Encircling (8 page)
Authors: Carl Frode Tiller
The next day she tried to make out that she’d forgotten the whole thing, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. She stayed out of my way as much as she could and if we did find ourselves in
the same room she avoided my eye and made a show of being busy with things that weren’t important or that certainly didn’t need to be done right then. Not only that but she kept saying that she hadn’t blacked out like that since her teens. “I don’t remember a thing, I really don’t. When did I actually get home? In a taxi? Was I very drunk? Oh, I’m so embarrassed! Just as well the neighbours didn’t see me!” and so on, and I put on a smile of sorts and tried to look unconcerned.
I remember we were roaming around the east side of the town when I told you all this. You were white with rage. Why the hell did I let myself be treated like that, you asked, and even though I made excuses for Mum by saying that she’d been drunk, and even though I tried to explain how much she had sacrificed for me and what a good, caring mother she could be, it touched me to see you like that. Whether it was because I couldn’t bring myself to be angry with her myself and needed you to be angry for me, or whether it was simply good to see and to know that you cared about me and that it upset you to see someone hurt me, I don’t know, but I remember telling you that I loved you. I had never said it before and I still remember how it felt, standing there just after the words had left my mouth. I’ve never had children, and I doubt I ever will, but if I were trying to be poetic, I would say that uttering those particular words was much like a mother letting her child go out into the world and hoping that people will receive him or her well and be good to them.
As you did. “I love you too,” you said, and since you didn’t like extravagant words and shows of emotion and because I was so happy and felt so moved at that moment that I was afraid to spoil it all by saying something you would consider pompous or pathetic, I said nothing else for some time. We strolled side by side past the wire fence around Van Severen’s
sawmill and I remember the spray from one of the hoses that kept the timber damp falling right over onto the pavement, leaving a dark, narrow band on the sun-baked tarmac. I don’t know whether it’s nostalgia for my childhood in the sawmill town of Namsos or an echo of the happiness I felt at that moment that runs through me today when I catch the whiff of wet timber and sawdust, but I am filled, at any rate, with a strange little surge of happiness, a sense of belonging maybe.
Alongside the happiness I felt right then and in the days that followed there was, of course, uncertainty and fear. We were at an age when you tend to be self-centred and quick to make a big drama and a big deal out of the smallest things, but this really was a big deal. It’s true that we thought people were more interested in whether we were gay or not than they probably were, nonetheless we were right in thinking that the way in which we chose to deal with our relationship and the rumours of our homosexuality would have major and definitive consequences for our own futures. I’m as convinced of this now as I was back then. In a way it was kind of exhilarating, this feeling that everything really was at stake, and there were times over the next few days when I was pompous enough to tell myself that at least I was leading a more intense and more fascinating life than most people. There were other times, though, when I was seized by a paralysing sense of dread: I could be sitting practising or maybe watching TV and all at once and for no reason that I could see the nausea would rise up in my throat, a cold sweat break out on the back of my neck and my brow turn cold and clammy. At times like that I had a desperate urge to resolve all of the questions that were churning around in my head, and even though I felt sick at the thought of broaching the subject with you, I probably would have done if it hadn’t
been for Berit’s sudden death, after which, for a while, none of this mattered.
