The Cold Song (23 page)

The woman in the poppy-red dress got up and walked toward Alma. She pointed to the empty chair, the one her father had been sitting on. She said, “Is it okay if I take it?”

Alma nodded.

The woman thanked her, took the chair, and carried it over to her own table. And then it was as if it happened again. The woman in the poppy-red dress got up and walked toward her, saying “Is it okay if I take it?” but adding in a quiet voice, “You know that little baby girl can’t help it if she cries. She’s just a baby. And no one can do anything about it one way or the other. But I’ll help you. Give me your hand!”

And Alma gave the woman her hand and the woman drew her into her arms and held her close.

“It will be fine,” the woman whispered. “You will be fine. Everything will be okay.”

All the crumbs were gone from her hat now. Not a single crumb left.

“Bye-bye then,” said the old lady who couldn’t leave other people alone.

Alma didn’t reply and she didn’t look back as she walked toward the exit. It was Milla who had said you should never look back. No good came of looking back. But Alma had looked back that time in Grandma’s car, Alma had seen Milla sitting there at the side of the road, and Alma had said
Stop!
She clearly remembered saying
Stop!
And then she said
Shouldn’t we take her with us
, and Grandma said,
Take who with us?
and Alma said
Nobody, I thought I saw somebody, but I didn’t, forget it
, and Grandma said,
Let’s go home, then
, and they drove the last bit of the way up to Mailund, and that night Alma had actually thought that Grandma wasn’t quite herself, that she might have had too much to drink.

The girls from her class giggled, but Alma walked past them and didn’t look back.

SIRI HAD KNOWN
for many years that her husband was cheating on her.

He cheated on her long before Milla came into their lives, but that was a time when Siri more often than not made the choice to forget—she thought of this, her habitual ability to forget, draw a blank, leave well enough alone, as acts of tenderness, a way to ward off fear.

But now it seemed Milla wouldn’t let her. Milla wouldn’t let her forget about anything.

The pretty lost girl in the photograph looked at her from everywhere and didn’t care if what Siri remembered (and would rather forget) had happened before she came into their lives.

Siri remembered that it was a Sunday, that it was raining, that she had been out for a long walk, that she came into the living room, her hair still dripping, and how a few drops of water had fallen on Jon’s laptop (had she ruined it?) and how she thought that the laptop had been left there on the dining table on purpose, open, blatantly flaunting itself, shamelessly inviting.

She remembered sitting down, tying her hair in a knot so it would stop dripping, and reading.

It was an e-mail from Jon to a woman called Paula:
I think of how it would have been, just you and me, morning, afternoon
,
evening, night, and I think of everything you are and everything you can show me and all the things I want to do with you. You ask if I’m unhappy, if the thought of you makes me unhappy, but just knowing you exist makes me happy. I picture your face, your hair, your eyes, your light shining. But you know my situation—maybe that’s what’s making me unhappy. I think of you morning, afternoon, evening, and night, but I can’t be with you except in my thoughts, because, well, you know. Because …

First, relief.
I’m not crazy
. Everything fell into place. All suspicions confirmed. She had been right, although time and again he had told her she was wrong.

During their first years of marriage, when she was still confronting him about those inconsistensies that kept popping up in his stories (not the stories he told her at night, out of love, to help her fall sleep, or the stories he wrote in his books, but the other ones—about where he had been, whom he had seen, what he had done), he had told her that she was just imagining things, that she needed to see someone about her paranoia and insecurities, that he was fed up with her accusations.

Siri read the e-mail again:
But I can’t be with you except in my thoughts, because, well, you know. Because …

Because … what?

Because he was married to Siri? Because Siri was a burden so heavy that words could not describe it? Or because Siri was so utterly light—insignificant, weightless, transient, forgettable—that she wasn’t worth a single letter of the alphabet?

Because, well, you know. Because
 …

She read it again.

Why didn’t he write “I can’t be with you except in my
thoughts, because I’m married to Siri”? It was very simple, no need for pregnant pauses and meaningful silences. No need for
dot dot dot
. And what was up with that anyway? Does any self-respecting person, let alone a highly acclaimed novelist, indicate significance by writing dot dot dot to finish off an unfinished sentence? Is that even allowed?

It’s really very fucking simple, Paula.

Siri trembled, but said nothing to Jon. Not the first evening, not the second, not the third.

“What’s the matter? You’re very quiet. Is something wrong?” “No, nothing,” Siri said.

The next time she checked his inbox he had deleted the letter.

I picture your face
.

But Siri knew the words by heart and for a while she started her day by quoting the e-mail to herself, as if it were a difficult text that she had to learn by heart so as not to forget it (until she chose to do so), she examined the letters from every angle, pictured Jon writing, and Paula reading, and the words dissolved and re-formed, giving rise to new meanings and associations, depending on the point at which she chose to enter the text and the point at which she chose to exit it.

I think of how it would have been, just you and me
.

If Siri had said anything to Jon, she might have said: You make dates with another woman, you walk around looking forward to those dates and lie to me and go off with the dog,
going to get bread, going to get milk
. And there was me thinking that we were the exception, that you were my one and only, and I was your one and only, and that the disaster that strikes everyone else,
the most embarrassing of all thinkable disasters, the most humiliating and the most banal, the kind of disaster that we laugh about when it strikes others, would never strike us. I wanted to be your one and only, Jon, not one body among other bodies.

Your hair, your eyes, your light shining
.

Once he’d said to Siri:
Your light shines more
. She’d thought it was a lame line, but she’d let him get away with it. She was light. She shone. He needed her. She was his one and only.

But now he had taken their words, their silly little secret passwords, and given them to someone else. To a woman named Paula. Words which, when put together in one way or another, or rather in one very specific way, constituted the sum of Siri and Jon’s story. Siri was no longer the one and only. She wasn’t even the only one who shone.

Now the story went like this—
and this is not a particularly original story. In fact, Jon, it’s an extremely banal and embarrassing story and I hate that you made me a part of it
—first there was Siri who had light. Then there was Paula who had light.
Your light shines
.

(In Jon’s, the unfaithful husband’s, defense it should be added that he is a writer suffering from writer’s block. It’s years since he was supposed to have finished the third part of what was to have been the trilogy of the millennium, but he can’t seem to find the words, the only thing he has come up with so far is that he wants to write “a hymn to everything that endures and everything that falls apart” and that, as he has painfully had to acknowledge, won’t get him very far, a hymn to everything
that endures and everything that falls apart is a crock of shit. In other words, you could not expect—it’s unreasonable to expect or demand—that Jon, a writer who can no longer write, should invent an entirely new language every time he becomes enamored of a new woman.)

But the bit about the
light shining
—that she couldn’t forgive.
Your hair, your eyes, your light shining
. That the other woman had hair and eyes was reasonable. Siri too had hair and eyes, most women had hair and eyes, but Jon hadn’t made special mention of the hair and eyes simply to confirm the obvious: that Paula had hair and eyes. No, Jon made special mention of the hair and eyes in order to assure her that:
I see you. Your particular hair. Your particular eyes. You are not one body among other bodies. You are the one and only
.

Whether he actually meant that Paula was the one and only is not important here. Whatever was going on in Jon’s mind when he was writing this letter is very different from what went on in Siri’s mind when she read it. Jon’s love letter was most probably a manifestation of a perfectly ordinary instance of barter in which the rules governing supply and demand were clear and unambiguous:
You have been seen and described by me. Now it is my turn to be seen and described by you
. But the other woman didn’t only have eyes and hair, she also had
light
—screw him.

And if Siri had told Jon that she had read the letter, that she was about to collapse and wouldn’t be able to get up again, that the pain was cold, like being force-fed icicles, then she
might have asked: “Do we both shine at the same time, Paula and I, like the twin lights on Thacher Island? Or did I stop shining the moment Paula started? And how many shining lights are we actually talking about?”

Siri broke a glass, but she didn’t cut herself. That sort of drama wasn’t her, it would only make the banality complete. The banal story of a banal woman who slashed herself because her husband had cheated on her. No, she wouldn’t say anything.

But if she had, she might have said:

“Why did you put me in harm’s way like that?”

Out with the dog, going to get bread, going to get milk
.

During the weeks and months and years after Siri had read the letter, Paula was everywhere. Siri googled her and learned that she was thirty-four years old,
younger than me
, worked in an art gallery, and lived on Oslo’s trendy east side. She had 567 friends on Facebook. Her profile picture was indistinct, slightly out of focus in an interesting sort of way, she had a teasing look in her eye and long fair hair. Paula’s picture said:
I’m beautiful in an interesting kind of way, my picture is not like all the other pictures, I have a teasing look and long fair hair
. Oh, all those beautiful women, and even women who weren’t quite so beautiful but whom Siri imagined could be Jon’s type, were everywhere. The long fair hair, the slender shoulders, the small breasts, the teasing look in the eye.
Everywhere
. In every café, in every shop, on every street corner, at the gym dancing and spinning and lifting weights and taking their clothes off in locker rooms, and in the pool where she occasionally went
swimming. And each one was the one and only, and Siri a body among other bodies. And Siri let her gaze pass over their faces and their bodies, at first shattered (betrayed, tricked, supplanted, painted out, debarred), and then curious (if he can look at them, so can I), and eventually greedy.

And if she had said anything to Jon, she might have said, “I want to see what you see, unearth whatever it is that you unearth, I want to understand that thing that makes them special. I want to share them with you, undress them, rend them apart, make love to them, and hear them say my name,
and I think of everything you are and everything you can show me and all the things I want to do with you
, see them fall, feel what you feel when they look at you, you look at them, look at me.”

But she didn’t say anything to Jon. She let it go, because she chose to.
These were acts of tenderness
. But now, with Milla, it all came crashing back.

AND IF HE
were to think about it, something he preferred not to do, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when he and Siri had started sleeping apart. She in the bedroom and he in whatever attic was available. When did the unraveling of their marriage begin? It was long before Milla. But
when?
It had been years now.

They said to each other: “Oh it’s been months, we should go away somewhere and be together.” But the fact was that it had been years.

These were all things he preferred not to think about, so instead he thought and did other things. Drank cheap wine, which tasted better than expensive wine, and texted whoever was up, listened to music, and talked with the dog. They told each other it was because of the children—which, to some extent, it was. Alma still came to their room every night, she had done so for years, and when he was still sleeping in the master bedroom, she climbed into their bed next to him.
Hold me! Stroke my hair!

“We can’t rule out the possibility,” Jon remembered saying, “that the reason I’m not writing is that I’m not getting any sleep now that Alma’s in our bed every night.”

Siri turned to him and said, “She doesn’t just keep
you
awake, Jon! Last night she nearly pushed me out of bed and you snored.”

Her voice was shrill.

“Oh, just listen to yourself,” he said.

“No, you listen, you bastard! Have you given any thought to the fact that of the two of us I’m the one working and earning money so that you can write that bloody book of yours? Or rather, not write it.”

And so they went on.

There was a time she couldn’t even consider falling asleep unless he was right next to her, holding her hand, telling her stories.

Not long after Liv had learned to walk, she too started coming into their bed at night. She wandered through in the dark, climbed over Siri and Alma and Jon, and stretched out across the mattress, shoving everyone else over to one side. She didn’t ask for permission and she didn’t want to be held or stroked. She just wanted to sleep, but she took up more room in the bed than anyone else. And so their nights went. Everyone—apart from Liv, who slept undisturbed—waking and sleeping and waking and sleeping. Jon detached Alma’s arm, laid it down along her side, and she promptly snuggled into him again and put her arm around his neck, and Siri put Liv’s head on the pillow, gently shifted her legs until they were pointing straight down to the foot of the bed, but she merely drew them up again, squirmed, and stretched out across the bed as before.