Encircling (17 page)
Authors: Carl Frode Tiller
You and Silje gradually lost touch with Jon after that, as I recall. He was deeply ashamed of what he had done and even though it had been his own choice to swallow those pills he was well aware, of course, that the company he kept had also had something to do with it, so it was understandable that he wanted to distance himself somewhat from you two. Oddly enough, this close encounter with death also prompted you to abandon your warped philosophizing and all it entailed. Not overnight, obviously. I think that in some way you would have regarded that as a loss of face. Slowly but surely, though, you began at any rate to gravitate away from the person you had been before Jon’s suicide attempt. Your youthful rebellion was over and you were on your way home again.
The lift is starting to slow down, so now I really will have to pull myself together, I don’t want to be caught blubbing here if somebody gets on, so I hastily tug my sleeve down over my hand, raise my hand to my face and dry my tears. A couple of seconds, then I hear the long hiss of the brakes followed by a high, grating whine as the lift comes to a halt. It gives a long shudder, then a little lurch before it stops completely and the doors slide open. I step out, walk slowly past the reception desk and down to the entrance. Someone has left a newspaper on top of the rubbish bin outside the kiosk; I pick it up on the way past, it’s always good to have a paper to hide behind when you don’t feel like talking to anyone. On the other side of the entrance hall I see a bloke from the room next to mine, he looks across at me, smiles and nods, but I don’t nod back, I run my eye vacantly around the entrance hall and pretend not to see him, I don’t want to risk him coming over, I’m not up to that, I’m in no mood to talk to anybody right now. I walk out into the warm summer evening. There’s an empty bench under the lilac tree so I stroll over to it and sit down. I shut my eyes and breathe in through my nose, smell the sweet scent of new-mown grass. I sit like this
for a little while, then I open my eyes, lay the newspaper on my lap and open it.
And suddenly I’m looking straight into David’s eyes. “David,” I cry out and I snatch up the newspaper in both hands and bring it close to my face. I haven’t seen him for years, not since he moved away from the town, but that’s him in the picture, there’s no doubt about it, that’s David. But what on earth is he doing in the paper, what does it say, he’s lost his memory? I feel my mouth fall open and I crease my brow, try to focus and rapidly skim the newspaper report, read that he has lost his memory, that he doesn’t know who he is, his past has been erased and everyone who knows or has known him is urged to contact the authorities so that he can be helped to discover who he is. I tip my head back slightly, look up at the sky and shake my head, sit like that, open-mouthed, for a couple of seconds. “Oh, my God!” I murmur.
Well, I’ll have to do my bit, that’s for sure, there weren’t many people who knew David as well as I did when he was younger so I’ll have to do all I can to help with this. “I’ll help you, David,” I murmur solemnly, and as the words leave my mouth I feel a surge of eagerness, I feel so eager to get on with this task, and I’m conscious that it makes me happy again just to know that I’m still capable of feeling such eagerness. I feel filled with a strange sense of happiness, something akin to relief. “So there is a little of the old Arvid left,” I murmur and even as I say it I realize that I’ve been given the very thing that I have just been shedding tears over, because it was gone. Only a moment ago I was standing in the lift, crying because I no longer had any of the old Arvid in me, because I had no one to care for and show my positive qualities to, crying because
this had turned me into a sick man and nothing but a sick man. But suddenly everything has changed, I think. Suddenly I have someone for whom I can be the old Arvid. David has lost his memory, he has no idea who he is and he needs me to tell him.
