A thought has been planted inside me and I allow it to grow when I have time. I’m thinking of liberating Carl from the care home, getting a little apartment for the two of us, just a couple of rooms, and then taking charge of his care myself. Like Langley Collyer I’ll go out foraging, he’ll be waiting by the door when I return from my what-could-be-nightly excursions. ‘What have you brought for me?’ he’ll ask, hardly able to wait till I’ve put my purse down – he’ll already have his hands inside looking for something good. He’ll no longer be a drug addict, because I can’t have anything to do with that. He’ll have been cured years earlier, that’s the way it has to be. Or instead, I’ll go out at night to buy drugs for him. If he takes off, I’ll go out searching for him. Do I suddenly see him between two officers? Where is all that money going to come from? I can barely pay for the apartment. Then I’ll cure him of his habit the hard way. He is no longer a drug addict, done. He is in poor health after all the tough years, but I know better than to put him on a diet of oranges, no extremes with us, nice and easy, perfectly normal diet. I live in fear that he is going to die. I can’t remember what we used to talk about, if we have ever even talked. Mother? What was there to say about our very own Asiatic troll, we would bow our heads when she entered the kitchen. I still can’t grasp that death could stop her. She was like a steam train.
Well, then I’ve gone to New Jersey.
Narrator
And you really shouldn’t have done that.
Vivian
The care home is on a hill, it is a red building with lots of chimneys, I can suddenly remember the postcard of the correctional facility Coxsackie that Carl sent us, it was also a red building but it was situated on an enormous lawn and had a tall chimney (after the camps, chimneys became forever ugly), the inmates made various things, they had to learn a trade while they were re-educated. Vacational School, oh Nana and then also oh Grandma because they belonged together. No, I didn’t call first. It’s always difficult to know what to call Carl, so I hesitate a little by the counter, but okay, Vivian Maier would like to visit Carl Maier. The glasses resting on the nose, gazing above them, I think she looks like Paula Fox whom I think highly of and whose mother almost sounds worse than mine. A kind face, a good start to a dubious expedition. Take a hike, V Smith.
‘Good day, I’m looking for my brother Carl Maier, my name is Vivian Maier.’
Well, so that’s that.
‘One moment,’ and ‘He’s never had a visitor before, I’ll just have to prepare him a little.’
I’m scared, admittedly, and so I quickly eat a piece of chocolate I was supposed to give to Carl, it sets the nerves at rest. You can’t outright accuse them of being busy. Maybe he doesn’t want to.
Narrator
Then a tall man wearing a sports jacket and a baseball cap came through the revolving door, ‘How are you doing?’ he shouted straight away, and waved. The lady from the counter led him over to Vivian and suggested they go for a little walk in the park, under the sufficiently cloudy sky, yes, but the air was not cold for the time of year.
Vivian
Carl has become a digitigrade.
‘Do you recognize me, Carl?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Would you rather go for a stroll, or should we sit down?’
‘Sit. I don’t walk very well.’
‘Oh no, what’s the matter?’
‘It’s mercury poisoning.’
‘Oh, did you swallow a thermometer? No, that was stupid. I know you know Mother is dead, do you also know that Father is dead?’
‘No. I’ve just been here.’
‘So tell me, what do you think of Reagan? He’s as smooth as Father, isn’t he?’
Narrator
Then two residents walked past the bench where they sat. ‘Is that your young wife, Carl?’ one of them asked, and Vivian laughed.
‘It’s my little sister,’ Carl said.
‘Nice to have a good laugh, eh Carl.’
‘How are you doing?’ Carl asked and stood up, ‘should we go back inside?’
‘I brought a copy of Gallop Magazine.’
‘Thanks, that was a good idea,’ Carl said and took it and started to walk away.
‘I’ve come all the way from Chicago.’
‘Thank you so much.’
‘But are you happy here?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Don’t you want to talk a little more?’
‘Sure.’
