I turned automatically as the elevator approached the sixth floor, after three years I knew exactly how long it took to ascend, stepped out onto the landing with its clutter of kids’ stuff – two strollers, toddler roller, Vanja’s scooter, and Heidi’s bike with training wheels – and opened the door of the apartment.
Coats and shoes dumped on the floor, toys strewn all over, TV sounds from the living room.
I took my jacket and shoes off and went inside. Heidi and Vanja were snuggled up close in one chair, staring at the TV. John, standing in the middle of the floor in his diaper with a toy car in his hands, looked up at me. Linda was sitting on the sofa reading the newspaper.
The rug was bunched up, cuddly toys lay thrown about the entire room, as well as a number of books and plastic toys, felt pens and sheets of paper they had been drawing on.
“How did it go, all right?” Linda asked.
“Yes, fine,” I said. “Nearly bashed the car when I was getting gas. You know, that cramped underground place. Apart from that, fine. Thomas and Marie say hello.”
“Did you give her my mansucript?”
I nodded.
“How are we doing, girls?” I asked.
No reaction. Their little blond heads were motionless as they stared at the TV. In the same chair: apparently they were getting along today.
I smiled, they were even holding hands.
“Daddy basement?” said John.
“No,” I replied. “Daddy’s been driving a car today.”
“Daddy go to basement!” he said.
“Are you hungry?” Linda asked. “There’s some leftovers out there.”
“OK,” I said, and went out into the kitchen. The dishes were still on the table, the girls’ plates almost untouched, they hardly ever ate at dinner, never had. To begin with, Linda and I had argued about it, I wanted discipline when it came to meals and felt they should sit at the table until they had eaten up, whereas Linda held the opposite opinion, that when it came to food everything should be as free as possible, with no compulsion. What she said had seemed right to me, it sounded awful to talk about forcing them to eat, so ever since then we had let them do as they wanted. Whenever we came home from the nursery and they started going on about being hungry they had a slice of bread, an apple, some meatballs, or whatever was left over, and when dinner was ready and on the table they could sit there for as long as they felt like. Usually, that was no more than a few minutes during which they prodded a bit and took a few small mouthfuls before sliding off their chairs and toddling off into the living room or their own rooms, leaving Linda and me to eat at opposite sides of the table.
I piled up a plate with macaroni and meatballs, Sweden’s national dish, cut a tomato into bite-sized wedges, squirted some ketchup over it all, and sat down. The first year we lived in Malmö I talked about it with one of the other dads from the nursery. How did they cope at mealtimes? They never had any trouble at all, he said. She always sat nicely at the table and cleaned her plate. How on earth did they manage that, I wanted to know, biking up alongside him on our way out to Limhamnsfältet to play football as we did every Sunday morning. She knows she has no choice, he said. How does she know that? I asked. We broke her will, he said. She sits there until she’s finished, it doesn’t matter how long it takes. One time she sat there until late. Sobbing, and shouting all sorts of things at us. Wouldn’t touch a thing. But after a long while it sank in, she ate up and could leave the table. Three hours, I think it took! Since then there’s hardly been an issue. He looked at me and beamed. Did he realize what he was telling me about himself, I wondered, but said nothing. It’s the same whenever she throws a tantrum, he went on. I’ve noticed Vanja gives you a bit of trouble every now and again. Yes, she does, I said. How do you tackle that? I hold her still in a firm grip, he said. No drama, just hold her still until it passes. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. You should try it, it works like a dream. Yes, I said, I certainly need to think of something.
