Breathless (12 page)

T
he penultimate summer of my childhood, our days in the pearl fisher's house changed. Lukas had dropped out of school to work at the leather factory with his father. A sabbatical, he called it, but no one believed that. Sometimes I cycled up to the factory and waited for him to finish his shift. People poured out of the building, but Lukas was easy to spot in the crowd, always first out.

They tanned a hundred tons a week, and it showed on him—as if he tanned them all himself. The youngest invariably looked the most tired, worn out by the unfamiliar. Nonetheless, he never refused to come with me to the pearl fisher's house. He just had to go home first to shower away the smell, even though he had showered once at the factory.

—

We sat in the blazing hot sun against the wall of the house, dozing off and listening to music. When our skin started to blister, we undressed and went out into the water. I don't remember if summer was ahead of us or behind us, as we were in an everlasting season of warmth and an intermingling of identical days. I just remember how Lukas lifted me up in the water and hurled me like a grenade that exploded on contact with the quicksilver surface. I quickly swam back to land, though I knew that as soon as I came within reach he would catch me again, throw me far out once more, fling me into my place, make me feel how light I was compared with him.

I wriggled away, dived down and grabbed hold of his slippery penis, and pulled as hard as I could. That was the only weapon I had. Under the water his yell sounded like a muffled gurgling. I could feel him catch me and hold me down under the surface, so that I would panic and let go. I did in the end, but as soon as I felt his grip on my head loosen I swam between his legs, where he was standing with his feet apart in the water to keep his balance. I shot up behind him, twisted as I passed from water to air, threw myself onto his back, and then we whirled around again under the surface. His lungs could hold twice as much air as mine, so I was always the one who had to give in and go up for oxygen first. We kept on like this until we were blue with cold.

It was an entirely normal evening, but in the dusty greenery by the lake disaster lay in wait. I didn't notice my father's brother until it was too late, when he had already seen everything he believed he had seen. I had no time to warn Lukas. Rikard was quick. After a couple of strides out into the water, he tore me out of Lukas's arms and pushed me up onto land, ordering me to get dressed. Without waiting for explanation, he hit Lukas. Hadn't reckoned that he would stay on his feet, that he would have to hit him again. And that Lukas would remain standing. As if the blow were simply an unusually strong gust of wind between the trees. Rikard probably hadn't had a chance to think anything at all. He'd stop thinking the second he lost his temper, and because he lost the power of speech too, he gave the impression that he was stupid.

Certain things about Lukas were difficult to get used to—how swiftly he switched between bravado and subservience, a dangerous mix of extremes. An unpredictability that would have seemed alarming if I hadn't grown up with it. But he was like an untrustworthy dog you had known since he was a puppy, and it didn't frighten me, which was not the same thing as my relying on him.

He didn't dare hit back, but at least he should have defended himself instead of just standing there, uncomfortably resistant to the impact. I screamed at Rikard until my voice shattered his concentration. Only then did the nightmare end and Lukas staggered backward and sat down on the grass, his face covered in blood. I flew at Rikard, but bounced away like an insect, flew at him again, bounced away. Bent over Lukas at a menacing angle, Rikard hissed:

“This is just a little warning. Next time I won't be as careful. I don't know . . . how old you are . . . but my niece here is
eleven
.”

When Rikard marched off with me I could see over his shoulder that Lukas was trying to stand up but fell down in the grass again. It had never taken much to make him throw up, and now the concussion produced a cascade over the grass. At that moment he didn't seem to care where I'd gone. Behind me I heard a long string of words in Gábriel's language. It happened sometimes, words Lukas didn't even know the meaning of, tirades he had grown up with.

You feel no pain, Mama used to say. It wasn't true. Seeing Lukas there was unspeakably painful. Rikard carried me to make sure that he got me home, and the whole way he blamed Papa for everything: since David went this and since David went that . . . I had become unmanageable, they couldn't let me out of their sight for a second . . . Papa could be held responsible for all the things that had gone wrong since he disappeared.

We were hardly through the door before Rikard reported Lukas and me to the security police in the house. It always happened this way at home—no private life, no integrity or honor.

“I understand why Papa ran off,” I stood in the corner of the kitchen and howled, “and I intend to report you for assault, Rikard, just so you know!” No one took any notice of me. Rikard and Mama wound each other up; they were the most indignant people in the kitchen, on a sliding scale down to Papa's father, who was sitting at his place by the table looking moderately shaken.

“Lukas isn't a child anymore, he's an adult now,” Mama said, in a voice that indicated that this was bad news, and a glance at Grandfather that meant he needed to do something about it.

“You're not going to report anything,” was all Grandfather said to me gently. “If anybody needs to be concerned, it's that lad and his family.”

“He has no family,” I spat out. “No one, no one!”

Rikard stopped me when I tried to slip out of the kitchen. “Yes, but he has a father, and that's the person we're going to speak to.”

“You said yourselves that he's an adult, so don't talk to his father . . . he beats him all the time.”

