Days in the History of Silence

by Merethe Lindstrom

  She had the feeling that there might even be an expectation by the two of them, both husband and wife, that she would fill a need that the wife no longer had any wish to satisfy.

  Generally she worked alone, although she would have preferred to have the company of a colleague, she liked to have a female friend to converse with. It was often too quiet in empty apartments. But there were always certain sounds that were particular to that very house. She remembered one occasion when an animal was locked inside the apartment next door. Was it a dog, a cat? The sound she heard was so low, a light and gentle clinking, that now and again it might sound like a child, as though a child were locked inside that one room in the apartment, and it was terrifying, Marija thought, that there was a possibility a child was alone in there.

  The rooms resembled the pages of interior décor catalogs, she had once tried sitting on a settee, having made herself a cup of coffee using an expensive coffee machine and drunk out of one of the cups belonging to a designer set, she was embarrassed when she confided that to me.

  One place was filled with exercise equipment, little else, in the kitchen there were enormous drums of protein powder, and in the living room there were two exercise machines that she dusted every time she was there. In another house there were photographs everywhere of the family who lived there. You would think they didn’t have mirrors, she laughed.

  In one detached house there had been a spooky cellar, the laundry room was down there, you went down a staircase and along a narrow corridor, and deep inside hung a padlock on the door leading to a dark room, she had peeked in there, and this cellar again ended in a hole, just that hole in the wall. Like a dungeon.

  Most of them were ordinary houses, terraced houses, detached houses, individual apartments. I come in, she said, and now I always know where they keep their keys, where they hide them. I know about all the hiding places. Everybody has their own hiding place, but I could open every single door in this city.

  SHE MADE FRIENDS with the postman. It was the same man who had talked to me about asylum seekers. Sometimes she used to stand and wait, in fine weather she would stand and wait for the mail, or else she just peeked outside, she had this idea that she ought to fetch the mail for us on Saturdays. It was always the same guy.

  I watched her from the window. Her standing on the garden path, and him approaching, walking with his mailbag on his stomach, after parking the mail van on the road. In the beginning I think he barely replied to her, since I saw that she talked to him while he brought out the mail, and that he ignored her.

  But later I noticed that they stood together one Saturday and she was laughing, and it struck me that they were perhaps around the same age, he a few years older. Are they flirting? I wondered. I remembered what he had said about cleaners. But now he was standing there chatting nineteen to the dozen.

  She waved when he left. She gathered up the mail, turned around and waved.

  Simon mentioned his brother once to Marija, she asked whether he had any siblings, she thought he talked too little about his family, she said. And so he mentioned his brother. I was surprised. He never talked about his brother.

  I looked at Simon. It was the closest he came to telling Marija about his own past. He said that he missed his brother, that they had lost contact, that they had lost contact after events that—

  I thought he was about to say: took place during the war. If he had not stopped at that, he would perhaps have mentioned the hiding place.

  She might perhaps have said: Why a hiding place?

  Perhaps he would have told her about it then.

  However, she interrupted him, saying that there was an effective way of finding missing relatives or others you had lost contact with, that she herself had found a relative, that he ought to try the foreign information service. Simon nodded and smiled, and pretended to be surprised, in a somewhat vague way, yes, he said, he said he agreed, he ought to try directory inquiries.

  They are so helpful, Marija said. A woman there told me I only needed to give the name, country and preferably town, but I didn’t have the town. And all the same, only a few minutes later I was talking to Milda, and we were both overwhelmed. Milda and I who had not spoken to each other for many years.

  EVENTUALLY MARIJA TERMINATED several of her work arrangements because she was tired out. The last time she was in the country, she had steady cleaning work for a storekeeper and ourselves. Only sporadically did she take on other work in other places. In places she described to me as attractive apartments, all of them almost empty. It was so easy to work there.

  Norwegian houses are clean, she said. Like Norwegians. I laughed. But she was quite serious. It’s true, she said. Norwegians are. Always beautiful. And clean.

  SOME DAYS HE simply goes to the car after breakfast, installing himself in the passenger’s seat and waiting until it’s time to drive to the day care center. If I haven’t followed him after about ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, he presses the horn. It varies how long he waits, once when I came out he had fallen asleep. He presses only once. If I don’t arrive, he sits for a while longer, and if I still do not come, he opens the door and struggles to stand upright again. Gives the door a little push. He walks disappointedly back to the house. At least he appears disappointed, his expression is grave and reflective. He never asks why I haven’t come.

  He goes out to the car. Waits. I let him wait.

  He will not speak, I will not drive. He sits in the car for almost half an hour. I see the back of his head from the window, it strikes me that he is sitting too quietly, in a moment I will make a move to run outside, but then he moves.

  He comes in again, sitting down on the chair in the hallway without removing his overcoat, he looks through the hall window, staring out at the car. I say nothing.

  I look at him. I think about what he would have said.

  Usually I come before he sounds the horn. I sit down beside him. Sometimes he gives a satisfied little snort, and camouflages it by lifting his pocket handkerchief, he wipes himself continually with the handkerchief now, it might be a habit from his childhood he has resurrected, as though someone or other, perhaps his mother, might be standing over him telling him to remember his handkerchief. When I leave him in the corridors of the day care center, it still feels as though I have abandoned him for good, as though the entire car journey here has had the aim of placing him and leaving him there while I make my way as quickly as possible to the exit, and escape.

