My Struggle: Book One (54 page)

When had I accompanied Grandma to the fish hall?

I hadn't stayed with my grandparents on many weekdays when I was growing up. So it must have been the winter holiday that Yngve and I had spent there. When we caught the bus on our own to Kristiansand. That meant Yngve must have been with us on that day as well. But in my memory he wasn't. And the crabs could not have been there; the winter holiday was usually in February when you couldn't buy live crabs. If it had been February they wouldn't have been in a wooden crate. So where did this image, so distinct and detailed, actually come from?

Could have been anywhere. If my childhood was full of anything, it was fish and crabs, shrimp and lobsters. Many was the time I had seen Dad fetch cold leftovers of fish from the fridge, which he ate standing in the kitchen at night, or on weekend mornings. He liked crab best, though; when late summer came and they began to fill out he used to go to the fish wharf in Arendal after school and buy some, if for once he didn't catch them himself, in the evening or at night, on one of the islets in the skerries, or by the rocks on the far edge of the island. Sometimes we joined him, and there is one special
occasion that sticks in my memory, one night by Torungen lighthouse under the bluish-black August sky, when the gulls launched themselves at us as we were leaving the boat to make our way across the islet, and afterward, with two buckets full of crabs, we lit a fire in a hollow. The flames licked at the sky. The sea around us was immense. Dad's face shone.

I set down the glass, cut off a piece of fish, and stuck my fork into it. The dark gray, oily meat separated by the three prongs was so tender that I could break it up with my tongue against my palate.

After eating we resumed the cleanup. The stairs were finished, so I took over where Tove had left off while Yngve began in the dining room. Outside, it was raining. A fine layer of drizzle fell against the windows, the veranda wall was slightly darker, and at sea, where presumably it would have fallen with greater force, the clouds on the horizon were striped with rain. I wiped the dust off all the small ornaments, the lamps, the pictures and the souvenirs that littered the shelves, and put them on the floor piece by piece in order to clean the shelves themselves. An oil lamp that looked like something from
One Thousand and One Nights
, both cheap and precious, with ornate, gilt decorations, a Venetian gondola that gleamed like a lamp, a photograph of my grandparents in front of an Egyptian pyramid. As I examined it I heard Grandma get up in the kitchen. I wiped the glass and frame and put it down, reached for the little stand holding old-fashioned 45 rpm records. Grandma stood with her hands behind her back, watching me.

“No, you really don't need to do
that
,” she said. “You don't need to be
so
thorough.”

“It won't take a second,” I said. “Might as well while I'm at it.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “It's looking nice.”

After wiping the stand down I put it on the floor, piled the records beside it, opened the cupboard and removed the old stereo player.

“You don't take a little drop in the evening, do you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Not during the week anyway.”

“I guessed as much,” she said.

In the town on the other side of the river the lights had started to shine more brightly. What could the time be? Half past five? Six?

I cleaned the shelves and replaced the stereo. Grandma, who must have gathered that there was nothing more to be gained here, turned with a sigh and went down to the second living room. Immediately afterward I heard her voice, and then Yngve's. On entering the kitchen to get some newspaper and a window spray I noticed through the open door that she had taken a seat at the table to chat with Yngve while he was working.

Drink really had gotten a hold on her, I was thinking, as I took the spray from the cupboard, tore a few pages from the newspaper on the chair under the wall clock, and returned to the living room. Not exactly a surprise. He had been systemically drinking himself to death, no other way of explaining it, and she had been here to witness it. Every morning, every afternoon, every evening, every night. For how long? Two years? Three years? Just the two of them. Mother and son.

I sprayed the glass door of the bookcase, crumpled up the newspaper, and rubbed it over the runny liquid a few times until the glass was dry and shiny. Looked around for more to do while I had the spray in my hand, but saw nothing apart from the windows, which I had determined to save till later. Instead, I went on with the bookcase, cleaned up everything, starting with its contents.

In the meantime the air in the harbor basin was streaked with rain. The next moment it beat against the window in front of me. Large, heavy drops that ran down and formed tremulous patterns across the whole pane. Grandma walked past behind me. I didn't turn, but her movements were still engaging my mind as she stopped, picked up the TV remote control, pressed it, and sat in the chair. I put the duster on the shelf and went to see Yngve.

“They're full of bottles as well,” he said, nodding toward the line of cupboards along one entire wall. “But the dishes are fine.”

“Has she asked you if we usually take a drink?” I said. “She must have asked me ten times since we arrived. At least.”

“Yes, she certainly has,” he said. “The question is whether she should have
a little drink. She doesn't need our permission, but that's what she's asking for. So … what do you think?”

“What?”

“Didn't you understand?” he asked, looking up again. With a tiny mirthless smile on his lips.

“Understand what?” I replied.

“She wants a drink. She's desperate.”

“Grandma?”

“Yes. What do you think? Is it okay for her to have one?”

“Are you sure that's what it is? I was thinking the opposite.”

“That was my first thought too. But it's obvious when you think about it. He lived here for a long time. How else could she have stood it?”

“Is she an
alcoholic
?”

Yngve shrugged.

“Thing is she wants a drink now. And she needs our permission.”

“Shit,” I said. “What a mess this is.”

“It's fine, but surely it wouldn't hurt to have a little drink now, would it? She is in shock, kind of.”

“So what do we do?” I said.

“Well, we can ask her if she wants a drink? Then we can have one with her.”

“Okay, but not right now, surely?”

