Welcome to America

by Linda Boström Knausgard

  I hadn’t the courage to stare at the naked bodies and would look away, into the water. Dad was up at the cabin seeing to his nets. He shook them apart where they were tangled and hung them up between two nails. He mended the holes. He’d filleted the fish, and the discarded offal lay baking in the sun.

  That was how I liked to think about my dad. At the boat, fishing. He was good at that. Everything else was a mess. It was frightening. His eyes in the dark when he shinned up the drainpipe. Or the times we were at grandma’s. All of a sudden he could turn up and sit down at the kitchen table, the rage pulsing inside him. Or maybe it was despair. We couldn’t keep him away. Just you try, his eyes would say, passing from one of us to the other. My mum could come apart then, disintegrate. The efforts she made to keep him at bay, and then there he was. Sometimes they let him out from the hospital without telephoning first. Well before he was recovered. It was hard to keep someone in against their will. There were special criteria to be met. The knot in my stomach grew into a thumping fist whenever I saw him. Whenever he saw me. He saw that we were afraid and it made him furious. There was nothing wrong with him, how could there be? It was mum there was something wrong with. She was hysterical and wanted him locked up. Flustered, grandma would serve boiled coffee and homemade buns, back and forwards with the coffee pot between the stove and the table: Is that Stig come now? Go on, dip in. A person has to be able to get divorced, mum would say to dad later on. There’s no point in anything else if one party doesn’t want to go on. You can’t just barge in and claim everything back. That was what he wanted. To get us back. He couldn’t come to terms with the divorce. It didn’t exist for him. We couldn’t live without him. But we could. And much better too. Was it at grandma’s up north that I first prayed to God?

  I thought of killing him myself. I wondered how I could get my hands on my uncle’s hunting rifle. I fantasised about thrusting the knife into his chest and twisting it around. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but it was so vital he went away I reasoned that extraordinary measures were called for. I was a child, I wouldn’t go to prison. What would happen to me if I killed my dad? Would I be put into care? I didn’t know, and so I decided on prayer. His death was in reach. That was how it felt. He was moving about in its presence, of his own accord. The fire. The drainpipe. He climbed up on the roof when he was drunk and often got into fights. Or maybe he would do the deed himself when the pendulum swung the other way and he became mute and consumed by self-loathing. He could hang himself or throw himself off his balcony. All I needed was some time and God, who would help me. Dear God. Please make my father die. I want him to die and you have to help me. Let’s do it now. Together. You and I. Let’s kill him. It’s my highest wish. Amen.

  Every night the same prayer. Every day and night on earth. The same words. The same wish. Until the night he really did die, in his sleep. He reached for me that night. He came to me as a light in my dream and held out his hand. I think of it as his dying moment. That it was me he was reaching for. Did he know that it was me who killed him? Whether he did or not, he reached for me.

  It was as if we all breathed out after his death, though in different ways. Mum was relieved, if somewhat concerned about our now being fatherless. It was worst for my brother. Some of his memories were fond, he kept hold of them and couldn’t let go. Perhaps he felt guilty about feeling relieved? For me it was painless. From the moment my brother stood there with the phone in his hand and said that dad was dead, I have been calm.

  Is that true? Part of me, at least, has been calm. The part that had to do with him. There was no better ending than the one that came. The solitude, then? The three weeks he lay there? Yes, that was right too.

  Sometimes I wonder if I’m bad. If there’s something wrong with me. My ability to empathise. Is there something lacking in me? Something important?

  Dad’s death was a triumph for me and God. It was our first collaboration.

  Did I believe in God? Yes, I believed. With all my strength, I believed in God. There was nothing else.

  Were we actually a family of darkness? Tormented by secrets and turmoil? But there was mum and her character. The force of nature she was. Withstanding everything.

