Across the China Sea

by Gaute Heivoll

  They still lived together, with private rooms, it’s true, but under the same roof, just as they had for most of their lives. The brothers no longer lived in a building for asocial, mentally disabled men. Ingrid no longer had a room with a splendid view of the sea. Lilly had not been transferred to Bakkebø, but she was still afraid of water. At first they were separated, but later were reunited in a building that resembled an ordinary house. There were five such houses in a row, essentially the same, except for different flower boxes on the terraces, different curtains in the windows, and different cars parked outside. The flower boxes, incidentally, were empty.

  I knew which house was theirs; their names were on the mailbox outside, and I saw them through the large windows as I approached.

  Lilly was now sixty-eight years old, Nils sixty-six, Sverre was fifty-five, and Ingrid was the same age as me.

  One person was missing, however.

  Erling had become increasingly sensitive during the past few years. His migraines had gotten worse, he couldn’t stand to be with the other four. It was as if the sight of them made him more and more despondent. As if they constantly reminded him of himself. And that upset him. Finally, all he could tolerate was his own company. In the end, not even that. At the very end he just sat on a chair turned toward the wall, his head wobbling as if from a foolish, hopeless thought that haunted him constantly. Now Erling was at rest by the old Naerbø church. He lived to be sixty-one years old. He had not had a medal for courage nor a wandering cup in which to see himself.

  Through the windows the four looked like any gathering of elderly or middle-aged people. They had already seen me. They waved through the windows as I walked up the driveway. I rang the bell, and Ingrid opened the door. She hugged me and held me tight, laughing loudly into my shoulder.

  “It’s wonderful to see you, Ingrid!” I said.

  I took off my dripping jacket and wet shoes and went in to see the others. My socks left shiny footprints on the floor. Nils and Sverre came over and shook hands with me, one after the other. Lilly shook my hand too, and held it tight.

  “Did you come in your car?” she asked.

  “Not this time,” I said. “This time I took the train.”

  “Was it nice?” she asked, without letting go of my hand.

  I nodded.

  “Were there lots of people?”

  “No,” I replied. “I was about the only one.”

  “The only one?”

  “The only one,” I said.

  Then she let go of my hand.

  The table was already set with glasses and small plates. I took the sweet buns out of the bag, lay one on each plate, and put a bottle of Solo soda next to it; after that we sat down at the table, all five of us. A few seconds of uncertainty followed; Sverre looked at Nils, Nils grinned and looked at Ingrid, Ingrid looked at Lilly, and Lilly looked at me.

  “Perhaps we should sing the table grace?” I suggested.

  So we sang, as we had so many times before, and Nils and Sverre sang with clear, childlike voices that seemed almost unchanged. It was as if time had stood still. I heard my own childish voice singing. I saw the old room upstairs: the five beds, the tin plates in front of us, the picture of Jesus holding a lamb. It was as if Mama had not yet come home from Oslo, Matiassen sat under the ash tree in the garden, and Josef lay on his back reading in his room next to us. We sang. Chills went down my spine. Afterward everyone was quiet.

  “Please eat,” said Lilly.

  We sat for a long time eating in silence. I drank a soda and looked out the window. I asked them about little things, questions that could mostly be answered with yes or no. Now and then, thank you.

  “I didn’t find Asina in the store,” I said. “But Solo is almost the same.”

  “Yes, Solo is almost the same,” said Nils.

  “I didn’t find Gjende shortbread either,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” said Sverre.

  “You like these cookies too?” I asked.

  “We like everything!” said Nils.

  Suddenly Lilly said:

  “Ingrid can talk.”

  I looked up in surprise.

  “Is that true?”

  Ingrid looked at me with a shy smile.

  “Is that true, Ingrid?” I repeated.

  Once we had taken off our clothes in front of each other with no bashfulness or shame, we had waded out into the icy water, and she had made me feel completely free.

  “Will you let me hear?” I said.

  Ingrid opened her mouth, I saw her glistening tongue and how her lips and tongue formed a word. She repeated it many times, like a plea that came from a place deep within her. I just sat there watching her. She did her utmost.

  “Asina,” she said. “Asina. Asina. Asina.”

  I didn’t know what more to say; I’d run out of questions, and the four of them didn’t have anything more they wanted to know from me. I sat for quite a while thinking I should tell them that Mama was gone, and that the house at home no longer existed.

  “It’s a long time since all of you were home on vacation,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Nils. “It’s a long time.”

  “But you have a good life here too.”

  “We have a good life here too,” said Sverre.

  Another silence. It was as if they were waiting for me to come to the point. I opened the package of cookies and sent it around.

  “Do you remember Tone?” I asked.

  Nobody replied. Nils grinned as before. Ingrid licked around her mouth. Sverre looked at Lilly. Lilly looked at me.

  “I had a sister named Tone,” I went on. “She died the first summer after you came to us. But then I got a new sister, and she’s named Astrid.”

  “She’s not dead,” said Lilly.

  “No, she lives in Oslo,” I said.

  I felt I wanted to talk more about Tone, but didn’t know what to say.

  “Surely you remember Tone,” I said to Lilly. “She was so fond of you.”

