Days in the History of Silence

by Merethe Lindstrom

  In the conversations with Irit they came to life again, he said they came to life for him. His parents of course, but also other relatives. The younger aunt who had lived with them for a longish period together with her little son. One of his father’s sisters. When he thought back, he was less concerned with her, she was part of the adult world. The adults he knew as snatches of conversation, good and bad weather; the grown-ups gathered around the table in the living room with cherry wine or anxiously huddled around a newspaper, heads close together as they sit looking at an article, reading about new regulations, about war brewing. But then the aunt had a son aged five or six. His cousin was more indistinct. Irit Meyer remembered some things. Fragments. The boy’s family had come to visit on some of the vacations, he liked to spend time on the beach, liked the sand, the waves, but he was shy, she thought she remembered that he collected things in his pockets, she thought it was him, but he had lived for too short a time to leave any deep impression. There were a few sketches remaining, some children’s books, she thought there might be some photographs. Simon recalled that his aunt spoke very little, that during the time they were living together, she was preoccupied with her husband who had gone under cover because of the work he had been involved in, he stayed away permanently, although the intention had been that he would come and live together with them. She altered clothes, Simon had a clear memory of that, she fixed the clothes when you were growing, he recollected the strange feeling when she measured him, the length of his legs, his arms, he stood with his arms exactly as she had instructed him, perhaps he liked her firm and at the same time careful hands. His aunt recorded the measurements in a little book, she always had a suitcase sitting there, she never unpacked properly. He remembered that suitcase. And also the contents that he glimpsed on the occasions when she opened it to fetch something or place something inside. The suitcase was important, it was always ready. Like a warning, an imperative long before anything took place. Several times he had wanted to sprint out into the street with it, put it down in some random place and leave it there.

  He remembers two things: The cousin has a visual impairment, he has strong glasses it is forbidden to touch, without them he would just stumble around helplessly, and if he gets milk, something there is very little of anyway, he becomes ill. He vomits on the kitchen floor, the smell permeating the entire apartment. Simon comes into the kitchen, and there is vomit on the tablecloth and across the floor, his cousin has been taken behind a curtain to be washed. It is a curtain made of hand towels. Behind that curtain is a tub of water, and there are voices there, probably his aunt, the young mother, talking to her son. He remembers it like that. He remembers everything else so perfectly well, but not his cousin. Only these two commands. Don’t touch his glasses, don’t give him milk. That his cousin’s glasses should not be touched is something Simon has been told by his mother, probably also that he is helpless without them, for he has no memory of that, no picture in his memory of his cousin at all. He is hidden behind the curtain of towels, he only pops up in his mother’s admonitory voice about his glasses, the sight and smell of vomit, the open windows in the tiny kitchen. Simon is confused, he can’t recall anything about this boy, he searches in the photographs his second cousin sent, rummages through the words he believes he has heard.

  It was as though he avoided being seen, he told me. His cousin was small, he sometimes sat by the window, his face directed out toward the street. No, that was himself. Simon sat looking out the window and down into the street, he loved to look out the window. He thinks he waited while his cousin was on the toilet, heard him in there. Does he ever come out? He goes past him in the dark passageway, the cousin looking away, they take a photograph, the cousin stoops down. But in one or two of the photographs he is visible all the same, a newborn in a blanket, a tiny speck bundled up in another lighter speck.

  HE HAS MORE dreams about his cousin later. A shadow he knows must be him. He almost always dreams the same thing, Simon says. He is in the old street where he lived as a child, he has been inside the old apartment, his cousin is waiting outside. Sometimes the cousin is a child, sometimes he is grown up. When he is a child, he is sitting in the enormous tree in the yard, a tree that is much larger and sturdier in the dream than Simon remembers in reality. Simon walks by, his cousin shouts, he calls out something, but Simon does not look at him. He thinks it is a dreadful thing to do, but he will not stop. It is even worse those times when the cousin is grown up. Then he is standing in the courtyard outside, they meet and take each other by the hand, say hello, sometimes the dream starts when he is going down the stairs, Simon says, and he knows there is something he wants to avoid, he searches for opportunities to leave, but there is no opportunity, he has to go out the same door, out into the same courtyard where his cousin is standing, good day, they greet each other, his cousin takes him by the hand, walks by his side, but the cousin isn’t going anywhere. He asks Simon where he is going. And Simon is going to work, that is what he says. His cousin asks if he can accompany him. If he can come with Simon. Yes, Simon answers, because the question is like the narrow passageway, there is no other response, no other possibility, but nevertheless he knows that his cousin cannot tag along, and therefore he has to come up with a lie, and in his dream he is sweating, he is wriggling away, he has to run from his cousin, but can’t manage to do so. He awakens, lies there feeling as though his cousin has taken up residence within him. He never actually sees his cousin’s face now either, it reminds him of others, it is complex, it can’t be brought out of the dream. But then the dream or dreams change at some point in time. Now the cousin as child and adult are interchangeable, he stands there like a beggar, child, adult, old. And he always wants the same thing and Simon knows that it’s not possible, he can’t keep company with this creature, ghost, Gespenst, that is what he is. He says that. You can’t come with me. No, he says. Why not, his cousin asks. Because you are dead, Simon answers. The cousin looks at him, and appears to be just as alive as everything else Simon senses exists in this dream. You died as a child. How? his cousin asks and is so young, old enough to understand the words, but not to comprehend. He is eight or nine years old, older than he was when he disappeared. Simon cannot answer. I don’t know, he says. His cousin asks if that is why he cannot come with him, if that is how it is. Yes, Simon says. He wakes. He falls asleep again, he dreams the same thing, with only small variations, with only small changes. He has this recurrent dream for several years. It constantly torments him. Sometimes Simon thinks he sees his cousin when he is awake too, he says, sees him someplace or other, in the background, in a corner of his own field of vision, but when he tries to turn around, he is erased. This ghost, this intruder.

