The son is standing by the bookcase, but he isn’t looking for a book. He is not even looking through the glass. He is looking in the direction of the door. It is open, so everything being said in the hallway can be overheard, as well as everything not being said. In front of the doorway, there is a curtain that his mother once put up to make it look nicer. When she put it up, she thought it was beautiful, but they thought it was ugly. And this is why it hasn’t been used for three months. They hardly even noticed it was there. But earlier when he was alone, he pulled it across and it stayed that way the whole evening. Now Berit is squeezing his hand so that she won’t have to be lonesome. Irritated – nearly disgusted, really – he feels that it’s clammy.
Because the curtain is there, he doesn’t see them at first. He only hears their footsteps approaching, one set is gentle, light, and brisk, and the other is heavy, deep, and squeaky. The footsteps stop behind the curtain for a moment. Then the curtain rings rattle as the father sharply slides it open. Because the son was listening to their footsteps, it is their feet he sees first. Or shoes, to be precise. The woman slowly entering the room has black shoes, and they are very beautiful. There was only one other time, he thinks, when he had seen such beautiful shoes. But he can’t remember when.
Now she comes so close to him that he has to look up so it won’t seem like he’s bowing. And when he does look up, he sees flowers. They were not for the father since they are still wrapped in white paper. The footsteps stop again, and the flowers are raised up to him, as far as they can go, right up to his chest, making him go cold inside.
How do you do, Bengt? Gun says.
Bengt looks at Gun. Coolly, like he imagined he would, maybe not exactly, but it isn’t warm either. If anything, it’s a look of confusion, as he is also confused. When you intend to be harsh, the person you want to be harsh to must behave the way you expect her to. Otherwise, you won’t be harsh at all, but instead how you’re normally supposed to be.
He didn’t expect flowers. If he had expected them, then he would have planned it so that he would have taken the flowers and plopped them on the daybed, letting them just lie there. But now he takes them and stands in the middle of the room as everyone quietly watches him unwrap the tissue paper. It’s a lot of paper, which is why there’s much silence. When the paper is unwrapped, he has five roses, five red roses, in his hand. He doesn’t know what to do with them, but he knows what he ought to do with them. He knows that he should give them back, that he should be firm, with a piercing glare, a stern voice, and that he should say harsh words: Thanks, he should say, but keep your roses. Roses are inappropriate for mourning. Especially red roses.
That’s when Gun first notices Berit. It’s often the case with Berit that even when you know she will be there, you don’t see her. She must be somewhere else, you think. But then you hear that she’s in the room, after all. Even furniture can let you know it exists, because it creaks. And when you do see her, you find her standing with her back to you. It’s not until later that you realize she isn’t standing that way at all. It’s just that her face and the front of her body can sometimes convey a solitude and silence that only a back can convey.
Hello, Berit, Gun says.
Then Berit extends her hand to Gun as if she’s handing her a gift. Behind them, the father is watching the two women. Berit is a bit taller and therefore thinner, too. Berit has straight black hair and straight legs. He doesn’t like women with straight legs. And he doesn’t think Berit is pretty. What he does find attractive is that Gun is looking at Berit like a mother. He finds mothers very attractive, especially beautiful mothers. But because they were looking at her for so long, Berit turns red and dashes off to the kitchen to look for a vase.
Then the father says:
Let’s sit down then.
As soon as he says it, he remembers he had said it once before, but he can’t remember where. Then he looks at the son to see if he remembers, but he doesn’t seem to recall either. He is merely standing there with the flowers. The roses are very red, but Bengt is very white. After standing for some time, he goes to sit down, holding the flowers in his hands the whole time. With both hands, though he only needs one. When he sits down, he notices there are five roses. Then, when he looks up, he notices the table is only set for four. So that they will be five again, he stuffs the flowers in the vase that Berit brought him and lights the candle. As soon as he lights the candle, he notices that Gun is watching him. The father is also watching him. Berit, too.
