“What’s the matter with you?” she asks, trying to look kind of surprised, acting like she doesn’t know what’s the matter with me. I don’t reply, just sit there staring at her. “Ole?” she says, but I still don’t reply. There’s so much, I don’t know where to start, so I just sit there staring at her, feeling somehow overwhelmed, powerless, feeling more and more drained and weary, I can’t face fighting with her, can’t bring myself to call her bluff, can’t bear to hear her twisting what actually happened, distorting the truth, because that’s what she’ll do, I know, if I call her on this. She’ll come up with all sorts of excuses and explanations and counter-accusations and I simply can’t cope with being drawn into that maze right now.
“What’s the matter, Ole?” she asks again, trying to sound slightly worried now, as if that’ll convince me that she really doesn’t know what’s the matter. I look her straight in the eye, try to let her see that I know that she knows, but she looks genuinely worried, she puts on such a good act that it doesn’t look like an act at all and I feel myself giving up.
“Nothing,” I mutter, then I get up and walk out. I walk straight past her. I’m close to tears now and I won’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I refuse to be the poor bastard who cries because his wife has been unfaithful to him, I won’t let her think I need her that much. But she follows me, I can hear it, I hear her draw the pan off the burner, turn off the heat and come after me.
“Ole,” she says. “What is it?” she asks, managing to sound both surprised and scared. She acts so well that she doesn’t sound as if she’s acting at all, but I know she is, I know it’s an act. I walk down the hall, open the bathroom door and a strong smell of shit hits me in the face, she hasn’t put the lid of Daniel’s diaper bin back on properly. I step into the bathroom and close the door behind me, but the key’s not in the keyhole so I can’t lock it. I just stand there looking around for the key. I look on the floor just under the door, on Daniel’s changing table and on the shelf next to the mirror—and there it is, lying next to a squashed tube of toothpaste with a squiggle of blue and white toothpaste trailing out of the top. I lean forward to pick it up, but I’m too late, she’s already opening the door.
“Ole,” she says again, looking at me in alarm. “Can’t you at least tell me what’s wrong?” she says. “I’m worried about you,” she adds, and she sounds worried too, she both sounds and looks genuine. I don’t say anything, don’t know what to say. A moment passes and then she moves in close to me, strokes my cheek as she gazes at me with those worried eyes of hers, as if meaning to comfort and care for me now. First she crushes me and now she’s acting like she’s coming to my rescue. This is her way of controlling me, I don’t know if she’s aware of it herself, but I’m aware of it, it’s a way of gaining control and power. I don’t say anything, don’t know what to say, I just stand here letting her stroke my cheek, letting her comfort me. I don’t want to be rescued like this, but I just stand here, I shut my eyes and swallow, smell her scent, the scent of shampoo and cigarettes. After a moment I feel her other hand on my back, she draws me gently to her, my body is rigid, my arms hang by my sides and all of a sudden she kisses my throat. I feel her soft, moist lips on my skin, once and then again, she kisses me lightly all the way up my throat to my ear, blows gently in my ear, she’s trying to turn me on now, she knows how horny I can be the morning after a night on the booze and now she wants us to have a make-up fuck, a quickie in the bathroom, and that’ll be the end of that, I know her, and I know that that’s what she’s trying to do. Another moment passes, then I feel her hand on my crotch, she curls her fingers around my balls, squeezes gently and I feel myself growing hard, I don’t want to get a hard-on, but I’m getting one anyway.
“Hmm, it’s so big,” she murmurs in my ear, saying what she thinks I want to hear. “I want it,” she says, raising her free hand and pulling the towel off her head. Her damp brown hair flops down onto her shoulders and for a split second the scent of shampoo is slightly stronger. I say nothing, just swallow, but this is not on, I want to, but I won’t, I know what she’s up to and she knows I know and I refuse to go along with this charade, it’s ridiculous, it’s so blatant, too good to be true.
“No, Helen,” I say, pushing her hand away from my crotch.
