by Linn Ullmann
Alma turned to face the water again and continued with her story: “And once the mother had made the cocoa she poured a sleeping potion into the cup. It was colorless. Tasteless. There are such things, you know—sleeping potions that you can drink without even realizing that you’re drinking them! You never know. It can happen any time. It could happen to you too. Your mother could put a sleeping potion into your cocoa without you knowing.”
“Cut it out,” said Simen.
“You cut it out,” said Alma. “I’m only telling you that it could happen. These are the harsh realities of life.”
“Well, cut it out anyway,” Simen said again.
“And once the girl had drunk the cocoa,” Alma went on, “she fell asleep in her mother’s big four-poster bed. Fell into a deep, deep sleep. And the mother put her ear to the girl’s mouth, and when she was sure that she wouldn’t wake up, she picked her up in her arms and carried her through the woods to this lake and threw her in.”
“I don’t believe that,” Simen said.
“That’s because you’re a little boy,” Alma said, “and because you don’t know what mothers do when they can’t stop crying—and that girl’s mother just couldn’t stop crying.”
It was years now since Alma had looked after Simen and told him the story about the boy and the girl who had drowned in the green lake, and even though he didn’t believe the story one hundred percent, he didn’t like to swim there. He swam in the sea instead. He never wanted to swim in those green waters, thinking about how that boy and girl, turned to water lilies, might clutch at him, a foot or an arm, and pull him under.
So Simen and his friends rode past the lake where he had sat with Alma when he was little and he thought to himself: I know every inch of this forest.
The treasure—two hundred kroner in notes, a diamond crucifix on a gold chain, and an autograph book from Liverpool—was in the light blue tin pail, lashed to Christian’s handlebars. One shovel jutted out of Gunnar’s rucksack. Simen had borrowed a saddlebag and found room for the other shovel in that. Three boys, all fine as pencil strokes, riding full tilt through the dim green light, on the hunt for the perfect hiding place.
The wood opened up and closed in and wrapped itself around them and suddenly Simen pulled up sharply and cried, “Look! Over there, under that tree!” They had come to a clearing in the woods and on the edge of this clearing was a clump of rocks shaped rather like the letter S—as in sacrifice or Simen or the greatest soccer manager of all time Bill Shankly—and in the middle of the clearing was a tree and the tree raised its branches to the sky as if it were cheering every single goal scored by Liverpool since 1892.
But everything looked different in the autumn. Nothing was the way it should be. It was raining and it was cold and dark and you had to wear hats and scarves and thick sweaters and you had to bring a flashlight, and the woods were brooding, dense, and still and there were no bright clearings with rocks in the shape of the letter S or cheering trees.
But they did find a clearing, and they did find a tree that looked a little bit like the one from the summer.
“So what was the point of burying treasure if we are just unburying it two months later?” Simen tried one more time. “I thought the point was to leave it there forever.”
“Oh just shut up,” Christian said.
“I wasn’t the one babbling on about sacrifice and stuff,” Simen retorted.
“I want my stuff back,” Gunnar said. “Okay?”
Christian was quite sure that this was the right spot, he recognized it, he said. Simen regarded the tree with its bare branches raised to the night sky. No way! This tree wasn’t anything like the other one. This tree looked like an old man shaking his fists in the air, very angry and close to death. And it wasn’t just because it had lost its leaves. This tree was fucked. But he said nothing to the others. They had been riding in the wrong direction for what seemed like hours. He was almost absolutely sure that they had been riding in the wrong direction and that this was not the right spot. But if he was wrong and Christian was right, and it turned out that the treasure was buried under this tree, he wondered whether he should put the diamond crucifix back in the blue bowl in the bathroom or keep it, or maybe try to sell it. You could do a lot with seventeen thousand kroner. He pictured his mother looking all over for it, in the house, in the garden, never suspecting him. She had worn her red dress, she had smiled at him and asked him to help her look.
They dug the shovels into the ground.
“Just as well the frost hasn’t set in yet,” Christian said. “This would never have worked if it had.”