  Our eyes met. Once she had stood in the semidarkness and gazed lovingly at me, once she had sat on the edge of the bed and stroked my hair. Once I had almost been her child. Now she had grown old. Her hair was gray, but her eyes were clear.

  “Of me?” she said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Do you remember?”

  And maybe it was a look on my face, in my eyes, something that made her see how deeply I wanted her to give a certain answer. The silence was unbearable for a moment. Then she said:

  “Yes. I do. I remember now.”

  We sat together for another quarter of an hour. Another fierce rainstorm came in from the sea and beat against the tall windows; the wind howled in the kitchen exhaust fan. We drank our sodas, finished eating. Ingrid swept bits of coconut from the table into her hand and licked remnants of custard filling from inside the paper bag. Then Lilly got up from her chair. She cleared away the five plates and set them on the kitchen counter; next she picked up the bottles, even though everyone hadn’t finished drinking, and put them in the sink. She found a dishcloth and wiped off the table while the rest of us sat watching her. No one protested. When she had finished, she turned to me.

  “You need to leave, because we usually take a nap now.”

  I nodded.

  “Of course.”

  I stood up slowly as everyone’s eyes turned toward me; bits of coconut sprinkled from my lap, my trousers were not yet dry.

  “It was nice to see all of you,” I said.

  Ingrid gazed at me attentively. Her eyes were so gentle. I wanted to hug her, but didn’t.

  “Well, I’ll go now,” I said.

  I tied my shoes in the entry, zipped my jacket up to my chin, and called to them one last time before I left. Then I called to Ingrid.

  “Ingrid,” I called softly. Like a question.

  It was the first time I’d called to her since that summer almost fifty years ago. I heard my childish voice shouting somewhere in the woods. I stood i
n the entry and waited, I looked toward the doorway with my heart pounding, but she didn’t come.

  Afterward I stood in the parking lot in front of the Stone House. The taxi wasn’t due to pick me up for a while yet. Perhaps I should have told them that Mama had died, perhaps I should have told them that the house—their childhood home in a way—had burned to the ground. That everything was gone except the ash tree, that a gash had opened in its trunk and no one knew yet whether it would survive.

  Perhaps I should have told them.

  It was cold, the wind blew from the ocean, and it was still raining a little, but not so much that I got wetter than I already was. I put my hands in my pockets and started to walk along the road toward the sea. The ground was muddy, dirty brown water had collected in old tire tracks; the water shivered and shook in the wind.

  It was perhaps two hundred meters to the ocean.

  Near the end of the road I came to windblown sandbanks and brown tussocks with salt-scorched marram grass trembling in the breeze. To my right, the long, flat stretches of shoreline continued along the coast as far as I could see; to my left, I glimpsed the old Hå rectory and the red light at Obrestad lighthouse. I climbed down a sandbank until I stood on the beach itself. A belt of crackling seaweed lay several meters from the water’s edge. I walked out to where the sand was wet and compact and the waves sent avalanches of frothy foam almost to my shoes. For a long time I stood there, taking deep, calm breaths. The iron-blue North Sea curved along the horizon and continued endlessly. It was overwhelming. The rain stopped, my hair was wet, the wind tasted salty. Nothing held me back. Then the tears began to fall.

  PART SIX

  One afternoon before Christmas, Ingrid and I were in Josef’s room watching him polish the medal for courage. He had borrowed silver polish and a chamois, and the medal got so shiny you could see yourself in it.

  “Look,” said Josef, showing us. “When it’s like a mirror, it’s exactly the way it should be.”

  He held the medal in front of me. It turned slowly, and I actually saw myself, my own face, slightly distorted in the silver.

  “And now you,” he said to Ingrid.

  He held the medal in front of her so she could see herself, but Ingrid refused. She turned away, looked at me, and waited to see what I would say. But I didn’t say anything. I went over to the window, and then I caught sight of some people walking up the road. It was as though the early darkness had gathered all its strength in order to conjure up two gray figures out of all the snowy whiteness. When they got closer I saw it was Mama and Anna. They had shawls over their heads and walked arm in arm, their shoulders were covered with snow, and I knew they had been to the church to practice for the concert. Their wavering tracks stretched behind them, and then disappeared in the twilight. I heard them stamp their feet on the front steps, Anna brushed the snow off her shoes with a broom, and when they finally closed the outer door Josef, Ingrid, and I already stood in the front hall.

  “I thought two angels had arrived,” said Josef.

  “Oh, just wait till we’ve shaken off the feathers,” said Mama.

  Josef’s eyes grew wide, and Mama laughed as melting snow dripped from her shawl.

  The last day before Christmas break I sat at my desk in the Hønemyr schoolhouse. I heard the sound of pen nibs scratching on paper, and at one point I raised my eyes and looked out the window. It had started to snow again. Large, wet flakes drifted down slowly from the unchanging sky. The snowfall steadily increased, the forest shimmered through the snowflakes, and I put down my pen and just watched.

  Suddenly, Nils Apesland stood by my desk.

  “Say hello to Ingrid, and wish her Merry Christmas,” he said.

  I looked at him and nodded.

  “I’ll do that.”

