Encircling

by Carl Frode Tiller

  It’s things like that that make a person grow, David, a smile and a few words of praise from the one you love, often that is all it takes for a man to accomplish things he thought he wasn’t capable of. Oh, I remember when we were doing up the basement, I remember how exhausted I was. I was so busy at work at that time and I was worn out to start with anyway, but in the evenings there was nothing for it but to climb into my green overalls and get stuck in. I can see it now, I can see the white, conical halogen lamp lying on the newly laid chipboard floor that gives slightly when you step on it, I see how it lights up the fine sawdust drifting down from the plasterboard I’m cutting, I see my shadow on the insulating material I’ve just put in the side wall. “Oh, Arvid,” Mum would say, when I’d been at it for a while, “isn’t it about time you took a break?” “A break?” I would say, acting as if I wasn’t quite with her. “Yes, you must be worn out, aren’t you?” “No, no, I’m absolutely fine, really!” And she would look at me and shake her head. “I don’t how you do it, I really don’t.” “How do you mean?” I would say. “How you can work the way you do.” And I would just say “Aw,” and wag my head. “You’re unbelievable,” she would say.

  Such things, such tiny drops from Berit, could give me the strength to carry on for not just one, but up to three or four hours longer than I would otherwise have done. She made me strong, David, she made me great.

  During those first years I used to ask you to give me a hand when I was working on things in the house or the garden. And you never said no, not ever. Not that you were much help, mind you. Oh, it’s funny to think about it, you were bright and did well at school, but you were certainly no handyman. You simply didn’t have it in you, and more than once I had to leave the room to have a quiet laugh at the sight of you wrestling with the tools until you were sweating and fuming. Hammer and saw did not seem happy in your hands, they seemed to want to go a different way from you, and when you did eventually finish a job I often had to redo it once you were in bed. I came up with a lot of weird explanations for why things didn’t look quite the same when you came to check on your handiwork the next day.

  “Ah, well you see, I had a bit of an accident – I knocked the paint tin off the steps,” I might say when you had been painting something. “It splattered all the way up the wall and I had no choice but to paint the whole thing again.” But sometimes you saw through my little white lies and then, oh, dear, I felt so sorry for you. You were a proud lad and you didn’t let it show, but I could tell you were upset and then of course I tried to make it up to you by treating you like my workmate and my peer. “What do you think?” I might ask. “Should we give the doorframe one coat or two?” “One, maybe.” “We-ell,” I’d say, spinning it out, giving you time to change your mind. “No, maybe we should give it two,” you’d say. “Yes, you know what, I totally agree,” I’d say. “I think it needs two!”

  And that was all it took to cheer you up. Oh, David, to have you around me as I worked, to be high up the ladder and hear the sound of your humming mingling with the buzz of insects in the flowerbed and the low drone of a distant lawnmower, to see you standing there in paint-spattered denim shorts and a baseball cap with the paint shop name on it, dipping your brush way too far into the tin of wood preservative and slapping it on willy-nilly so it ran and dripped onto the swaying flowers below, it made me so happy and, not least, it made Mum happy.

  No matter how much your mum and I had loved one another she would have had nothing to do with me if I hadn’t shown myself to be a worthy father for you, if I had not loved you, too. For reasons we will never know she would never say who your real father was, not to you, not to me, not to anyone, but she knew you needed a grown man in your life, that you needed a father, a man who could stand as a role model for you. I am so grateful that I was allowed to be that man, David, I’m glad of that and I think I can safely say that your mum was glad of it, too. There was poetry in her eyes when she saw us doing things together, when we were oiling the house, stacking firewood or going over your homework. She would stand a little way off, just watching us, her face shining. I’ll never forget one time when it was too much for her and she started to cry out of sheer joy. We had been to the birthday party of an old evangelical friend of mine on the island of Jøa, I remember, and we were in a hurry to catch the ferry home. It was summer and the day was hot, the air shimmered over the narrow, winding country road and occasionally there would come the sharp, contained crack of a stone thrown up by the wheels striking the mudguard or the undercarriage.

  “Oh, look – raspberries!” you cried, sticking one slim, sun-browned arm between my seat and Berit’s and pointing to a clump of raspberry bushes on the right-hand side of the road. “Can’t we stop and pick some?” “No, David, we haven’t got time for that,” Mum said. “Oh, just for a minute!” you pleaded. “Pleease!” “No, David, we’ve got to catch the ferry!” But I pulled in to the side and stopped anyway, of course I did. Berit turned to me in surprise and I cocked my head and gave what I hoped was a disarming smile. “Oh, I think we can make time for this,” I said, “don’t you?” A little smile spread across her face, but she quickly turned it into a pout, acting sulky. “It’s funny how we never seem to have the time when I want to do something,” she said with a little toss of her head. I laid my arm along the back of the seat and half turned, looked at you and winked. “Hark at her,” I said, “now she’s gone in the huff because we left the party before the ice cream.” “Humph!” Mum snorted. “Isn’t that right?” I said, smiling slyly at you. “Yep,” you said and laughed. Mum turned to you, flashed you a dirty look, then faced front again and shook her head. “It’s like I’m always saying, you gang up on me, you two. I’m sure you’d rather be rid of me altogether.” I looked at you, frowned slightly and waited a moment. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I think we’d be in a right old mess without Mum. Eh, David, what do you think?” “Yep,” you said, grinning. And Berit wiped the pretend pout from her face, turned to you and stroked your cheek. “And I’d be in a right old mess without you two!” she said, and then she turned to me, leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Yuck!” you said and then you opened the car door and fled. Mum and I had a little laugh, we stayed where we were and watched you wading through the dense and slightly dusty clump of raspberry bushes on the roadside.

