A Summer of Drowning

by John Burnside

  I don’t get that much mail, nowadays, but back then any letter would have been an event – though not usually a happy one. I didn’t like mail, and I disliked the telephone even more – who wants to talk to someone they can’t see? It’s hard enough talking to someone who’s right in front of you. A boy in my class sent me a note, once, when I was fourteen, and Mother has been known to send me things through the post – surprise gifts and postcards – but I can’t recall ever writing a letter myself. I didn’t reply to the boy – I suspect he only wrote the note for a joke – and, though I sometimes leave drawings and cartoons on the kitchen table along with brief notes to let Mother know I’ve gone out, I’ve never had to address an envelope. The truth is, I’ve always regarded communications from the outside world with a degree of suspicion. Most mail is for Mother, of course, and, unless it’s from Fløgstad, she quite often leaves it unread for days, or even weeks, at a time. Maybe that’s where I get it from. Anyhow, whatever the reason, my first impulse was to throw the letter in the bin and forget about it. It had nothing to do with the life I was living. It had nothing to do with the life I wanted and, at the very least, it felt like an imposition. Yet I couldn’t throw it away and though I read it with increasing distaste and no little anger, I read it through to the end and then, when I was done, I read it again – hoping, I think, that I had misread something, and the whole thing would turn out to be a mistake. Because it was a mistake, as far as I was concerned.

  The letter – a single white sheet of unlined paper in a smooth, cream-coloured envelope – was from a woman in England who said she lived with my father. I was out when it arrived and, because it was addressed to me, Mother left it on the kitchen table – and I knew, as I read it that, even though it was completely unexpected, she wouldn’t ask me about it, or intrude in any way upon what she would have seen as a private matter. She has always been fastidious that way. She is a person of infinite and careful scruple, governed first and foremost by the rule that, in order to have the space she requires to work and to be herself, she must grant those around her just as much, or even more, of that same space. It’s not just a matter of live and let live, it’s much subtler and more negotiated than that. The space she needs, and the space she grants, is constantly shifting, and she is never indifferent to anything, but she takes pleasure in concealment for no obvious reason, and she enjoys those moments when things slip by unremarked, or even unseen. She must have been curious about a letter from England, coming out of the blue like that, but she didn’t say a word, and I am quite certain that, as soon as she saw that it was addressed to me – a rare occurrence, as I have said – she set it down on the table and chose to think no more about it.

  What is surprising, looking back, was that the letter didn’t say very much and, on this first occasion, it didn’t ask for anything from me either – or not in so many words – yet it was a shock nevertheless, because, after eighteen years I was now learning about the existence and present circumstances of my father from someone who wrote in the matter-of-fact, disengaged tone of a new penfriend who doesn’t quite know how to break the ice. The address on the envelope was handwritten, but the letter itself was typed, which struck me as odd, under the circumstances. It told me the name of my supposed father – Arild Frederiksen, a name that, oddly enough sounded vaguely familiar – and it went on to say that he had spent the last eighteen years travelling the world, first as a foreign correspondent and then as a travel writer, but that he was now ill and the writer of the letter – who signed herself Kate Thompson – wanted to let me know this, adding, in conclusion, that she hoped that her writing to me at this time would not seem intrusive and that, even though she herself was a stranger, I should think of her as a well-intentioned one.

