The Blue Room (Coming of Age Series)

by Hanne Ørstavik

  MEIKE ZIERVOGEL

  PEIRENE PRESS

  Everyone who has read Fifty Shades of Grey should read this book. Why? The Blue Room holds up a mirror to a part of the female psyche that yearns for submission. The story shows how erotic fantasies are formed by the relationship with our parents. It then delves further to analyse the struggle of women to separate from their mothers – a struggle that is rarely addressed in either literature or society.

  Contents

  Title Page

  The Blue Room

  Also from Peirene Press

  About the Author and Translator

  Copyright

  I cannot get out. Something must have happened to the lock. I’ll have to wait until Mum comes home from work to help me. Everything was totally normal when I went to bed last night. It was late and I dropped straight off to sleep. This morning I was woken up by the sound of the front door. I looked at the clock. It was quarter past six. I assumed Mum had got up early and had just gone to fetch the paper, but then I heard nothing more.

  I’m standing by the window, looking up at the sky. It’s so quiet here in my room, it feels padded, like a cocoon. My armpits are damp; occasionally a drop of moisture trickles down. My hands are cold and dry. The sky is clear, but it’s windy, and now a dark cloud is approaching. A moment ago a plane came into view, like a tiny dart, its exhaust as straight as an arrow. I stood here and watched it disappear.

