Stella Descending

by Linn Ullmann

MY HOME IS WITH MARTIN. I believe you would like me to stay with you. You might even be a little bit in love with me. But we don’t talk about such things. It would upset you if I were to hint at any such thing. For Christ’s sake, Axel, you’re forever dying. You know, sometimes you disgust me. I’m young, Axel! I’m not going to die. It’s you who’s going to die, not me. I tell you I want to have more children. This hurts you. Dirty old man. Splendid old man. Don’t mind me. You know I love you.

  There are a lot of things I don’t tell you. For example, I don’t tell you that Martin checks where I keep my contraceptive pills and makes sure I take them every night. He knows when I have my period and when it’s time to start a new sheet. He’s always the one who goes to the pharmacy to refill the prescription when I’ve run out.

  He wouldn’t hold Bee when she was born. He got out of it by saying he wasn’t feeling well; it had nothing to do with Bee. He was also having nightmares and not sleeping well.

  “Nightmares about what?” I asked.

  To which he replied, “The hideous beast Ammut.”

  But it might not be the same with a new baby. Martin is changing as the years pass. He has always been good to me, in his way, and he seems to have taken to the girls now, too.

  I think I am going to stop taking the pill, when the time is right.

  WE RENT a holiday cottage in Värmland, just over the border in Sweden: a wooden cabin painted red, surrounded by trees, and among the trees a lake where Martin and I swim naked at night.

  Bee is four years old, Amanda is ten. They are good friends and don’t fight the way most sisters do. In the morning Amanda takes Bee into the forest, where they will build tree houses, play with pinecones and insects, and tell fairy tales. Amanda has breasts now, a little bump on either side of her T-shirt. Her dark hair falls past her waist. She’s starting to happen.

  By the time my girls get back, Martin and I have set the table in the garden. Bee has brought presents from the forest— in my lap she lays a beetle, a tuft of moss, and a twig covered in green leaves.

  Amanda wants to play Nintendo, but we don’t have a TV out here in the country. She misses her best friend, Marianne. She misses the city. In the evening we take turns telling stories about ghosts and other creepy things. First me, then Amanda, then Bee, but Bee just shakes her head. She doesn’t want to tell a story, she says, she only wants to know if I liked the beetle, the tuft of moss, and the twig covered in green leaves.

  “Yes, yes, Bee,” I say brusquely. “Of course I liked them.”

  Then comes the evening when it is Martin’s turn to tell a story.

  “Once upon a time there was a beast by the name of Ammut,” he says. “It lived around these parts, deep in the forests of Värmland. This beast had an enormous appetite. It had to eat the heart of at least one child every week. And it had to be a heart that did not beat too hard (hearts that beat hard gave the beast stomachaches, hiccups, and other digestive problems), nor yet a heart that beat too slowly. It was his servant Poppel, a wicked sorcerer, who procured and prepared the children’s hearts. He did this by casting an invisibility spell on the children. You see, the sorcerer knew that for every day a child is invisible, its heart will beat a little more slowly, and after three weeks it will be beating at just the rate the beast likes best of all: a little but not too much.

  “The children’s parents knew nothing about the beast in the forest, nothing about Poppel the wicked sorcerer. And one by one the children went missing. Their parents called and called for them, but in vain. Eventually the parents decided that their children must be dead, and they wept without stopping for seven days, maybe more.

  “The children, who were not dead at all, just invisible, climbed up onto their parents’ knees, clutched their parents’ hands, patted their parents’ cheeks, slipped into their parents’ dreams at night. ‘We’re not dead,’ they cried, ‘we’re alive!’

  “But even though their parents heard their cries, they persisted in believing that the children were dead. They put the cries down to grief playing tricks on them, and after a while both the children’s cries and the parents’ grief subsided.”

  “Did their parents’ grief really subside?” Amanda asks.

  “Yes, after a while,” Martin replies. “The invisible children put their heads together and came to the conclusion that the only way to win back their parents’ love was to become visible again, and the only way they could become visible again was by venturing into the forest and finding the wicked sorcerer. No sooner said than done: One by one the children tramped off into the tall trees of the forest; one by one they were caught in a sack by the wicked sorcerer, who had known all along in the depths of his dark heart that the children would come in the end, because no one wants to be invisible for too long a time; and one by one they were boiled alive in a cauldron—”

  “And then what?” Bee asks, breaking in.

