Knots

by Gunnhild Øyehaug

  And pees.

  * * *

  But she doesn’t flush when she’s finished. That would make too much noise. Instead she puts in extra toilet paper, tears the sheets ever so carefully from the roll. Now she has to creep out into the kitchen to get a jam jar, which she can use to catch the wasp, like she’s seen her dad do when he doesn’t want to kill them; he puts the jam jar over them and then slips a thin piece of paper between the windowpane and the jar opening, lifts the jar slowly away from the window and then holds it out of the open window and pulls away the paper. Then the wasp flies out and you have to close the window quickly before it decides to turn around and fly back in. She pulls up her underwear, pushes open the door, which makes a noise, but not enough for anyone to hear it, she reckons; she steals out into the hall, stands there, listens. No one comes out. By now the boy from next door has probably emerged from his hiding place and said hello, in that nice way that he does.

  * * *

  The kitchen door is shut, completely, and it’s impossible to open the kitchen door without making a racket. The doors in this house are so old! It annoys her immensely that they don’t have new, silent doors, or that no one has at least oiled the hinges so that the old doors they do have creak less. She studies the two doors, the living room door and the kitchen door. She’s in a risky midfield position. Either could open at any time. People could come out, get her to come in. And when she opens the kitchen door with the inevitable noise that that entails, one of her parents might already have gone into the kitchen from the living room and they’ll be standing there and will force her to go into the living room and sit down at the piano. She tiptoes over to listen at the living room door, and after a while, she’s heard all three voices, so can establish that none of them have gone into the kitchen without her noticing. She tiptoes back to the kitchen door. Puts her hand on the handle and then realizes that she still has another door to go, the cupboard door, and that if the kitchen door hasn’t already given her away, then the cupboard door certainly will, because it makes a really distinctive sound when it opens. She’s lost the battle. And by now her cousin will have smiled her lovely smile and said hello back. Ragnhild opens the door, goes into the kitchen, opens the cupboard door, which makes its distinctive sound; she takes out a medium-sized jam jar, closes the cupboard door, walks out of the kitchen, closes the kitchen door, and runs up the stairs.

  Thunders up.

  * * *

  She opens the door to her room a crack, nervous that the wasp might now be banging into the doorframe, and that it might fly straight into her face and sting her. But nothing happens. She opens it a little wider, systematically scans the ceiling, the walls, the window; she can’t see the wasp anywhere. Nor can she hear any buzzing. She boldly steps into the room, clutching the jam jar to her chest; she ventures farther in, slowly; it’s not there. She sits down on the bed, puts the jam jar on the windowsill, and then she sees her cousin and the boy from next door, who is now sitting beside her on the grass and it looks like they’re chatting, it looks like they’re having a nice time, her eyes get hot, she hates her cousin, she hates the doors in her house, she hates the heat, she hates everything.

  She hates the whole world.

  There’s a knock on the door.

  NO, she says.

  * * *

  But here she is: the ridged fabric against her thighs because her dress has slid up. The pedals are freezing cold under her bare feet, and the lines of music seem endless. She looks at the first note and can’t think where it is on the piano.

  * * *

  She thinks her dad understands her confusion, she thinks he’s looking at her back, realizes that she has two hands that have no idea where to begin, he hums the first note, just like that, as though he just thought of a note and had to hum it. She thinks, it’s an F. F is there. F. F

  * * *

  She pulls her hands away from the keys, scratches her forehead, leans in toward the music again to show her audience that she has to think about it, ponder, before she can start, that there’s a lot to be considered before you can even open with an F. Hmm, she says. F.

  * * *

  The piano is a closed window. She scratches her forehead. F. F, F, F

  * * *

  She gives it a try. But she can hear straightaway that it wasn’t an F. Her dad hums an F again, and now it’s no longer just a coincidence, now it’s quite obvious that that’s the note the whole piece starts with and that the pianist is having problems finding it on the piano. The pianist concentrates on the keys. Has seen a key that might possibly be the right one. The difficulty now is to play it so quietly that the pianist, and not the audience, can hear whether or not it’s the right one. So the pianist has to conceal her hand movements, and the key, so they can’t see it being pressed down. The pianist has to move forward on the piano stool, accept that her dress is pulled even farther up her slightly too fat thighs, that is to say, pull it down with her left hand, then press her elbows in to her sides, position her right hand flat over the keys, lean forward so that her back becomes a screen, and then press, as gently as possible, the key that might prove to be F.

  * * *

  A miracle: it is F.