What are you looking at me for?! he wants to shout. But he only shouts with his eyes. It’s the only yell he can get out. Deep down inside him, the other cry, the real cry, is buried. It’s an egg buried underneath the baking sand, and it has to get much hotter before it will hatch. Then, once it has hatched, it will come out, but no one will know what it’s going to look like until the shell cracks. Not even he will know.
But even the roaring of his eyes can be heard. At least the father hears it. This might be why he is scratching his ear and keeping quiet. But Berit is holding one hand to her mouth as if she were the one who wanted to scream. And she probably does. Because she has suddenly discovered something that frightens her more than all the other things she has recently seen. What she noticed is that the candle, which is just starting to blaze, is in front of Gun. She is the one who put it there, but she wasn’t exactly sure she did it since she often does things that later surprise her. She is usually afraid of what she has done, and lately she is almost always afraid. Her sofa also broke again, and she doesn’t dare sleep at night. She is afraid of her own fear. But now she is afraid of the candle.
But she doesn’t really have to be afraid. Because nothing ever happens with the candle, nothing else but that a flame flares up searchingly high, like flames usually do. But after that, the candle burns like an ordinary candle. After lighting it, Bengt sits down between his mother and his fiancée. Yes, his mother. Because even though it’s true that a white cake is on her plate and that her cup is turned over in the shadow that the tall cake is casting over a small portion of the table, he still knows she is there. And he knows that they know she is there. Even she who is sitting behind the candle knows it because she can’t possibly think someone would light it for her. She can’t believe that a son in mourning would light a candle for the one who has hurt the deceased. Therefore, he purposely leaves the candle there. In the end, the candle will burn her and whoever is burnt suffers greatly. Whoever is burnt will also remember why she is burnt. Every time she looks at her hands, she will remember.
For the time being, however, she doesn’t burn herself. Probably thanks to the father. Because he takes the candlestick by the base and slowly moves it to the center of the table. Bengt watches his hand as he moves it. It isn’t burnt but it’s afraid, because it grips it harder than a candle needs to be gripped. The father’s hand grips it so tightly that Bengt can see that it knows what candle it’s really moving. So that she will know, too, Bengt moves the candle back with one hand and offers her a cookie with the other. As she takes it, she says with an air of surprise:
What happened to your hand, Bengt?
Suddenly, he lets go of the candle and nearly drops the plate. Then he puts both of his hands on his lap.
I burnt myself, he answers without looking at anyone. I burnt myself on a candle.
It must have been quite recent, Gun says.
She looks at him when she says it. Then the father looks at her and wants to say something, wants to tell her what’s really going on, partly to correct a mistake, partly to say anything, because he knows that silence is dangerous. Just as he’s about to tell her, he realizes that he can’t. Because then he would have to talk about a time that burnt, so he talks about something else. He talks about the weather.
But Gun was right. Bengt has burnt himself quite recently. At three o’clock he burnt himself on the candle. On a whim, he put it on the table to see how it would look. For fun, he lit it. But just for a little while
so that it wouldn’t be too short at nine o’clock. When he decided to put it out, he tried doing it with his hands by squeezing the flame, as people sometimes do to flames. Then he burnt his hands. He had forgotten to spit in them first.
Candles can be dangerous, Gun says after the father stopped talking.
Yes, Bengt responds. Just yes.
It isn’t much. He had wanted to say more, and he even knew what he should have said. Especially some candles – he should have said – the ones that burn at funeral meals. But it’s hard to say something like that. Much harder than he imagined. In fact, it’s difficult to do anything at all, except for looking down at his hands and grabbing a cookie now and then. After all, there is little we can do when we’re sitting at the same table and drinking tea with someone we hate. Judas himself could be sitting at our table, and we wouldn’t ask him about Jesus. We would talk to him about the weather.
Although, there’s actually a lot you can say about the weather. And only a moment after the father stops talking about it, he begins talking about it all over again. He says the weather is good, damn good, you could even say. Gun says it’s wonderful walking weather, but terrible for the cinema. Berit has nothing to say about the weather because she hasn’t noticed it. She has had a lot more to notice. Besides, she usually only notices it when it rains, because she likes the rain a lot. But Bengt says:
Yes, it’s nice now, but it wasn’t so great in January. There was a lot of snow. And it was so windy that you always had watery eyes.
