Outside, someone shouted. The door opened and an elderly woman came in, flanked by two men. She was around seventy years old and giving them hell, writhing and squirming, flailing her arms as she kept shouting: “He’s lying, I’m not Anne! He’s lying, I’m not Anne!” They led her across the room and through a door on the other side.
Tove sat unperturbed in her own world.
“Do you want some coffee?” I said. “There’s a machine over there.”
“Are you sure?” she said.
I went over and dropped some coins in the slot. The machine began to whirr, a white cup was ejected and filled. The plastic was so thin it became darkened by its contents, and so hot that in order to carry it I was forced to hold it gingerly by the rim, which wasn’t that much better since the steam then rose against my palm. I put it on the table and was just about to sit down again when a male nurse came in. It wasn’t us he’d come to collect but the two brothers, who duly followed him through the door, the younger still muttering to himself while making angry little tosses of his head.
“The kids are back at school the day after tomorrow,” I said, sitting down. “So we’re going to have to drive home in the morning.”
“Are you sure about that?” she said.
“With a bit of luck we might be able to get you transferred. I can’t promise anything though.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
My phone pinged a message, and I took it out to see who it was from. It was Ingvild.
How’s it going with Mum?
Everything’s fine, I typed back. We’re waiting at the hospital now. How’s everything at your end?
Fine.
Has Gran baked you some buns?
Apple crumble.
Lovely! See you soon.
Hug Mum from me and tell her I love her.
I sent her a heart and put the phone back in my pocket. In the office behind the glass partition, another woman had come in and the two colleagues sat chatting, the new one gesticulating all of a sudden, which made the first one laugh. I was annoyed by it, and was about to go over and ask how much longer we’d have to wait, when the door opened again and another nurse entered the waiting room. She was young, in her late twenties, pale-skinned and freckled, her mouth bearing the slight irregularity that suggested she’d been born with a cleft lip.
She was very attractive, and I had to make an effort to look at Tove and not at her when she stopped in front of us.
“Hello,” she said. “My name’s Benedicte. You must be Tove?”
“Are you sure?” said Tove.
“If you’d just like to come with me?” she said.
We followed her down a corridor, at the end of which was another waiting area.
“If you’d just like to take a seat for a second, the doctor will see you in a minute,” she said.
“Thank you very much,” I said.
A loud, heart-rending scream came from somewhere close by. It was desperation, I thought, rather than pain.
Tove stared at the door.
“Ingvild just texted and I’m to say how much she cares for you,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she said.
And then the door opened, and another nurse came out to collect us. She was in her fifties and spoke with an accent I took to be Eastern European. She led us into a room without windows, where Tove and I sat down on separate chairs. The nurse herself sat behind the desk with some papers on it.
“Hi, Tove,” she said.
Tove didn’t answer, but stared at the opposite wall.
“Can you tell me your full name, Tove?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tove Hovin Larsen, it says here. Is that right?”
“Are you sure about that?” said Tove.
“Your date of birth?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you tell me the reason why you’re here today?” the nurse said.
“I don’t know,” said Tove, and brushed something invisible from her thigh.
“What else are you called besides Tove?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know what day it is today?”
For a brief moment she appeared to be trying to work it out, but then she let it go and looked down at her hand on the desktop.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you seen anything unusual today? Or heard anything unusual?”
“I don’t know.”
The nurse looked at me.
“Perhaps you can help me out? Can you tell me what made you come in today?”
“Tove’s been manic for some days now,” I said. “Yesterday it became impossible to get through to her. And today she’s just been walking nonstop around the garden. We’ve got three children and it’s rather frightening for them, so I thought it best to bring her in and maybe have her admitted for a few days.”
“Is that right?” the nurse said, looking across at Tove.
Tove nodded.
“OK,” the nurse said. “If you’d just wait here a minute, the doctor will be along soon to have a word with you.”
She went away and we were left on our own in the little room. It reminded me of the times we’d been expecting a baby, and would go for various check-ups and have to sit and wait in similar rooms, the two of us on our own. But we’d been full of expectation then about all that was going to happen, and at least we’d been together in that.
Now I no longer knew if we were together at all.
We had the children, of course. They would always be ours. But did we have anything besides them?
The door opened again and a man in his fifties came in. He introduced himself as Nygård, and his face, small eyes above baggy cheeks, inspired little immediate confidence. But no doubt he was competent enough, I told myself as he looked at Tove through the rectangular glasses on his nose, pen at the ready. Six years of training and more than twenty years of experience, I reckoned.
He asked much the same questions as the nurse had done, an exception being whether Tove had any children.
“I don’t know,” said Tove.