Mama stopped, midstep. “You've never said that before.” As if she didn't believe me. As if it were just a means of diverting attention away from Lukas's crime.

“Well, that is
not
what all this is about right now,” Rikard objected, his voice cold.

When Mama went off to speak to Gábriel, to get him to understand that the family's patience with his son had run out, Grandfather accompanied her. Not because she asked him to, but perhaps to offer some protection—to her or to Lukas's father wasn't clear.

It didn't reflect on me. I was just a child, they said. A name and a reputation—if nothing else, at least we have that. That applied to Lukas and his father too, and they ought to bear it in mind. That was Papa's mother's opinion.

That night I sneaked out after they had all gone to sleep, down to Lukas's house. He was sleeping in the room behind the kitchen, woke up and let me in through the window. When he switched on the light I got a shock. Which of the injuries were caused by Rikard's outburst by the lake and which were caused by Gábriel, I didn't know, but the sight of him . . .

“What does he think I've done with you? That Rikard,” Lukas mumbled. “I've never . . . I've just . . .” I laid my hand on his split lips, frightened that Gábriel would wake up. Explained that Rikard believed that he had to play the part of my papa now, and obviously thought that this was the sort of thing fathers did.

“It's not your fault,” Lukas said, but what he was thinking in reality I don't know. His dark eyes were ashen. “Has he hit you too?” I shook my head, no, no, Rikard would never do that, he just told me off, made threats, imposed restrictions, involved the whole family, raised hell, and said that if Lukas and I ever . . .

—

I had collected some toads after the rain. Heavy and still from the warmth of the night, they had been lying on the gravel track between our houses and let me pick them up. When I was banned from going out they starved to death in the buckets in the pearl fisher's house. A peaceful death, Lukas consoled me, but they didn't look peaceful where they'd been trying to escape by scrambling over one another and died in a sinking tower of toad flesh. In the place where he buried them the grass stopped growing.

We continued to meet, but took more safety measures. As if nothing had happened and as if no harm could come to us again. But it had, of course, and it could happen again. Something had changed, and I didn't want to see him through the same eyes my family had, but it was hard to stop myself.

“Sex is the only thing grown-ups think about,” I said, testing.

Lukas tensed.

“They can't stop us from seeing each other,” I added.

“I think they can.”

“No.”

He looked doubtful. “Anyway, we have to make them think that they can,” he said.

I
f only I'd just had an inkling of what would happen, a hint of a threat brewing, a shift on the horizon, something. Not this: cloudless sky and then lightning that suddenly struck and without a sound set fire to everything. Papa had been standing in the yard one morning in late winter, his bags packed, his brother Jon behind the wheel of the Volvo to drive him somewhere. Where? The world's end? Mama's mother was crying, at any rate. Not Papa's mother, she wasn't the crying type, nor Mama; she just stood by the open front door with a face I didn't recognize. Rikard, newly awakened, came down from upstairs, Papa's father was nowhere to be seen—at least afterward I couldn't remember him. The rest of the family was scattered here and there in the yard, as if something had flung them apart, a shock wave or simply a feeling of bewilderment. The consternation was still palpable. I was sitting on Papa's hip, clinging on with all my strength as his hands were full.

“Where are you going? When are you coming home? I want to come too.” Not that I wanted to. I had never traveled anywhere and would rather stay at home. But he looked lonely. No one in the family had gone away alone before. That was not the way we did things.

Around Mama was an impenetrable air of “leave me alone.” The others in the family took turns keeping me occupied so that I would leave her be. No one explained what had happened or why.

If only I could remember a single time that Mama and Papa had argued. Had I forgotten? Or had they lived a secret life that I had not even seen? It's true that they didn't sleep together, but it had been like that for as long as I could remember. Papa slept in the narrow passage above the stairs, Mama in the north room with his sister Marina.

That very night previous, I had been woken by something, a noise or a dream, sneaked out of bed, discovered that Mama was not in fact lying in the double bed back to back with Marina as usual. In my drowsy state I thought that maybe she had gone to sleep with Papa after all. I crept in next to Marina feeling muddled but contented, and fell asleep as soon as I felt her warm back against mine. In the morning I awoke to full-blown disaster.

—

After Papa disappeared, Mama didn't want to keep any happy pictures of him. She took them out of the albums. I rescued them from the trash can and hid them among the other forbidden things in the dust under her wardrobe. She never gave away their secret, not even in revenge for Papa leaving. No revelation, apart from what I heard her say to his father—to destroy a man is not difficult, the difficult thing is to get along with him. The words etched themselves as a permanent enigma.

A cloud perhaps, if I thought hard about it. They were chopping wood in a race against each other once. An unreal atmosphere in the yard with their rhythmic breathing, more and more vehement. Mama won by a mile. Papa's talent wasn't for chopping firewood. I don't know what it was, but not chopping wood, at any rate. He was weak, his father maintained, and I thought that perhaps that was why he could walk on water, or at least on ice, something no one else in our family could do . . . because he weighed nothing. But he wasn't weak. Though I didn't tell Grandfather this, once a long time ago I saw him hit Mama in the scullery. It was only the one time, and she hit back, and by dinnertime they were pretending nothing had happened. And perhaps Grandfather was right in one way. Perhaps it was just because he was weak that he lashed out.