  I lay in for a while, smiling to myself under the warmth of the duvet. But I knew I wouldn’t go back to sleep. I was too excited. I was looking forward to my coffee and to all that was going to happen. I climbed down from my loft bed and went over to the door. But it was shut. It took some time before I realized I wouldn’t get it open. I pulled at the handle, as hard as I could without it coming off, since it’s old and broken. And then it struck me: I was never going to get out on my own, someone was going to have to help me. I started shouting. I banged on the wall of the lounge, where Mum sleeps, and then on the kitchen wall. We share the third wall with the next-door apartment. I’ve no idea who lives there. The wall is thick and I’ve never heard a sound from behind it. I didn’t try that one. The fourth has a window in it, but I’m naked. I’d put the clothes I wore yesterday into the washing machine in the bathroom and my wardrobe is out in the hall. I wrapped a sheet round me, but then I stopped myself: it seems daft to go screaming from the fourth floor into a backyard in Frogner. I’ve sent up a prayer that everything will be all right. I’ve decided to leave it to God, to put my fate in his hands. White empty spaces interrupt my thoughts when I try to think logically and then I can’t remember what I was thinking. I must try to breathe from my stomach, try to relax and not tense my muscles. I suddenly remember some exercises from an evening class in bioenergetic training. Only postgraduate students were supposed to attend the class really, but I managed to sneak in. I take my duvet, spread it on the floor and lie on my back. Just imagine if I hadn’t studied psychology and didn’t have an insight into extreme reactions. I try to push the air up and down in my stomach. I close my eyes so I don’t have to see my body. The trick is to relax so much that the small of your back touches the floor, but I find that very difficult. I’m useless at concentrating on physical things. My brain finds it dull and then my thoughts start wandering. It’s nearly eight o’clock now. I see Ivar standing next to the open window of his apartment, smoking a cigarette in the fresh morning air. He’s wearing his red and black Icelandic sweater, the one that’s frayed at the wrists. I think about his hands, his mouth round his cigarette, his lips. And then he smiles, a calm, warm, happy smile that touches my whole being. He’ll be leaving soon. He’ll walk down the stairs and out through the gates, turn right into the street. It will be fine, I think to myself, I will get out of here in time. And yet, it’s as if I already know it’s over. I must let it go, let go of the hope and the dreams, let them float away like twigs in a stream. Rucksack, guitar case, his feet as he steps onto the Airport Express. He was supposed to turn as he got onto the train, and I was supposed to be standing there, on the platform, carrying my case, out of breath and happy. I was supposed to arrive just in time. I still can. If only I get out now. Then I’ll run with my bag down to the station. And there I’ll be. He’ll look at me with that same expression in his eyes as he had on that first day: Hi there! At the back entrance of the Social Sciences block, where the bikes are kept. I remember how he startled me, how I stopped in my tracks. He was just the new boy working in the canteen back then. He looked at me, and it felt as though he’d poked me in the stomach with a sharp stick. He was wearing faded jeans and a short white jacket; he held his left arm tightly across his chest and tucked under his right armpit as he smoked, one knee bent, a foot wedged up against the red-brick wall. His voice was deeper than I’d expected. Not that I’d ever thought about his voice before. Or had I? I’d seen him behind the counter, but he was rarely serving at the tills; he did other things – buttered baguettes, chopped tomatoes – standing in the background. It all seems so long ago now. Come with me, he said, and you can borrow a towel. He dropped his cigarette butt into the red bucket, exhaled from the corner of his mouth and held the door open for me. He smiled again and walked towards the canteen, leaving me standing in the entrance hall next to the information desk. I watched him disappear through the swing doors where they take the dirty dishes on trolleys. My glasses were covered with rain. I took them off, thinking I should find some tissue to dry them with. My clothes were drenched. I was sweating, and my skirt was dripping and clinging to my legs. Everything had gone wrong. I’d had to stay at home and study because Mum couldn’t get the time off work, so I had to be there to let the plumber in. And then he’d turned up late so I lost a lot of time. I’d cycled here as fast as I could, but when I finally arrived and wanted to lock up my bike, I realized I’d lost the chain. I knew I’d put it under the clip – I always keep it clamped on the rear rack, I do it automatically. It must have fallen off. There had been a light drizzle as I set off from home; by the time I arrived it was pelting down. In just three minutes the lecture would start. I couldn’t leave my bike without locking it: I couldn’t afford to lose it, and I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the lecture if I was worrying about my bike being stolen. Everything was going wrong. But I had to cycle back and look. As I pedalled down Blindernveien and past Marienlyst School I started to cry. The lock was lying next to the Portakabins outside the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation building, a blue-plastic-covered chain. I got off and picked it up, hung it over the handlebar, turned and pushed my bike all the way back – uphill – crying the whole way. I had to lock it in a different place from usual. As I stood there in the entrance hall, I was still crying – or the tears were flowing at least. It must be physiological, I thought, as if I had a plastic bag in my chest filled with water. But my face was so wet with rain, I don’t think he noticed the tears. I felt a stabbing pain in my left eyebrow. I was going to be late for my lecture. At the same time, I wanted to follow the canteen man, to be wherever he was. Yes, that was what I wanted. That was the truth. Already then. I walked towards the glass partition that marks the start of the canteen. Perhaps I should go and look for him, tell him I had to go. Or perhaps he’d forgotten me, since it was taking so long. Then again, he might be standing in there laughing at me. He reappeared through the swing doors and walked calmly towards me, holding a clean white kitchen towel, neatly folded, in his outstretched hand. Here, he said. I smiled and thanked him, and he asked if I wanted a coffee. I ought to go to my lecture. There’d still be quarter of an hour left. I glanced at my watch. Yes, at least that. I looked at him. My whole forehead was throbbing. Come back with the tow
el later then. Yes, I said, thanks. He smiled, broadly, as though amused by something. He seemed almost too happy, I wasn’t sure I could quite trust his smile. I went down the wide spiral staircase to the toilets, taking three steps at a time. Luckily nobody was there. I stood in front of the big mirror and had to smile. I could see why he’d laughed. My red hair was sticking out in a clump on either side of my face, my gold hairclip had slipped at an angle, making my hair bulge on top, and my mascara had left dark tracks under my eyes. I wiped my face with the towel energetically, blew my nose, dried my eyes – I had finally stopped crying – polished my glasses, ran back up the stairs and hurried to Auditorium 7. I opened the door carefully, sat at the very back and took a notepad out of my bag. The top corners were damp. I looked down on the lecturer. He seemed so small, whizzing about, drawing jagged lines on the board next to the overhead projector. There was something aggressive about him: no doubt he was irritated by people coming in late, causing a disturbance – he was in the middle of explaining cognitive dissonance and attribution theory.