‘Do you remember the kitchen with the wallpaper with ears of corn that I thought were reeds?’
‘No.’
‘You called me “Sis” two times, Carl.’
‘That’s obvious.’
‘Because it’s shorter than sister?’
‘Thank you so much for today.’
‘Carl, wait, I’m taking a…’
It was with his back turned.
When Viv has to tear herself away and leave, there is a moment where she almost wishes she was Carl who lives in the same surroundings and is surrounded by the same people, year after year. But maybe it’s just because the trip to Chicago lies ahead of her and it feels so long.
Viv
But no sooner had I torn myself away and walked down the hill than the old joy of being able to go anywhere I wanted returned.
Narrator
The two of you were never good when it was just you two, face-to-face. The grandmothers were needed, beams in the rickety house.
Viv
It felt nonetheless as though the last remnant of Purpose had abandoned me when I boarded the bus and started the long journey home. When I finally got off the train, it had grown even worse, Void, Abyss. Somebody shouts ‘Kiki.’ It’s pouring down. ‘Why don’t you go in the tunnel? You have to get in the tunnel,’ I shout. Then I grab the other end of his mattress, and while we lug it along, I recall a picture from years ago in Queens of three children with a baby carriage, where the little girl is struggling to fit an awfully grubby mattress back in the pram.
No sooner had I found him than I got word that he is dead. Exactly one month later. But would I have visited him again? I don’t think so. My three good boys have found me an apartment and pay the rent, everyone always fed Mother with money, that’s why she gave up and went to bed and only rarely made an attempt to support herself. But I can’t find work that includes lodging any more. I have seven locked rooms with my belongings now. I could take them back to my apartment, there was really rather a lot that I wanted to be reunited with, but I expect I’ll only be living here temporarily. I don’t know why I put my combings in envelopes, but I can’t stop, or to put it differently: I can’t summon the energy it would require to stop. And who would it bother? I’ve never had an apartment before, alone, to myself, I seem to see myself from the outside all the time, it’s very bothersome, as though I walked around holding a mirror in my hand.
Narrator
Anyone you stare at long enough will seem strange to you.
Viv
I can see in the bathroom mirror that gravity has been doing its job well and is probably nearing its conclusion, it almost looks like I’m dropping myself on the floor. However, my good feet look as good as ever, from what my no-longer quite-so-good eyes can tell from up here. When I absolutely have to bend down – perhaps I’ve dropped something I positively have to pick up – I see if there is anything else I can do while I’m down there seeing as I’ve made it that far.
I know I’m talking Jim D. half to death, and he runs away when he sees me. There is nobody else to talk to, so when I open my mouth all the floodgates are opened. He sometimes lets me enter free of charge. I saw that he caught me shoving food in my purse during the reception at the Film Center, but they’re just going to throw it out. It got rather wet in there – only dry things next time, Kiki. Every time I come home at night and go to let myself in, I think, now I’m going down to join them in the tunnel. New president, new war, hallelujah. My companion the apparatus lies collecting d
ust. For a long time, it could not find anything to feed on but front pages, signs, graffiti. ‘You sex-happy bastard’ – wasn’t that a good one to go out on!
Then I lost five of the storage rooms because I could no longer pay for them. And what have you done with my things, where can I collect my things? They were sold at auction, that was meant to pay for last year’s hire. It’s so abhorrent that I can’t have anything at all to do with it, all the grubby fingers digging into my life. Even if I could have my things back, I would not take them. Yes, I would sanitize them. But WHERE are all the photographs now? I try to look at it as though a hurricane had blown them to every corner of the world. I try to look at it as an impersonal wasteland. But I picture bodies, with their limbs chopped off.
Narrator
There were uncashed cheques worth thousands of dollars in your boxes. Why didn’t you cash them? You’re always short of money and borrow small sums from here and there which are difficult for you to repay.
Viv
I saved them for hard times. Those of us who grew up during the Depression learned to always set a little something aside for a rainy day.