I lower the newspaper onto my lap, sit there staring into space for a couple of seconds, feel myself filled with a strange, faint sense of happiness. “Ah, no,” I say, and I feel a sneaking twinge of guilt, feel guilty for sitting here feeling happy when someone who was once very close to me has been struck by such a tragedy. “Poor David,” I say, shaking my head. “Poor David,” I say again and it helps, I can feel it, feel the guilt ebbing away. A second, then I get to my feet and start to walk back to the entrance, because now I have to hurry, I have to hurry along to the computer room, have to hurry up and write an email to ask how to proceed. The best thing would probably be to write down everything I remember, put it all down in writing and post it or email it, that would be best, I suppose, but I can ask the psychologists what they think, take their advice. There could be all sorts of considerations that I’m not aware of, I’m sure there must be both practical and more psychological aspects to be taken into account in such cases, I’ll have to remember to ask about all that sort of thing, find out about it, it’s important, I mutter to myself, then the doors slide open and I stride into the entrance hall, going as fast as my feeble legs will carry me, and there’s the computer room, I can see it, down at the end of the corridor. I feel so fired up, I can scarcely remember the last time I felt so inspired and it’s so good to have something as important as this to do, it feels so good to matter to someone, to be allowed to give something of oneself to
another human being. “It sounds so banal, but you don’t realize how true it is until you’ve been hit by loneliness,” I mutter under my breath, “you don’t realize how dependent you actually are on other people until you’ve felt what it’s like to be lonely,” I mutter and I give a little laugh, laughing at the banality of what I’m saying. “Ah, no,” I say, “no, that’s enough now,” I mutter, because I can feel the guilt returning. “This person who was once my stepson, the boy I loved as if he were my own, little David, has been struck by tragedy and here I am feeling happy again,” I mutter and I give a little shake of my head, shake my head to salve my guilty conscience. “Yes,” I mutter, “but it’s not the fact that David’s been struck by tragedy that has fired me with such enthusiasm. Surely it must be possible to differentiate between the tragedy itself and the joy I feel at being able to help,” I mutter. “The tragedy has already struck, so what better than to throw myself into the task with zeal and enthusiasm. It’s not as if I’m feeling happy because this misfortune has befallen David,” I mutter and I’m conscious that what I’m saying is true, it’s true, and this in turn makes it even more alright to feel happy. This new fire, this spark that was lit when I read about what had happened, well obviously I have to tend it and keep it burning, I have to do it for David’s sake, and I have to do it for my own sake, this task comes almost as a gift to me. Only a little while ago I was blubbing in the lift because I believed I had no one to live for, and then, out of the blue, I’m given this. I’ve never seen things in this light before, never give any real thought to how much influence other people actually have on who I am as a person. Well, obviously I had thought about it in a more superficial way: there can’t be many people who talk as much about
brotherly love as we clerics; in all my years in the ministry, in sermon after sermon, talk after talk I wrote and spoke about loving thy neighbour and yet I don’t think I had ever understood what it meant, not until today, not until I was standing blubbing in that lift, not until it struck me that the absence of any close kith or kin has probably had as much to do with how I’ve changed as my illness. And no sooner had I come to the conclusion that what I missed most of all was having someone to live for, no sooner had I told myself this than it was given to me, the very thing I was crying for. “And if that isn’t a gift I don’t know what is,” I mutter. “No, it’s more than a gift, it’s a miracle,” I mutter as I sit down in front of one of the computers and even as I hear myself say this an avalanche sweeps through me, a long avalanche of joy, because suddenly I see it, I see it all so clearly and distinctly, suddenly I see that it is God who has granted me this gift and that is Him who has worked this miracle. I see it and I feel this almighty force running through me, feel my whole body being filled with the power of the Lord and I can only sit here, incapable of speech, incapable of movement, because this, this is the greatest gift of all, I am with God, again, I have come home to Him once more. In the blink of an eye I’ve been shaken out of the life I’ve led for the past year and into a new life with God. Since I became ill I don’t know how many times I’ve prayed to God for a miracle, it’s years since I resigned my ministry and forsook the Lord, but in my despair I prayed anyway; weeping and with clasped hands I’ve begged and pleaded for him to make me well again, but I’ve never received a single sign, not one, not until now, not until today, not – it strikes me – until I prayed for a miracle regarding something other than being
cured of my illness. The minute I did that, God revealed himself to me, and that very fact is significant. “This can’t be a coincidence,” I mutter excitedly and no sooner have I said this than I realize what it is God has been trying to show me – well, what was it I was praying for, what was it I was crying for in that lift and saying that I lacked: someone to live for, a neighbour to love. “The nature of brotherly love, that’s what this is all about,” I mutter, “what it means to love they neighbour and how much it’s worth, that’s what it’s about.”