  It was still snowing when I went to bed that evening. The night-light glowed on my bedside table and I didn’t want to turn it off. I lay staring at it until my eyes hurt, and fell asleep with it still on. In the middle of the night the light awakened me. I heard footsteps outside my door, the handle went down, and Mama entered.

  “Are you asleep?” she whispered.

  “No,” I replied.

  She walked quietly across the room to the window and opened the curtains.

  “Is it still snowing?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Harder than ever.”

  She stood at the foot of my bed looking at me. She seemed large and heavy, her shadow went far up the wall.

  “Am I going to get a sister?” I asked.

  I didn’t dare to look at her.

  “Yes,” she said. “Or a brother.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Are you going to sing in church?”

  She nodded. I said no more, and she just stood there.

  “Should I turn out the light?” she said finally.

  I nodded. She came over, switched off the lamp, and the room became almost completely dark.

  “Go to sleep now,” she said.

  I closed my eyes. She sat down on the edge of the bed. I sensed her smell. I sensed her heaviness.

  “I will,” I said.

  She kept sitting there. She touched my arm. Finally I opened my eyes, but at that moment she rose and walked toward the half-open door. I heard her footsteps in the hall. In my mind I saw the snow falling outside the window, I saw it falling through the roof upstairs, through the floor in Jensen and Matiassen’s room, and down into my dreams.

  “I’ll go to sleep now,” I said.

  The next morning the pine trees bowed under heavy snow, they leaned toward each other as if talking of bygone days; our horse plodded down the road while Papa walked beside the sleigh in waist-deep snow.

  In the evening the stars came out. Josef stood by the window peering at the ash tree, at the black branches that were so thin the snow hadn’t stuck to them. He saw the moon, Venus, and maybe Orion above the bowing pine trees in the south.

  “Look,” he said. “The pine trees are saying their evening prayers.”

  Early on the afternoon of December 23, Mama left home before the rest of us. Joseph watched her as she stood tying her shawl by the mirror in the front hall.

  “Do I look respectable, Josef?” she asked.

  Josef thought for a moment.

  “The missus is extremely respectable,” he said. “Extremely respectable.”

  Papa hitched up the horse. He stamped the snow off his feet on the front steps, stuck his head in the door and shouted that the sleigh was ready, and they drove off to the church while it was still light.

  Papa returned before dusk and went upstairs to take care of Jensen and Matiassen; I heard their voices through the floor. Afterward I went to the siblings’ room with him. Before she left, Mama had helped Lilly clean the room; there were new curtains in the windows, a Christmas cloth with embroidered sleigh bells on the table, and Papa had chopped down a pine tree that they had decorated. The five of them sat around the table, but they had finished eating. The plates had been carried down to the kitchen. The table wiped off. Everyone looked up. Erling burped.

  “We’re leaving now,” said Papa.

  “Going where?” Lilly asked.

  “We’ll be back before bedtime,” Papa said briefly. He closed the door, turned to me, and was about to go downstairs.

  “No,” I said.

  Papa looked at me in surprise.

  “Why can’t they come along?” I said.

  Papa just looked at me.

  “I want them to come along.”

  Standing outside the siblings’ room, we heard them singing the table grace, even though they had just eaten. They sang on the other side of the door, and there must have been a look on my face that made Papa hesitate.

  “The horse can’t pull so many in the sleigh,” he said.

  “We can take two trips.”

  “There’s not enough time.”

  “Yes, there is,” I said. “If we hurry.”

  Josef and I stood
on the front steps waiting while Papa led the horse across the yard. We saw light in the two low windows of the cattle barn, and just beneath them, the glow of two other windows floating in the snow. It was so dark I could only sense the horse as a large, living shadow that glided toward us next to Papa. Josef held Matiassen’s lantern at shoulder height while Papa hitched up the sleigh. As we left I saw light in Jensen and Matiassen’s window; in the window facing south I saw Lilly, Ingrid, and Nils; Erling and Sverre were in the window facing west.

  Lilly had been told to get everyone ready.

  I huddled close to Josef while Papa sat on empty sacks in front of us with the reins gathered in his hand and the flaps on his fur cap firmly down over his ears. The night smelled of horse and coldness, the harness creaked, the sleigh runners whizzed beneath us. We passed Sløgedal’s house, which was completely dark; at the river Papa turned the horse west, and we glided across the open countryside toward Breivoll. Continuing north, we soon saw lights from other sleighs behind us. When we arrived at the church, Papa turned the horse around and went back to pick up the siblings. The vestibule door was open, creating a yellow strip of light on the snow-covered churchyard. Josef and I followed the narrow path that had been shoveled from the churchyard entrance to the steps of the church; there we stopped and waited. Everything was white and still. No gravestones were visible. I noticed Josef looking at me. Even in the dark I knew where her grave was.

  Josef and I stood on the steps as people came up the path and disappeared into the church.

  “Welcome, welcome,” Josef said to people as they arrived. “You know me, don’t you? Former tenor in the Hope Chorus. Glad to see you. Glad to see you.”

  After a while we got cold standing there, after a while no one else came up the path; finally, only Papa and the siblings were missing.