Then the father notices that it’s burning up in the room. Bengt notices, too. What he also notices is that he hasn’t noticed it from the beginning, and this bewilders him. As for Berit, she drops a spoon, and it’s good to drop spoons when you sense it heating up. Maybe even Gun senses it. Then all of a sudden, she looks at Bengt, silently and for a long time. The father notices before the son does. The father thinks she looks at him beautifully, beautifully like a beautiful mother. But when Bengt notices, he is quite mystified again. He doesn’t like that she is looking at him, but he does notice that she has rather lovely eyes. Then he likes it even less. Because the one you despise cannot have beautiful eyes. Not because you really think they’re ugly, but because you don’t want them looking at you. So he lowers his eyes.
Don’t you come to the theater sometimes, Bengt? Gun asks.
No, pretty rarely, he answers rather sullenly. I haven’t been there for quite a while. I don’t like going to the cinema.
But I think I’ve seen you at the Lantern, Gun says.
Then Bengt replies that he almost never goes to the Lantern. It’s silly to say this and stupid to lie because he knows she must recognize him. Still, he can’t keep from lying. Then it’s even stupider to have lied, because Berit says:
But Bengt! We’ve been to the Lantern several times lately. Of course, you remember.
It’s absurd for her to say this. Quite meaningless, too. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t matter whether Bengt goes to the cinema or not. Or to which theater he goes, either. But she says it all the same. Because the one you love isn’t supposed to lie. At least not so that anyone will notice it. This is why she thinks she says it. But after she said it, it occurs to her that maybe no one noticed that Bengt lied. This frightens her and to distract them from what she had said, she sweeps it under a haze of words.
But she also rambles because she knows that silence is bad. For she has suddenly become terrified of the silence, just as much as the father was. And whenever she speaks quickly and frantically, her accent comes out without her noticing it. Only the others notice it. And suddenly the son realizes that her dialect is vulgar. Sitting there, listening, he is surprised that he hasn’t noticed it before. The father thinks her accent is ugly. He usually likes accents – but beautiful accents, the accents of beautiful women. Gun smiles.
Berit talks about a sofa, the sofa in her room, the kind of back it has, and how it falls off whenever you sit on it. This makes Gun smile. The father does not smile. Nor does Bengt smile. Soon they are just uncomfortable. They think it’s so embarrassing that Berit is so odd right off the bat that they can’t bring themselves to smile. A person should never show herself to be stranger than she’s presumed to be. Otherwise, the audience, which everyone has at her performance, becomes disappointed. Not because the new show is bad, but because it’s new. Someone who has just appealed to our compassion, to our melancholy, or to our fear cannot suddenly start experimenting with our joy as she has just experimented with our earnestness! Too much cannot be contained in one and the same person. Otherwise we become skeptical, and we don’t like anyone we’re unsure of. And the person who seems to boast everything – we hate her, because it’s against the rules of the performance to have it all. The truly popular people are actually the monotonous ones, the ones who are always themselves, that is, the ones we believe them to be.
Therefore, it’s a relief for both of them when Berit finally stops talking. The father wipes his brow, which is now sweaty. Maybe it’s the candle that’s too warm. Bengt takes the cake from his mother’s plate and holds it in front of Gun. Then his hands start to tremble, because if Judas were to sit at our table, we would talk to him about the weather, of course, but if we were to offer him a pastry, our hands would tremble. He thinks they are shaking with hatred, so the son is pleased with his hands. But as soon as he is pleased, they no longer shake.
As Gun slices the cake, he studies her face. He looks at it through his mother’s candle. Gun is looking at the cake, which is why he dares to look at her. The candle is burning very brightly, and through the flame he sees her face as it is when it’s alone; how it looks when it thinks no one is watching it; how it looks when it sleeps. Now it has dark shadows under the eyes and lines around the mouth, fine, like needle marks. Now her face is forty years old and he wants the father to see it, too. So he says to the father:
Would you mind holding the cake for a moment?
