, or if you’ll have to sleep one or more nights first. A quarter of an hour or five hours, five days or two weeks, these are abstractions that mean nothing to you. On the other hand, you can relate to “When you get home from school,” or “when it gets dark,” or “after the summer holidays,” even though you always find it unreasonably soon or impossibly far off.
I look at the guests filling the house and I look at you, and I see that this gathering operates with two times that are in many ways incompatible. Once more I feel an anxiety about how this evening will turn out — as I did this morning when you woke us up before dawn, draped from head to toe in silk, velvet, and furs, all dressed up and ready for the party.
THE YOUNG ONES — whom I must remind myself to regard as adults, they’re in their twenties, after all, and have children themselves — rapidly disappear down into the library for a smoke. You tag along, having so much to tell these big brothers, whom you admire and want to be admired by, so much to share with them. But they’ve got their own things to talk and gossip about, jobs and friends, strained finances and problems they don’t want you to hear about. I know this, and I bring you back up before you start demanding something they don’t have the energy to give you.
Up in the living room it’s cozy, the candles are lit and reflected light glints in the newly polished silver. From the cooking pots come smells of tomato and herbs and oil, and Grandma and your cousin Kristin Isabel are sitting there rocking Deborah’s newborn baby in their laps. The baby is lovely, you think so too, and want to hold and cuddle her. Of course, they say, just be careful. But you’re too much, you’re too big and overwhelming, and little Monica begins to cry in your arms. You can see no reason for this, all you’ve done is be good and kind, and you make it clear that this is a stupid baby.
— No, Gabriel, we mustn’t say things like that, you don’t mean it, comes the mild rebuke from the group of women on the sofa, and that provokes you, because of course you meant it, otherwise you wouldn’t have said it! Your voice rises in tone and pitch with each word of your sentence, and the concluding exclamation mark is chiselled in angry wrinkles between your eyes. Mom enters from the kitchen in time to defuse the situation, and suggests that you go have a chat with Grandpa.
He sits discussing safety routines and weather prospects for the winter with William, your cousin, who has started work on a ferry boat in the north of the county. You lean up against Grandpa’s comfy body, want to be babied a bit yourself, and his big fist rests upon your head, and it’s safe and pleasant when he s
trokes you. But he continues talking to William about things you don’t understand, and you want more, you want to cuddle him and creep up into his lap and press your nose into the hollow of his neck even though you’re a big boy, and he lets it happen, lets you climb and crawl on his mountainous body, but then that too gets to be too much. He lifts you down and you understand; you manage to check yourself, not to protest and make it embarrassing, make people think you’re a little baby. You demonstratively pull your arm out of his hand and turn to leave, but in your haste you step on Balder’s tail. He’s lying on the floor and is so dark against it you can’t see him. He yelps so loudly that even Victoria looks up from her mobile phone, and little Malin is afraid, and you run over to comfort her, but then you see that it’s your treasures she’s sitting and playing with on the rug. At that point, fortunately, the doorbell rings.
Your private jet has landed and the last guests arrive. Granddad immediately has to promise to tell you a bedtime fairy story; you can hardly wait for the continuation of what you heard in the summer when we visited them at their holiday home. Granny has brought a little present, and so have Aunt Liv and Aunt Ingeborg. It’s true that you haven’t seen any of them for a long time, but the presents you’ve never seen at all, so we have to realize that they’re more important than telling how you’re doing at school, or agreeing that yes, indeed, you really are a big boy now. Everyone smiles at this, and then they proceed into the living room to say hello to the others, and how nice it was last time we met, it must have been, can it really be, good grief how time flies.
In the kitchen, everything is ready. I ask your sister to tear herself away from her mobile for a moment and give the word to those sitting in the library. She’s about to ignore the request, then registers that Granny is following the scene, and since she’s the one who sends the monthly envelopes that pay the phone bill, Victoria jumps up and disappears down the corridor. Seconds later she’s back, exasperated, but understanding in the way she shakes her head and rolls her eyes, and signals for me to come. I know that look, and I follow her. From the corridor she points into the toilet, and there you sit, on the floor, with the contents of your mother’s makeup bag strewn around you, your face transformed into an extravaganza of lipstick, mascara, and cream in red, black, and white. With half a tin of gel you’ve styled your hair into a pyramid. A loud, anGRy no is on its way out of my mouth, but I manage to swallow it, replace it with a milder rebuke about how Mom is going to be sad and sorry, and begin to wash and clean you up. Most of the abomination is water-resistant, and by the time I’m finished and we go in to take our places you still look like you have some sinister skin disease, but that can’t be helped. We’ve seen worse in this house before.
Somewhere Over the Sea Page 9
