“Oh, by the way,” she says. “I saw they were looking for part-time help down at the Co-op. Why doesn’t she apply for that?” she asks, looking straight at me and giving me a stiff smile. I don’t answer right away. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell her that Helen isn’t fit to work, not the way she is at the moment, she will not drop it. She acts as if she takes it for granted that Helen is looking for work, hoping that this will make me see what she has apparently long since recognized: that Helen is more than well enough to work and that what she really needs is a good kick up the backside. I look at her, realize that I’m getting a bit tired of this, I think she could be a little more understanding, considering how low she was herself at one time, she ought at least to be able to show Helen a little more understanding than she does.
I look at her and force a smile.
“I’ll let her know,” I say. “But Mom,” I say, and then I pause, look at her and smile again. “You mustn’t go comparing everybody with yourself, you know. Not everybody is as much of a glutton for work as you are,” I say, telling her what she wants to hear, it’s the best way to stop her criticizing Helen. This might not even be about Helen, anyway. When Mom starts hinting that Helen’s neglecting her duties it might be that what she really wants is for us to remember that she has never done that. This might be her way of saying she’d like us to show respect for how hard-working and conscientious she has been, how she soldiered on and how much she sacrificed after Dad was left paralyzed. She’s been far too hard on herself at times, Mom, in fact if you ask me she’s been just about running herself into the ground lately. I’ve told her so many times that she should take it a bit easier, but it does no good. I look at her. “And anyway,” I say, “times have changed. Maybe people just aren’t used to working as much or as hard as you and Dad did,” I add, making sure to give him his share of the credit.
“Yes, well, that’s as may be,” Mom says. She likes this turn in the conversation, I can see, her face immediately brightens up. She tries to hide it by burying her nose in the hollow of Daniel’s throat again, but I can tell that she’s pleased. “Well, that just how things were in those days,” she says. “I had to learn to work hard to keep things going, because there wasn’t much help to be had,” she goes on, adopting this very matter-of-fact tone, trying to make out that it was no big deal, but I can tell by her face and her voice that she’s gratified and she shows no more sign of bitching about Helen, maybe she doesn’t feel the need as long as she’s being given credit for always being such a hard and conscientious worker.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dad says, breaking in and grinning wryly as he picks up his coffee cup and takes a sip.
Mom turns and gives him a dirty look, she holds his eye for a moment or two, but doesn’t say anything, simply gives a little sniff, then she turns away again.
No one says a word. The flies are buzzing around the flowerbed. “In the Summertime” is playing on the radio. I look at Dad, he puts his cup down on the rail, then he looks at me and grins and I don’t really know what to say, I never really know what to say when he gets like this. It’s hard to make any comment without referring to the fact that he’s disabled, I mean it’s because he’s disabled that he plays up like this, I know it is, it really rankles him that Mom had to run the farm almost single-handed after his accident, and this is how he reacts, by being sarcastic in a kind of mean, spiteful way. Another moment or two passes and still no one says anything, and then I feel a surge of guilt, because I know that any mention of how hard-working Mom is only reminds him of his own inadequacy, it’s been like that ever since the accident so that was a bit thoughtless of me.
“No, we’re going to go in and put another outfit on you, so we are,” Mom says, acting as if she isn’t the least bit bothered by Dad. “Aren’t we, Daniel?” she says. “Yes we are, we can’t have you wearing a pink onesie, can we? Not when you’re called after a big, tough lion killer,” she adds, and she gets up off the step. “Talk to you later,” she says, looking at me and smiling for a second, then she carries Daniel off into the house.
Neither Dad nor I say anything. On the radio someone is talking about the semi-finals of the World Cup being on television this evening and a bumblebee drones quietly past. It lands on one of the sunflowers growing up the side of the house and the flower bobs under its weight for a moment or two.
“Well, I’d better be getting on, as well,” I say.
“Yes, indeed,” Dad says. “If you’re going to sell off your birthright then you’d better get on with it.” He looks at me and smirks.
“Dad, come on,” I say.
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it, there’s a lot to get rid of,” he says.
“Look, we’ve been through all this.”
“Yes, and a whole lot of good it did, seeing as your mind was already made up,” he says, still smirking.
I’m about to start explaining why it makes sense to sell this plot and the others I’ve cleared for summer cottages, but I don’t, he’s heard it so many times before and to be honest I think he does understand why it has to be this way, it’s just that he cares so much about our land, that’s why he acts the way he does. It may only be a matter of a few acres of rock, heather and blueberries that we can’t use for anything, and it may well be that we need the money, but that doesn’t mean it’s any easier for me to sell it, I’ve never said it was, not when we’re talking about land that’s been in our family for generations. I run a hand over the top of my head and give a little sigh. I almost say that selling the land is as hard for me as it is for him, but I don’t have the chance, because just then the plumbers appear, carrying the old washing machine. They come up the basement steps and along the hall. It’s Svendsen himself and his apprentice, their backs are straining, they’re a bit red in the face and their mouths are drawn so tight you can’t see their lips.
