Memory of Love (9781101603024)

by Olsson, Linda

  Mother is reading a book. She sits with her legs crossed and her wide skirt spreading over the seat, her foot with the red high-heeled shoe rhythmically kicking at the air. Marianne doesn’t want to look but she can’t help herself. She wants the foot to be still. She wants everything to be still. And she wants everything to disappear. And that is what seems to happen. Mother seems to withdraw, as do the rest of her surroundings, until she is absolutely alone in a white space where this thing inside her is the centre. She would like to ask her mother to help her, but it’s impossible to speak while trying to hold back what is rising inside her. In fact she can’t even shift the slightest on the seat. She looks at Mother, but she doesn’t look up, doesn’t seem to notice. It is filling her whole body now, this awful thing inside.

  Then she can’t hold back any longer. Violently it erupts, sprays over her dress and over the doll’s dress too. She begins to cry, sobbing as her mouth fills with the foul vomit. She gags and it shoots up into her nose too. It hurts. Mother springs from her seat, brushing stains from her skirt. She is distant, still so very small. Mother looks around, as if she is hoping for help from somewhere. And it is forthcoming. A woman stops and they both bend down over her, but as another burst of vomit erupts from her mouth the woman retreats. They both take a few steps back. They will never be able to help her. Nobody can. She sobs and she weeps, she swallows burning bile that returns to her mouth instantly, only to trigger more burning retches. More vomit.

  It is not until her stomach is empty and the retches find nothing more to expel, that they go to the bathroom to try to get her cleaned up. The smell of vomit follows them everywhere.

  ‘Let’s hope that’s it, Marianne,’ Mother says, trying to smile as she straightens Marianne’s wet and wrinkled skirt. It feels cold against her skin. She is very cold now and her teeth chatter.

  ‘We have a long journey ahead, Marianne. Perhaps you can sleep a little now. Let’s go back and see if we can find a good seat.’ Mother rises to wash her hands.

  Marianne thinks about the long journey and she begins to cry again.

  There is nothing to do about it. She will have to make this trip. Somehow, it must be possible. And somehow, she will have to learn to live over there.

  They leave the bathroom, and it is only later, after they have disembarked in Stockholm, that she realises her doll has been left behind in the toilet. She doesn’t tell her mother.

  And now she doesn’t cry.

  12.

  I opened my eyes and noticed immediately that Ika was no longer in the hammock. It swung empty in the light wind and I felt a moment’s rush of panic. Where had he gone? Then I heard the music. He was inside, playing the piano. I listened for a moment and the flowing sound felt comforting. He wasn’t going to run away. Not today. I had no way of knowing what he was thinking, but I knew that the only way for me to come to understand him a little was to give him time. Give us both time.

  When I thought about my own memory of leaving home, the child’s natural egocentricity struck me. I remembered only myself. My own despair. My utter loneliness, my grief. The overwhelming sense of hopelessness. And my total acceptance. But my mother was outside, distant.

  Why had she suddenly decided to bring me into her life? I knew she was my mother of course. But the word mother had no meaning. I had no memory of missing her, longing for her. I had only seen her during brief visits at long intervals. She had never been a part of my life, nor had I been a part of hers. There was so little I knew. My grandfather rarely talked about my mother. When he did, it was just to give me little snippets of her present life, never anything about who she was. He would tell me she would be coming to visit the following week. That she had landed herself a new film role. That we should be proud of my beautiful mother. But it always felt so distant. As if she lived in another world that had no relevance to us or our lives in the village.

  Instinctively I knew that it had been important to her, though. Claiming me and taking me with her to Stockholm seemed to be essential for her. And the look she gave Grandfather across the table as she took my hand was one of triumph. Much, much later, when I revisited my grandfather’s village on one of the islands in the Åland archipelago, I stumbled across information that gave me some clues to Mother’s need to prove herself as a mother. My mother. But by then it had no relevance. Or perhaps it did, in a way. Perhaps it was given to me to help me to find a place for my mother in my life’s story.