I’m not exactly sure what the post-mortem revealed, but I seem to remember that it had to do with some sort of heart defect. In any case, she simply keeled over in a shoe shop, without any warning, and she was dead before the ambulance arrived. I’d never known anyone who had lost someone close to them, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when Silje and I were standing on the front step of your and Arvid’s house, waiting for you to open the door. I had the idea that the grief you bore would be so great that it would show itself in ways I would never forget, and I remember being surprised at how relaxed you seemed. It knocked me off-balance when, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, you started talking about some lyrics that Silje had just written or a film you were looking forward to seeing, and I didn’t quite know how to react when you told a funny story you had heard and then roared with laughter. To begin with I thought this was some sort of defence mechanism, that your apparent air of calm was a sign that your mother’s death hadn’t sunk in yet, but that couldn’t be it because you spoke about Berit and her death as well. Even then, though, it was no heartbroken, devastated young man who spoke, as I had imagined and as I had hoped, since that would have given me the chance to comfort and support you, thereby proving the love that I so longed to show. The only time I saw you betray any kind of pain or sorrow was when you and Silje and I were walking along Havnegata and we passed the artist whose work Berit had liked so much, but whom you had once called a local nutter who thought that all it took to be an artist was to slap a beret on his head. You didn’t say anything right away, but you went very quiet and a little later when we were sitting in Silje’s living room, listening
to Captain Beefheart’s
Trout Mask Replica
, you gave vent to a brief but moving emotional outburst in which, in a voice that shook slightly, you admitted to feeling guilty for the way you had treated Berit. You blamed yourself for having been cold and hard and you couldn’t forgive yourself for having made fun of her when she told you about a book she had read or showed you a picture she had bought. You also believed that her sudden interest in the arts had actually been an attempt of sorts to get closer to you, which just made the whole thing worse. The novels, the volumes of poetry, the art gallery, the National Theatre productions; the way you saw it, it wasn’t because she had woken up one morning feeling like a new woman that she had decided to explore all of this. No, she had simply been trying to get through to you by showing an interest in, and learning more about, things that she knew meant a lot to you. “And even though I knew this right from the start, I pushed her away,” you said.
It’s okay now, everything’s cool, just forget what happened back there, don’t think about it. It’ll be a long, fucking time before I talk to Mum again, though, not to mention Eskil and Hilde, can’t think when I’ll ever want to see them again. I walk up the steps to the front door. Ring the bell. Hook my thumbs into the loops on my belt and stand there trying to look laid-back. I glance down at the steps and up again. Then I see my name underneath the bell button. If she still hasn’t taken my name down, she must still have some faint hope. I could be doing the wrong thing showing up here like this if she’s hoping I’ll come back, I don’t want to give her false hope, either. Maybe I should have gone to the cottage after all, bought food and wine and taken the bus over there, spent some time on my own, read books, gone fishing, taken it easy, but it’s too late now. I hear the sound of the hall door opening, I’ll have to ask if I can stay here till things sort themselves out. They always do, eventually. I take a step back, lean one elbow on the iron banister behind me, try to look relaxed, laid-back, look as if I just popped by to say hello, just happened to be in the neighbourhood. And then the front door opens, slowly, and there’s Wenche. She looks at
me, I try to smile, but she doesn’t smile back, her face is still, expressionless almost, and she doesn’t say anything, just stares at me.
“Hi, Wenche,” I say.
“Hi.”
Two beats.
“Well, you look thrilled to see me,” I say, attempting a little laugh. But she doesn’t laugh, she shuts her eyes and breathes a big sigh, opens her eyes again and stands there looking at me. She has these kind of affectedly weary eyes.
“What do you want, Jon?” she asks.
“What do I want?”
“Yes.”
I nod at the label under the doorbell.
“Well, it looks like I live here,” I say with another attempt at a laugh, but she doesn’t laugh back, just blinks her eyes languidly and curls one corner of her mouth.
“Oh, please!” she says.
I look at her, realize this is a bit awkward, embarrassing, and I stop laughing.
“Sorry,” I say.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
I look into her green eyes, eyes like gooseberries.
“Because I’ve nowhere else to go, simple as that,” I say, just telling her the plain truth.
She rolls her eyes.
“Oh, thanks a lot,” she says. “You really know how to flatter a girl.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say with a short laugh.
She looks me straight in the eye, holds my gaze for a second, then a small smile spreads across her face, she
thaws slightly, shakes her head and steps aside, motions me into the flat.
“Oh, come on in,” she says. “You can sleep on the couch.”
“Thanks!” I say, smiling, feeling relieved, didn’t even have to ask if I could stay the night, it sorted itself out. I kick off my shoes, dump them on the shoe rack, hang my jacket on the slightly lopsided wooden coat stand. The same shoe rack, the same coat stand as when I lived here, it’s weird, it feels as though I’ve hardly been gone at all, and yet everything’s totally different. It’s like coming home and being a visitor at the same time.
