Nothing.
That afternoon Bård texted me to say that every cloud has a silver lining. Love, your brother.
The silver lining being that he and I had found one another again.
December in Lars’s cabin in the woods near the river, which was partly frozen and thus strangely quiet. Usually it would babble to anyone who listened carefully. Dark and cold and quiet, the trees black and mourning the summer, which had been taken from them, their branches spiky against the sky, yearning for snow, to be dressed in snow. I tended to work well when I was there, far from the city and the people, where Fido could run free.
December darkness with snow in the air that evening, but the next morning the grass lay green and the sun was strong as though we weren’t in December. Then raw December, sudden darkness and red wine in the evening, bad dreams at night, low-lying fog in the morning only for the next moment to be bright and sunny as if it were spring, it didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t concentrate. I was restless, unedited theatre reviews were piling up. I had intended to write about the risks of dramatizing popular novels, but struggled for hours to find an angle, then I had an email from Bård, who had had an email from Åsa. She wrote that they would obtain new valuations. That the previous ones might have been rather low. However, it was up to the testator to decide how much money should be deducted for presents given as an advance of an inheritance, but by obtaining more quotes and valuations, Mum and Dad would have a basis for a fair estimate. If we were able to agree on a method of calculation, she thought that Mum and Dad would accept it.
It was up to Mum and Dad to decide, but if we could reach an agreement, she thought they would accept the new valuations. The implication being that if Bård continued to object, they would ignore them.
An hour later I received a copy of an email he had sent to Dad, Bård had gone off the deep end now, I recognised the deep end. He reminded Dad how he had always said that he would treat his children equally when it came to inheritance. So how was it fair to give two of his children the cabins on Hvaler as an advance of their inheritance without first having them valued? And presumably many years before the other two, Bergljot and I, he mentioned me by name, would inherit anything at all?
I’ve never caused you any trouble, he wrote, he was referring to me, who had caused them trouble and grief. You tell me how much you love me and my children, to that he would reply: Actions speak louder than words.
I sat in the forest with no peace. I imagined them gathering in Bråteveien to continue the myth of Bård as a troublemaker and Bård’s wife as a warmonger, she had been allocated the role of the woman who had seduced Bård away from his family. I knew exactly how it would play out; once I had contributed to it myself, I had been so completely enmeshed in the family’s version of its own story. It wasn’t until I became estranged myself, until I had distanced myself, that I started to look at things differently, but still slowly, taking baby steps, such is the power parental stories have over a child’s concept of reality that it’s almost impossible to free yourself.
And had I managed to free myself? Or was I still stuck, and had the name of the villain merely changed?
I closed the Mac, got dressed, took the dog down to the river and let her off the leash. She didn’t run away, she was loyal. I counted the rocks in the river, you couldn’t see them in the spring and summer, in my mind I traced the river backwards, to the spring it had come from, its source, I walked along the bank for about an hour and then back in the darkness, alone on the path, as far as it was possible to go without being in another country. I went inside and turned on the Mac, and there was another email from Bård, he was well into it now, he was also tracing the river back to its source. He had received an email from Åsa, who assured him that there was a will which stated that Bård and I would be recompensed for the cabins, that new valuations would be obtained. Some blank spaces followed, then she wrote that it would have been easier to communicate with him if his tone had been less hostile: It’s almost scary to receive an email from you.
He replied that she shouldn’t forget that his original wish had been for the four of us siblings to share the cabins. We would then have had a natural place to meet with our children. It was sad, he wrote, that Astrid and she were opposed to that solution. He wrote that if she thought it scary to receive emails from him, it must be because she found it uncomfortable to read about how she and Astrid had behaved towards us. He would never understand why they refused him and his children half a cabin on Hvaler.
Lars turned up at the house in the woods. We cooked, we drank wine, I told him about Bård’s emails. We went to bed together and afterwards, as we lay close, I told him what Åsa had written to Bård and what Bård had written to Åsa. Lars heaved a sigh and turned over to go to sleep saying that as far as he was aware then I had never shown any interest in getting a cabin on Hvaler. I don’t want a cabin on Hvaler, I exclaimed, but I can understand why Bård objects! Don’t you see why Bård objects, why he’s upset? Lars looked at me, stunned, and sighed wearily: Yes, of course.
What was it like to be a normal human being?
I didn’t know what it was like to be a normal human being, an undamaged human being, I had no experience other than my own. When distressing dreams woke me up at night, I would snuggle up to Lars, slip my right arm around his back and try to take over his dreams, which were undoubtedly peaceful. I tried to open my mind towards Lars so that his harmless dreams could flow into mine, I tried to suck the dreams out of his sleeping body, but it didn’t work, there was no way in, I was trapped inside myself.
The next day, just after noon, as I tried to write about the risks of making plays based on novels, while Lars sat in the conservatory with coffee and newspapers, I got an email with an attachment from Bård. He had lain awake all night, he wrote, but now felt he had got everything out of his system by writing it down. It was wonderful to have articulated it and sent it, he wrote, he called it the last act in our little family drama.
To Dad
I want to tell you what kind of father I would have been, if I had had a son.
I would have tried to develop a close and strong relationship with my son.