The odd thing about that conversation, I thought to myself as I spooned the barely warm food into my mouth, was that I had gauged him – or rather both parents – to be alternative, meaning soft. He carried the youngest around in a sling, the way dads like him were supposed to, and on a trip we were on with the nursery I had overheard him talking about the advantages of it as opposed to a BabyBjörn baby carrier. They were more than ordinarily concerned that food should be healthy and additive-free, their kids’ clothes were as far as possible made of natural fiber, and they were among the most active at parent meetings. So the fact that such uncompromisingly Victorian parenting methods should suddenly be revealed in their case came as a surprise to me. Or maybe it completed my understanding. I had always wondered how come their eldest daughter, who often played with Vanja, was always so reasonable and cooperative. She never spent a second in her stroller and walked everywhere they went, as opposed to Vanja, who could start pestering me to get in behind Heidi as soon as we were more than a few meters away from the nursery gate.
There had been occasions every now and then when I’d seen no alternative but to break her will, and of course eventually I had succeeded, but never without feeling awful afterward. It couldn’t be right, surely. On the other hand it was good for her to sit and eat with us, good for her to walk, good for her to get dressed herself, good for her to brush her teeth and go to bed at a resonable hour.
Once, Vanja had been at their place, it was her first ever sleepover. I went to pick her up the next day, they said everything had gone fine, but I could tell from Vanja, who kept wanting to be as close to me as possible, that it hadn’t been quite without problems. There had been a minor episode, he said, but we sorted it out no trouble, didn’t we, Vanja? What happened, I asked. Well, she asked for more dinner, but then after we’d given her some she wouldn’t eat it. So she had to sit there until she until she did.
I stared at him.
Was he mad?
No, he was already rummaging around to find her socks for me and I said nothing, even though I was furious. Who did he think he was, assuming he had the right to force my child to adhere to his ideas? I took the socks he handed me, helping Vanja put them on as she stretched out first one foot then the other, before giving her her coat, hoping and praying she was going to put it on herself so I wouldn’t have to do it for her under his critical gaze.
Linda was enraged when I told her what had happened. By then I had changed my mind about it, it wasn’t that bad, besides it was probably good for her to see that different people had different rules.
“That’s not the point,” Linda said. “They’re criticizing us, aren’t they? How dare they. Who do they think they are? You should hear how smug she is. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“They invited Vanja to do a fun run with them in the woods, I forgot to mention it,” I said. “It’s next weekend, in the Pildammsparken.”
It was the sort of activity we never would have got involved in on our own. Vanja was excited at the prospect. She’d get to stand behind a starting line with a number pinned to her chest, and to run with a lot of other kids along a path through the woods, and when she crossed the finish line she would get a medal and an ice cream.
It fell to me to take her to the start, along with her friend from the nursery and her friend’s mother, while Linda looked after Heidi around the finish line. Vanja was proud of her number, and as soon as the starter shouted Go! she took off as fast as her little legs could carry her. I trotted along beside her under the trees, with all the other moms and dads. But after a hundred meters or so she slowed down, then came to a complete standstill. I can’t, she said. Her friend and her friend’s mother were of course well ahead of us by then. They stopped, turned around, and waited. Come on, Vanja, I said. They’re waiting for us! Let’s run! And so we ran, Vanja in that wobbling way of hers, me loping along like an elk; we caught up with them and we all ran side by side, until her friend and her friend’s mother once more began to edge ahead of us
and we again fell behind. She ran like the wind, that girl. Vanja panted heavily at my side and came to a halt. Can’t we walk a bit, Daddy, she asked. Yes, of course we can, I said. Just for a little bit though. They waited patiently for us until we caught up with them again, and we forged on together for another hundred meters perhaps, before the gap between us opened up again. Come on, Vanja, I said. Not far to go now. You can do it! And Vanja gritted her teeth and ran on, maybe it was the finish line that lay ahead and the ice cream she knew would be waiting for her that gave her renewed energy. Her friend was about twenty meters in front of us, she was a good runner with a light and effortless step, and if it hadn’t been for us she would have been over the finish line well before. She turned and waved to Vanja, but then as she turned again she stumbled and fell headlong onto the path, where she sat clutching her knee and sobbing. Her mother stopped and bent over her. We were approaching now, and as we came up to them, Vanja was about to stop too. Come on, Vanja! I said. You’re almost at the finish! Run as fast as you can! And Vanja heard me and ran as fast as she could, past her friend, whose knee was grazed and bleeding, with me alongside her, past child after child she ran, as fast as the wind and over the finish line!
