The Helios Disaster

by Linda Bostrom Knausgaard

  ‘What should I begin doing?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re going to speak in tongues,’ said Daniel.

  There was no one in the congregation who spoke in tongues. I had heard Erik say that he was very careful about the truth, so no one in his church was allowed to fake things.

  ‘I can’t do it either, and I’m a pastor,’ he said. That’s how careful he was. ‘God is the one who should speak through people’, he had said. ‘And we don’t play with God’s words. Either they’re there, or they’re not. We can do nothing more than pray, read the texts, and hope. But we must never misrepresent ourselves. Never make things up for His sake.’

  What had he said? That I should let God speak through me?

  ‘I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘Try.’

  Daniel sounded stern. Sometimes it seemed as if he was the one who was in charge in that family. Even Erik seemed weak beside him.

  I decided to try. It burned inside me. Why? Shame? I stood there on the floor, ashamed. Then I opened my mouth and spoke.

  The words gushed forth; there was no beginning and no end to the words; they hung together and played with each other, drawing themselves out and pushing back inside my mouth. The whole church was full of them; they roared and rushed like the river, I thought, and it was as if I were viewing them from a distance and as if I could see how they played with one another. Biting one another and pushing away. Never before had I felt the way I did now, with the church full of words that came out of me, from the deepest parts of me.

  They came and painted everything around them blue. They whirled, and I dove into the waves. I saw a girl lying in a bed, asleep; her hair was spread over the pillow. I bent down to her to stroke her cheek. Then she opened her eyes. I fell through a tunnel and woke up lying on the floor. The pastor’s sons and Ulf were bent over me.

  ‘I told you she could do it,’ said Ulf.

  My life changed. Every Sunday I spoke in tongues, if that was indeed what I was doing when the words came, seeming to pour out of my mouth, the only thing that was real. The words that intertwined and sang. The services were always well-attended and the rumours had spread all the way up to the surrounding cities. School was no longer in question, Erik had said. ‘It’s important for her to rest, as much strength as it takes. You see, she gives us great parts of herself every time she speaks. She’s not like the rest of us. I can tutor her myself, in the Holy Scripture,’ Erik told Sven, but Sven said no to that. She didn’t have to be religious just because she spoke in tongues. Sven and Erik sized each other up.

  I continued to send letters to Conrad, even if I didn’t get anything in return. I described what I did all day, but I kept it to myself, the part about speaking in tongues. I wasn’t sure that it was God speaking, and I wanted to wait until I knew more. Besides, I sensed that part would worry Conrad. He probably had enough going on with his own voices. I looked up schizophrenia in the dictionary. Serious psychological illness with intellectual deterioration. I thought about the voices for a long time. About how my strange voice was healthy, even valuable, while his was sick and meant that he had to be locked up in a hospital. I thought about how our different voices might be alike. That maybe the differences weren’t as great as they had seemed at first.

  I got to go to the movies on the third Saturday after the first letter came. I took the bus into the city. I got to go by myself, as I had hoped.

  The Grand was next to the shopping centre, near the sea. I seldom thought about that. That the city was on the sea. Maybe that was because the downtown wasn’t right next to it. But you only had to walk for five minutes and you would get to the sea. There was ice there now, and the icebreaker was anchored at the big pier, waiting. The sun and all the white stung my eyes. I put my hands to my forehead to make enough shadow to look out across the ice, far, far away. I wanted to walk out on it, but I didn’t dare—what if it cracked? I had never walked on ice before, and I felt that Urban should be with me.

  I turned toward the shopping centre again, where the movie theatre was at the end. I was nervous, because maybe I would see him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had to give me a clue like this.

  I went up to the window, where an older woman was reading a paper.

  ‘One ticket to the Western,’ I said, ‘and a soda and also a bag of candy.’

  There were pre-bagged candies in a basket. I was the only one there, but that wasn’t too strange, because I was early. I didn’t know how long it would take to get from the bus stop to the movie theatre, and also I wanted to be early so I could carefully study the people who came.