  I used to say that Heaven was like the trees. That the earth contained tunnels all the way down to Hell. That the Devil himself sat listening to what the children said to each other. I said he counted them as his own from when they were small. I said that eternal damnation was the life we were living then, repeated into infinity. And then there were the little lies: I said I was the riding instructor’s assistant and that I had three horses of my own, that I kept a silver shark in the bath at home. What I thought I could achieve by such lies I have no idea, but they popped out of me whenever I opened my mouth at school. They couldn’t be helped. I was powerless against them, and they were so small. I was so much bigger than them. Now I was living the truth. Not even my thoughts were tainted by lies. Or was I really still lying about something? Something I couldn’t see?

  It was night and my brother was in love. Mum had surely slept soundly after Vendela’s visit. Everything had gone so well. Only I yearned for before. What was it exactly I yearned for? The hallowedness. The silence. What else? Whenever the thought came to me that one day I might speak again, I knotted up inside. What could be worth saying out loud? What could be so important? Mention of the specialist came as a surprise. Mum wasn’t letting me be after all. It wasn’t going to pass over on its own. It needed a specialist. Had he or she already been contacted? Was there an appointment mum was keeping secret? Was she going to surprise me one day and just take me there? What was expected of me at the consultation? What would the waiting room look like? I immediately imagined a space not unlike that at Odvik the dentist’s, with mirrors and magazines, nicely done out in the hallway of an apartment on the square where mum bought flowers and fruit. What would the specialist say? And then the important question: Would mum be in the consulting room with me, or would we be on our own? How would he or she address me, refer to me?

  I imagined the way the situation could pan out. The specialist pressing and prodding my body, as if to find an answer there. The chatty way he or she would talk to me, as if I were a much smaller child. How had it started, this refusal to speak? Did I ever forget and say something by mistake? Had anything happened to bring it on? I needed to observe the specialist, try to understand the person he or she was, where their thoughts were and what was behind them. Will. The will of the specialist against my own, who would be strongest? Forever the same question when it came to human beings. Whose will was strongest? What would I have to do to obey my will?

  There were too many questions and too few answers. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter was that no one could force me. Not mum, and certainly not some specialist. There were no two ways about it. My refusing to speak was stronger and far more unambiguous than all their attempts to break it down. Only now had I become unambiguous to myself. Everything I had said and done before seemed unnatural, as if I had removed myself further and further from the person I was every time I spoke. It was so much better now. Vendela. Did she really scare me? Was I bothered by her being at home with us? Would it matter if the apartment was full of my brother’s friends all absorbed in each other? No. It wouldn’t matter at all. Not really. I’d have to withdraw even further. That was all.

  I found some photos of her one day. They were lying in a pile face-up on the kitchen table. I could only imagine that my brother wanted us to see them. He would hardly have put them there otherwise. She was naked in them. In one, her whole face was a smile, she was lying on my brother’s bed with her legs wide apart. In another she was on all fours. Her bottom took up the whole frame. It was impossible to stop looking at them, and it was obvious my brother had taken them himself. I stared at her mouth, her nakedness, it felt like I was burning inside. It had to do with life itself. Deep down, I knew that. That it was life, burning inside me.r />
  Mum’s men. Men who came late at night and left early in the morning. Did it bother me? Or when she threw a party for the last night of a run and the whole ensemble came piling in? Life, going on with me at its edge. Did it bother me that I wasn’t in its midst like everyone else? That I was an onlooker? Did I not yearn to plunge myself headlong into life like all the rest? Had I not become complacent, observing from the wings? Was it not cowardly of me? They were living, connecting with each other. They had pluck, whereas I was a despicable coward.

