One of Us Is Sleeping

by Josefine Klougart

  She is a master of Chinese chequers; there, she says, looking up. First at me, then turning in her chair to look out at the road. There are no tracks in the snow there, not yet, there are no cars out. The sound of the snow as it falls, the non-sound made by that. Its thunder, and its absence.

  Your turn, my mother says. She pours more tea, her eyes grow older. The voices of the snow are swallowed by the wind, at the bend by the lake.

  Your turn, she repeats. I place a finger on a marble and follow a path across the board. No, not that one, another. Only the next comes to a dead end after four hops. In the minutes of my turn, only falling snow is heard. A sentence that may join all the world together, a way of walking that connects two places.

  Are you sure about that, she asks me. I understand there must be a better move.

  Yes, I say.

  She puts down her cup, draws a green marble all the way through the board into my area. I love you, I think to myself.

  I ASK IF we can eat in the kitchen. The darknesss is too oppressive here. My face is warm with sleep that never became sleep. A long day. An exhaustion that comes of the day. My father arriving home, his footsteps through the living room, to the piano. I hear him put down his car keys, see them reflect for a moment in the black varnished wood.

  And then they are still and silent in their place. The lake gapes beneath the ice, but the winter is a lid on top of all that is living, all that is dead: as the snow that falls, all the living and all the dead.

  Do you remember, I say quietly, when we found that big fish in the lake.

  My mother looks up. She is standing with a teaspoon in her hand, removing pips from a cucumber, scraping one half, then the other. She has a steady hand. The same with fish, the way she removes the bones in a single movement, with ease.

  I think so, she says. Last winter, was it. Or the one before. It must have been the one before.

  It was trapped in the ice, I say. And my hands have come to a halt; my eyes notice them, the way they have come to rest on the chopping board.

  I am not breathing.

  We both know it must be the winter before last, because last winter we couldn’t see each other. I had made a choice, she said. After that she fell ill, then presumably forgot her disappointment; color washes from wood if only it is left long enough in the sea. It doesn’t disappear, but becomes like the winter: only lighter. Increasingly iridescent, a price on my head that continues to rise. A competition in which we have forgotten to time ourselves.

  It must have been, I say. Last year. Why hasn’t he said hello, I ask.

  She raises her eyebrows and looks so sad all of a sudden.

  Perhaps he’s, I don’t know . . .

  She turns the cucumbers on the chopping board, slices them into staves, dices them, then lifts the board over to a bowl of yogurt, sweeping it clean with the spine of the blade.

  Tired, I suggest.

  Tired, yes. That’ll be it.

  I crush three cloves of garlic and peel them, passing them on to her with the garlic press. I put the dry skins in the trash. Hi, Dad, I call into the living room. He has sat down at the piano. It needs tuning, always some note that resists. He plays as if there’s something important he wishes to announce to someone.

  What is it about that fish.

  I don’t know why. I just started thinking about it.

  It did look so very strange. Caught in the ice, and frozen solid.

  I nod. It’s funny, but it suddenly feels like—well, a long time ago.

  It is, she says. Rinsing the chopping board and wiping it dry. I suppose he must be, tired.

  He gives me a kiss on the cheek. Do you want red wine, he asks. Yes, I say to please him. Or to comfort myself. That’s probably it. I drink three glasses while we eat. They open another bottle. Should we open another bottle. Yes, why not.

  What are you doing, she asks me as we brush our teeth before bed. That won’t help. I shrug. I shouldn’t have come.

  Of course you should. The way you’re feeling.

  I shrug again. I think there’s something fine about repeating it all the time.

  BE CAREFUL WITH that dish. It means a lot to me.

  I will.

  Thanks, she says. Do you think you’ll be coming home more often now.

  Yes, I lie.

  She smiles. Puts the dishes in the dishwasher. Straightens up and holds on to the counter for support. That’s good, she says. You’re always welcome, you know that.

