On the way back home, the real estate agent called. Not a nibble yet. We agreed to drop the price even further. I could hear that she too was heartily sick of the cabin.
* * *
In the midst of all this John’s third birthday loomed. Both Vanja and Heidi had been allowed to have parties with guests from the start, while up to then John had been forced to celebrate with us. He hadn’t known any different when he was one or two, but now that he was three I had been wondering for a while whether to invite some children over from the nursery school, to give him a party, but I came to the conclusion this was far too ambitious. Instead he would celebrate it at school in the usual way, with one of the parents bringing a cake and making a fruit salad, and then at home with cake and presents after the evening meal. Linda wanted to join us at the school, she had asked the doctor, who had said it was fine. I was not convinced it was a good idea. There was a shrill side to her now, which came out in social situations, and I was not keen for Heidi and John to see it.
She rang the doorbell of the apartment at eleven.
She’d had a haircut and dyed her hair black. She wore heavy green eye shadow, a red skirt, purple tights, and high heels. She was smiling, but looked utterly drained.
“What do you think of my Frida Kahlo look?” she said.
“You look good,” I said.
“Shall we go and get some cake? And fruit?” she said.
“Can we have a cup of coffee first?” I said.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
I wondered how to tell her. After seeing her, I knew there was absolutely no question of her organizing the birthday at the school.
“How are you?” I said.
“I’m very well. A bit tired though maybe.”
On one wrist she had an enormous watch.
“You bought yourself a new watch?” I said.
“Yes! I took the biggest they had to remind myself to be punctual. Otherwise I can’t handle it. They get so angry with me then.”
“And the green strap?” I said, nodding toward her wrist.
“That’s to symbolize that I’m totally free. Whenever I look at it I think about it. About being completely free.”
“Very nice,” I said. “Mm, Linda?”
“Yes?”
“It might be best if you don’t go to the school. It’ll be very intense, you know. And what you need is peace and quiet. It’s much better if I go, and then you can come in the afternoon and celebrate at home. What do you think?”
“Yes, it’d be wonderful not to have to go,” she said.
“That’s good to hear,” I said.
“But can I buy him some presents? I can do that, can’t I?”
“Of course. We can do it together.”
“Actually I’ve discussed everything with Jenny.”
“OK.”
* * *
She was back after a couple of hours, several bags in hand.
“There might be too many, but they’re lovely,” she said. “And I’ve bought something for the girls too.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ll put them in the closet. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“No, Jenny’s waiting downstairs. See you this afternoon.”
She came and we decided to skip the meal, John wanted to go straight to the cake. I lit the candles, we sang for him, the girls stood on their chairs, as they did at school. He blew out the candles. We ate cake, they were each given a present, and then John got the rest of his in the living room. Linda came in with a flurry of packets, ribbons, and plastic bags, she sat down with him and helped him to open them. Suddenly, in the middle of unpacking a large present, she got up and went to the balcony.
“Mama!” John cried. “Help me!”
I sat down with him. Luckily he accepted that, and we unpacked the present and opened the box it was in. Linda moved to the bedroom and logged on to Facebook, she was writing when I entered.
“It’s gone very well,” I said.
“I couldn’t stand any more,” she said. “I can only take a little at a time.”
“I know, but that’s enough.”
She didn’t look at me, her fingers clattered across the keyboard.
“I think it’s time to go,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “I just have to finish this.”
Afterwards she stood up and went into the hall.
“It’s John’s birthday,” she said. “It doesn’t feel right that they have to come with me. Couldn’t you just stay here and carry on with the birthday?”
“Do you remember what happened last time?”
“Yes, yes. But I’m not there now. I’ll go straight to the hospital. I promise. I can’t risk not being able to go out.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Absolutely,” she said.
“OK,” I said.
She looked at me.
“It’s always struck me that I was a sailor’s wife. You went to sea and left me on my own. But now it’s the other way around. Now I’m the sailor.”
She laughed.
I laughed too because she was wearing her striped sweater and did a sailor’s salute.
We kissed. She pressed against me, breathed in my ear, I wrestled myself free.
“Not now,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “Now I’m casting my moorings.”
And then she was gone.
A few hours later they called from the hospital and asked if Linda was at home. I apologized, saying it had been impossible to accompany her because of the children, and I had taken a risk.
The following day I asked her what she had done. She said she had just drifted around a little. Been to a few bars, talked to people. One man she had spoken to, my age, visited her just before I arrived later that week. She said they were good friends. I had never seen or heard of him. The same applied to many others, suddenly she had a large circle of acquaintances in Malmö. That evening she was refused permission to go out, so we visited her in the park, where she was composed again, a long way from the impatient, restless teenager she had been the evening before. Ingrid came down from Stockholm; the first thing she did was visit Linda. We talked about it on her return.