“Let's finish up for the evening. And then ask her. As though it were nothing out of the ordinary.”

Half an hour later I had finished the bookcase and went onto the terrace, where it had stopped raining and the air was full of fresh fragrances from the garden. The table lay under a film of water; the seat covers were dark with moisture. Plastic bottles lying on their sides on the brick floor were dotted with raindrops. The bottlenecks reminded me of muzzles, as if they were small cannons with their barrels pointing in all directions. Raindrops hung in clusters along the underside of the wrought-iron fence. Now and then one let go and fell onto the wall beneath with an almost imperceptible plop.
That Dad had been here only three days ago was hard to believe. That he had seen the same view three days ago, walked around the same house, seen Grandma as we saw her and thought his thoughts only three days ago was hard to grasp. That is, I could grasp that he had been here recently. But not that he couldn't see this now. The veranda, the plastic bottles, the light in the neighbor's windows. The flakes of yellow paint that had peeled off and now lay on the red terrace by the rusting table leg. The gutter and the rainwater still running down it into the grass. I could not grasp that he wouldn't see any more of this, however hard I tried. I did grasp that he wouldn't see Yngve or me again, that had something to do with our emotions, in which death was interwoven in a completely different way from the objective, concrete reality that surrounded me.

Nothing, just nothing. Not even darkness.

I lit a cigarette, ran my hand over the wet chair seat a couple of times and sat down. I only had two left. So I would have to go to the newsstand before it closed.

A cat slunk along the fence at the end of the lawn. Its coat was a grizzled gray and it looked old. It stopped with one paw raised, staring into the grass for a while, then went on. I thought about our cat, Nansen, on which Tonje lavished her affections. It was no more than a few months old and slept under her duvet with its head just peeping out.

I hadn't given Tonje a single thought during the day. Not one. What did that mean? I didn't want to call her because I had nothing to say, but I would have to for her sake. If I hadn't thought about her, she would have thought about me, I knew that.

In the air high above the harbor a seagull was flying toward us. It was heading for the veranda, and I felt myself smile, it was Grandma's seagull on its way for supper. But with me sitting there it didn't dare approach and landed on the roof instead, where it leaned back and squawked its seagull squawk.

Bit of salmon wouldn't go amiss, would it?

I stubbed the cigarette out on the veranda, put it in a bottle, stood up, and went to Grandma, who was watching TV.

“Your gull's here again,” I said. “Shall I give it some salmon?”

“What?” she said, turning toward me.

“The gull's here,” I said. “Shall I give it some salmon?”

“Oh,” she said. “I can do that.”

She got to her feet and walked with her head hunched into the kitchen. I grabbed the TV remote control and lowered the volume. Then I went into the dining room, which was empty, and sat by the telephone. I dialed home.

“Hello, Tonje here.”

“Hi. Karl Ove here.”

“Oh
hi
…”

“Hi.”

“How's it going?”

“Not wonderfully,” I said. “It's hard going here. I'm in tears almost all the time. But I don't really know what I'm crying about. Dad being dead, of course, but it's not just that …”

“I should have gone with you,” she said. “I miss you so much.”

“It's a house of death,” I said. “We're wading through his death. He died in the chair in the room next door, it's still there. And then there's everything that happened here, I mean, a long time ago, when I was growing up, all that's here too, and it's surfacing. Do you understand? I'm somehow very close to everything. To the person I was when I was younger. To the person Dad was. All the feelings from that time are resurfacing.”

“Poor Karl Ove,” she said.

Grandma came through the door in front of me, carrying a dish of cut-up salmon. She didn't see me. I waited until she was in the other room.

“No, don't feel sorry for me,” I said. “It's him we should feel sorry for. His life was so awful at the end you wouldn't believe it.”

“How's your grandmother taking it?”

“I don't quite know. She's in shock, she seems senile. And she's so damn thin. They just sat here drinking. Her and him.”

“Her as well. Your grandmother?”

“Absolutely. You wouldn't believe it. But we've decided to clean everything up and have a wake here after the funeral.”

Through the glass door to the veranda I could see Grandma putting down the dish. She stepped back and peered around.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Tonje said.

“I don't know,” I said. “But that's what we're going to do now. Clean the whole damn house and then fix it up. Buy tablecloths and flowers and …”

Yngve stuck his head through the door. When he saw I was on the phone he raised his eyebrows and withdrew, just as Grandma came in from the veranda. She stood in front of the window and looked out.

“I was thinking of coming down a day before,” Tonje said. “Then I can give you a hand.”

“The funeral's on Friday,” I said. “Can you get a day off work?”

“Yes. So, I'll come in the morning. I miss you so much.”

“What have you been doing today?”

“Mm, nothing special. Had lunch with Mom and Hans. Love from them, they were thinking about you.”

“Mm, that was nice of them,” I said. “What did you have to eat?”

Tonje's mother was a fantastic cook; meals in her house were an experience, if you were the foodie type. I wasn't, I didn't give a rat's ass about food, I was just as happy to eat fish fingers as baked halibut, sausages as fillet of Beef Wellington, but Tonje was, her eyes lit up when she started talking about food, and she was a talented cook, she enjoyed working in the kitchen; even if it was only pizza she was making, she put her heart and soul into it. She was the most sensuous person I had ever met. And she had moved in with someone who regarded meals, home comforts, and closeness as necessary evils.

“Flounder. So it's just as well you weren't there.”

I could hear her grinning.