Encircling (11 page)
Authors: Carl Frode Tiller
So we parted, and it was some years before I saw you again. While you moved to Trondheim to study literature, I turned down my place there and stayed behind in Namsos, not because we had split up and I was depressed or anything like that, but simply because Mum was getting worse and worse and had no one but me to help her. I had the idea that I could get a temporary job, take an external degree at night school, then move to Trondheim once we had found a way round the situation she found herself in due to her illness. But what was meant to be one year in Namsos turned into two, and what should have been two years turned into three, and so it went on.
It’s almost unreal to think back on what happened to me during those years when I was living at home, how I changed. The contempt I had once shown for small-town life didn’t merely disappear, after a while I almost began to cherish and value all the aspects of life in Namsos that I had once mocked. It was as if, quite unconsciously, I had gone all out to learn to embrace my own fate, and when you met me at
the Wine Monopoly the night before Christmas Eve eight or nine years ago, you met a guy who, while you would never have called him a loser, you did nonetheless regard as just that: a loser, a failure, someone who had had the same urge to travel as you and many of the same dreams for the future as you, but who had never got away.
I had just stuffed a half-bottle of Finlandia into my jacket pocket when I saw you standing at the head of the queue furthest away from the door. They didn’t have the wine you were looking for and the assistant had suggested another one that you didn’t look too happy about, but which – a little reluctantly, but with a smile – you accepted anyway. “Oh, all right,” I remember you saying, and when you’d been handed the bottles and paid for them you turned and looked straight into the eyes of a young, once plump, man with girlish features and a receding hairline, clad in a rather battered denim jacket. You, on the other hand, were wearing clothes I didn’t even know the names of, but which looked like the kind of thing I’d seen in the Sunday-paper style section. Your hair was short, you looked slim and remarkably fit, which surprised me a little I remember, maybe because it didn’t really seem to go with how a student of literature ought to look. We beamed at each other, shook hands and acted as if we were a little happier to see one another than we actually were. “Well, well, fancy meeting you here!” “I know! Long time, no see!” “Yeah, I know, far too long!” “Wow, great to see you!” “Great to see you, too!” And so on and so forth, talking loudly and effusively and clapping each other’s shoulders. I told you I was working in the music department at Øyvind Johansen’s, that I was still living at home, but that I was going out with Wenche Berg from the parallel class to ours in senior secondary and that we were planning to move to Trondheim in the autumn to
study. You told me you were single, living in the Lademoen area of Trondheim and that you’d soon be a fully qualified man of letters. “So now there’s no help for it, I’ll have to get out there and find myself a job too!” you said, laughing.
I remember being vaguely annoyed to hear you say such a thing. It sounded to me as if you felt sorry for me for the life I was leading and that you were trying to make me feel better by talking as if we’d both soon be in the same boat. But I didn’t comment on it. Instead I started to tell you about the subjects I was planning to take once we moved to Trondheim and what sort of career I was contemplating, but that fell flat as well. You smiled and nodded while I went on about my plans, but I could tell by your face that you thought it was all just talk and this only made me more annoyed. We chatted for a while longer, but once the most inconsequential, innocuous questions had been asked, we made it clear to one another that we ought to be getting on. I had nowhere I had to be, but I glanced at my watch and said, “Hmm” and you asked what time it was and when I said that it was just before twelve you looked a little startled and said, “Oops, is it that late?” But we told each other that we’d have to get together over Christmas, “have our own little party”, as I put it, and even though we both knew it would never happen you pretended to be all for it. “Yeah,” you said, “we really should.” “Okay, be in touch,” you said before we parted.