“The children come first,” Ingrid said. “They’re the most important. They’re the top priority.”
“I agree,” I said.
“It was like that when her father became ill. The children came first, whatever happened.”
The Saturday before school started I took Vanja with me to IKEA. We bought a bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers. On Sunday we bought a satchel, a pencil case, and new clothes. I assembled all the furniture, apart from the drawers, after they had gone to bed because I got so angry with do-it-yourself kits that I might have taken my annoyance out on the children if they were around.
Early on Monday morning Linda came home to be there on Vanja’s first day of school. I was apprehensive about her appearance, hoping she wouldn’t turn up in green eye shadow and purple tights, but she didn’t, she wore a simple flowery dress and had taken care with her makeup, which, apart from the red lipstick, was neutral.
I took a photo outside the front entrance to the building, exactly as someone, presumably my mother, had done with me, outside our house, on my first day of school.
We took John and Heidi to the nursery and then we walked the last stretch to the school with Vanja. She held Linda’s hand and mine. She was a little afraid, I sensed, but also full of excitement.
The atmosphere in the classroom was as I remembered from all my first days. Half formal, half uncertain. Linda talked to the teacher and other parents. Vanja stood with her best friend and stared at the other children. When the teacher called them and they had to sit on a carpet in the middle of the floor, she was undaunted, she had her friend behind her.
Linda and I sat next to each other looking at Vanja in the middle of this group of children. After half an hour Linda leaned toward me and whispered she had to go. I nodded
. We agreed to meet at the little café by Möllan. Only twenty minutes later it was over as far as the parents were concerned, and I walked to the café, where Linda talked and talked and could finally go wherever her mind led her.
* * *
Toward the end of the week I was due to go to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. After taking the children to the school, I rented a car and drove over the bridge to Denmark. The weather was magnificent. Sun, high blue sky, Indian summer. I sat outside the boathouse by the sea drinking coffee and smoking and chatting to the other authors, among them Tomas Espedal, who had shown such heart and defended me in Bergens Tidende, and Dag Solstad and Tua Forsström, the Finnish poet, who turned out to be a warm, generous person. There was a full house, two hundred people, and when it was over I drove back in the darkness and went to bed in a quiet apartment where everyone was asleep. The next day I did exactly the same. Linda was worried while I was away, even if it was only for the day, at the same time she told everyone I had to go to Denmark to appear at Louisiana.
The doctors suggested electric-shock therapy. They called it by a different name, but that is what it was. They wanted to halt the mania in its tracks. She was given an appointment, but when the time came she didn’t turn up. She was frightened, I understood that, she didn’t want it.
One afternoon she came with me to pick up the children. First Heidi and John, who we took with us to Vanja’s school. Her classmates were in the schoolyard, but Vanja was nowhere to be seen.
“I’ll go behind there and look for her,” I said.
Linda nodded.
In a corner, barely visible, she stood with her friend, clapping their hands against each other’s and singing.
“Come on, Vanja,” I said.
Both of them came and we walked over to the others. Linda was speaking with one of the teachers, with Heidi clinging to her leg.
“Where’s John?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Linda said. “I’m not responsible for them now.”
Again and again I misjudged her.
I looked around. No John. I ran to the back of the school. There, by the playground equipment, he was staring at the bigger children. I lifted him up and took him back with me, and we all walked home together.
* * *
Ingrid returned to Stockholm, and a few days later my mother traveled down. She also visited Linda and was shocked by the place she was in. She said it had been like that in Norway in the sixties. The nurses had white uniforms, she couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw that, Mom said. The rooms were run-down and, to a great extent, institutional. Linda’s enthrallment couldn’t last that much longer, I suspected, because she was becoming more and more tired, and at some point she would collapse with exhaustion and plummet into what she was fleeing.
One morning the real estate agent called, she was angry, I could hear. The key had gone, she hadn’t been able to get in, she had been forced to turn people away and tell them there was no viewing. We had agreed that we’d leave the key in a flowerpot, hadn’t we? I said I didn’t know what had happened, but I would investigate and contact her later.
I called Linda.
“You haven’t been to the cabin, have you?”
“No,” she said. “But I might’ve done something a little stupid.”
“Oh?”
“Well, I told a man here about our place. I told him the cabin was empty and that the key was in a flowerpot beside the front step. He needed somewhere to live, you see. I just wanted to help him.”
“What sort of a man?” I said.
“He’s been here in the ward a few times. He was going to be deported, I think, and needed somewhere to hide.”
“What!” I said.
“He was nice,” she said.
“What sort of a person is he?”
“He’s from Bosnia or Serbia or somewhere like that,” she said. “He was in the war there.”
“You know we’re trying to sell the cabin, don’t you?” I said. “There was a viewing organized and the key had disappeared. Thank God he wasn’t there. But now we need to get hold of the key. You’ll have to go and get it from him.”