  I phone Helena and invite her to come over, I need a few groceries. Yes, that is something she can help me with all the same. If she has time.

  She seems pleased. I can do the shopping, she says. Just tell me what you need.

  After twenty minutes I hear her car driving up in front of the house.

  It’s me, Mom, she calls out. As if it could be anyone else. And then she says no more for a few minutes, before standing in the kitchen doorway.

  The application form, she says. It’s still lying here.

  Disappointment. Her face and her voice, her hand with the letter.

  She gives it to me. And now I have to open the envelope, I have to look at the sheet of paper with the blank spaces where Simon’s name should be. I have to say oh, I have to say I must have forgotten about it. I have to find an excuse, she is right to be displeased with me, she has taken over that role. It is the intention that I should feel ashamed.

  I’m a bit disorganized, I say and apologize to my daughter. She says it’s all right, Mom. Fetching my glasses, she places them in front of me on the table and puts the grocery bags on the counter. Sit down in the living room, Mom, I’ll sort out the groceries. I go into the living room and put the application form down in front of me on the coffee table, closing my
eyes as Simon usually does. Open them again. From the window I see a flock of sparrows gathered on the terrace. The radio is playing the Beatles. It must be the Beatles, Simon likes them, he has never been too old for the Beatles. What’s that called, the song they’re singing. “Michelle.” It’s a long time since I heard that. Simon should have been here now.

  The newspaper is lying folded on the table. She is busy tidying up out there, opening and closing the doors to the fridge, the kitchen cabinet. I read the newspaper headlines upside down, managing to read a whole column, a whole paragraph. I watch the sparrows. Michelle, ma belle, these are words that go together well. Simon loves that song.

  Or am I the one who loves it.

  Do you remember that book Dad liked so much? she shouts. The history book.

  I know what she means. His great hobby, battles of the First World War. She is still standing in the kitchen, shouting. Yes, I say.

  I promised him I would read it.

  Michelle, ma belle, sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble.

  But the truth is I haven’t got the time.

  Très bien ensemble.

  I don’t think I’m going to do it, she says, there isn’t really any point. Now.

  Is it written to a sweetheart, I wonder. The song. It really must be.

  I don’t understand why they haven’t delivered the newspaper, I say. It didn’t come yesterday, but today it was there again.

  I really should bring it back here with me, she shouts.

  What do you need to bring with you, I ask.

  She clatters the dishes, putting them into the dishwasher, pushes the door closed. The song is finished, there is someone talking now.

  She stands in the living room doorway. Helena, who has always been the youngest. She sits down beside me, stretches out her arms and embraces me, rocking. I accept the sign of affection and hug her back. If you fill out the form, I’ll fetch it for you meanwhile, she says.

  What, I ask.

  The book, she says.

  Why does it not matter anymore, I inquire. What do you mean?

  I just mean that I won’t actually be able to tell him if I like it, we aren’t going to be able to discuss that book now.

  She strokes her hair with her hand as she speaks, pulling it behind her ears. I can bring it to you, she says. I can come in again afterward in any case.

  Yes, I say.

  Mom, she says, giving me a hug.

  And then she leaves.

  SHE WANTS TO return the book she has borrowed from him, as though there really is a rush. An hour later she phones to say that it took awhile to find it. As though I have asked her to do it, as though there is a hurry and it’s important. Take your time, I say. I’m here.

  But just after that she is standing in the house again. With the book and frozen raspberries she was out picking in our garden earlier in the summer. Everything is contained in two bags. She couldn’t be bothered to read it. Although she feels, she says, that he still wants her to do it. The book means something, he was so enthusiastic about that author, the historian who has written it. They talked about it. It was one of the last conversations they had together, when Simon at least spoke a complete sentence to her. Perhaps that was why it seemed so important, she says. She has picked up the book, placed it on the coffee table.

  We remain standing for a moment.

  I’m always trying to guess what you’re thinking, Mom. Are you? I say. You know I talk all the time. No, she says. You don’t.

  I OBSERVE MY daughter, the dark hair, the blue eyes. Exceptionally blue. Simon’s eyes. I study Helena, there is something I have always regarded as glassy, brittle, about her. She was always afraid when she was little, afraid of the water, of the attic, of the dark.

  Perhaps it comes from the fear she has inherited without actually knowing what she is scared of, could not know.

