Oh come on, don’t take it so literally.
It’s in the hymnal. You’re going to be confirmed, and you haven’t read it?
No, I haven’t, and I don’t believe that’s what it says.
In that case I’ll show you, in black and white!
Nanna disappears into her apartment. The dog trots after her, the sound of its barking echoing in the stairwell. Why is she still standing here? Because she is paralyzed by her bottomless ignorance. She has no idea how the church feels about those who haven’t been baptized, Jews, Mohammedans, and atheists. Nor can she rule out the possibility that Nanna might be right. To her, God is a promise that life isn’t meaningless. She can’t come out with something that simplistic.
And she wants to keep her own uncertainty about him to herself.
But Nanna is back, waving the hymnal. The fine print flickers, and she can’t read the words. She is seized by panic. She tumbles out of herself, out of the fragile protective shell that holds her together if need be. It is as if her intestines have fallen out, as if her innards have been exposed in front of everyone. She doesn’t know how she manages to get up the stairs.
But from that moment she fears Nanna.
It is an irrational, senseless, paralyzing fear.
The lonely girl on the ground floor, who was perfectly harmless to begin with, is transformed into an internal accuser, an all-seeing eye that persecutes her. Nanna can observe everything from her kitchen window. When she gets home. When she cycles into town with her burning pussy. Who drops by to visit.
Nanna can open her door and ask questions at any moment.
Questions the girl cannot answer.
She is going to be confirmed, but she hasn’t read those words in fine print, the terms and conditions of the contract she has apparently signed, and for which she can now be held responsible. Even though she still isn’t sure whether God exists!
As usual she has been less than conscientious. And the presence of Nanna in the building—what evil power made them neighbors?—forces her to admit that everything within her is resting on far from solid ground. She knows nothing, can achieve nothing. She is intending to be confirmed, in spite of her doubts. She is driven by sex. She lies to her mother.
Nanna can see right through her, deep inside her. Nanna knows she is not the person she pretends to be. This causes panic, a headlong tumult. After this encounter she does everything she can to avoid bumping into her neighbor. In the mornings she closes her own front door behind her, then stands and listens, her heart pounding with fear. Has Nanna already left?
Or is there a danger she might meet her horrifying accuser?
She bends double, panting with terror.
Then she hurtles down the stairs, slipping and stumbling, her schoolbag catching on the handrail until she manages to throw herself onto her bicycle.
What forces did Nanna trigger within me? We hardly got to know each other at all during those four years at high school. She would occasionally come up to our apartment to ask about something, a test or a sports day.
I answered politely, but never invited her in.
I was vaguely aware that I was projecting dark thoughts onto her. It didn’t help. Although I was afraid of her, at the same time I couldn’t help feeling sympathy for her. Nanna and her mother on the ground floor were very lonely.
It was the same as with Mom: feeling sorry for someone, while simultaneously being scared of them.
Perhaps it was that particular combination that I couldn’t cope with. Nanna became a menacing wedge in my all-too-unstable mind.
A hell of a pain in my ass. During almost the whole of my time at high school I avoided my ground-floor neighbor as best I could. It is one of the most powerful projections I have ever experienced.
All the conflicts within myself that I was unable to resolve—God and Mom, sex and shame over my sexuality—I put down to Nanna’s gaze upon me.
Which became horrifically menacing.
When we eventually became close friends in later life, after graduation, I was still a little afraid of her. I was always kind of on my toes with her.
She knows that she is unworthy before God. And then one day Ia comes along with something to tell her. Ia is in the same class as one of Vibeke and Bertil’s children, and frequently spends time at their place after school.
One day when they are alone in the kitchen, Ia starts babbling about Dad. Before he went to America, he often used to come around to see Vibeke. He would turn up on his bicycle when Bertil was at work. The children spied on them. They saw them kissing. They secretly read Dad’s notes to Vibeke, arranging where to meet.
Don’t say anything to Mom. Ia is ten years old, and as excited as a secret agent who has found a hot lead. She wants to know what her big sister thinks. What is she supposed to say to Ia? She replies, sounding as supercilious as she possibly can, that Ia is too little to understand.
If Dad comes to call it’s because he and Vibeke are friends. Is there anything wrong with that?
No, Ia says, looking relieved.
If she herself took any notice whatsoever of what Ia said, it is because of her own sordid thoughts. She trusts Dad more than anyone in the world. He isn’t exactly God the Father, he’s just their dad. She brushes aside her suspicions as one might wave away a persistent fly. She can’t talk to anyone about the things that are really bothering her: God and who she actually is.
The confirmation service takes place in the cathedral choir. They sit in front of the priest clutching their hymnals. The girls are dressed in white, the boys in suits. Down in the pews relatives and friends and Mom are listening.
Tall candles surround the candidates. The cathedral’s pillars shimmer in the candlelight, disappearing in shadows and cobwebs. The priest asks her the question about the Bible stories: Adam and Eve, Moses and the burning bush, the Annunciation.
Can we believe in the miracles in the Bible?
