At the far end of the island he stopped and turned. From here you have a wonderful view, he said. The best apartments are at the top, all with large balconies, as you can see. The less expensive ones are farther down, but they are all spacious and of a high standard.
“Yes, it really looks wonderful,” I said. “Absolutely fantastic.”
Linda looked at me.
“What do you think?” I said.
“Yes, it’s very nice.”
There was a negative tone to her voice and I felt a twinge of irritation. But he probably didn’t notice anything. Only those closest to her could interpret the tiny variations of mood and temper that constantly emanated from her. No, not even them. Only I could.
“Perhaps we should go back,” the man said. “Then you can see one of the apartments from the inside.”
“I’m not sure that’s necessary,” Linda said. “We’ve formed a picture of what they’re like now.”
He looked at me, and I smiled apologetically.
“It wouldn’t do any harm, would it?” I said. “We can have a little peep, can’t we? Don’t you think?”
She nodded, reluctantly it had to be said, but she assented, and I called the children, who of course didn’t want to go. Vanja was beating the surface of the water in the fountain with a little stick she had found, Heidi was lying on her stomach with her hands deeply immersed in the water.
“Hey, girls, we’re going now. We just have to see one room. There’s an ice cream for you afterwards.”
“Don’t want one,” Heidi said. I grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up.
“No!” Vanja said, and ran away. Heidi kicked and struggled. I laid her over my shoulder and ran after Vanja. Fortunately Heidi was laughing, that wonderful bubbly laughter she had come out with ever since the first few months of her life. I put her down, took a few quick steps, and caught up with Vanja, who had become jealous of her sister.
“I want Mommy,” she said.
She always wanted Mommy, regardless of what I did. Sometimes I thought it was because I was so hard on her and unreasonable; sometimes I thought that was just the way it was.
“She’s over there!” I said now. “All you have to do is walk!”
She squinted into the sun, and her mouth opened as though connected with her eyes in a secret, to her unknown, pact. I knew the mannerism from Linda. When I had been most in love and my insides burned like a forest fire it had been as though the slight movements of her lips passed straight into my soul. I had never been as open as I was then. The whole world streamed through me.
Vanja turned and ran over to Linda, grabbed her hand and snuggled up to her. Heidi had sat down on the ground; I lifted her up and followed the others.
In a corridor at the top of the hotel the man asked us to wait, he just had to check if the room was empty and had been cleaned.
“I want to go to the beach,” Vanja said.
“Soon,” I said. “We just want to have a look at this room.”
“Why?” Vanja asked.
“Good question,” Linda said, and smiled at her.
At that moment the man reappeared and waved us into a room. Open windows, curtains fluttering in the Atlantic breeze, light colors, shiny stone floor, the feeling of trespassing as Heidi and Vanja walked around, no sandals on the sofa, do you hear me, don’t pull at it, no, be careful now, you might break it! He took us onto the large balcony, the sea blue and heavy and glittering in the sun, the sky vast and deep, the cliffs along the coast to the south in shade. The cars on the road there tiny, like busy insects. He said all this could be ours if we wanted, and without it costing us that much. I asked how much. He repeated that you pay a one-time sum and you could be here for a few weeks every year. It was like buying a stake in an apartment or in a mountain cabin, he said with a smile to me. No maintenance, no cleaning, everything taken care of, so we could have a luxury holiday every year for the rest of our lives. As parents of small children we deserved that, he said. Live in a paradise like this every single summer. And if you prefer to buy a stake in one of the smaller apartments you retain all the rights and the full service, of course.
He asked us to follow him. Making us such an offer meant that he actually believed we could afford something like this. That was why he was spending so much of his time on us. So at least he hadn’t thought we were a traveling flea circus, as Linda was wont to call us. In the corridor he told us how much the cheapest apartment cost, and the most expensive. The price wasn’t out of the question, at least not for the bottom of the range.
We were ushered into a huge carpeted conference room full of men in shirts and ties and women wearing blouses sitting in front of computers, many of them engaged in conversation with clients like us. There were several TV screens showing pictures of the hotel and the countryside around, there was a lounge with brochures displayed on a low table, the air was cool, almost cold, the atmosphere one of professionalism and efficiency. He guided us to a high table where there was a thick folder he asked us to peruse. It turned out that if you bought a stake you didn’t have to come here every year because there were other equally luxurious hotels all over the world where we, if we paid the one-time fee, could stay free of charge. We wouldn’t have that option if we bought the standard holiday home or mountain cabin. Now he would leave us alone, there was something important he had to do, but he would be back.