“Oops, looks like we’d better get out of the way,” I say, moving aside. The plumbers don’t say a word, they just sidle past us, taking short, quick steps, edge down the wheelchair ramp and over to the van, then they dump the washing machine onto the gravel with a thud.
“Holy shit,” the apprentice puffs. He takes off his cap and wipes his brow with the back of his hand.
“That’s a beast of a machine,” Svendsen says. He rests his elbow on the side of the pickup and lets out a loud “whew,” stands for a second or two getting his breath back then he looks up at Dad. “Twenty-five years old, was that what you said?” he asks.
“Yep, twenty-five,” Dad says.
“The machines they’re making these days are a bit lighter, to put it mildly,” Svendsen says, taking off his work glove and running a hand through his gray, almost white hair.
“Maybe so,” Dad says, “but I don’t really recall it being all that heavy,” he says, trying to seem a little surprised. I can tell by his face and his voice, he’s pretending to be surprised by how heavy they think the machine is, so we’ll all think that he must have been a real he-man in his day. I can read him like a book, and I know that’s what he’s after. I look across at Svendsen and his apprentice, they’re still struggling to get their breath back before heaving the washing machine onto the bed of the truck. “But of course I was a young man when I carried it down those stairs,” Dad adds, then he picks up his cup and takes a sip of coffee.
“Aye, I’ll bet you were,” Svendsen mutters, shooting a glance at the apprentice and raising his eyebrows. The apprentice grins back at him. It hurts me to see this, I turn to look at Dad, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed and I feel a little relieved, I know how that sort of thing can get to him, he’s so touchy. I look at him, look at his skinny legs—thighs and calves so thin that even the narrowest trouser legs lie in folds around him on the wheelchair seat. I watch him for a moment and then I feel myself being overwhelmed by concern and fondness for him. I have the urge to say or do something that will make him happy, something that’ll make him feel useful or whatever.
“You know tha
t complaint I filed against the guy who built the new jetty,” I say. “We’ve got an arbitration meeting with the Consumer Council coming up soon, you wouldn’t consider coming with me and giving me a bit of support?” I ask, saying the first thing that pops into my head, but it wasn’t such a stupid thing to say because I know such situations are right up Dad’s street, he loves it when he has the chance to show that nobody can take him for a ride, and this arbitration meeting could easily provide him with just such a chance. “I’m completely hopeless at things like that,” I add, just to emphasize that I really could do with his help, and it’s true, I could do with his help at this meeting.
“You mean you need a grumpy old bastard like me, is that it?” Dad says, grinning and speaking loud enough for the plumbers to hear us, calling himself a grumpy old bastard, but grinning all the while to let the plumbers know he’s only joking, he wants them to think: here’s a man who stands up for his rights, that’s what he’s after.
“Well, if you want to put it like that,” I say and I glance at the plumbers and chuckle, like I’m in on the joke.
“Nah, you know what, Ole,” Dad says. “You’re nearly forty and if you ask me it’s a bit ridiculous for you to come running to me every time things don’t quite go your way.”
I stand there staring at him. The plumbers glance at us, then they look at each other and grin again. I feel my cheeks start to burn, this’ll make a great story for Svendsen to tell, it’ll be all around the island in a couple of days, I’m sure. I look at Dad, feeling both embarrassed and annoyed, I mean, how often do I ask him for help? I don’t know when I last asked him for anything and yet he goes and does this, making me look like a little boy who runs crying to his daddy every time things get difficult. Although I know why he says these things, of course, I know he’s doing this to make himself look like the man he longs to be. He’s the one who needs help, not me, but he talks as if it was the other way around, reinventing himself as a man whom I’m somehow supposed to be totally reliant on, that’s what he’s doing. I stand for a moment just staring at him, and now it’s his turn to blush, he must realize that he’s gone too far, making a fool of me like this, he must realize that I can contradict his statement, any time I want, make fun of it even. I’ve half a mind to do it too, I’ve half a mind to point to that wheelchair and ask who cries for whom when things get difficult, but I won’t, I wouldn’t sink that low. I shouldn’t grudge him this fleeting sense of having some power in his life.
“Ah, well,” he says with an attempt at a grin, he knows it’ll put him in a bad light if I say what I’m thinking, so he’s trying to laugh the whole thing off. I look at him and try to smile back, as if confirming his version of what’s going on between us, as if acknowledging that he was only joking. “It’ll be fine, I’m sure,” he carries on. “Just you put me in the picture and I’ll come with you.”
“Great,” I say, still smiling. I shoot a glance at the plumbers, but they’re not looking our way, they’re both hunched over the washing machine, trying to get a good grip on it, and I turn back to Dad. “Right, well, see you later,” I say and raise a rather limp hand in a wave.
“See you,” he says.
