It sounds amazing; she feels quite proud. More worthy than any other man. That’s true. Professors are men. She’s never heard of a female professor. There are women who are married to professors, like Mom. In Årsta no one even knew what a professor was. In Lund everyone knows, and it’s the best thing you can possibly be.
Contact with her new classmates, who are trying to be friendly, forces her to produce something new: a clear outline. She has none. Or perhaps she has too many. She is full of disorganized impressions, inexplicable contradictions. Nothing really seems to settle within her.
You are dragged along to something new, released, and expected to swim off into the unknown like a cheerful fish. But that’s not the way it is. She isn’t cheerful in the least.
And the professor’s daughter? That’s not her.
There is a male physics teacher in school. On one occasion he brings a dead frog to the lab. He sends an electric current through its body; they all stand around watching the dead limbs twitch and jerk. That’s what she feels like for a long time: a galvanized frog.
Dad might be a professor, but he’s not exactly distinguished.
He often behaves like a little boy, farting shamelessly in front of his daughters (Mom never does). He wanders around in the nude at home, completely unembarrassed (such a thing would never cross Mom’s mind). He sits hunched in his chair at the table, hearing and seeing nothing. Then he gets up and absently undoes his belt. His trousers drop to the floor and he distractedly steps out of them. They lie there like an abandoned figure eight. Mom shakes her head when she sees them.
But unlike Mom, Dad has a great deal of patience.
When he’s around, everything is as it should be. Each of his daughters believes that she is the most loved. He envelops all three of them in his warmth. He reassures them when they have nightmares. His jokes chase away the horrors. And every morning while Mom is still sleeping, he wakes them with hot chocolate in the kitchen.
His three daughters adore him; they want to be with him all the time, but unfortunately he is usually with his students at the university. When he is at home he sits up late with his math papers, so late that he falls asleep on the couch in the living room. In the morning he says that he didn’t want to disturb Mom.
Sometimes the girl wakes up in the middle of the night. She gets out bed, still half asleep, to see where the light is coming from. Dad has nodded off in the living room, his book open on his chest. He sleeps in his underpants.
She notices her father’s nocturnal erection, although she doesn’t know what it is. Gently she removes the book, covers him with a blanket, and switches off the lamp. Why does he sleep on the couch and not in his bed? Because he is absentminded.
That’s what Mom says: For God’s sake, don’t be so absentminded!
This is a distinguishing characteristic of professors.
One evening during the first winter in Lund, they are visited by a middle-aged couple. When Dad says who the man is, her memory unfolds like a crumpled-up paper bag: Uncle Bertil! The family doctor, who used to hum hit songs while examining a sore throat.
That was during their previous stay in Lund, and now Dad has bumped into him in the street. He lives not far from the Mathematics Department. He is going to let Dad keep the Hanomag in an outbuilding on their property. His wife’s name is Vibeke.
She is statuesque, and speaks with an attractive Skåne accent. She has an infectious laugh. When Dad found out she was a singer who gave concerts and performed in churches, he invited them home on the spur of the moment, hoping to cheer Mom up; she misses contact with the world of music. Bottles appear on the kitchen table.
Dad stands by the stove frying eggs. Although he will soon be forty, he is as excited as a little boy. They drink schnapps, and bursts of laughter fill the air. When she has gone to bed—her room is right next door to the kitchen—it is impossible to sleep. She tiptoes back in her pajamas; she can hardly see anyone through the clouds of smoke. But Vibeke notices her and waves: come and join us, come on in!
She and Bertil are not part of the stiff, academic side of Lund, but the other side: bohemian, cheerful, prone to undergraduate humor.
That’s what her parents say afterward.
They are adults—Uncle Bertil and Aunt Vibeke also have quite grown-up children—but they love exchanging banter and pretending to be young. They have joy within them. Which breeds more joy and takes the sting out of Mom’s tendency to gloominess. In their company the words fly around like shuttlecocks, the jokes bounce back and forth and nothing is really serious.
Her parents often visit their new friends, where they drink and dance. Even Mom dances, in spite of her lame leg. It is a new time, less rigid and more liberated (this was in the early 1950s, the borders were open once more, the war seemed like a distant memory, and strict morality was loosening up).
On one occasion when Aunt Vibeke and Uncle Bertil are visiting, Mom comes out with the statement that women aren’t good enough to be composers. They are only capable of interpreting men’s work, she claims angrily.
Mom has a sharp tongue, and likes to say things that wind up other people. Once again it’s all about the inferiority of women.
She saw through her mom a long time ago. Mom says this stuff because she wants to be contradicted, which is why she keeps repeating that she is worthless and hasn’t succeeded at anything, just so that others will find what she says unreasonable, and object.
You have to contradict her. If you can find the energy.
And indeed the adults in the kitchen protest, Aunt Vibeke most vociferously: Don’t be stupid, that’s not true at all! Mom comes right back at her: Okay, name me one significant female composer! They can’t do it, even though they try very hard. Consternation and silence follow.