I thumbed through the folder, Linda took care of the children. My eyes lingered on a hotel in the Alps. The photo had been taken in the autumn, before the snow had fallen, and the sight of the countryside, the steep rock faces with the green conifers and the melancholic glowing foliage at the bottom, the fences and country roads, and the old, white-walled hotel awakened a great yearning in me. Oh, to be there. I turned the pages, there were hotels in Mexico, Italy, France. We could travel around the world every summer or autumn, the whole family, it would be a magnificent experience, at least for the children. Perhaps my mother could stand security so we could get a loan? Or I could get a bigger advance from the publisher?
I called Linda and showed her the photo of the hotel in the Alps. I suppose she must have seen how excited I was because she said it was lovely, but that we couldn’t afford it. Don’t say that, I said. We can probably wangle it somehow. It is actually a good opportunity. Not the hotel here necessarily, but all the others. And it’s not a lot of money. Not really.
“We don’t have any money,” Linda said. “And I have a problem with the feel of this place. I’ve had enough of the upper crust in my life.”
We sat down. It felt as though we were in a large prestigious law firm or at the European headquarters of a multinational company. The man who had shown us around appeared at the other end of the room a few minutes later and beckoned us over. Our relationship changed when we sat down on one side of the desk and he, with all his piles of papers and folders in front of him, on the other. We were his clients. He asked us what we thought of all we had seen, was this for us? So he assumed that we were affluent enough to enter into a deal. It felt good that he could see past our clothes and style. He was taking us very seriously. I said we were definitely interested. Perhaps not in this particular hotel, but all the others and the fact that you could move around. You could, couldn’t you? I had to know for sure, I said. Yes, that was correct, he said. So would we be able to manage the financial side? I wasn’t sure. It depended. Would you like us to look at it together? he asked. Yes, we can do that, I said as the children began to move around in territory that grew bigger the more secure they felt. What is your income? he asked. I told him how much I earned, the scholarship plus my monthly consultancy fee, and added that in the good periods, when I came out with a new book, it was much higher. Then I could earn several hundred thousand in one go. One way of doing this was to take out a loan now and then pay it off as the money came in. That is one option, yes, he said. How much are your monthly expenses? I told him, and he wrote it down and looked up at me. Do you have any
savings? If not, it will be hard for you to get a loan on this. No, we don’t have anything else, I said. But it would be possible to get someone to stand surety for us, I think. Do you think you could arrange that now? You can call from here free of charge.
I looked at Linda.
“That would be a bit stressful,” I said. “Can’t we do this when we get back home? Just take some papers with us and then read them at our leisure?”
He shook his head and smiled.
“What I’m giving you now is a special offer. You’re entitled to it because you’re here. It requires you to make up your minds rather quickly. There’s a lot of interest, you know. We can’t reserve it just for you.”
“But we can’t tie this up here and now,” I said.
“Do you think you have the means to go through with this? If you know you have, you can sign now and juggle the finances when you get home. But you have to be absolutely sure.”
“We can’t afford it,” Linda said. “Nowhere near.”
He gave a sigh of resignation and leaned back.
I looked at her.
“We can try,” I said. “We can do it if we want.”
“But do we want to? I couldn’t imagine coming here every summer for the rest of my life. It sounds like a nightmare to be honest.”
The impoliteness of what she said cut me like a knife.
“I think it’s really nice here,” I said. “But the hotel here isn’t the point. It’s all the others we gain access to. Actually, I think it’s a very good idea.”
“But we can’t make up our minds now. We have to think it over!”
I looked at him.
“Can we think about it? And then contact you from home?”
“As I said, the offer is only valid for today. But who was it you thought could stand surety for a loan?”
“My mother possibly,” I said.
He pushed the phone over to me.
“You can give her a call now,” he said. “Then we can clear this up right away.”
“We need more time,” I said. “We have so little money that such an outlay has enormous consequences for us. We’ll have to think about it.”
I spoke in an almost pleading voice so that he would understand I wished things were not as they were. But it didn’t help. When I said that, he seemed to change personality. All his amiability was gone, his kindly eyes went black, he rose to his feet, his movements stiff with irritation.
“If you don’t have any money, what are you doing here?” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“If you go out and turn right you’ll come to a terraza. Take a seat and a colleague will come and take care of you.”
He turned and walked over to one of his colleagues. I felt like running after him and apologizing again. Or telling him we were joking, of course we had the money, give me the contract and we’ll sign. Instead I stood up, lifted Heidi, and we made our way to the exit with the defeat stinging and aching inside me.
“Let’s just get out of here, no?” Linda said. “We don’t need any more of this.”
“We promised we would wait for his colleague,” I said. “Out there, didn’t he say?”
I nodded toward a terraza behind a glass partition. We went out, sat down at one of the tables. No one came, Heidi was tired, it was her bedtime and she whined while Vanja nagged us for an ice cream and to go to the beach.
“Let’s go,” Linda said. “Come on.”
“No,” I said. “We promised we’d wait. So we wait.”