I turn and make my way across to the car and all at once I feel a little tired, a little heavy-headed after all that’s been said and done this morning. It’s been a bit much, all this, first that bother with Jørgen, then with Helen, and finally with Mom and Dad. Oh, well, it’ll all work out okay in the end—this, too. I open the car door and heavily slump down onto the seat, look back at Dad as I start the car, he picks up his newspaper, gives his thumb a little lick before opening it. I feel a surge of pity for him. I know he doesn’t want to be pitied, or at least that’s what he’s always saying, but I can’t help it, no matter how many years it’s been since the accident, sometimes I still feel pity for him. Not so much because he’s in a wheelchair, but because he’s never been able to reconcile himself to that fact. He won’t admit it to himself, but everybody around him knows that he hasn’t reconciled himself to it, not altogether, not properly. He still has this urge to help in ways in which he can’t possibly help, and this bothers him more than he’s prepared to acknowledge, maybe even more than he actually realizes, because I’m not sure he’s aware that it’s this urge that lies behind his constant need to call attention to himself and appear bigger and more important than he is. I don’t think he is, I don’t think he realizes that this craving for attention represents a vain attempt to free himself from his handicap. I drive out of the yard and up the slope, hear the rattle of the trailer as I turn onto the bumpy farm track running up to the top of the hill.
Otterøya, July 8th, 2006
I’m almost a bit embarrassed by the kind of goody-goody, comic-book language I used the other day in my description of our life at the camp. I kind of feel as if it was written by someone trying to make fun of the kids being depicted or at best someone who sees only their cute, harmless sides and doesn’t take them seriously. But that’s not the case at all, believe me. Obviously we didn’t talk exactly the way I’ve written, we may not have used expressions such as “armed to the teeth” and “yellow dogs” all that often. But if I’m to present a clear picture of the imaginary world we inhabited up there in the forest and of how we saw ourselves and each other when we were running about up there, then this is the language I have to use. It’s much the same as me writing that we wore feathers in our hair and loincloths made from cut-up sheets. I seem to remember that one of us did show up in a get-up like that one summer’s day in the late 70s or the early 80s, but it wasn’t a regular thing. Most of us wore perfectly ordinary shorts or faded bell-bottom jeans, I think. But if I’m to show how we saw ourselves and each other and, not least, how we would have been viewed by outsiders, then it’s more correct to kit us out with loincloths than with jeans. Because in our minds we were all Indians.
And this Wild West-inspired fantasy world was very much your creation. It was you who decided what rules applied in the camp, what it was okay to do and what wasn’t okay, how we should or shouldn’t talk. The rest of us interpreted your rules in our own way, of course, and acted accordingly, and since most of us read the Silver Arrow comics, the Deerfoot books and various other key sources of inspiration, naturally we sometimes came up with our own suggestions or ideas about how to shape our fantasy world. But everything that was said or done still had to be approved by you before it could be incorporated into this part of our boyish society, if I can call it that. You made no comment, for example, if I called myself Swift Horse or Per wanted to be known as Strong Bear, but when one of the little kids said he wanted to be called Obi-Wan Kenobi, you got annoyed and told him to find himself a proper name at once. Nor did you like it if we said things like “I’ve got to get back for dinner” or “My mom and dad said I had to be home by six” because that brought elements from the real world into our imaginary universe and as you’ll see from my last letter this could confuse and spoil things, jolting us out of the dream world we inhabited. But the worst sin anyone could commit was to remind us of what we all knew really: that we didn’t actually have any enemy. Both the real-life camp and the imaginary universe that went with it were built, after all, around the idea that we had an enemy that we had to defend ourselves against. The fact that we kept watch, that we made weapons and built stockades around our brush shelters, that we practiced hand-to-hand fighting and laid all sorts of plans for attacking and retreating, all of this we did because we had to defend ourselves against an enemy. So to say out loud that this enemy didn’t actually exist, to admit that the kids from Husvika were no threat to us and probably never would be, would be tantamount to destroying the whole foundation of everything we did, all the effort we had put into it would seem worthless without an enemy, all the pleasure we got from playing at the camp would be gone, our life up there in the forest would become meaningless.
And that was exactly why, as chief, you would take drastic action to keep alive the notion th
at we were under constant threat. Not only would you get angry and upset and attack the culprit both verbally and physically, the way you did with Karoline and Hauk, but in order to repair the damage I know for a fact that one night you actually sneaked out of the house and up to the forest and tore down everything we had built. Shelters, stockades, lookout post, you destroyed everything, and afterwards not only did you blame the Husvikings, you were even crafty enough to plant clues that confirmed that this had indeed been the work of the kids from Husvika. “Look!” Per cried, pointing to what we all recognized as a baseball cap belonging to one of the Husvikings. Only later did you admit that the Husviking concerned had left the cap lying in one of the goals at the football pitch and that you had taken it and left it next to the toppled totem pole, where Per found it.
And you achieved your aim, of course. “Revenge!” Per cried. “Death to the Husvikings!” I screamed. “No mercy!” you yelled, brandishing your spear above your head.
And as if that weren’t enough, just after this, when we’d got over the shock and were busy rebuilding the camp, who should come strolling up the path but Hauk and the girls, each carrying a berry pail.
Well, we asked, now did they believe us, now did they see what sort of enemy we were up against?
The girls were stunned, they just stood there staring at the ruins.
So it was true after all, they mumbled. We hadn’t been speaking with forked tongues when we told them about the Husvikings.
You frowned.
“Why on earth would we lie about a thing like that?”
No, the girls had no answer to that. But at least they no longer doubted us. And could they help us to rebuild the camp?
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