  I woke up to find my mum standing in my room. She wanted sleeping bags from the wardrobe, she said. She sleepwalked a lot. I nearly blurted out: The sleeping bags aren’t in there, we’re not going on any trip, you can go back to bed. It was a close call, so close it made my heart thud in my chest, the thought of those almost uttered words. She rummaged about in the wardrobe and I sat up straight and watched her, breathing quickly in and out, trembling. The words had been there on my lips, ready to be spoken. All I had to do was open my mouth and they’d have come out. I asked my heart to stop beating so hard. I tried to calm myself with the thought that nothing had happened. It had been an impulse, that was all. But somehow mum’s sleepwalking had forced me out of my shell. Suddenly I’d wanted to reach out to her with my voice. Only it hadn’t happened. Nothing had happened. I climbed out of bed, took her by the arm and guided her out of the room, nudging her along in front of me. I walked her through the kitchen, the serving passage, the living room, into her bedroom, where a man lay asleep. He looked young. Maybe it was one of her pupils, or a new actor from the theatre. When had he come? I left her in bed and went back to my room, still trembling at nearly having spoken.

  You’re the most theatrical person I’ve ever met, mum would sometimes say when she was angry with me. So calculatedly mean, she could hiss when her temper got the better of her. It felt like she could hit me. Instead she would shake me, hands gripping my shoulders as if to force some word out of me. I looked into her face, soaked up her despair and anger. I waited for her to stop, waited for her tears to start, the way they always did after an outburst. I braced myself inside, locked myself tight into silence so that no sound would come out. Once, my brother had stepped up behind her and asked: Do you want me to hit her? But mum had merely left the room crying, my brother after her.

  If I was afraid of anything, it was that. Physical violence. I knew I couldn’t withstand it. That was my weak point, and my brother knew it. It was why he had the power over me. The steady, underlying threat of violence. He could lash out at any time. What would I do then? How was I going to protect what was mine? Mine alone. Dad had hit mum in moments of despair and I’d been petrified, but I don’t think mum was. I don’t think she was scared. Dad could yell at her, accuse her of sleeping with the whole theatre, of calling the police as soon as he showed his face. I tried to step between them, and would tug on his arm, to make him understand that he had to stop. That he absolutely wasn’t to hit her. And that if he did, he would have to hit me too. I knew it was out of the question. He would never have hit me or my brother; he couldn’t see us when he was angry, only mum. Preventing dad and my brother from striking out, that was what I was good at. Now there was only my brother to worry about, and he was growing up. Maybe he was growing out of his anger. Maybe Vendela was a solution. Even if it wouldn’t last, I sensed that. But there’d be others like her. Maybe he was growing away from me, so that we’d no longer have to stand in the same room, measuring each other with our eyes.

  I hadn’t spoken. That was the important thing.

  It had been close, but I hadn’t spoken.

  It would be morning soon. Should I go to bed or stay awake? Perhaps listen to my mum and the man in the kitchen, before she got rid of him? They never stayed for long. Even the thought of someone else at breakfast was inconceivable. She wouldn’t have it.

  Dad’s face there at the dinner table. Completely sunken in on itself. A stagnation and fatigue that seemed enormous. Sitting beside him was like being sucked into darkness, his darkness. He said nothing. He had more than enough with his anxiety disorder. It was a term I heard from mum. Your father suffers from an anxiety disorder, she said. It’s a terrible affliction. He can’t help things. What had he done? He’d broken in, he’d borrowed money from dubious lenders and bought a farmhouse up north. He was going to keep horses there. Trotting horses. He was going to fish in the river. He was going to catch char. Do what he wanted. But there he was, sitting in our kitchen, ashamed of himself on account of it all. For having ventured to dream that life could go on. That he could make something of himself. The interest payments to the lending company. How was he supposed to manage? He would never move in to that farmhouse. It had been a dream, a dream that now required him to do something, in his other state of mind, under the sway of self-denial and turmoil. The dense darkness of depression. Who was supposed to save him? Mum was. Only she could save him, her sheer primordial force would fix things for him. She could get the loan agreement annulled on the basis of dad not being of sound mind. She could lay into them, make some phone calls, sort things out. Was that what he was hoping? Or was the farmhouse what he wanted, deep down inside himself? It was impossible to tell. One thing was clear though, and that was that he couldn’t cope with anything. That his darkness commanded him to die. He was no use to anyone. A broken man. Mum had chewed him up and spat him out. She’d lived their life as if it were the most natural thing in the world, only then to shut him out. It’s the end of the line, she told him. And it was true. It had got to that. But why did she still help him, even when they were divorced? Why was he sitting in our kitchen? Why did she have to sort out his mess, then later be accused of taking everything away from him? Even his farmhouse, he yelled at her when things came to a head for him, when he’d forgotten all about sitting in our kitchen and wishing he was dead. Why did she have to sort everything out for him? Why didn’t she let him sink to the bottom like a stone? Why did she have to hold him upright? Because he’s your father, she said. Because I loved him once. Because you can’t just abandon another person.