“This is definitely the place,” Gunnar said, “you can see that somebody’s been digging here before—”
“Yeah, but the whole point was that we wouldn’t ever dig it up again,” Simen mumbled, knowing he was right about this.
“But whose point was that, anyway?” Christian asked.
“Well, the treasure was your idea,” Simen said.
“Oh just shut up and dig,” said Gunnar.
The boys worked in silence. It was pitch-dark now; they took turns digging and holding the flashlight.
An hour later when, breathless and exhausted, they shone the flashlight down on her, none of them got that it was Milla lying there, at least not right away. The grave looked like a bird’s nest—a big underground nest of twigs and bones and skin and straw and grass and pieces of red fabric—and at first Simen, whose eyes did not take in the entire contents of the grave all at once, thought that was exactly what it was, that what he was looking at were the remains of some giant bird, the only one of its kind, black and surging, hidden from the world, lone and mighty on its heavy dark wings, swooping back and forth along subterranean tunnels, passages, and halls. A great, proud, solitary night bird that had at last come plummeting down, leaving only a few signs that it had ever existed—and he was not shaken out of this state until Gunnar, who was holding the flashlight, started screaming.
“Oh, Christ, it’s a body.”
Gunnar’s face was green and not just from the ghostly beams of the flashlight.
Christian said, “Look at the hair, it’s not grass, it’s hair.” Then he threw up.
Two years had passed since Milla disappeared and even back then Simen and his bike were as one, that was how he thought of himself, as a boy on wheels, a bike with a body, a heart, and a tongue, and if his parents had let him, he would have taken his bike to bed with him when, much against his will, he was told to go to sleep. From early morning he was out, zooming and skidding and swerving up and down the narrow dirt tracks around the white-painted church or screeched to a halt at the very end of the wooden jetties alongside the ferry wharf, inside the long breakwater; his handlebars flashed in the sunlight and he breathed in the sharp reek of shrimp shells and fish ends from the two fishermen who hadn’t yet called it quits and chosen some other line of work.
On the evening she disappeared—July 15, 2008—there had been a shower of rain, the mist had thickened around him, and the roads were black and damp and looked as though they might yawn open at any minute and swallow him. Simen’s parents allowed him to go out on his bike alone in the evening—as long as he stayed near the house. He was cold, but he didn’t want to go home. His mother and father were fighting constantly and they couldn’t stop, not even when he yelled, “Stop it! Please don’t fight anymore!”
At the top of the winding road known as the Bend (but which everyone thought ought to be called the Bends because of the many twists and turns and which Simen knew took about a thousand and one steps to climb), that coiled like a rippling band up the slope from the town center, sat the big old turn-of-the-century house belonging to Jenny Brodal.
Every evening Jenny Brodal and Irma, the very tall woman who lived with her in her house, went for long walks together. Jenny was small and dainty and marched down the long road to the town center. Irma was big and broad and seemed to glide along a few steps behind her. Simen often came
across the two women when he was out on his bike. Irma never said anything, but Jenny usually greeted him.
“Hello, Simen,” she’d say, or something like that.
“Hi,” he’d answer, never knowing whether he ought to stop and say hello properly or just ride on—in any case the two women were always long gone before he could make up his mind.
Irma was the woman whom Jenny had taken pity on. Simen wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, to take pity on somebody, but that was what his mother had said when he asked who she was, the lady living at Mailund with Jenny Brodal.
Simen did his best to avoid Irma, especially when she was out walking alone. Once, he had come riding down the road toward her and she had grabbed hold of his handlebars and hissed at him. She didn’t exactly breathe fire, but she might as well have. Irma seemed to be all lit up—he noticed this because the evening had been so dark. Glowing, as if she had just swallowed a fireball.
He had no idea why she did it. Why she hissed. He hadn’t done anything, just cycling along, minding his own business. It wasn’t as if he had gotten in her way. She had grabbed him.