  Back then, as a miserable seasick six-year-old, I resigned myself to my new life, and I closed the door to what had been my life until then. I saw my grandfather only twice after that, and somehow his world had already slipped out of my grasp by then. Also, by then it was taking all my effort just to survive in my new environment. In my mother’s world. I simply could not allow myself to hold on to the memories.

  I wondered how this big step felt for Ika. I wanted him to understand that the door to his other world would remain open. That he was free to live in both worlds, on his own terms.

  Besides, I had to accept that this was a temporary arrangement. I had no guarantee that I would be allowed to keep him with me. One day at a time, I thought. One day at a time.

  The music stopped and I stood and cleared the table. It was time for our first proper walk together.

  It was the day we started the project. The first day.

  ‘I think you should make a big one. On the beach.’ Ika was standing on the deck with his eyes on the sea.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘A big one like the ones you make inside.’

  ‘An artwork?’

  He nodded, but didn’t turn.

  ‘A really big one. So big you can only see it from above.’

  What did he mean?

  ‘But if I make it that big I can’t see it while I am working on it,’ I said. ‘I won’t know what I’m doing. Even with the ones I make here it’s sometimes hard to see the whole thing and get the proportions right.’

  ‘I can see it for you,’ he said.

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, and I wasn’t sure how to respond.

  ‘Okay,’ I said after a moment’s silence. ‘I’ll try. If you help me.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘We’ll need a lot of material,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  And that was how we started.

  I didn’t quite understand what we were setting out to do, but the idea seemed to grow on me. We began to collect material and intuitively we picked more substantial things. Rocks that were so heavy I could only carry one at a time. Large pieces of driftwood. Feathers that we tied together into long ribbons. We created several stashes along the beach for the heavy material while we kept searching for the right location.

  A couple of weeks later Ika asked me to follow him down to the beach. We walked further than we usually did, to a place where a small river forked before it reached the sea. The large stretch of sand between the two arms of the river was packed hard, and the surface was smooth.

  ‘Here,’ he said, his eyes on the space. I could see what he meant. It was perfect. Well out of reach of the high tide. It wouldn’t be permanent of course, but here it would last a long time.

  ‘Perfect,’ I said. And Ika gave me one of his rare half-smiles, fleeting and without eye contact. It was almost as if he were mocking me. I had come to treasure those taunting little smiles, so quick that they were easy to miss.

  ‘Let’s mark it,’ I said. There were some rocks further up the beach and I walked there and collected one. I placed it on one side of the flat surface of the sand. Ika shook his head and pointed a little further to the side.

  ‘Here,’ he said. I diligently moved the rock. We placed another three large rocks, one at each corner of the sandy canvas, and each time Ika directed me to the exact spot. When we were done he stood watching the space with his eyes screwed up. I stood beside him taking in the view too. And I was filled with a sense of excitement. Slowly
, ideas began to take shape, and I could almost imagine what we were going to create.

  ‘It will be wonderful,’ I said, trying to control my urge to hug him.

  Ika nodded.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Mother says as she opens the door to the room. Marianne instinctively knows some response is required but she is so tired. So very tired.

  ‘It is your own room, Marianne,’ Mother says. But she already has a room in Grandfather’s house, doesn’t she? She doesn’t want this big room with its big bed and strange smell. But she doesn’t want to cry, so she says nothing.

  They have arrived in a taxi. There are houses everywhere – big houses so high you can’t see the sky. Lots of cars, and lots of people. They live in a big house in Karlavägen. Number 63, on the fourth floor. They haven’t walked up the stairs but have taken the elevator. She will have to remember all these things. But right now she is so tired.

  When she has had a bath and changed her clothes, Mother takes her by the hand and leads her around the apartment. It is very big and the ceiling is very high. She doesn’t want to be here alone, ever. When they stop by the window in the living room she can see cars moving along the street far below. She feels a pang in her stomach again.

