Somewhere Over the Sea (6 page)

Since then there's been a half-heartedness about your sessions of playing at pirates. It's as if it doesn't seem worth the effort anymore. And it hasn't been as difficult for us to coax you out of your pirate role — if not of all the other roles. A lost innocence, perhaps, but above all a triumph for maturity, a big step on the road to gaining an understanding of who you are in the world.

And we'll just have to put up with the fact that you're no longer afraid of being called a landlubber. There are more important things in life than eating fish.

— ARE YOU
SURE
you want to do this, Gabriel? You can do exactly what you want, no one at school will say anything if you change your mind. You know that, don't you?

— Yes, I know that. But can't I do it if I want to? Please, please, please? I know it, here, just listen . . .

And you launch into your song, both verses. You do it impeccably, strictly speaking, even though you also demonstrate beyond any doubt that you're your parents' true-born son and that you, like them, would be wise to choose a career other than music.

But this wasn't about music. This was about longing and your need to be seen the way you saw that others were seen. It was about being included by the others, something you hardly ever experience ordinarily, at least not outside school hours. That treat is so exceptional for you that on the rare occasions when children your own age call on you at home you're completely perplexed. You lose your conceptions, as you put it, without being quite sure what that means. Do you remember that day last summer when Marit from your class suddenly rang the doorbell? First she gave you a hug that left you embarrassed and almost lost for words, and then she asked if you wanted to go out and play. You were so busy expressing your amazement that you almost forgot to answer her:

— Can you imagine, Dad? Someone in my class wants to visit me! And in the middle of summer holidays too!

Yes, of course you wanted to be part of it, of course you wanted to sing, and of course you wanted to do it on a stage in front of the class and all the others. Of course you wanted to show them that you too could do it, that you were one of them.

YOU ASK MANY
and difficult questions, Gabriel, but some of them are difficult in complicated ways. If others had asked them, I might have perhaps considered them rhetorical and a bit stupid. When you're the one asking, however, I see and hear that they are deeply serious questions, born of a pain in you that won't go away, no matter how often you ask them, for they have no answers. They are questions like:

— Why can't I be like the others?

— Because, son, because . . . you're different.

It isn't a good answer and I know that. All the others are different too, and yet you're unlike them. And it hurts you — more because you don't understand why you're different than because you actually are. The latter you can, in a sense, come to terms with. The former is a riddle with no answer, and you're condemned to live with it.

But even if you're different, you're not alone, Gabriel. Spread around the world are millions of people who struggle with the same sorts of problems as you do, even though they do so in other ways and with different preconditions. What unites you is that you don't understand, you don't master the social games that go on around you and seem so utterly easy and natural to the rest of us.

Still you're right, in a way, when you protest almost accusingly against such attempts to calm you and comfort you, when you express doubt that anyone else in the whole world can have the same problems as you, because no two people are exactly similar, so no two people can have exactly similar problems. You say this with a certainty I don't quite know how to interpret. Is it simply a logical inference you're formulating? Are you talking about a painful and perhaps unconscious insight that stems from your experience of being different? Or is it that you find strength and security in the experience of being the only one? Sometimes it seems as though you derive comfort from this very undefinability, as when you came home one day shortly after the start of a new school year and exclaimed happily, as though it were a great encouragement:

— Hey, Mom, it's so great — we've got a girl in our class who's different! Yeah, not different like me, but different from the others!

Your classmates are exceptional. From the very first day at school they've embraced you with a natural compassion that is free of any strained sympathy or adult-induced sense of obligation. They can tease you and shout at you, they can quarrel with you and have mock fights with you, they can also have real fights with you if they or you make it necessary; but they have a kind of built-in understanding of where your limits are, of what you're able to accept and tolerate, of what happens when you suddenly turn very Gabriel, and of what they then ought to do and definitely not do. Perhaps part of the explanation is that from the very beginning we've tried to be open with both them and their parents by giving, among other things, explanatory talks about you at parents' meetings and class gatherings. But most of all it's just blessed good luck: you've been lucky enough to end up among children who probably don't always understand you and perhaps don't even always like you, but who nevertheless, or perhaps for that very reason, wish you well.

