by Linn Ullmann
And not only does this leave Jon at a loss for words, he isn’t even sure what the correct answer is. Obviously he knows the sex of his dog. But he’s not sure whether Leopold being male is good (the other dog, according to its owner, is impossible around bitches) or bad (the other dog, regardless of sex, feels threatened by males). There are, Jon thought, a lot of situations in which it would be preferable for dogs (male or female) not to meet and sniff each other, as dogs do. Either dog A would want to mate dog B against dog B’s will, or dog C would develop an immediate antipathy toward dog D and this antipathy would be expressed by dog C attacking dog D; either that or dogs A, B, C, and D would get so excited and/or confused at running into one another that their leashes would get all snarled up and their owners would have a hard time disentangling them.
Jon much preferred to avoid the small talk that comes as a natural consequence of having a dog, so he suggested to Leopold that he should also retreat to a kind of canine version of the impersonal circle of acquaintance. Which was to say: No snuffling. No sniffing. Merely a little friendly tail-wagging from afar—and then move on.
Jon thought only good of all the new people he encountered every day on the way to the butcher and the park, and it was a great relief to him that he had not endangered his own self-containment by trying, for example, to stare the gorgeous young mother of two to him. That he didn’t want to. That he didn’t have to.
His cell chirruped. He dug it out of his trouser pocket.
The worst thing is not knowing what happened, what became of her. The second worst is that today is a new day and tomorrow is another new day. A.
Jon had taken one bench for his own and here he would sit in the autumn sunshine, making notes for his novel. (He always had his notebook with him, no longer trusting himself to remember what he wanted to remember; more than once he had found himself seeing something or overhearing something or even thinking something that seemed important, a flash of insight maybe, only, when he sat down at the computer later, to find that it was gone. He could recall the sense of elation that this flash of insight had engendered in him, but the insight itself was gone. And so, because he forgot things, even important things, he always carried a notebook in his pocket, and he wrote in this as often as he could.)
At home in his study he had gone through old work documents and found his notes about a woman with a kinked waist.
He thought of his wife.
“Do you think that’s how it is?” Siri had whispered, turning to him. He had pretended to be asleep, they had kept each other awake all night that summer in Gloucester, many years ago. First he had told stories to help her fall asleep and then, if she was still awake, she had told stories. He remembered her whispering, “Do you tell stories in order to become someone else, Jon? Do you think it’s possible to put yourself in someone else’s place, to suffer, breathe, feel as they do?”
As October passed into November Jon had to take his walks to Torshov (to the butcher, the coffee bar, and the park) without Leopold. His walks with the dog became steadily briefer, amounting eventually to just a couple of turns around the block. Leopold no longer strained at the leash. Jon remembered the power of that big body. The fights he and Leopold had had over what sort of dog Leopold ought to be. But Leopold wasn’t interested in fighting anymore, and whenever they went for a walk he stuck close to Jon’s side, grateful and finally conquered.
Jon bought chicken giblets, hearts, liver, kidneys, and other offal at the butcher’s, but it got to the point where Leopold only sniffed at his food before lying down in a corner of the living room and going back to sleep. The last time the vet had examined him, he had scratched Leopold’s belly and said, “There’s not an awful lot we can do here, he’s not in any pain, although that can change from day to day, it’s already spread quite far,” and then he had looked at Siri and Jon and said, “The important thing now is for you to have a good Christmas together, hold him, massage his paws, and prepare yourselves for making some difficult decisions come the new year.”
Jon had gotten into the habit of waking early. He was up before six, showered, had breakfast and took a cup of coffee standing at the kitchen counter, whistled for Leopold, and off they went. When Leopold fell ill, he made a change in their routine. First he took Leopold for a little walk around the house, then he took his own long walk to Torshov, and when he got back he sat down at his desk to write.