But it’s already too late. His triumph has died out. Gun looks at him and smiles, smiles and says:
Are you tired, Bengt?
He doesn’t manage to avert his eyes, so he’s able to see that when she looks at him her face is younger – not young but somewhat younger. Because of this, his hands tremble some more when he hands the cake to his father. And when he tries to hide the shaking, it only makes it worse.
As they eat the cake, drink the last of the tea, and sip the wine, the candle continues to burn. It burns all alone because nobody is looking at it. And because nobody acknowledges it, it’s no longer the mother’s candle. It’s just an ordinary candle, purchased one day at a department store. But to transform the candle and to break the silence, which is deep and dangerous, Berit bangs her cup on her saucer and says:
What a nice candle. I haven’t seen such a nice candle since the funeral.
She didn’t mean any harm by what she said. She never means any harm. She only meant well, only wanted to get Bengt to see how much she cares for him, how much she is on his side, for she was suddenly struck with a curiously emetic certainty of what the most important thing is: to make sure, above all else, that he is not alone. Even so, it’s as if he didn’t understand what she said, because as soon as she says it, he glares at her. And the horrifying thing is that his eyes are not grateful. The horrifying thing is that they don’t understand a thing. The horrifying thing is when his mouth sharply asks:
Berit, what kind of accent is that?
But for him it’s horrifying because he knows she didn’t say it with an accent. So he hopes she won’t answer. And she doesn’t. She doesn’t say anything for a very long time, not until everything they have to drink is drunk and everything they have to eat is eaten. She gets up quickly and says with a lonely, high-pitched voice:
I suppose I’ll clear the table.
Then the son blows out the candle because he doesn’t want to burn himself again. In silence, Berit gathers up the cups and the plates. But the silence seems to be too deep for the father,
too. He gets up quickly and the moment he stands up, all three of them know that he is now the Comedian who will entertain them, the one we see at every party, the one who would travel the world to be funny at all costs.
He pushes Berit back in her chair because the Comedian is here and he is going to clear the table in the world’s funniest way. He rattles some spoons and makes a racket with cups and clinks the glasses because the point for the entertainer and the ones who are watching in fear is that it should never get quiet. The thing that makes the loudest noise, however, is in his pocket. He had anticipated it would get so quiet that he would have to entertain, so he asked a coworker named Fritz, who entertains all the time, what the funniest thing to do is. Then Fritz gave him something that would really please his company. It’s nothing special, just a piece of metal, in fact. You have to drop it for it to be interesting, and when you drop it, it sounds like someone spilling a load of porcelain from a tray.
So he puts it on the tray. To make them laugh even more, he then puts only three cups on it and walks into the kitchen. He purposely stumbles on the threshold as he drops the piece of metal. They find it very funny, and when he comes back with the empty tray, he drops that, too. They think it’s very amusing the first three times, but by the tenth time they are slightly bored. By then, Berit is the only one who laughs.
Bengt does not laugh. Because when the father goes into the kitchen with the last of the wine glasses and, as usual, trips on the threshold, he suddenly notices something strange about the father’s back: he doesn’t recognize it. That’s the peculiar thing, and since he doesn’t recognize it, he thinks, Is this man really my father? Is my father a clown?
As soon as he thinks it he is sorry, because it hurts to think about his father that way. Feeling guilty, he happens to look at Gun – not intentionally but inadvertently. Just then, the piece of metal falls on the hallway floor again and he sees what she is thinking. She is smiling with that strained smile one has when the one you love is making a fool of himself, smiling and thinking, Can that man be my future husband? Then she senses someone is watching her, and when she sees that it’s Bengt, she smiles at him. But in his confusion, he sees that this smile is different. Confused, he smiles back. He knows that he shouldn’t, knows what he ought to do instead. Be stern and harsh and don’t smile. But even if Judas were to drink tea and port wine with us, we would smile back at him, too, if he smiled at us. But then we would leave the room.
A Moth to a Flame Page 11