“Changed your mind, did you?” he said, his face lighting up.
“No, just trying to keep my private life to myself,” I said, and gave him a smile of sorts before putting my case in the overhead compartment and sitting down in my seat, two rows behind him.
I leaned back and closed my eyes as my pulse began to settle. But the queasiness I felt wouldn’t go away, its waves of nausea washing through my chest and stomach. I knew I ought to send Gaute a text message, but at that moment I didn’t feel up to it.
I opened my eyes.
How had he got here before me?
He’d been behind me at the elevator. I’d hurried, run even, and there’d been no queues anywhere.
Perhaps he’d gone another way. Perhaps he worked for one of the airlines and had used a shortcut for staff only.
Outside the window a ground-support vehicle was pushing one of the bigger aircraft back. Wherever I looked I saw flashing lights. Yellow, orange, red. Two men wearing overalls and ear protection stood idly watching. They seemed so oddly small, like the vehicles that whirred this way and that, as if they belonged to a miniature world, vastly inferior in the majestic presence of the airplanes.
Peter had PE the next day. I would have to remind him. Gaute almost certainly hadn’t remembered to wash his sports things after training the day before, but there had to be something that was clean. And Marie had to go to the library with the books she’d borrowed.
They’d seemed cheerful enough when I’d spoken to them. Gaute had taken them to the baths at Nordnes, which both of them loved so much. Water had always done them good; all conflicts dissolved the moment they immersed themselves in a pool or swam out from a beach.
A flight attendant welcomed the passengers on board over the loudspeaker. I got my phone out of my bag and opened the text message Gaute had sent.
When do you land? Entrecôte and red wine await! he’d written.
Home around eleven, I typed back. Looking forward to late dinner with you!
Only then I deleted it and sat with the phone held forlornly in my hand as the plane began to move. The domes of light above the building we were leaving behind were etched with rain. I remembered the dark clouds I’d seen from the railway station in town, they’d been almost black.
I wished I could stay where I was, in that seat, never having to move. If only I could just sit there, taxi out to the runway, take off, and fly away somewhere else, far above the world. I would have to get up to leave the aircraft, of course, but in a foreign city, in a foreign land.
Anywhere but home.
Anywhere.
Abruptly, I was gripped by a sense of grief.
Was that how things were?
The thought was so very painful.
But it was true. I didn’t want to go home.
I didn’t want to go home.
* * *
—
On the Thursday before, I’d sat on the airport shuttle on my way out to Flesland, relishing the feeling of being on my way somewhere, though everything I saw out of the bus window was familiar to me and the only reason I was going away was for work. It happened less and less frequently that I actually looked forward to something. But I’d been looking forward to this particular trip for quite a while. For some years, I’d been a part of a team of translators working on a new version of the Bible, and now that the work was coming to an end everyone involved had been called together for an intensive three-day seminar at the Bible Society premises in Oslo, where those traveling from outside the capital were also being accommodated. Most of those taking part were people I knew already—Norway’s theological circles are rather small—and the thing I was looking forward to most was seeing them again. Or at least some of them. Camilla, Helle and Sigbjørn, whom I’d been at the university with, and Torunn, whom I’d got to know later and who was a researcher. I missed the discussions we always had, the openness toward the world and life that had felt so much a part of them. Perhaps that openness had been naive, but it was certainly genuine. In those days I’d thought that was how life was going to be. We squandered our time and thoughts, and only when it was over did I understand that it had all been unique and would never return. That is what life is like, is it not? When we’re young we think there’s more to come, that this is only the beginning, whereas in fact it’s all there is, and what we have now, and barely even think about, will soon be the only thing we ever had. There had been no new abundance of friends, only Camilla, Helle and Sigbjørn, and no new abundance of thoughts; the ones we’d had then were the ones we still have now.
In a way, my life was more truthful than it had been then, for the reality in which it was anchored was more absolute. I’d given birth to two children, and the love I felt for them was perhaps the only thing I had that was unconditional, the only thing I never questioned or doubted. On the other hand, I thought to myself as the bus crossed through Danmarksplass, which glistened in the rain, and I looked up in the direction of Solheimslien, life being more absolute didn’t simply mean that it was more truthful, but also that there was no getting away from it. Nothing stood open any longer, the way everything had when we were in our early twenties.
But who said life had to be open?
The priest who’d supervised me when I was a student had once said to me that a person only has to step sideways for everything to look different. He’d been talking about the priest’s role as a director of souls. I don’t know why I remembered it so vividly, because he said all sorts of clever things, but I reasoned it was because it was true, and because it was something I’d needed to know and thus found significant. People disappeared into their own lives and conflicts, and in doing so they lost perspective, not only on where they were, but also on who they were, and who they had been or could become.
But stepping sideways in one’s own life was well nigh impossible.
Just the thought of this filled me with guilt. I had Peter, I had Marie, what more could I want? What good was openness to me now?
