My Struggle: Book One (43 page)

Yes, here, but only one.

“Have you seen the packaging?” I asked Yngve. “The boxes? I'm on the phone with Tonje's father.”

“There are some in the cupboard next to you,” Yngve said.

“What are you looking for?” Grandma asked from her chair.

I didn't want to patronize her, and I had been aware of her eyes on my back while I was rummaging, but at the same time I couldn't take any notice of that.

“I'm talking to a doctor on the telephone,” I said to her, as though that was supposed to explain everything. Strangely enough, it seemed to calm her, and I left with the prescription and the packets semiconcealed in my hands.

“Hello?” I said.

“I'm still here,” he said.

“I've just found some of the boxes,” I said and read out the names on them.

“Aha,” he said. “She's already taking a sedative, but I can prescribe one more for you, that won't be a problem. As soon as we hang up I'll phone it through. Is there a pharmacy nearby?”

“Yes, there's one in Lund. It's a suburb.”

“I'll care of it. Thanks a lot.”

I cradled the phone and went back to the veranda, looked across to the
mouth of the fjord where the sky was still overcast but the clouds had a quite different, lighter hue. Tonje's father was a good person and a lovely man. He would never do anything offensive or go too far in any direction, he was respectable and decent, though not stiff or formal, on the contrary, he was often fired up with enthusiasm, a kind of boyishness, and if he didn't go too far it was not because he didn't want to or couldn't, it was because it wasn't in his repertoire, it was simply impossible for him, I had reflected, and I liked him for that, there was something in it, in decent behavior, that I had always sought, and whenever I found it I always liked being close to it, although at the same time I also realized that I liked it and him so much because he reminded me of my father. When I got married at the age of twenty-five it was because I wanted a middle-class, stable, settled existence. That side of me, of course, was counteracted by the fact that we didn't live that kind of life, the middle-class, stable, routine-anchored lifestyle, quite the opposite, and the fact that no one married so young anymore, and therefore it was, if not radical, then at least original.

This being my thinking, and also because I loved her, I had fallen on bended knee one evening, alone on the terrace outside Maputo in Mozambique, beneath a coal-black sky, with the air full of the sound of chirruping grasshoppers and distant drums from one of the villages a few kilometers away, and asked her if she would marry me. She said something I didn't understand. It certainly wasn't yes. What did you say? I queried. Are you asking me to marry you? she said. Are you really? Is that what you're asking? Yes, I said. Yes, she said. I want to marry you. We embraced, both of us with tears in our eyes, and right at that moment the sky rumbled, a deep, powerful clap of thunder, it rippled and Tonje shivered, and then the torrents fell. We laughed, Tonje ran inside for her camera, and when she came out she put one arm around me and took a photo with the other hand outstretched.

We were two children.

Through the window I saw Yngve going into the living room. He walked towards the two chairs, stared at them, moved on and was lost from view.

Even outside there were bottles lying around, some had been blown against the picket fence, others had got stuck under the two faded, rusty garden seats that must have been there since the spring, at the very least.

Yngve reappeared, I couldn't see his facial expression, just his shadow as it passed through the living room and disappeared into the kitchen.

I went down the steps into the garden. There were no houses below, the hillside was too steep, but at the bottom lay the marina, and outside it the relatively small harbor basin. On the eastern side, however, the garden bordered another property. It was as well-tended as this one had once been, and the neatness and control that manifested itself in the trimmed hedges, the manicured grass, and the gaily colored flower beds, made the garden here seem sickly. I stood there for some minutes in tears, then walked around to the front of the house and continued my work in the cellar. When the last item of clothing had been carried out, I sprinkled the Klorin over the floor, using half of the bottle, and then I scrubbed it with the broom before hosing it all down the drain. Then I emptied the rest of the green soap all over it, and scrubbed it again, this time with a cloth. After hosing it down again I supposed that would have to do and went back up to the kitchen. Yngve was washing the inside of a cupboard. The dishwasher was running. The counter was cleared and scrubbed.

“I'm having a break,” I said. “Want to join me?”

“Yes, I'll finish this first,” Yngve said. “Perhaps you could put some coffee on?”

I did so. Then I suddenly remembered Grandma's prescription. That could not wait.

“I'll just run down to the pharmacy,” I said. “Is there anything you want, maybe from the newsstand?”

“No,” he said. “Actually, yes, a Coke.”

I buttoned up my jacket as I emerged onto the steps. The pile of garbage bags in front of the beautiful wooden 1950s garage door glistened black in the gray summer light. The dark-brown trailer stood with the bar resting on
the ground, as if humbled, I thought, a servant who bowed as I appeared. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and walked down the drive, along the pavement to the main road, where the rain had now completely dried up. On the overhanging cliff opposite, however, its many surfaces were still wet and the tufts of grass growing there shone with an intense green against all the dark colors, so very different from when it was dry and dusty, when there were fewer contrasts between colors and everything under the sky seemed indifferent, resistant, open, vast and empty. How many such open, empty days had there been when I used to walk around here? Seeing the black windows in houses, seeing the wind whistling through the countryside, the sun that lit it up, all the blindness and deadness in it? Oh, and this was the time you adored in the town, this was the time you regarded as the best, when the town really came alive. Blue sky, boiling hot sun, dusty streets. A car with a blaring stereo and an open roof, two young men at the front dressed only in trunks, with sunglasses, they are heading for the beach . . . An old woman with a dog, clothed from head to toe, her sunglasses are large, the dog strains at the leash, wanting to sniff a fence. A plane with a long banner behind, there is a match at the stadium the following day. Everything is open, everything is empty, the world is dead, and in the evening restaurants are filled with suntanned, happy men and women wearing brightly colored clothes.

