by Linn Ullmann
“I can’t believe it!” she said. “You’re in Copenhagen, Axel?”
I replied that I was indeed and often had business in Denmark (I believe that I did in fact use the word business as if it were the most natural thing in the world).
She said it was nice to see me, that she actually had quite a busy day ahead of her, but surely we could find time for a cup of coffee. I said, “Couldn’t we go to Tivoli instead and try the Ferris wheel?” She looked as if she had been struck by a bolt out of the blue. Or, rather, she looked at me as if I had just fallen out of the blue, to land outside her hotel in Copenhagen at two-thirty in the afternoon. Evidently it had never occurred to her that I might be the sort of man who frequented amusement parks.
“You sat so still, Axel, with your big hand over mine, and when we reached the highest point you said, ‘Look, Stella! Look!’”
“And you hardly dared to open your eyes, couldn’t understand what I saw in this form of entertainment.”
WHEN I SAW STELLA for the first time, way down at the other end of the hospital corridor, dressed all in white, so purposeful, and with that—how shall I say?—singing inside her, I was put in mind of the time Alice was to be married. When I met her, Stella was in her mid-twenties and she and Martin had just started living together. Alice was also in her mid-twenties when, for some unfathomable reason, she decided to get married. I was to lead her to the altar and hand her over to an estimable fiancé, whose name I’m glad to say I have forgotten. He was a tall, dark, bespectacled man whose only good trait was that he always agreed with the last person to speak, seldom forcing his own ideas and opinions—whatever these might have been—on others. If there was one man about whose thoughts I had no wish to be enlightened, it was Alice’s fiancé. There are torments even I have been spared! Anyway, I collected my white-clad daughter at her studio apartment … how many years ago was that? It would have been in ’63, six years before Gerd died—I picked her up at her tiny apartment and made room for her in my blue Volkswagen Beetle, the one that was to give up the ghost in the seventies but at that time still shone like the sun. We drove to the church. Alice was quiet. Her veil kept falling over her face and she blew it away in exasperation, as if it were the long hair she had never had. I chatted dutifully about the weather and mentioned that her mother was looking forward to the party afterward; she had left for the church a half hour earlier to check that the flowers had been arranged just so, and the whole house was filled with the glorious smell of roast reindeer—that sort of thing.
“Huh!” said Alice distractedly as we were turning up toward the church.
“What’s the matter, Alice?” I asked.
“Maybe this is all a big mistake,” said Alice.
“Oh, Alice, come now,” I said, opening my door and then walking around to open hers.
She gathered up her skirts, aggressively almost, pushed her veil back from her face, and set off at a jog toward the church. Although the sun was shining that day, a stiff breeze was blowing. She turned back to me and shouted, “Come on, Pappa! Everybody’s here. There’s nothing to do but march right on in there!”
Outside the church door, she let her skirts fall around her. I straightened her veil. She gave me a defiant look, and I stroked her cheek.
“You don’t like him much, do you?” she whispered.
“Alice, it’s you who’s marrying him, not me.”
The music struck up, the doors were thrown open, and my daughter and I began our walk down the aisle. All the wedding guests rose to their feet; at the altar stood the estimable fiancé, arranged with the bridesmaid and best man. All eyes were on us. Alice slackened her pace and leaned toward me, her lips to my ear.
“The problem is, Pappa, that the only thought in my head at this moment is that five years from now I’m going to want a divorce. I won’t be able to stand that guy for more than five years.”
We continued down the aisle as Alice whispered these words in my ear. I leaned toward her and muttered that this was not the right time to be discussing her possible divorce. Then she came to a complete halt. A faint murmur ran through the congregation, a ripple of uneasy curiosity. Alice came to a complete halt and whispered in my ear.
“The problem, Pappa, is not that you don’t like him. The problem is that I don’t like him! I think he’s an arrogant jerk. Look at him! Look at him standing there with that pompous look on his face, waiting to marry me. I can just feel it in my bones, Pappa, this is going to be no fun at all!”
