“The next day we came to Bergen. I saw it for the first time in my adult years with Victor Hollins. We climbed Ulriken and walked in the snow. We took a boat out to the skerries. We visited the stavkirke at Fantoft and Victor fell in love with that place. It appealed to his writer’s imagination. He said there was an immense feeling there of good struggling against evil. He said that was what all fiction writing was about—that eternal battle between good and evil. In his books he wanted the good to win. Perhaps that’s why they are considered old-fashioned today.”
I too had felt that warring of good and evil at Fantoft, and I heard Laura in wonder. More than I knew, I was my father’s daughter.
The smoky voice that built pictures in my mind which I didn’t want to see fell silent for a little while. Perhaps she was thinking of yesterday at Fantoft, of meeting me there. Was that why she liked to walk in that place—because she had once gone there happily with my father?
“We took the train over the mountains to Oslo.” She picked up her story. “We looked from the train windows into the deep fjords and over the valleys. We went from spring to winter, up where the streets of tiny skyline towns ran between high walls of packed snow. It was all beautiful because we were together, sharing it. In Oslo we walked among the Vigeland statues and saw all of life depicted in those enormous works. After Oslo we sailed to Stockholm.”
The paperweight lay in her lap and she picked it up, turned it about in her fingers, as if it were a crystal ball in which she saw the past.
“Stockholm was the end of our trip together. The end of our time together. We stayed in one of those grand old nineteenth-century hotels near the place where the waters of Lake Mälaren meet the waters of the Baltic below the bridge. It was late afternoon when we went into Gamla Sta’n, the old town. When it began to rain we didn’t care. We walked those narrow cobblestoned streets arm in arm with the old copper towers above us, and I wanted it to be always like that.
“The clock tower looked down at us, and on every side there were tiny shops with their counters cluttered with antique treasure. I pulled Victor into one of them because I wanted to buy him something that would remind him always of that day. The millefiori paperweight was waiting for me. I asked the girl to wrap it for me, while Victor was in another part of the shop. I carried it in my purse as we went back to the rainy streets.
“We found an unexpectedly elegant little restaurant right off the narrow sidewalk, and when the rain came down too hard we ducked into it. I don’t remember what we ate that evening, but there were candles on the tables, and because it was early there was no one else there. When the waitress had gone away with our order I gave him the paperweight, and we held hands across the table. When we went home, he said, we would be married. It must always be like this for us. I was the only woman he had ever truly loved. He told me that, and because it was Victor I believed him. Of course I knew it couldn’t always be like that, but I smiled at him and said nothing. He told me he could see the candlelight in my eyes.
“It was still drizzling when we walked back to the hotel, but I was very warm and happy inside. We walked across the empty courtyard of the palace, and we crossed the bridge where the black waters were roiling angrily, as if lake and sea could not bear to mingle. When we got back to our high room the evening was gray, but there was a saffron streak in the sky beyond the opera building and a great black storm cloud was cutting into it. The eastern sky was still pale and there was somehow a sense of melancholy, perhaps a too recent memory of winter, even though we’d seen forsythia blooming. I can still remember the sorrowful sound of the gulls. When I hear them in Bergen, I remember. But it was warm in our room. And our love was warm.”
I was crying. I hated her for making me cry. Getting my handkerchief from my purse was awkward, but I had to wipe my tears. I could barely see her face in shadow, but there were no tears in her voice—only that husky quality that carried emotion on its tones.
“We had to leave for home the next day.” She had stopped turning the paperweight about and held it still in her hands. “I waited until we were back in Hollywood before I told him I couldn’t marry him. He was very angry with me, but he knew I meant it. He flew back to New York without even letting me know he was leaving. A month later I suspected that I was going to have a baby. I didn’t tell him. Not then. He might have tried to use that as an excuse to force my hand. Of course I didn’t expect that he would be so angry with me, or that he would marry Ruth as quickly as he did. Months later, I let him know about the child. What could I do with a baby in Hollywood?”
What indeed! I bent my head over the empty pages of the notebook so that she couldn’t see my face and know how torn and shaken I was.
“Victor did the wise thing,” she said. “He wanted his daughter. So I let the baby go. It was the only way.”
The baby, the child, his daughter—these were the words she used. Never “you” in direct reference to me.
“I thought you might like to know about the paperweight,” she said gently.
As though she had given me some priceless gift! It was likely that I had been conceived that night in Stockholm—yet she talked to me about a paperweight.
I flung the word back at her. “Paperweight! What about my father’s love that you threw away? What about me? What about the way I would grow up without a mother?”
She was unruffled, but her role had turned compassionate. “You had a better mother in Ruth than you could ever have had in me. I know that because Victor wrote me about you from time to time—until you were grown up, and then he stopped. He never sent me the pieces you had written, or told me what you were like now. Ruth gave you both the happy, contented lives you deserved, and which I could never have given either of you. Any more than I could give myself a happy, contented life.”
“That’s the way you excuse yourself, forgive yourself!” I flailed out at her. “That’s the way you’ve been able to stay free and irresponsible.”