I never saw this more clearly than on National Day. Like most of the other festive holidays children look forward to,
May 17 isn't a good day for you. The expectations are so immense and diffuse that they can't possibly be met, the level of noise so high, the crowd so great, the impressions so manifold. You lose track of things, and the ability to concentrate, you become confused and that makes you dispirited. And yet each year we try, because we'd so much like for you to feel included.

This time you have, uneventfully, but also with no apparent pleasure or understanding of the point of it, marched in the morning procession and carried the flag from school to church. Afterwards we've been to town and bought a cap gun, ice cream, and a sausage roll. Now we're going to school, where there will be speeches and games and competitions. You and your schoolmates have shot your way through most of your ammunition, and because everybody else is, you too want to take part in the race on the sports field. The event is organized by classes, and prospects of huge gold medals are held out to the winners. One of those, you say, you've just got to have, and you decide, as though it were a matter of pure will, to win.

I stand behind you on the starting line, and with a lump in my stomach, explain that you mustn't begin to run before you hear “Ready, Steady” — and then the starting gun. Great doses of adrenalin and excitement are pumping through you, but you confirm that you've understood.

— Ready . . . Steady . . .

The crack comes so suddenly and unexpectedly that you need a moment to compose yourself. But you feel the thrust of my hand on your back, hear the cheering from the sidelines, and see that the others are off. You stride out, you run like you've never run before, narrow-eyed and determined. You run to win, to get that medal, to show them, and then . . . you look around and see that you're all alone, that there's just you and the gravel field, that way ahead the others are already crossing the finishing line, and you realize that you've lost.

A terrible
no
! explodes from your throat, and you collapse into a fetal position in the middle of that sea of gravel and weep convulsively. A moment later I'm there, sitting with you and holding you tight against my chest, not knowing what to say or do. An awkward silence descends upon the field; people look over at one another and out at us.

Then they're there, your classmates, all of them, swarming round you. I can hardly believe what I'm hearing.

— You were great, Gabriel!

— You did it, Gabriel!

— What a good runner you are, Gabriel!

You raise tearful, disbelieving eyes to look at them, and the trace of a crooked smile appears on your face.

— Come on, Gabriel, let's go and get your medal!

— Yes but, I didn't win . . .

— Of course you won, Gabriel!

— You were brilliant, Gabriel!

— Come on, come and fetch your medal, Gabriel!

You stand up and dry your face on your sleeve, and radiate pure, unadulterated pride and joy as your classmates lead you to the trophy table. Out on the gravel field I remain sitting with my own tears, moved as rarely before by what these seven- and eight-year-old children have done for you, just because they wished you well.

IT'S BEEN A
FORTNIGHT
since May 17. Fourteen May days are a long time in a child's mind, long enough time to leave things behind and get on, but today is the school's cultural evening, and I haven't forgotten that scene on the gravel track. The lump in my stomach is back, only bigger.

As usual, when it's something important, I've left the camera at home. Your classmates' parents and the parents of other children you know come over and wish us luck. They probably haven't forgotten either. Some of them offer to take photos when it's your turn.

The program is extensive this evening. Individually or in small groups, thirty second-graders are going to sing, dance, recite, or perform sketches. I must admit I remember very little of what happened. I see that some of the bigger pupils are dangling from the wall-bars with the tacit permission of the teachers, and I picture you standing and waiting in the locker room where we left you, a somewhat distant look in your eyes, but more because you sense an unusual level of tension among your fellow pupils than because you're tense yourself. Out in the gym hall, Mom and I are feeling a little uncomfortable, almost stared at. We try to talk about other things while we wait, but as always when the conversation absolutely has to be about something else, it comes back around to you. In the end we sit there in silence. Victoria finds acquaintances with whom to while away the waiting time.

The lights go down and the teacher takes the floor to welcome us and say a few well-chosen words about what she's proud to present to us this evening. Then the annual cultural evening for the district school's second grade is underway.