  “Then all Poppel the wicked sorcerer had to do was to cut out the children’s hearts, which by now were beating neither too hard nor too slowly but at just the right rate, and serve them to the beast,” says Martin. “Snip, snap, snout.”

  Amanda looks at Martin. It is not a pleasant look. “The children’s hearts wouldn’t be beating at all, would they, if the children had been boiled alive in a cauldron?”

  “ ’S’right,” whispers Bee, edging onto Amanda’s lap.

  “Poppel’s a sorcerer,” retorts Martin defiantly. “And sorcerers can do whatever they damn well please.”

  The next day, and this is what I wanted to tell you, Martin takes Bee into the forest. His story has scared her. I say, “Come on, take her for a walk in the forest and show her that there is no sorcerer and no beast.”

  I stand at the window, watching them walk along the path leading into the forest. She looks so frail under all that long black hair, and he looks so big. They walk along side by side. I think, Surely he could at least take her hand. Come on, Martin, take her hand! Why don’t you take her hand?

  I say nothing.

  Amanda comes to stand beside me. She looks out the window. “He’s going to walk off and leave her out there, isn’t he?”

  “No, Amanda,” I say. “He’s not going to walk off and leave her.”

  We stand at the window a little while longer.

  “Look,” I say, and I point, too eagerly, too brightly. “He’s taking her hand! He’s taking her hand, Amanda.”

  And they disappear among the trees.

  AMANDA MINE-ALONE. That’s what I call her sometimes. She has no father to speak of. I know you two spend a lot of time together, Axel, and that’s fine, even though I wish she got on better with young people. The old geezer, that’s what she calls you. Her best friend, Marianne, doesn’t call very often these days, and as far as I know she has no other friends her own age. When she’s at home she lies in front of the TV, playing Nintendo; she has this game she plays, with a princess who has to round world after world, falling from one level to the next and fighting the most terrible battles in her quest to find the key to the palace of the king.

  Sometimes I can spend a whole night sitting on the edge of her bed. She sleeps on her tummy, the way she did as a baby. She’s all grown up now, tall and—I was about to say beautiful, but beautiful isn’t the right word, although men do follow her with their eyes when she walks down the street. She’s curvy, with the sort of figure I never had. I can’t see it on her, can’t see it in her face, her sleep is deep and seems so peaceful, but I know she has horrific dreams, of mutilation and ghosts and murder. I wish I could take her in my arms and hug the nightmares out of her.

  Can you hear me, Amanda? I wish I could be with you when it gets you this way.

  When Bee was younger she loved her pacifier. She hung on to that pacifier as if it were her only link with the world. Without it, nothing: no night, no day, no mother, no father—no Bee, in fact. Amanda never used a pacifier, never sucked her thumb, never had a single cuddly toy or doll or tattered old blanket. But ever
since she was a baby she has had the habit of rubbing her right index finger gently up and down the bridge of her nose, as if, in her sleep, she were inscribing these horrific dreams of hers on her face, scene by scene.

  In the morning, at the breakfast table, she tells us what she has dreamed about, but at that time of day even the worst dreams seem to have their funny side. Bee thinks Amanda is telling stories and begs her to tell some more.

  Amanda has a father. I don’t even know for sure whether he’s still alive. Probably is, and doing fine, but no help to anyone since he emigrated to Australia. He sent us a postcard once: Dear Stella. Dear Amanda. I’m fine. Miss you. Stella—tell Amanda I love her! Hugs and kisses and all that.

  WE DON’T MAKE LOVE as often as we used to. We don’t sleep, either. After Bee was born we used to lie awake night after night, on sheets drenched in sweat, following the sound of Bee’s breathing in her bassinet. She never cried, but she kept us up all the same.