His mother said that maybe Irma had been trying to have a bit of fun with him but just had a clumsy way of doing it. There was nothing wrong with Irma, his mother insisted, and Simen shouldn’t let his imagination run away with him, shouldn’t make up stories about people he didn’t know. What Simen had to understand was that Irma was probably a very nice person. She was someone whom Jenny Brodal had rescued from all kinds of dreadful situations, someone whom Jenny had taken pity on, but because Irma was so large (Simen’s mother hesitated before choosing a word that in her mind would accurately describe Irma’s overwhelming physique) and did not, therefore, look like an ordinary woman, there was a risk of people judging her purely based on appearances. Simen’s mother said, you must never judge people purely based on appearances. She said this because she always thought the best of people. But in this case his mother was wrong. Irma the giantess had glowed in the dark, grabbed hold of his handlebars, and hissed at him.
But on this particular drizzly July evening Simen luckily met neither Jenny nor Irma. It was Jenny’s birthday and her big garden was full of people, he heard the voices and the laughter from a long way off. It was a big party, which Simen thought was strange, when you considered how old Jenny Brodal really was. Over seventy, at least, maybe even over eighty. He wasn’t sure. But she was old. And was probably going to die soon. And Jenny Brodal obviously knew this, she wasn’t the kind of person who skirted the truth. Nor was Simen. His mother was going to die, his father was going to die. And someday Simen too would die. He was well aware of this. He had discussed it with his mother—she always gave straight answers. His father was more evasive. So why have a big party when all you had to look forward to was death? What was the point?
Simen pedaled up the long, winding road to spy from the bushes. The mist lay over him and under him and ahead of him and behind him, and the voices from Jenny’s garden seemed to leap out of it. The voices came from the mist. The chatter and the laughter came from the mist. The winding road came from the mist, and all the people at the party came from the mist. And only Simen and his bike were real. They were flesh and blood and bones and wheels and steel and chain. They were one—Simen and his bike. Or at least they were until his wheel rammed a rock and Simen flew headfirst over the handlebars. His scream was cut short as he hit the ground. He lay perfectly still for a few moments, until the pain kicked in. Grazes on the palms of his hands and his knees. Grit in the cuts. Blood. He hobbled over to the side of the road, slumped against a tree trunk, and cried. But no matter how loudly he cried his mother and father wouldn’t hear him. Their house was way down the road, the party drowned out everything else up here, and he was alone and hurt all over, his knees hurt worst of all, his bike was probably wrecked, and his palms were grazed because he had put out his hands in an attempt to break his fall, protect his head. That was what you were supposed to do if you fell off your bike. And not only that, you were supposed to wear a helmet, his mother would be furious with him for not wearing a helmet and he wouldn’t be allowed to go out alone on his bike in the evenings ever again.
His bike was still lying in the middle of the road. All funny and bent looking. Simen howled even louder. That was when she appeared. The girl in the red dress, with the long dark hair with a flower in it. She had a shawl around her shoulders. She was the prettiest girl Simen had ever seen—and the mist, now thickening into fog, didn’t touch her, but appeared to shy away from something so beautiful. He went on crying even though a voice inside him was telling him that when something as pretty as this girl is coming toward you, you shouldn’t be sitting in the ditch, crying like a baby. On the other hand, if he hadn’t been sitting in the ditch, crying like a baby, the girl would never have stopped, she would never have crouched down in front of him and put her arms around him and whispered, “Did you fall off your bike? Did you hurt yourself? Can I see?” She would never have helped him to his feet, asked his name, and used her red shawl to wipe the dirt and the tears off his face. She would never have bent over his bike to inspect the damage. “It’s not wrecked,” she said, pulling it up onto its wheels. “Look, Simen, it’s not wrecked.” And she would never have walked with him through the fog, all the way down the long, winding road from Jenny’s house to his house, five hundred and sixty-seven steps—with one hand in his hand, the other on the handlebars. “I’m Milla,” she said when they finally got there.
She propped his bike against the fence, looked at him, and smiled. Then she bent over and kissed the top of his head.
“I’m Milla and you’re Simen and you’re not to cry anymore.”