  * * *

  So here she is: this is one of Grandpa’s favorite pieces, which is basically why she’s been practicing it, and when no one is listening, when the house is empty, when all the windows are closed, she plays it well, she can play it by heart, she never wonders where to start, she can play the whole thing with her eyes shut. Can look out into the garden while she’s playing, watch the magpies land on the pear tree, then fly off again. But now everything’s clouded, there’s a tremor in her arm, and she is not playing well, she feels quite distinctly like a fat, ugly child who doesn’t like the sun, and who can’t play the piano, who says no and starts over and over again, who hacks her way through Grandpa’s favorite piece, and is dreading the final chord, which she knows she can’t do and she’s almost guaranteed to start crying, but she refuses to do that, she has to get it right, and now there’s only half a line left, and here comes the chord, and it’s wrong, it’s totally wrong, she has to do it again, she takes a long time to check that her fingers are in the right place, on the right keys, before pressing down.

  * * *

  The applause from only three pairs of hands sounds so strange, she turns toward them and smiles gingerly, she’s got a lump in her throat, but she swallows it down, smiles with tight lips. “Come here!” Grandpa says, and she gets up from the piano stool and goes over to Grandpa, who has a really proud look on his face, she doesn’t understand, he looks so proud, he’s smiling, he gives her a hug, she can smell his aftershave, then he holds her firmly by the upper arms and looks into her eyes, still smiling, and she sees that he has tears in his eyes and one is rolling down his cheek, and she’s embarrassed, she doesn’t know what to do. She laughs a little, and parrots: “Well, it’s the University of Oslo concert hall for you next,” and they all laugh, and Grandpa hugs her again.

  * * *

  Then she’s free to go. She goes to her room, but doesn’t thunder up the stairs. She’s bewildered because she’s not angry, but actually quite happy. She looks out of the window. Her cousin is playing badminton with the boy from next door. Her cousin is not very good at badminton, but the boy from next door seems to like that. He laughs, runs after her, throws the cock in her hair, grabs her round the waist, swings her back and forth. Ragnhild wonders what he would say if he found out that she is actually very good at badminton, much better than her cousin. She lies down flat on the bed. In a while she’ll go down and ask her dad if he wants to play badminton. They won’t play in the garden, but rather out on the road below her cousin’s house. The boy from next door will see that she can return all the shots that are too far forward and the ones that fly straight into her face. He’ll be surprised, he’ll stop and stand there watching her and her dad, watch them playing, he’ll see that she’s awesomely good. He’ll see that she
’s the best. He’ll think: I had no idea … She’s looking forward to it. She almost can’t wait.

  A Renowned Engineer

  Norwegian Essay

  When Rimbaud was a little boy, he used to sit at the kitchen table at home in Charleville. He would sit on his chair without moving, his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands, his eyes blank, and stare out of the window. His feet dangling. When he got older, he wrote some of the most disputed poems in world literature, was the lover of someone called Verlaine, was shot in the foot by Verlaine (who was also a poet and used his time in prison after the shooting incident to write some of his finest poems), and traveled to Africa, where he worked as a merchant and an arms dealer for several years. Some say that he worked as a ringmaster in a Stockholm circus. (Others say that he only sold tickets.) Some think he was a slave trader, but I don’t believe so. No evidence has been found. He also lived with an Abyssinian woman, but had no children. Nor did he write. He stopped doing that in 1873, after he had written one of the most disputed poems in world literature. He was only nineteen at the time. When anyone in Africa asked him about his writing, he replied disinterestedly: Oh, that. Then said nothing more.

  * * *

  After many years in Africa, where he traveled a lot, his body was so worn-out that he fell ill; one of his knees swelled up and was sore. There has been much speculation about what kind of pain it was, and what caused it; some people think it was caused by syphilis, others believe he fell off a horse while hunting with the Righas brothers. It has also been said that after he felt that first intense pain in his knee, he rode off furiously on horseback to distance himself from it, but the horse bolted and threw him off in such a way that he hit his sore knee on a tree.

  * * *

  Whatever the case, he wrote home to his mother and asked her to send him a long, warm sock that would reach over the knee. The long, warm sock arrived, but didn’t help. He had to go back to France. Twelve men carried him out of Africa and onto a ship.

  * * *

  The doctor in Marseille could do nothing but amputate. Rimbaud was given a pair of crutches and hoped to return to Africa. But first he wanted to get married. He wanted to marry a fine French girl from a good family; he simply did not understand that he himself, a broken and fevered amputee with very little money, would perhaps not be the first choice for a fine girl from a good family. She might want other things first.

  * * *

  Another dream that Rimbaud had before he died soon afterward, as a result of an infection in his amputated leg, or fever, or cancer, was that, once he was married, he would have a child, a son, who would become a renowned engineer, a rich man, who would work in the field of science, a man afraid of nothing, and who would get on in the world and do well in life.