We stood there in the aisle, eyes fixed on her fiancé, who was himself starting to look puzzled. We spent a long time staring at him. Eventually I leaned toward my daughter.
“Well then, Alice, there’s only one thing to do,” I whispered.
She looked at me and gave me her most dazzling smile, and we turned right around. We turned and paced back just as solemnly as we had made our way down the aisle, just as slowly in the opposite direction, away from the altar, away from the estimable fiancé, toward the church door. In sheer consternation, the verger opened the door, letting us out into the light. And before the congregation had collected itself, we were back inside my blue Beetle.
“Okay, where to now?” I asked my daughter.
Alice just laughed.
“Oh, Pappa, I do love you,” she said, laying her head on my shoulder as I started the car and drove off. “I love you so very, very much.”
Today I’m off to church again—or, rather, to the crematorium— this time on account of Stella. It’s a relief to know that the next funeral I attend will be my own. Stella was afraid of death, which is possibly why she worked with it day in, day out. I don’t know. She was young. She had children: two girls. Amanda and then Bee, a quiet little thing she had with the conceited ass to whom she was married.
“But you don’t like anyone, Axel; everybody’s either an old hag, or detestable, or disreputable, or an offense to the eyes—and what was it you called Martin?”
“A conceited ass.”
“How come? Give me one good reason.”
“He’s reckless.”
“So are you, Axel, in your own way.”
“He’s dishonest.”
“And what does that make you, the soul of truth?”
“He’s not good to you.”
“There are plenty of people worse off than me.”
I do not fear death. I learned early on from my father that the right to die by one’s own hand is the most fundamental of human freedoms. There is always a way out. I have known this since I was a boy: There is always a way out! And my father actually did put an end to it all, taking my mother with him. Whether he did so deliberately, I cannot say, although he probably did. Long after we children had grown up and left home, before the war, they went missing in the Trollheimen Mountains and weren’t found until spring. They had been caught in an avalanche, or so it was said. They left no money. My sisters inherited our mother’s few dresses and cheap jewelery. I inherited a chandelier. When Gerd and I got married, she hung the chandelier in the living room. She thought it was beautiful. She said it lit up both the room and itself, unlike me, she said; I didn’t light up the room, myself, or anything else for that matter. I remember her sitting on the floor in her blue-checked dress with a yellow cardigan around her shoulders and her hair in a braid, sitting under the chandelier and gazing up at it for hours on end. One night after she had fallen asleep, I crept out of bed and downstairs to the living room, where I climbed onto a chair and pulled off one crystal after another until the chandelier was stripped bare. The next morning, Gerd demanded an explanation. I did not feel I owed her one and said as much. I still have the crystals, sealed up in a box in the cellar, next to the barrel organ.
Stella did not want to die. She would never have fallen off a roof, just like that. As a child, you are always falling. Then you stop. Your morals go on falling, of course, but you yourself stop. Very rarely do you see a grown woman or man fall down—in the street, for example, or on a streetc
ar—and the odd time this does happen it is extremely unpleasant for both the person who has fallen and the one looking on: a shared loss of balance. Then you grow old and you start falling again. These days I’m forever falling down. My knees give way beneath me. I slip on the ice. I want to go in one direction; my feet go in another. When I venture out onto the street, this is what I fear most: falling down. That I’ll fall and break something, to say nothing of making myself the laughingstock of anyone happening by. Stella would not have jumped, either. Not from her children. What she could have been doing up on that roof is a mystery to me. He must have forced her to go up there. They were reckless, those two, Stella and Martin, just like children. Daring and bullying each other. Clinging to and pushing each other away. Maybe it was only a matter of time before one shoved the other over the edge.