She says firmly that they are not true. The priest stares at her in consternation. She tries to rescue the situation by adding that stories and miracles could perhaps be regarded as symbolic truths. She knows she is on thin ice, but continues to embroider her thought process to the end, not without sophistry.
She is as honest as she can be.
She doesn’t participate in the declaration of faith: a slim gesture of integrity. She has not achieved any certainty that God exists. Nor the opposite. The question will just have to remain open for the time being. Perhaps she ought to have opted out of the confirmation service, but she is too much of a coward to do so.
She goes through with it partly to avoid proving the arrogant Nanna right. She wants to keep her uncertainty to herself! It is a free space and it is hers and hers alone.
Maybe the whole thing would have passed off smoothly if Mom hadn’t made the confirmation into an event. She invites a number of ladies to the apartment to celebrate; what is there to celebrate? But there is no getting out of it. After all, as Mom points out, she is doing it for her sake. How could she tell Mom, who doesn’t believe in anything, that she is torn? That she feels as if she is beset by demons?
It doesn’t show on the outside. Mom serves coffee and cakes. She receives jewelry and poetry anthologies. Aunt Vibeke gives her Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. She says thank you, she smiles. Her skin feels raw, as when a dressing is ripped off a wound, leaving it open.
The wound festers and suppurates. And the next thought: who does she think she is, making such a big deal of herself? Taking herself so seriously—it’s absurd! Afterward she pulls off the white dress and goes out.
She is rebelling, and has no one to rebel against. On the way home, when she sees herself from the outside, bent over the handlebars pedaling furiously, she finds herself utterly ridiculous.
She sits down on a beet crate by the railway line and manages a slightly hollow laugh. She has the right to keep quiet about her uncertainty at least. Until she has acquired a skin that is strong enough to hold
her together. Then Nanna can sit there in her big wide pants reading Nietzsche as much as she wants.
The great event in the spring when she turns fifteen is not her depressing confirmation, but a performance of the St. John Passion in the cathedral.
Sometimes Mom practices at Vibeke’s, because Vibeke is breastfeeding her new baby.
Later they rehearse in the cathedral with singers and musicians. Mom is full of praise for Vibeke, who is singing the alto part. She also admires the other soloists and musicians, but is nervous about her own contribution. What if she has a tummy problem, what if she goes wrong, what if she faints?
After all, Mom suffers from nerves, as she puts it.
On the evening of the concert she cycles to the cathedral alone. As usual she is late, and the place is packed. She is given a program and sits down on the stone floor with her back against a cold pillar. Johann Sebastian Bach, one of Mom’s favorites, gets off to a flying start. It is like a theater.
And it’s overwhelming! The power grips her. The melancholy and the tenderness, the rage and the sorrow. And the story: Peter’s denial in the courtyard, Pontius Pilate and the trial, the people yelling crucify him, crucify him! And the Roman soldiers who offer him Essig when he is thirsty.
Vinegar! Offered up to his cracked lips.
The man on the cross gives up his spirit.
Es ist vollbracht. Vibeke’s alto voice conveys deep distress as she repeats those words. Suddenly she realizes that vollbracht doesn’t mean only death, but completion. Coming home, peace. Soon the dead man will be home with his father. Even though she is sitting on a cold stone floor, she feels a wave of warmth and her eyes fill with tears.
Then it’s over. The soloists take their bow. She can see Vibeke, elegant in a black evening gown. She has listened for the harpsichord, and felt proud of Mom, who played all of her sections beautifully. There is no sign of her. Lots of people are unwrapping bouquets of flowers, ready to present them. She never thought about flowers. She stumbles onto the stage. Mom is sitting at the harpsichord, and looks up at her. Those black eyes.
That beautiful, animated face!
At that moment she doesn’t see the mom who is so full of contradictions, such hard work; she sees her mom as a person in her own right. And she loves her. She cycles home. It is one of those chilly spring evenings in Lund when the buds are just about to burst into life.
From Copenhagen and the Sound comes a faint hint of the sea. Everything is incomprehensible, everything is fragile. But that evening, cycling home from the St. John Passion, she is fulfilled. Uplifted. The world is bathed in a brighter light.
Many years after the St. John Passion in Lund Cathedral I read my mother’s letters to my father during his long absence in America.
They were breathless, hectic, cheerful.
Mom was dead by then, and the letters were found among her belongings. I didn’t even know they existed, but Ia gave them to me, along with some other papers, when I was visiting. Before her death Mom had stapled together her letters to Dad, written on thin airmail paper.
Lots and lots of staples. As if she had been in a violent rage.
It was almost impossible to remove them without tearing the sheets, but I managed to prise them out and read the letters one night, with mixed feelings. The tone was so forced. So anxious. So many typing errors.
The sentences stumble over one another. Mom has such a lot to do. She writes about her activities at great length. She seems proud of the fact that she is earning money. She misses Dad, although she often expresses herself with a certain sarcasm.
Or rather: with a slightly throwaway, plucky edge.