I raise my eyes, tilt my head back instinctively and gaze at the ceiling. “Thank you, Lord,” I whisper, then I swallow and wait a moment. I feel my mouth widening into a little smile, then I straighten my head, face front again. I smile and feel myself being filled with joy and gratitude. And now I’m going to write an email and ask how I can best help David. I may not have that much time left, a month perhaps, or possibly six months, Dr Claussen said. At any rate, whatever time I have left I’m going to use to help David. “Help David and help myself,” I mutter. Because by helping David I’ll be helping myself too. Having someone to live for is what makes us human. It’s banal but true, if we have no one to live for we cease to exist; the old Arvid disappeared when he lost those closest to him and only with God’s help can he rise again. By praising God and all His works I have been reborn; to love thy neighbour as thyself is to praise all that God has created and all that God is and only through this can we find salvation.
On the morning of August 11th 1989, as she was trying on a new pair of shoes in Ole Bruun Olsen’s shoe shop, your mum’s aorta burst and she keeled over and died.
While she was still alive I had occasionally tried to imagine how I would react if she died before me and when I did this I had felt a certain light-heartedness that I was reluctant to acknowledge and that always made me feel guilty. I knew of course that I would be devastated if I lost her, but the thought of being able to do exactly as I pleased and of being spared some of the obligations that come with marriage did sometimes seem tempting and exciting. But when she really did die there was none of that whatsoever. I didn’t feel so much as a glimmer of excitement, no thrill at being free, neither immediately after her death nor when I was starting to get back on my feet. Losing her was just terrible. In order to make the loss easier to bear I tried to convince myself that she hadn’t really loved me, that she would have left me and gone to live with Samuel if he hadn’t let her down. But it didn’t work, she had got over Samuel a good while before she died and if there was anything at all to forgive I had long since forgiven her. As she had always forgiven me for the mistakes, big and small, that I had made. I remember
I also tried to make myself angry with her by thinking back on the things about her that had irritated me: a strategy I had heard counsellors recommend to people coping with the breakdown of a relationship. I thought of how often she had tried to make me feel guilty by being in such a hurry to do things that were actually my responsibility, but which she felt I didn’t do soon enough. I thought of how bright and bubbly she could be, giggling at the silliest things when she was with some of her women friends, and how she would simply become brighter and bubblier when she saw how this annoyed me. I thought of how she snored, how she smoked on the sly, and of how she mispronounced certain foreign words or used them in the wrong context and how it always embarrassed me when other people heard her do this. But since that was the worst I could come up with, this strategy actually had the opposite effect. The fact that I could only come up with such petty failings simply served to underline how well Mum and I had got on and this made my grief all the greater. I balk at writing this because more than once since then I have found myself thinking that it was such a ridiculously sentimental thing to do, but I actually kept the pillow on which she had dreamed her dreams. Every single night for one or possibly two years after she died I slept with my head on her pillow, hoping that with its help I might meet her in my dreams.
