by Linn Ullmann
“You get to carry them all home.” She smiled. “They’re all yours, every last one.”
When Johan opened his eyes and looked around, it was evening. Hardly a sound to be heard, only his neighbor coughing on the other side of the screen. He didn’t know anything about his neighbor. Sometimes, when he was alone, he wondered whether he ought to ask. Introduce himself or something. Sometimes this loneliness was almost too much to bear.
But he could not find the words. There was no way he could just come out with it, he thought. There was no way he could call out to this complete stranger coughing in the next bed, Hello, my name is Johan Sletten, and this loneliness is almost too much to bear.
Mai came to see him daily. At first, after what was termed the last, and unsuccessful, operation, they didn’t say much. She held his hand, asked him if his wound hurt, and moistened his lips for him. After a while, he began to babble. The morphine was a blessing, a veritable gift from the gods. Named after Morpheus, the god of dreams, son of Hypnos, the god of sleep. Some days he didn’t feel the least bit sleepy, and the morphine seemed to perk him up. One day when Mai arrived he was sitting in bed, propped up on pillows and reading a biography that had just received a good review in the paper.
Mai perched on his bed. She was wearing makeup. Not a lot, just a touch on her lips and eyes. Mai never wore makeup, but she was wearing it now. It looked pretty.
She also wore a red silk scarf wrapped around her head. Against the long gray hair it made her look rather artistic, he decided. Kind of Karen Blixen–ish. He told her as much.
“And when you write my biography, you’ll call it Dance in the Vale of Morphine,” he said.
“Dance in the Vale of Morphine.” She laughed.
“That’s right. It will be a long and impassioned elegy on my life. A title like that will endow both you, the biographer, and me, your subject, with a sort of mysterious aura of degradation.”
“Degradation, indeed,” she said.
“Yes, Mai, degradation. Give the impression that I lived a hectic, reckless, ruinous life.”
Mai stroked his cheek. “But you’re still my Johan.”
There it was again, that gentle voice. Ah, but you’re still my Johan.
He pushed her hand away, startling her. Her eyes glistened, but he refused to look at her. The man in the next bed coughed.
Johan muttered, “You’re wearing makeup, Mai.”
“No, not really. I just—”
“You put on makeup for me. You wanted to look especially nice when you came to the hospital to visit your dying husband.”
“I always wear a little makeup. You know that. Today’s no different.”
“You’ve got a red scarf in your hair too.”
“Yes.”
“You look very nice.”
“Thank you.”
She lowered her eyes. They were still red. Then she said, “I spoke to Andreas. I asked him to come to the hospital.”
“I see. What did he say?”
“I told him that maybe it was time.”
“So you think he might come?”
“He told me he’s living with someone.”
“Finally! How old is he?”
“He’s over forty. Forty-three, I think.”
“Over forty, eh?”
“He said he’s living with someone. Her name is Ellen.”
“Ellen,” Johan repeated. “Is she over forty too?”
“No, no. Not at all. Twenty-four, he said. And a lovely girl, I gather. She works in production.”
“Production of what?”
“I’ve no idea,” Mai said. “Production. That’s all he said: production.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Mai. I mean, the first thing you ask is, ‘Production of what?’ ”
Mai sighed. He turned to look at her. She bit her lip demonstratively. “Johan,” she said, firmly now. “You haven’t spoken to Andreas in eight years. And I barely know him. I thought it would be a good idea if you two had a chance to talk before … well …”
Johan turned toward the screen. “Did you hear that?” he called to the stranger on the other side. “I’ve got a son! His name’s Andreas!”
The stranger coughed. Johan could make out a shadow stirring on the other side of the screen.
“And he’s living with someone, a real dish, only twenty-four. He’s over forty himself.”
The stranger heaved a sigh. “Aw, shut up! I’ve got a son, too, you know!”
Johan started and leaned closer to the screen, straining to catch anything else that might be said. But there was nothing else, only the sound of a body endeavoring, with some difficulty, to turn from one side to the other in a high hospital bed.