—

“Don't think about him,” Rikard said when he came with me down to the lake to bathe, “and if you don't think about him, he might come back.” Rikard's back was warm from the sun when I laid my wet stomach against him and said, “Can't you marry Mama . . . ?” Papa had been away for several weeks by that point and I'd realized he wasn't going to return. Rikard stiffened and then he began to laugh.

“You mean one of those brother-in-law marriages? So that the property won't leave the family?” He rolled me off into the grass. I didn't know what “brother-in-law marriage” or “property” meant. But I assumed that I was “property”—and I most definitely did not want to leave the family. “If your mother had wanted me I would have married her long ago. Well, supposing I didn't regard her as my big sister, that is. David should have done the same, for that matter. Not messed it up like this.” My mouth tasted of water lily. I wrapped myself up in the towel, shivering, and waited for him to continue. Because it felt as though he ought to say something more, something about . . . supposing my parents had not messed it up, I wouldn't have existed. But he said nothing.

When Rikard lifted me up I was weightless. He walked out into the water and flung me out over the surface, light as a fishing net, just the way he knew I loved. How could he leave her, I thought as I sank to the bottom, how could he? For that was what he'd done, though no one said so, wounds just left to heal themselves. Conflicts were settled between those affected; you left other people's lives in peace. That was how we did things more often than not.

I let myself sink so that I could be rescued, but Rikard would have to hurry now. What was he doing? The cold water from the bottom of the lake shimmered toward me as I sank deeper and deeper. He didn't come to save me, not this time. I had to fight my way up with sludge water in my mouth, blue-lipped. He was sitting in a patch of sun on the grass looking at me.

“When do you intend to learn to swim, Lo?” I could swim, only I dared not show I could as it was Lukas who had taught me. “When are you going to grow up?” I realized that it was time. I was nearly nine and to all intents and purposes fatherless now. No one was going to rescue me.

—

Mealtimes were a wordless torture. May I have the butter; pass the salt. Mama didn't even say that. Quietest of all. Go out and play, I saw in her eyes as soon as I happened to fall within her field of vision.

I tried to wear down their patience with questions, but it led nowhere. Papa's father had the shortest temper in the family, so I started to work on him carefully. At first he paid no attention to my nagging, then he got annoyed. Finally he gave in. Late one evening he came into my room and gave me a picture of an oil rig, high as a skyscraper out in the middle of a blue-black sea with no land in sight. This was where my papa was, on this great steel monster that was drilling oil from the seabed far out in the North Sea.

“Stop going on about it now,” Grandfather demanded in return. As if Papa's reappearance were a kitten I was never going to get. I cried myself to sleep that night. Not because he was there—I knew he wasn't, knew he had such bad vertigo that he couldn't even go up into the attic with both Mama and Grandfather holding the steps. I cried because they had lied to me. One lie turns everything into a lie.

—

The picture of the oil rig where Grandfather alleged Papa was working hung like a fixture over my bed, even though I was sure he was not there. It's true he could walk on water, but only when it was frozen, and I found it impossible to imagine my father in the dark with his vertigo drilling oil from the bottom of the sea with storms and albatrosses howling around his ears. Alone among men, according to Grandfather. It was only men who worked out there, real men.

I thought that it might have something to do with her—the one who disappeared under the ice—but it was so long ago now and I wasn't sure what the connection could be. The picture nailed to the wall as a reminder. That adults are not to be trusted. In my dreams the steel monstrosity moved like a giant spider through a desolate sea in a heavy storm. In contrast to me, Lukas was impressed. He didn't really care that it was a lie. A lie was at least an answer, but he didn't even have a lie as explanation for what had happened to his mother.

—

After Papa went off I began to see adults as merely shadows who carried their secrets and lies and lunchboxes and their tension headaches, their hideous hairstyles and tennis elbows, through a town that didn't even have a tennis court. The elbows they had acquired at the factory. The hairstyles at the Greek's. They carried them between work and the shop, home and the public baths and the lake. Carried their plastic bags and secrets, their tiredness, their hopes, their exaggerated optimism for the future and private despair, and everything in terry toweling, gabardine, denim, corduroy, and rib knits, and the jerry cans, shotguns, snow cannons, bicycle chains, cod for the soup, gossip, holiday plans. Much of it came to nothing. Some things succeeded, but most did not. The adults carried everything around apart from their children, for there was a do-not-indulge mentality that they all made their common cause. All except those who carried me. Long after I could walk they took turns carrying me, competed for it. I was big when I discovered by mistake that I could in fact walk by myself. They would rather I had never discovered it, that I had never noticed the smell of those secrets.

Don't indulge. Don't disgrace yourself. It was the unspoken rule that applied to all other children, it was part of the community, but we didn't belong to it, so we could just as well behave as we liked.