  The first people to come were two boys in hats and down coats. I just observed that they were there, and then I kept my eyes on the door. It opened two more times. Two girls, older than me, and three senior citizens from the nursing home showed up. All of them were going to see the spy film, so when the doors to the theatres opened I entered the small one on my own. I took off my down coat and started eating my candy. It tasted fantastic. I sucked carefully on them one piece at a time before I started on the next. I was at a matinee. This was a new word; it was written outside the theatre. The daily matinee showing.

  I leaned back when the movie started. I wasn’t disappointed that my father hadn’t come. It almost felt nice to have the room to myself, and when the music and the moving images started I was happy. I almost said it aloud. I’m at the movies and I am happy.

  When I came home, I wrote a long letter to my father in which I recounted my experience of the whole film. I thought that maybe he forgets, so he watches the same film over and over again. I asked him to come next Saturday, so we could see it again together, and then I asked him to send a photo from when he was little. I had heard Sven talking about how his aunt had dementia and that all she remembered were small scenes from her childhood. The time she got a dollhouse for her birthday; her father had made it and decorated it with furniture and everything—and her confirmation, she could remember that. The time the pastor gave her the wafer and Jesus’s blood to drink. That she hadn’t liked the taste of the blood and wanted to spit it out, but she forced herself to swallow. Maybe Conrad too only remembers his childhood. Maybe I have to start there and then coax out the memory of my birth.

  I was already starting to get nervous for the next day, when I would stand before the congregation. I was afraid that nothing would come, no words, and that people would be disappointed. I wanted to do my best, since they were coming for me, and from far away too. Once I had seen Greta sitting in the congregation, but when the service was over she wasn’t there. I would have liked to have asked her about Conrad. I wanted nothing more than to return to the house. My armour. Was it still in the kitchen bench? Did someone else live there now? I wanted to know. I hoped that she would come next Sunday, but I never saw her again.

  Sunday came; Erik dressed me in the shift and asked me, as he usually did, not to feign anything.

  ‘If it comes, it comes. You don’t have to do this for the sake of anyone but yourself. And if you don’t want to, you don’t want to. Take it as it comes. Just follow along with the service. After the confession of faith I’ll nod at you, and then it’s your turn. We’ll do what we usually do, right?’

  Erik took me by the chin and looked into my eyes. His eyes were brown, and I didn’t look away. Never, for him.

  ‘You are a blessing. A miracle. But we must never let it weigh you down. You must never be made to bear anything more than your age allows. Do you hear what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Are you very tired afterwards?’

  I nodded.

  I woke in Erik’s arms. He carried me into the pastor’s room, where he would go to change his clothes, and he laid me down on four chairs, which stood next to each other along the wall.

  He crouched next to me, stroked my hair several times, and whispered, ‘You were good today. You wer
e really good.’

  The next day I received another letter. I shouted with joy inside when I saw it lying on the floor of the hall. I took it and forgot to hide it. I just ran down the stairs and into my room. I kicked the door closed behind me and threw myself onto the bed, ripping open the envelope. A black-and-white photograph fell out and I held it in my hand and looked at it for a long time before I started reading the letter.

  This is a picture of my mom when we swam in Lake Österjörn, seventy kilometres inland from Skellefteå. I don’t remember this day, but I remember we swam in the same spot many times, but I don’t remember this particular day. My mom is named Gerda and then there’s my siblings Göran and Märta and then there’s me. And my mom and my dad got divorced so she had to work in a meatpacking plant and didn’t make very much money, but it was enough for three children and for her.

  We had a sewing machine in the bedroom, of course, and that’s where Göran came up with, my brother, that he would have a fort with soldiers so he was just out in the sandbox getting a lot of sand to scatter over the sewing machine, it never worked again of course, but he got his fort there, he always got to keep it on the sewing machine.