I would have tried to steer him towards activities which he and I could enjoy doing together, both when he was young and also later.
I would have shown an interest in and got involved with his activities.
I would have supported him in these activities even if they didn’t interest me to begin with, simply because they mattered to my son.
I would have felt true joy, delight and pride on seeing my son’s happiness when he was doing those things I had supported him in, and which I knew he had worked hard to learn. I would have felt and expressed the same sentiments when it came to his education and career.
Once he had grown up and got himself a good education as well as professional experience, I would have asked his advice when it came to business matters where he had more competence than me.
I would have enjoyed some of my finest moments as a father and a human being by sharing experiences with my son.
You and I both know that you haven’t behaved like that towards your only son.
I played hundreds of hockey and handball matches. You turned up to watch only one of these matches.
You never introduced me to activities that could have turned into something the two of us could have enjoyed doing together.
I know several of my friends’ fathers better than I know you. I have been skiing more often with Trond’s and Helge’s fathers than I have with you.
I have three qualifications, and I have achieved a great deal in my professional life. Yet you have never said or indicated that you are proud of me or pleased on my behalf.
I have done very well in several types of sport throughout my life, but you have never shown any interest or support.
We can’t live our lives over and we all have to live with our choices.
I have never asked much of you a
s a father, but I demand that you treat the four of us fairly when it comes to inheritance. You and I both know that it hasn’t been like that so far, not even close.
Bård
I went to the conservatory. Lars was sitting in his thick, quilted jacket in a chair facing the lawn, the forest and the river, he wasn’t reading the newspapers nor was he smoking, he was gazing at the lawn and the forest and the river, and I thought that he felt proud to own it, you can feel joy at ownership, a strange joy, a good and heart-warming if not a politically correct emotion, like the Maasai in Kenya or the Inuit in Greenland probably feel when they gaze across a landscape they regard as theirs although legally it isn’t. Like I used to do a long time ago when I was alone on Hvaler as a young woman, alone with my children when they were small, in early autumn or in March, off season when most cabins were closed up and empty, when I would look across the archipelago, the sea and the rocks I knew so well, and feel a sense of belonging and something which could be called pride. Not being able to be on Hvaler had been a great loss, a consequence of my estrangement, but I’d had no choice, and compared to what I had gained in terms of peace of mind by my estrangement, Hvaler meant little.
I tapped Lars on the shoulder and asked if I could read something to him. He looked at me, hoping it didn’t have anything to do with inheritance. I sat down and it started to snow. Look, he said. Big flakes whirled in the air, unwilling to settle, like blossom falling from the apple and cherry trees in June. We each chose a snowflake and followed it until it landed and melted. It’ll be Christmas soon, he said. I looked at my watch, December 10. Fido chased after the flakes trying to catch them, childhood was unreal. Ice hockey matches and piano lessons unreal. I was loath to look back. I remember thinking on my way to school, in Year Three, when I was wearing a new orange dress which I was so proud of, that I would have been happy if it hadn’t been for that.
Perhaps Dad was reading Bård’s email right now, it had been sent seven minutes ago. I tried to imagine him, but it was so long since I had seen him and I had never seen him in front of a computer, I had no idea what kind of computer he had, where he kept it, in his study, in the living room or in the kitchen. It must be horrible for a father to receive such a message from his son, his only one, his firstborn. Poor old Dad, grey-haired and stooping, his glasses perched on his nose, I’m guessing now, peering at the screen while he clicked on the inbox. To Dad from Bård. A huge amount of compassion welled up in me. The old man who couldn’t escape his past, who was forced to carry his past mistakes with him for the rest of his life, and I was overcome with guilt for what I had done by becoming estranged from that poor old man.
Then I reminded myself that the father I pitied wasn’t my dad, but an imaginary dad, the archetypal father, the mythical father, my lost father. I reminded myself that my actual father, the person I knew, wouldn’t be moved by Bård’s letter, but would instinctively go on the offensive. Dad’s final words to me, the last time I spoke to him on the telephone seven years ago were: If you want to see a psychopath, just look in the mirror.
It was a sunny Saturday morning at the start of June, I was sitting on the windowsill in a function room after an end-of-year party with a man from the events committee. We had finished clearing up and were enjoying a beer.
