A tower of buttons; a large scarlet one at the bottom and then smaller and less and less colorful ones until the top of the tower, which is a tiny, transparent button.
A collection of twigs caught together in a sort of birdcage shape. I am careful with this. It is fragile.
Birgitt never explained anything in the list I have just written out for you. Never spoke about the objects at all, and I did not mind because I accepted them as significant in themselves, for her sake. Now I think perhaps I would have been more use to her if I had insisted she talk to me about them. They never formed a link between us as this piece of material, with the history you have given me of why it matters to you, forms a link between you and me. I am beginning to think that these objects, which I have dusted and arranged so carefully since her death, have no meaning, and I should throw away the ones I do not like to look at. I will ask Karin and Erik. They are both coming to stay next weekend. This does not often happen, and I am excited about it. I can see that cooking for your family is important to you, and I will cook for mine.
I will let you know if I am successful. With the cooking and with throwing things out. I do not read poetry; another raspberry not yet picked but still on the plant, and I will go back along the row to find it.
Love,
Anders
Bury St. Edmunds
September 27
My dear Anders,
If I were to take one of the rooms in our house and make a list of all the furniture and the objects in it, I would need a spreadsheet. The task would only be manageable if I could put them into categories first—the useful and used; the useful but not used; ornaments, whole; ornaments, broken; items belonging elsewhere; random.
Having written this list of categories, I went through to a room we call the parlor. This is a pretentious word for it, but it was known as that by previous generations and so it still is. This is the room where we sit, in the evening, where we entertain friends. It is warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and I chose this room because it is the most formal and therefore the least cluttered. As soon as I was in it, with my list, I realized I could not begin to make order out of chaos with the categories I had invented. This must be making you smile, you who are a master of cataloging, sorting, sifting, putting item A with item B into a family. I looked first at a green glass vase. I do not use it to put flowers in, partly because I rarely have flowers to put in it, though I could have if I bothered to grow and pick them for the purpose of brightening up the house, but also because it is cracked and the water seeps out. Is this “useful but not used” or is it “ornament, broken”? I think perhaps I should begin with two headings: “Broken” and “Whole,” and then have subcategories underneath. I am happy that the vase would then slot neatly into “Broken—useful but not used.” There again, it is only in the parlor because I like it. The green is a pretty green, and the shape is elegant. So is it, after all, “Broken—ornament”?
How do you do your job? I’m looking at a bootlace. Unused. Just the one, left behind by someone who brought a packet of two new laces into the parlor to replace a broken lace and did not bother to remove the one he did not need. I imagine I will have picked up and thrown out the remains of the old one in my passes through the room with a duster and a vacuum cleaner, but the unused bootlace cannot be thrown out. It needs to be picked up and taken back to the drawer in the scullery where anything to do with shoes is kept. I could pick it up now, but then I would have to go through the hall, along a corridor, across the kitchen, and down some steps to the scullery, and it seems a lot of time and effort for one bootlace. If I look around, I can see other things that need to be picked up and carried to where they ought to be and put away: a pair of gloves, a pair of scissors, a manual for a dehumidifier, the cover of a smoke alarm, a glasses case (empty), an elastic band, an elastic bandage, a cookie jar (empty), a penknife, two golf tees. None of these belongs in the scullery. If I were to carry them all at once (for which I would first need to fetch a basket or bag) I would have to travel through every room on the ground floor, up the stairs to the first floor and again to the second floor and finally out to the farm office in the yard, in order to put them all back where they belong. Why bother?
Even if I managed to rid the room of things left behind, there would still be—I have been back down there to count—eight chairs, two sofas, three small tables, and four other pieces of furniture for, as you put it, keeping things out of sight. Also on the floor, which is stone flags covered in rugs with frayed edges, are three other objects for keeping things in—logs, magazines, knitting. On the wall are eight pictures, all of them so murky it is hard to say what they are meant to represent; three of them appear to be paintings of livestock, two are of trees, three of people’s faces. If I wanted to know more, I would need to take them outside into the sunlight, or bring in a flashlight to shine on them, as the windows in this room are small, and the only lighting—apart from the floor lamp I use to let me see the stitches as I knit—is an overhead effort with four arms, each ending in an upturned pink glass lampshade with a black band round the bottom where dead flies have collected inside the shade. I could not bring myself to count the ornaments, so I counted instead those I would put into the van if I were leaving like Mary and Vassily. The answer to this is three. The cracked glass vase; an unglazed pottery figure of a woman with a long skirt and a haughty expression, which is designed as a candlesnuffer and therefore potentially of use, but as there are no candles in the room, it is no more useful than a vase that leaks; a wooden bowl, currently full of walnuts, two golf balls, and a handful of loose change, which I would throw out before putting the bowl into the van. The vase was my mother’s. I bought the candlesnuffer on a holiday to Great Yarmouth. The bowl Edward bought for me at a country fair. It is not the associations, though, that lead me to choose these things. I choose them because I like to look at them.