“Who’s this?” the doctor then said, nodding at me.
Tove looked at me.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He put down his pen and leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on the desk.
“I think it’d be best for you to stay here until you get better, Tove.”
“Are you sure about that?” said Tove.
* * *
—
An hour later, I was finally able to leave the hospital. I paused outside and lit a cigarette, crossed the car park with it smoking in my hand, stopped beside the car and took a last couple of drags before getting in. It was swelteringly hot inside and I opened all four windows as I pulled away toward the exit.
After the doctor had gone, we’d been taken into another empty room, this time on the closed ward, with windows facing the corridor through which patients and nurses kept passing, the former often shouting or screaming, though their behavior didn’t seem in any way to affect Tove, who sat quietly next to me as if unaware even of my own presence.
Once the paperwork was completed, the red-haired nurse took us out into the corridor, where someone else came and showed Tove to the room that was to be hers. White plasterboard walls, a gray linoleum floor, a bed, a chair, a bedside table.
“Have you eaten anything today?” the nurse asked.
Tove shook her head.
“I’ll fetch you something. Have you brought any things with you?”
“I don’t know,” said Tove.
“She’s got a bag in the car,” I said.
“I’ll go and get it.”
When I got back, Tove was sitting on the bed with her hands between her knees. There was a plate on the bedside table, with two slices of bread on it, an apple and a glass of juice.
“I’ll be making tracks, then,” I said. “It’ll be good for you here, I think. I’ll phone you every day.”
“Are you sure about that?” she said, getting to her feet and putting out her hand.
She wanted to give me her hand in farewell, as if I were a stranger. I took it, and it struck me that we’d never shaken hands before.
“Everyone’s dead,” she said, and looked at me earnestly.
“What?” I said. “What did you say?”
“We’re all dead.”
I sighed.
“We’re alive and well,” I said. “All of us. I’ll phone you tonight. OK?”
“Sorry,” she said.
Even before I’d left the room, she’d sat down again to carry on staring at the floor.
Now, in the car as I left the hospital area, I thought to myself how significant everything was. Her saying that she didn’t know me was significant. Her shaking my hand instead of hugging me was significant. Regardless of whether she was psychotic or not.
And what she’d said about us being dead: it meant we were dead to each other.
Psychoses were like dreams, I knew that. They made you think in symbols and images, seeing meaning everywhere where there was none.
But it was true. We were dead to each other.
I stopped at the junction and checked my mirror to make sure there was no one behind me, took out my phone and was about to text my mother to say I was on my way home, when it occurred to me that she didn’t know how long things had taken, and that I now had the chance of an hour on my own somewhere.
I slid the phone into the hollow underneath the handbrake, put the car into gear and pulled out, passing first through a residential area before joining the main road. Soon I was speeding back over the bridge, the sea gleaming and open, the sun lower in the sky now, and in the east, occasionally visible from the road that cut its way through the forest, a curtain of dark cloud.
The star. I’d forgotten all about it.
It was almost a shock to see it shining so brightly in the oceanic blue sky up there.
The crabs, the crash.
I’d forgotten it all.
And all those damn fish in the cellar!
They’d be reeking to high heaven by now. I had to do something about them before we left.
I picked up my phone again, my eyes glancing through the albums that were stored on it as I drove. Not Bowie, because that would just remind me of her and taking her in to the hospital. Maybe Peter Gabriel? His first solo album, the one with “Here Comes the Flood”? I’d played it regularly ever since the first time I’d heard it at the age of twelve, though not at all this past year.
It was a relief to be on my own.
All of a sudden, there were no problems anymore. At least none that were insurmountable.
The music came on and I turned it up.
When I was a boy, the road followed the coastline, passing through the little towns that lay there, winding through the inlets, past the small farms. Now they’d straightened it out so that it ran a few kilometers inland. It was quicker, but I was in no hurry, so I turned off at the next junction and drove toward the sea, finding the old road soon enough and following it instead. It must have been there ready in my brain, for I knew what was round every corner. Memory and reality merged, past and present collaborated. In one way it felt like I was driving the car in my mind, in another like it was my mind doing the real-time driving.
A small river cascaded down a weir, whose steps gleamed darkly in the shade of great oaks. A wrought-iron gate glittering in the sun separated from the road what had once been a large manor farm; a red barn, red outbuildings, the main house painted white, a pennant flag in the Norwegian colors drooping motionless from a flagpole.
Suddenly I remembered the hotel in the little bay with the sandy beach. One Sunday in every month, Mum and Dad used to take us there for dinner, the Sunday after payday. Surely it would still be open? I could sit and have a beer in the shade before carrying on home. Perhaps I’d even have something to eat. The kids would be all right with my mum, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten a thing all day.