I hated this town.

After a hundred meters down Kuholmsveien I reached the intersection, the pharmacy was a hundred meters away, in the middle of the small suburban center. Behind it was a grass slope, on top of which stood some fifties or sixties blocks of flats. On the other side of the road, quite a way up the slope, were the Elevine Assembly Rooms. Perhaps we should use them for the gathering after the funeral?

The thought that he was not only dead for me, but also for his mother and his brothers, his uncles and aunts, made me weep again. I wasn't concerned about this happening on a sidewalk with people walking past all the time, I hardly saw them; however, I wiped away the tears anyway, mostly for practical
reasons, to be able to see where I was going, as a thought suddenly struck me: we shouldn't hold the wake in the Elevine Rooms but in my grandparents' house, which he had ruined.

The thought excited me.

We should clean every damned centimeter of every damned room, throw out everything he had ruined, recover everything that had been left and use it, restore the entire house, and then gather everyone there. He might have ruined everything, but we would restore it. We were decent people. Yngve would say it wasn't possible, and there was no point, but I could insist. I had as much right as he to decide what the funeral would be like. Of course it was possible. All we had to was clean. Clean, clean, clean.

There wasn't a line at the pharmacy, and after I had shown my ID, the white-clad assistant went between the shelves and found the tablets, printed out a label and stuck it on, slipped them in a bag, and referred me to the cash register on the other side to pay.

A vague feeling of some good here, maybe only caused by the slightly cooler air against my skin, made me pause on the steps outside.

Gray, gray sky; gray, gray town.

Glistening car bodies. Bright windows. Wires running from lamp post to lamp post.

No. There was nothing here.

Slowly I began to walk toward the newsstand.

Dad had talked about suicide several times, but always as a generality, as a conversation topic. He thought suicide statistics lied, and that many, perhaps nearly all, car accidents with a single occupant were camouflaged suicides. He mentioned it more than once, that it was common for people to drive a car into the side of a mountain or an oncoming truck to avoid the disgrace of a blatant suicide. It was at this time he and Unni had moved to Sørland after having lived in northern Norway for such a long time, and they were still together. Dad's skin was close to black from all the sun he had absorbed, and he was as fat as a barrel. He lay on a sunbed in the garden behind the house and drank, he sat on the veranda in front of the house and drank, and in the
evenings he would be drunk and drifting, he stood in the kitchen in no more than his shorts, frying chops, that was all I ever saw him eat, no potatoes, no vegetables, just blackened chops. During one such evening he said that Jens Bjørneboe, the Kristiansand author, had hung himself by the feet, that was how he had committed suicide, hanging upside down from the rafters. The impossibility of this procedure – for how could he have managed that on his own in the house in Veierland? – never struck either him or me. The most considerate method would be, he said, to go to a hotel, write a letter to the hospital saying where you could be found, and then drink spirits and take pills, lie down on the bed, and go to sleep. It was incredible that I had never interpreted this topic of conversation as anything except conversation, I thought now, as I approached the newsstand behind the bus stop, but that was how it had been. He had imprinted his image of himself in me so firmly that I never saw anything else, even when the person he became diverged so widely from the person he had been, both in terms of physiognomy and character, that any similarities were barely visible any longer, it was always the person he had been with whom I engaged.

I climbed the wooden steps and opened the door to the newsstand, which was empty except for the assistant, took a newspaper from the stand by the till, slid open the glass door of the freezer compartment, took out a Coke, and placed both on the counter.

“
Dagbladet
and a Coke,” the assistant said, lifting them for the bar code scanner. “Was there anything else?”

He didn't make eye contact when he said that, he must have seen me crying as I came in.

“No,” I said. “That's all.”

I pulled a creased note from my pocket and examined it. Fifty kroner. I smoothed it before passing it to him.

“Thank you,” he said. He had thick, blond hair on his arms, wore a white Adidas T-shirt, blue jogging pants, probably Adidas as well, and did not look like someone who worked in a newsstand, more like a friend who had taken over for a few minutes. I grabbed my things and turned to leave as two
ten-year-old boys came in with their money poised in their hands. Their bikes were thrown carelessly against the steps outside. A stretch of cars in both lanes began to move. I had to call Mom this evening. And Tonje. I walked along the sidewalk, crossed at the narrow pedestrian crossing down from the newsstand and was back in Kuholmsveien. Of course the funeral should be held there. In . . . six days. By then everything ought to be ready. By that time we should have put an advertisement in the newspaper, planned the funeral, invited guests, restored the house, come to terms with the worst aspects of the garden and organized the catering. If we got up early and went to bed late, and did nothing else, it should be feasible. It was just a question of getting Yngve on board. And Gunnar, of course. He might not have much of a say in the funeral, but he did as far as the house was concerned. But, hell, it should be fine. He would understand the reasons.

When I went into the kitchen Yngve was cleaning the stove with steel wool. Grandma was sitting in the chair. There was a splash of what would have to be pee on the floor below it.

“Here's your Coke,” I said. “I'll put it on the table.”

“Fine,” he said.

“What have you got in that bag?” Grandma said, eyeing the paper bag from the pharmacy.

“It's for you,” I said. “My father-in-law's a doctor and when I described what had happened here he prescribed you some sedatives. I don't think it's a bad idea. After all you've been through.”

I took the square cardboard box from the bag, opened it, and removed the plastic container.

“What does it say?” Grandma said.

“One tablet to be taken once morning and night,” I said. “Do you want one now?”

“Yes, if the doctor said so,” Grandma said. I passed her the container, and she opened it and shook out a tablet. She looked around the table.