  “I’m so happy,” she said suddenly and when I turned I saw tears rolling down her cheeks. That was the moment when she cried out of sheer joy, David. She soon pulled herself together again, shook her head and laughed at herself as she wiped away the tears. “Oh, dear, I’m so silly,” she said, but I didn’t think it was at all silly. She had taken so many knocks in her life that it was hard for her to believe things could be going as well for her as they were now. That was why she was crying and it made her seem genuine and beautiful, not silly.

  Your mum was the least self-pitying person I’ve ever known, she didn’t like to talk about the traumatic things that had happened to her, but sometimes, even so, she did, usually when we were lying head to toe in bed at night and she didn’t have to meet my eye. With an ache in her voice she would tell me what it had been like to lose her mother at the age of six, and about growing up alone with your grandfather, Erik. He did the best he could, I’m sure, but he was a drinker, and when Berit’s mother was knocked down and killed by a bus and Erik lost the one person who had been able to keep him in check, he took to the bottle more and more and became less and less able to be a father to her. According to your mum he really wasn’t all that bad when he was drunk. Both then and when he had a bottle tucked away or a party to look forward to he was usually as good as gold, kind and generous. It was when he was sober, with no prospect of getting drunk, that Mum had to watch out, because at such times he was tense and unpredictable and could fly into a terrible rage at the drop of a hat. He never hit her, but he ranted and raved and told her she was useless and that he didn’t see how she was ever going to get by in life. If she did something she wasn’t
supposed to do he would simply stare and stare at her for as much as a minute and once, when she was unlucky enough to drop a dish of boiled cod on the floor, he leaped to his feet and started jumping up and down and stamping the cod into the rug. It was farcical and if it hadn’t been for the fact that your mum was only six years old and scared stiff it would have been hilarious. In fact it would have made excellent material for the Otterøya Christmas Show. Immediately after such incidents he would be devastated, full of remorse, all apologies, didn’t know how to make it up to her, and this was of course a redeeming and sympathetic feature. The stupid thing was that he was always so upset and guilt-ridden that he would end up making promises he couldn’t keep. He was going to buy Mum a pony as soon as he got paid, or get her a bike at least. He might even take her to Oslo soon to see the palace and say hello to the king. So it went on and all through her childhood Mum had to cope with disappointment after disappointment, each one greater than the one before. Hers was a tough childhood, David.

  When Mum left school she went to live in Namsos and started training to be a nurse, but within six months she was pregnant with you and had to move back to Otterøya and Erik. There were no benefit schemes for single mothers in those days and even though Erik straightened himself out and cut down on his drinking once there was a baby in the house, he didn’t get his old job with the roadworks department back. He did a bit of odd-jobbing in the town and helped out on his neighbour’s shrimp boat during the season when there was a lot to do, but his income was poor and unstable and even though your mum also did occasional work during those first years it was hard to make ends meet.

  The hardest part, though, was all the gossip, the jeers and the sneers that she had to put up with. Single mothers were fair game back then and she had to shake her head and laugh when she told me about the time when she got work as a cleaner for three of the posher families in town. She arranged for one of her girl friends to look after you for a few hours every day and hitched a lift on the milk van when the milkman had finished his rounds and was heading back to the dairy. It went really well for a while, because Mum’s rates were reasonable, she was conscientious and hard-working, and – not least – trustworthy. These posh people used to leave earrings and small amounts of money lying about to test her, but she was honest, she never stole anything and all three families let her know that they were more than satisfied with her. One man, the manager of one of the town sawmills, even gave her a raise without her having to ask for it – not what one might have expected, since he was known for being tight-fisted where his employees were concerned. But when he and the others learned that Mum was an unmarried mother it didn’t matter how hard-working and honest she was, she was fired on the spot; these grand ladies didn’t want her sort in the house, who knew what temptations she might lay in their husbands’ way? Thirty-five years ago that was, David, only thirty-five years. So times do change, and they change fast.