  I stayed in the auditorium during the break to copy my neighbour’s notes. Kind of her to let me; more than 500 of us will compete for thirty-seven places, so she didn’t have to, but she offered. You can see the competitiveness among some of the boys. The resolute gaze, the arm covering their notes. As I wrote, it all started to make sense, travelling through my hand and into my body, and the calm concentration, the logical lines, put me in a state of suspension. And yet that face. Taking form and then evaporating. Taking form and disappearing. Like a pulse – the canteen man, his smile, his eyes – an image lodged in my bloodstream so that each time it pumped past my eyes, it became visible again. I smiled. Stop it, Johanne. I shook my head to make it go away. I’d moved down to the third row, where I usually sit, in front of the lecturer. I couldn’t stop smiling. It was almost a need. Although I’m not sure I knew where this smile was coming from yet. After the break the auditorium began to fill up again, footsteps and voices in the air like dust settling all around. Resuming its place, like sunshine and warmth after a storm. The lecture could begin once more, like a symphony. I must have felt finely tuned, infinitely joyous and light. I remember humming a song in my head: Every day thy riches grow, For Jesus Christ has made it so, Though doubt and sin thy life may fill, A place in heaven awaits thee still.

  I get up and go back to the window, the sheet covering me. The sky is so light and open. My exercises haven’t had the least effect. I don’t understand people who swear by body therapies, who seem happy to stretch and pummel and rub, believing these activities offer a path to inner understanding. Ultimately it is through thought that we discriminate or make decisions. The physical may act as a signpost, but the mind does the work and passes judgement. I run my fingers along the window ledge; the paintwork is flaking. I’ve told Mum that we ought to keep it in good repair, scrape and paint it, but nothing has happened so far. There are bubbles, tiny blisters, here and there. How do we recognize when something starts? I think of the beginnings of various things in my life: my studies, my desire to be a psychologist, this thing with Ivar, my connection with God. Only in retrospect does a starting point become clear, something I can pin down to a particular book read at a certain moment, the light on those trees on that day, glimpsing a brown dog at a particular spot, the sound of the church bells ringing. But the fact is, there are no true beginnings, everything connects. And this continual interconnectedness constitutes original sin. But what do we do with the guilt? Being ignorant of the moment things begin, we can repeatedly deny guilt, pointing ever further back to a previous event as the starting point – it wasn’t me. I prefer to think the opposite. To think of myself as guilty of everything, thus giving me a responsibility and a duty to change. Everything should be as new. The train is about to leave. I’ll never make it. Ivar is sitting by the window now, looking out, going through the old town, up over Groruddalen, past the Salvation Army by Alna Bridge, gazing out over the dark stream before Bryn, the workmen’s barracks, the industrial park, the motorways, the Cooperative Dairy, people waiting on station platforms going to town. Gestalt psychology began in 1913 with intermittent flashes of light seen through the window of a train by a young Jewish woman in Germany. She noticed that if these repeated bursts of light came at short enough intervals, her eye was unable to distinguish them and she perceived them as one unbroken streak. A single streak of light. She got out at the first station, her mind in turmoil, knowing that she was badly needed in Vienna, where she’d been heading, to look after a recently widowed aunt who could barely walk due to the pain of a pelvic prolapse. Where does pain go? Has anyone researched pain? Might it be a form of energy? Can it be recycled? Can we reuse it? I remember scribbling these thoughts in the margin. I looked up, turned in my chair; my skirt was still pretty damp, but my hair was almost dry. I looked at all the students sitting around me reading. I remember being filled with a sense of love for them. I had so much to give. I was pleased with my thoughts about pain. I wanted some canteen coffee, imagined a white paper cup filled with dark-brown, steaming liquid. I wanted to go down to the canteen and buy one. But I had to be firm with myself. Remember the money, Johanne, I said, it’s a waste when you’ve got a full Thermos, and think of the time too. Focus, Johanne. Concentrate. Anyway, the young woman got off the train and vanished. She found a room near a university where she and three other young Jewish women – all of whom eventually went to America – developed a theory about the isomorphic functioning of the brain. The human brain recognizes identical patterns. And when the senses only pick up fragments, our brain fills in the gaps to achieve wholeness and harmony. Thus flashes of light become a streak when viewed at certain intervals, just as we tend to see a whole circle when presented with a ring with a break in it. There is, in fact, only an arc, but the brain says ‘circle’. Whenever I see a white jacket my brain says ‘canteen man’. I got up after all. I took a ten-kroner piece from my pencil case, picked up the wet towel from the floor, walked out of the reading room and went down the stairs to the canteen. I felt light, weightless, as though my body didn’t exist.