  Sometimes, when we’re not lying there looking at the black shawl that covers the window, I take Martin’s hand and give it a squeeze. This used to be a sign. He knows what it means. But I’m not even wet when he climbs on top of me and butts his way inside. His orgasm is sudden and silent. Afterward, he goes downstairs to the kitchen, makes coffee, sits on the sofa, and gazes out at the blackness of the night, waiting for it to let up. I am full of his body fluids; they’re running out of me. I’m alone in the room—apart from Bee, breathing in her bassinet. I stroke my breast, remember when I used to bleed with sheer pleasure. I soak my hands in his semen, rub my fingers up inside myself, back and forth, slowly, thinking of Martin not down there in the living room but here with me.

  Here with me, until I can no longer hold back the tears.

  BEE STARTS NURSERY SCHOOL when she is five. She doesn’t say much, but she stares at all of us—the nursery-school staff, the children, Martin, me—with a look in her eyes that I cannot fathom. She has great big eyes, with room for plenty of grievance.

  “We’ve hardly had time to make any mistakes,” Martin whispers, “and yet the way she looks at me, anybody would think I’d robbed her of all joy or something.”

  Bee’s hair is long and dark and beautiful, just like Amanda’s. All the other girls at nursery school want to comb it, brush it, braid it. Bee lets them. Bee sits on a blue box and lets the other girls tie red ribbons in her hair. She has the patience of a saint. But when I ask her who has tied ribbons in her hair, she can’t say for sure.

  One morning I hear a cry from Bee’s room. It comes from Martin. I’m in the kitchen making breakfast. It’s Martin’s turn to wake the kids. I hear a cry from the bedroom and race up the stairs. Bee is still asleep—his cry has not woken her—her dark hair spread across the white pillow.

  “Lift her head,” Martin hisses.

  “What is it?”

  “Aw, Jesus!” says Martin.

  I sit down on the edge of her bed, lay my cheek against Bee’s, listen to her breathing. So faint, feeble almost. This is my child, I think; dear God, help us. I run my hand through her hair and whisper to her that it’s time to wake up. A black bug crawls over my fingers. I run my hand through her hair again.

  “Bee’s got lice,” I murmur. “It’s quite common,” I add, seeing the look of revulsion on Martin’s face.

  Bee wakes without a word, wraps her arms round my neck, lays her head against my chest. There are lice on the pillow and on the sheets, and when I brush her hair lice fall on the floor.

  “There’s no end to it,” Martin says. “There’s just no end to it.”

  I keep Bee home from nursery school and Amanda home from school. Amanda tells us a tale about a princess who is so beautiful that gold coins fall from her hair every time she combs it. In the evening she plaits her own hair together with Bee’s. They sleep in the same bed. I find them like that, intertwined, two girls and one braid. My daughters.

  I INHERIT SOME MONEY from Pappa, enough for Martin and me to take out a loan and buy a semidetached house with a garden on Hamborgveien, near the Lady Falls. I have the idea that everything will be different when we move. We’ll be more like a normal family. I can just picture it: Martin, Amanda, and Bee, in the kitchen, in the garden, maybe even a dog. More life, I think. Yes, that’s it. More life.

  And at long last I have a good excuse to kick out the plumber. There is no way he is coming with us. I refuse to take the plumber with us to the new house.

  “D’you hear me, Martin? I’m not taking the plumber!”

  Martin looks at me. “But I’ve already told him he can rent the room in the attic. I thought that would be okay. We could do with the money. And you should never underestimate the value of having a plumber in the house.”

  “And what value would that be, exactly?” I ask.

  “A plumber in the house, Stella! A plumber in the house! Does everything have to be spelled out?”

  A few weeks after Bee’s sixth birthday we move to our new home in Hamborgveien. Martin, Amanda, Bee, me—and the plumber in the attic.

  I didn’t think Pappa had any money. I thought he had a lot of debts, so the inheritance came as a surprise. The gift shop in Majorstua had to close when Miss Andersen, the sales clerk, died and the customers stopped coming. That was a long time ago. Pappa spent the last years of his life in a dark little cubbyhole of an office, strictly a one-man affair, in downtown Oslo. I never really took any interest in what he did there. To the extent that I thought about it at all, I imagined that he did nothing. It has always been tempting to resort to the word nothing when trying to describe Pappa. I can’t help thinking of this song about a dead man, sitting in the corner of a diner, and nobody realizing he’s actually dead as a doornail. The first time I heard it I thought of Pappa. I thought it was Pappa who was sitting in the corner of that diner, dead as a doornail, with nobody noticing.

