My Struggle: Book One (53 page)

She held the rail tight, as though on the brink of a precipice.

“Is that you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“But I'll soon have finished.”

“Where's Ynge then?”

“He's gone shopping,” I said.

“Yes, that's right, yes,” she said. She stood watching my hand, which, with the cloth held between my fingers, was moving up and down the banister. Then she looked at my face. I met her gaze, and a chill ran down my spine. She looked as though she hated me.

She sighed and flicked the lock of hair that kept falling over one eye to the side.

“You're working hard,” she said. “You're working very hard.”

“Ye-es,” I said. “But now that we've started it's great to make some progress, isn't it?”

There was the sound of a car engine outside.

“There he is,” I said.

“Who?” she asked. “Gunnar?”

“Yngve,” I said.

“But isn't he here?”

I didn't answer.

“Oh, that's right,” she said. “I'm beginning to unravel too!”

I smiled, dropped the cloth in the turbid water, and grabbed the handle of the bucket.

“We'd better make something to eat,” I said.

In the kitchen, I poured out the water, wrung the cloth dry, and hung it over the rim of the bucket while Grandma sat in her place. As I removed the ashtray from the table she moved the lowest part of the curtain aside and peered out. I emptied the ashtray, walked back, took the cups, put them in the sink, wet the kitchen rag, sprayed the table with a detergent and was washing it when Yngve came in with a grocery bag in each hand. He set them down and began to unpack. First, what we would have for lunch, which he laid out on the counter, four vacuum-packed salmon steaks, a bag of potatoes stained dark with soil, a head of cauliflower, and a packet of frozen beans, then all the other goods, some of which he stowed in the fridge, some in the cupboard next to it. A 1.5 liter bottle of Sprite, a 1.5 liter bottle of CB beer, a bag of oranges, a carton of milk, a carton of orange juice, a loaf. I switched
on the stove, took a frying pan from the cupboard under the counter and some margarine from the fridge, cut off a slice and scraped it in the pan, filled a large saucepan with water and placed it on the rear burner, opened the bag of potatoes, spilled them into the sink, turned on the tap, and started washing them, as the dollop of margarine slowly slid across the black frying pan. Again it struck me how clean and, for that reason, heartening the presence of these purchases was, their bright colors, the green and white of the frozen beans bag, its red writing and red logo, or the white paper around most of the loaf, though not all, the dark, rounded, crusty end peeped out like a snail from its shell, or, so it appeared to me, like a monk from his cowl. The orange tint of the fruit bulging through the plastic bag. Together, one globular shape hidden behind the other, they almost resembled a textbook model of a molecule. The scent they spread through the room as soon as they were peeled or cut open always reminded me of my father. That was how the rooms he had been in smelled: of cigarette smoke and oranges. Entering my own office and smelling the air there, I was always filled with good feelings.

But why? What was it that constituted the “good?”

Yngve folded up the two grocery bags and put them in the bottom drawer. The margarine was sizzling in the pan. The jet from the tap was broken by the potatoes I was holding beneath it, and the water that ran down the sides of the sink was not powerful enough to remove all the soil from the tubers and so formed a layer of mud around the plughole until the potatoes were clean and I removed them from the jet, which then swept everything with it in a second, to reveal once again the spotless, gleaming metal base.

“Hmm,” Grandma said from the table.

Her deep eye sockets, the darkness in her otherwise bright eyes, her bones visible all over her body.

Yngve was drinking a glass of Coke in the center of the floor.

“Anything I can do to help?” he asked.

He set the glass down on the counter and belched quietly.

“No, I'm fine,” I said.

“I'll go for a walk then,” he said.

“You should,” I said.

I placed the potatoes in the water, which was already coming to a boil; small bubbles were rising. Found the salt, it was on the hood of the stove, in a small silver Viking ship with spoons as oars, sprinkled a little into the water, cut up the cauliflower, filled another pan with water and put it on, then sliced open a packet of salmon with a knife and took out the four filets which I drizzled with salt and laid on a plate.

“It's fish tonight,” I said. “Salmon.”

“Oh, yes,” Grandma said. “I'm sure it'll be good.”

Her hair needed washing, and she needed a bath. And a fresh change of clothes. I was almost dying for it to happen. But who would take charge of that? It didn't look as if she would do anything on her own initiative. We couldn't tell her. That was out of the question. And what if she didn't want to? We couldn't force her either.

We would have to ask Tove. At least it wouldn't be quite so humiliating for her if it came from someone of the same sex. And who was a generation closer.

I placed the filets in the pan and switched on the fan. In seconds the undersides lightened, going from a deep, reddish pink to pale pink and I watched the new color slowly permeate the flesh. Turned down the potatoes, which were boiling over.

“Ohh,” said Grandma.

I looked at her. She was sitting exactly as before and was probably not aware that a groan had escaped her lips.

He had been her firstborn.

Children were not supposed to pre-decease their parents, they weren't supposed to. That was not the idea.

And to me, what had Dad been to me?

Someone I wished dead.

So why all these tears?

I snipped open the bag of green beans. They were covered with a thin layer of downy frost and had a grayish appearance. Now the cauliflower was boiling
as well. I turned down the burner and glanced at the wall clock. Eighteen minutes to five. Four more minutes and the cauliflower would be ready. Or six. Maybe another fifteen for the potatoes. I should have cut them in half. After all, this was no banquet we were having.

Grandma looked at me.

“Do you boys ever drink beer with your meals?” she said. I saw that Yngve had bought a bottle.

Had she seen it?

I shook my head.

“It has happened,” I said. “But it's rare. Very rare, in fact.”

I turned the filets. There were a few brownish-black patches here and there on the light flesh. But they weren't burned.