It was December now, and he was back at Mailund, and here too he woke early. He opened his eyes and for a brief moment everything was blank. He was no one. None. None thought. None flesh. None sleep. None waking. Before everything came flooding back to him. Before he remembered everything. The bright expanse between being and not being.
The first thing he did on waking was reach out his hand and touch Siri, she didn’t push him away, they were sharing a bed again, but more often than not she would roll over and carry on sleeping. She had started dreaming. Dreadful dreams that woke her in the middle of the night, and sometimes she told him about them and sometimes not. The dreams had started when Jenny died. I should have done more, she said, sitting up in bed. Jon took her hand and squeezed it in the way that she recognized, the way he had squeezed it when they were living in Gloucester and she couldn’t sleep, when they lay side by side in the dark and told each other stories. Siri lay down again, but didn’t settle. She should have been more alert! She should have taken better care! There was so much she should have said. But now her mother was dead and all that was said, was said and there was no way now to go back and start over. And then there was Alma.
We have to talk about Alma.
Jenny died only days before the three boys found Milla in the woods. The young man known as K.B. was immediately brought in for new questioning, his status was altered from witness to accused, he had been charged and remanded to custody.
But no one, except Jon, knew what Jenny had told Siri just days before she died, namely that she had seen Milla on the road that night.
“I know what I heard, Jon,” Siri told her husband. “I know what she was talking about. My mother wasn’t that mad. Sometimes I think she was only pretending.”
“Pretending what?”
“To be mad.”
“But why—it doesn’t make sense. Jenny was many things, but not a pretender.
“You know why?” Siri said. “You know why she pretended to be crazy? So that she could escape, so she could opt out. What a relief. I’m a looney and can’t be held responsible for anything whatsoever. I’m no longer a member of normal human society.“
“No, I don’t think that’s how it was, Siri” Jon said. “I think she was old and sad and very tired. I think her brain … I think her spirit was worn out.”
“She had, like, five bottles of wine and took Alma with her in the car for God’s sake …” Siri almost shouted. “She could have killed her, she could have crashed into a tree and killed her … she could have killed Alma!”
Jon nodded.
“So it was very convenient to start acting crazy after that. And then she tells me before she goes and dies that she and Alma might have been the last people to see Milla alive. Was she raving? Or was she actually speaking the truth and just pretending to rave? I don’t know! And what about Alma? What did Alma see? What are we to do with this information? Do you think Alma saw anything that night and hasn’t told us? What do we tell the police? And Milla’s mother? What do we tell Amanda? She calls, sends text messages, and we say nothing. Oh, no. She’s a bit of a nuisance, isn’t she? With her grief and her texts and her telephone calls. Well, I mean, what can we do, except express our sympathy. What good is that? So we don’t even express sympathy. Amanda says, You two know something about my daughter that you’re not telling. And we say No, we don’t and then we tell each other that she too has been driven mad by suspicion and anger and grief. She sends text messages and calls and hangs up and we put up with it because she lost a daughter. But the fact is that she’s right! She’s right. We do kn
ow something and we’re not telling it and I don’t know what we should do.”
“Well, anyway,” Jon said quietly, “it wouldn’t have made any difference one way or the other. What we know, I mean. She’d still be dead.”
“That’s not true, Jon,” Siri said, “it’s not true what you say, that it doesn’t make any difference one way or the other. It’s not true!”
“What I mean,” Jon said quietly, “is that no one could have imagined what this K.B. character was capable of. He raped her, followed her in his car, killed her, and buried her in the woods. This is what we know. He’s the one who did it. And we don’t know anything about him … nothing except that until that evening he was just this ordinary kid living in this town among us.”
Siri and Jon had been having this conversation, or variations on this conversation, ever since Jenny’s admission during her last days. Maybe, Jon said to Siri, Jenny had been talking about something else entirely. Well, they would never know now. But Siri mustn’t forget that toward the end it had been impossible to understand what Jenny said, she wasn’t in her right mind, and the craziness wasn’t an act, Jon insisted, she was crazy, and maybe Siri had conjured up this whole story about her mother and Alma seeing Milla there on the road, allowing her own fear and anxiety to weave themselves into disastrous events.