He turned back to Mai. Her eye makeup was smudged now. Johan grinned sheepishly and gave her his hand.
“Tell me what Andreas said. Does he want to see me?”
“Yes, he came around to it in the end. I had to hint that it was … that you had … that there might not be very much time.”
He gaped at her and bolted upright in bed. A jolt—as if his stitches had just burst. He bellowed, “Why the hell did you do that?” Mai opened her mouth to explain, but he wasn’t finished. “Why did you hint at anything at all?”
“Because Andreas is your son. He has a right to know. This is a chance for you two to make your peace with each other. I’d really like you to make your peace before it’s too late.”
“For God’s sake, Mai. The way you talk, anyone would think I was going to be done for tomorrow.”
“I’m talking about reconciliation. All I’m saying is that this is a time for reconciliation.” She thought for a moment. “Johan, I said as much as I did to Andreas because he told me that Ellen is pregnant.”
“Who the hell is Ellen?”
“His girlfriend. The girl I told you about.”
“The twenty-four-year-old?”
“Yes.”
Johan guffawed. “The one in production!”
“Yes.”
They both fell silent. Then Mai said, “A grandchild, Johan. She’s nine months along. The baby’s due any day now. That’s why I felt I had to tell Andreas as much as I did.”
Evening came again. Mai had left long before. Then came night. Why, he wondered, did she have a red silk scarf in her hair?
“She’s sprucing herself up, Johan.”
It was Alice’s voice.
Alice, wife number one, the Horse, alighted on his bed.
Johan sighed. It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t he suffering enough as it was? He wanted to ask the man on the other side of the screen whether he too received visits from the dead. It was, he would say, as if the walls between this world and the next were starting to dissolve. But he decided against it. In order to talk to the man behind the screen he would have to turn around, and even the most simple movement was terribly painful, not worth the effort. So he lay where he was, eyes wide-open. He tried to think of Mai but found no escape there. So he faced the fact that Alice was sitting on his bed, looking the same as ever.
“You haven’t changed, Alice.”
She looked him up and down. “I can’t say the same of you, Johan. You look awful.”
“It’s always a pleasure to hear your voice. I’ve missed you.”
“I haven’t missed you.”
“No. No, I didn’t really think you would. Who are you nagging now, Alice? The Almighty, perhaps?”
She made no reply.
Johan went on. “Our son’s going to be a father. Did you know that?”
“I knew.”
“High time, if you ask me. He’s over forty.”
“He’s forty-three.”
Johan took her in: her hands, her fingers with their bitten nails, her horsey face. Of all the ghosts who might have visited his bedside, why her? Why not his old friend, the late lamented Ole Torjussen? Why not someone famous—Joe Louis, for example; maybe Strindberg?
She interrupted his musings, whispering, “Are yo
u leaving him anything, Johan?”
“What the hell?”
She inspected her nails. “No need to get upset. I just want to be sure the money will go to Andreas. I don’t want money that was, strictly speaking, mine going to your new wife. I inherited it. It was my father’s money.”
“It’s in the bank, Alice. I haven’t touched it.”
“One hundred fifty thousand kroner, plus twenty years’ interest?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“It will all go to Andreas. I promise.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“You never did.”
“And with good reason.”
Johan groaned. “Alice, you’re no longer with us!” He propped himself up on his elbows and screamed, “You’re no longer with us! You’ve been dead for twentyfive years! Surely you didn’t come all the way from your world to mine to argue about money! Even you aren’t that petty!”
She said, “You are, for all intents and purposes, in my world now, Johan.”
“Go away!”
She pouted. “Poor little Johan.”
He mimicked her voice. “Poor little Johan! Poor little Johan!” Tears welled up and he hurled a pillow at the wall. “Go away, I said! Go away! Leave me alone!”
“Johan, my darling. No need to make a scene.” She peered at him, leaned closer, and whispered, “What’s that you’ve got on your cheek, a boil? Looks pretty gruesome. As if there were two of you.”
“Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“Do you remember saying that if I went to heaven you’d rather go to hell? So we wouldn’t have to spend eternity together?”
Johan nodded. “Did you get to heaven?” he asked.
“It isn’t anything like that,” Alice said. “No heaven, no hell. Just death, or something worse.”
Johan hummed:
Maybe death he lies a-lurking ahint some ragged coral reef— He may be hard, but he is fair, so sing hey, sing ho.
The man behind the screen coughed. No one else was in the room. Where was Mai? Why didn’t Mai come? What time was it? Johan was about to turn over and say something to the coughing man, but then he heard Alice’s voice again: ranting, grating, whining, droning on and on.
“Why did you push me into the water, Johan? You knew I couldn’t swim.” Alice fixed him with her gimlet eye. “Why?”
Johan pondered the question. At last he said, “I don’t know. It just seemed like the thing to do. You were standing on the edge of the dock, and it struck me that you had to go in.”
By midmorning, when Mai arrived, Johan felt better. He was sitting up, having finally managed to catch some sleep around daybreak.
She wore a dress he hadn’t seen before: tight across the bosom and waist, flaring out from the hips. A lovely red dress, although possibly a little on the young side for her. She was over fifty, after all.
“New dress, Mai?”
“No,” she said, settling herself on his bed. She fiddled with a sleeve and laughed at him. “I found it in the attic.”
“We don’t have an attic!” Johan protested. “There isn’t even an attic in our building.”
“You know what I mean. In one of those old trunks in the storeroom in the basement.”
“I see. So that’s what you meant.”
She looked down. “I spoke to Andreas again. He’d like to come see you. Are you up to it?”
“Yes.” Johan stared at her. The earrings were new too, red stars dangling from silver threads. “You mentioned reconciliation,” he said.
“Yes.”
“He’ll inherit everything, you know, Mai, one hundred fifty thousand kroner plus twenty years’ interest. It was Alice’s money. I can’t leave you anything except debts.”
She looked at him and stroked his cheek. “Did you have a bad night, Johan, my love? You look tired. You’re having a hard time of it, aren’t you?”
He knocked her hand away. “I had a very good night. I feel fit enough to run a marathon. Do you have any idea what kind of a man Andreas is?”
“You know I don’t really know him that well. He seemed nice enough on the phone this time around.”
“He’s unbearable. He’s the kind of person who always has to set people straight: friends or strangers, young or old, everybody! He has no qualms whatsoever. Say, for example, that somebody mispronounces a word. Andreas will purse his thin little lips and promptly correct him. The problem is that, almost without exception, he’s the one who’s wrong.”
“Oh, dear,” said Mai.
“He was in a restaurant once with some new friends,” Johan continued. “Take note of that, Mai. Always new friends. There is no one on earth Andreas can point to and say, That’s my old friend so-and-so; we were at school together … no one—”
“You don’t know that, Johan,” Mai interrupted. “You haven’t seen him for eight years.”
“He’s my son. I know.” Johan took a deep breath. “Anyway! He was in a restaurant with these new friends, and one young man announced that he was going to have chèvre. Whereupon my son smiled and said, ‘It’s chevré, with the stress on the final e. And an accent aigu. So.’ He pursed his lips and raised his hand slightly. ‘Chevré! Simple, right?’ No one told him he was making a complete fool of himself with his absurd French pronunciation. They just let him ramble on, indulged him, and seemed to hang on his words. They asked whether he spoke French, and Andreas said, Oh, yes, he spoke a little. Not much, but oui, oui, absolutely. In that case, had he perhaps read the works of Marcel Bavian, a much underrated French writer whose short stories were enjoying something of a revival? It was a young woman who asked the question. And naturally Andreas had read Marcel Bavian. Loved his work, especially his short stories. In fact, he said, Marcel Bavian wrote the most perfect short stories: spare, yet rich, devoid of literary pretension, and aimed straight at the reader’s solar plexus.”