But the discussion ends in laughter when Bertil remarks dryly that most men aren’t composers either; he himself would never dream of pursuing such a career. So exhausting, for God’s sake. Even Mom joins in the hilarity.
Presumably Mom thinks men have better opportunities than women. She could well be right, but she tries to get her point across in the wrong way: by angrily and obstinately insisting that men are superior to women.
Just because of their gender. Is she serious?
If she doesn’t think that, then surely she ought to defend women and say they’re just as good as men, if only they get the chance to prove it. It’s difficult, because Mom doesn’t speak with clarity; instead she wraps everything in her anger.
The girl hasn’t given the matter much thought. She can’t see any reason why one gender should be better than the other. For example, how many times has Mom laughed at Dad and told him he’s totally tone deaf? Which means that she thinks she’s superior to him on that point.
A memory pops into her mind from their previous stay in Lund.
Mom is sitting at the piano, while she herself is a little girl, standing in the doorway on Sandgatan listening. What is a note? Mom asks. Dad replies that a note consists of vibrations. He offers to calculate the intervals between the notes for her, and fetches his slide rule. Mom is furious.
If anything is vibrating it’s inside the heart! That’s entirely possible, Dad replies patiently, but a note is also a certain number of vibrations. He fiddles with the slide rule as Mom stares at him. You’re completely tone deaf!
With that she leaps up from the piano stool and leaves the room.
Words are elusive and create misunderstandings. She thinks a great deal about how words and language (and men and women) go together. And why there are no female composers, of course. Is that true?
Mom is emotions and outbursts. Dad is objectivity and calm. Music and mathematics seem to be two opposing languages. Music is female, mathematics male. Most things seem to be either male or female.
What gender are fortune-telling and magic?
Mom and Vibeke become friends. They both agree that their husbands lack musicality and are tone deaf. They listen to phonograph records
together; not just Bach and Beethoven, but also jazz and blues. Mom doesn’t like bebop and Charlie Parker—too chaotic.
But Vibeke does.
She turns up with sheet music and sings George Gershwin, while Mom accompanies her on the piano. It is early summer. The balcony door is ajar, the curtains fluttering gently in the breeze, little gusts that make it come alive. The girl is sitting in the corner of the sofa. Aunt Vibeke’s alto voice is as soft as cotton.
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. The melody dips its wings in the darkness and soars like a bird. Oh, your daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin’ so hush little baby, don’t you cry. It is a lullaby for a small child. The women at the piano are tall and dark and in total agreement. There’s a-nothin’ can harm you with Daddy and Mammy standin’ by.
It is so wonderful that she is on the verge of tears.
When Mom goes into the kitchen to make coffee, she stays with Aunt Vibeke. I would have liked to pursue a career in singing, trained properly like your mom, Aunt Vibeke says. You must be so proud of her.
The girl has to swallow hard to hold back the tears.
It must be the music.
Or it’s because she is proud of her mom.
Mom puts a new record on her new phonograph. The piece is called Das Lied von der Erde, by Gustav Mahler, and the singer is Kathleen Ferrier. It is classical music, but this time the shutter inside her ear doesn’t come down. The music and the deep voice pour over her. She sees light and shadow, mountains and precipices, colors playing across the surface of the water.
Aunt Vibeke listens with her eyes closed.
Mom stands by the balcony door, gazing silently at the plain. The girl realizes that the language of music captures emotions that simply cannot be expressed in words. Not in mathematics, and not with a slide rule either.
Dad arrives home and is pleased to see Aunt Vibeke. She makes everyone happy; she is as warm as a tiled stove. Mom has finally found a musical friend.
Kathleen Ferrier. Gustav Mahler. She makes a point of remembering the names.
Another memory. Now it is winter. The kitchen table is covered with a stained oilcloth, and the ceiling light has a broken shade. Mom wants them to clear the table.
The girl, on the other hand, wants to talk about the sixth sense. It turns out that Dad knows a professor in Lund who is researching that very subject. She bombards him with questions about the man who is linking science with clairvoyance and the note that is intervals with the note that vibrates inside your heart (and Mom with Dad).
The man is a professor of literature, but he has written books and articles about intuition, telepathy, clairvoyance, and contact with the dead. He calls it parapsychology, and claims that the topic is a huge field of research in the United States.
Dad shakes his head skeptically.
Mom picks up the pot of leftover macaroni and says that when she was young, it was a popular pastime to sit around a table in the dark. A glass would begin to move all by itself, and someone would hear the voice of a dead ancestor.
The voice of someone who’s dead! Ninne is all ears.
It was nothing but a parlor trick, Mom snaps.
It turns out that her parents are in total agreement on this point. There is no breach into the unknown. No way out. She stares at the reflection of the ceiling light in the window. What if the mirror image is showing them the way to a more real reality? Dad laughs and says that matter is made up of atoms and elementary particles.
She can hear the shrillness in her voice.
In that case what is God made up of? Is he just particles too?
Dad rinses his plate and doesn’t reply, which makes her obstreperous. Surely the five senses can’t tell us everything about the world? Why shouldn’t mediums and clairvoyants be able to see a reality that is inaccessible to mathematics?