“You’re crying,” Laura said in wonderment. “But none of this should matter to you now. You are your own person, just as I am my own person. We have agreed that we owe each other nothing—except as writer and actress. So why should you cry for something I don’t cry about?”
“You’re monstrous!” I spat the word at her. “I’m crying because my father died only a little while ago, and you’ve brought it home to me how much you hurt him, and how little you cared.”
I could feel hysteria rising in me. Her very look of slightly amused tolerance destroyed me. I lifted my head and stared at her angrily, no longer ashamed of my tear-stained face.
“Now I can understand something!” I cried. “Now I can understand what drove you to go downstairs to that room last night and destroy the portrait of yourself. If you hadn’t done it, I would like to do it. I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than to feel those scissors in my hand as I slashed that painting across and across.”
Her eyes were enormous and there was a glassy shine to them. Her pallor had a leaden hue.
“What are you talking about?”
“You might as well know!” I flung at her. “You walked in your sleep last night. Miles found you in my room after you’d mutilated the picture, and took you back upstairs. You can go down and see it for yourself.”
She looked quite dreadful and I knew in horror what I had done—how I’d shocked and frightened her. Angry as I was, I hadn’t meant to do anything as dreadful as this. But before I could speak to her, or try to soften my words, she jumped to her feet with the paperweight raised in her hand. With a single wild gesture she flung it straight through the picture window. There was an enormous crash of breaking glass, and then a tinkling as small pieces fell from the jagged opening.
“Get out!” she said to me. “Get out of my sight. I never want to see you again.”
“Of course,” I told her. “I’ll pack my bag and leave at once. There’s nothing more we can say to each other. Not ever.”
I banged the door
behind me with some of the fury she had shown, and pitched myself down the stairs with dangerous speed. Fortunately, there was no one around. In Laura’s room of pictures and costumes, I closed the door behind me and stood trembling in its center. Across the room the scarred portrait hung with its face to the wall as Irene wanted it to hang.
I was too distraught to pack, to do anything sensible. My stomach was churning with emotion. I had to breathe fresh, cold air. In a moment I was through the doors to the garden and had walked around the house to the front.
Near a flower bed where nothing was yet blooming, Donia Jaffe stood with the paperweight in her hands. She was almost as pale as Laura had been. She held the ball of glass flowers toward me in fingers that were shaking.
“She tried to kill me,” she said, and her lively dark eyes sped toward the broken window of the room above. “This paperweight just missed my head.”
I took it from her and examined it closely as if its perfection was the most important thing in the world. Miraculously, it had not even been chipped in its flight through glass, and its fall to soft earth had preserved it. I tried to breathe deeply so my voice wouldn’t shake.
“She didn’t throw it at you,” I said. “She was angry with me and she flung it away in a rage.”
Donia continued to stare at the window. “She’s sick and dangerous. Unbalanced. For twenty years she’s brought my brother nothing but grief and suffering. For her, everything that happened that night in Hollywood is still going on. She has never let any of it go. It will be forever on her conscience. She can only end it if she dies. She should be put somewhere so that she can do no more harm.”
For some unfathomable reason I turned the dregs of my anger upon Donia in defense of Laura. “If you mean that she’s mentally ill—she’s not! And she’s not dangerous. If she was, she’d have thrown that paperweight at me. I goaded her into what she did. She made me angry, and I goaded her. Actors are highly strung people.”
“I knew you’d bring trouble,” Donia said. “My brother was against your coming here. She was quiet and we were having no difficulty with her. And then you came to stir her up.”
“At least she’s alive again,” I said. “In the state you call quiet she was half dead.”
“Which is the only way she can lay the ghosts that haunt her.”
How long we’d have glared at each other, I don’t know, but just then Gunnar Thoresen came around the side of the house toward the front garden.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully. “I heard voices, so I came around.”
I ran toward him and very nearly flung myself upon him. He looked to me like an old and dear friend upon whom I could count for support and comfort. I remembered in time that he was none of these things, and held out my hand lamely.
“I’m glad to see you,” I said, and clung to his hand a moment too long.
“There is something wrong.” It was a statement.
“Just about everything!”
“Then you must tell me what you wish me to do, and we will try to make what is wrong better.” After a brief nod in Donia’s direction, he looked only at me.
Donia sniffed in displeasure and went toward the house. “When my brother comes home, I’ll tell him about this. Don’t think that I’ve been fooled by your excusing Laura. I know what she just tried to do.”
Gunnar looked after her gravely, his brown, slightly wavy hair shining in the sun. “There is trouble. Perhaps you must tell me a little.”
He looked wonderful to me with his strong, narrow face and perceptive eyes. I wanted to throw my arms about him and hug him for all that quiet Norwegian strength. Instead, I showed him the paperweight and gestured toward the broken window above. He glanced up at it with understanding, and smiled slightly.
“I should have warned you that Laura has a great temper. She did not have a proper Norwegian upbringing, I am afraid. We are indulgent and loving toward our children, but we also discipline them. In any case, I had a fear that all might not go smoothly at first, so I came early to see if I could be of use.”