  The noise in the canteen was like a fog, a cacophony that closed in around me like a membrane, soft and fine. I was here for a purpose, of course, I had to return the towel. I walked up to the counter, but couldn’t see him anywhere. I considered going to the swing doors by the dirty dishes and peeping in. A tall trolley was pushed aside and I caught sight of him, chopping at a bench, his back turned to me, hand on knife, neck bent, a thigh, everything utterly silent, in slow motion, like a movie. Somebody shouted at him. He turned and looked along the line of people at the counter, as though registering the queue, its length, then his gaze returned, flitting a little before it finally fixed on me. We looked at each other. He put down his knife and walked towards me. He said something to a girl arranging cheese rolls on a tray; she was pretty, yet he looked only at me, nodded towards the swing doors, smiling all the while. You are here in my belly, I thought, living inside me already, or perhaps that’s a recent idea, but I felt it even then, I had to scold my legs to make them move. Walk, I said. My body felt so hot, I think I was filled with laughter.

  We must forgive seven times seventy times, and he who looks back will be turned into a pillar of salt. I lie on the bed, my loft bed, staring out of the window. It is so light. Is it always so bright in here at this time? I can’t remember being in bed so late in the morning before. But the apartment is quite high and there is almost nothing but sky outside. Mum called it the Tower when we first moved here. Like on a castle. Poor Mum, she deserves some peace, and to relax. I close my eyes. There’s an Asian girl chained to the bed. Twelve years old. It is an iron bed with rails and there are bars at the window. A fat sweaty man comes once an hour. He takes off his shorts and shirt, and she has to do whatever he wants. Perhaps he orders her to suck him. The little-girl-mouth stretches tightly around his big cock. I see her little hole in front of me. She is thin, her skin smooth and golden. He w
ants her to sit on him. She does what he says, doesn’t talk, doesn’t smile. Just does. Does and does. And then comes the sperm. Then maybe he cries. It takes only fifteen minutes, or seven, or three. He straddles the basin and washes himself with water from a jug, then dresses and leaves, and she has a chain around her ankle. It’s attached to the bed and she can go only as far as the window. She looks out. Down into the street, where she sees the man walking along, talking to another girl who works there. A grey sun in a white sky. Or maybe she lies on the bed trying not to hear the sounds from the other rooms. Perhaps she wonders what she’ll get for dinner today. I try to imagine what it’s like to be there. I think how awful it must be not to know who’s coming. Whether he’ll be cruel or kind. I think about what the bad ones might do, beat her perhaps, or stick bottles up her arse. I clamber down from my bed. My back feels better, soft and supple. Perhaps nothing’s actually happened. It’s only quarter past nine. I’ll take a quick shower and call a cab. Perhaps the door was just jammed, a bit of bad luck. Imagine if this whole thing is in my head and I’ve simply not managed to open the door until now.