  He had answered my question. So the childhood thing worked. He had sent a photograph as I had asked him to. Conrad had siblings. Göran and Märta. Where were they now?

  I looked at the photograph. My father is squinting at the sun and looking at the camera. Märta and Göran are playing with a boat.

  He was just a child, but I could recognize him. I recognized him and I recognized myself. There was something similar about our eyes and cheekbones. It was obvious. It wasn’t my imagination, or a longing. The similarity was there. I rushed into Urban’s room with the photograph. He was lying there reading the Bible, as usual.

  ‘Urban,’ I called, ‘look at this, Urban.’

  I threw myself down on his bed and held out the photograph.

  Urban slowly put his Bible down on the nightstand. He sat up and gave me a look that I didn’t bother to interpret. He looked at the photograph for a long time.

  ‘Is that Conrad?’ he asked, pointing at my father.

  ‘Yes. Yes,’ I said. ‘There’s Conrad and Märta and Göran and then that’s their mom, Gerda.’

  ‘Urban,’ I said. ‘Don’t we look alike?’

  Urban looked carefully and for a long time at Conrad as a child. Then he said, ‘Sure you do. Can you leave now?’

  I went back to my own room. Delighted at this confirmed similarity. I looked like him. He looked like me.

  I felt a rush from all of this likeness. I wanted to scream out loud. Just roar, without anyone hearing me. I had to get out. Out of the house, to my skis. I changed and ran up the stairs. Birgitta’s ‘dinner in fifteen minutes’ slid right off me. Out. Out. I didn’t bother with my jacket, I just grabbed my hat and mittens. I ran to the garage door where my skis were leaning and clamped them on. I went up the hill fast and soon I was in the tracks and there, finally, the scream could come. I skied and cried and screamed. I screamed louder than I ever had before, and it was as if my body had just been waiting to get to scream, all these weeks with the family in the village. It was a scream as mighty as a skyscraper, a wall of water, like the river in the spring, like an aircraft that tears loose and takes off. I screamed until every cell inside me vibrated. My scream was like a storm. Like pouring rain. My scream was like a spear. Like a way out.

  I shovelled down the meat and potatoes when I came home. There was still a plate for me on the table, and Birgitta looked at me curiously. Both Sven and Birgitta had started doing that ever since this voice thing in church. Sometimes I thought that it was like they were afraid of me. Familiarity had been exchanged for distance. The small talk at the dinner table seemed to have vanished unnoticed, and I think I missed it. I really wanted to be like a daughter in this house, even if everyone knew I wasn’t. After dinner I closed myself in my room again. I looked at the photograph again and again, as if it could tell me something more than what I already knew. My father’s dark hair, his way of tilting his head to the side.

  I went into the bathroom with the photograph and held it up beside my face. I arranged my face so it tilted exactly like his. Then I squinted and pulled up my mouth so my teeth were visible. The similarity was striking. How old was Conrad in the picture? Eight years old. He could have been my little brother.

  I wrote another letter that evening. I had bought a piece of stationery with the envelope. The stationery was white with the royal seal of three crowns. I had chosen between one with horses on it and the one with the three crowns, but I decided the crowns suited Conrad better. I wrote only one sentence. A question:

  What do you do all day?

  Your daughter

  I thought it was good to keep it simple, so he didn’t have too much to react to.

  I sealed the envelope. Once again I went to the kiosk with the letter inside my jacket. I bought the stamp from the woman in the kiosk and this time I had a few extra kronor for candy. I bought three diamond candies, one for me and one for Urban and one for Ulf. They were beautiful, red and green and big. They would last all night. I mailed the letter and walked home. I met Anna-Lisa and Britta on the way. They were out walking with their dog; it was a Siberian husky. I had seen it many times and I thought it was beautiful with its ice-blue eyes and black eyelashes. I wanted to have a dog, a dog just like that was what I wanted, but I had never dared to ask Birgitta or Sven. Anna-Lisa nodded and I walked over to them. Britta looked at me from under her hat and I said hi.

