Let us imagine instead another novel.
A man who lives in a small port town beats his children. Many things happen, there are feelings and vivid sensations and dramatic scenes—but none of them lead anywhere. The man tries to understand his own life, but regardless of what he realizes, it doesn’t change anything. Several events intrude without direction or purpose. Then one day his doctor prescribes him some antidepressant pills. After that, he no longer hits his children so often.
This cannot be called a story. Everything dissolves into meaningless fragments without consequences, into a bald recitation of facts. This novel undermines the very structure of narrative.
The problem here is that this novel comes much closer to the unmerciful randomness, the immense chaos, and the constant biological vulnerability that constitute the essence of human existence. In short, this “anti-narrative” is more truthful.
The great majority of novelists and people who write for film and TV have never attended lectures about the breakthroughs in the last 30 years of psychology, psychiatry, and neurology. On the other hand, in the course of their high school or university education, pretty much all of them learned about psychoanalysis—which happens to provide the perfect structure for storytelling that is otherwise structurally unreflective.
The damage sustained by modern fiction is colossal. The ramifications are greater than if the authors had been educated in biology before Darwin or physics before Einstein. For it means that the person who watches a lot of TV, reads a lot of books, and sees a lot of movies has probably developed a more outdated and conservative notion of what it means to be human than people who have been able to keep their consumption of fiction at a lower level, and who obtain their knowledge from practically any other sphere of human activity.
Will TV series, movies, and literature then be able to find another paradigm for structuring their narratives? In other words, will fiction—whether found in books, in movie theaters, or on TV screens—be able to survive as anything but a deception and opiate of the people? It is doubtful, for the “psychoanalytical cultural tradition has
* * *
1. Of course, not all 20th-century novels take place by a harbor or involve violent fathers. Here it is only the structure that interests me, and in this respect the examples are endless: detective novels where the villain’s character is “nuanced” and “rounded” through flashbacks to his boyhood; family chronicles in which childhood traumas have an inexorably determining effect on the rest of life; psychological novels where insight into a primeval trauma translates into behavioral change; etc., etc., etc. There is no end to the stream of novels in which separate events constitute a narrative only because they are pinned to a unity that has been postulated by psychoanalysis.
27
There’s room for no more than thirty boats in this small natural harbor. Even then, that’s only if they’re moored several boats deep, so that kids playing on board have to scamper across the boats of other holiday visitors to reach land.
The two jetties are crescent-shaped promontories of granite rock, while the harbor’s only building is a kiosk, an old wooden shed painted barn red. We parked the car behind it so we could buy ice cream and extra water, but it turns out they also sell fresh-baked heart-shaped waffles with jam, scoops of ice cream, and whipped cream.
Together with blond happy tan Swedes, Bernard and I wait in line to buy our waffles, standing with an arm around each other’s waist. We’re wearing shorts, sunglasses, and sunscreen. Gulls swoop in low over the boulders beyond the harbor, and we’ll clamber around on the rocks as soon as we’ve had our waffles and coffee. Later we can hike up the path between the fields or walk along the coast to the edge of the woods where cows are grazing.
When a family gets up from one of the tables, I hurry over, draping my pullover across the back of one chair and tipping a second one forward so its backrest leans against the edge of the table. The table’s ours now. I trot back to the line and wrap my arms around Bernard, and we kiss as if I’d been gone a long time. The couple behind us smile conspiratorially; perhaps they discovered love recently too.
I’ve been over to look through the window of the old wooden kiosk, and they have a large selection of ice cream, but the best kind with waffles is plain vanilla.
“One scoop of vanilla,” I say to Bernard as we stand in line. “And coffee.”
“I’ll have the same,” he says. “Plus a chocolate-covered marshmallow on top.”
I squeeze him tighter when he says this. I don’t know why, there’s just something about the simple fact that he’d like a chocolate-covered marshmallow that makes me want to fall into him and disappear even more than I already did. Or maybe it’s his tone of voice, or the way the strong sunlight falls upon his almost-white hair, or the smell of warm waffles combined with the way he scratches his neck.
It’s so clear we were born to be together—there’s no avoiding it, it’s constantly clear—yet somehow it becomes even more obvious when he says plus a chocolate-covered marshmallow on top, or when he gazes out over the glassy Kattegat Sea and screws up his eyes because the light is so harsh, or when he takes another two steps forward in line, with steps I’m learning could only be his.
The couple behind us is smiling again, and though I smiled back at their infatuated, wide-open faces before, now I turn away. I suppose I’m feeling a tad bashful, and Bernard must sense this, for he nudges me over in front of him until I feel his chest warming my back.
We don’t say anything else until it’s our turn at the counter. Behind the glass stands a thin old man with a large nose. Maybe he’s run this kiosk every summer since he was young. By his side is a plump teenage girl, perhaps his granddaughter. Or the daughter of a friend. Will she stand here for another fifty years too?
We get our orders and carry the limp paper plates with the waffles over to our table. The tables and chairs stand directly on the bare granite; they look old, with thin metal frames and wooden seats and backs where the white paint has flaked off.