Amanda
Other things I don’t tell Bee: For example, (4) I call my boyfriends Snip, Snap, and Snout. They don’t know I do. They don’t know I have more than one boyfriend, either. Snip doesn’t know there’s a Snap and Snap doesn’t know there’s a Snout and Snout doesn’t know there’s a Snip or a Snap. When I was thirteen I had no breasts and no boyfriends. Marianne had breasts— but then she was a year older so that wasn’t so surprising. Marianne was my best friend at that time. Once, she took off all her clothes in Mamma’s room. She took off all her clothes and stood in front of Mamma’s big mirror, and I stood behind her and we gazed in awe at her breasts, her skin, and her lovely long fair hair and her little round tummy and her butt and legs. I told her if I was a boy I’d definitely want to fuck her. That’s what I said, but I was thinking that what I really felt like doing was running a finger down the side of her body, following the soft line that curved in at her waist and out at her hips. Marianne stood in front of Mamma’s big mirror, stark naked in front of Mamma’s big mirror, and then all at once she gave a little jump, a jump for joy, sort of, and the words just blurted out of her: Oh my god, I’m gorgeous!
I don’t think she meant to say it out loud, because her face went bright red and she scrambled back into her T-shirt and panties as quick as she could.
I’m fifteen now, and I look pretty good too, not as good as Marianne but not bad at all. That time in front of Mamma’s big mirror, I didn’t look good. Sometimes I would put on a lot of sweaters, one on top of the other, so nobody could see I didn’t have breasts. When the boys see me, I thought, all they’ll say is, There goes a girl who’s all wrapped up. Not: There goes a girl who’s got no breasts. Since then I’ve come to the conclusion that when they saw me the boys didn’t think anything one way or the other.
I tell Bee, who’s lying here in bed beside me, that Mamma falls and falls and never hits the ground. And while she’s falling she sees the strangest things and she meets the strangest people and creatures. Birds, for example, flying south. But birds don’t fall, they fly. There is a difference. She meets a squirrel that has fallen out of a tree and a cod that has been fished out of the water by a boy and then tossed, half alive, half dead, onto dry land. I explain to Bee that it’s exactly the same thing, as misfortunes go, for a cod to be pulled out of the sea as for a squirrel to fall out of a tree. I cover us both with a blanket. Maybe Mamma will meet Granny too, I say; God must have kicked Granny out of heaven a long time ago, she was so grumpy and tight-lipped.
Axel
It is an annoying fact of life that Money Sørensen always lets herself into my apartment at the most inconvenient time. It’s true that we agreed on every Thursday at ten, and it’s true that she turns up every Thursday at ten, but for me Thursday at ten is and always will be an inconvenient time! Exactly thirty years ago, when we came to the arrangement whereby she would come here on that day at that time to clean and tidy this place, I felt as if I were committing myself under duress. It would have suited me better if we had agreed, for example, on every Friday at one o’clock, at which time I am always out for a stroll. Every Monday at twelve would also have been quite suitable, since I usually spend a few hours downtown at Deichmann’s library around that time. Even Wednesdays after eleven would have been fine, Wednesday being my day for errands in town: shopping for food, going to the bank, that sort of thing. But Thursday at ten is, and always will be, the most unsuitable time imaginable. Unforeseen things are always happening on Thursdays. Today, for example—today I have a funeral to attend, so I have to take a bath and get changed. Isak Skald was also buried on a Thursday. But I’m not just talking about funerals. Young Amanda often looks in on a Thursday—she finishes school early that day—and the last thing I want when Amanda pays me a visit is to have that old hag moping around here, putting both the girl and me in a bad mood. I talked to Stella about this on one occasion, and naturally Stella asked me why I hadn’t discussed it with the old hag herself.
“Why haven’t you tried getting her to come at some other time?” she asked, laughing.
I told her it was easier said than done. Money and I had had this arrangement for thirty years: She would come here to clean and tidy the place every Thursday at ten. That I had felt pressured into it in the first place is another matter. I distinctly remember saying to the old hag, “Miss Sørensen, it would suit me better if you were to come on Fridays at two o’clock. Thursdays are no good for me.”