Hospital, Namsos, July 4th 2006. Two-bed room
I raise one eyebrow slightly and try to look as though I’m concentrating, eyes fixed on the page, seemingly engrossed in my book, but Eilert doesn’t take the hint this time, either. I hear him clearing his throat, hear him preparing to say something else, he’s the kind of person who simply cannot understand why anyone would choose to read rather than talk, he probably thinks he’s doing me a favour every single time he interrupts me. He thinks I’m reading because I’m bored and have nothing else to do, and it’s up to him to come to my aid by being sociable and telling me all about his own life, about the farm in Nærøy and his wife and his two daughters, about the older daughter who’s married to a doctor from Halden and who’ll soon be taking over the farm, and about his younger daughter who’s at university in Liverpool, studying to be a vet, blathering on about places I’ve never been and people I don’t know. He means well, I’m sure,
just wants to cheer me up, but I get so sick of it him talking almost nonstop, telling the same stories again and again, it makes me so tired.
“When are you going home?” he asks.
I stifle a little sigh, give it just a second, then I peer over the top of my book. He’s propped up, half sitting in the bed, his ruddy moon face beams at me and he smiles as amiably as always, I don’t think I’ve ever met a more amiable man than Eilert.
“Tomorrow probably, or the day after,” I say, then I pause for a moment, I don’t want to return the question, but I can’t help it, feel almost duty-bound to ask.
“And you?” I ask.
“My younger daughter’s coming to collect me this evening,” he says.
I nod and smile, then I look down at my book again, trying to escape, but it’s no use.
“I’m looking forward to seeing her,” he says, not giving up. “Haven’t seen her in over a year.”
“Oh, really?” I mutter, glancing up and giving him the ghost of a smile before looking down at my book again.
“She lives in England, you see. She’s at university over there, studying to be a vet,” he goes on. I don’t know how many times he’s told me that.
“Hmm,” I say, not raising my eyes.
“In Liverpool.”
I glance up briefly at him, nod and smile that same faint smile, then return to my book.
“I’m dreading that drive, though,” he says.
“Yes, it’s quite a way,” I mutter.
“I’m glad we’re doing it in the evening, though,” he says.
“Yes, it’s a lot shorter in the evening,” I mutter.
There’s silence for a couple of seconds and I feel a little twinge of guilt: he’s only trying to be nice, I can’t talk to him like this. I look up at him and smile again, try to give him the impression that it was a little joke, but I don’t think he gets it, it’s not his sort of humour, he just gives me a rather bewildered look.
“I was thinking of the heat,” he says. “It’s murder being cooped up in a car when it’s as hot as it’s been lately.”
“Yes, you’re right there,” is all I say, I can’t be bothered explaining, there’s no point.
“But you don’t have to worry about that, living as close as you do,” he says, pauses for a moment, then: “Whereabouts in Namsos do you live again?” he asks, looking at me and smiling affably and I open my mouth, about to answer, but I stop myself, he’s just the sort of provincial character who’d be quite liable to drop in on a man he hardly knows. I wouldn’t put it past him to look me up next time he’s over for a checkup or a chemo session, and I couldn’t cope with that, I’m not having that, no way.
“Fossbrenna,” I say, don’t feel like telling him exactly where I live, just give the name of the first housing estate that comes to mind.”
“Ah, yes,” he says.
“So,” I say briskly, hold his gaze for a second and smile as warmly as I can, then I look down at my book, seizing the opportunity to end this brief conversation before he can say any more. I raise one eyebrow, try to look as though I’m concentrating, but it does no good this time, either, he simply can’t not talk, I hear him clearing his throat again, getting ready to say something else.
“What’s that you’re reading, then?” he asks, nodding at my book.
“What am I trying to read?”
“Yes,” he says, my little correction going right over his head. He just sits there smiling that same affable smile. I raise my book so he can see the cover properly.
“A biography of Stalin.”
“Phew,” he says.
“Yes,” I say, “phew indeed.”
“Aye, he wasn’t a man to be messed with, that’s for sure.”
“No,” I say.