  A well-intentioned stranger. That struck me as funny. How could this woman think it was well intentioned, to write such a letter and send it, out of the blue, to someone she didn’t know? And what was it she wanted? I assumed, of course, that she wanted something, or she wouldn’t have written, and she must have been banking on my curiosity about a father I had never met, hoping I would respond in some way that would allow her to say what that something was. And it was true, I had wondered about my father for years, and I had told myself, when I was little, that I would find him some day and bring him home to Mother, so they could be together again, even though Mother had always told me that he’d gone to live in South America, and that she didn’t want him to come back, because she was happy with me, happy with how the two of us lived, doing what we liked and not needing anybody else. Whenever I asked about him – where he was now, what his name was, why he had gone away – she had told me the same story, a story pared down to the most basic essentials and free of ornament: he had been in Oslo for a summer, they had known each other for a while, but he had left around the time she got pregnant, which was fine, because she was happy and she hoped I was happy too, just as we were. She’d never told me anything substantial, never given me anything to go on, and I hadn’t pressed her. For a while, when I was younger, I really did want answers – and I asked my few questions again and again, getting the same vague story over and over, but I didn’t push, I didn’t insist because, to begin with, I didn’t know how, when she was so determined, and, later, I realised that I didn’t really care any more. Or rather: I taught myself to stop asking, because I wasn’t inclined to know something that she was so intent on not telling me. I trusted her, and if she felt that strongly about not telling me the whole story, then she must have had her reasons. Besides, I had everything I wanted and, at the back of my mind, there was a nagging, superstitious part of me that suspected having just one thing more might ruin everything. Even at seven, I knew who I was and what I needed – and maybe that was the point. Maybe the one lesson Mother wanted me to learn was exactly this gift for self-reliance we only acquire when we are deprived of something that had once seemed essential. I think that’s fair. I learned to live without a father quite happily, because I didn’t need a father – or rather, I didn’t need the father that chance had provided. And no, this is not the story of some poor soul starved of a proper childhood and the usual rich tapestry of family and emotional support. I really was happy, growing up, and I can’t think of an alternative history that I would prefer. I am happy now, too, in much the same way and for much the same reasons – a woman living more or less alone, daughter of a mother whose first love was, and continues to be, her work, and of a father who never really existed. I was happy as I was, without this father – and if I could make one change in my life as I have lived it so far, it would be to go back and throw this letter, and everything that came after, into a midsummer night’s bonfire, and watch the whole pile go up in smoke.

  I didn’t throw that letter in the fire, however – and though I didn’t look at it again, I spent the next three days thinking about it. I considered sending back a brief and courteous reply, saying I wasn’t interested in the blithe correspondence that Kate Thompson had in mind, and I considered writing to say that, as far as I was concerned, I didn’t have a father, but I didn’t do either. I thought about taking the letter to Mother, and I wonder, now, that I didn’t – but then, just as I hadn’t wanted to be caught up in whatever this well-intentioned stranger’s plan might be – happy reunion, forgiveness, remission of sins – I didn’t want to distract Mother with it either. She had seen the letter, after all, and in the days that followed, she didn’t ask me who it was from, or what it said, which I could only interpret as an indication that the best thing to do about such letters was to ignore them. Which is exactly what I did. I didn’t want that letter and, because I didn’t know what to do about it, I put it aside and tried to pretend that it had never arrived. I’m not sure what I expected to happen, but I hid the letter away safely, in a place where Mother would not find it, and I waited. I had no wish to be cruel, but I had no desire to get involved either, so I decided to believe that this Kate Thompson would accept my silence as the least inelegant response I
could offer to a message I had never wished to receive.

  It’s Midsummer Night. All over the country, people are lighting bonfires, gathering on the shore of some southern fjord, or walking to a patch of open ground in Narvik or Mosjoen, for the yearly celebration of life and light – and that is what I will be doing too, on this island in the white north that most of them have never even heard of, driving thirty kilometres along the coast to observe the ritual with whatever handful of almost-neighbours and near-strangers happens by. That’s what I have always done, and that is what I shall do for as long as I am here, which may well be the rest of my life. I know, of course, that this notion would strike my former self as more than a little odd, but it’s what I’ve settled on and, for the most part, I am happy enough with the idea of remaining here forever – though happy isn’t quite the word I am looking for. Certainly, I am happy enough on nights like this, though it isn’t the same without Kyrre Opdahl, and I don’t suppose it ever will be. It was Kyrre who first brought me to the midsummer fires, and it was Kyrre who told me the stories that, more than anything else, bind me so closely to this place. So I suppose it’s his fault that, in spite of all that happened, I will always belong here, and nowhere else. Back then, Mats and Harald Sigfridsson would be there too, eerie and white in the firelight, standing apart from the rest of the crowd, in a world inhabited only by themselves – and every midsummer I remember that, had they only stayed in that world, that summer’s events might never have happened. Maia would never have become the huldra, and Kyrre wouldn’t have lost his mind; Martin Crosbie would have gone home with a few pictures and stories, to make his summer in the Arctic Circle into some kind of romance that, with time and effort, he would have managed to believe. And me? Sometimes, in these last ten years, when chance has taken me that way, or when I’ve had nothing better to do, I’ve gone back the next morning to the scene of the fire and stood watching the ashes lift and fritter away in the wind, blowing out over the meadows or along the shore to wherever it is things disappear to, after they are done with this world. I don’t know why I do this, unless it’s because I am looking for something. A sign, maybe, or some memory of a word or a gesture that I missed back then – or maybe it’s just that my eye wants to follow the trail of spent ashes, in the hope of discovering that gap in the fabric of the world where those whom the old stories condemn cannot help but disappear, whether they believe in the stories or not.