I have occasionally railed against the quantity of objects in this house, and I know from his reaction that Edward’s perception of them is different from mine. For him, the house represents continuity and tradition, security and roots. If he were turned out of the place tomorrow, even if he were left with a livelihood and somewhere else to live, he would be shivering like a man whose coat has been ripped off his back in a storm. He would feel exposed, insubstantial. For me, the house and all its contents are like the mud collecting on my boots as I walk the dog round the fields in a rainy season. Holding me back, weighting me down, limiting how far I can travel.
I am failing to be joyful in this letter. Please write and tell me what decisions you have made about the objects in your house. Please tell me you have chosen to keep only those that give you pleasure. I am also worried about the position of your desk. I do not like to think of you facing a wall and writing to me. I would prefer to imagine you have a view of the clouds crossing the sky, of your neighbor’s flagpole, a seagull or two. If there is nowhere else to put it, though, I would rather you wrote to me facing a wall than that you did not write to me at all.
Love,
Tina
Silkeborg
October 1
Dear Tina,
You sound sad, in your letter, and I am sad that you are sad. Our correspondence began at a time when I was finding little reason to be happy, and it has brought me happiness. It would distress me greatly if it was making you unhappy. I mean, if it is causing you to think about your life in ways that make it seem a burden to you. You have lifted a burden of grief from me. I wish I could do the same for you. I worry that, as I have become more joyful, you may start to compare my chances for growing in happiness with your own, and this may cause you pain.
Let me tell you what I think, now that I have read your description of the room where you sit with your family. I think I would hate to be surrounded by all the things you say are in the room. I am not used to it and I admit I might find myself trying to group them together, to catalog them. This would be necessary for me because it is my way of w
orking. It is how I manage myself. I also think, though, there is evidence that people live in your house. They go in and out. They do what anyone might do in a house where they are at home. Change their bootlaces, read a manual, empty their pockets looking for a penknife, it might be. In my house, there is no one. When I return home from work, no lights are on, nothing has been touched since I left in the morning. I can understand the way you say your husband would feel if he were deprived of his home. I am often aware of the empty space behind me. Empty of movement, I mean. It is empty of ornament, but I choose that it should be. I am more aware of the empty space because I had it filled by my children last weekend, as well as because of your letters, which open another way of living to put alongside my own.
I will tell you about the weekend. I will not disguise how much I enjoyed it, even though this might appear unkind when you have nothing joyful to tell me. I know you will not think it unkind.
I cooked a stew, following a recipe from a book already on the shelf, making sure to do exactly as it said, down to measuring the quarter teaspoonful of salt. As it cooked, the smell filled the empty spaces, made them seem already like a home with people living in it. Erik and Karin arrived together on Friday night. I do not know the words (in English or Danish) to describe the lift in my heart when I opened the door and they were there. It was dark outside and they were lit up by the porch light, warm and solid and laughing at me in my apron covered in tomato seeds and gravy. Karin is magnificent. She is fragile yet firm, weighted. She had draped herself in a knitted garment, a poncho I suppose it might be called, instead of a coat, and it wrapped itself round her body, hung in folds elegantly round her shoulders and over the mound that is my grandchild, her face rising up through the neck, just as beautiful (at least to me) as always, but with an added … now I have run out of words; what do I mean? Healthiness, shine, fulfillment? Something that was not there before.
I am sorry if I seem to be talking about my daughter as though she were the most special person in the world, when she is special only to me. But she is so special to me, at this time, waiting for the child to be born, and with the sunlight breaking through again after the misery of her mother’s death. Of her mother’s life, I could say. So much is said of post-traumatic stress. When I look at Karin now, I wonder if I am suffering from post-traumatic joy.
Erik is taller than either of us, but he is a man of passions, much more obvious passions than I am, and one of his passions is food, so he is plump. He is passionate about people, too. Kisses and hugs more than Karin or I do, than Birgitt did (she was particularly sparing with hugs). He laughs and cries much more easily. He is a delight to be with, but not restful.
Karin brought with her a loaf of bread with nuts and seeds in it, and a dessert she had made with apples. Erik brought a very fine bottle of red Burgundy wine, and these additions made the stew, which I believe was no better than ordinary, appear delicious. I had decorated the table with white porcelain plates and dishes, my loveliest simple glasses on slender stems, white linen napkins, and three pewter candlesticks. (Your pottery lady who is also a candlesnuffer would have a welcome place in my house.) We ate the food, and Erik and I drank the wine. Karin has read all the latest books on pregnancy and would not taste it. Then we sat on the sofa, in front of the stove, and talked. Mostly we talked of Karin, her health and mood, and the baby. The baby, she decided to tell me, when we were all together like this in the warmth with a Bruch violin concerto playing softly, is a girl. She will be called Birgitt. I could not help feeling a little guilty that I could not stop myself from being pleased, at this moment, that Karin has no husband, that the father of the child is on the other side of the world and ignorant of his daughter’s existence. She will be born into my family, into the family that is Erik, Karin, and me, and no one else will have as much right as us to love and nurture her. This is selfish, I know.