  At one time I must have thought it would protect her. Not knowing, that it would make her, make them, safer. But when I look at her now, it strikes me that it has had the opposite effect. Maybe it works that way, that what you guess at terrifies you more than what you are told. The blurred, nameless apparition.

  As a child she invited friends to visit on her birthday. They arrived in starched party dresses, eight eleven-year-olds, stiffly dressed up and critical, going around looking at everything we had in the house, lifting things up and peering at her belongings. No one talked to her, they ate our food, delivered their presents, chatted together in her room without letting her in. She did not complain, I think she was afraid I would be angry with them.

  A few hours later, they traipsed home.

  I don’t know why, there seemed to be no reason. When I asked her, she just said that she was not very popular.

  In time she became like me, like us, she began to read, withdrawing more into herself. Her sisters are tougher. Helena is the only one who is a teacher, like me. She teaches science, mathematics, nothing as intangible and vague as literature. I think it is an appealing subject. She teaches at junior high school, I like the thought that she stands facing them, explaining something so solid and certain.

  I take one of the bags with me into the living room. I still feel uneasy, perhaps I have acquired her uneasiness. The clock is ticking, suddenly I hear it.

  She leaves, and I think about the application form. That she forgot to ask me if I had filled it in.

  I REMEMBER SOMETHING that happened once when we were on the way home from a trip to the mountains, just Simon and me, we had been driving for hours, we were on our way down after staying at a little hotel for a few days, it was some occasion or other, and we were driving through a valley that reminded us both of some other place, a place we had been before and enjoyed. We were exhausted. Hungry and thirsty. As we drove over the newly paved highway, I saw a sign saying BYGDETUN, a local museum. I recalled something like this from my childhood, a vague memory of a day spent in the sun at some place like that, and there was the same heat outside the windows while we were driving that day. I said that to him, we could stop, I said. We could get something to eat.

  Simon wasn’t sure, he drove on, I thought he wanted to pass up the idea. But he pulled onto the side at an exit road and turned the car.

  It was later in the day than I had realized, and when we parked the car in the row of other vehicles, I saw that people were already on their way out of the museum, though there was still no sign of anyone dismantling stalls or packing up. Children at one end of a playground were having a good time with a pony, two boys on the stage were trying to grab hold of the microphone, talking into it, splitting their sides with laughter, but the equipment was obviously switched off. There were still families sitting on the wooden benches with thermos flasks and coffee cups. But there weren’t many people all the same, and perhaps it would have been different if it had been more crowded, if there had still been a queue in front of the stalls as I expected there would have been earlier in the day, if people had their eyes focused on the stage, at something going on up there. It didn’t take long until it dawned on me that we had become an attraction, although that is the wrong word. We were being noticed, or more than that. Passersby were looking at us skeptically, I thought it was skeptically, at least there was no feeling of being welcome. What I had been trying to relive, the pleasure I remembered from the encounter with a similar museum as a child, had completely vanished. Instead I was the stranger, we were the two strangers, who had sneaked into a location where we did not belong.

  We continued to stroll around for a while, Simon bought a cup of coffee, I looked at a hand-knitted scarf, I felt I was being watched. Even by the children.

  When we returned to the car, we did not speak. We had both, I am quite certain, the same realization of not being wanted. It was a feeling of shame, that we might have misunderstood, read the signs of hospitality so wrongly and believed that it embraced us, that we also without any fuss might fit in and be accepted.

  She enjoyed cleaning, Marija told me.
As a rule she simply went into a house or an apartment, let herself in with the key she had been given or a key that was hidden somewhere. She worked her way through the house with a mop, a vacuum cleaner. There was nobody there, no instructions. Few of the houses were really dirty. She cleaned just as thoroughly regardless. She saw little of the inhabitants who must live there, who rarely left behind any traces other than an almost invisible hair on the basin, a towel on the kitchen floor, a pair of sneakers in the hallway. Of course also the money that was left for her on mantelpieces or dining tables, and in some cases, as with us, paid into her bank account. She might discover a coin placed in a strategic spot or a banana skin that seemed to have slipped out of the trash can. A kind of test, she thought.

  In one place lived a married couple. At first Marija had thought they were just living together, that he was a relative, or that they were siblings. Because it seemed as though they lived separate lives and seldom spoke to each other, she said. But they were husband and wife. The man liked to sit and talk while Marija went about her work, he chatted about his wife. He nattered about his wife who was sitting on the other side of the wall and who was walking outside in the hallway, between the bathroom and the kitchen, as though she was someone who had left the house and disappeared long ago. Or he talked about their summer cottage and the grown-up children who were there far too often, he rambled patronizingly about their habits, in-laws he could not abide, about journeys they made to places he could not comprehend anyone having any interest in visiting. Every time she was there, he turned up to talk to her. He could sit for many minutes with his observations, talking continually as time passed and Marija tried to work. She had the impression it was not the floors and the cleaning she was being paid for, but that she was actually being paid for conversing with this man, Marija said to me. And there was some kind of inference. Something was being implied through this arrangement. That social barriers were being expunged, something was being assumed that she struggled to understand.