“She told me to get out. So I’d better go now and pack, and you can take me back to the hotel until I’m able to catch a plane for home.”
He shook his head and the twinkle I had seen before was in his eyes. “She will change her mind. You must give her time. She will regret and she will want you here. So it is better if you come with me now, and leave the packing for later.”
I had no wish to go flying home. I simply wanted to stay longer in the company of Gunnar Thoresen. I wanted to tell him everything that had happened since I’d last seen him. Whether I stayed in this house or not, I wanted him to know all that had occurred.
“You have been crying?” he said. “Because she threw the paperweight?”
“No—not because of that. Because of what went before.”
“Then go and wash your face. And put on your lipstick so that you will feel like a woman. Then fetch your coat and we will go. It is better if I do not enter the house during this crisis. I will wait for you in my car.”
I ran to do his bidding. If ever I could fall in love, I thought irrelevantly, it would be with a man like this. And that would not be wise. Not for me.
When my face had been refreshed with cold water and my lipstick brightened, my coat flung about my shoulders, I went into the hall and found Irene Varos standing at the foot of the stairs as though she waited for me.
“She’s been throwing things again?”
“Is it a habit, then?”
“Not so much any more,” Irene said.
“Have you been up to see her?”
“Not yet. It’s better to let her quiet herself first. Then she’s less likely to throw something at me.”
“I told her about the picture,” I said. “I told her that she walked in her sleep last night, and I didn’t tell her gently. Perhaps you’d better know as well that Mrs. Jaffe thinks the paperweight Laura threw was aimed at her. Of course it wasn’t. It wasn’t even aimed at me, though Laura was angry with me. But Mrs. Jaffe is talking about her being sick and dangerous and unbalanced. She said she should be put somewhere so that she couldn’t hurt anyone.”
A look of intense disliking flashed in Irene’s eyes. “Mrs. Jaffe ought to be put somewhere herself! But thank you for telling me. Nothing of the sort will be done while we are here to protect her.”
“Don’t count on any we,” I said, and let myself out the front door.
It was wonderful to leave the house behind me and drive up the mountain in the Mercedes.
Chapter 7
The winding road snaked back and forth along the hillside, with trim, bright houses arranged in mounting levels. After a turn or two I could look down upon the dark blue tiles of Laura Worth’s house. Everywhere the gardens were neat, almost ready to burst into bloom, and often there were plants in the windows. Far below, Bergen reached its peninsula into the waters of the fjord and spread its buildings around on either side. I could see boats at anchor in the larger space of water on the left. On the opposite shore, far to the right, were the wharfs, with steamships alongside, and the peaked roofs of old Bryggen on the street that paralleled Vagen, the inner harbor.
“It’s beautiful—your city,” I said. “Heavenly.”
He nodded, quite complacent. “Yes. It is difficult to understand why anyone would live elsewhere. Though the Oslovian thinks us countrified here in Bergen. Of course he is wrong. We are the gateway to the west. We have nine hundred years behind us, and we are the door that opened to let in the influences of England and the other countries of Europe. How difficult to get over the mountains to Oslo in the old days. Now the trains run through all winter.”
He was talking to amuse me, to cheer me, until I was ready to talk to him. I let him go on. I didn’t want to begin my story while he was driving on a mountain road. Besides, it was pleasant to lean back in the seat and relax, to watch the vast scene grow beneath us as we climbed, and for a little while to think of no
thing.
When the road had wound as high up Flöyen as was possible, Gunnar parked the car near a sign that warned us we could drive no farther. We got out and started up a road that soon began to rise steeply, with the black rock face of the mountain towering high above us. At the very top dark fir trees stood silhouetted against the sky.
We were not alone. The sun had brought people pouring into the open, and a number of them had chosen this holiday to climb the mountain. Children climbed as sturdily as their parents, and we even saw a baby carriage or two being wheeled up the steep road. There was the bright red of sweaters everywhere. Norwegians loved the color red. Yet the little groups did not trouble one another. We traveled in small islands and tended to our own affairs.
When we reached a bench that had been placed at a high lookout point, we climbed up to it and sat where we could see the entire countryside. My eyes followed the road that wound past the neighboring mountain, Ulriken, and ran out toward Fantoft, around little lakes and into the country.
The steady traffic sounds of Bergen were more distant now, but we could hear intermittently what was coming to be familiar—the curious “hee-haw” scream the ambulances made. There was a sound of band music too, from the center of town, for this being a holiday, the marching groups were out, the young people and the parades. From the water far below came the roar of a motorboat, and a plane hummed overhead. Behind us among forest trees birds were singing.
“Last night,” I told him, “I’m sure I heard a bagpipe playing. Is that possible in Bergen?”
He smiled. “It is not likely. Undoubtedly what you heard was one of our Hardanger fiddles. Though the bagpipe is a wind instrument, and the fiddle is string, the sounds are similar. I have such a fiddle myself. One time soon I will play it for you. The music is distinctive—it belongs to Norway.”
“The party seemed to go on very late,” I said idly.
Listen for the Whisperer Page 13