  ‘This is our TV, Marianne,’ Mother says, and points to a box on a table in the corner of the small room beyond the living room. ‘You will enjoy this.’ Marianne doesn’t understand what she means but she asks no questions.

  Just then there are steps in the hallway and a man appears in the doorway.

  He is old. He looks older than Grandfather, though he is very nicely dressed. He has no hair and the light from the chandelier reflects on the pale skin at the top of his head.

  ‘Aha, this must be Marianne,’ he says, looking down on her with his arms folded.

  ‘Marianne, this is Hans,’ her mother says. She pauses a little as if unsure how to continue. Then she says: ‘My husband.’

  Hans stretches out his hand but he doesn’t move any closer. She has to walk up and take it. It is such a small hand, not at all like Grandfather’s. It is soft and smooth and it holds her hand in a tight grip for too long. Because she doesn’t know where to turn her gaze she stares at their joined hands. The nails on Hans’s hand are long and they shine in the light from the lamp. It looks like a woman’s hand, she thinks. She can smell his perfume. And when he finally bends forwards and opens his mouth she catches another strong, sweet smell. She would like to turn away but she can’t do that. Her stomach tightens and she holds her breath.

  ‘Let’s hope we’ll be very happy together,’ he says. ‘Anneli has been waiting for this for such a long time.’ He looks at Mother and he’s not smiling. Nor is Mother.

  Later they have dinner in the kitchen.

  ‘This calls for champagne!’ Hans says, and opens a large bottle. The cork pops with a bang and hits the ceiling, where it leaves a small mark. Hans laughs.

  They have strange food that she has never had before. Prawn cocktail, Hans says. Pale pink things that smell like fish, in a strange pink sauce. Her stomach knots and she holds back an urge to retch. She holds her fork and pokes around in the glass bowl, but she doesn’t eat anything. Hans and Mother don’t seem to notice. Now they smile and smile. And they drink from high delicate glasses – Hans more than Mother.

  Mother has poured her an identical glass from another bottle. When she tries to balance the glass and take a sip, it seems to go straight up into her nose. She struggles to swallow and her eyes fill with tears. But they don’t notice this either. Hans talks and Mother listens. She smiles and nods and her fingers play with a strand of hair. She looks very beautiful in the soft light.

  ‘God, you’re beautiful, Anneli,’ says Hans and reaches for Mother’s hand across the table. Mother smiles and lets him caress her hand where it lies flat on the table.

  ‘Your looks. My talent and my contacts. Unbeatable. We’ll go far,’ Hans says. ‘The world is at our feet!’

  Then he turns to Marianne.

  ‘Your mother will be world-famous, Marianne! Let’s drink to that! Cheers!’ And they raise their glasses, all three of them.

  Later, Mother sits on Marianne’s bed and strokes her hair.

  ‘Sleep well, Marianne. I know it is all new and very different. But you will grow to like it. Life here in the city is so exciting. So much to do, so much to see.’

  She looks at Mother’s face. It feels as if it is burning behind her eyelids, but she doesn’t know what to do, what to say. So she lies still and silent, on her back with her hands underneath the cold sheet. Mother runs her hand over the edge of the blanket but she doesn’t bend down. Perhaps she doesn’t know what to do either. They stay like this, in silence, for a long time.

  ‘I have wanted this for so long, Marianne,’ Mother says finally. ‘It was just never possible before. Not till I met Hans.’ Mother doesn’t look at her, but towards the window. Somehow it feels as if Mother is talking to herself. Then she turns her head and looks down at Marianne. ‘Hans is kind. You will come to love him.’ She nods slowly, as if to make the words penetrate. Whether into Marianne or herself is not so easy to know.

  ‘We will be like a family, Marianne.’

  She says ‘like’ a family.

  13.

  It is strange how quickly we fall into routines. Begin to take things for granted. After a couple of weeks it was as if we had always lived together, Ika and I. And always would.