  ‘Anna,’ said Anna-Lisa. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come to our house sometime? Britta would like that, wouldn’t you, Britta.’

  Britta looked at me and nodded.

  ‘You can spend time in Britta’s room and take the dog out,’ said Anna-Lisa.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘We could do that.’

  I only said it to get away, but as resolute as Anna-Lisa was I would surely have to visit.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said, and I turned onto the street and then up the hill to the house.

  Damn, I thought when I thought about Britta. I wanted to think about my father instead. About how he would receive the letter the next day. I wanted to think about Conrad and the diamonds I was bringing home; instead I was thinking about what it might look like in Britta’s room. About what we would say to each other. People take up so much space in a person, I thought. They eat their way in and stay, even though you want to be alone. What does Britta’s look from under her hat do in my body? I knew that only the skis could make her disappear now that she was there, but I couldn’t go skiing tonight. Tonight we were going to have tea, all of us together. Urban wasn’t going to practice and Ulf wasn’t with the pastor’s sons. We would drink tea and have a family meeting. I had never been to one of them, but I had heard of them. Everyone would contribute to the family meeting with their thoughts and experiences. We would discuss the family’s important issues.

  When I came in, everyone was already sitting around the kitchen table. I hurried to take off my jacket and shoes. I slid down onto a chair with the bag of candy in my hand.

  ‘It’s good that you’re here,’ said Sven. ‘I have a list of speakers here, with the topics we’re going to discuss. If there’s anything in particular you want us to talk about, write it down here.’ He handed me the list, which was full of questions. I tried to think of something I could bring up, but I couldn’t come up with anything, so I handed the list back to Sven.

  ‘Item one: this is from Birgitta and me, and the heading is “silence.” We feel that we don’t talk to each other anymore. As if everyone is so deeply involved in their own thing that there’s not much of a sense of togetherness left in our family. No team spirit. We were talking about this the other day, Birgitta and me, and we realized that we miss you. What do you think, Urban?’

  Urban took a sip of his tea and raked hi
s fingers through his hair.

  ‘That time has passed, Dad,’ Urban said, and he buttered a rusk.

  ‘What do you mean by that, Urban?’ Sven asked in a friendly voice.

  ‘It’s been a long time since you were that close to us,’ Urban continued. ‘It’s been a long time since we turned to you when we had a question about something. It’s completely natural,’ he added.

  ‘Does anyone else have something to say? Birgitta?’

  ‘Well, I think it’s sad when no one says anything,’ said Birgitta. ‘Only Ulf does, and with you, Ulf, it feels like you think you have to because no one else does.’

  ‘Have to what?’ said Ulf.

  ‘Well, you’re always joking with me,’ said Birgitta. ‘About how I just sit on the couch embroidering. You know, things like that. You don’t have to do that for my sake. I’ll be okay. I’d rather that we talk to each other because we actually want to.’

  I had never heard Birgitta speak for so long and so coherently.

  I looked out the window, because suddenly I had tears in my eyes, and they were for Birgitta. Because what she longed for would never happen. Then there was something about how they became so small, Sven and Birgitta, that I didn’t like. It was unpleasant to feel bigger than them. Like Urban, Ulf and I were bigger, when it ought to be the other way around.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Mom,’ Ulf said, and when he said it Birgitta started to cry.

  ‘Let’s move on,’ said Urban, looking at the list of items. ‘Make dinner together,’ he read aloud.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sven. ‘That’s Birgitta’s idea, and I must say that I think it’s an excellent one. We’ll cook dinner together once a week. And we’ll take turns being responsible for the meal. One person will do the shopping and decide what to eat, and then we’ll all help make it. What do you say?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Urban, as if he knew that he had to go along with his parents for their sake.

  ‘Okay,’ said Ulf, looking at me.