Johan looked at Mai.
“That’s the kind of man he is. Not until later does it dawn on him that when they laugh, they are laughing at him.”
“But how do you know all this?” Mai was smiling. She was caught up in the conversation. They were chatting; he liked that.
“He told me about it, but not quite the way I just told you. Oh, no! Triumphantly, Mai! Telling me how he taught this charming new friend of his how to pronounce the name of a French cheese … and asking whether in all my years as a critic I had ever come across a writer by the name of Marcel Bavian. Had he been translated into Norwegian, by any chance? No? Really? Too bad.”
Mai lowered her eyes. “He might have changed,” she said. “That was a long time ago.”
“Do you think people can change, Mai?” He remembered his last day at the newspaper, face-to-face with Dolores, the gorgeous summer intern. The looks. The sniggers. The degradation.
“I don’t know,” Mai replied. “I think so. I’ve changed.”
“Have I changed?”
Mai looked at him, her eyes on his face. And in her eyes he could read where things stood with him. He asked her for a mirror, and she produced a compact from her purse.
The first thing he saw was his waxen skin. And then the boil, intent on devouring his whole cheek. Finally the familiar wryness, the result of his plucking one eyebrow bald and leaving the other bushy.
He said, “I don’t know what you see in me. I’m old and ugly and I’ll be dead soon.”
“But you’re still my Johan, and I love you.”
Her voice was soft and persuasive. Still looking at himself, he laid his head on her shoulder. Maj from Malö, he hummed, bonny Maj, you whom all the waves long to kiss. She stroked his face and gently took the mirror from his fingers. She drew closer to him and whispered, “You’re in pain, I can tell.”
The time had come for a conversation of another sort. He could tell by the sound of her voice: You’re in pain, I can tell. He wasn’t up to it. He would really rather not.
He said, “Yes. It does hurt sometimes. It hurts to turn over in bed at night. And my head … this headache. But I don’t feel so nauseated now. So that’s a good thing.”
“I spoke to the attending physician. Emma Meyer.”
“The dancer.”
Mai looked at him blankly. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, forget it.”
“Anyway, Emma says—”
“Emma?” Johan interjected. He hated this bandying about of first names. Emma! He didn’t like the idea of a physician who was making decisions regarding his life being called something as … as literary as Emma and— particularly—being in some way a friend of Mai’s.
Mai corrected herself. “Dr. Meyer says the last tests show the reason for your headache.”
She didn’t need to say any more.
“I thought the headache was caused by the changing weather. It’s been so hot and humid,” Johan remarked flatly. “And I’m feeling a little better now. My head doesn’t hurt as much as it did last week.”
“No,” Mai said quietly.
“So, as I say, I thought it had something to do with the weather or the strain of the last few weeks, a psychological reaction of some sort. Headaches can be stress-related, everybody knows that. Even children have headaches brought on by stress these days. I was just reading an article about it in the paper. They catch stress from their parents. It’s a big problem.”
Mai nodded.
“But what you’re saying is that Dr. Meyer’s tests have shown something else,” Johan said, looking her in the face.
“I wanted to tell you myself,” Mai said. “I thought you’d want to hear it from me.”
“I would actually have preferred to hear it firsthand from a doctor,” Johan snapped.
“I am a doctor!” Now it was Mai’s turn to snap.
Johan lowered his eyes. Didn’t it count for anything that he fought every day? Sometimes he actually came close to giving up, but other times … at other times he looked around him and could say to himself: This day too I am here. It grows light in the morning and dark in the evening, and I am here in that light and in that darkness. Didn’t that count for anything? That it grew light in the morning and dark in the evening; that he repeated these words to himself like an incantation, as proof … but of what? He wasn’t quite sure. Still, it calmed him to say it again and again. Say it a thousand times. Say: It grows light in the morning and dark in the evening. But did that count for anything with the others? With Mai? With the white coats?