“And that’s exactly why,” Jon said, “we mustn’t start pestering Alma with all sorts of questions. Bringing up the past. Asking what she might or might not have seen more than two years ago when she was out driving with her grandmother.”
“I don’t know,” Siri said. “I don’t know if she was raving.”
“She could have been talking about anything,” Jon said. “You said it yourself—it was almost impossible to understand her. She had her own language at the end, you said. We gave our statements to the police at the time. Remember? So did Alma. No one had seen Milla. Do we really have to drag Alma through all this again?”
Irma had construed this last encounter between Siri and Jenny in her own way. The day after the scene in the bedroom she had called Jon to say that now Siri had crossed the line. “What line is that?” Jon asked.
Siri had shouted, according to Irma. Siri had shaken. Siri had actually been in danger of killing her own mother.
And while they were on the subject, Irma begged to remind him of the agreement between herself and Siri’s mother, which was that Irma was to care for Jenny as she thought best when the day came that Jenny could not care for herself, and that day had now come, she said, and she would kindly request that Jon and Siri respect a sick woman’s last wish and stay the hell away from Mailund. Irma considered it her duty to care for Jenny for whatever time she had left, so she had in fact decided to forbid Siri from visiting Jenny from now on.
“You can’t forbid Siri to do anything,” Jon said. “You can’t! And your accusations against Siri are ridiculous. Downright spiteful. You are a very mean woman, Irma.”
“I was there, I saw what I saw,” Irma said.
“Well, no matter what, you can’t forbid Siri to visit her mother.”
“You just watch me!” retorted Irma and slammed down the phone.
Jenny died the next day. Irma sent Jon a text, informing him of this and asking him to pass the message on to his wife. She left it to the family to make the funeral arrangements.
And then she had written: My work here is done.
After the funeral, Irma had packed her suitcase, fed the ducks in the overgrown garden pond one last time, and departed, never to be seen again. Jon seemed to remember hearing someone say that she had a place in the mountains at Hemsedal, but on reflection he came to the conclusion that he must have heard wrongly or misunderstood. He checked his notes. He remembered writing it down. Irma in the skiing mecca of Hemsedal? Yep. That’s what he had written. Could he have dreamed it? Irma the giantess, Irma with the angel face, Irma with the long curly hair, swishing down the ski slopes. He pressed DELETE just to be rid of her, wherever she was.
Christmas was celebrated quietly with the children, and the snow kept on falling. Early in the morning on Christmas Eve, Jon and Alma and Liv went off to the woods to chop down a tree. They walked through the woodland and every time Jon said, “Look, that pine there, that could be our Christmas tree,” Liv said, “No, it can’t, that’s not a proper Christmas tree.” And Jon and Alma and Liv walked on, past snow-covered glades, past the green lake, which wasn’t green but white like everything else.
And Jon scanned the ice and said, “Maybe we could go skating here someday.”
“No,” said Alma.
He turned to the girls. They were well wrapped up in jackets, hats, and mittens. Alma shook her head and clasped Liv’s hand.
Jon’s phone warbled. He groped in his jacket pocket, pulled it out, and looked at the screen.
“No,” Liv echoed.
Christmas Eve is the hardest day of the year. As you can imagine, I’m sure. A.
Jon slipped the phone back into his pocket. He looked at Alma, he looked at Liv. They were standing in the snow, shouting at him.
“No, we won’t,” Liv said. “Papa, are you listening?”
“What won’t we?” Jon asked.
“We won’t go skating here,” Liv said, rolling her eyes. That was so typical of Papa, not to listen. Typical Papa, to be the only one who didn’t know what was so obvious to everybody else—that there could be no talk of skating on this lake.