  We organised a room of sorts for him. I cleared out the things I had stored in one of the wardrobes in the bedroom, and then we spent a day removing the back wall to make it open into the lounge. It was a deep space, intended to contain two double wardrobes opening from opposite sides, I think. Closing the door to my bedroom and opening it on the lounge side, it became like a little cave, just wide enough for a narrow bed and a chair. Before furnishing it, I asked Ika what colours he would like his room to be. He didn’t reply straight away and I wasn’t sure if he had understood.

  ‘Come,’ I said, and nodded for him to follow me into the kitchen. From my piles of things on the bookshelf along the wall in the dining area I pulled out a colour chart I had picked up from the paint shop in town several months earlier. We sat down at the table and I pushed the chart over to him. He didn’t seem excited, but then I had never really seen him excited. I was slowly trying to learn the subtle signs of emotion that he did demonstrate. Now, there were none that I could discern. He turned the pages slowly, seemingly without much interest.

  Then, ‘This,’ he said suddenly, and pushed the leaflet back across the table.

  He had picked a soft pale green, like the underside of olive leaves. For some reason his choice surprised me and sent a wave of emotion through my body.

  ‘That is a lovely colour, Ika,’ I said. ‘It will make your room very beautiful.’

  Next day after school we went to the paint shop and had the paint mixed for us. We also bought a bedspread a darker shade of green and a small striped mat. Ika insisted on holding the bags on his lap all the way back.

  Painted and furnished, the small sleeping space looked very inviting. We hung a white sheet on a wire across the opening and I made a tieback from braided linen strips and showed Ika how he could use it to hold the curtain open.

  He stood quietly looking at the result.

  ‘Happy?’ I asked.

  He didn’t respond. After a little while he went inside and pulled the curtain closed behind him. I heard him lie down and I went around to my bedroom where I tapped on the closed door of the former wardrobe. I waited. Eventually there was a soft tapping in response.

  I smiled and went over to my bed.

  Marianne’s room is an alien world where she lives, but which never quite feels like her own. As time passes, everything becomes familiar in a way, but she never stops to consciously take in every detail. The smells. How the parquet feels under her bare feet. How the wide marble ledge along the window feels as she lets her hands run over it – smooth and c
old at the same time. It never feels right to lie down on the pink bedspread. Not even to sit on it. When it has been folded back at night she slides into the bed that still feels foreign to her. She gets no comfort from it, no warmth. It is as if her body wants nothing to do with any of these things. It keeps holding back, and it feels as if she cannot breathe properly here. At Grandfather’s she had never been conscious of the look or feel of anything in particular. She had been one with all that surrounded her there. But that world no longer exists. All she has now is this. Nothing here belongs to her, and she doesn’t belong here.

  Here in this quiet world there is no time. There is no next day. Just an endless now. She lives here now. But it still happens that she wakes up and for a second she has no idea where she is. Then a faint hope rises from deep inside her. And before she is able to stop it, she has a notion of something else. A memory of another place, another time. But this happens more and more seldom.

  She slowly learns how to find her way around – in the apartment and in the nearby surroundings. Sundays they often walk to Djurgården: Mother, Hans and Marianne. The best days are the rainy ones, because then they might stop and visit the large museum that looks like a fairytale palace. There is one display in there that she likes the best. It has windows and you can look through them into different rooms, all with tables set for dinner. You can stand and watch with your head close to the glass and imagine the people who will eat there. The best room has a large beautiful table covered with a white tablecloth, and with candlesticks and vases with flowers. In the centre of the table there is a swan, its wings slightly opened, as if it has just landed. If she stands there quietly with her forehead resting against the glass she can sometimes imagine how happy they will be, the people who will soon sit down on the chairs and open the folded napkins. How they will talk and laugh while they eat their nice dinner.

  They rarely have guests at home. Most evenings, Marianne has her dinner alone at the kitchen table, because Hans and Mother eat out, in a restaurant.