Behind us her friend got to her feet and limped on. An official hung a medal around Vanja’s neck, another handed her an ice cream. I won, Mommy! she shouted out to Linda, who came smiling toward us pushing the pram, with Heidi at her side. Only then did I realize what I had done, and blushed like I’d never blushed before. We ran past her! So we could be first! While she, the little girl who had stopped and waited for us along the way, sat bleeding on the ground!
Back at the finish, it was now her turn to receive her medal and ice cream. Fortunately, it seemed there were no hard feelings on her part. Her father came toward us.
“Looked like you really wanted the win there!” he said with a laugh.
I blushed again, understanding that he didn’t realize it was true. That he would never in his wildest fantasy think that a full-grown adult could behave in such a way. He was making a joke out of it precisely because it was unthinkable that I should have urged my daughter on so she could win over his daughter, and to have done so in such an unsportsmanlike way. They weren’t even four years old yet.
The girl’s mother came over and said the same thing. Both of them took it for granted that it was Vanja who had pressed on and that I hadn’t been able to stop her. They could understand a four-year-old not being able to show empathy with a friend her own age. But the idea of a nearly forty-year-old man being equally incapable was naturally beyond their imagination.
I burned with shame as I laughed politely.
On the way home I told Linda what had happened. She laughed like she hadn’t laughed for months.
“We won, that’s the main thing!” I said.
* * *
Two years had passed since then. John had been only a month old, Heidi nearly two, Vanja three and a half. I remembered it so well because we had taken so many photos that day. John with his big baby head and narrow, wrinkly baby eyes, kicking his slender bare legs, waving his slender bare arms in the stroller. Heidi with her wide eyes, short little body, and fair hair. Vanja with her delicate features and her character’s singular blend of sensitivity and fervor. Then as now I was unable to fully grasp the connection between us, mostly I looked upon them as three little people with whom I shared my home and life.
What they had, and what I had lost, was a great and shiningly obvious place in their own lives. I often thought about it, the way they woke up every morning to themselves and their world, which they would inhabit all through the day, taking everything as it came with no questions asked. When we were expecting Vanja, I had been worried my gloominess might rub off on her, I had even mentioned it to Yngve once, who had said that children are basically happy, it was their point of departure, and so it had turned out, always they strove toward gladness, and as long as no complications arose, they were forever happy and buoyant. Even when that wasn’t the case and for some reason they were feeling sad, despairing, or upset, they never removed themselves from who they were, but accepted everything completely. One day they would look back and ask the same questions as me, why had things been the way they were then, why are they like this now, what exactly is the meaning of my life?
Oh, my children, my beloved children, may you never think such thoughts! May you always understand that you are sufficient to yourselves!
But most likely that won’t happen. All generations live their lives as if they were the first, gathering experiences, progressing onward through the years, and as insights accumulate, meaning diminishes, or if it doesn’t diminish, it at least becomes less self-evident. That’s the way it is. The question is whether it has always been that way. In the Old Testament, where everything is expressed through action and the narratives are closely bound up with physical reality, and in the ancient Greek epics, where lives unfold in similarly concrete fashion, doubt never comes from within, as a condition of the individual’s existence, but always from without, by some external occurrence, for instance a sudden death, and is thus bound up with the conditions of external, earthly life. The New Testament, however, is different. How might we otherwise explain the darkness in Jesus’s soul that eventually drove him to Jerusalem, there to close door upon door until only the last and simplest remained? His final days can be interpreted as a way of eliminating all choices, so that responsibility for what was to happen, his slow death on the cross, would not be his, since he would be directed there, so to speak, by the will of others. The same thing occurs in Hamlet, his soul too is darkened, he too approaches his demise with open eyes, in such a way that it appears governed by fate and thereby inevitable. In the case of King Oedipus it is fate, he is genuinely oblivious, but for both Hamlet and Jesus it is a choice they make and a direction in which they choose to go. Oedipus is blind, Hamlet and Jesus see with open eyes into the darkness.