And I distinctly recall her replying that she could not come on any day but Thursday. If that did not suit, she was sorry but she could not help me.
The fact that she was a friend of Gerd’s sister made it only harder for me to maneuver. She knew I had to treat her civilly, if only to disprove what Gerd’s sister, my daughter Alice, and all Gerd’s other relatives were starting to say: namely, that I was a “brute.” She also knew I would need someone to “do” for me in the new apartment, since neither Alice nor Gerd’s sister were prepared to help me any longer. I was completely on my own.
In other words, there is no way, I told Stella. No way any of this can be altered. If I were to strike up a conversation with the old hag for the purpose of changing the time appointed for her regular appearances, she would (1) be mortified and (2) turn nasty and spiteful. It would be something along the lines of: How do you like that? Grutt wants to change an arrangement that has worked perfectly well for thirty years.
Here, having been given my chance, I might attempt to plead my case. But, my dear Miss Sørensen, it has not always worked perfectly well for me. You may recall the conversation we had when you started cleaning for me, in which I pointed out that Thursday was not the most convenient day? But then she would, of course, sniff and, claiming to remember no such thing, assure me that if I was dissatisfied with her work, she could easily find more enjoyable things to do of a Thursday. No point staying on where she wasn’t wanted. Whereupon I, having shrunk to a nothing before her eyes, would have no course but to retreat: that was not what I had meant at all, it was only a suggestion. And then, with a (clenching) cheeriness, I would be obliged to add, I only thought a little change in our routine might perhaps perk us up a little, Miss Sørensen.
But here we are again, with Money letting herself in just as I am about to get into the bath. I had intended to bathe before the funeral service, which starts at 1 P.M., and then walk to the crematorium, to be sure of arriving on time. I could, of course, lock the bathroom door and call out to her that she needn’t clean in here today, since I’m in the bath. But she would take offense at that, too. So now I’ll have to get dressed and go out and say good morning—and wouldn’t you know, I’ve left my socks in the living room. I have no choice. I’ll have to walk all the way through the apartment to fetch them, sure to bump into her, I in my bare feet.
“Good morning, Miss Sørensen.”
In the living room, she turns from the windowsill she has been dusting and looks across at me; her wrinkled old moosh is painted red, her cheeks caked with makeup, the effect altogether hectic. She smiles faintly, a sour smile; she doesn’t fool me with her fake warmth. The sour smile turns into a more genuinely sarcastic grin when her eyes fall
on my naked feet.
“Good morning, Grutt.” She turns back to the window. “Looks like we’re going to get some sunshine in September, too.”
She is grinning sarcastically at my naked old feet, when I notice a run in the left leg of her panty hose. Not only that, but I happen to have noticed that same run perhaps three weeks ago, indicating that she has not changed her panty hose in weeks, and for all I know months, that old slattern, standing there, with her face turned away, grinning sarcastically.
“My friend Stella is being buried today,” I say.
She says nothing.
“I’ve never been able to make up my mind what sort of weather I feel is right for such occasions,” I go on. “I’ve always associated sunshine with death and rain with life, so as far as I can see it’s only right and proper that the sun should be shining today. I hope it shines on my funeral, too.”
Money, still standing there, still staring out the window, then says, “I don’t know whether I told you, Grutt … Axel … how truly sorry I am, for your sake, that Stella is gone. And of course I can’t help thinking about her girls. I mean, Axel, I’ve met Amanda here a few times, when she’s visited you… .”
In what gutter did we get onto first-name terms? I want to ask but bite it back. Instead, I mutter, “Well, we all have to go sometime, Miss Sørensen.”
I feel like adding that I think it highly—highly—inconsiderate of her to bring up Stella’s and Amanda’s names like that, with me standing here in the middle of the living room barefoot. That’s so typical of her.
“Old hag!” I whisper.
She turns and looks at me. “Did you say something, Grutt?”