  That year, in the run-up to Midsummer Day, Mother was busier than usual. She had no fixed schedule, but then she never had; she would vanish for hours, or even days, at a time, only emerging to cook a meal or fix some coffee and carry it back to the studio, and though she did her best to make those mealtimes coincide with mine, it didn’t always happen. When I was younger, she was scrupulous about that: she would be there when I was there, only working when I was asleep or in school. Later, though, when I was in my teens, she started observing her own timetables, and she would often be blithely unaware of what was happening in the outside world. The studio was at the back of the house, overlooking the garden and the carved stones just beyond; there was no traffic there, and nothing to see besides a stand of birch trees and the low pine-covered hills, so she was utterly cut-off, completely alone and completely silent. I didn’t mind that, though. I liked my own company. I liked sitting in the kitchen by myself, over a sandwich and a glass of milk, quietly revelling in the sensation I sometimes had of being the last person on earth. Saturday mornings excepted, nobody came to our house unless they were summoned or had an appointment and, if anybody had turned up unannounced, they would have had to park on the road below, next to the little garage where Mother kept her own car, which she very rarely used. That summer was no different. In fact, to me, it felt even quieter, even more remote from the world, because school was over and I had no sense, really no sense at all, of anything that might resemble a plan for the future. Time – the time measured out by clocks and calendars and daily routines – had more or less disappeared, to be replaced by a long, slow, pleasurable drift, where nothing was required of me, and I could do exactly what I wanted. I was living in the present, and the present was a sweet, apparently endless limbo.

  I spent days wondering what Kate Thompson would do next. It wasn’t clear whether she had written to me at Arild Frederiksen’s instigation, or even with his consent, and I wondered how sick he actually was, and whether he even knew what she had done. To me, the letter had come as an unwelcome intrusion, to say the least, and I didn’t really know what to do about it. Should I write back or would that only encourage her to pursue the matter? Should I tell Mother? She hadn’t said anything about the letter: but what would she say if I mentioned it first? My first impulse was to write and tell this well-intentioned stranger to go away, but I was pretty sure that was a waste of time. I could have discussed my options with Mother, I suppose, and she would have supported me in any decision I made – but that was precisely the point: I didn’t want to make a decision. It wasn’t fair that I had to consider making a decision, because I hadn’t done anything to invite this woman into my world. All I wanted was to be left alone and the simple fact, the fact that I kept returning to, was that this wasn’t fair. I had no interest, now, in Arild Frederiksen, none of the curiosity that, presumably, Kate Thompson was counting on, and I didn’t want to think about what the next letter might ask of me – because I knew, of course, that something would be asked, eventually. I thought about the letter all that night, and all through the next morning – all the while waiting to see if Mother would mention it – and then, over a solitary lunch in the kitchen, I decided that I would banish this sudden father and his lady friend to the world of bogeymen and phantoms, the world, in other words, to which they rightfully belonged, and forget that they even existed.