Narrator
You collected cheques too, admit it. You couldn’t part with them. By the way, there was a canister of teeth in one of the boxes that was sold at auction. Vivian, whose teeth were they?
Viv
They were the children’s teeth, that goes without saying. I don’t like you.
Narrator
Which children?
Viv
They’re mine and Carl’s teeth.
Narrator
They don’t look like baby teeth.
Her three good boys who are grown men with beards and children have got her an apartment in a better neighbourhood. They also came and helped her clean the old one when she moved out, which is to say Viv sat in a chair with the newspaper and told them where they could find chlorine and ammonia.
She is virtually only there when she sleeps. She sits on a bench most of the day, right down by the lake, all wrapped up, because it’s November now. When her neighbours go past, she shouts advice at them, ‘Put on a hat so your ears don’t freeze off!’, or ‘Put a bell on your bike, or ‘Water your flowers, they’re dying!’, or ‘That skirt could be a little longer.’
She always has a can opener and a spoon with her and eats the food straight from the tin.
‘But aren’t you going to warm it up?’
‘But I like it this way,’ and then she thinks of Carl and remembers his despair at having so little self-control.
‘You have an interesting face,’ she says, and makes room on the bench for the man with the interesting face. He carries a wind instrument with him and blows notes out across the lake. One of the leafless trees is full of pigeons; a magpie is perched at the very top and the sun strikes its white breast.
Viv
When Obama is elected and I am standing in Grant Park sending jubilant cries towards the heavens, along with many others, I am even happier than when Kennedy was elected, or at least equally happy – I almost wish I had dusted off the old apparatus. Everyone is taking photos, completely at random, with their cell phones, just holding them in the air and shooting with no moderation.
A young girl embraces everyone she sees, me as well, I let it happen (it doesn’t disgust me), those were some splendid arms, but my bones cracked like a bird.
Narrator
It would be symmetrically pleasing (in so far as we’re almost ending where we started) to narrate that what she is thinking of on the day that she falls – when she gets up from the bench, slips and thumps her head on the flagstones – is the photograph of the horse lying on the street, with its head in a pool of its own blood.
Viv
The ground rose precipitously towards me, and I reached out but could not get a hold. Afterwards, when they had called for the ambulance, I hung on to the bench, but they detached my hands, and I thought about the hem of my mother’s dress, how tightly I held on to it, but how in the end they always managed to free her from me.
Credits
Origins of quotations used, in order of appearance.
‘A Bee his burnished Carriage’, The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime, Emily Dickinson, 1945.
‘Child of the Romans’, Chicago Poems, Carl Sandburg, 1916.
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, 1906.
‘Chicago’, Whittier’s Poems Complete, John Greenleaf Whittier, 1874.
Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster, 1927.
Newspaper article from The Boston Globe, 23 August 1902
Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
About the Author
Christina Hesselholdt, born in 1962, studied at the Danish Academy of Creative Writing in Copenhagen and published her first novel in 1991. She has since written sixteen books of prose, including several novels and short story collections, and has received numerous awards. Vivian won the Danish Radio Best Novel Award 2017 and was shortlisted for the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2017. In 2018, Christina Hesseldholdt received the Grand Prize of the Danish Academy for her body of work. Her latest novel, Virginia is for Lovers, was published in Denmark in 2019.
Paul Russell Garrett translates from Danish and Norwegian. He serves on the management committee of the Association of Danish-English Literary Translators (DELT) and is Programme Manager for a theatre translation mentoring programme, [Foreign Affairs] Translates!
Copyright
Fitzcarraldo Editions
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London, SE8 3DX
United Kingdom
Copyright © Christina Hesselholdt, 2016
Translation copyright © Paul Russell Garrett, 2019
Originally published in Great Britain
by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2019
The right of Christina Hesselholdt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
ISBN 978–1–910695–61–6
eISBN 978–1–910695–62–3
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Vivian Page 15