  The Girl Holding My Hand

  She sees: A park. A pond in the middle of the park. Children running around the pond, playing with small boats on the water. It’s late autumn, cold; on the yellowy-brown gravel, adults are sitting in their coats and scarves, with red noses, keeping an eye on what the children are doing. She’s drawn by it. She wants to sit on one of the chairs and follow what the children are doing. Then she’ll tell me that if she had been the same age as them, or that’s to say, as small as them, she would be a child sitting on a chair watching the children. She’s afraid. She’s afraid of all kinds of things. She would be scared of losing control of the boat. Of bumping into one of the other children’s boats. She would be scared of running into one of the other children. And scared of the adults sitting watching. She would be scared that her mom and dad, who were sitting in the chairs in their coats and scarves, would be ashamed of their hopeless child who couldn’t control her little boat and kept colliding with the other children. I can see that she’s thought about all this, because her eyes are big and sad, and then she turns and looks at the children again. She’s hankering. She’s longing to sit in the chair and ache. She says something. Let’s listen to what she says: “Can’t we sit down for a while?” she says. I nod. We find two green chairs and sit down. I look at her and think, almost in wonder, that this is the girl, this is the girl who straddled me and rode me hard on the jangling hotel bed less than an hour ago. That her fair hair had swayed back and forth above me. That she had had no one to bump into then, no boats to lose control of, no parents who thought that their child was hopeless at this, that she should let go of her inhibitions and not be so uptight. I am gripped by love, want to shake her, tell her that she’s the most fantastic and uptight and uninhibited person alive. But I know that if I lean over and whisper that in her ear, and that I want to be with her for the rest of my life, that it’s very likely that we’ll do just that, stay together for the rest of our lives, I know that she won’t say anything, her eyes will slip away, but she’ll take my hand and squeeze it. That’s all. Because she’s not in love with me. I know that. I know she’s in love with someone else in this town. Obsessed. Someone she tries not to talk about. Someone she tries not to look for on every street corner, in every gallery we go to. Someone we were supposed to meet here by the pond two days ago, but who didn’t show up, someone she thinks she sees everywhere—I can feel it in the hand that’s holding hers, a faint start, she thinks she sees: a tall guy, with broad shoulders, a thin dark line. An ex. She looks at me: “Shall we go and get something warm to drink? I’m cold,” she says. She’s done with longing. Or rather: she wants to long a little more, as we leave the pond and she thinks that it’s perhaps the last time that we’ll pass this place. We stand up, and she takes my hand. Always takes my hand. I can see that she’s caught up in something I should not ask about. If I ask about it now, she’ll purse her lips and look down at the ground. But I know what it is, know what she’s thinking. I know her. She’s thinking that this is the last day, and we’ll go home without having met him. She’s thinking he’s somewhere in this town. That it’s a long way home. That this was the last chance. That we’re not going to pass this way anymore, that it’s over now, there’s no hope now. I look down at my hand, my hand that’s holding hers, think that if I were to squeeze it, the veins would bulge and burst out of her skin—

  * * *

  A café appears between the trees. I don’t ask her if she wants to go there, I just steer her over and she lets herself be steered. She pretends that everything’s fine, that we’re heading for a café, that she’s going to have to face the counter, an unknown waitress, an unknown place, where she’s going to sit down and drink a cup of tea and do it in a way that doesn’t give away just how frightened she is. I know what she’s going to ask, so I might as well tell her beforehand, before she even opens her mouth, she’ll say: “Can you order?” And she’ll look at me in the same way that she looked at me as we approached the pond. Those I’m-a-stranger-here-and-frightened eyes. Save-me eyes. She’s going to say it now, she slows down so I will be the one who has to put my hand to the door handle and open the door. She stops before I open it and looks at me in the same way that she did when we were at the pond, she says: “Can you order?” She’s a stranger here, and frightened. Can I save her? I nod, open the door, she looks around. There are grown-ups sitting at the tables, they’ve taken off their coats and scarves, but they still have red noses. We find an empty table, sit down. It’s perfectly clear. He’s not here. I see it in her eyes: they dart nervously around the room. It’s empty. He’s not here.

  * * *

  A girl with long dark hair comes over to us with a small notepad, I order. She’s got beautiful eyes, and a nice, round backside, I discover as she turns to go and get the tea that I’ve ordered. She smiled when I tried to order in this language that I don’t really speak. The general response is an exasperated shrug. But she smiled. Came back and put the teapot on the table, the two cups, the small metal jug of milk. She smiles at me again. I smile back. I see that the girl sitting beside me sees it too. That I look at her nice, round behind as she walks away. It doesn’t stop me. I stare without shame at her mouth when she talks to t
he old man behind the counter, they kiss each other on the cheek; I stare at her without shame as she puts on her coat, which must have been lying on a chair behind the counter, as she picks up her bag and swings it over her shoulder, without shame as she lifts her hair that has got caught under the collar, she lifts it up at the neck and drops it down her back. Then she walks past us, head held high, smiles at me again, and walks out. Because I don’t do it, I don’t get up, I don’t follow her, I don’t catch up with her, don’t take her by the hand, I don’t pull her into the trees, where there’s no one else, I don’t stand her up against a tree, I don’t kiss her, I don’t take my revenge.