“But where are your things – didn’t you bring them?” she asks.
“Nope,” I say, being totally straight with her. I know she likes that side of me, my impulsive, spontaneous streak. She used to say that it drove her crazy, but I knew she liked it, liked being the one who straightened things out and looked after me, the one who was in control.
“No bass, no clothes, no toiletries even?” she asks.
“Nope, I just upped and left,” I say.
She shuts her eyes and shakes her head despairingly, looks at me and smiles. Just as I thought, she likes it, I can tell.
“I see,” she says, putting her hands on her hips, smiling at me. “So what is it this time?”
I shrug, smile back.
“Oh, I had a bit of a set-to with Mum and Eskil,” I say.
“With Grete and Eskil? I thought you were on tour.”
“No, no! I left the band,” I say, come right out with it, I might as well, she’ll find out anyway when she talks to Lars and Anders.
“What?” she says, sticking her head an inch or so further forward, staring at me round-eyed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! You know what, you never change. You left – just like that? One minute it’s the best thing that ever happened to you, and the next … why on earth did you leave the band?”
I look at her and smile rather ruefully, indicating to her that I don’t feel like talking about it right now. But she’s not about to quit. She’s still the same, still as persistent.
“Well?” she says.
“Please, Wenche,” I say. “Let’s talk about this later.”
“Why?”
“Hey. Don’t start interrogating me straight away,” I say a little wearily, but still smiling. “I’m just in the door,” I say.
“Interrogating you? I only asked.”
I look at her, give a faint sigh.
“It just got to the point where we had to go our separate ways,” I say. “I suppose we were less alike than we thought, both musically and personally.”
“I see. And the three of you just suddenly discovered this? You couldn’t have waited till after the tour?”
“Yeah, well, we probably could have. But it didn’t work out that way.”
“Oh, no?” she says. “And why not?”
I eye her beseechingly, don’t feel like talking about this any more, not right now. But she won’t quit, still the same old Wenche, persistent as always, looks me straight in the eye, demanding an answer. I wait a moment, sigh.
“Oh, you know, it was just a case of the proverbial last straw,” I say, a mite reluctantly. “They started accusing me of being negative and I was pissed off because they hadn’t spoken up sooner, instead they’d actually laughed
at my black humour and played along with me, and then we started arguing, and well … here I am!”
Wenche stares at me, shakes her head despairingly.
“Okay, okay!” I say, raising my hands as if to say, “I give in,” as if agreeing that I’m hopeless.
“Oh, Jon, really!” she laughs. It suits her to have me like this, suits her that I’m the sort of person she can take care of. “Go on in and sit down,” she says.
I smile, stick my hands in my pockets and stroll into the living room, the sweet smell of incense fills my nostrils and Joni Mitchell’s voice comes slinking to meet me, a number from
Blue
, can’t remember the title. Halfway into the room I stop, look around me. The ceiling light is gone and there are lighted candles on the windowsills and the dining table, tall candelabra with white candles that cast rippling shadows on the white walls.
“The place looks great,” I say, looking at a big Rosina Wachtmeister print in a gold frame. “I really like it.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you do!” she says, laughing.
“No, I mean it,” I say, trying to sound sincere, smiling at her.
She smiles back.
“Well, thank you,” she says, pauses, then: “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, thanks,” I say.
“A glass of wine, then?”
“Well, only if you’re having one! Don’t open a bottle for my sake.”
“As if I would,” she says.
“Cheeky!” I retort.
We look at one another, laugh again, one beat, then she goes out to the kitchen. I walk across to the couch, flick
a cushion out of the way and flop down, stretch my arms along the couch back.
“So, how’s the course going?” I ask.
“Oh, fine,” she says, then she pauses and I hear her pulling the plastic seal off the top of the wine bottle. “Not bad,” she goes on. “It’s a bit tough, though, obviously, what with me living here and not in Trondheim. But it’s going okay.”