She doesn’t say anything, she just stands there looking at me, a moment passes and then I sink down onto the shower stool behind me, place both hands on the top of my head, sit like that for a couple of seconds, then I lower my hands, bring my head up sharply and look straight at her.
“I’m sick of this, Helen, I’m sick of you trying to control me the way you do.”
“Control you?”
“Yes,” I say, “maybe that’s not the right word, but … that’s how it feels to me. You made a fool of me out there last night, you ignored me completely and flirted blatantly with Per to drive me wild with jealousy and then, once you’ve brought me down far enough, you come here acting like you want to comfort me, like you’re coming to my rescue. I don’t know if you realize it yourself, but to me it seems like you’re trying to make me feel like I can’t manage without you, to me … it seems like a crude way of gaining control over me,” I say.
“In what way is it not easy being me?” she asks.
I don’t say anything for a moment, this isn’t exactly the question I’d been expecting and I sit there looking at her, a bit bewildered. I know, of course, that this is a deliberate move on her part, that she’s trying to throw me off-balance by confusing me like this, she always does this and I’m going to have to watch what I say now and not get drawn into a trap, shouldn’t forget why we’re having this conversation.
“You’re always talking about how it’s not easy being me, why do you say that?” she goes on. Then she stops, looks me straight in the eye, and I hold her gaze for a second then look at the bathroom floor, there’s a used cotton ball lying on one of the tiles. I reach out my foot and nudge it forward an inch, look up at her again.
“Oh come on, Helen,” I sigh, “don’t dodge the issue.”
“I’m not dodging the issue,” she says. “I’m simply trying to tell you there’s no reason to feel sorry for me.”
“I’ve never said I felt sorry for you,” I say. I don’t want to get caught up in this maze she’s trying to lure me into, don’t want to rise to the bait, but I do it anyway, it just happens.
“No, but you’ve always behaved as if you feel sorry for me,” she says. She tightens the belt of her dressing gown, crosses her arms and stands there looking at me. “I don’t need you to save me, Ole.”
“Helen,” I say and then I stop, run a hand over my head. “Stop trying to talk your way out of it, that’s not what I said,” I say. “Why can’t you …?”
“No,” she snaps. “I’m not trying to talk my way out of it, I’m trying to tell you that it’s you who’s trying to control me and not the other way round. You like to see me as this poor, pathetic creature that you rescued from ruin, and you do everything you can to get me to see myself that way too, because that gives you a hold over me,” she says. “You laugh at Knut and all those other guys who buy themselves some poor hard-up Russian woman, but you’re no fucking better, you think you own me just because you own this house and pay all the bills and buy all the food. Deep down you see me as bought and paid for, so don’t you fucking talk to me about power and control,” she says. “All I am to you is another piece of equipment you’ve bought for the fucking family farm. You’ve only one aim in life, Ole, and that’s to run this farm as well as you can and make sure that it stays in the family after you’ve done your bit. And in order to do this obviously you need a woman to have children by. That’s why you brought me here.”
“Helen,” I say, gazing at the floor and putting my head in my hands. “How can you say such a thing, that … that’s not how I see you at all, you have to believe me,” I say, and I look up at her again, pause. “You’re not just a piece of equipment to me … I love
you,” I say. “Truly,” I add.
“I don’t believe you,” she says. “You may think it’s me that you love, but it isn’t, the person you love exists only in your head, Ole.”
“Helen, please, don’t say things like that,” I say, and I realize that I’m close to tears, I swallow, clear my throat, trying not to cry. “I love you,” I say again. “You’ve had to cope with so much shit in your life that you find it hard to believe anyone might simply want to make you happy. I realize that, I realize you need time, that you have to learn to trust me, but … we’ve been together for almost two years now, we have a child, you have to believe me when I say that I don’t want anyone but you.”
