The Cold Song (28 page)

She doesn’t remember the sound of water trickling and purling although it must have been there. What she remembers is the silence, as if someone had turned off all sound apart from her voice.
Syver! You’ve got to stay here beside me! I can’t be bothered running after you all the time!
They were both wearing thick sweaters, not their regular winter jackets. It was their first day with sweaters instead of winter jackets and she felt light.

Jenny was inside, at the kitchen table, writing a letter to their father, to Bo Anders Wallin, and in this letter she cursed him for being on the island of Gotland while she was trapped at Mailund with two young children.

And what am I? Where has this endless child rearing gotten me?

And:
Syver was crying again last night, water doesn’t help, milk doesn’t help, singing doesn’t help, being held in my arms and looking out the window at the snow falling through the night doesn’t help, nothing would quiet him, so in the end I took him into bed with me (where you are not), and there he slept, cuddled up close
.

It was a big day, the day that Jenny allowed them to leave off their winter jackets, the day when they could go out wearing just woolen sweaters and thick dungarees. Siri’s sweater was too big for her, it was red and white and only a little bit itchy around the collar; it had belonged to the pretty thirteen-year-old daughter of one of Jenny’s friends. The smell of the girl still permeated the sweater, even though it had been hand-washed in warm, soapy water. A faint whiff of perfume, of sweat, of milk. Siri didn’t smell of sweat yet, she was too young, the sweater was a bit itchy, but not as itchy as her blue woolly knit now handed down to Syver. She had on a scarf and a woolly hat and winter trousers and winter boots and she walked through the woods, calling to Syver who would sometimes disappear from view and then show up again and it was up to her to look after him. Jenny had told her so.
Now, you look after your little brother
, she said every time she opened the door and shooed them out into the winter day. Outside time. You weren’t allowed inside the house when it was outside time, not even if you had to go to the bathroom (you went to the bathroom before you got dressed and went outside). You weren’t allowed to go in and get
something to drink (you had a glass of water or milk before you went outside and—most important!—before you went to the bathroom). You weren’t allowed to ring the doorbell even if you had something really, really important to say. Outside time was from noon to two o’clock. And Siri called to Syver, and Syver popped up behind her, grabbed her legs, and heaved, sending them both tumbling over into the snow, and she said,
Oh, shoot, Syver, now we’re both going to be soaking wet, don’t do that
, and she scrambled up onto her knees in the snow and at this point, for a brief moment, the sound was switched on and the wind sighed in the trees and the birds twittered and spring was everywhere and Syver blew in her ear and wet snow slid between her scarf and the neck of her sweater, into the gap just there, and trickled icily down her back and Syver started to cry and wrapped his woolly-sweater arms around her and said,
Don’t be mad at me, Siri
. And they both got up and she said,
I’m not mad
, but now he had to stay beside her, she was in charge, she was the oldest and they weren’t really allowed to wander as far away from home as they had done, but the yard around the house, where they were supposed to stay when it was outside time, had its limitations. And Siri remembered that the biggest problem was
time
, because she didn’t know when it was two o’clock and when outside time was supposed to end. When were the two hours actually up? One day she had come back from the woods with Syver in tow and banged and banged on the door because they had been out for ages, and Jenny had opened the door, flung the door open, with a towel wrapped around her head, and said,
What have I said
about coming to the door when it’s outside time?
Jenny had said a great deal on this subject. Among other things, how important it was for children to get fresh air every day. And how important it was not to disturb their mother when she was working. And how important it was that they respect the rules laid down by her. And Jenny stared at Syver and Siri (he had hidden behind his sister and peeked around her, giggling, and Jenny almost, but only almost, smiled) and said,
Twenty minutes, Siri! You’ve been out for twenty minutes! It’s twenty minutes past twelve. I want the two of you back here at two o’clock. That’s in an hour and forty minutes from now, for heaven’s sake! Not a minute before
, Jenny said,
not a minute later
.

And the strange thing was, Siri thinks now, and in fact she had thought the same thing then too, at the age of six, that it never occurred to Jenny that Siri hadn’t yet learned to tell time.
I wonder, I wonder how much longer we’ve got to stay out
, she said to Syver, who wasn’t even old enough to understand the problem.