I emptied some beans into the pan, added salt, and poured out the excess water. Grandma leaned forward and looked out of the window. I took the frying pan off the heat, turned down the temperature, and joined Yngve on the veranda. He was sitting in a chair and gazing out.

“Food'll soon be ready,” I said. “Five minutes.”

“Good,” he said.

“The beer you bought. Was that for the meal?” I asked.

He nodded and glanced over at me.

“Why?”

“It's Grandma,” I said. “She asked if we ever had beer with meals. I was thinking that perhaps we don't have to drink when she's there. There's been so much boozing here. She doesn't need to see anymore. Even if it's only a glass with food. Do you see what I mean?”

“Of course. But you're going too far.”

“Possibly I am. But this is not exactly a huge sacrifice.”

“No,” Yngve said.

“Are we agreed then?”

“Okay!” he said.

The irritation in his voice was unmistakable. I didn't want to leave with that hanging in the air. At the same time I couldn't think of a way to smooth
things over. So after a few seconds of indecision, with my arms hanging limply down by my sides and tears in my throat I went back to the kitchen, set the table, emptied the water from the saucepan of potatoes and let them steam themselves dry, lifted the salmon filets onto a dish with the spatula, sliced the cauliflower and put it and the beans on the same dish, then found a bowl to put the potatoes in, and set everything on the table. Pink, light-green, white, dark-green, golden-brown. I filled a jug of water and was putting it on the table with three glasses just as Yngve came in from the veranda.

“That looks really good,” he said and sat down. “But a knife and fork might come in handy.”

I grabbed some cutlery from the drawer, passed it to them, sat down, and started to peel a potato. The hot skin burned my fingers.

“Are you peeling them?” Yngve said. “But these are new potatoes.”

“You're right,” I said. Impaled another potato with my fork and transported it to my plate. It crumbled as I pressed my knife in. Yngve raised a sliver of salmon to his mouth. Grandma sat dividing it up into small chunks. I got up for some margarine from the fridge, put a blob on the potato. From force of habit I breathed through my mouth as I chewed the first mouthful. Yngve appeared to have a more normal, adult relationship with fish. He even ate lutefisk now, which at one time had been the worst of the worst. In my head I could hear him saying
In fact it's really nice with bacon and all the trimmings,
while he sat beside me eating in silence. Lutefisk lunches with friends, well, that wasn't a world I inhabited. Not because I couldn't force down lutefisk but because I wasn't invited to that kind of gathering. Why not, I had no idea. I didn't care anymore anyway. But there had been days when I had cared, days when I had been on the outside and had suffered. Now I was only on the outside.

“Gunnar said there was a tool rental in Grim,” I said. “Shall we go there tomorrow after seeing the undertaker? It would be good to get this done before you go. While we have a car, I mean.”

“Fine,” Yngve said.

Also Grandma was eating now. A pointed, rodent-like expression came
over her face. Every time she moved I caught a whiff of pee. Oh, we were going to have to get her into the bathtub. Get her into clean clothes. Get some food into her. Porridge, milk, butter.

I raised the glass to my lips and drank. The water, so cool in my mouth, had a faint metallic taste. Yngve's cutlery clattered against the plate. A wasp or a bee buzzed around the dining room, behind the half-open door. Grandma sighed. And she twisted sideways in her chair as though the thought that had occurred to her had passed not only through her consciousness but also her body.

In this house they had even eaten fish on Christmas Eve. When I was small it seemed outrageous. Fish on Christmas Eve! But Kristiansand was a coastal town, the tradition well-established and the cod on sale in the fish hall during the Christmas run-up carefully selected. I had been there once with Grandma, I remembered the atmosphere that met us in the hall, the darkness after the blinding sunshine outside in the snow, the large cod swimming calmly around in their tanks, their brown skin, which was yellowish in places, greenish in others, their mouths opening and closing so slowly, the beard beneath the soft, white chin, the rigid yellow eyes. The men working there wore white aprons and rubber boots. One of them cut off the head of a cod with a large, almost square knife. The next moment, after moving the heavy head to the side, he sliced open the stomach. The intestines oozed out between his fingers. They were pale and wet, and thrown into a large waste drum beside him. Why were they so pale? Another man had just wrapped a fish in paper and was stabbing a till with one finger. I noticed that he treated the keys quite differently from the way they were treated in other shops, as though two distinct worlds, one tidy and the other rough, one indoors and the other outdoors, were brought together here in the fish vendor's brusque yet unpracticed fingers. The hall smelled of salt. Fish and shrimp were bedded in ice on the counters. Grandma, who was wearing a fur hat and a dark, floor-length cloak queued in front of one of the counters while I wandered over to a wooden crate full of live crabs. From the top they were dark-brown like rotten leaves, underneath yellowish-white bones. Their black, pinlike eyes,
antennae, claws that made clicking sounds when the crabs crawled up on one another. They were like a kind of container, I thought, containers of meat. It was a marvelous adventure that they came from the deep, and had been hauled up here, as all live fish had. A man was hosing down the concrete floor; the water flowed towards the grille. Grandma leaned forward and pointed to a completely flat fish, greenish with rust-red spots, and the assistant lifted it from the ice-bed and put it on some scales, then onto paper, and wrapped it up. He put the packet into a bag, handed the bag to Grandma who, in turn, passed him a banknote from her little purse. But the sense of adventure that surrounded the fish here was gone as soon as they were on my plate, white, quivering, salty and full of bones, the same as with the fish that Dad and I caught in the sea off Tormøya, or in the sound by the mainland, with a jig, trolling line, or pole, that sense left them as soon as they had been prepared for the table and lay on one of our brown lunch plates at home in Tybakken in the seventies.