“See that gull over there?” I ask. “A second ago it caught a fish.”
“What, did it dive?”
“Yes. It flew over by that red boat, and suddenly it plunged, straight down. Like a raptor.”
“Do you want to sit in this chair? Then it’ll be easier for you to see over there.”
“No, I’m just fine sitting here.”
In this manner we continue to unwind, together in the emptiness.
“You think the people sitting over by that poster are Danes?”
“Did you hear them speak Danish?”
“No, it’s just that … there’s something about them.”
Then we grow quiet again.
We’re so close to Denmark. But here in Sweden, no one knows who we are.
We walk out onto the rocks, maintaining our balance all the way down to the water, sometimes holding hands and other times proceeding separately and using the rocks for support. We stretch out upon a great flat stone, feeling the sun on our faces, our bodies. The heat, the calm, the distant sound of chattering children someplace behind us. Our bodies dissolve. And then the shadows are long; we must have lain here for hours, my head upon his chest and his head upon mine, my bare knee over his bare thigh, his hairy thigh across my belly, my nose against his … my eyes … my heel in a puddle of water on the rock.
We walk back toward the harbor and the kiosk. The low sun is golden over the fields and accentuates each rise, each rocky projection here where the Halland Ridge subsides to topsoil and thence to shore and sea. We walk down a path through fields of grain, then up along a rise until we come to a parasol over a table with cardboard baskets of strawberries. A sign says 30 CROWNS. We take two baskets, leave a hundred-crown note and take forty crowns in change from the small pail of money on the table. We’ll eat the berries tonight, after we’ve eaten dinner in the restaurant beneath the guesthouse where we’re staying. We can eat them in the dark down by the shore or up among
the elderly visitors on the guesthouse grounds.
And so it continues: nothing happening. Nothing at last. Nothing, nothing, transparently nothing.
• • •
During dinner that evening, Bernard tells me about the first time he took Lærke to a swimming pool after the accident.
Three months had passed and she still had no initiative at all. She essentially remained sitting wherever Bernard or the staff at the rehab center placed her. She never ventured to do anything of her own accord, and her face never lit up because of something she felt or thought on her own.
Bernard arranged with one of Lærke’s girlfriends who had stuck with her since the car wreck to help Lærke in the dressing room. He stood outside for a long time, waiting for them to come out, and when they emerged and Lærke saw all the water, she started to flail about, out of sheer excitement—her right arm flew up and down, she squealed loudly and started to run toward the water. She fell right away, of course, but they had a good grip on her so she didn’t hit the tiles; they helped her up, and then she started flailing and running and fell once more. Lærke’s friend and Bernard both began to laugh, because it was such a relief to see Lærke suddenly as unmanageable as an overexcited three-year-old. Something had finally gotten through to her.
Lærke knew she wasn’t supposed to act that way at the pool, but just as it was impossible for her to increase her energy level at home through mere force of will, at the pool it was impossible for her to lower it.
Bernard led the two women out into a hallway where Lærke could calm down before they took her back to the water again. They did that twice. The third time she no longer tried to run, but her right arm was still out of control, flying every which way, and she was shouting with such joy that the lifeguard came rushing over and Bernard—who had decided once and for all to never act ashamed of his wife—had to explain that the only thing happening was that Lærke was happy to be there.
Since then, Bernard’s used what he saw at the pool to make Lærke’s life easier. He’s constantly on the lookout for experiences that might increase her engagement at the right time. He can’t take her swimming every time they have to do something important, of course, but less drastic measures also help. Disco music and old video recordings of talk shows with Jarl Friis-Mikkelsen are perfect.
Disco gets put on the stereo fifteen minutes before guests arrive, or before Bernard and Lærke have to go somewhere. If the music remains on for more than ten minutes, Lærke becomes overwrought and agitated, and if it isn’t put on, their friends will be disappointed by how listless she is.
They use Jarl Friis-Mikkelsen to create a calmer joy. Winnie will often pop a talk-show tape in their old VCR before Bernard or the boys come home. Lærke has also learned to manage her own energy level with music and other experiences; with time, it’s become as natural for her as it is for others to drink a cup of coffee or have some candy to wake up or calm down.
This three-day vacation’s the first time since the accident that Bernard’s been away from her for several days in a row. Down in the break room at school, we concocted a story about how he had to work for a business client in Aalborg.
As for me, I signed up for a continuing-ed seminar on pedagogical theory, leaving the course materials around on the dining table and then in my bedroom. I’d stand with program and participant list in hand, talking about how I was looking forward to it. Perhaps I overdid it; it’s hard to know, as I never really paid attention to how much room such papers took up in our family’s everyday clutter.
The stories seemed so simple when Bernard and I planned them, but one lie feeds the next. When Helena heard I was going on a seminar, she naturally asked why in the world I’d chosen to use some of my relatively few days off this summer with these particular teachers, who were so theoretical and impractical. Normally, neither of us would have considered taking a course like that. She wanted to know what I thought I could use their highfalutin theories for in my everyday work—and Frederik happened to hear my reply.
