Days in the History of Silence

by Merethe Lindstrom

  We could invite some old colleagues, he said.

  Yes, I replied.

  It would be nice to meet someone. We ought to go to bed soon, I said. He finished his cognac, placing the empty glass on the windowsill.

  What were you thinking about your brother, I said.

  He looked at me, said that it was hazy, everything had happened while he was half asleep.

  I have forgotten to switch off the light, he added. The light is still on in the garage.

  He released his breath, waited, and in the ensuing silence that drew all attention toward itself, he remained standing there with his hand halfway over his mouth. Let’s go to bed, he said.

  HE HAS NEVER made any attempt to find his brother in recent years. If he knew where his brother was, I don’t know whether he would look him up. I even mentioned it once, that he hadn’t really taken care of his brother. His brother existed somewhere, in an apartment, in a town, even though a long time had passed. His brother who walked about and remembered and knew, and could have talked about it. In contrast to those who were gone.

  He came here once. The brother. One single time, while the girls were so small that they don’t remember him. A slightly built, serious man, he did not look like Simon, he smoked a great deal, drank rather excessively, they conversed in the language that Simon never used at other times, something that made Greta laugh, she was only a few years old, but she laughed whenever that man opened his mouth. At first I believe it confused him, but then he permitted her to approach him, allowed her to take his hand and sit on his knee. Greta continued to laugh every time someone spoke in this foreign language. She touched his mouth, made him open it wide, he was patient, she touched his lips, his teeth, as though she wanted to look and see if the strange words were inside there, if that was where they came from or if they were somewhere else altogether.

  He was a nervous, slightly drunken man. He stayed with us for a few days, he was to stay for a whole week, but I believe they ran out of things to talk about, he and Simon. And he had to return home. There was something he had to go home for, something vague. I saw that they sat in their own chairs without talking to each other. They could perhaps cope with their own silence, but not the other’s, and they never sat or stood close to each other. I thought that they could no longer be close, that the physical closeness that was forced upon them during the war meant that they could not bear to be too close to each other, just the smell, the voice, the body and the feeling of the other person there must be enough to remind them, perhaps even give them the feeling of being back, shut inside. They sat in their individual chairs, their separation by mutual agreement, I thought, as if they both agreed to keep their distance, now that they had finally acquired the personal space they must have dreamed of when they shared a bed and kept themselves occupied in the hiding place, now that they were at last set free from closeness, that closed in, desperate symbiosis.

  Not until the airport. After Simon’s brother had taken out his ticket for the journey home, after we had said bon voyage and he was about to board, they both took a step forward, suddenly hugged each other, embracing with a tight grip, and not unlike the beginning of a fight, held each other fiercely as I imagined two wrestlers might perhaps do, only closer, really inseparable, they merged into one, two wrestlers checking out each other’s strength before throwing themselves onto the ground and one of them gains the upper hand. They let go again. Neither of them wept, neither of them looked as upset or moved as that moment of intimacy would suggest. The brother walked toward the airplane, and Simon was left behind. Only Greta took a few steps after him, as though she wanted to accompany the uncle she had come to know slightly, unwilling to give him up just like that. She looked questioningly at us and at the exit to the runway. But Simon simply said: Now we’ll go home.

  HIS BROTHER TOLD us something while he was here. It seemed as though he was putting down a heavy burden and then journeyed on. He had heard their parents talk about it, he said. Before they left their apartment during the war, they said nothing to their neighbors on that stairway. Nothing about where they were going or why. There was no one who could be trusted, or else it was impossible to know whom you might be able to trust. Every day the neighbors walked past the locked door, and there was little cause for curiosity. The family had left, the door was locked, the windows in darkness. One of the neighbors had a dog, what was it called, oh yes, Kaiser. And that dog usually stopped outside the door, barking, sat down and barked as if it were waiting for something. Waiting for someone to open up, a stupid dog. The owner of course tried to drag it off with him, it protested loudly, as was stated later. The neighbor scolded, threatened. But the dog was insistent. It would not desist. As though it had caught the scent of something inside.

  The same performance was repeated every day. The dog sat down. Barked. Pawed as though it were possible to burrow underneath the doormat, under the threshold, the doorframe. But the apartment is definitely empty, people said. The occupants left ages ago, the boy who knew the dog and took it for walks has left with his family. He won’t be coming out no matter how much the dog barks. The neighbor speaks sternly to the animal, he almost has to deliver a kick, to the dog, in order to get it to come with him. The next day the same procedure. The day after. Until the dog owner and another neighbor have a chat. It is the other one who has become suspicious. Has someone broken in, entered the empty rooms, inside the apartment? It is possible of course. It is dark, it is silent there, but it is possible all the same. He notifies the police.

