She nodded after everything I said.
“We’ve got three girls,” she said. “Will it be all right for them to come and see him after school today?”
“Yes, by all means,” I said. “Visiting time’s until eight.”
I looked at her.
“How old are they?”
“Thirteen, fifteen and seventeen,” she said.
At the same time, Ellen came out of one of the rooms and grabbed my attention, gesturing for me to come. I excused myself and went over to her.
“Can I speak to you a minute?” she said.
“Yes, of course,” I said.
We went into the duty room. It turned out she was concerned about a woman who’d been admitted that morning, or rather it was about her child, an eleven-year-old girl who was at school but would be coming home to an empty house.
“The mother’s a bit worse for wear. She says the girl will be fine and is used to looking after herself when she gets home from school, but I’m not so sure.”
“Is there anyone else who can look after her?”
“Her aunt’s coming tomorrow, apparently.”
“What do you think would be best?” I said.
She hesitated.
“I could get in touch with social services and see if they can help,” she said.
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said.
“It’s not a bit drastic, you think?”
“No,” I said. “It’s only to make sure she’s got the support she needs. Go in and talk to her again, tell her you’re going to help out with her daughter. Then you can ring social services and explain the situation to them, and they can take over after that.”
When I came out into the corridor again, Unni was sitting typing on her phone. She knew the operation was likely to go well and that the surgeons would be able to remove nearly the entire tumor. But she had to know too that it would return. In nearly all cases, sooner or later, it would grow back again and would then be fatal.
It could happen in ten months, it could happen in ten years.
Every day would be a gift then, I thought, and looked through the window at the end of the corridor, at the bright houses that seemed almost to have been scattered across both sides of the river, the lush green fellside that rose up steeply behind them, near-black in the shadows at its foot, resplendent in the sunlight that flooded over the ridge at its peak.
* * *
—
Almost three hours passed before Inge’s surgery was complete and the orderlies emerged from the elevator with his trolley bed. I saw them through the window of the office, got to my feet and went out into the corridor, and followed them into his room.
“There we go,” one of them said, and then they were gone.
Inge’s face was drooped and unexpressive due to the anesthetic. At the same time, the bandage around his head transformed him too, making his face more exposed in a way, more obvious among all the tubes and monitors which surrounded him.
It was my job to help him, help his wife, help their three daughters.
I smoothed my hand cautiously over his cheek before going out again to inform the anesthetist that he could be woken up and to tell Unni that the operation was over.
* * *
—
The sun burned in the sky all day. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, only deep blue space and the fiery ball that slowly passed across it.
And yet I froze. The air conditioning was on full, and in every window on which the sun shone, the blinds were down.
Inge and Unni’s three girls came out of the elevator, I could tell straightaway it was them. They were tall, all three of them, and looked very much like sisters, the same facial contours.
Quiet and sheepish, and staying close together, they came along the corridor until they reached his room.
It felt like I’d intruded on something very intimate that didn’t concern me. But I was used to it—in the hospital environment, the boundaries between private and public were in constant flux, it was part of the nature of any hospital and something everyone who worked there had to relate to—and I dismissed the feeling as quickly as it had come.
Before I went off duty for the day, I looked in on him again.
He was sitting up in bed, staring into space with blinking eyes.
“How are you feeling?” I said.
“Bit of a bad head,” he said, and smiled faintly.
“No wonder,” I said, and smiled back. “I’ll give you some more pain relief. Everything all right apart from that?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not thirsty?”
“A bit, maybe.”
I filled a glass with water and held it out in front of him. He reached for it slowly, as if it had been a long time since he’d done anything similar and had now almost forgotten what to do, folded his fingers around the glass and lifted it to his lips.
Some of the water ran down his chin.
He made to put the glass down, and I took it for him and put it on the table.
“Thanks,” he said. “You’re an angel.”
He leaned his head back against the pillow, his face pale and expressionless. The edge of his bandage was red with blood.
“What you need now is rest,” I said, and got to my feet. “I’ve given you some more morphine now, so the pain should start to go away very soon.”
“Yes, I think I’ll have a sleep,” he said.
* * *
—
There were traffic jams at both roundabouts on the way out of town that afternoon, but entering the valley the traffic eased and I could put my foot down. The landscape was glorious, every thinkable shade of green beneath a sea-blue sky. Cattle lay dozing under clusters of trees. Children and teenagers were swimming in the river, bikes glittering between the tree trunks; little piles of clothes lay dumped on the rocks, and here and there, heads, shoulders and arms poked up out of the slowly gliding, gleaming body of water.
I sang.