There’s silence for a second, and I feel laughter bubbling up inside me, but I manage to pull myself together just in time, turn the laugh into a little cough. I put my hand to my mouth and cough again to reinforce the credibility of the first cough. Then suddenly my stomach contracts, a brief and relatively mild spasm that immediately passes, but fear of the pain that’s just waiting to strike promptly washes over me, my brow and the back of my neck turn cold and clammy. I quickly put the book down on the bedside table and sit there breathing rapidly and staring intently at the duvet, sit there stiff as a poker and simply wait, checking to feel whether there’s more to come.
“What’s the matter?” Eilert asks. “Are you in pain?”
I don’t answer, I sit perfectly still and wait, and then it comes. It’s like two strong hands grabbing hold of my intestines, squeezing and wringing them out like washcloths. I automatically curl up and heel over slightly, take a deep breath, squeeze my eyes shut, stay like this for a second, trying to gather myself a little, then I open my eyes and raise a hand above my head, groping frantically for the cord, feel the little plastic bob gently nudge the palm of my hand. I have to fumble around a bit before I
catch hold of it, then I tug it, once and then again, short, sharp tugs. I slide down into the bed, draw my legs up to my stomach and lie there, completely rigid. It feels as though I have a huge red-hot rock in my stomach, I squeeze my eyes shut as tightly as I can, they should be here by now, I need something now. I open my mouth, take a breath, let it out and at long last the door opens and the blonde nurse comes in.
“Can you give me something?” I gasp, groan almost. I try to smile, but can’t quite manage it.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, turns on her heel and hurries out again. I hear the suction as her sandals hit the floor, the faint schwipp as they leave it again. Then the door closes with a heavy sigh and all the sounds from the corridor are shut out.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Eilert mumbles from the other side of the room.
I clutch my stomach and grind my face into the pillow, tensing every muscle in my body. After a few moments the door opens again and both the blonde nurse and the chubby one come in.
“It hurts so much,” I say between gritted teeth. I try to roll over onto my back, but the chubby nurse places a hand on my shoulder and stops me.
“We’re going to give you a Spasmofen, so just stay on your side,” she says. She pulls the stool over, sits down next to me, strokes my cheek. “Not long now and the pain will be gone,” she says.
“He ate his elevenses a bit too fast,” I hear Eilert telling the blonde nurse. “I noticed, but I thought it better not to say anything, you know how it is,” he says. “Either that or it was that water he drank a while back,” he adds.
Even now he can’t keep his mouth shut. The blonde nurse says not a word, I hear the quick swoosh as the curtain is drawn, hear the sound of a latex glove being pulled on, then my underpants are tugged down over my thighs and I feel a suppository slipping inside me.
“There now,” the chubby nurse says. “That should help,” she says. She regards me with kind, gentle eyes as she strokes and strokes my cheek. A few seconds, then I feel the suppository beginning to take effect, the pain growing fainter and fainter, and the fainter it becomes the more clearly I feel the warmth of the chubby nurse’s hand. The fear gently drains out of me and I feel a calmness settling over me. I’m overcome by a sense of gratitude and I have the urge to say something they’ll appreciate.
“You’re so kind,” is all I say.
