Dad was the root cause of my misery, but the misery spread to everyone and it wasn’t within my power to relieve it. It doomed Mum and Astrid to making me even more miserable while they themselves also suffered.
I walked along the beach and into the centre of San Sebastian while the sun set and it grew dark, and I went inside the small church where I lit a candle for my children and one for Dad. I bought a bracelet of black beads, a mourning bracelet, and I wore it from bar to bar in San Sebastian, looked at it and remembered Dad’s death and my grief. On my way back a stray black dog started to follow me, I could see that it wanted to come home with me, and I realised that it was Dad. Do you want something to eat, I asked it, are you thirsty, I asked it, do you want to sleep at my place, I asked it, then it ran off, it wants its mother, I thought, because it was Mum who was trapped and hurting.
I sat on the terrace in the darkness in San Sebastian and drank wine and got mad at Dad and ripped off my bracelet. When I woke up the next morning without it, I had forgotten Dad’s death and my grief right until I skidded on black mourning beads and had to bend down to pick Dad up.
I was home from San Sebastian. Astrid wrote that she had to talk to me. It was of the utmost importance. I thought it might be about clearing out Bråteveien, that she might be wondering if my children would like to take part. If my children wanted some of the carpets, the furniture or artwork, which Mum couldn’t take with her to her new flat. When my children’s great-grandmother, my ex-husband’s grandmother died, her children and grandchildren were invited to her big house to share her things between them. I called my children and asked if they wanted any of the carpets, furniture or artwork from Bråteveien, which Mum couldn’t take with her to her new flat. Ebba and Søren said yes. Astrid called, but not to talk about emptying Bråteveien, she had to meet me, we had to talk about the situation, I owed her that much, the last four months had been the worst of her life.
Bråteveien was cleared without my children or Bård’s children being told.
And no wonder, given how we had behaved, given how we had left it to Astrid and Åsa to organise everything.
Astrid wrote that seeing as I didn’t want any contact with her, she felt the need to write me a letter. The following week I received a letter from her in the post. Why did she post it rather than email it? So that I wouldn’t forward it to anyone like, say, Bård?
I made some coffee, went to the living room and opened Astrid’s letter.
Bergljot!
She wrote that recently I had stated over and over that I didn’t think she had ever taken my story seriously. Whenever I said that, she got very upset and angry because it just wasn’t true. The experience had probably been terrible for me, and Dad’s death might well have caused things to resurface. She was sorry for that, but it didn’t give me the right to say that she hadn’t listened or taken my story seriously. Since I now wanted to end all contact, there was something she felt she had to put in writing. She hoped that I would also show this letter to Søren, Tale and Ebba.
She said that in the years after I first told her that Dad had raped me, she had listened, she had listened and listened and listened.
That was true, I remembered it.
She described the circumstances when I had first told her twenty-three years ago. I had said that I couldn’t remember when and where it had happened, but that I knew that it had. Of course I believed you, she wrote. Why wouldn’t she believe her own sister? She believed me and had done a lot of soul-searching, she wrote, examined it warts and all, yes, I remembered that she examined it warts and all twenty-three years ago. Her head was filled with horrible thoughts, she wrote, she tried to pretend that nothing had happened in front of Mum and Dad and she began to dread family events. Yes, that was probably also true.
Ever since then she had given the matter a lot of thought, she wrote. How could she not, she asked. Rape is one of the worst crimes. She hadn’t kept quiet about it but thought about it a lot and had spoken to many people about it, her husband, her friends, Åsa, Mum. Could it have happened? When? Could she remember me being distressed? Had I had any injuries? Could I be wrong? After all, the first time I brought it up I was around thirty years old and had three children. We had lived on top of one another in Skaus vei, wasn’t it odd that no one had ever said anything? Given how many people knew us and spent time with our family. She had no recollection of anyone dropping hints about this until I spoke up as an adult. That didn’t necessarily mean that it hadn’t happened. After all, it was a different time where incest wasn’t something people talked about. She had thought a lot about her childhood, and her conclusion had to be that she remembered her childhood as safe and filled with love and joy.
Because the rape of a child is extremely serious, such allegations are treated with the utmost seriousness, she wrote. I drank my coffee and read on, it didn’t feel as if it was about me. Because the rape of a child is extremely serious, such allegations are treated with the utmost seriousness, she wrote in a hectoring tone as if to point out to me how serious my allegations were—just in case it hadn’t crossed my mind. She used serious and seriousness in the same sentence, she took it so seriously, with the utmost seriousness. Her problem was, she wrote, that I couldn’t remember and Dad rejected the allegation. And that’s exactly what makes incest cases so complex and wicked. The absence of proof. It’s one person’s word against another. As the years passed it had become clear to her that she didn’t know enough to make up her mind. She wrote in italics: The information I had—what you had told me and my own thoughts—wasn’t enough for me to know for sure.