He threw himself into a disquisition on educational theories and challenges, and while otherwise we might have been able to connect with each other through our shared interest in teaching, our discussions now were grounded in lies about what I thought and what I wanted from my job—lies about who I was.
A pall of deceit and alienation settled over our meals and interactions, heavier than before. And when Niklas was there, too.
This must be what it’s like to have an affair, I thought—something I’d never tried before. The real Frederik, my unfaithful spouse from before the tumor, must have lived for years like this, inhabiting two realities at the same time. This had been his life.
On the first morning of the seminar, I showed up and struggled to sit calmly in my chair, unable to focus on anything at all due to pure physical anticipation. A couple of hours later, I told the course leader I was feeling ill, and then I drove to the Elsinore ferry to Sweden and waited for Bernard.
• • •
In the bright dining room of the guesthouse, each regular has her own white linen napkin and napkin ring, waiting for her at her assigned place at one of the small tables. Everything’s just as it has been for half a century, with guests who return gratefully year after year.
Bernard places his cell phone and our room keys on the starched white cotton tablecloth, and then we walk over to the buffet.
The guesthouse was furnished many years ago by the family who lived in this stately manor, just a hundred yards from the beach and even closer to the woods. They’ve let their old mahogany furniture remain in the rooms and the family pictures on the walls. Over time, the manor and the grounds have only grown more idyllic, though the guests are older now. Around us are several well-dressed women in their seventies and eighties, each seated at her own table with an empty place across from her.
Soon I’m back from the buffet with a bowl of oatmeal topped with stewed apples and cinnamon, evidently a traditional breakfast in Sweden. Bernard walks leisurely around the long table, pondering the eggs, the bacon, the cheese and fruit. He wakes in stages, I now know. And when in a little while the young woman asks me what we’d like to drink, I also know I should order him a double espresso.
While he’s up there, I hold his cell in my hand, feeling its smooth backside against my palm, a bit like skin. Suddenly the display lights up: Winnie calling, it says, and without thinking I press the END CALL button before the phone manages to ring.
This holiday mustn’t end early. But it’s about to—or in any case, its unspoiled happiness is. For Bernard’s mother-in-law wouldn’t call without a reason—and the reason must have something to do with Lærke. I feel the urge to cry. An icon on the cell display indicates that there’s been a call, and a moment later another icon appears, to show that a message has been left. Can I erase the message and remove the icon? These are the last good minutes of our vacation. Of a vacation I never thought I’d take.
Bernard lumbers back to the table in his one-quarter-asleep gait with fruit, two croissants, and a little Nutella on his plate. I want to drink him in. To inhale him like air, suck him into my lungs, I want to see every little hair on his face, every little wrinkle, for this is the last I’ll see of him before our vacation ends.
Will he glance down when he grasps the arm of the chair to seat himself? Will he notice his phone and pick it up to see who’s called?
No, he only looks at me. And smiles broadly.
“Thank you for last night,” I say.
“I think it’s me who should be thanking you.”
We both laugh.
Yesterday morning, we studied all the widows at the breakfast tables around us and imagined their lives. Some were excessively erect of posture while others were hunched over, but they all radiated a certain dignity in their fine summer dresses, pressed and pastel.
Every summer for forty years, we agreed, they’ve been coming down here from Stockholm—at some point with just their husbands, and before
that with their children too, who could play on the grounds. As each man died, his widow had to consider carefully: should she lay this little paradise with him in the grave, this preserved essence of their summers’ happiness during the ’60s and ’70s? In the end, however, each widow insisted on her freedom and her right to go on living life on her own, and she kept making the trip.
But even though each return has been a declaration of independence, a loud exclamation to herself and the world at large that she still has a life to live, yet each summer’s visit, each napkin ring lying in the same spot in the dining room, becomes a shadow dance with a man who had once been warm and muscular and laughed when he came home from work, who chewed her out or ignored her or pressed himself into her during sleep. A man who is now dead and gone. And each sunken widow’s face moves about this bright dining room as a memorial tablet testifying to a love that extends beyond death.
The love that Bernard and I share is another sort. We’ve smuggled our deceit into their temple, and I imagine that if the pastel widow ladies discovered our infidelity, right here in the midst of their shrine, they would band together, hang us naked from the fruit trees out on the grounds of the estate, and flay us alive with their old women’s claws.
Is he looking down at the phone now? How can I divert his attention? If I try to move it away, it’ll only increase the risk of him looking.
Our last good minutes, our very last good minutes; I take him by the hand. He gazes into my eyes, I gaze into his and I say, “Thank you for a wonderful holiday.”
“And it isn’t even over yet,” he says.
I’m not a good person. When I listen to what Bernard has been through for his darling—with his respect for her undiminished, and a love that the widows here would admire—I know I haven’t deserved him. He’s denied it many times when I mention it, and I enjoy hearing his repeated denials, but I know that they don’t really hold water. I know that he still doesn’t know me, that I haven’t told him everything. For instance I haven’t told him about the night when Niklas found me on the kitchen floor, passed out from drinking.
You Disappear: A Novel Page 29