Dear David,
I’m sitting in the shade of the big cherry tree behind the house where we lived. When I look up from the computer screen I can see right across our garden and down the avenue we drove up on that first day, the day you and Berit moved in with me, the day the two of you came home. I can picture us in the yellow Simca I had borrowed from the parish clerk because there was something wrong with the gearbox of my Volvo. I picture the way the dun-coloured dust swirled up behind us as we turned in at the postboxes and how it hung like a curtain, billowing slightly in the shimmering, sun-warmed air before settling again. You were leaning forward, I remember, with a hand on each front seat, and you whooped with laughter because I had just taken my hands off the wheel so it looked as though I wasn’t really steering. You were eleven, almost twelve, and actually very keen to show that you found such things childish, but before long you always got carried away and became as were you then, eager, excited and full of life. Your mum was in the passenger seat and when she saw what I was doing she squealed and pretended to be scared and
you laughed even louder and harder at that, of course. You bounced up and down on the seat and shouted at me to do it again. “No, please don’t, please don’t, we’ll end up in the ditch,” Mum begged. “Yes,” you cried eagerly. “Do it, do it.” And so I did, naturally I did. I took my hands off the wheel again and pretended not to be steering and you whooped and laughed in the back seat. “Oh, no, Arvid, please!” Mum cried, pretending to be even more scared. “What?” I asked insouciantly, turning to her, raising my eyebrows and acting as if I had no idea what she was talking about. “Well, keep your eyes on the road, at least,” she cried, pointing straight ahead and acting terrified. I put my hands back on the wheel, turned my head slowly and looked at the road again. “What’s so special about the road? I don’t see anything,” I said, and you roared with laughter on the back seat. “Oh, you, you daft idiot,” Mum said, poking my shoulder. “Ow!” I laughed and then I glanced in the rear-view mirror and caught your eye. I smiled slyly and winked at you. “You’re not right in the head, either of you!” Mum said, shaking her head and acting as though she despaired of us.
That day saw the start of what was to be the best year of my life, David. Before I met Berit I had always taken a pragmatic view of the love between a man and a woman. The way I saw it, while we humans might not be liable to fall for just anyone, there had to be plenty of people out there whom we could well learn to love and live with, and when people talked to me about the one true love, I tended to regard it as an attempt to justify the choice of partner they had already made. But then I met Berit and I realized that I was wrong. Just as the newborn baby knows its own mother, so I knew Berit. I had never set eyes on her before, but everything in me instantly told me that we belonged together and, having once met her,
to say “I love you” to anyone else would have made me feel like a liar, a traitor. I would put it as strongly as that.
I looked up to her so much, I needed her, was hooked on her. If I had written something in a sermon or the “Thought for the Day” that I was particularly happy with, for example, I was not above longing desperately for praise and acknowledgement from your mum. Not that I would ever have admitted that, of course, it would never have occurred to me to read out anything without being asked, but I remember how I used to try to catch her attention by pretending to be unsure of something. “Hmm,” I would murmur and cock my eyebrow. And if Mum didn’t react straight away I would sit there shooting impatient glances at her to see whether she was soon going to turn round. “Hmm,” I would murmur again. “Oh, I really don’t know.” And at long last she would respond. “What was that?” she said one day as she was bending down to pick up a towel from the pile of washing in the green plastic tub. “We-ell,” I said a mite hesitantly. “It’s just this little sentence here, I’m not quite sure whether it’s all right or not.” “Let’s hear it, then,” she said, and taking the towel in both hands she lifted it slightly and shut her eyes as she gave it a quick flick. It made a little crack that echoed around the room. “Oh, well, you’re welcome to hear it, but …” Mum hung the towel on the drying rack and turned to me. “People buy one thing after another and carry them all home, but they have lost the key to the house,” I read, and then I lowered the sheet of paper and looked at Mum again. And she stood there, open-mouthed and smiling. “Did you really write that, Arvid?” “What do you mean, did I write that?” Inside I was crowing with delight, but I tried to look as though I didn’t quite understand why she should ask this. “Well, obviously I wrote it,” I added. “But it’s so … it’s excellent,” she said. “So you think I should leave
it in?” “Yes, of course you have to leave it in,” she said, “I’ll be very annoyed with you if you delete it.” “Ah, well in that case I’d better leave it in,” I said and gave a little laugh as I turned to look at you. “What do you say, David? Better not get on her wrong side, eh, we know what would happen then, don’t we?” “Uh-huh,” you laughed.