I can't follow what's going on, I'm much too nervous. I'm in Nicaragua. There's a big surprise waiting for you there, which I haven't told you about. During a visit a few months earlier, in connection with an aid project, I met somebody who introduced me to someone else who knew the boss of a breeding ­station outside Managua. I paid a hefty price, but things like this don't come cheap, and then the fees, to the vet, to the agricultural department, to the export authorities, plus a few other governmental bodies. The diplomats at the Norwegian embassy and good contacts among people in high office did their best, but there wasn't enough time. It turned out that the Norwegian authorities required six months notice to okay the import, and I had to return home empty-handed. But all the same — in an accredited and well-run breeding station in Nicaragua — it's waiting for you. It's yours, Gabriel, only it lives somewhere else. Green as spring grass, speckled with all the colours of the rainbow, the most loquacious breed, found only in the depths of America, which for you doesn't mean the U.S., but Latin and South America, because what are fast cars and skyscrapers compared to the mysteries and wonders of the jungle, incarnate in the eloquent bird that sits perched on the shoulder of every self-respecting pirate, a genuine . . .

— . . . which he has chosen himself and which he will now sing for us. Please, Gabriel.

Never before has a gym been this quiet. You walk out onto the floor, position yourself in front of the microphone, cast a glance at the guitarist who's to accompany you, and look out across the hall. You appear neither afraid nor uncertain, more as though you're trying to get an overall picture of the unusual situation, as of a complicated traffic picture. Around you, on the other hand, the tension is palpable. Two hundred, perhaps three hundred eyes see only you. Silent prayers fill the air.

Ready . . . Steady . . .

The first chord sounds like a starting gun, but this time you're prepared. You empty your eyes — and you sing. You sing! You don't stumble, you don't stutter, you don't forget a single line, not so much as a word. You sing systematically and confidently and flawlessly

I am a parrot from the jungle deep

Where I was born a long time ago.

My parrot mama said, because I couldn't speak:

Give him time, he'll talk, I know

and you don't see it, but there are tears in two hundred eyes, tears of joy, tears of relief, proud tears, and when you've finished both your verses and the final chords die away and you bow deeply, the ovation is thunderous.

We stand up, the whole room stands up, we clap and cheer and shout bravo and dry our tears, and you smile crookedly and happily and take another bow. You've done it; you've shown them that you can too, that you're one of them.

But I look at all these people who now stand applauding, hailing you for what you've just achieved on stage. They are the same people who, fourteen days ago, stood and watched you fall to pieces on the gravel field, and we all know that what you've done now is much more than show us you can sing in front of an audience. Because that day on the sports field you laid bare, you screamed out a nakedness that only a very few would confess to. And what's more, tonight you have, on behalf of us all, surmounted it.

CHAPTER SIX

D
o you remember the day of the fire?

I didn't wake suddenly, because sleep was strong and held on tightly to the prey it had been hunting for most of the night. But the noise was stronger, an insistent knocking that didn't belong here where only crying seagulls and bleating sheep have an established right to disturb the early-morning peace. Slowly and laboriously, as though constantly having to stop to decompress, consciousness rose to the surface. As it finally broke through I heard clearly: someone was shouting and hammering on a door.

My first thought was you. What were you doing out, what had happened? A queue of possible and impossible answers at once formed, and then dissolved just as quickly, for in the bed beside me you too were waking up. I had slept in the guest room so that I could get up with you without waking Mom, and you must have come down to me at some point in the night.

The sound of shouting and hammering did not stop. It only grew louder the clearer my head became.

— Carry on sleeping, I'll be right back, I said.

I grabbed a pair of trousers and a shirt, threw them on, and staggered out the door and up the stairs. On the way into the living room I saw Mom coming out of the bedroom in her dressing gown, a sleepy question in her eyes. The Easter sun had already risen, and in the sharp backlight through the window we saw the outline of a woman. She stood there pounding with her fist on the terrace door. In the crook of one arm she was holding a small dog.

I didn't recognize her immediately, but Mom saw that it was the tenant of a neighbouring house a couple hundred metres behind us. When we opened up, we were met by a dissolved and tear-streaked face and a garbled, almost hyperventilated flood of words. We tried to get her to come in, but she wouldn't, stood still with the dog squeezed under her arm and repeated the same shouted words over and over again. We recognized one of them: fire. At the same moment we realized that what we had taken for morning mist in the east was actually clouds of smoke coming from the house behind the barn.

