So I know very well who she is, and I have even called her. But otherwise I haven’t caused her any harm. But tomorrow I will tell her the truth, and I’m looking forward to her visit. For Mama’s sake, I’ve wanted it for a long time now. That’s why I told Papa he could bring her here. But there will be five at the table, I said. Five? he asked. I’m bringing Mama with me, I responded. Then he told me that I should be sensible. I retorted that I would be as sensible as I could. Then he said I was capable of being very sensible.
Now I’m alone again. Tonight I’ll stay awake and think about what I’m going to say. I’ve been thinking about it for several nights now. I bought a candle, too, which is why I’ve been waiting for her to come.
But it’s late now, Bengt, so … good night.
Your Friend
Tea for Four or Five
Sometimes we do something without knowing why. And once it is done, we are surprised that we did it. Or sometimes we are even afraid. But from the surprise, as well as the fear, comes an explanation. It has to come. Because the unexplained fills us with a dread that we cannot tolerate for long. But by the time the explanation is thought of or uttered, we have already forgotten that it came after – that the deed came first. If we’re never reminded of it, because the act corresponds with the explanation, then everything is fine. But sometimes everything is not fine. This is when it suddenly occurs to us that the explanation given to us is mendacious, and that after the consequences of our action become clear to us in light of all that has happened, the explanation reveals itself as a distortion of our true intentions. This is when we experience real dread, because real dread is being unable to rely on your thoughts on their own. Real dread is knowing that your thoughts lie to you, even when you think you are being honest.
It’s nine o’clock when the son becomes afraid, nine o’clock at night. They are otherwise ready. The table is set in the other room. Because he is the one who set it, there are five teacups and five saucers and five spoons and five small plates for the cake, which the father has brought home with him. It’s also set with five wine glasses because the father has also bought some port wine from the liquor store. The table also has a candle, which is in front of the place setting without a chair. The son didn’t put a chair there on purpose. He wants to make it clear that no one should sit there – but that someone should only be present. Otherwise someone else might sit there. And he knows what he’s doing because he has spent the entire day planning how everything should be. This is why he hasn’t been able to study.
His fiancée has done everything else. She has swept all the floors, including her fiancé’s room – even though he didn’t want her to. When she asked him why he didn’t want her to, he said that his floor was clean. Nevertheless, she went into his room and when she came back out, the dustpan was full of dirt. Amid the dirt was a little yellow handkerchief, rolled into a ball. He let her throw it away, but when she did, he took her by the arm and told her that she shouldn’t go snooping around in his room. She didn’t understand what he meant, so she started imagining things. But after he said it, he felt sorry. Sorry because he wasn’t sure himself what he had meant and because he had hurt her. He regrets almost everything he says to her nowadays. But in spite of this, he still says it.
Other things are done, too. The books are dusted and so are all the picture frames. All the dishes are washed, too. She had to do that on her own because the father just stood by and watched. Well, he did do one thing at least. He brushed the dog. Now its fur glistens black like a woman’s fur coat. Then he caresses it as one caresses a woman. At one time, he wanted to buy Alma a fur, but he changed his mind and bought her a big black coat instead. It makes me so ugly, she had said. He replied that it suited her. He was the one who picked it out; he picked it because it made her ugly. He wasn’t aware of it then, but he realized it when her clothes came back from the morgue. And because he didn’t want anyone else to notice, he hung it up in the attic. He thinks about this as he strokes the dog.
He doesn’t do anything else but comb and pet. Well, he does walk back and forth in the apartment, here then there. It might seem aimless, but he’s actually following a plan the whole time. He doesn’t want to leave the son alone. In fact, since he came home he hasn’t left him alone for a single moment. If the son is in his room, he knocks and claims to be looking for something that might be in there. And once he’s inside, he doesn’t leave. He stands around chatting about this and that and doesn’t even notice the son isn’t listening until he asks him a question. But it doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that the son is not alone.
Berit arrives at eight. She is anxious because she can’t find any coffee. She is always anxious, even in ordinary situations, and she breaks a plate in her nervousness. There is no coffee, yet at nine o’clock there is to be coffee for five, or at least four. So the father goes to borrow some from a neighbor. And he takes the son with him. Standing in front of his neighbor’s door, the father realizes that this is the first time since the funeral that he’s had to deal with a neighbor. A woman opens the door. It’s one of the women who came to the funeral. But when she sees the widower something peculiar happens. She doesn’t open her door the way neighbors do for other neighbors but peeks through a small slit, which she doesn’t open any wider. She doesn’t say anything, either. Then the widower asks her if he can borrow a little coffee because they are going to have company at nine o’clock. The woman tells him that she’s out of coffee, but perhaps someone else has some. But they do not ask anyone else.