I still think it’s a lovely thought, however sentimental it might be, but it was also a symptom. I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back on it I can see that it was also one of many signs that I was no longer capable of living among the living, so to speak. It was not only Mum who departed this world on that August day in 1989, the man I had been for as long as I had known her and you also departed this
world. Because it’s trite but true: when there is no longer anyone to document our life, when there is no longer anyone to tell the funny stories of how stubborn we are or how grumpy in the mornings; when we no longer have anyone who will laugh when we tell a joke or get mad at us when we are bad-tempered: when we no longer have anyone to remind us of who we are; when we no longer have anyone to encourage us to be the person we can be, we crumble away to nothing. Even Arvid the Christian crumbled away to nothing in the weeks and months that followed. Although, I don’t know whether this was due purely to the loss of Mum, it certainly wasn’t as if losing her rendered me incapable of believing in a good and a just God – nothing so banal. My loss of faith was possibly more a sign of the secularization that was taking place all around us. As a vicar I had had plenty to say about yuppiedom and dancing round the golden calf. I had warned against the growth of materialism and been concerned about the flight from the world of the spirit, but I did not see that I too was a part of the society and the times in which this was happening. I wasn’t merely a vicar who could and should help reverse this trend, I was also a small individual, and one who was equally affected by this same development. But it wasn’t until after Mum died that this was really brought home to me. When I stood in the pulpit for the first time after returning from sick leave I remember being struck by how empty the church was. There probably weren’t any fewer people there than there had been before my leave of absence, but after my time away it seemed so to me and this triggered a train of thought in my mind. It was as if during my brief absence God and all the godly had left this world, they had fled in all haste, rather like the Jews during the war, and here I was, standing in a large and
almost deserted church, talking as if nothing had happened. I looked at the cross, at the altarpiece, at the font and all the beautiful paintings on the walls and suddenly I saw myself as a bewildered museum director. I was coming to the end of one of the first sermons I had given since returning to work and suddenly I had this image of myself as a museum director who thought he was living in the age from which his museum exhibits dated. Nothing outrageous happened, I finished the sermon as normal and I gave several sermons after that. But I could not get that image out of my mind and this sense of not being a part of my own time, of not living in the same age as all the people I saw round about me every day, filled me with an overwhelming dread. I would wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and ask myself what I was really doing with my life. Suddenly and without any warning this question would come into my head; it happened more and more often, I was given no peace. I tried putting it down to a perfectly normal mid-life crisis and I laughed at myself, told myself I ought to buy a motorbike. But it did no good, it was only a stupid attempt to take the sting out of the question and I couldn’t fool myself into thinking anything else, the situation was too serious for that. I hardly slept at all any more, many a time you were woken in the middle of the night by me talking to myself downstairs in the living room.
“Who are you talking to,” you asked me once. “Hmm?” I looked up to see you standing there in nothing but your underpants. You scratched the fine line of hair running downwards from your navel. “Who are you talking to?” “Oh, I was just having a little chat with myself,” I said, trying to smile. “At least that way I’m always in the right!” I added, as if such a stupid crack would make it all seem slightly less
worrying. You neither smiled nor laughed, you simply shook your head, then you turned and went back up to your room without saying a word.
It’s dreadful to think that you had to witness everything that I went through at that time, David. Eventually it got so bad that I had to see a psychologist and it was after many long sessions with him that I decided to give up the ministry and accept the job of accountant. After that things started to improve slightly. Not only was I relieved to finally have made my decision and not only was I sure that I had been right to resign my vocation, I also felt it was good to work with something as concrete as accounting, where I could put a double line under the final balance and go home for the day. I needed that.
Still, though, something wasn’t right. I was functioning on a day-to-day level. I went to work, earned money and did whatever had to be done in and around the house. But I did it joylessly, reluctantly. Where I would once have pushed myself to work on for an extra hour or two just for a word of praise or an admiring glance from Mum, now I was more liable to stop an hour early. I put off cleaning the house and washing the dishes until I couldn’t put it off any longer, even though I had much more spare time than I had had as a vicar, and I no longer put on a smart shirt at the weekend, as I had done when Mum was alive. I didn’t even make myself something a little more special for dinner on Saturday evenings. It was a life devoid of cheer and magic, I was not so much living at that time as simply surviving.
So it wasn’t surprising that I saw less and less of you, or that you eventually moved in with Silje and her mother. Only vestiges remained of the man I had been and you needed more than that, you needed a good male role model, a man
you could look up to and strive to emulate, and I was unable to be that for you back then.