I missed them already, even though I’d seen them that morning and would be seeing them again in three days’ time.
It was pouring down as the bus swung into the bay outside the Lagunen shopping center to pick up more passengers. People hurried past, huddling under umbrellas, cheerless faces lugging their carrier bags, pushing their kids ahead of them in their strollers. Taillights shone red, car trunks were opened and slammed shut, buses roared past.
The priest had said something else that time too, that had likewise etched itself into my memory: One must fasten one’s gaze.
“Have you seen Being There?” Camilla had said when I told her what he’d said.
“Why, do you think it’s trite?”
“Yes, I do! Can’t you hear it? ‘Step sideways.’ ‘Fasten one’s gaze’!”
What had I said in reply?
I couldn’t remember. But probably something about the simplest things often being the truest.
Which also could have been said by Chance the gardener in Being There, I realized with a smile, and I looked out at the fields, their green sheen in the rain, their almost archaic appearance among the industrial buildings and construction sites.
Some sheep stood with their heads lowered, grazing beside an outcrop of rock a few hundred meters away.
How inconceivable it was that someone could make a sacrificial site there, pick out one of those sheep and cut open its throat, splash its blood in accordance with the ritual, and then cook the beast on an open fire in honor of God.
How different our times now.
But the sheep were the same. The grass was the same, the rocks, the clouds, the rain.
At that moment I received a text message from Gaute. I opened it and saw that it was all hearts, smileys, cars and planes. Underneath he’d written, Marie wanted to say this to you.
I replied with a heart of my own.
On the flatland in the distance the air traffic control tower came into view.
If I stepped sideways in my own life, I considered, there would be nothing missing. And if I fastened my gaze, I saw the children and nothing else.
I decided to close the door on my daydreaming for good.
I would fly over to Oslo, take part in the seminar with all my enthusiasm, come home on the Sunday evening and be glad of all that I had there.
And for a while it worked; I enjoyed the flight, the train ride into the main station, the taxi ride and the atmosphere of the grand building that was home to the Bible Society, to which I arrived late in the evening, the small, austerely furnished room I’d been given there. Something white that resembled semen was floating in the toilet bowl and I laughed when I saw it, entertaining the idea for a moment that I could inquire as to who had been staying in the room before me, though I quickly dismissed the notion. I went out for something to eat at a Chinese restaurant nearby, slept like a log all night, gave my talk the next day, took part in a discussion that carried on over lunch, and then in the evening met up with Torunn. The two days that followed continued in the same vein: sessions in our various groups, talks in the lecture room, fruitful discussions afterward. Everything was conducted to such a high level, and it was a joy to listen to what the others had to say, not least because it all reminded me so much of my time as a student—many of the speakers had lectured then too.
Only now it was over.
I didn’t want to go home.
It was a dreadful insight.
But it was truthful.
I stared at the phone in my hand and tried to think as clearly as I could as the plane taxied out to the runway and the rain streaked the small windows, the cabin crew going through their safety routine in the aisle.
Then, breathlessly almost, I typed a message to Gaute and sent it before I had time to change my mind:
Missed the plane. Having to stay over at Gardermoen. Catching first flight in the morning then going straight to work. Really sorry. Maybe the wine and the entrecôte will keep till tomorrow?
Immediately, three little dots rippled under the text I’d written, and I visualized him standing alone in the living room, his head lowered as he typed. The flight attendant who was standing two rows in front of me put on her life jacket, demonstrating exaggeratedly how it was to be deployed, her gestures timed to coincide with the instructions being voiced over the loudspeaker.
Not like you at all. What happened?
Went out with Camilla and Helle after the seminar, couldn’t get a taxi and the train stood still for an age, I replied as the flight attendant began walking down the aisle, her head moving from side to side, little abrupt movements as she checked the rows of seats on both sides, and then three more dots appeared beneath my message.
I put the phone down in my lap, but she must have seen me texting, because she stopped beside me.
“Have you got your phone in flight mode?” she said.
I nodded and gave her a smile.
“It is now, yes,” I said.
She carried on down the aisle.
I had to answer him, otherwise he was bound to become suspicious. If I was at a hotel as I’d told him I was, my silence would have no plausible explanation, and I couldn’t say I was running low on battery, because why wouldn’t I just recharge it? And if I’d forgotten my charger, something he would find unlikely—and surely two unlikely occurrences, first missing my flight and then my battery running down, would already have him wondering—couldn’t I borrow one from reception?
I turned the phone in my hand and read his new text:
A lot of misfortune all at once! All well here, kids asleep and I’m working. Miss you.
Miss you too, I typed back. Sleep well.
I switched the phone off, dropped it into my bag and stared out of the window. I looked at the rain as it darkened the concrete underneath us, the runway lights that close up looked as if they’d been laid out haphazardly, but which from a distance formed straight, luminous lines.
The plane halted and the engines began to roar. With a jolt, their restrained force was unleashed and the aircraft began hurtling down the runway.