She couldn’t know what had happened, she wrote. She realised that she couldn’t verify my allegation any more than she could know if Dad was telling the truth when he denied having done anything. This stance became the only one she could live with without compromising her own integrity.
As she had already told me on the phone, she wrote, I must know that she had NEVER—in capitals—said to anyone that she thought I was lying or that what I claimed couldn’t have happened. But neither could she prove that it had. Had she sided with me, she would have been accusing Dad of a horrific crime on what she felt were unsafe grounds. She couldn’t do that.
Because she loved Dad and me, she wanted to be in touch with both of us and she didn’t think that wanting to see her dad as well her sister was ‘having her cake and eating it’.
She was right about that, I agreed with her.
She wrote that Mum and Dad had accepted her position and been pleased that she was in contact with me.
She thought it was beyond tragic if this was allowed to destroy the relationship between our children, their cousins, the relationship between the grandchildren and their grandmother, the relationship between me and Mum. That was why she had kept on saying that we had to talk. After Dad’s death she had asked me several times if we could meet to talk. She was of the opinion that the crisis in our family was now so serious that it could result in a permanent rift. So much communication was lost when you couldn’t see one another, listen to one another’s voices or see each other’s body language. That was why she was so keen on a physical meeting. When people don’t see one another, the distance and the likelihood of demonisation increase. Perhaps she was afraid that this might happen because she had experienced the same thing close up in the relationship between Mum, Dad and me and seen how bad it had grown. She couldn’t bear the thought that we four siblings and our children wouldn’t be in contact. We all had our good and bad sides, and it was much easier to see the whole person when we were physically together.
I didn’t reply. There was nothing I hadn’t heard before, there was nothing I could say that I hadn’t said before, and if there was, it would be in vain because she didn’t take anything on board.
The experience had been terrible for me, she wrote, and Dad’s death had probably caused certain things to resurface.
What experience? What things? She had already concluded that
there was no experience, that it must be some sort of construct in my mind. What things could resurface and hurt me after Dad’s death, if there was nothing to resurface? She kept returning to my pain, she understood that I was in pain, but if I hadn’t experienced what I claimed to have experienced, if it was all made up, what was the nature of my pain?
She wanted it verified, she wrote.
How? DNA evidence, video footage? She who worked with human rights, who dealt with stories that couldn’t be verified every day, what kind of proof did she have in mind?
Should I have called her after every therapy session, after every bad dream, every time a new memory surfaced, every time the past caught up with me, in my dreams or in the middle of the day as searing flashbacks, every time a jigsaw piece from my childhood, adolescence and adult life fell into place and made me see even more of the big picture and my part in it? Dad’s strange reactions, Mum’s strange reactions in otherwise ordinary situations whenever sexuality or sexual assaults were mentioned, whenever dangerous family secrets were mentioned. Should I have called Astrid and supplied her with details, how would she have felt about that, how would she have liked that, would that have been pleasant? After my bombshell twenty-three years ago, I chose to withdraw, to heal myself, to seek professional help. Should I have called Astrid with the physical details, pleaded my case with a sceptical sister who loved her parents and had every reason to, who had a great relationship with her parents, who wanted a happy family, should I have called her and shared my open wounds, exposed my nakedness, so painful, so shameful, so intimate, so difficult to talk about outside the psychoanalyst’s consulting room, tell her things I hadn’t told anyone other than my psychoanalyst, not even my friends, my boyfriends or my children because it hurt too much and was too physically intrusive, because I didn’t want my nearest and dearest to have such images of me in their heads?
That’s why, Astrid.
Dad denies it, she wrote, as if that was a decisive argument, as if she believed it was something he would ever confess to. She had thought about it a lot, she wrote, she hadn’t kept silent about it, but talked a lot about it, but with whom? Professionals? The Support Organisation for Victims of Incest? No, she had talked to her husband and Åsa, who shared her agenda, and with Mum whose whole life would appear wasted and shameful, if what I said was true. How might their conversation about this have gone?
Mum: Could she be telling the truth? Lots of people used to come to our house. No one ever said anything to me.
Åsa: She’d had three children when she brought it up; if she’d had any kind of physical injury, wouldn’t the doctors have noticed?
Astrid: I don’t remember her ever saying anything about it, or that she was unhappy. No one ever mentioned anything like that.
Mum: I don’t think she could be telling the truth. Dad wasn’t like that.