Now, though, I have regained something of the old Arvid. I won’t go into all the details except to say that what I have tried to do for you with this letter you have already done for me. You have brought to life a little of the man you knew when you were about ten or eleven and moved into the vicarage with your mum. This may even have left its stamp on what I’ve written here, you may read this letter and recognize aspects of the man I was then, something about the tone, the tenor, something about the mood, I don’t know, but I can hope.
You know, I’m often been unsure of exactly how to phrase things here. I have sometimes felt like a mad scientist, playing at being God and attempting to create an ideal new human being. I have felt tempted to fill you with false memories, not because I wanted to present myself as better than I was, but because I had a burning desire to present you as someone who believes in God and thereby turn you into someone who believes in God. I admit it, there was a part of me, especially when I began this letter, that was desperate to make a Christian of the person you are now by leading you to think that you had always been a Christian. I’m not going to dwell on this, but I was in a kind of ecstasy when I started writing and my missionary zeal may well have had something to do with this. As I wrote, though, it became more and more clear to me that I loved you exactly as you were and that it is the boy you were that I miss. Just at this moment the mere idea that I could have contemplated improving you fills me with shame. As if I could have done that. Talk about arrogant.
But let me close this letter as I began, David. As a Christian I believe that everything ends with us coming home, so let me close with our homecoming, with the first day of what were
to be the best years of my life. I can see myself in the yellow Simca I had borrowed from the parish clerk, I see the heavy green branches hanging over the road, the shadows of the leaves softly flickering over the yellow gravel and Berit’s red hair fluttering lightly in the draught from the half-open car window. “Are you excited?” Mum asked. “Yes,” you said. “Any minute now we’ll see it,” she said and then she turned to you and smiled. “But … what have you done to yourself?” “Done to myself?” you echoed, not quite understanding what she was talking about. “There,” she said, nodding at you. “Your finger, you’re bleeding.” “Oh, that. I had a bit of an accident, that’s all, cut myself with my pocketknife.” “Oh, no,” Mum said, “does it hurt?” You raised your eyebrows and eyed her quizzically. “What, that?” you said. “No!” “Are you sure?” Mum asked. But you just laughed and didn’t even bother to answer. “Women!” I said. I shot you a glance in the rear-view mirror and shook my head. “Hey, you!” Mum cried in that pretend-cross voice of hers and punched me on the shoulder. I laughed and shot you another glance. “The weaker sex, eh, David?” I said. “Yep,” you said, laughing back at me. Mum turned and glared at you, then faced front again, sat there shaking her head. “See, I told you. You two are always ganging up on me.” I looked at you in the mirror and winked, and you smiled back. “Look, David,” Mum said. “There’s the house.” You didn’t say anything right away, simply sat with one hand on each front seat gazing at the rambling red-brick pile which was to be your home from then on. The car wheels crunched over the gravel as we drove up in front of the house, the neighbour’s elk hound barked fiercely a couple of times, but he was old and tired and soon fell quiet again. We climbed out of the car and stood looking at the house. Behind us the car engine clicked and clunked: we could hear the flies buzzing about over in the flowerbed
and I remember that the backs of my knees and thighs were damp and sweaty from sitting in the boiling-hot car. “Here you are, David,” I said, pulling the door key out of my shorts pocket and handing it to him. “Go up the stairs, turn right and you’ll come to your room.” “Oh, yeah!” you whooped and off you raced across the drive. Mum and I watched you for a few moments, then we turned to one another and smiled. “Do I get a kiss?” Mum said softly and as I bent down to kiss her we heard a long “Yuck” from you on the front steps. I can hear it now, David, I can hear it and see it and it reminds me that loving gestures are handed down through the generations. One day, when you kiss your own wife and are good to her, I would like to see that as an echo of the time when I kissed Mum and was good to her. And one day, when you tuck in your own child and tenderly kiss its cheek, I would like to see this as an echo of the kisses and caresses Mum and I gave you at bedtime when you were small. That, I hope, is how I will live on in this world, through the kisses and caresses I gave to you and to others. Anything else of myself that might remain is of no interest to me.