We knew that she lived alone there with her little daughter, and were suddenly gripped by an anxious fear. I grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and shook her and tried to fix her gaze: Is your daughter in the house? In reply she only wept and cried out fragmented sentences that were impossible to make any sense of. We repeated the question several times, and I felt a touch of panic as we picked up phrases like “inside the house” and “must get out.” We managed to get her into the living room and down into a chair, and Mom set off running. I was to ring the emergency services and try to calm the woman down, attempt to get a definite answer out of her and find the fire-fighting equipment.

It's incredible how quickly it is possible to think. While on the phone and at the same time trying to pacify the woman, I saw Mom through the window, running, and it was as if I were running with her, racing to get there first. Even in the midst of two desperately important conversations I had all the time in the world to think: What does one do with a burned child, a child who has inhaled smoke? Can the doctors do anything at all for her? It looks like a fine day; we should go out in the boat. There's a bit of a breeze blowing from the southeast, I can see that from the smoke, so the little island isn't a good idea today. Is it true that our neighbour's house is a burning house? How shall I tell the mother that she has lost her daughter?

WE NEARLY LOST
YOU ONCE
, we thought. You were just six, seven, maybe eight weeks old, I don't remember. It was late in the evening and time for your feeding. You, who had always been so ravenous, who could never get enough, lay weak and feeble in the bed without even the strength to take the breast into your mouth. You disappeared from us, were on the point of leaving, and your body was burning. We shook you in terror, tried to call you back, turned and lifted your head. Mom forced breast and milk in between your lips, and late in the night you finally opened your eyes. You had a frighteningly high fever, but it passed, and you came back to us.

We almost lost Alexander even before he was born, in a nasty car accident; someone ran into Mom and permanently damaged her knee. Incredibly, the fetus that was due to be born in three weeks time was unhurt. Since then we've nearly lost him on several other occasions, to forces and urges that tried to appropriate both his love of life and his life itself. But we got him back too.

Sometimes we have also lost each other, lost sight of each other in the turmoil, in the fog of everyday life, in the mist of habit, in new and unfamiliar faces. But we found the way back and returned home.

We can't afford to lose more than the time that passes by itself, Gabriel. What we have left is too little.

HOW FIRES WREAK
HAVOC
with the discretion of closed doors! Like family quarrels, personal tragedies, abuse. When Mom opened the front door and entered the vestibule, all she sensed was the smell and the heat. Then she pushed open the door to the hallway, and I picture the flames hissing to her, telling her that she would lose herself in there.

She was standing on the stoop, choking as she gasped for breath, as I came running with the fire extinguisher and news that the daughter was probably safe: there was another little dog still in there — I thought. The mother's speech was still incoherent, so I could not be sure; perhaps a little girl really was dying inside the house. I wrapped my shirt around my nose and mouth and dived into the blackness, but was at once blinded and struggling for breath. A living black wall of sooty smoke engulfed the air around me, sucked it out of my lungs and left something there instead that my body refused to absorb. I did not want to, but I had to get out, and then it was my turn to kneel on the stoop. Afterwards we emptied the extinguisher through a window, to precious little avail. The house was consumed by fire, and our attempts to put it out merely a joke. Besides, we could now hear the sound of sirens from over the hill and it was time to make way for the experts.

It was only then that I realized you were standing there watching, barefoot and in pajamas, and with our garden hose in your hand. You had pulled it loose from the tap and dragged it with you in order to help, with no definite plan of how to fill it with water, but all the more with a desire to be of assistance. I went over to you and wrapped my arms tightly around you, as though you had just been rescued from the sea of flames. I could not rid myself of the image of a little girl in there. We still did not know whether this was a hideous death by fire, or only a sad story about a house that burned down, and perhaps a dog that dieD.

WE LOSE SO
MANY THINGS
, Gabriel. We lose all the time, and we grieve for what is gone. Or perhaps we grieve most for the feeling of loss, the certainty of having lost, rather than for what we have lost. Ask me, because I know grief.

Do you want to know about grief? Shall I explain grief to you?