  I nod. This is the way things are right now. But who of us is welcome. That’s the feeling I’m left with. I’m someone else. She doesn’t know who it is she’s inviting. She knows who it is she misses. In a way we are the same. I, too, miss something that no longer exists. I am careful with the dish and put a napkin down on it before placing the smaller dish on top. I tear open the wrapping of some tomatoes and put them in a bowl. The things you forget have to be just as real as those you remember. If not more so. That hasn’t altered. Does a head scarf look silly, I ask her. Is it too Suzanne Brøgger.

  No, I don’t think so. It looks good. Color suits you.

  Did she say I was always welcome.

  There is a sense of repetition that becomes impossible—a thought that there are no rules as such. That there is a place in the world for one sorrow, and a place in the world for another. That all the time, we discover new people to miss.

  There. I turn toward her, holding a red scarf to my head. It’ll look good on you, she says.

  I look at myself in the windows, the mirrors of their glass in the evening. The steam now gone.

  YOU’RE NOT SLEEPING.

  No, I’m not sleeping. My mother sits down on the sofa opposite. She gets up again almost in the same movement, places a log in the wood stove. Opens the inlet. The influx of air sucks flames from the embers.

  She sits down again and draws a throw over her. It’s impossible to tell what she wants. I am lying on the made-up sofa, the rear cushions heaped in a pile at the end.

  I don’t know why you won’t sleep upstairs. The bed’s made up and the heat’s on.

  The fire, I say. It’s nice to lie here and look at the fire.

  She nods, watching it with me, staring into the flames. We both think of my grandmother, the time she lay here, the last winter she was alive. I know exactly that it is what my mother is thinking about. The way her own mother was unable to reconcile herself with the glass window of the stove, the way she kept calling for us to tell us this: the house is on fire.

  There’s meant to be fire, we said, it’s a stove for heating. It stays inside, nothing will happen.

  Why didn’t we just move her into the office, I ask out of the blue.

  My mother shrugs. That’s where I get it from, I think to myself. My shoulders are an echo of my mother’s.

  She was afraid in the night, I think. How could we let her lie like that, I ask into the room. Afraid in the night.

  She slept eventually, my mother says, defensively.

  Perhaps, I say. Or maybe her face grew tired. My fingers feel my own face, as though to see for themselves. Was it tired of looking sad. Was there any clarification. There was no way of telling.

  Who is it you’re grieving over anyway, she suddenly asks.

  I am not even surprised by her question.

  I don’t know, I say calmly. Have you noticed the apple tree, I ask.

  The fire settles. The wind has died, it calms the flame.

  Which one, she asks. She draws a cushion under her head and makes herself comfortable.

  I can’t help thinking about her body underneath the blanket. Like the plaster cast of a body.

  Mine, I say quietly.

  Have you got your own apple tree, she asks. Which one is it.

  Don’t you remember, that afternoon. We were each given a tree. It was your idea. I chose first, I don’t even think the others were that interested. I don’t think they cared.

  Oh, says my mother. I do remember now, faintly. The low tr
ee, the one you can see from the bedroom.

  Yes, that’s the one, I nod.

  My mother’s legs, her blue chest. You can see the movements of her heart inside her chest.

  I’m not sure I know who you’re grieving over.

  No, I say. How could you, when I don’t even know myself. Have you noticed the tree, it’s still got apples on it.

  Has it. That’s good for the birds.

  What sort are they. They’re red. And very dark. Not Ingrid Marie, I’d recognize those.

  Is it Jakob, or the new one, she asks.

  I turn onto my back and look through the room. The joists slice it apart. When can you take sprigs in, I ask. Will they blossom if you take them in now.

  I don’t think so. They need buds first. In March you should be able to. Then they’ll flower. She talks about the spring, March, April, May. I’m not listening. I’m already asleep.

  Josefine Klougart has been hailed as one of Denmark’s greatest contemporary writers. She is the first Danish author ever to have two of her first three books nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and has been compared to Joan Didion, Anne Carson, and Virginia Woolf.

  Martin Aitken has translated dozens of books from the Danish, including works by Dorthe Nors, Jussi Adler-Olsen, Peter Høeg, and Kim Leine.

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