Instead, Berit makes tea. They wait in the other room as the water boils and Berit carries on slamming doors to cupboards in the kitchen. It’s very quiet in the other room. The father seems to be looking for a book in the bookcase. And in a way he is. He notices that the son’s textbooks have been moved, and when he notices, he looks immediately at the son. The son is standing by the desk, which has a pen without a penholder and a dried-out inkwell on it. There’s also a little glass jar with green beads in it that you’re supposed to dab your pen into when you’re done writing. This makes the beads rather dirty but the pen very clean. For fun, he picks up some beads and starts rolling them back and forth across the desk. Five beads don’t make a lot of noise, so he grabs some more. Yet not even ten beads make enough noise to drown out what he doesn’t want to hear. So he puts the beads back and starts banging on the desk with an ink-stained ruler. But he can still hear it. The father hears it, too. It’s because of this that the father is looking at the son. And it’s because of this that the son is not looking at the father.
What they hear is the noise from the kitchen. In the silence of the room they realize it hasn’t been noisy like this for three months. And suddenly it’s like a grave has been opened. At once, they remember her with a terrible, crystal-clear clarity. Does he remember Alma? Does he remember Mama? Maybe. Yet in a sense it isn’t she they remember. It’s the racket she made whenever she was in the kitchen and they were in the other room. A twenty-year-old noise. The rattling of spoons pulled from a drawer, the slamming of drawers, the sharp clinking of china against china, the scraping of chairs across the floor. Now she is back after being away for three months.
This is when the ghastly certainty strikes the son. It strikes the father, too, but it can’t frighten him the same way; it can only arouse a few minutes of uneasiness. But it hits the son with such force that he intentionally knocks over the glass jar with the green beads in it, so that he can lie on the floor without being suspicious. The linoleum is nice and cool. And to see the beads better, he lays his face on it, making his face nice and cool, too. Then he slowly begins refilling the glass. Before it’s filled, the father cries out to the kitchen:
Berit, he yells, sing!
Then she starts to sing because he yelled at her to sing. She will do anything if you yell at her. She will even do anything if you simply ask her. This is why some people like to ask her to do impossible things. “Pull down the moon, Berit,” you
want to shout, or “Put out the sun!” And if you do, Berit will cry. Not because you are being mean but because she can’t do it.
In any event, it’s good that she is singing. Not because they can really hear what she’s singing, but because what they do hear is enough. They hear that it’s not Alma in the kitchen. They hear that it’s someone completely different. Yet they don’t hear Berit. Because that’s not what they want to hear. And as she sings, the father straightens out the chairs at the table. They are fine where they are, but the son is the one who put them where they are. So it’s good to move them around. Meanwhile, the son thinks there aren’t many beads left to find, but when he’s done picking them up, he sees there aren’t as many in the glass as there were before. There never are. They’ve upset the jar of green beads several times and some were always missing. There was only one time when none was missing. That time, Alma knocked it over while dusting, and they had to help her move the daybed because several of them had rolled underneath it.
Now the son doesn’t have to move the daybed, because Berit is singing. Had she been singing the whole time, he wouldn’t have needed to knock over the jar. And he wouldn’t have needed to know what he now knows – incidentally knows. We get to find out a lot of things. But much of what we learn, we forget. Even though it’s often said that we don’t forget anything. And by the time he puts the jar of green beads back on the desk behind the inkwell, he has already forgotten what the sensation of certainty meant. It was horrible, and horrible things are the easiest to forget. But they are also the easiest to remember. Before Berit started singing, he was standing by the desk and thinking that it isn’t his mother he’s been missing for the past three months. It’s the noise that came from her being alive.
Berit comes singing into the room, but when they realize it’s she, they ask her to stop. Then she tells them it’s nine o’clock. The clock hasn’t chimed, because it has stopped. And it has stopped because the key is gone. One evening, almost all the keys were gone. But out of habit the father still looks at the clock. For a month now, the father has been used to it showing half past eleven when he wakes up in the daybed in the mornings, and the same time when he turns out the lights at night.
Now it is showing three o’clock.
It’s impossible, but when he looks at the dial again, it still shows three. Then he looks from the dial to the son, who is standing by the window. And it’s by the window where the son will become so dreadfully afraid. In fact, he didn’t even realize he had gone up to it. But standing there, all of a sudden he knows he is there because he wants to look down at the glistening bull’s head, look at it and remember – because it’s three o’clock. Now it is always three. So he should stand by the window forever.
It’s three o’clock, or a few minutes past nine, and everything is ready. Berit, however, can’t seem to accept that everything is ready. She moves the cups and plates around, arranges the heap of cookies so that they look beautiful, moves the glasses from their places, and puts the wine bottle in a new spot. Not even the cake may stay where it is. She suddenly takes the cake tray and puts it on top of the plate at the fifth place setting. Since this causes one cup to be left over, she turns it over and hides it in the shadow of the large cake. But this also leaves a candle, so she puts it at the place setting where it was never meant to be. She puts everything in place. Berit always puts everything in place. She does this because she means well. When she is finished, it is still three o’clock but several minutes past nine, and instead of a table for five, it has suddenly become for four. The father sees this and keeps it to himself. But Berit doesn’t notice.
The son hasn’t noticed anything either. He has been standing with his back to everything and only heard that something had happened but not what had happened. Finally, the commotion at the table stops. Then the father coughs and says:
What are you doing at the window, Bengt?