“Oh, would you listen to yourself, Ole,” she says. “That’s the sort of thing they say in those Wednesday-evening rom-coms on the TV,” she says and she looks me straight in the face and shakes her head. “I’ve had to cope with so much shit that it’s hard for me to believe you really love me, you say, but that’s exactly what I’m talking about … you think that everything I think or say or do can be put down to all the shit I’ve had to deal with in my life. But you’re wrong, I’m not the poor creature that you love, Ole. You don’t have to feel sorry for me, and I don’t need all the care and kindness and tolerance that you’re constantly lavishing on me, quite the opposite really, it almost makes me want to throw up the way you’re always trying to be so fucking nice, you’re so goddamn tolerant that you end up not really caring at all, Ole, not just about me but about everybody. It doesn’t matter what the fuck people say or do to you, you make excuses for them, and it … it drives people crazy, or at least it drives me crazy, it makes me feel like behaving even worse, it makes me feel like hurting you even more. Partly in order to punish you and partly in order to find out how far I can push you, to find out what sort of man you really are, to … I don’t know, but … I feel as if I don’t know you, in fact sometimes I almost have the feeling that you don’t actually exist, you’re so fucking self-effacing that I lose sight of you completely. You just go along with things, and you keep going along with things until it’s like there isn’t anybody there at all and Christ, that really fucking gets to me!”
“But why can’t you just be nice back?” I ask. “I know it’s probably pretty silly and naive of me to ask, but why can’t you try to treat me the way I try to treat you?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, man,” Helen says flinging her hand in the air. She stands there open-mouthed, glaring at me. “Don’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you? All this tolerance, all this kindness of yours, it’s not worth the effort. And it’s wrong to call it tolerance and kindness anyway, because underneath it’s … it’s nothing but sheer selfishness. I don’t believe for one minute in your kindness and tolerance, Ole. I believe you’re suppressing the dark side of yourself and I believe you only pretend to be nice and kind to prove that you’re better than me and everybody else around you. You know something? I’ve never felt as dirty or ashamed or like such a bad person as I have since I moved in with you, and yet I’ve never been treated with more tolerance and kindness. Even when I was living with Tom Roger and he was beating the shit out of me I didn’t despise myself as much as I do now, I’m telling you. It was easier to hang onto my self-respect when I was with him than it is now. Not only because he sometimes behaved like an animal and I seemed human by comparison, but also because it was easier to safeguard myself against his way of controlling me. When he beat me up we both knew that it would end with him crawling back to me on all fours, begging for mercy and forgiveness. And sometimes—not often, just now and again—I’d actually do or say something that I knew would goad him into battering me, because that was one sure way of getting him to go to pieces completely and that gave me at least a little of the control and the self-respect that I needed and that I normally had so fucking little of. It sounds totally sick, but that’s actually how it was with us by the end. But with you, Ole, I get nowhere. No matter what the fuck I do, I’m still the poor pathetic creature that you want me to be, no matter what the fuck I say or do I always end up confirming the picture you’ve painted of me, no matter what the fuck I do you have power and control over me.”
“But I don’t see you as a poor pathetic creature, Helen,” I say, and I can no longer stop myself from crying, my eyes fill up and the tears stream down my face. “Anything but,” I say. “I’m actually afraid of you sometimes. I often balk at saying what I think or feel because I’m afraid of how you’ll react, it’s like I’m walking on eggshells sometimes. I do everything I can to keep you sweet and I … I don’t know what to say, Helen, but I love you, and it hurts that you don’t believe me, it hurts me to know that I haven’t been able to make you see how much I care about you,” I say, then I put my head in my hands and sit there staring at the floor again, crying softly. Moments pass, then I feel Helen’s hand on the back of my head, she pulls me gently to her, presses my brow to her stomach and lightly ruffles the hair at the nape of my neck, it’s ending just the way it’s not supposed to end: first she crushes me, then she comes to my rescue, soothing and comforting me. I don’t want it to be like this, but it is, there’s nothing I can do to prevent it. A moment, and then I run a hand over my face, wipe away the tears.
Then: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” It’s Mom, I whip around and there she is in the doorway, looking daggers at Helen.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Helen asks.