Åsa: No, neither do I.
Astrid: No, it doesn’t seem likely.
How could she claim that they had spoken about the subject in earnest, opened themselves up to it in all seriousness, to use the word she repeatedly used? If they had, then Mum wouldn’t have reacted the way she had at the meeting with the accountant: You’re just saying it to get attention! Astrid claimed that they had talked and talked and thought and thought, all very seriously, but if that were true, they wouldn’t have reacted as uniformly, as aggressively, as they had done on 4 January. She claimed that she had been caught between a rock and a hard place, but had she ever put as much pressure on them as she had on me? Had she ever asked Mum and Dad unpalatable and critical questions? Why were you always so anxious about Bergljot? Why did you send Bergljot to ballet classes and piano lessons, and not us? No, she couldn’t have. Or there wouldn’t have been that harmony and unity between them that my children had so often experienced in Bråteveien, that Søren and I had witnessed at the meeting before the funeral and in their behaviour at the meeting with the accountant on 4 January.
Had Astrid, who occupied a particularly influential position in relation to Mum and Dad, ever talked to them in a way that might result in a genuine conversation about the core of the conflict? No, she couldn’t have. Instead she had invited me to her fiftieth birthday party, that is to say, she had asked me to play along and put a smile on my face.
She could have influenced Mum and Dad. But she hadn’t.
At the meeting with the accountant and on several other occasions Astrid had stated how tough it was to be caught between a rock and a hard place. How terrible it was to be her. Yet now she wrote that Mum and Dad had respected her position, her piggy in the middle position, that they had even been pleased that she and I were in contact. And why wouldn’t they be? They had no reason to doubt her loyalty, although on one occasion, a hundred years ago, according to her and in response to Dad’s direct question, she had replied: I don’t know what happened, Dad. Once the initial turbulence had died down, Mum and Dad never had cause to question her allegiance because she hugged them and spoke flattering words at every opportunity and followed them up with every possible sign of caring for them and gave, but more importantly, received gifts.
So what exactly was the nature of her pain?
Was she hurting because she knew I was right?
The flaw in Festen is that it ultimately ends well for the man who confronts his father and his family. In real life it doesn’t end well for anyone who confronts their father and family. The problem with Festen is that it lets the person who confronts their family produce evidence. In real life there is no evidence. In real life no one who confronts their family has a twin who has killed herself, leaving a note proving the father’s guilt. I would like to have had a twin who killed herself and left a note proving Dad’s guilt. Festen is a great film, but it’s wrong.
I met Bo in a café to discuss some poems he had written in Ireland. While I read Bo’s Irish poems, he read Astrid’s letter. Every now and then I would glance up at him. When he reached the passage about meeting in person and demonisation, he said: That’s not true. You don’t need to meet in person to have a good relationship. And who is she scared will be demonised? Herself? But that’s not what you’re trying to do here.
No, I hope not, I said. I just want to protect my boundaries, I said, my boundaries are so fragile, I want to maintain my boundaries, I said, and if I meet with Astrid, she’ll intrude on them without me realising it until it’s too late. I don’t have the energy to tell my story again and again, repeat it ad nauseam, I don’t want to plead my case, it’s too intimate, it’s humiliating, I’m too tired. I forgot Bo’s poems in favour of my case, I pleaded my case. Once, I said, I decided to have hypnosis in order to produce the evidence they demanded, remember times and places, every single detail and present it as proof, but my psychoanalyst had said that if I underwent hypnosis it had to be for my own benefit, because when it came to convincing my family, I might as well give up now, there was no form of evidence in the whole world that they would ever accept, if I produced a video, they would say that it had been manipulated. They had said something similar at the Support Organisation for Victims of Incest, that those who confront their family usually lose their family.
Let me get back to your poems, I said.
She has put on her serious face, he said, she writes with that face. She uses ‘serious’ and ‘seriousness’ in the same sentence, to prove how seriously she’s taking it. And she probably does take it seriously, he added, but she’s tangled up in her own language of goodness and virtue, she shows how much she has practised being a good and sensible human being, a kind of officially good person.
Why would I struggle, I interrupted him, forgetting his poems in favour of my case, why would I struggle with everything that has happened as a result, with loss and pain and isolation, how would I have been able to keep up this draining, painful estrangement, if it was all in my mind, what would my motivation be, what would I stand to gain? Who makes up a story like that, for what, for what, what would my motivation be?
What it says between the lines of her letter, he said, although she doesn’t realise it herself, is that you’re capable of accusing your father of a terrible crime, accuse an innocent man of something horrific, to use her words; indirectly she’s saying that you’re a terrible human being.
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