  HE NOTIFIED THE police, Simon’s brother told Simon. The police arrive, they knock on the door, shout. It is silent inside. The apartment is empty, a neighbor says, thrusting his head out from another doorway on the same landing. The family has left. It’s only that daft dog. The boy who lived there before has spoiled it, taught it to receive a reward when it sits outside there and barks. That’s why it does it. Barks as if it’s calling for him. Disturbs the whole block. But the boy is long gone, like the family, no one knows what’s become of them. Another one gets involved, but it is obvious the dog has got wind of something, he says. Look at it. As if it is sitting there waiting for its master. You would think it was the boy’s dog. The police shout a warning again, eventually breaking down the locked door. The neighbors crowd around their windows. And after only a few minutes they emerge. The dog was right. The apartment is not empty. There is a woman there, a child. They are picked up that morning, taken away. The neighbors watch them drive off in a car. A woman and a child aged five or six. The hound was not stupid.

  It never ends, all this about the dog.

  Simon exonerates the dog, but not himself.

  He sat up more often in the evenings talking about the events of the war. It made me uneasy. And so, after all the repetitions, the ruminations put into words, the interpretations of everything that had happened, the time in the hiding place and prior to that, it was as though he started to run empty, as though he exhausted himself. He spoke less and more rarely. And eventually he spoke more rarely about other things as well, to me, to others.

  Until he stopped saying more than what was routine. Good day. Hello.

  Now that I am not admitted, I simply long for him to talk, anything at all, I would listen.

  We are alone together when it is quiet.

  He said that he liked the silence so much after we had moved here, out of the center, that he liked how still and bright it was. That is a long time ago now.

  I often lie awake listening to the susurration of the trees, the rain in summertime, falling on the planks of the terrace floor, the garage roof. Soundlessness in the rooms and outside.

  Not so long ago I saw an advertisement, animals for sale. Puppies at a kennel. There were pictures of them, they were lying curled together on newspaper with large heads and ruffled pelts. I studied the picture, I liked the tiniest one that had clearly ended up slightly outside the rest of the litter, so I cut out the phone number, it is still hanging on the r
efrigerator. I have seen dogs when I walk about in the neighborhood here. I have thought a little about getting a new dog. We could have gone for walks, the dog and I. It could probably make contact with Simon, perhaps it would have done him good. There are dogs that can be trained to communicate with their owners, they understand. He would not need to speak to it. Dogs are intuitive, where have I heard that. Loyal to their master.

  A new dog could guard the house as well.

  She did not like dogs, Marija, but when I reflect on it, I can’t recall that she ever gave a good reason for why she felt that way, that she ever explained it in a rational fashion, or in a fashion I could understand. It was not true that she was afraid of them.

  She just did not like them.

  Marija’s daughter managed to throw her man out, was it in May during the spring that she came running to tell me that? Marija had phoned her every single day, and in the middle of her work she would have to answer her phone, something she never did otherwise. We appreciated that it was important, we heard her walking to and fro out in the hallway, we could not of course understand what she was saying. But we could make out our own names. Afterward she came through to the kitchen and told us that some important things were going to take place now.

  We invited her to dinner. First she cleaned the house, helped out in the kitchen and afterward sat down in the dining room as though she had just come in the door, she had changed her clothes, she had a different smell. She must have dabbed on perfume, it was slightly unfamiliar, later I associated the evening with the scent of that perfume, a distinctive odor of chrysanthemums. But perhaps she had also used it before, she used it on special occasions such as when she was looking forward to something.

  Sit down and eat, I said.

  I really should have prepared the food, she said. But I told her that it was not necessary, I had already roasted the meat and boiled the potatoes and broccoli, and while we were eating, her phone rang. We heard her speaking in this language that I actually cannot recall ever hearing before Marija came here. Now it has happened, she shouted and began to tell us about it while she was still standing out in the hallway. She has left him. And best of all: She’s coming, Marija said, with the phone in her hand. At last she’s coming!

  Her daughter was to arrive the following Sunday, together with Marija’s brother. They were both going to stay at Marija’s house, and although I offered them accommodation at our house, Marija turned that down for quite a while. She was unwilling. I said that I would not give in. Then she yielded reluctantly. They would not be any bother, she said.

  I was not looking forward to it, I was happy about her excitement, but it is true, I was not happy about having strangers in the house.

  The uncle, Marija’s brother, was a man with thinning hair and an outbreak of rosacea spreading a blush across his face and giving him an agitated appearance, he was also unusually tall, like having a giant come to visit, a giant who went around the house and never seemed able to find a chair to fit. In any case he seldom sat down. When he spoke his voice contrasted starkly with his appearance, soft and high pitched. He offered to repair an old refrigerator we have in the garage, but on Marija’s advice we refused the offer, he cannot repair anything, she said, he works at the cash desk in a gas station, he is just trying to be useful. Marija had told us that her daughter was totally different from her, and that was true. She seemed shy and depressed, she was small, slim and had a little girl with her who continually sat on her lap. The uncle smoked with the terrace doors slightly ajar, something that led to a constant draft during those days. The girl, the child, was called something beginning with B, a name I learned to pronounce, but that I have forgotten now.