  Before I leave, I always kiss him on the cheek, his soft skin, and feel his cheekbone beneath my lips.

  ON THE DAYS he is not at the center, he wants us to drive. He does not say where he wants to go, but I know that he wants us to seek out places we have visited before. He seems contented then.

  I drive him.

  There’s a pleasant smell of leather in the car, no matter the time of year it is always snug and secure, I have the feeling of being in a house, a movable house that has been built around us. Most often we go nowhere.

  The drives started many years ago, but they had a more fixed purpose at that time. We were on our way to the cottage, or to visit my relatives, one of the children who was studying in a different city, or some of his colleagues. We still sometimes go on extended journeys. We drive out of the city, perhaps the sun is striking the roofs of the passing cars, a stream of cars. Soon, up in the mountains, they disperse and disappear, only one or two will follow us farther up, but then they too are gone. It is spring, almost summer or fall, early fall. He often sits with his head sideways, resting on his shoulder, he is sleeping or just leaning his head there. His gray hair against the seat fabric, the heat of the car. Previously he was often the one who drove. We would talk about things we saw, sometimes it was a river coming up on one side, meandering its way down the valley. The water and the earth beneath appear green, a turquoise color, and in one particular spot it is like a whirlpool, churning, an agitated movement, as though trying to run the other way, against its own powe
r that draws it downward. Other rivers are clear and slow, melted glass running over stones, perhaps the valley stretches itself out in front of you, no people, only grass, a derelict, transparent house, the walls disappearing, soon only a framework remains under the roof that disintegrates stone by stone. A pile of glass, an accumulation of materials, a defective angle, a distortion of the surrounding landscape. The loneliness that exists in some places. It is impossible not to be moved by it. It happens so abruptly. Maybe we have been there before, maybe he says that, maybe we talk about it, an everyday conversation, music on the car radio, voices coming and going. I remember we liked to sit and listen to the radio. But that is the past. The trips we take now are without purpose, we do not talk, we don’t really go anywhere, and it is just the trip for its own sake. But recently I have had a feeling that we are nevertheless bound for or at least looking for something. We drove through the forest a few days ago, and while we were still inside a canopy of leaves, it struck me that this, that the forest I saw, was an inherited visual impression, that it had always been there. Of course not seen through a car windshield, but the same picture in any case. In contrast to the asphalt road, the road signs, the exit roads to picnic areas. While I drove he sat beside me sleeping, I wanted to wake him, I wanted us to see this together, that we should talk about it, as I think we used to do. Or did we only talk about the children, about work and the house and finances. I don’t remember. But I felt it so strongly, it was something quite special. I began to consider what it was that was going on inside him, when he sat like that with his eyes closed, once sleep had taken a grip on him.

  Sometimes I collect him early, he does not seem to have anything against it, he comes with me, and I help him to put on his coat, and instead of driving home I steer the car out onto the highway, we drive out of the city, through the tunnels and all the way out to an open space where we must choose which way we are going to drive up into the mountains. That is where you end up regardless. Then I turn around and drive back. And one night I lay close beside him, it was a dream, but I heard his heart clearly, the skin like a fine membrane and he fastened his arms around me, I pushed him up in the bed, until he was almost sitting, I climbed on top of him, pushed his erection inside me. While I did that, I noticed that I was crying. When I glanced at him again, it seemed as though he wanted to say something, but he could not manage to articulate it. I sat up, I tried to help him, there was something stuck inside him, I felt for his pulse, and when I did not find it, I moved over to the other side of the bed and pressed my hands, the palms of my hands, on his chest. He opened his eyes again as I was doing this.

  When I awoke, he was lying by my side, and I sat up and felt for his pulse even though he was breathing just as softly as usual.

  I was at the church tending to the grave of the unknown boy, Simon was helping me to water the plants with the watering can, when the pastor approached us. He spoke just as quietly as I had expected from someone like him.

  He said that he had seen me in the church that day, he had seen me go out again, and it was a pity we had not been able to have a chat. If there was anything I wanted, he continued, then I only had to get in touch. I gazed at his face and thought he was perhaps saying that out of a sense of duty, but he seemed sincere.

  I’d like to mention that we have a baptismal service on Sunday, he said.

  I nodded, I thought to say: We probably can’t manage that.

  On our stroll that Sunday we noticed that there were small groups of churchgoers gathered outside the church. We peered over at the open doors with people going in and sitting down. During the service Simon closed his eyes, are you sleeping, I asked, but then he opened them again. As though he needed to shut everything out only for a moment. The child to be christened who was carried to the front by a round woman with a midlength skirt and shiny, black boots, what shall the child be named, its hat was taken off, its head held over the baptismal font. Just a few more inches farther down with the child’s head, hold it under, then it would be a completely different and terrifying type of ritual. The family stand in a row, all in their Sunday best, the child is silent, it is a boy. A girl is singing, a young girl, a psalm, an unbelievably high and delicate voice, a doll’s voice, she is singing the psalm “God is our refuge and our strength,” is that what it’s called? Out on the church steps Simon took the pastor’s hand. I did not believe it usual for clergymen to stand on the church steps. But Simon took him by the hand, he grasped it, held his hand tightly as though there was something he wanted to say, and I think the pastor was waiting for that too.