  I go down on my knees and peer through the keyhole. I can see a section of the kitchen: the cooker and the fridge, a corner of the table, and Mum’s chair. I picture her as she sat there, rigid, as though somebody had poured aspic over her, sticky layers of gelatine. She put her hands together to sing grace. I joined in. She sang loudly, out of tune, she seemed oblivious to it. We smiled at each other and began to eat. I felt like Ivar was there, standing beside the table all through the meal, watching me. I told Mum about the plumber, about my bicycle lock and the rain, that a boy who worked in the canteen had lent me a towel, and that he was called Ivar. A thoughtful gesture, don’t you think? I looked over at her. She appeared to be engrossed in her food. He was so kind, I said. I tried to speak in my normal voice. Ivar. Just talking about him made me smile. I didn’t want Mum to notice. We were having pie, my favourite. I’d cooked it because I felt happy, as though I had something to celebrate. What is he studying? asked Mum. Her expression was serious, brow furrowed, voice sharp. I’m not sure, I said, whether he’s studying anything, we hardly talked, I just took the towel back to him, and then someone dropped a tray of lasagne and he had to go in and help. Mum looked out of the window, head turned, gazing up at the sky. We could do with some sunshine, Johanne, an Indian summer, that’s what we need, don’t you think? I couldn’t tell her the rest, the details. Or that we had in fact talked a bit. Every detail of what he’d said echoed in my head: his name, the way he’d said it, his country dialect, soft and unassuming, a voice that seemed to open up onto wide horizons. When I’d suggested he must find it frustrating to work shut up in a kitchen, he’d said he conjured up images of the Hardanger Plateau, and he walked miles every day, he said, but pretended he had heather underfoot, and it was good training for the hunt. I’d nodded in agreement, but when he smiled at me, I realized he’d been joking. He lived near Gamle Aker. He could see the church from his window. Surely a sign, I thought. I didn’t tell him that I was a Christian. I was frightened he wouldn’t like it. Forgive me, Father, for my frailty. Mum said she had a visitor coming. She looked out of the window as she talked. I felt I’d betrayed her by not sharing my thoughts. I should tell her, keep her informed. My left eyebrow twitched, I had to rub it with my finger. Mum turned towards me; she looked sad. I wanted to comfort her. She probably knew I was keeping something from her. I wanted to make her happy. I’m going to Friday Mass, I said, I’ll have to go soon. Johanne, she said, inclining her head, have you done something to your hair? No, I said, touching it; from the way she was talking it sounded as if it had caught fire. You’ve sort of lost your curls, said Mum. No, I said, it’s my hairclip pinning them back. I’m so awfully tired, said Mum, turning to the window again. She had finished her pie, but there was a lot of salad on her plate still. You should eat your greens, Mum, I said. You’re so strict, she said, taking her packet of cigarettes out. I leant my chair back to shut the door to my room and stop the smoke going in. She lit up and we stared out of the window onto the backyard. From my chair I can see the big birch tree. The leaves were red and yellow. We’d had a few nights of frost. From Mum’s chair you can see the Virginia creeper on the grey wall to the side of the courtyard. It too had already begun to turn red. Suddenly her plate fell to the floor, sending iceberg lettuce, pieces of tomato, sweetcorn everywhere. I turned to her. She looked so small as she sat gazing out of the window. I don’t think she’d even noticed the plate, or heard it fall. She’s been through so much. I crouched down and began to pick up the bits. They should be nicer to her at work, I thought, so she has some energy left when she comes home. I don’t know much about Mum’s work really. She works in the Culture Department. She trained as a teacher originally, but she has higher qualifications in art education; her work generally seems to involve schools. I’ll clean the bathroom in a minute, I said. I’d got red pepper on my skirt at dinner, so I wasn’t overly careful as I went down on my knees to clear up the mess. Pieces of sweetcorn are so tiny. She didn’t answer straight away. But then she turned her head slowly and looked down at me. That would be wonderful, she said. You’re an angel. I don’t know what I’d do without you. She went on staring down at me for a long time, as if she’d begun to think of something else but forgotten to shift her gaze. I smiled. She’s right, I thought, we belong together like two clasped hands. I got up, threw away the bits, cleared the table, rinsed the plates, put the washing-up in the bowl, then opened the cupboard under the sink, took out the bucket and cloth and yellow Jif bottle, and went out into the bathroom. I didn’t hear her get up. She must have forgotten to put her indoor shoes on.