And yet the tone is warm. Intimate and friendly. Toward the end of spring Dad sends her a nylon blouse, which makes her happy. She writes that the blouse makes her think that she, his old wife, still means something to him.
It seemed to me that they must have had a big discussion before he left; I’m sure she didn’t want him to go. That’s what I thought.
And that with these letters she was trying to mend something between them. In letter after letter she writes about the new car she wants them to buy when he comes home. She tells him about the St. John Passion, how well it went, and how much she appreciated Vibeke’s contribution.
It is clear that she didn’t have a clue about Dad and Vibeke’s relationship.
I reread the letters several times to make sure. I had known for a long time that the affair had started when we arrived in Lund, and had gone on for many years.
But Mom had no idea. They fooled her.
It was heartrending. And what should they have done?
Maybe they were trying to be considerate. The price they had to pay was the lie. Although I was old and they were dead, I sat there with those letters for a long time. It was night. Ia was asleep, and the apartment was silent. When I was little I used to try to console myself with what Dad always said: It won’t matter in a hundred years. It was no consolation now. Darling Mom. It hurt to read her letters.
A small town drama from all those years ago, who could possibly care about it after all this time? Who hasn’t deceived someone, who hasn’t lied? I have. But this was about them, about my parents. A lie has its own anatomy, even when it seems necessary. Even when it is perpetrated out of consideration. It is not possible to carry out a consequential analysis of the lie, it continues to have an effect at the third and fourth remove.
Why did Mom still have the letters? He brought them home from the United States, of course. I guess he didn’t take them with him when he left us.
Before her death Mom had gone through her papers carefully; she had thrown a lot of things away. Most things. There are no letters from Dad to her while he was in the States, nor any other letters written by him.
But she kept these letters, the ones she had written to him. I assumed she wanted us to read them. Afterward there were fifteen, twenty bent and twisted staples lying on the table. They looked desolate. I swept them together with my hand.
3
on how you find out
Writing also involves not speaking.
It means being silent.
It means screaming without a sound.
The thought that I cost money was unbearable. I didn’t accept any money at home. I worked throughout my time at school. Not accepting money for clothes, trips to the movies, the theater, school dances was the most important decision of my whole life.
Unfortunately my parents didn’t notice; they were so preoccupied with themselves.
If I had suffered in the past because I couldn’t please both of them, now I felt as if I were being split into several different individuals. Being an unwanted item of expenditure was the blackest. The others were colorless. I existed only in the outermost circle of transparency, in the thin invisibility where I was myself, and where I tried to preserve my integrity. During Christmas vacation in my first year at high school I sold men’s slippers in the EPA department store.
When I came back from the language course in Lübeck, I babysat for a doctor’s family. During the rest of my time at school I worked weekends and vacations as a care assistant in a facility for the chronically sick up in the north.
Unfortunately she falls in love. It’s before the trip to Lübeck and the language course. It’s not the first time, but on this occasion it’s as if a crater opens up inside her. The trees are in full leaf. They sit on a sofa kissing with a party going on all around them and Lena Horne singing from the record player:
Love me or leave me and let me be lonely
You won’t believe me that I love you only.
They kiss each other at several parties. He plays the trumpet at school dances. He has a red moped, a Mustang; she learns to recognize the sound of it among the hundreds of mopeds in Lund. One afternoon it zooms past the apartment block on Vintergatan and disappears. But it comes back.
And the doorbell rings. She opens the door and he’s standing there asking if she’d like to go to the
movies. She starts trembling. Mom is playing the piano; she tells her she is going out. Mom lifts her hands off the keys and her voice can be heard all the way out into the hallway: What on earth’s wrong with you, your entire body is shaking!
Please Mom. Not so loud. Mom takes no notice. In an equally loud voice: The movies? Absolutely not! You’re always running off somewhere or other!
She goes back to the front door. She can’t trust her voice, she can only shake her head. When he has gone she is trembling so hard that she thinks she is going to faint. She sits in her room, her whole body shaking.
After that he doesn’t contact her again.
She doesn’t see him for a long time. And he doesn’t get in touch. She is too proud to make the first move. She travels to Lübeck with Swedish students from all over the country, and she is still in love. For the classes, which are held in a boys’ school that is closed for the summer, they read Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kröger. The German is too difficult, but Tonio, with his great sensitivity, becomes a soul mate. The novella is set in Lübeck long before the Allies’ bombs fell. At the Marienkirche there is a pile of bricks from the clock tower that crashed to the ground. The signs of war have not yet been cleared away.
The family she is lodging with takes her to Travemünde. She sees the raked sand through binoculars. That is East Germany. She sleeps in a trailer in the family’s garden; it was used by refugees during the war. She has read about what life was like in the serial Child 312 in Allers magazine at Granny’s house, with illustrations by Ib Thaning, whom she admires. She is trying to learn how to draw from these illustrations.
She is homesick, and Mom’s letters are a pinprick of light in the darkness. Her obsession with the boy she loves is driving her crazy; she does everything she can to kill it.
A Fortune Foretold Page 10