On Saturday morning, as we sat at breakfast, I told them I was wondering whether the display of objects I listed in my last letter should be allowed to stay as they are, unaltered, a monument to the strange obsessions of their mother’s mind. Or was it time to look at them as if they had that moment been put down by an anonymous hand, and I could keep or dispose of them as I wished? According to whether I liked them or not. Erik folded his arms on the table and laid his head on them. I did not know what this response meant, so I looked at Karin, and she was smiling.
“Is this a good idea?” I said.
“It is a very good idea,” Karin said.
“Hallelujah!” said Erik, lifting his head from the table. “I can’t believe it has taken you so long.”
We lined up all the objects. I chose the piece of porcelain and the piece of wood shaped like an arch. These are things I like to look at. Karin chose the buttons and the pebbles. She has a friend who creates jewelry and sculptures from objets trouvés—so Karin called them. I expect you understand. Erik picked the slice of tree trunk. It is something, he says, that can fit on his desk, not in the way but not entirely out of sight, and it will recall his mother to him when his eye lights on it and he has nothing else in his mind, or only thoughts that he does not want to keep on thinking. This left us with the padlock, the bowl, the box, the fan, and the nest of twigs. We put all these into a bag, and Erik and I put on our coats and Karin wrapped herself up in her poncho. It is cold here; the wind is reminding us of winter.
We went into Silkeborg to a shop that buys and sells antiques. It sells nothing very large or very fine; in fact, much of what it offers is just old—is that different from antique?—and not very lovely or desirable. But I enjoy looking, and it sells books I sometimes buy, so I often visit. We offered the woman who runs it the box, the bowl, and the fan. The shop is well lit, but where the woman sits at the back, in an alcove behind a table covered with papers, it is very gloomy. I have never really looked at her, but I had the impression of someone quite old. When we gave her the box made of playing cards and the fan, she switched on a bright lamp, and I saw that in fact she is not exactly young, but not old at all. She has scars on her face, the sort of scars I imagine would be caused by injuries from a car accident. When she spoke to us about the items we had brought, it was obvious she is not Danish, though she speaks Danish. Here is someone else with a story to tell that I will never hear, I thought.
The fan, she said, was too damaged to be worth anything, but she liked the box and offered us money for it. Erik said at once we would not take the money but we would look for something in the shop to put in the empty spaces we had made by removing the fan and the box, and she might give us a discount on whatever we chose, if she liked. We looked through everything on all the shelves and tables and windowsills and at last we came across a piece of glass, and I decided that was what I wanted. I may have had in mind the vase you talk of, though I have no idea what it looks like, what shape it is, what shade of green. Erik and Karin liked the piece of glass, too, without having the connection to make. What we bought is shaped like a bottle with dimples (I think that is the right word) in the sides as if someone had pressed their thumb into it as it cooled. It is blue. It is not old, the woman who runs the shop told us, and it is chipped on the base and there is a tiny crack on the rim. It is in the shop, she said, because she liked it; the shape, the color, and the substance of it. She used a word in Danish that means solid strength, as a piece of wood might be solid and strong. It is not a word a native speaker might have used in this context, but a good one. She would take no money for the glass, only for the embroidered sampler that Karin bought for the wall of the baby’s room. Worked by a girl called Alice who was twelve years old in 1905.
The shopkeeper did not want the bowl from an animal’s hoof. It was too ugly, she said, and she was right. As we were about to leave, Erik brought out the padlock and offered it to her. If she had a use for it, he said, she was welcome to keep it. She said she had no fear of having things stolen, in Denmark, but there might come a time when she would wish to keep something safe, and she wo
uld be pleased to have the padlock, in case that time came.
When we left the shop we walked down to the lake. The surface was gray and ruffled in the wind, as it often is. Erik knelt down at the water’s edge and Karin handed him the fan. He let it slide into the water, giving it a push to move it away from the shore. For a while it floated, but then the little waves raised by the breeze lapped over the tattered silk and overwhelmed the lacquered spokes, and it danced a little then sank out of sight. Next she passed him the bowl. He floated it across the surface and stood up with a handful of pebbles, ready to sink it if it stayed afloat for too long, but it turned round twice in the water then plunged below the surface, all at once. I hope the hoof has not been treated in some way that will prevent it from decaying, as all animal matter should decay, back into the mud.
Lastly, Erik laid the nest of twigs on the water of the lake and we watched as the waves and the breeze played games with it, tossing it away from us, then toward us, as if inviting us to decide we did not really want to let it go. It looked so slight, as insignificant as any twig or leaf stripped from a tree in a storm. I could not believe I had kept it so carefully, for so long. At last it broke apart and went back to being just scraps—from any bush, it might be, any tree. Returning to the state it would have fallen into years ago if a human hand had not lifted it up from the earth and carried it away. As an archaeologist, it is my job to pick things up from the earth and carry them away. Watching the twigs floating off to become part of all the other plant matter in the lake, I wondered whether it was a worthwhile way to spend a life. At least what you do produces food. How does what I do benefit anyone? I put these thoughts in here as part of the conversation I am having with you. They did not make me sad, standing on the bank with my beautiful, pregnant daughter and my plump and cheerful son. They do not make me sad now, writing them down for you. But I would be interested in what you might have to say on the subject.
Meet Me at the Museum Page 11