Then she turned and walked away.
JON DREYER HAD fooled everyone.
He was in the attic room at Mailund, that dilapidated white turn-of-the-century house, where the Dreyer-Brodal family spent their summers. He was looking at Milla.
The room was small and bright and dusty with a view of the meadow and the woods and of Milla picking flowers with his children. His wife, she of the asymmetric back (a little kink in her waist, that’s all), owned a restaurant in the center of town, in the old bakery. Siri was her name.
Siri was at work.
He was at work too.
His work was right here. He had his desk, his computer, this is where they left him in peace. He had a book to finish.
But he was looking at Milla.
Siri’s restaurant was called Gloucester, after the fishing port in Massachusetts where she and Jon and Alma had spent a summer when Jon was writing the first part of his trilogy. That was nine years ago, when Alma was three and Liv wasn’t even born yet.
Oh, how he could write back then. Pages and pages, effortlessly every day. And now here he was, working on part three; the first and second parts had been great successes, published in quick succession in 2000 and 2002. And then nothing. Part three—nothing!
He was supposed to have finished part three a long time ago but the days were frittered away and he had nothing to show for them. Maybe he was depressed. Siri said she thought he might be depressed.
Back then, when they were in Gloucester and he was still writing an average of ten pages a day, he’d lie beside his sleepless wife at night, hold her hand, tell her stories. He would remember things he thought he had forgotten long ago: the interior of his grandmother’s apartment; his mother’s colorful dresses, detailed one by one; the names and faces of his childhood friends. He told her about the silent ski excursions through the woods with his father, the sadness he sometimes felt when he was little, the snow falling everywhere on his trail, white, blue, silver, gray. And he lay beside her and talked and talked and occasionally she fell asleep, but more often than not she didn’t, and he was nevertheless thankful for the warmth and nearness of her and he stroked her hand until he talked himself into his own sleep. And when Jon went quiet, sometimes dozing off mid-word, she took over. She told of dreams she’d had as a
child and of dreams she had now. She told of films she had seen and books she had read, “And Jon,” she whispered, “do you read and also write in order to become someone else?” He liked lying next to her, listening to her voice, but was too tired to reply. “Do you think it’s even possible to put yourself in someone else’s place, to suffer, breathe, feel as they do?” And when he still didn’t answer she told him of when she was a little girl and of her father and how, instead of reading to her, he recounted snatches from books he loved. Siri was only six and her little brother, Syver, was four, but that didn’t stop their father, who told the children about Karenin, Anna Karenina’s husband, who was so strict that everyone was afraid of him, when in fact he was just very sad. And Siri remembered how she had understood what it must be like to be Karenin, even though she was just a little girl. And she told Jon, as she had so many times, about the time when Syver died in the forest, about her mother, who started drinking, who never staggered but simply moved fitfully around the house, suddenly popping up in a corner of the living room, suddenly on the edge of the bed, suddenly standing over pots and pans in the vast kitchen, suddenly in front of the mirror and “I tried to grab hold of her, but she slipped through my fingers and into the pots, into the mirror.” And she told of how her father ran off to Slite on the island of Gotland and married Sofia, starting up his own stonemasonry, and of the time when he paid a visit to Mailund and had forgotten to bring a birthday present, so to make up for it he cut up his gabardine coat and gave it to her, telling her that it was an invisibility cloak. It was her father—on one of the few occasions in Siri’s childhood when she had visited him in Slite—who had taken her to the lighthouse on the nearby island of Fårö. She liked Slite, liked the cement factory that seemed to loom over the whole town and the tired little streets in the center and the white dust that settled over everything and everyone, but Fårö was something else, Fårö was too beautiful, almost forbidding, with its red poppies and pebbled beaches and shifting lights of gray, and she remembered not wanting to go back there and she really hadn’t thought much about that trip with her father until she and Jon and Alma were standing on Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester more than twenty years later and thousands of miles away, looking at the silhouettes of the two lighthouses, the twin lights, on Thacher Island.