  Right up until you moved out Erik had spells when he drank heavily and was difficult to live with. But according to Mum he was still a lamb compared to the way he had been before you were born, and fortunately living with him didn’t seem to have done you any harm. You had many good memories of your early childhood and you laughed and were proud when you told people how “barmy” your grandfather was. You didn’t know that Erik had been drunk that time when he drove the car straight through the garage door or when he played the accordion for Mum and all the guests at her birthday party clad only in his underpants, and you never noticed how your mum always seemed to have something to do in the kitchen when we had visitors and you started going on about him. You saw everything with the eyes of a child and as far as you were concerned Erik was simply a jolly buffoon.

  As for me, I got on okay with Erik, but no more than that. It didn’t matter how hard I tried I could never really like the man who had hurt Mum so much, and his behaviour when he came to visit us could be very annoying. He had worked as a lumberjack, a removal man and a navvy – in other words, he was a labourer and he looked exactly as you would expect a labourer to look: big, burly and with a way of talking and acting that spoke of a strange innate blend of arrogance and inferiority complex. He was confident and assertive when it came to anything practical. If there was some job to be done in the house or garden that I wasn’t sure about, or needed help with, he would always lend a hand, and since there was no doubt that his skills in this area were far superior to mine his manner when he gave me tips and advice was more modest than condescending. But with things which he didn’t know much about the exact opposite was the case. It was as if he were trying to compensate for his own insecurity and inadequacy by boasting and acting as if he knew it all. When he was running out of arguments and losing a discussion, for instance, he would either grin, shake his head hopelessly and act as if whatever I was saying was so ludicrous that there was no point in continuing the discussion, or he would credit me with a whole range of ridiculous, naive views, against which he would then deliver a fierce tirade, obviously in the hope of making himself and everyone else believe that he was on the offensive. Everyone there could see right through him, of course, even you, young though you were. But so good was he at fooling himself that he was completely impervious to this, and when I eventually got fed up and couldn’t be bothered arguing the toss any longer, he would act as if he had put me soundly in my place. “Oh, aye, I maybe didn’t have as much schooling as you, but that don’t mean I’m stupid!” he would say.

  And very often this was exactly what he was trying to convey when he told his stories. He was a brilliant storyteller, I give him that. If I had had even a fraction of his gifts in that area I would have had the church packed to the rafters every single Sunday, that’s how good he was. But here again, as in discussions, he was hellbent on showing that he wasn’t just anybody – even if he was only an ordinary working man from Otterøya, as he was wont to style himself. He put himself into just about every story he told, even those in which he could not possibly have had any part. He didn’t always have the lead role, I grant you, but he always acquitted himself equally well, remarkably often at the expense of those whom he called “office rats”, an epithet which covered everyone who did not do hard, physical labour. Such people lived sheltered lives, they were weak, cowardly and impractical, and in story after story Erik had to clear up the mess they made, help them or quite simply tell them to bugger off so that he, the man with the necessary muscle, courage or quick-wittedness, could take matters in hand and sort them out. I can almost hear his coarse laugh after he had told one of these yarns, almost hear that booming voice as he delivered his closing line: “That took the wind out of the chairman’s sails, I can tell you!”

  Naturally the tacit implication was that I too was an office rat and naturally this was one of the reasons why I found him so annoying. But at any large gathering I could always tell that I was not alone in finding him tiresome. It had something to do with the powerful urge he had to constantly put himself in the spotlight; it was quite wearing to have to sit there, affecting to be speechless with admiration at all that he had experienced, all the things he had done in his life. Although it was worst for your mum, of course. It could be downright painful for her to have to listen to this man who had ruined her childhood boasting about himself all the time. Particularly painful, obviously, when he started angling to be absolved of all the things he had done to her, as he often did, oh yes, just about every time he visited us. I can see us sitting at the round table in the living room, I see the way Erik’s huge frame fills the chair, see how he twirls his black moustache. “How about that time when we pretended we were stranded on a desert island, Berit,” he said on one such occasion. “On a desert island?” Mum said. “You must remember that.” “No,” Mum said. “That time we camped out on the sheep island,” he said. He eyed her in some surprise. “When we played that we’d been shipwrecked and washed up on that beach, don’t you remember?” “No, I don’t remember,” Mum said. “And how we were go
ing to live off the fish we caught and the berries we picked?” “No, I don’t remember any of that.”

  She did remember, though, of course she did. She remembered that and all the other things Erik used to remind her about, but she refused to go along with painting a rosy picture of her childhood, as she put it. Because she knew that was what Erik wanted her to do. Erik knew the sort of father he had been and he deeply and sincerely regretted that. These attempts of his to get your mum to talk about the good times which, in spite of everything, they had had together, were his way of gaining a little peace of mind. There were times when it hurt to look at them, it was such a touchy subject, this, for both of them and more than once I told Mum that she would have to try her best to forgive him, that it would make life easier for both of them if she did. But it was hard for her and I didn’t want to put too much pressure on her, either; demanding of a victim that they forgive their persecutor can feel like another act of abuse, it may seem as though what he or she went through is being belittled, taken lightly, and that was the last thing I wanted.