Jon and Alma and Liv walked on. At last they came to a clearing and in this clearing was a tree, and it was here that Liv stopped and pointed.
“There,” she said. “That’s our Christmas tree.” And Alma and Jon nodded and Jon set to work and chopped down the tree while his daughters looked on.
Siri cooked up good, traditional Christmas fare: mutton ribs (dried and salted, steamed over birch twigs), mashed turnip, special Christmas sausages, and almond potatoes, and Leopold had his favorite, kidneys, but merely sniffed at his bowl, went back to the fireplace, and lay down on his old blanket. The big head between his paws. The long, scrawny body. The dull coat with the white patch on his chest. Jon felt a sudden urge to weep. He looked out the window, at the snow falling through the darkness, and remembered the summer two and a half years ago when Siri was flitting about out there in the sea of mist, drifting between the tables with all the white tablecloths swirling around her.
Christmas night was quiet. The children slept. Siri slept. And in the morning Jon woke early, got dressed in the dark, and tiptoed out of the bedroom. The broad stairway wound from the attic to the basement apartment. Not all that long ago Leopold would have been standing at the foot of the stairs waiting for him. Now he was asleep on his blanket in the living room. Jon went over to him, bent down and stroked his head, whispered, “Hey, boy. Want to go for a walk? Come on, Leo, come on!”
Leopold opened his eyes and looked at him.
“Let’s go out,” Jon continued. “Come on. Up you get.”
Slowly, Leopold got to his feet, staggered a little, and wagged his tail, as if to assure both Jon and himself that all was well. It was still dark when Jon opened the front gate and stepped out onto the road with Leopold by his side.
Jenny’s funeral had played out pretty much according to Jenny’s instructions. She was dressed in a red silk dress and nectarine-colored sandals, with the black handbag she was so fond of on her chest.
Before the funeral, Jon had accompanied Siri when she went to meet the vicar who would be conducting the service for her mother. The vicar, whose name was Beth, said she was looking forward to learning more about Jenny.
He noticed how she stressed people’s names—as if she were speaking in italics—presumably to show how much she cared. And why were they all on a first-name basis? They had just met. She was a vicar, for God’s sake. Someone one goes to in a moment of seriousness and need, not a pal.
“Siri, hello,” said Beth, holding out her arms. Siri had flinched and Jon had had to pinch her hand to stop her f
rom storming straight back out of there.
They took their seats on spindle-backed chairs set around a brown Formica table in the vicar’s office, Siri and Jon said yes to coffee, poured into paper cups from a red-and-white thermos. Beth was new to the town, had spent most of her life in Trondheim, was in her mid-thirties, and had long, dark, curly hair that she pinned up with a big flower clasp. She wore a little too much lipstick and glasses with brightly colored striped frames. Siri had read an interview with her in Aftenposten on the day of their meeting, and after reading it, all she had really wanted to do was cancel the whole thing.
“We can’t have this vicar burying my mother,” she exclaimed.
The newspaper interview had been part of the coverage of the discovery of Milla’s body and the remanding to custody of K.B., charged with an almost indescribably heinous crime (rape and first-degree murder, the police would not comment on reports that Milla had been buried alive).
And how, the interviewer asked, did a small community deal with a tragedy of such magnitude, especially now that it was known that a perfectly ordinary young man, not a stranger, was behind the murder of Milla?
Beth the vicar had talked about evil. It’s all around us, but if we stand together we can fight it. She had talked about goodness. She had talked about our times and how they were very difficult. She had talked about an emerging new Norway and an emerging new Europe. She had talked about social media. What’s the good of being able to communicate with the whole world if we forget to communicate with each other and with God. She had talked about grief. She had talked about forgiveness. And she had talked about empathy. But first and foremost she had talked about herself and her own difficult role in situations like this … and how it was a burden she could not refuse to shoulder … It is my duty to support this shocked and grief-stricken small community.