  I finally get around to going into his cubbyhole office to clear it out. Mamma can’t be bothered, she says; it was a big enough job packing his clothes into cardboard boxes (two boxes) and delivering them to the Salvation Army. The rest is up to me.

  I don’t know whether she mourns for him. It’s hard to tell. It was a perfectly ordinary Wednesday. They were sitting in the kitchen, Mamma and Pappa on either side of the kitchen table, under the blue ceiling light, eating dinner. Then Pappa died. He didn’t topple over, he just sat there on his chair, almost as if it would have been bad manners not to, with the same straight back, the same pale blue eyes. There was nothing to indicate that a change, if one can call it that, had taken place. He simply stopped eating. His face might have turned a bit grayer when it happened, I don’t know. In any case, Mamma didn’t notice a thing until she began to clear the table and he still hadn’t moved.

  His office looks exactly as I expected: a brown desk, a brown chair, a brown bookcase. A computer. A grimy window overlooking a grimy backyard. White fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. I find invoices and catalogs, from which I gather that after the closure of the Majorstua store, Pappa had gone on selling bric-a-brac by mail order. Mail-order knickknacks: crystal swans, brass candlesticks, sherry glasses, china dogs, angels in every shape and form at prices to suit every pocket. I discover that he rents a small storeroom somewhere in Asker, to the west of the city. And as far as I can see, everything is in perfect order: no unpaid debts, no dissatisfied customers, no secret love affairs, no unknown son or daughter. Nothing.

  It takes me some time to find the key to the desk’s top drawer, which is locked. The key is tucked high up on a shelf out of sight, inside a ceramic pot that must once have held a plant. There’s still some potting soil at the bottom. I dust off the key and unlock the drawer. Inside I find a photograph and an unfinished letter dated many, many years earlier. The photograph is of a fair and rather plump lady pushing fifty. She has full red lips. Although it’s hard to say for sure, I would say she is a tall woman. I turn the photograph over. The name Ella is written on the back in green, my mother Edith’s handwriting. And a year:
1979.

  I pick up the letter, immediately recognizing Pappa’s neat, elegant hand:

  Dear Ella,

  I am writing to you yet again. Edith has told me you have decided to leave for good this time and she intends to go with you. My wife says she’s going to leave me for you. I beg you, I beg both of you: Do not do this. Stella may be a big girl now, but she is still not grown up. Not quite fourteen. She needs her mother. You promised me you would wait until she was grown.

  THEY ARE ALL DEAD NOW.

  I sing to Bee. She lies in bed listening, silent and solemn-faced. She won’t play with my hands the way Amanda did at that age.

  “Night-night, Bee,” I say, but I receive no reply. “Aren’t you going to say night-night back, Bee?”

  Bee turns to face the wall.

  I sit there on the edge of the bed, staring at the back of that thin, clammy little neck. Then I get up and look in on Amanda.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “That’s just about enough Nintendo for tonight,” I say.

  “Oh, but Mamma, there’s this beast in the forest that I have to kill,” she says, “and then the princess’ll fall down into the next world.”

  I stretch out on the sofa and read. It is far too quiet in this new house of ours. Not a sound except the mechanical little melody churned out by Amanda’s Nintendo game.

  The silence has followed me all the way here.

  I AM LYING on the sofa, reading, when Martin walks into the living room and says, “That’s it, Stella, I’m leaving you. I’ve packed a bag. I’ve found myself a studio to rent. I can’t take this any longer: the house, the kids, Bee … all of it. I can’t take it.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say. I don’t look up but keep my eyes fixed on the page of my book. He’s done this before.

  He sinks down onto the sofa, lays his head on my shoulder, and bursts into tears.

  “I can’t stand it,” he whispers. “I’m going to disappear if I stay here.”

  “I don’t believe you’re going to leave me,” I say. “I don’t believe you’ve packed your bag, and I don’t believe you’ve found a place to rent.”