He did ask gently and friendly, but the crushing answer is still painfully clear. There is only one answer, and Bengt already has it on the tip of his tongue: Because it’s three o’clock, he wants to say. Really, the father would say, is it three? I thought it was ten past nine. He would say this, too, very warmly because he is being nice tonight. He is afraid and when he’s afraid, he is always nice. But even though he is being nice, there is also only one answer to his other question, and even this answer is crushing: Look at the clock yourself. Don’t you see it’s three? Since Mother died, your clock is always three.
All of this should have been said, but it isn’t said. He only gives the first answer and not the others. This is partly because the father says something he isn’t supposed to say. And partly because the son becomes afraid.
Because it’s three o’clock, the son answers. And you know very well why I’m at the window at three o’clock.
This is true. The father does know. But because he knows, he doesn’t ask why the clock has been changed. In fact, he knows that he shouldn’t ask. Besides, he knows that he wouldn’t be able to prove it. So he says:
To think that they took the head down.
By head he means the gilded bull’s head above the doors of the butcher shop. It’s been gone for a few days now, probably so that it can be freshly gilded or because someone suddenly noticed that it wasn’t exactly pretty. Nevertheless, one might consider this a rather harmless statement about a harmless fact. But it terrifies the son immensely. Standing there at the window, the son looks out and notices something absolutely dreadful: he has failed to see that the head is gone. At once, he realizes his thoughts are deceiving him. He didn’t go to the window to see the butcher shop straight across from him. He wasn’t standing there because it was three in the afternoon, but because it’s almost a quarter past nine in the evening. He is standing there so he can see her coming.
When he realizes that this is the reason, the son feels genuine dread. Then he starts to hate not himself or his thoughts but her, the one who is coming, because she is the one who duped him with his own thoughts. And anyone who does such a thing to us deserves our hate.
For a few minutes it’s absolutely silent in the room. And amid the silence, the father starts feeling bad. And he feels bad because he’s afraid of what might happen because of his own carelessness. But he only regrets his carelessness. And nothing else. At one point in the evening, the son put his coat out so that his fiancée could brush it outside in the hallway. The father stood there feeling the pockets, explaining that he was looking for matches. When he felt nothing hard in them, nothing that felt like a weapon, he started laughing. Berit thought he was laughing at her and started imagining things. But he was laughing at his own fear, which had allowed him to believe that his son was armed. He wasn’t laughing before this. Nor was he laughing after. Because now he was imagining all the things one could hide in the pockets of a pair of pants.
As for Berit, she is merely afraid in the silence. She has nothing to be sorry about. She only has to put things in place, and she has already arranged a few things. And now that it’s so quiet, she notices for herself that there will only be four at the table, four people for tea, some who love each other and because of that love, there is someone who hates one of them and maybe more. She is afraid of hate, and she herself has never hated anyone. She has only ever liked people, because she’s also a little afraid of love. The only thing she isn’t afraid of is to like. Quietly, she moves the cups and glasses around a bit so everything will be just right. It’s a quarter past nine when she lays the matches next to the candle.
Then the son sees her coming. Alone in the bright night, which has its own natural lamps, she turns around the corner. Then she crosses the street. She is walking quickly in a short unbuttoned fur coat that glistens as it catches a ray of the twilight sun. In one hand she is holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in tissue paper. She holds the bouquet with the flowers pointed down because it’s easier to carry it that way. With her other hand, she is clutching her coat so that it won’t blow open. Howe
ver, a tiny slit remains and through it he can see she is wearing a red dress. The dress is as short as the fur coat. His mother’s red dress was long, partly because she was tall, partly because she didn’t like short dresses. She steps onto the curb, where a red bicycle is. She doesn’t have particularly long legs, but they are quite fair underneath the dark fur coat. And when she looks up at the apartment, he notices that she is blonder than he imagined. He also sees that she’s wearing a black hat over her blonde hair. Furthermore, he notices that she must have already known where they live because she looks straight at their window. He takes two steps back into the room and stands with his back to it.
Then the father knows she is coming, and Berit does, too. So she arranges the cookies so they will look even nicer. The widower looks at her and when they look at each other, he nods to her and walks away. She nods back, but her face has turned bright red. The son stays where he is. And when the doorbell rings, he continues to stay where he is. But only for a second. Because when it occurs to him that no one has rung their doorbell for three months, he walks over to the desk. A white sheet of paper is on it, the back of an unpaid bill. He puts the jar of green beads on top of it so that it won’t blow away. Then he fills it with meaningless scribbling with his pen. As he is scribbling, the door opens and the entrance is filled with an even greater silence than before. At first, only the dog can be heard, then a subdued voice. Berit quickly moves behind her fiancé so that she won’t be so dreadfully alone. But because what he wants to do calls for a moment of quiet solitude, he grows irritated with her and leaves the desk. He also leaves the sheet of paper he was writing on. When the fiancée looks at the note, she sees that the scribbles he made aren’t entirely meaningless. In fact, they make a name, and when she deciphers it, she grows even more afraid than she already was. She crumples up the scrap of paper and stuffs it into the jar of beads.
A Moth to a Flame Page 10