“But I can’t do that,” she said. “He might be a bit dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“Take a nurse with you then. Tell them. Take two nurses. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” she said.
Next time I went I talked to the nurse who had read Mein Kampf. He had gone to the cabin together with another nurse and Linda. The man had turned aggressive and refused to hand over the key, he was going to live there, she’d promised him. They managed to wrest the key from him, but his actions were so threatening afterwards that the nurses called for the police. I phoned the real estate agent and tried to explain what had happened. I said there had been a kind of break-in and a man had been living there. The place was probably a mess, but I would go and clean it up, and then we could make a fresh start. The real estate agent accepted that, but not without some skepticism in her voice.
* * *
Then Linda came home.
First she phoned late at night, she was absolutely hysterical, she hadn’t been given any food, she’d smashed a glass in her fury, extra staff had been called, it was humiliating, now she wanted to come home. She had gone there of her own accord, it was her right, and half an hour later she was home. She was perfectly calm, and said it was enough now, she wanted to be at home. I said that was what I wanted as well. We talked for several hours, she was as she had been before, everything was good. The next morning she was on a high and restless again, and walked back to the hospital, but nevertheless something had happened, she was closer to herself, the energy was slowly draining from her, and one evening one of the nurses there, the motherly one, knelt in front of Linda and told her she had to go back to her husband and children, this had gone on for long enough and wasn’t leading anywhere. The intensity of her plea had shocked Linda, shaken her, at the same time she was on her way down, she had begun to talk at a normal speed about normal things, to tell us she longed to be with us, and then one morning she came home with her backpack, and it was over.
It was over.
She embraced her children when they came back from school and said she was staying.
“Can you sleep now?” Vanja said.
“Yes,” she said. “Now I can sleep.”
We stayed up chatting that evening. She was worn out, quiet, but when she looked at me, it was Linda looking at me, no one else.
“I’ve been on a long journey,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Now I’m home,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “But it was no big deal.”
“OK,” she said. “I think I called your editor. Geir Gulliksen. I told him not to put you under any pressure. And to take care of you.”
“That was nicely put,” I said. “Not a problem.”
“And I’ve called Tore. And Yngve. And all my old friends. People I haven’t seen for years. I don’t remember what I said.”
“Not a problem. And now we know where we stand. Perhaps it will happen again. It might. But we know it’s not a problem. You’re just on your travels.”
“Away from my family.”
“No. You haven’t been. It’s been fine. You’re a hero. You coped so well.”
She cried.
I cried.
It was over.
* * *
But the cabin was a problem. I had to go and deal with it. Linda didn’t want me to go, the guy was dangerous, the police had said we shouldn’t confront him under any circumstances if we met him. I e-mailed Aage, one of the few friends I had in Malmö, explained the situation, and asked if he would be willing to accompany me with a baseball bat or something. He called me minutes later. He was in London. He said he could go with me when he was back and I shouldn’t go on my own. I said I wouldn’t. But a crazed ex-Yugoslav seemed like a minor problem after the summer I’
d had, so I went to Åhléns and bought some new rugs, curtains, tablecloths and cushion covers, and some flowers from a florist, detergents and cloths from Hemköp, took the bus to the cabins, which were deserted in the rain, the season was already long over. My heart was thudding in my chest as I approached our cabin. I carefully opened the wicket gate, stopped, listened. Nothing. I walked around the back. Nothing. And the door was in one piece. He wasn’t here. I unlocked the door and entered. It was a mess. It stank of smoke, and there were cigarette butts everywhere. The floor was filthy. There were bottles all over the place. But nothing was broken. I threw out all the rugs, curtains, tablecloths and cushion covers, all the bottles and cigarette butts and detritus. I was on my guard the whole time, expecting the door to be kicked in at any moment and the crazed guy to come in and gun me down. It didn’t happen. I washed every single centimeter, from the ceiling over the cramped mezzanine to the floor. In several places there were fairly large piles of fine sawdust. I sighed. That had to be woodworm, the whole damned house must have been rotten to the core. I decided not to say a word. I laid the new rugs on the floor, hung the new curtains over the windows, put a cloth on the table and arranged the flowerpots. The cabin looked flawless. With a garbage bag in each hand I left, the rain was pouring down and dusk had started to fall. Not a soul in sight anywhere. I threw the bags into a trash container and caught the bus home. I had a hot bath and then watched a film with everyone – Dumbo, the elephant with the big ears. Linda was tired but collected and present.
The viewing was held: no offers. At the next viewing someone saw the triangular piles of fine sawdust, so new ones had appeared and people had shaken their heads, I assumed. We got Anticimex in, a pest-control company, it wasn’t woodworm but some relatively harmless insect, they said, which they now had under control.
My Struggle, Book 6 Page 131