The man who was to take care of us was young, wore black Prada sunglasses, a white shirt, and a tie. He had the same folder as his older colleague, placed it on the table in front of him and said in English he had an offer for us. We could have a two-week stay at the hotel at a much reduced price, almost half price in fact, he said.
“We came here for the beach,” Linda said. “We were promised tickets for beach chairs today. We’ve already been here for two hours.”
He looked at me.
“We don’t have the money, I’m afraid,” I said.
It was true, I had five thousand kronor left in my account, at most. It had to last us for the next four days.
He got up. His movements too showed signs of irritation.
“Then I’ll get you your precious tickets,” he said, and was gone.
“I’m utterly exhausted,” Linda said. “And hungry.”
“I understand,” I said. “But we can eat at one of the cafés down there and then you can relax on the beach afterwards. Heidi’s fallen asleep. And I can take care of Vanja.”
The salesman didn’t return for half an hour. Mute, a scornful grimace on his young face, he placed the tickets on the table and left. We had something to eat, Heidi slept in the stroller, I went for a swim with Vanja, who used up the whole roll of film in thirty minutes. Even though the sand was fine-grained and golden, and the water in the lagoon an exotic green, it felt as if we were there on sufferance and could be thrown out at any point. We hadn’t shown ourselves to be worthy enough. But we couldn’t go home, not until the taxi came for us and the other Swedish couple, who were now lying a few beach chairs away and, unlike us, seemed to be enjoying life.
* * *
“I would never have believed I’d be glad to get back here,” I said as, some hours later, the minibus turned off the main road and drove down to the hotel. “But I am.”
“Me too,” Linda said. “Imagine you actually considering buying a time-share!”
“Yes, it’s unbelievable. But the worst is that I didn’t catch on. I didn’t get what was happening until afterwards! But you did, right?”
“Yes. I wondered what you were up to.”
“I was taken in hook, line, and sinker. Oh, the thought of it is so painful! Accepting the tickets in the first place without realizing what was going on. An hour in a taxi. Who would pay for that without any hope of gain?”
Linda laughed.
“Yes, go on, laugh,” I said. “We won’t breathe a word of this to anyone, OK?”
“OK!”
In the evening, after we had been to see Coco the clown on the stage by the pools, and the children had gone to bed, we sat on the balcony and talked at length for the first time in ages, me with my feet on the railing and a bottle of beer in my hand, Linda with her hands folded over her voluminous belly. We decided never to go on such a vacation again, it was pointless, neither one of us enjoyed it, everything was done for the children, based on some notion of the family and the ideal of a normal, healthy father and mother and two children by the pool, on a beach, in a Spanish restaurant, suntanned and happy, all of which, however, paled the closer we came to the reality of it, and in the end, once we were actually there, went up in smoke. We should have rented a house, I said, somewhere we liked, it wouldn’t have been any more expensive. I agree, Linda answered. I don’t like this any more than you do. But the worst, I said, is that I find myself on two levels the whole time. One level is the children’s because they are having a really good time, they can’t see through all this, for them Coco is a genuine clown, a fairy-tale figure. They have no idea that the waiters despise us or that they show Norwegian TV and sell Dagbladet in the kiosk, for them this is a fantastic place, and I have to keep thinking that too, if you see what I mean. This is a world for children, not for adults. And then I think that almost our whole culture is too. That it’s actually for children.
I looked at her.
“But that doesn’t bother you?”
“Yes, it does. Of course it does. Was I inattentive?”
“A bit. But it doesn’t matter. You have other things on your mind. I understand that.”
“Not at all,” she said.
“What were you thinking about?”
“Heidi. It feels almost unfair for her to have another sibling when she’s so small.”
“It’s only good for her.”
“Maybe.”
“It is as it is anyway,” I said, on my
feet to get another beer from the fridge. The effect of the two I had already drunk lay like a veil of well-being over my consciousness, and another one, I knew, would charge it with a faint sense of anticipation, which a couple more would dispel, whereafter everything would be good. A couple more and I would convert my mood into actions, anesthetized against any objections and common sense, and then, if I went out, everything inside would be glittering and sparkling.
Oh, how I loved drinking.
I loved it.
The longing to do so came only when I had drunk a little, then I seemed to remember what it was like and realized what I really wanted, which was to drink copious quantities, drink myself senseless, unconscious, as deep down in the shit as I could go. I wanted to drink myself out of house and home, drink myself out of family and friends, drink myself out of everything I loved and held dear. Drink, drink, drink. Oh my God, just drinking and drinking, night and day, summer and autumn, winter and spring.
I opened the fridge door, held the cold, slim beer bottle, whipped off the cap, and took a couple of long swigs before going back to the balcony.
My Struggle, Book 6 Page 106