It’s things like that that make a person grow, David, a smile and a few words of praise from the one you love, often that is all it takes for a man to accomplish things he thought he wasn’t capable of. Oh, I remember when we were doing up the basement, I remember how exhausted I was. I was so busy at work at that time and I was worn out to start with anyway, but in the evenings there was nothing for it but to climb into my green overalls and get stuck in. I can see it now, I can see the white, conical halogen lamp lying on the newly laid chipboard floor that gives slightly when you step on it, I see how it lights up the fine sawdust drifting down from the plasterboard I’m cutting, I see my shadow on the insulating material I’ve just put in the side wall. “Oh, Arvid,” Mum would say, when I’d been at it for a while, “isn’t it about time you took a break?” “A break?” I would say, acting as if I wasn’t quite with her. “Yes, you must be worn out, aren’t you?” “No, no, I’m absolutely fine, really!” And she would look at me and shake her head. “I don’t how you do it, I really don’t.” “How do you mean?” I would say. “How you can work the way you do.” And I would just say “Aw,” and wag my head. “You’re unbelievable,” she would say.
Such things, such tiny drops from Berit, could give me the strength to carry on for not just one, but up to three or four hours longer than I would otherwise have done. She made me strong, David, she made me great.
During those first years I used to ask you to give me a hand when I was working on things in the house or the garden.
And you never said no, not ever. Not that you were much help, mind you. Oh, it’s funny to think about it, you were bright and did well at school, but you were certainly no handyman. You simply didn’t have it in you, and more than once I had to leave the room to have a quiet laugh at the sight of you wrestling with the tools until you were sweating and fuming. Hammer and saw did not seem happy in your hands, they seemed to want to go a different way from you, and when you did eventually finish a job I often had to redo it once you were in bed. I came up with a lot of weird explanations for why things didn’t look quite the same when you came to check on your handiwork the next day.
“Ah, well you see, I had a bit of an accident – I knocked the paint tin off the steps,” I might say when you had been painting something. “It splattered all the way up the wall and I had no choice but to paint the whole thing again.” But sometimes you saw through my little white lies and then, oh, dear, I felt so sorry for you. You were a proud lad and you didn’t let it show, but I could tell you were upset and then of course I tried to make it up to you by treating you like my workmate and my peer. “What do you think?” I might ask. “Should we give the doorframe one coat or two?” “One, maybe.” “We-ell,” I’d say, spinning it out, giving you time to change your mind. “No, maybe we should give it two,” you’d say. “Yes, you know what, I totally agree,” I’d say. “I think it needs two!”
And that was all it took to cheer you up. Oh, David, to have you around me as I worked, to be high up the ladder and hear the sound of your humming mingling with the buzz of insects in the flowerbed and the low drone of a distant lawnmower, to see you standing there in paint-spattered denim shorts and a baseball cap with the paint shop name on it, dipping your brush way too far into the tin of wood
preservative and slapping it on willy-nilly so it ran and dripped onto the swaying flowers below, it made me so happy and, not least, it made Mum happy.
No matter how much your mum and I had loved one another she would have had nothing to do with me if I hadn’t shown myself to be a worthy father for you, if I had not loved you, too. For reasons we will never know she would never say who your real father was, not to you, not to me, not to anyone, but she knew you needed a grown man in your life, that you needed a father, a man who could stand as a role model for you. I am so grateful that I was allowed to be that man, David, I’m glad of that and I think I can safely say that your mum was glad of it, too. There was poetry in her eyes when she saw us doing things together, when we were oiling the house, stacking firewood or going over your homework. She would stand a little way off, just watching us, her face shining. I’ll never forget one time when it was too much for her and she started to cry out of sheer joy. We had been to the birthday party of an old evangelical friend of mine on the island of Jøa, I remember, and we were in a hurry to catch the ferry home. It was summer and the day was hot, the air shimmered over the narrow, winding country road and occasionally there would come the sharp, contained crack of a stone thrown up by the wheels striking the mudguard or the undercarriage.