At the bend that brought the road closer to the fjord, I found myself plunged into the shade of the tall deciduous trees on both sides. I shuddered in what was surely a reflex brought on by the sudden change from strong light to dimness and shadow.
To think that shade existed.
And then I thought about Inge. He’d seemed so unperturbed, cheerful even.
Was he really the same person as that timid little boy I barely remembered?
Had life made him the way he was now?
In that case, his life had been fortunate, I thought to myself.
I picked up my phone and pressed Marianne’s number. The ringing tone filled the whole car and I turned the volume down a bit.
“Hi, Solveig!” she said when she answered. “Can you not make it today?”
“How on earth did you know that?”
“Why else would you be phoning now? Anything else and you’d have told me later on while we were out.”
“Very clever, Sherlock,” I said with a laugh. “Line’s coming tonight, so I thought perhaps we could go out tomorrow instead?”
“Yes, let’s do that,” she said. “How lovely for you!”
“Yes,” I said. “It’ll be nice.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen Line since . . . when would that be? Two years ago? Three?”
“I think she’s staying a few days,” I said. “You’ll be able to see her, I’m sure.”
We chatted for a few minutes before hanging up, and then I reached into the glove compartment, took out a CD and put it in the player without looking to see which one it was. I liked leaving things to chance, at least little things like that, it often gave me pleasure.
Oh, I knew this.
What was it now?
I turned up the volume as I reached the end of the valley and th
e road began its rise over the fell.
Albinoni. Adagio in G minor.
I drove on down the other side, passing along the fjord, the waterfall white amid the green, through the cutting, before another steep, narrow climb.
I felt so uplifted I hardly knew what to do with myself. I could have burst into tears or laughter. I hummed along to the music, which rose and fell like the landscape around me. But music didn’t come from the landscape, it came from the sky. Or from within.
Within someone.
Within us all.
Within me.
I drove past a cluster of milking huts and saw some people sitting out, and then the road began to lead down again. At the point where it curved around the big boulder, I slowed down in case I happened to meet a car coming up.
On the other side, a red deer was standing at the edge of the forest.
I’d seen them in the area lots of times, but never as close.
I pulled in to the side, turned the music off and rolled the window down.
It stayed where it was, quite still, its head turned toward me.
So sleek and graceful it was.
It looked at me for a long time, then began to walk away, quite leisurely, before disappearing into the trees.
The distant rush of the waterfall dissolved on the wind that came sweeping through the valley, rustling every tree as it went. I carried on, descending, until at last I could see the blue shimmer of the fjord in the distance, the steep face of the fell that from there resembled a reclining horse.
* * *
—
I put the car key down on the old telephone table in the hall and opened the door into the living room.
Mum was sitting in her chair at the window. Her bony face was in profile, her mouth open, her breathing faint and inaudible.
Behind her, on the other side of the pane, the branches of the tall birch lifted soundlessly in the sea breeze.
Strange how little space she took up when she was asleep, I thought, closing the door quietly and going into the kitchen. The sight of the red deer still resonated in me, a delicate shimmer of joy. I put the shopping down on the work surface, put the items away in the cupboard and fridge, and tucked the folded carrier bag into the bottom drawer.
The rya mat on the floor looked grubby all of a sudden, so I took it into the bathroom and put it in the washing machine, loaded some towels from the laundry bin too, and then started the wash cycle.
When I returned I heard a low hum from the living room. It was her chair, which she could raise with a remote control, making it easier for her to get up.
“Hello, Mum,” I said from the doorway.
Her eyes flashed with anger as she looked at me.
It almost paralyzed me, like a hand gripping my heart and tightening around it.
But she couldn’t harm me, I told myself. She couldn’t harm me.
“Is something the matter?” I said, stepping toward her tentatively. My legs were weak, my body weak.
She tried to say something, but was too enraged, all she could muster was a hiss.
Her anger worked at a different speed from her body, as if it hadn’t aged the way the rest of her had.
“Did you want me to come home earlier, is that it?” I said, and took her by the arm, leading her a few steps until she could hold on to her walker and stand on her own. “Only you know I couldn’t get here any sooner,” I said. “I’ve a job to look after too, you know that.”
She shuffled forward, her feet barely lifting off the floor, employing all her strength in this single endeavor, to cross the room to the sideboard by the wall.
Was it that watch again?
She tried to pull the drawer open.
I helped her.
“What are you looking for, Mum?” I said. “What is it you’re so concerned about?”
She started rummaging through the drawer.
Then she stopped and whispered something.
I bent toward her.
The brooch. Was that what she said?