“What am I doing here? Well, in case you’ve forgotten, you have a little boy,” Mom says. “I looked after him while you were getting drunk last night and now I’ve brought him back, he’s in his stroller outside. Oh, and his name’s Daniel, by the way.”
“You might fucking well call before you go barging into people’s homes.”
“Oh, so that you can torment people in peace, you mean?”
“Mom,” I say, wiping away a few tears. I put my head on one side and eye her, “don’t …”
“Oh, but I will, Ole,” she says, cutting me off. “Because this has gone far enough. I can’t stand by and watch any longer, she’s destroying you. You can’t see it yourself, but everybody who knows you can see it. The whole island knows—you’re not well and it shows, you look tired and run down, Ole. I hate to say it, but you seem to have aged ten years in the two years you’ve been living with her, and now you’re taking after her and drinking more than is good for you … you simply can’t go on like this, she’s destroying you.”
“What are you talking about?” Helen asks. “What the fuck do you know about what goes on between Ole and me?”
“Ole is my son and unlike certain other people I could mention I can see only too well when there’s something wrong with my own son,” Mom says.
“Oh, he’s your son all right,” Helen says grinning fiercely. “That’s your problem in a nutshell, you can’t bear the thought that I’ve taken your son away from you. You’re so fucking jealous it’s just not true, you’ve been out to get me right from the start, criticizing every single thing I do.”
“Everything I do?” Mom repeats. “And what do you do, exactly? Apart from lying on the sofa moaning about migraines and pains in your face and God knows what other ailments you’ve dreamed up since you came here.”
“What the fuck do you know about what I do or don’t do,” Helen screams. “Hmm? Nothing! You know nothing and yet you barge straight into my house and start pulling me to pieces. It’s like I’m always saying to Ole, there’s never come anything out of your fucking mouth but sour comments and cigarette smoke,” she screams. She’s quivering with fury and her eyes have changed color; her eyes are like little black marbles in their sockets. “Maybe it’s time you cut that umbilical cord and accepted that Ole’s a grown man and quite capable of deciding for himself what’s best for him,” she says. “You may find this hard to believe, but he’s managing perfectly well without you now,” she says and then she pauses, stares at Mom with those fierce black eyes. “Do you think he’d be li
ving with me if I was as bad as you say I am? Well, do you think so?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, woman,” Mom says, almost shouting herself now. She keeps her eyes locked on Helen’s, glaring at her. She’s every bit as fearless as Helen. “Ole is terrified of losing Daniel, don’t you realize that?” she shouts. “Don’t you realize that he only puts up with you for Daniel’s sake? Ole’s not stupid, Helen, and contrary to what you say he’s not selfish either,” she says. “It’s almost impossible for a man to get custody of a child as long as the mother’s alive, and Ole’s terrified that the same thing’s going to happen to Daniel as happened to Jørgen, don’t you realize that? Ole knows you’re not fit to look after that wee boy on your own, he’s terrified of what sort of man you might take up with, and …”
“Ole,” Helen cries. She eyes me furiously, raising her arm and pointing at Mom. “I won’t put up with this, not in my own house. I’ll thank you to talk to her, because she’s gone too fucking far this time,” she yells.
But I don’t say a word, I just sit there with my head in my hands, staring at the bathroom tiles and feeling more and more bewildered.
“Ole, be a man, for fuck’s sake,” Helen yells.
But I just sit here, I can’t be a man, I just sit here like a fucking wimp, sit there doing nothing while my girlfriend is being bawled out, unable to come to her defense, I ought to come to her defense. Although to some extent Mom’s right, everything’s not okay between Helen and me, we have our problems, but it’s not Mom’s job to sort them out, I shouldn’t need my mother to sort things out between Helen and me, I shouldn’t be the sort of wimp who has to go running to her the minute things get difficult, but that’s what I am—if it’s not Helen who’s coming to my rescue it’s Mom, no matter how I look at it, I’m behaving like a fucking wimp.
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