He told me that he had studied with my sister Åsa, in Trondheim. I didn’t know that, how funny, he told funny stories about their university days in Trondheim. I was giddy and laughing as I called Åsa, to whom I hadn’t spoken for years and said: Guess who I’m having a chat and a beer with and handed my phone to the man and he spoke to her, and it was fine, it was good fun. Then I called Bård, to whom I hadn’t spoken for years either and said something similar, and he laughed, it was fine, perhaps a part of me had been missing Bård and Åsa since I had called them now that I was drunk and my defences were down. I called Astrid and said something similar and it was fine, although she was more guarded, she knew me better, she was aware that my moods fluctuated and she could probably hear that I had been drinking, then I called Mum and Dad, seeing as I was on a roll, I can’t have been thinking straight, I acted on impulse, believing perhaps that it would be fine as it had been when I called the others. Mum answered the phone and I was about to say something funny about the man who had studied with Åsa in Trondheim when I heard her whisper and it must have been to Dad: It’s Bergljot. And perhaps she put us on speaker phone, I thought afterwards when the conversation was over and had ended the way it had, she probably put us on speaker to show Dad that she was on his side and wouldn’t whisper with me without him being able to hear what was said, or maybe he demanded that she put it on speaker. Mum refused to let me say a word about the man who had studied with Åsa in Trondheim, she went straight to the point, asking aggressively how I could treat her and Dad so badly, be so ungrateful when they had always done their best for me, helped me in every possible way, what had they ever done to me that made me so horrible to them? I was completely unprepared for her reaction, with hindsight it’s mind-boggling that I could have been so foolish, what had I imagined, that they would chat light-heartedly with the man who had studied with Åsa in Trondheim? I had been naïve and I came crashing down to earth. When Dad dies, I said, then you’ll stop asking those questions, then you’ll come round, I said, but by then it’ll be too late, I said, and Dad then spoke because Mum had probably put the call on speaker: If you want to see a psychopath, just look in the mirror.
I had often thought that if Dad died first, then Mum would start to see things my way, but also that by then it would be too late. Once he had uttered those words, then it was too late. That was who I had become, who I had chosen to become, merciless. If you want to see a psychopath, just look in the mirror! That was who Dad had become, who Dad had chosen to become or he hadn’t had what he regarded as a real choice, he’d had to become merciless. I was convinced that Dad was incapable of feeling what Bård wanted him to feel, and so Bård’s email wouldn’t have the desired effect. To Dad Bård’s email would merely be evidence of his ingratitude, the word he had used about Bård and me. And Mum and Astrid and Åsa would shake their heads at Bård’s email, if they ever got to read it. A grown man, almost sixty years old, chiding his old father over nothing.
The email wouldn’t be shown to anyone but Astrid and Åsa. Should it become necessary to talk about it, to explain the situation to the rest of the family, they would say that Bård at nearly sixty was so juvenile that he was still cross with his father for not going to more of his handball matches when he was a little boy.
The email would be water off a duck’s back, and Bård knew it, he probably had no expectations of ever being understood, but for his own peace of mind he had felt a need have his say as explicitly as he had before it was too late.
I read it aloud to Lars. He listened carefully. Wow, he said when I had finished and then he fell quiet. Lars was a father, Lars had a son. Wow, he said again and grew pensive. The snow fell. We all want our fathers to notice us, he then said. That’s what it’s all about. The snow fell and the dog ran around the snow to catch the flakes. That’s the most important thing for a son, he said, for his father to notice him. That’s why Bård wrote to his father, he said.
We sat in silence for a while. Then he said that his father had also been quite distant. That many fathers of that generation were and that back then it wasn’t like today where fathers often turn up for hockey and handball games. Had my father merely been a little distant? No, I said. Because even distant fathers were proud of their sons when they won sailing competitions and ski races and would boast about their successful sons to other fathers, but Dad was incapable of giving Bård a single word of praise, of uttering one positive adjective about Bård. Dad was scared. If you’re scared, never let them see you tremble, and Dad didn’t dare tremble or show any signs of weakness, which is what he believed a compliment to Bård would represent. Dad’s regime was sustained by fear. His fear that everything might come tumbling down if he showed w
eakness. Dad could only accept Bård if he was humble and submissive, but Bård didn’t want to be. Dad hated Bård getting rich—although money was Dad’s yardstick—because once Bård grew rich Dad lost that power over him, which money represents.
I’m glad I’m not rich, Lars said.
Dad has probably mellowed over the years, I said, that was my impression, but he has painted himself into a corner as far as Bård is concerned. And he isn’t capable or willing to come out of it.
Bård hasn’t included the worst, I said. He merely lists the symptoms. I’m guessing the worst is too difficult to enter into and express because then he would have to become a little boy again.
December 10 and snow. I gave up doing any work, we went for a silent walk in the snow, the world was quiet and white. Lars left that night in a snowstorm and I was alone once more. The darkness came and with it came more snow. I sat in the conservatory and I smoked, although I don’t smoke. There was no wood burning stove there, so I wrapped up warm, I was completely covered up, I smoked and I drank wine, and I looked at the falling snow. I ought to be writing, editing articles, I smoked and drank in the darkness and looked at the snow, which grew higher.
When I went indoors in just after midnight, I saw that Mum had called. I had stored her number, so I wouldn’t accidentally answer the phone in case she called. She had left another message. She asked me to call her. It was this business with Bård and the cabins. Her voice wobbled as it usually did when she wanted to tug at my heartstrings, like when I was a little girl and she would sit on the edge of my bed and tell me how much it hurt her, how she would get chest pains when I didn’t do what she had told me to, when she doused me with her pain before she left, closing the door behind her, her heart unburdened, I presume, while I lay behind with mine pounding. All the times she had called me, despairing at her relationship with Rolf Sandberg, all the times she had called me to tell me she was going to kill herself and how I would spend hours consoling her and talking her out of it because we loved her so much and needed her so much, she had used me up with that tremble in her voice, which suffered as it expressed her suffering.
Will and Testament Page 5