As I approached the place, “Here Comes the Flood” came on, and I sang along. I’d never thought about what the lyrics meant, even if I did know them by heart. They’d always just been words. It was the same with anything I listened to. Johannes from my department, a huge Dylan fan who’d written a book about his lyrics, mocked me for it. Who plays Dylan without listening to the words? he’d say. The words are the whole point!
But now I listened: strange signs, omens, early warnings.
Egil believed in signs. But what did that mean? Signs from what, from whom, from where? What if the crabs did invade the land, and a new star did appear in the sky? It didn’t mean there was some omniscient being behind it all, using those occurrences to “speak” to us.
I couldn’t understand how he could believe such a thing.
Of course, those signs didn’t have to be random and meaningless on that account, either. When the animals started behaving differently, or were suddenly dying in strange circumstances, it was a sign that the balance of nature had shifted, that the ecosystem itself was breaking down. And the heat we were experiencing was a sign that the climate protecting us was likewise breaking down.
These were rational signs from a system of which we were ourselves a part. There was nothing mystical about it, nothing supernatural, no God “speaking” to us.
And the star was a supernova. Another natural phenomenon.
Ahead of me now, nestled among trees, lay the hotel. I turned in and slowed down. The car park was full. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one to have had such a bright idea, but I managed to squeeze into the far corner, in the shade to boot.
On the terrace, too, I was fortunate and found a table, a couple with a child rising to leave just as I appeared.
My lucky day, I thought, and turned round on my chair to catch the attention of a waitress.
How could I think such a thing when I’d just put Tove in the hospital?
But it didn’t weigh heavily on me. I felt unburdened.
And happy?
Yes, to be honest.
The waitress saw me and came over. She was about my age, stockily built, with dark hair that looked to be dyed.
“What can I get you? A drink?” she said in English.
“No need for the English,” I said in Norwegian. “It’s still a Norwegian restaurant!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Norwegian very well,” she said.
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Where are you from? And please don’t say Sweden!”
“No, I’m not from Sweden,” she said, without grasping the joke. “I’m from Lithuania.”
“Good for you,” I said, and ordered a pint of lager and a chateaubriand.
No, I ought to be feeling down, I thought, my eyes following her as she went through the dark double doors into the restaurant itself. The fact that I wasn’t told me I was lacking in empathy, something that occasionally concerned me, because empathy was something you were supposed to have. The propensity to care about other people. Mum and Dad both had it in abundance. So it wasn’t down to upbringing. Presumably it was some genetic throwback.
I did care about her, it wasn’t that. Just not all the time, that’s all.
She was in a room on her own in a madhouse and didn’t even know who I was.
It was terrible. But then so was her behavior. She left the kids to fend for themselves, couldn’t care less about them. Only an hour ago she’d refused to acknowledge she even had any.
She was psycho
tic, but even so. It was still revealing of the person she was inside.
At least I cared about the kids.
I’d looked after them all summer.
But I had to remind myself that she was their mother, if only to remain aware of how difficult it was for them. It was no good.
It was no good at all.
The waitress came out again with some drinks on a tray. I picked up the cold beer she placed on my table and downed a large mouthful as I looked out across the glittering surface of the sea.
The Flood would come. The Flood was the rising sea, the sin it was to purge was our galloping consumption.
I texted Mum to say I was on my way.
Which I was, technically.
Jolly good! she wrote back. All well here. How’s Tove?
Tove’s been admitted to the closed ward, I typed. Not sure for how long, but probably a few weeks.
The poor girl, she replied.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I put the phone down and took another slurp of my beer. She probably thought I was driving, I told myself, so it wouldn’t be strange if I didn’t add anything.
I picked up the phone again and called Lothar.
He answered straightaway.
“Hello, Lothar, how’s it going?” I said.
“Arne,” he said. “I’m all right, how about you?”
“Not too bad,” I said. “What are you up to?”
“Now, you mean?”
“For example, yes.”
“Lubricating a bicycle chain while the kids are in the paddling pool. You?”
“Sitting outside at a restaurant, looking at the sea.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Could be worse,” I said. “Anyway, we’re heading home tomorrow. That’ll give me a couple of days to prepare. You’ll have been working all summer though, knowing you?”
“Not at all, nothing but holiday here. OK, so a small amount of work, maybe.”
“Have you written anything?”
“A bit, yes.”
“Like what?”
“A piece on Heidegger’s black notebooks. Have you read them?”
“Sort of,” I said. “Skimmed them a bit. At yours actually, now I come to think about it, back in May or whenever it was. What have you got to say about them?”
The Morning Star Page 55