“The brooch?” I said.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Is it not in here?”
I emptied everything out and laid it all on top of the sideboard.
The brooch wasn’t there, she was right about that.
It had belonged to her great-grandmother, my great-great-grandmother. Mum had been given it when she got married and had handed it down to me when I got married.
“It must be somewhere,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll find it.”
She looked at me. She knew as well as I did that it hadn’t been worn since I moved back home and that the only place it could possibly be was in that drawer in the sideboard.
Someone must have taken it.
It couldn’t be Anita, I refused to believe it. But no one else came to the house.
Could she have left it somewhere herself and forgotten about it?
“We’ll find it, Mum,” I said. “I’m sure we will. I’ll have a look later on. But first I’ve got the dinner to make. Line’s coming tonight.”
“Line?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I said. “She phoned earlier on to say she was on her way. I’m picking her up from the bus at Vågen in an hour. Come, let me give you a change.”
I took her arm and walked slowly by her side to the bathroom where I pulled down her underwear, lifted up her dress and helped her onto the toilet.
Her legs, so thin and white, trembled now that the weight of her body no longer pressed them to the floor.
I waited a few minutes before going in again, wiping her, changing her and helping her wash her hands at the sink.
She was calm now and nodded when I asked if she wanted to sit outside for a bit in the sun.
I took a chair out, fetched a blanket and placed it over her legs as she sat looking out on the world she’d lived in all her life and loved so much. The pastures, the fjord, the fells.
The sun was high above the mouth of the fjord to the west, and the waters gleamed and scintillated in its light.
* * *
—
When the bus pulled in outside the Samvirkelaget co-op, I got out of the car and went over to wait.
Line was the last passenger to emerge. She was wearing a green, army-type jacket with a big yellow rucksack slung over her shoulder.
Perhaps she really was planning on staying awhile? A stream of joy ran through me as I lifted my hand and waved to her.
She waved back, looking both ways before crossing the road.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello, my darling,” I said, hugging her as tight as I could.
“Such a fuss to make,” she said, and dropped her shoulder to remove her rucksack. “Can you put this in the trunk?”
“Of course,” I said. “Oof, that’s heavy! What have you brought with you?”
“Books,” she said, and got in the car.
I closed the trunk and got in next to her behind the wheel.
“Anything you want from the co-op before we go?” I said.
She shook her head.
She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her hair was gathered simply in a ponytail. Together with her oversized jacket, it made me think she was trying to hide, or at least trying not to draw attention to herself.
It wasn’t a good thought.
But at least there was some color in her cheeks, I reasoned, pulling out onto the road as Line took a pair of sunglasses out of her jacket pocket and put them on.
“There’s a lasagne in the oven,” I said. “It should be ready by the time we get home.”
“Sounds good,” she said.
“You’re looking so tanned,” I said. “Have you been out a lot during the summer?”
“I was at a cabin up at the lake last wee
kend.”
“Who with?”
She glanced at me, then pulled down the visor on her side.
“Some friends,” she said.
The light from the low-hanging sun was refracted by the windscreen in such a way that it was hard to see anything for the glare, and I lowered my speed. There wasn’t much traffic once we got away from the town, but the road was narrow and often a tractor would suddenly appear, especially at this time of the year.
“What sort of books have you brought with you, then?” I said.
“Philosophy and theory of science, for the ex.phil. intro course,” she said. “I was thinking I could do some reading here for a few days where it’s quiet.”
“When’s the exam again?” I said, and smiled, glad to sense that her grit had returned.
“In three months,” she said.
We crossed the little bridge, passing through the shade of the oak trees that grew there, and I cast a glance toward the trough of the river. There was hardly any water in it, save for the odd pool here and there.
Perhaps not thinking about her appearance like that made her feel she was applying herself more to her studies?
I remembered myself in that same situation. Books and papers everywhere, overfilled ashtrays, unbrushed hair, comfy clothes.
I realized she would barely be able to imagine that I—not that long ago, either—had been a student too, living in a rented room and leading the same sort of life as she was now.
“Gran’s so much looking forward to you coming,” I said.
“Mm,” said Line, looking at herself in the vanity mirror, pursing her lips in a way I thought people only ever did when they were on their own.
* * *
—
While Line got herself sorted out in her room, I gave the table in the garden a quick wipe before putting the things out for dinner. It stood among the apple trees, and the dwindling rays of the sun, now low in the west, played in their crowns.
A hawk soared above the pasture below. The way it didn’t move its outspread wings, but simply hung suspended in the air, reminded me of a child’s kite.
The Morning Star Page 17