Siri was old enough to understand the problem, she just didn’t know how to solve it. Usually, though, she got it right. Siri had a rough idea of when they ought to turn and head for home so that they would be in the yard when Jenny opened the door and said,
Come on, come on, you two, there’s cocoa and sandwiches on the kitchen table
. And it was about time to turn around now, but Syver had disappeared again. He was nowhere to be found. She called to him. But Syver was nowhere to be found.

Syver!

She turned and turned and turned and finally faced the lake.

Syver! We’re turning around now! We’re going home!

And now the woods were silent again and Siri knew in herself, even before she knew for sure, that Syver had gone and died.

JENNY
’
S SEVENTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY
was coming up. Irma had agreed that Siri, who never gave up trying to celebrate her mother’s birthday, could organize a small birthday party in the garden at Mailund. For the children’s sake, Irma said. “I want no one else there, though, just Jon and you and the children.

Liv made a drawing of a house and a garden and a tree and a blue sky and a sun, and on the drawing she had written: HOY HOY HOY! TO GRANDMA FROM LIV.

“HOY HOY HOY doesn’t mean anything,” Alma said, looking at her little sister’s drawing.

“Yes, it does,” Liv insisted. “You just don’t get it.”

Alma wanted to buy her grandmother a bottle of perfume, it was a few days before the birthday and Siri and Alma were out buying their presents … Siri suggested that she might rather buy a scarf to lay over Jenny’s feet. “Grandma’s feet are really very cold,” she said. But Alma had shaken her head, asked to have the bottle of perfume gift-wrapped, turned to her mother and said, “Fuck you, Mama!”

Siri gripped Alma’s arm and said, as steadily as she could, “Please don’t speak to me like that. I don’t ever want to hear you say that to me again. Never again, okay?”

Alma smiled and said, “Okay, if you say so!”

The big day arrived, only it wasn’t a big day at all, but a very little day, and on this day that Jenny turned seventy-seven years old, Alma had gotten all dressed up. She had opted for a figure-hugging black dress, thick black tights, and black high-heeled ankle boots. Jon made the effort, and said, “Alma, you look very nice. What a good idea, to dress up for Grandma. Jenny was a very stylish lady. Think of all those beautiful dresses and shoes. And you do her honor by getting dressed up.”

Alma threw her arms around her father and wouldn’t let go. Jon was still subjected to these tight, needy hugs from his eldest daughter, and didn’t quite know how to respond to them. He didn’t want to hug her too tightly in return, so he often ended up patting her deprecatorily on the back. And he was always the first to end these hugs, except this time. She broke free and looked at him. “Why are you talking about Grandma in the past tense?” she said. “Like, she
was
a stylish lady. She
had
style? She’s not dead. She’s not dead, you know. You and Mama talk about her as if she were dead. You’ve got no morals, you two! I bet you’re both just waiting for her to die!”

Jon took a deep breath and looked over at Siri, who was in the middle of packing one picnic basket with cake, candles, and a coffee thermos and the other with croissants, scones, rolls, jam, and honey. She just shook her head and turned away.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Alma,” Jon said. “I only meant to say something nice and it came out wrong.”

Liv looked from one to the other. She was wearing Alma’s old sweater, it was pale blue, full of holes, and came down
to just below her bottom. She wore it as a dress. Her knees were covered in summer scrapes and grazes. Liv had just learned to ride a bike. Her flaxen hair was tousled. She was as thin as rain. She sighed, fixed her eyes on her parents and her sister, made a decisive little gesture with both hands, and said, “Everybody’s fine. And nobody’s dead. Can we please just go?”

They found Irma waiting for them on the front steps. She told them they could put their party stuff in the garden and she would carry Jenny down the stairs and get her into her wheelchair, which was already set out under the tall maple tree. Jon asked if he could help her; Irma snapped that if Jenny was to be moved from one place to another, she would do it herself. Siri fetched a blanket from the living room and spread it on the grass.

Once Jenny—who was tiny and brittle as a bird’s breast—had been installed in the wheelchair, Irma positioned herself over by the wall of the house, some distance away from the others. She wanted neither coffee nor rolls nor croissants nor scones nor cake, even though Siri had made a proper birthday cake, with vanilla custard and fresh berries, hastily decorated with seven candles since there wouldn’t have been enough room for seventy-seven.