  Marija prepared the meals, several every day, and I discovered that I enjoyed the company. Even the girl who sat up late in the evenings until she fell asleep on her mother’s knee and was carried up to bed. The uncle was simply present, he sat still for a few minutes at a time, before obviously feeling the need to move again, to try out a new chair, a different position while he peered in the direction of the garage door and the broken lamp on the outdoor light. He asked several times whether he could fix something. We went on an outing to the aquarium at Nordnes. B had a special way of showing eagerness, instead of smiling or shouting like the other children who were there, she clenched her fists, tightening her jaw, as though her excitement was almost unbearable. Especially when one of the employees came to feed the penguins, she tensed up in that way, almost like a temporary spasticity.

  Marija was concerned about her, I saw that she kept her eye on the girl. The child had experienced problems at school, Marija explained, she had become a scapegoat, for no reason whatsoever, these things of course happen for no reason at all, she said. She did not know what she should do. Take her out, find another school, when she talked about it, the daughter did not want to listen, she already had too many worries about her job and her former boyfriend. Marija held her granddaughter’s hand and bought her whatever she wanted, a book of fairy tales, a soft toy animal, in the evening she read the girl a fairy story, a Norwegian edition of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, she read the Norwegian text and translated it.

  Who is it that took the children away with him? The Pied Piper of Hamelin, he played his pipe and lured all the rats to follow him in a long line down to the river where they drowned. When he returned to Hamelin, they did not think they needed to keep their promise to him. They would not pay him.

  She read everything on the page, did not skip over anything. She conjured it up, and the girl tensed her jaw.

  When he began to play again, it was not the rats that followed the Pied Piper through the town’s narrow streets, but all the boys and girls, all the children of Hamelin. They came out from the schools, from the houses.

  I observed Marija and her granddaughter as Marija read the distressing story to the little girl who sat there with her eyes full of terror. While I listened, I suddenly felt unwell, perhaps it was something to do with the ghastly story. Simon had already gone to bed. He was lying in bed with the light on, I put my arm around him, and he put his arm around me. I think we both lay listening to the voices, the foreign language. People we barely knew, who were occupying our living room.

  The Pied Piper has a pipe, and the children follow him. They follow him in a long line, he leads them out of Hamelin, toward a mountain. He plays his pipe louder, an opening appears. Right into the mountainside, into a cavern, he leads them inside. And there they vanish.

  AFTER THEY HAD left, she was brokenhearted. She spoke to her daughter on her phone again, the daughter’s unpleasant boyfriend had returned. Marija said there was nothing she could do for her, for the young girl. She was discouraged about being so far away, but she felt that it would not have been any different if she had visited them. She would not listen, she said about her daughter. We talked about our daughters, how it was impossible to control other people’s lives, but instead we had to sit and watch things happen.

  That was when I suggested that she continue to live here with us for a while, in the meantime at least. She had problems where she was living, an increase in rent that meant she had to look for another place all the same. You can stay with us, we told her, while you are looking.

  Marija stayed with us for several weeks, occupying one room. Several weeks, was it not longer? They were peaceful weeks. So surprising. As though she had always stayed there, eating, sleeping, getting up there, being together with us. In the afternoons we ate dinner in the dining room, we seldom do that otherwise, we set the table with enthusiasm and took ages discussing places we had visited and foodstuffs we preferred, vacation destinations we would like to revisit. Marija said we must come to Latvia. We must visit her hometown someday, she would show us around. I think we envisioned at that particular time, we would travel with Marija, eat local food, meet the uncle, daughter, grandchild again. The rest of the family.

  Both Simon and I participated in these conversations with unusual eagerness.
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  In the evenings we formed a little group distributed among the settee and our three chairs, never facing the television, but each with a book or bent over the chessboard. Simon showed her his books, the history books with detailed descriptions of areas where important battles have been fought, he had marked all of them on various maps, look at the mountain ranges, these long river courses, I will show you what happened, if you see that line there, what it indicates, he talked as though he himself had seen armies fall on the battlefield. She seemed like a friend, he said later. A true friend, did she not?

  She was indeed, I said. That was after she had left, after her dismissal.

  They were lovely, those days she stayed here. We have never had many friends.

  The new cleaner arrives around ten. Once a week, mostly on Wednesdays. This one works in several other places, before holidays she brings a friend with her, they work together and clean the entire house. I hear the key in the door, and sometimes, if I am not particularly observant or have forgotten that she is coming, I think for a moment that it is Marija out in the hallway. She always calls out her name. It is Ana, she says, or is it pronounced Anna. Then she places the key on the bureau with a little bang. But she doesn’t come into the living room to chat, only if there is something in particular. As a rule she gives me instructions before she leaves. She fetches the vacuum cleaner that Marija was in the habit of using. She has pointed out that it needs a new nozzle, really we need a whole new machine, it does not work the way it should, she says.

  But she does not insist.

  She lets herself out.

  And then it is silent again.

  IT BECAME SILENT after Marija. She might just as well have let the house remain empty. Removed the furniture in every single room and just left the marks behind, shadows and pale spaces.