* * *
I got up, rinsed the plate, and put it in the dishwasher. We had been given the plate by the same couple when they were moving house and didn’t need it anymore. They had actually helped us a lot. What had we done for them in return?
Not much. I always listened patiently to whatever they talked about, asking questions and making an effort to seem interested. I had introduced him to our Sunday football. And I had given him a signed copy of my previous novel inscribed with a dedication. Two days later he told me he had given it to an uncle “who was interested in books.” But it was for you personally, for goodness’ sake! I thought to myself, though I said nothing; if he hadn’t grasped the fact on his own I wouldn’t be able to explain it to him.
This was how it was having children, you found yourself thrown together with complete strangers, people who were sometimes impossible to understand. Once he told me he and his wife liked to talk in the evenings in such a way that I understood that their talking to each other was something out of the ordinary, impressive even. After that I would often make a point of suggesting to Linda that we should talk. It became a joke of ours. Most likely they had similar ones about us. Nevertheless we kept on seeing each other right up to the time they moved, me especially in fact; I spent countless afternoons with him at different playgrounds, listening to all his ideas about how the world and everything in it hung together while our kids were playing.
On one such occasion he had a book with him by someone called Wolfram, which he would leaf through. It seemed to be about certain recurring patterns, in everything from leaves to river deltas, and contained a lot of line graphs. My first association was to Thomas Browne and his seventeenth-century treatise on the quincunx figure, the pattern on the five side of a die and its occurrence in nature, then to something I had only just read, in the book Geir Angell was writing, about how all complicated systems – society, share markets, weather phenomena, traffic – sooner or later break down because of instabilities brought about by the systems themselves. I found this idea striking
, since the patterns these breakdowns form are the same in artificial systems as they are in nature. The sky was blue, and as wide as it is only at the sea, and although the sun hung low the air was still warm. The play area with its sand and its meticulously designed play structure, so typical of Sweden, was surrounded by an area of trampled-down gravel with a broad though shallow paddling pond in the middle that some of the children kept throwing armfuls of leaves into. Beyond the gravel there was a lawn, and beyond that an area of houses. The green grass took on a sheen in the sunlight. I said it looked interesting, that patterns occurring in different fields could be so fundamentally alike. He nodded and started talking about evolution. He said the complicated organisms and complex systems all around us are in actual fact quite simple, and that this had to be understood in the light of the huge period of time in which they have developed. A million years, he said, is so much time we’re incapable of grasping it. So try thinking of twenty million years. Or sixty million. But time in itself is simple. The principle of evolution is simple too. It’s all about optimization, the best way of going about a matter. In other words, the most efficient. Everything in nature strives for efficiency. When the ice opens up, the crack travels by following the points of weakness. When glass breaks it’s the same thing. The cracks follow the weakest points.
“But there’s no will in it,” I said. “It’s pure mechanics. A law of nature.”
“Law?” he replied. “Forget laws for a minute, they’ll only distract you. What’s important is what happens. A glass breaks at the point where it breaks most easily. A branch snaps at the point where it snaps most easily. It’s the optimization that’s the thing. Leaves need sunlight, yes, so they seek the most efficient way of getting some. If the branches have to lift them higher, then the branches will lift them higher. If you place obstacles in the path of ants, what happens at first is confusion, but the confusion is only temporary, because if you go back after a while you’ll see that the ants are now following a new path which is the shortest route around the obstacles. They optimize. The ants don’t know it’s the shortest route, in the same way as ice is oblivious to the fact that it cracks along the path of least resistance.”
My Struggle, Book 6 Page 3