  Did I ever ask mum to stop seeing him? In as many words? No, I did not. I prayed to God.

  I watched her as she sat there in the bedroom with her hot curlers in. She was wearing a denim skirt and a white top she’d knitted herself. She was smoking a cigarette, it lay burning in the ashtray as she wound a strand of hair around a curler. She did her hair every day. Ironed some item of clothing. Rehearsals were starting. It was the first day and the director was coming from Poland. Strand after strand, fastened with a pin until her hair was entirely rolled up against her scalp. She was so beautiful. So shiningly bright and happy. Her joy. Her propensity for joy.

  What was I doing home? Was I ill? Why was I looking at her like that? I wanted to be near to her. It was always the same. Was she taking me with her to the theatre? How old was I?

  My first day at school. I went with my friend and her family, mum was rehearsing and dad was ill. I felt big, everyone else had their parents with them. I spoke up in a clear voice when my turn came to say my name and when my birthday was. I said yes when the teacher asked if I was looking forward to school. I told her I could already read. I’d decided to excel in every subject. I imagined it would be easy. So much easier than everything else. And it was too. Predictable, with no surprises. It annoyed me now that I’d turned into someone who told lies. What was I trying to prove? Why did I need to make myself better than I was? It was natural that I was the leader. The one who decided who was in and who was out. Only in the tree with my one real friend were things different. The discussions we had there were more equal, and I could never be sure of what would come next.

  The scream from the living room tore through the silence of the apartment. The despair of the pupil. She was Medea, betrayed by Jason. She was going to revenge herself. There was no other choice. Mum’s voice from inside, calm and objective. Or when suddenly she screamed her
self, to demonstrate to her pupil how to release one’s despair, so that she might muster the courage and not hold back. Raw despair, that was where she had to go. I took the tube of cod-roe spread and the packet of crispbread. Squeezed some globs of the spread onto a piece of the crispbread, put it on a plate and took it with me into my room. I sat down at the desk and listened to the pupil’s efforts. It sounded like an effort too, and I knew my mum had already decided the girl lacked talent. The salty spread tasted good with the crispbread. I ate a whole one and had gone back to the kitchen for more when I heard my brother coming in. I decided to stay put in the kitchen. I took another piece of crispbread as if it was nothing, as if being in the kitchen was something I had a right to. I took a glass and filled it with water that rushed from the tap. I sat myself on the counter with my crispbread and spread and waited for him to come in.

  He was with someone. It was Vendela. He gave me a look, but Vendela said hello. I stared at her, prompting her to step back, as if to hide behind my brother. As casually as he could, he asked what she wanted to eat. They could toast a couple of sandwiches, he said, how did that sound? Fine, she said. I stayed where I was and watched them while I ate. I watched my brother get the griddle out of the cupboard, then the things for the sandwiches: bread, ham, cheese, tomatoes. It was implicit that I should leave the room whenever he was there, but Vendela being there meant I could stay. As long as she was there, my brother couldn’t do a thing. He’d get me back for it, but I didn’t think about that. My brother must have explained to Vendela about mum’s pupils, because she didn’t ask about the screams from the living room. He made an effort to talk to her even though I was still there: They should go to a concert soon, he said. Did she want to sing today, or should they go out instead? I suppose we could have an ice cream in the park, she said.