“Oh, look – raspberries!” you cried, sticking one slim, sun-browned arm between my seat and Berit’s and pointing to a clump of raspberry bushes on the right-hand side of the road. “Can’t we stop and pick some?” “No, David, we haven’t got time for that,” Mum said. “Oh, just for a minute!” you pleaded. “Pleease!” “No, David, we’ve got to catch the ferry!” But I pulled in to the side and stopped anyway, of course I did. Berit turned to me in surprise and I cocked my head and gave
what I hoped was a disarming smile. “Oh, I think we can make time for this,” I said, “don’t you?” A little smile spread across her face, but she quickly turned it into a pout, acting sulky. “It’s funny how we never seem to have the time when I want to do something,” she said with a little toss of her head. I laid my arm along the back of the seat and half turned, looked at you and winked. “Hark at her,” I said, “now she’s gone in the huff because we left the party before the ice cream.” “Humph!” Mum snorted. “Isn’t that right?” I said, smiling slyly at you. “Yep,” you said and laughed. Mum turned to you, flashed you a dirty look, then faced front again and shook her head. “It’s like I’m always saying, you gang up on me, you two. I’m sure you’d rather be rid of me altogether.” I looked at you, frowned slightly and waited a moment. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I think we’d be in a right old mess without Mum. Eh, David, what do you think?” “Yep,” you said, grinning. And Berit wiped the pretend pout from her face, turned to you and stroked your cheek. “And I’d be in a right old mess without you two!” she said, and then she turned to me, leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Yuck!” you said and then you opened the car door and fled. Mum and I had a little laugh, we stayed where we were and watched you wading through the dense and slightly dusty clump of raspberry bushes on the roadside.
“I’m so happy,” she said suddenly and when I turned I saw tears rolling down her cheeks. That was the moment when she cried out of sheer joy, David. She soon pulled herself together again, shook her head and laughed at herself as she wiped away the tears. “Oh, dear, I’m so silly,” she said, but I didn’t think it was at all silly. She had taken so many knocks in her life that it was hard for her to believe things could be going as well for her as they were now. That was why she was crying and it made her seem genuine and beautiful, not silly.
Your mum was the least self-pitying person I’ve ever known, she didn’t like to talk about the traumatic things that had happened to her, but sometimes, even so, she did, usually when we were lying head to toe in bed at night and she didn’t have to meet my eye. With an ache in her voice she would tell me what it had been like to lose her mother at the age of six, and about growing up alone with your grandfather, Erik. He did the best he could, I’m sure, but he was a drinker, and when Berit’s mother was knocked down and killed by a bus and Erik lost the one person who had been able to keep him in check, he took to the bottle more and more and became less and less able to be a father to her. According to your mum he really wasn’t all that bad when he was drunk. Both then and when he had a bottle tucked away or a party to look forward to he was usually as good as gold, kind and generous. It was when he was sober, with no prospect of getting drunk, that Mum had to watch out, because at such times he was tense and unpredictable and could fly into a terrible rage at the drop of a hat. He never hit her, but he ranted and raved and told her she was useless and that he didn’t see how she was ever going to get by in life. If she did something she wasn’t supposed to do he would simply stare and stare at her for as much as a minute and once, when she was unlucky enough to drop a dish of boiled cod on the floor, he leaped to his feet and started jumping up and down and stamping the cod into the rug. It was farcical and if it hadn’t been for the fact that your mum was only six years old and scared stiff it would have been hilarious. In fact it would have made excellent material for the Otterøya Christmas Show. Immediately after such incidents he would be devastated, full of remorse, all apologies, didn’t know how to make it up to her, and this was of course a redeeming and sympathetic
feature. The stupid thing was that he was always so upset and guilt-ridden that he would end up making promises he couldn’t keep. He was going to buy Mum a pony as soon as he got paid, or get her a bike at least. He might even take her to Oslo soon to see the palace and say hello to the king. So it went on and all through her childhood Mum had to cope with disappointment after disappointment, each one greater than the one before. Hers was a tough childhood, David.