  But no words came. I saw that the pastor was waiting, Simon smiled.

  He could have been smiling about the pastor, about anything at all. It seemed that he was considering something.

  The clergyman nodded to us in farewell.

  When we went away, it came. The word Simon had perhaps been thinking about on the church steps. Brilliant, he said. It was the first word he had said in two days. Brilliant.

  •

  I THOUGHT ABOUT it afterward, whether it was just a word that occurred to him. Occasionally words crop up, as though he stumbles upon them, he finds them and it appears that he explores the meaning, feels them, whether the meaning is still there, whether they are worth articulating. Other times it seems as though they take him by surprise just as much as they take me by surprise. Bankrupt, he said one day. Photocopier. Calligraphy. He peers at the newspaper and reads fragments of a text, assault, care of the elderly, tax evasion.

  I thought earlier it was the beginning of something, I waited for the next thing he was going to say, and a whole day might go by. I was sure that the disconnected words could be part of an expanded monologue, that just took place over time, and that there was something in particular he wanted to express. Like the story about two trolls, or is it three, the one says something, then a hundred years pass, and the other one replies.

  If I pick them up, his words, and put them together, might the collection add up to something, give some kind of meaning. Or perhaps not.

  I WAS IN a church as a child, Simon told me many years ago. He had two memories of this church. The first was one ordinary day, before the war, a small gang of boys was wandering around aimlessly. Simon, his little brother, a friend, maybe one or two more. The group stood in front of the church that was located in a quiet street. They were the only ones present, there were no adults in the vicinity. And the church that none of them thought appeared impressive, it was just like other churches, a cruciform church, built in the shape of a cross, a construction based on the Latin cross, in which the central nave is long. It was situated on an open square, with a few houses and other buildings on the outer edges. No one watched over the church, why should anyone watch over a church, they are on a reconnoitering expedition around the building, a massive stone edifice with gray ashlar, and the tall tower, the spire. They have never been inside. This building that they must have seen before, but perhaps have never paid attention to, has become the object of something not yet formulated, waiting to turn up, to take shape inside their thoughts. What if they scrawled something, spat on it, what if they climbed a tree and clambered onto the lowest section of the roof or carved a message on the church wall. None of them has anything to write with, no chalk. That is when the eldest of them opens his trousers. Shocked and excited they observe, understanding his intention, what he is planning. But his fear makes him unable to pee, only a couple of sparse drops emerge and settle as a tiny stain on the pale wall, at the foot of the building, beside the staircase. They stare at the dark stain, is it possible that it’s growing, spreading outward, that it’s forming into a complete picture, a pattern? The eldest boy is still standing with his hands on the waistband of his trousers, the sun shining on the dark stain, and they hear an orchestra playing in a side street, not long before the war. A church.

  A man in a dark-colored coat comes up the street, an adult. They start to run, they sprint as boys can at that age. Across the publ
ic space, down the street, vanishing over the cobbles. They will never return. At that time the very thought causes Simon to awaken in fear at night. On a couple of occasions later he walks down that street, and every time he has a feeling, he relates, that the stain is visible, that it continues to spread outward, just waiting to be noticed and it is only a question of time, soon it will be visible to all, the entire city.

  THE VISIT OCCURRED awhile later. I went there with a female friend of my mother’s, Simon said, someone who subsequently also helped us to find the hiding place during the war. He said his mother had to overcome her pride in order to accept assistance, there was a conflict between her and one of the helpers, a conflict that had arisen because of him and this visit of his to the church. I remember her vaguely, he said. The female friend. Perhaps her hair was brown, perhaps she wore it long, to her shoulders, perhaps her upper teeth were slightly protruding, slightly crooked, perhaps she smiled with her crooked teeth and dark red lipstick, and her long hair lay on her shoulders and swept over them when she turned her head, the people from that time are so evasive, he complained, the simplest characteristics elude memory, although individual traits stand out distinctly, almost overexposed in one’s memory. Such as that she was carrying handkerchiefs and continually picked at my clothes, he said, hairs, tiny specks, particles of dust that were lodged there. It was this church she liked to frequent, she was probably Protestant, he remembered there being a Protestant atmosphere inside the church. She is a woman or girl in her late twenties, a friend of my parents’, he said, it is easy to forget they were quite young themselves, they became old so quickly after the war. Although I don’t have any reason for knowing it, he continued, I am convinced she did not have any intention of converting me. She was just sharing a story that engrossed her, and the church was the place where the story would best be told. Through her knowledge and understanding both the Old and the New Testaments became a multicolored parade, and her low voice a cast-iron bridge over which the entire story proceeded into his more than appreciative child’s brain. She retold the Bible stories with intensity in that voice, sad, beautiful, grotesque, loud, what else. Simon used words like that when he talked about it. And then there was the actual visit to the church.