Jon sat on the blanket in the sunshine, still trying to shake off the memory of the scene with Alma earlier in the day. His daughter was still small and rather chubby, but the shining, black-lined eyes, the full red lips, and the coal-black hair belonged to a girl he didn’t quite know, couldn’t reach.
It wasn’t that he didn’t try, that he didn’t want to. When it came to Alma he never looked the other way, he looked her straight in the eye,
I’m here for you
, but he didn’t get her. Siri didn’t get her either. But they refused to give up. Jon tried to understand, but it was like in that dream, the nightmare in which you’re a child again, standing in front of the whole class, and the equation you have to solve is totally incomprehensible, made up of numbers and symbols you have no idea how to make sense of. Day after day and night after night—don’t give up! But where had they gone wrong?

With Liv it was a completely different story. He had never considered it
hard
to love Liv.
Hard
to reach her.

“Right, dig in everyone,” Siri said, unpacking the baskets.

She glanced over at Irma, who was leaning against the wall of the house.

“Are you sure you won’t have some?”

Irma lit a cigarette and shook her head.

“Well, in any case, I’ll make up a lovely plate for Mama,” Siri said, her voice sounding false even to her own ears.

“Oh, no you won’t,” Irma retorted from her position against the wall. “Jenny has a delicate stomach. Jenny can’t eat cake. Jenny already ate.”

“A tasty omelet, I presume?” Siri snapped.

Irma didn’t reply.

Liv stood up and reminded them all that before they ate they had to sing “Happy Birthday,” and so Jon and Alma and Siri got up from the blanket and raised their glasses.

“You too, Irma,” Liv chimed. “You sing too.”

Irma looked somewhat taken aback by the child addressing her, but stubbed out her cigarette, came over, and stood giantlike next to little Liv.

And then they all sang:

Jenny, who was dressed for the occasion in a pale blue, egg-stained dressing gown, was slumped in the wheelchair under the maple tree, already half asleep.

Everybody looked at her.

“Hmm,” Jenny said, opening her eyes.

She pointed to something.

Six, no, seven ducks were swimming around in the overgrown pond at the bottom of the garden, including four ducklings.

“They’re mine,” Irma said by way of explanation. “They showed up in the pond one day and now I feed them.”

“Hmm,” Jenny said again.

Jenny had almost ceased speaking altogether, but when she did say something, she had to work to push every word out of her, as if the words were physical objects, each with its own particular size, shape, structure—soft, fuzzy, smooth, angular, pointed. She often strayed down sidetracks that ended in nothing but breath and silence. An abscess in her mouth further prevented
her from speaking clearly. Sometimes it was impossible to understand what she was saying, but everyone tried, and Jon remembered (he wrote this down later that day) that she was in her wheelchair under the tree and that she said, “I wonder who lives in this house and who laid out this garden.”

And then she said, “I have a lovely pair of sneakers in the cupboard, size thirty-eight. Would one of you be so kind as to go and get them for me?”

And finally, in her most charming voice: “I would like to thank you all for this lovely celebration, but I’m afraid I’ll have to go now.”

SIRI WAS ALONE
in the kitchen at Mailund, just about to dial Jon’s number on her cell. She turned down the volume on the baby monitor. It was complicated to have to listen to her mother’s ramblings on the monitor while at the same time trying to have a conversation on the phone.
Fucking baby monitor. Fucking everything
. When it came to babbling and rambling she wasn’t sure who was worse, her mother or her husband.

Siri rose and took a half-empty bottle of cheap red wine from the fridge. She would have to have a word with Irma about allowing Jenny, who quite clearly could not handle alcohol, copious amounts of red wine with her daily omelet. Not only had Jenny been a drunk for the greater part of her adult life (apart from those years when she had been a non-drinker) but mixing red wine with strong medication in the middle of the day had to be positively lethal. No wonder Jenny was confused. No wonder she was babbling. And once Siri had broached the subject of the red wine maybe she could also mention the omelets. An omelet every day. No vegetables. No meat. No fish. No mushrooms or cheese or anything. Just ketchup. And lashings of red wine. Siri had attempted to discuss the omelet with Irma before, but Irma simply would not listen, had planted her enormous frame in front of Siri and said, “The doctor says Jenny needs protein. Eggs are packed with protein. I’m only following doctor’s
orders.” And then she added, “And I think the doctor knows a little more about this than you do, don’t you?”