It still happens, though not as often as before, in the beginning, the first years, that grief strikes. Now it happens at intervals of weeks and months, but it always happens suddenly and unexpectedly, as in an ambush, and each time it overwhelms me, overrides everything else and makes me turn away and cry
a little.

I don't know if I can explain grief to you, Gabriel, even though perhaps you already know it, but under other names, that hurt in other ways. My grief is adult and difficult. It isn't
your confusion when you don't understand, when your thoughts
crash, as you put it, and you can't manage to think any of them all the way through. Nor is it the despair you might experience then, that makes you scream and weep and hit out in anger, that makes you look at me with wounded, pleading eyes, praying that I explain to you why, why, why. The despair you lie down with on the floor, pressed up against a wall or a piece of furniture, powerless and ashamed. Nor is grief the embarrassment you struggle with afterwards, once it's over, when you compel your gaze to defy shyness, to bring it back from the remote emptiness in which it has sought refuge and, with defencelessness in your eyes ask if I love you anyway, if we can be friends again forever.

What can I tell you about grief?

Grief is as big as the sky and the universe, as big as infinity, which we've talked about and none of us understands. Grief is as big as the riddle you puzzle all of science with, just by being you. As big as inscrutability, as big as the tiny little seed life neglected to plant in you, your difference, the absence that will always follow you and fill me with grief.

But this isn't an answer, I know that. Forgive me.

There's a grief in everything, Gabriel, in the flowers and the rain, in treasures and dreams. Grief is losing, grief is not to have. Grief is certainty. Grief is life that slips, time that passes, what could have been, but was not. Grief is helplessness. There's room for everything in the mansion of grief. It's dark and snug in the mansion of grief, and it's lonely. Grief is to catch the wind, grasp water in your fist. Grief is quiet. Grief is polite. It comes, and then it goes away. But grief is never gone. Only things are gone when they disappear. Grief is impossible, GabrieL.

THE FIREMEN ARRIVED,
and the police, and it was eventually established that the daughter was safe — she had spent the night at her grandparents. The other little dog, which had been stuck inside the house when the mother came over to us, had probably run out when Mom or I opened the door and tried to get in. It was found in good shape.

Neither of these two happy endings affected you. All that interested you were the uniforms, the equipment, the jets of water and the very big and very red fire engines.

More
locals
and
a
lot
of
children
had
turned
up,
and
now
that
the
fire
no
longer
threatened
tragedy
and
death,
it
became
an
occasion.
Some
popped
back
home
to
fetch
a
Thermos,
­others
their
cameras,
and
we
stood
around
in
groups
and
talked
about
the
possible
causes,
and
the
living-room
window
that
looked
as
if
it
might
explode
at
any
moment
under
the
pressure,
and
what
a
shame
it
was
about
the
house,
newly
redecorated
and
all,
and
what
a
gorgeous
day
it
looked
to
become.
Even
the
firemen
and
the
policemen
strolled
over
for
a
chat
during
their
breaks,
and
all
things
considered
it
was
a
fine
morning
hour
—
all
the
more
so
since
the
owners
of
the
house
were
off
in
the
mountains,
so
no
one
felt
under
any
­obligation
to
temper
their
good
mood
with
tactful,
head-­shaking
empathy.

By late morning everyone had had enough, the firemen, the spectators, and the local paper. It was over. A soot-stained and boarded-up shell surrounded the burned-out core of the house — it was said that the flames had eaten a full inch into the timbered walls. Only the insurance company could seek to profit from what was left. We went home, packed food and drink, and took off to seA.

YOU SPOKE LITTLE
TO US
that day, wandered around a great deal on your own. Mom and I bathed in the sun, happy and carefree. Perhaps it was because the day had already been so eventful, perhaps because we have taught ourselves to grab whatever free time offers itself, perhaps simply because we were thoughtless — but we didn't speak much to you either.

What did you think? All the fuss, the fire engines, this
whole unusual day must have made an impression on you. But what? How?

You have, in your own particular way, a strong ability to feel with others. Not conventionally, in the expected manner, but strongly all the same. Sometimes your empathy can seem heedless because it is tactless. And you do not forget, you feel for a long time. About a year and a half after one of the special needs teachers at school had lost her husband you went up to her one day and said: