The Cold Song (26 page)

Siri pushed Irma aside and walked into the kitchen. She sank down onto a chair.

“This is my home too, Irma. She’s my mother.”

In the middle of the kitchen table Irma had placed a pink baby monitor. It was switched on, crackling. Siri pointed to the device.

“What’s that?”

“That’s so I can hear her,” Irma replied. “If she needs anything. I carry it around the house with me.”

Siri nodded.

“It’s a big house,” Irma added.

Siri nodded again.

The baby monitor emitted a wail. It was Jenny squealing. A frail scream.

“I think I’ll go up and check on her,” Siri said. “I mean, she’s lying there screaming.”

“Oh, she makes noises all the time,” Irma said. “She can’t figure it out.”

“What exactly can’t she figure out?”

“I don’t know. But whatever it is, she can’t seem to figure it out. So she gets frustrated. She doesn’t want to be disturbed, though. And you’re not going up. She doesn’t want to see you.”

Siri rose from the chair.

“She doesn’t want to see you, Siri!” Irma repeated. “I promised to keep you out. Go home.”

Irma marched up the stairs with Siri behind her. That interminable stairway. Irma turned to face her.

“Go home, Siri. I’m sorry, but you’re not wanted here.”

Irma opened the door to Jenny’s room and Siri caught a glimpse of her mother in the bed, saw the withered gray hair on the pillow, and then the door was slammed in her face and the key turned on the inside. Siri froze. She should probably have banged on the door, she should have screamed and shouted.
She
should be in there with her mother, not Irma. But she didn’t scream and she didn’t shout. She turned and walked down the stairs. She’d come back another day.

SHE DID COME
back, once, twice, three times, four times, as often as she could, and gradually she learned the routines that Irma had established. The new rules of the house. At a quarter to one every day Irma lifted Jenny out of her bed. Her old nightdress was pulled over her head, her blue-tinged body was washed with a warm, wet cloth, and afterward she was dressed in a freshly washed nightdress and her regular light blue terry-cloth robe. Then Irma would pick her up and carry her down the stairs, sit her in her wheelchair, and take her into the kitchen. Her wheelchair was parked at the kitchen table and a plate with an omelet on it placed in front of her. Always the same thing: plain omelet, ketchup, and a large glass of red wine.

“One o’clock is omelet time,” Jenny would say, grinning at Siri.

Siri wouldn’t give up on
being there
for her mother, not without a fight. She made the two-hour drive from Oslo as often as she could. It was spring. Alma would be fifteen soon, Liv would be going into second grade in the autumn. Both her restaurants needed attention. There were a thousand things that Siri would rather be doing. But she wouldn’t give up
on this. It was always the same story: Irma refusing to let her in and Siri pushing her aside. There was no way Irma was going to take her mother away from her. Several times Siri had made an effort to befriend Irma. On one occasion she baked banana muffins, one of the brunch specialties at the restaurant, and took them down to Mailund. And when Irma opened the door, Siri smiled and said, “Muffins, here!”

As if the word
muffins
would make everything all right.

Siri held out the box of banana muffins. But Irma merely told her she could have saved herself the trouble.

“Always showing up here, interfering, making a nuisance of yourself, upsetting things. Jenny doesn’t want to see you, and you know why.”

Siri thrust the box at her and said, “Yes, well I baked them for you and I want to come in. You can’t shut me out. And no—I don’t know why. I think
you
don’t want to see me. I think you speak for yourself, not my mother.” And then she pushed Irma aside again and strode through to the kitchen.

Jenny was in her wheelchair, eating. She looked pale and thin. Indistinct, disjointed words dripped from her lips and occasionally bubbles instead of words—as if she were under water, speaking the water language, at long last reunited with the child she loved. Jenny eyed her daughter dully.

“Are you the lady that’s brought Syver?” she asked.

“No, Mama. I’m Siri,” Siri said, sitting down at the table.

Jenny shrugged. “Well,” she said, “are you the lady who’s come to take me to the palace?”

Siri started to laugh. Irma glared at her. Siri said, “Why are you going to the palace, Mama? Planning to return your medals?”

Jenny did not reply, instead she began to eat her omelet. She ate slowly, spilling egg down her nightdress. After a little while she pointed her fork at Siri.

“Want some?”

Siri shook her head.

“Ketchup,” Jenny said. “Ever taste ketchup?” She chewed with her mouth open. “Ketchup’s good. Are you sure you don’t want some?”

Irma had settled herself on a chair by the open window. She lit a cigarette.

“You shouldn’t be smoking in here,” Siri said. “You know cigarette smoke’s not good for her.”

“Why don’t you just mind your own business?” Irma retorted.

“I can’t believe I could have lived for nigh on a hundred years and never tasted ketchup,” Jenny broke in. “Are you quite, quite, quite sure you don’t want a taste?”

“No, thanks,” Siri said. “And you haven’t lived for nigh on a hundred years. You’re seventy-six.”

Jenny shook her head, then she lunged at Siri, shoving the fork with the omelet and ketchup into her mouth.

Siri flinched. The fork stabbed her lip and she caught the taste of blood and the nauseating taste of egg and ketchup.

“Good, isn’t it?” Jenny said. “I told you it was good.”

“No thanks, Mama,” Siri said. “I don’t want it.”

“Have some more,” Jenny said, lunging forward again and pushing another chunk into Siri’s mouth.

Irma stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and lit another. She looked at Siri and Jenny and laughed.

“And here’s more,” Jenny said, offering her daughter yet another bite while glancing proudly at Irma.

IT WAS NEARING
the end of April and Siri had carried a chair out to the garden at Mailund and settled herself under the tall, rotten maple tree. Jon was in Oslo. He had called her immediately after his meeting with his editor.

“Mortifying,” he said, “to hell with her, to hell with that whole bloody publishing house, I’m going to call Erlend at Gyldendal right now, you remember he said I’d always be welcome at Gyldendal.”

“That was five years ago,” Siri murmured.

“Jesus Christ, Siri, don’t
you
start!”

“All I said was it’s a while since you and Erlend talked about you switching to Gyldendal—and what matters most now is not to switch publishers but to write.”

“You don’t understand,” Jon said. “You just don’t get it!”

“So what did Gerda say?” Siri asked.

She gazed over at her white flower bed. It was dormant still, after the winter. It didn’t shine. It didn’t come surging toward her. She wondered what would happen to Mailund after her mother died. Should she sell it? Or should she and the children and Jon carry on using it as a summer house?

There was silence at the other end.

“Jon? Are you there?”

She thought of how much he had been dreading this meeting with Gerda, dreaded telling her that he was stuck again. Dreaded asking if she could agree to a new deadline and maybe a very small advance—or even a short-term loan. They could no longer manage on the income from the restaurant, their mortgage was astronomical, and this year all of his applications for grants had been turned down. Siri had told him he would have to find other ways of earning money.

“Jon, what did Gerda say?”

“Gerda said I would have to work for my living like other people. That I could no longer rely on the publishing house supporting me. She said the book would just have to be published when it was ready, but that they would not be including it on their autumn list. She said: ‘I haven’t seen any new material for a year.’ She said: ‘Face it, Jon. This is it.’ So, anyway. It won’t be September, it won’t be November, I’m no longer a part of the plan. Oh, yeah. And then she had to go. She had a lunch date. And here was me thinking I was her lunch date. And she got up and told me again that it was time to face the truth.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“I said: ‘What the hell does that mean?’ And then I cried.”

“How much money do you owe, Jon?”

“More than a million. More, maybe. I don’t know. Gerda was going to send me a statement.”

“But she … Gerda said they would publish the book as soon as you finished it, didn’t she—”

“For Christ’s sake, Siri, it’s all falling apart.”

His voice cracked. She wanted to touch the back of his neck. She also wanted to tell him that she couldn’t take it anymore.

“I don’t know what to do, Siri.” He sighed.

“I’ll be home this evening,” she answered. She cast a glance at the white flower bed. “And then we’ll sort it all out. Okay?”

MOST OF THE
time now, Jenny was silent. Siri removed a long dark strand of hair from her mother’s robe and was reminded of Milla, she looked around, startled, as if the girl would suddenly appear in the room, but then she realized it must have come from Irma.

Her mother’s hair was very beautiful before all this happened—the aneurisms, the wheelchair, the half madness. Now it was thin and stringy and not quite clean. Apparently Irma didn’t care about such things as hair, perfume, dresses, although to her credit she had made proper carpentry adjustments in parts of the house so that Jenny could be wheeled from one room to another without being knocked around by thresholds and narrow doorways.

Siri rolled Jenny’s wheelchair to the bathroom. She filled the bathtub with hot water, wrapped her mother’s thin terry-cloth-robed body in fresh towels, and carefully began washing her hair. Jenny still had bottles of expensive shampoo and conditioner on the shelf and soon they were both enveloped by the smell of cardamom.

And while Siri lathered up her mother’s hair, Jenny rambled on.

“I’ve shrunk, I’m much thinner and wispier than I used to be. I’ve always been a thin woman, though never wispy, but
now I’m both thin and wispy and I have to tie a cord around my waist to hold my skirt up. Look at this, Siri! You’re Siri, right? My skirt has to be tied with a cord.

“Look around you. I know this house. I know these walls and the room we were just in and this bathroom here. I recognize the smell of cardamom. But sometimes I ask myself: Who lives here? Who owns this house? And that big woman you hired to take care of me answers: Why you do, Jenny Brodal.

“What you’ll discover when you get older is that the words disappear. And your memories, of course. And big parts of your body. I have to hold mine up with a cord.

“What I’d most like to do is to leave. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t like that big woman. Do you know who she is? Was it you who asked her to come here? Do you think I can’t look after myself? Are you here to check on me? You’re Siri, right? Couldn’t you go and find my shoes? I’ve a pair of white sneakers in the cupboard, size thirty-eight. Very good shoes! Do you know where they are? Could you get them for me so that I can get the hell out of here?

“In one of my cabinet drawers I have a photograph of the Olympic champion Abebe Bikila and do you know, in it he is wearing exactly the same kind of shoes as I—in my nigh on a hundredth year—have in my posession? The first time Abebe Bikila won the Olympic gold medal he ran barefoot. That was in 1960. The next time he ran with shoes on.
My
shoes. He won that time too. That was in the summer of 1964, in Tokyo. He won the Olympic gold medal twice! Once barefoot. Once with shoes on.

“That’s the sort of thing I remember.”

Siri let her talk, while at the same time gently pushing her mother’s head over the rim of the bathtub, rinsing the shampoo out of her hair.

“I wanted to tell you about your little brother,” Jenny continued when she sat upright again, with a towel around her head. “His name was Syver and he lived for four years. Each morning I wake up and there is a brief moment when I don’t remember that he is dead. And then it all comes back to me like sheets of hail. With age, you’ll discover that everything disappears. Words, images, days, months, years of your life. And you’d think there would be relief in that. But there isn’t. Because there’s one thing that never goes away, and that is waking up every morning to a world without him.”

“I’m sorry,” Siri said, kneeling down in front of her on the blue tiled bathroom floor, patting her mother’s dripping face with a dry towel. “I am so sorry.”

“Oh, it isn’t your fault,” said Jenny. “Some years ago I wrote a speech that I meant to make to you. There was a party in the garden and charming people strolled around, raising their glasses and chatting pleasantly to one another. I don’t know what happened to it. The speech, I mean. But I know it must be around here somewhere. I think you had arranged the party for me and that things didn’t go as planned. Something happened, but this I can’t remember.”

But most of the time Jenny just sat silently in her wheelchair, slumped, with her big head lolling, her chin resting in the
hollow of her throat, her mouth half open. She was liable to fall apart at any moment, thought Siri, snap in two.

The first time she saw her like that, slumped over in her wheelchair, Siri sat down in front of her and whispered, “Are you even there, Mama?”

She received no answer.

Then she leaned in, as if her mother were a sleeping baby, to check whether she was still breathing.

JON WENT DOWN
to Mailund with Siri for a couple of days in June 2010, to help her clear out the annex. Irma refused to see either of them and locked the door.

“Jenny doesn’t want the two of you here,” she hissed. “You upset things.”

And so it went. Sometimes Siri made it over the doorstep, sometimes she didn’t. The main thing was not to give up, it was important to
be there
, Siri said, so they retreated to the annex and hoped for a change of mood. Irma had evidently turned the little house into a storage room of sorts: two bikes, a couple of boxes of books, and three wicker chairs occupied the center of the room, and a ceiling lamp shaped like a huge, smiling moon lay on the narrow bed. Jon carried the whole lot over to the garage, where Jenny’s gray Opel sat under its tarpaulin. Covering the car with a tarpaulin when it was already in the garage, it seemed so old-fashioned, so touching, somehow. The lost art of taking care of one’s belongings. His phone gave its text-message trill, Jon checked it, and the green display glowed in the half-light of the garage.