Everyone is entitled to believe what they like. Dad shrugs; he is longing to get back to his math. It is an ordinary evening meal in a Swedish kitchen. The stratosphere is humming, or maybe the sound is inside her head. She can’t cope with this literal approach, the urgency, the constant abandonment of everything that is important.
Neither of her parents believes in anything. Life is so blocked up that it is almost unbearable.
Dad has relatives from Småland living in Lund who are believers. One is even a professor of church history. She can’t really say she knows him, but she considers ringing him to ask what truth is. She wants to have faith in God, but she doesn’t know if she can do that, in all honesty.
One morning all her classmates are hanging out of the window, yelling and whooping. She pushes her way to the front and realizes why.
On the balcony across the street, on the same level as their classroom, a naked man is carrying out his morning exercises. He is jumping up and down, waving his arms. The balcony barely covers his bobbing penis; sometimes it doesn’t. She can’t believe her eyes. The man is her relative, the professor of church history. Someone is sent to find out who he is, and afterward she hears whispering on the stone stairs: Ssh, he’s her uncle. He isn’t, not literally. She turns and emphatically denies the relationship. Should she call him and ask if God exists?
She dismisses the idea, but not the issue of whether there is a meaning.
The last time they were in Lund, the girls were sent to Sunday school. She held Ninne’s hand, proud of the fact that she was allowed to take her little sister without being accompanied by an adult. She was six years old and Ninne was four. Back home Ninne announced in her bass voice: Jeeesus can walk on water. Peeeter is an honest man. Mom and Dad both burst out laughing.
When she was six, she had no doubt about the existence of God. Santa Claus maybe, but not God. Now everything is uncertain. Why do we live? Does she have any value?
In a way that is difficult to explain, the search for truth becomes mixed up with sex. She turns thirteen. Her breasts are large and in the way. She is embarrassed as she hints to Mom—she can’t turn to Dad about this—that she needs a bra.
Her mother’s gaze is as distant as the Antarctic.
Oh really? Then she forgets about it.
Okay, she was probably busy, sitting at her typewriter, reading the newspaper, doing some sewing. But the fact that Mom forgets is hurtful. She is so deeply wounded that she can’t bring the matter up again. She has classmates who are much less developed than her. When they are getting changed for gym she sees their pink and white bras. They already have bras, in spite of the fact that their breasts are smaller than half a plum.
Why them and not her? Presumably because their mothers are interested in them. She thinks her mom dislikes the fact that she now has breasts. That they’re already quite large. The craving for a bra takes on epic proportions.
Soon she can think of nothing else.
The bra draws all her sinful thoughts. All her sexual urges. She blushes as soon as she stops outside a shop window displaying ladies’ underwear. She edges up to the underwear counter in the EPA department store and picks up socks and vests while wondering if she dare check out the price of bras.
This goes on for months, until she manages to pluck up all her courage. She has seen one that she can afford with her pocket money. What size? How is she supposed to know? The assistant measures her. She can hardly raise her head; her cheeks are bright red, her heart is pounding.
She makes sure the bathroom door is locked before trying on her white, shiny new bra. It fits. She is secretive, hiding it away from Mom, which makes her feel dishonest. Why is this so shameful, so fragile? She feels unseen, neglected, embarrassed.
The wall between her and Mom keeps on getting higher.
Something like that. A crisis of puberty. In an academic’s home at a particular time, rational and with a scientific approach. No myths. No faith. The world was flat and without secrets. It hurt. It is clear that Lund, what I saw of it, was a facade, a place where sexuality among modern individuals was regarded as being just as rational as everything else.
We ignored the things that were important.
My sense of injustice grew.
But during the summer after the first year in Lund, Aunt Laura invites her to an island called Origo. Aunt Laura says that she wants to get to know her. She puts on her bra under her dress. Happy to be wearing it. Spends the whole train journey reading. Very aware of her breasts and the bra.
It turns her into a different person, and others look at her in a different way.
Origo is the central point in a system of coordinates. In the universe there are points designated origo, depending on which aspect you choose to study. And Origo is what Aunt Laura and her husband call their island. Laura explained all this over the telephone, and she feels so honored to have been invited that she sees herself as the center of the universe.
As soon as she steps off the train, she can smell salt. They are waiting on the platform, and give her a big hug. Uncle Elis—whom she hasn’t met many times—is a small man in a hat with sad eyes.
They drive north in a little Ford Anglia, with Uncle Elis at the wheel.
Aunt Laura rows them across the lake in a skiff they have hidden in the long grass on the shore.
A small grass-covered island in the middle of a lake, a house and a barn. No electricity. No telephone. Laura is nothing like her sister. Ricki is very quiet; Laura talks nonstop. Uncle Elis, on the other hand, is tired and needs to rest. In the evenings when he is sleeping, she and Aunt Laura play canasta and chat.
Does Aunt Laura believe in fortune-tellers?
A Fortune Foretold Page 7