I suddenly had no idea why I’d lied to Gaute, or what good it would do me to stay the night in a hotel. I hardly ever did anything rash, always thinking things through before doing anything.
But since there was no way I could go home now, at least not without dishing up another pack of lies, I should just make the best of the few hours I’d stolen.
The feeling of freedom had been overwhelming.
That’s what it was.
But I hadn’t done anything wrong. Stupid, perhaps, but not wrong.
Nothing more needed to happen. I could stay the night in a hotel, go to work as usual in the morning, come home in the afternoon and spend time with the children. Read to them, put them to bed, perhaps work for an hour or so . . .
Life itself was never the problem, it was the way you looked at it. Provided, of course, that it was a life without hunger, need or violence.
Gaute was a good husband and good father, considerate and unselfish; I couldn’t ask for more. And the life we had together was fine too, if only I allowed that aspect of it to shine through.
What was I doing?
In the depths of the darkness outside, lights glittered from a road, twisting serpent-like around invisible hindrances. A small town shone like a chandelier a bit farther away. Beyond it, darkness once more.
A soft pling sounded in the cabin and the Fasten Seat Belts sign switched off. The cabin crew at the front jumped to their feet and started getting ready to go through the aircraft with their trolley cases. The flight time was only just over half an hour, so it was no wonder they looked like they were in a hurry, I thought to myself, bending down and taking a book from my bag, one that Camilla had been talking about for years, a copy of which she’d finally given me at the seminar. The Kingdom of God is Within You, by Tolstoy. I put it down on the seat beside me, rummaged for my glasses without finding them, then lifted my bag onto my lap for a proper look. I couldn’t have left them behind at the restaurant, surely?
I’d put them on to look at the menu.
Hadn’t I put them back in my bag?
I couldn’t remember.
As I put the bag down again a new wave of nausea ran through me. I leaned back and tried to breathe steadily. I felt like I could be sick at any moment.
As a matter of precaution, I took one of the little white bags from the pocket of the seat in front and held it discreetly in my hand next to my thigh.
My brow was sticky with perspiration.
Ohh.
I tried to control the wave inside me as it continued to rise, sitting completely still and allowing my thoughts to ride with it in the hope they would tame it and make it go away. And it worked. Slowly the queasiness receded and soon it had settled sufficiently for me to put the bag back in its place and start breathing normally again.
The snack trolley was coming closer and I got my purse out. I wanted a Coke and a packet of biscuits, if they had any—it was what my father had always given me whenever I’d felt sick as a child, and I’d connected the combination with getting better ever since.
It must have been the food I’d eaten. We’d all had moules-frites, perhaps the mussels had been off. A single bad one was enough.
I remembered I’d have to remind Gaute to pay the mechanic before they sent the overdue bill to a debt agency. And to bring the two dishes home that we’d left at the school after the get-together to celebrate the break for the holidays.
Perhaps not both things at once. He disliked it intensely if I went on at him. Still, he only had himself to blame, putting things off the way he did.
And then there was the funeral to prepare for on Tuesday.
The flight attendant pushed her trolley past. I tried to catch her attention, but she was busy with the passengers across the aisle.
“Excuse me,” I said.
She gave no sign of having seen or heard me.
“Excuse me!” I said again, louder this time.
Too loud, it seemed, for when she turned toward me it was with a look of annoyance on her face.
“Yes?” she said.
“Could I have a Coke, please?”
She said nothing, but opened one of the trolley drawers and took out a can, handing it to me together with a plastic cup, though still without a word.
“Have you got any biscuits of any sort?” I said.
“Biscuits, no.”
“How about crispbread?”
She sighed and pulled out another drawer, then handed me a thin green-and-white packet with a piece of Wasa crispbread inside.
I held out my debit card.
“Payment’s with my colleague,” she said with a nod in the direction of the other flight attendant, before turning her attention with a smile to the passengers in the row behind me.
I didn’t see why she had to be so unfriendly. Could it have been that I used my phone when I wasn’t supposed to? But surely they were used to that?
Anyway, it was no reason to act the way she did.
I opened the crispbread and took a couple of bites, washing them down with a mouthful of Coke. After that, I got my phone out again and looked at my recent photos, mostly from the holiday we’d spent in Crete a few weeks earlier. Marie had learned to swim there, all of a sudden she could just swim. Fortunately, I’d had my wits about me and managed to film her, not the first time, when she’d discovered it was something she could do, but the second, a few minutes later. We’d been at a little bay next to a busy road, and there were some industrial buildings quite close by, but none of that could be seen in the video, all you could see was little Marie with her head held high above the surface, arms and legs paddling away beneath her. Behind, the blue sea stretched away until meeting the bluish-green rock face on the other side of the bay which rose steeply toward the bright sky, dashed with sandy-colored ruts and crevices. Her whole face exuded concentration and joy.
The Morning Star Page 6