  I was being naive, of course. I think I even knew that, but I couldn’t see any other option. Or none that I could accept. If I responded to the letter, if I talked about it to Mother, if I did anything at all, I would be acknowledging this man’s existence in my life, and I refused to do that. So I sat in the kitchen and ate a chicken-and-tomato sandwich on white bread, followed by an apple and a few slices of gjetost, and I determined to put the letter out of my mind. I listened to the radio for a while, then I fetched my camera bag and sat at the dining-room table, cleaning all the lenses slowly and carefully with a soft, blue anti-static cloth. It must have been about two o’clock when Mother appeared in the doorway. ‘Busy?’ she said, her expression neutral to mildly curious. It might have been intended as sarcasm, but I didn’t think so. She wasn’t one of those people who thought everybody else should work all the time, just because she did. On the contrary. If anything, I probably could have done with a bit more push from her – school was done, and I ought to have been doing something about my future, but I hadn’t lifted a finger. It might have been good for me, if she’d had a good old-fashioned mother-to-daughter heart-to-heart about what I was going to do with my life, but that just wasn’t her style. In most people’s eyes, she was a successful person – maybe in her own eyes, too, though success would have meant something different to her, something that had more to do with freedom than money or fame – but I didn’t think she had ever done anything very calculated in her entire life, other than coming north. That, and having me, of course. She was always careful to let me know that I wasn’t something that had just happened to her: she had chosen me, and everything she did, everything she had ever done since the day I was born, was intended to make my life as good as possible. She worked so I wouldn’t have to make false choices; she worked so that I wouldn’t have to rush into something and then have to pretend that that was the bed I had chosen to lie on.

  I set the camera down on the table. ‘Not especially,’ I said. ‘Are you?’

  She smiled at the hint of sarcasm in my voice, though it hadn’t come out quite as I’d intended. ‘I should be,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got this journalist coming at two thirty.’ She looked out of the window. �
��That’s if he doesn’t get lost.’

  ‘What journalist?’ I said.

  She looked back at me, and her face betrayed something like surprise, with perhaps a hint of irritation. ‘The American,’ she said. ‘I told you he was coming –’

  ‘I don’t think so –’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ she said. She started through to the kitchen and I could hear her moving about, fetching the kettle, filling it. Her voice sang out above the tap. ‘He’s coming all the way from New York, or some place,’ she said. ‘God knows why.’ She reappeared in the kitchen doorway and gave me a searching look. ‘I told you about him,’ she said, but I could see now that she wasn’t so sure.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ I said. I was quite certain that she hadn’t mentioned anything about a journalist.

  She sighed. ‘Well,’ she said, letting her head fall in a picture of theatrical resignation before returning to the kitchen. ‘I’ll have to talk to him. And I don’t want to take him up to the studio …’ Her voice trailed off and I could hear crockery being brought down and set out.

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I was planning to go for a walk, anyway.’

  She came to the door. ‘You don’t have to go out,’ she said. ‘I just thought –’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I need some air.’ I picked up the camera. ‘Maybe I’ll take some pictures.’

  She smiled. ‘Well, if it’s all right,’ she said. ‘He has come a long way.’

  I almost laughed at that. She wasn’t usually like this before an interview. Was she flattered that the man had come all the way from New York, just to see her? Or was it something else? It was so easy to slip back into the myth that had built up around her, how she chose to live alone, not saying a word for days on end, lost in her art and entirely self-sufficient – but I think she enjoyed those conversations, when they came, even though she pretended they were a chore. Interviewers always noticed how generous she was; they always made a point of saying how this notorious recluse made time for them and responded freely to their questions – and, because of the myth, they never guessed that those conversations meant much more to her than she pretended. When the interviewers left, with their tape recorders and notebooks, they always thanked her for the time she had so graciously given up; they never seemed to realise that she hadn’t given anything at all. She had taken. It hadn’t been much – what she took was carefully measured out, and the limit was never exceeded – but it fed her in some obscure way so that, quite often, when the visitor had been safely waved off, she would hurry up to her studio and not emerge until the next morning. That was how it worked, for her, on occasion – but it wasn’t what the interviewers said that mattered, it wasn’t the questions they asked, or the challenges they posed, that made the difference. No: it was what she said, or thought and didn’t say, during those long conversations that sent her away in some new direction. Those conversations allowed her to surprise herself from time to time, and that was why she had them. There was no other reason – though I sometimes wished there was.