In Every Moment We Are Still Alive

by Tom Malmquist

  It doesn’t take long before you wake and notice that I am no longer there under the duvet, you find me on the floor in the hall with my back towards the cast-iron radiator, after so many years you know it’s best just to sit down next to me and not touch me, or even ask questions.

  * * *

  —

  Five drops of vitamin D on a spoon. Livia swallows and puts her hands in the yoghurt. No, Livia, not like that, we don’t play with food, I say and wipe her with a damp towel. She clings to my neck when I lift her out of the chair. She toddles over to the basket of toys and throws teddies and wooden blocks into the air, then starts studying a doll Lillemor gave her. I scour the floor where she was sitting and finish off her leftover yoghurt. She drags the doll along the floor. Daddy, she says. Yes, darling? I answer. She tries to clamber onto the sofa. Daddy, she says again. Go on, you can do it, Livia, I say, and she does.

  I can hold the front door of Lundagatan open while pushing Livia through in the buggy. She sits up. In the yard is a steel bicycle rack. Most of the bikes haven’t been used since last summer. Their tyres are partially buried in the gravel and need to be pumped up. Dry leaves have caught between the spokes. Only one bicycle stands out, it has purple plastic roses wrapped around its handlebars. Look, says Livia. She stares at the bicycle. Yes, Papa told you about it yesterday, you’ve such a good memory, Livia, you remember Mum’s bicycle. I put on Livia’s sunhat with the floppy brim and button up her spring jacket, which I found at Stockholm Stadsmission’s second-hand shop on Hornsgatan this winter, it’s been heavily used but there are no holes in it, probably it hails back to the decade when Karin and I were born, it’s milk-white with a floral pattern in faded red. I throw away the bin bags full of prawn peel and nappies then stop on the pavement on Lundagatan. I feel a resistance to taking the short route to Malmgården Pre-School, the route that leads to the right past Högalid Church, a walk of about fifteen minutes, instead I turn left, a detour of close to an hour, past the ice cream kiosk in Skinnarvik Park, under the elms on Ringvägen-Hornsgatan and the block known as Svärdet, where my mother has moved. The park lawns smell stronger than the bins outside the restaurants. Livia lifts her chin into the breeze, litter is rising and falling and sand flying. Plane, she says and gazes up over the leafage of Tantolunden. I squat in front of her and say: Do you know, Livia, those are one of Dad’s favourite things, vapour trails, that’s what they’re called, the lines behind the planes, ever since I was a little boy it’s made me happy looking at them. She laughs because I’m smiling at her. Livia, today I’m not staying with you at the nursery, you’ll be with Ulla and Irja and all the children, there’ll be a right carry-on, you’ll all have snotty noses and you’ll throw soft toys at each other, most likely you’ll be goddamn furious when I come to pick you up. She takes off her sunhat, throws it on the ground, and makes a clucking sound when I pick it up. Livia, that wasn’t fun, well, maybe a little bit fun. During one of my walks with her I stop by the traffic mirror, the one on the sharp curve outside my parents’ house on Gotland. In it I see myself from above, looking down at an angle, I am filled with anguish of a sort that I also get from the works of Bruegel or Goya in your art books, I no longer have thinning hair, this last year I have been losing it, I am marked with a bald patch, I have become an emaciated human being, I have a grey beard and grey hair on my chest, you wouldn’t recognise me if you ran into me in the grass by the deep pool at Eriksdal baths.

  It’s the end of summer and we swim four lengths, you don’t like the smell of chlorine but I like it, there’s a bottle of Chablis in the bicycle basket, Swiss hard cheese, a roast chicken, vine tomatoes, there’s a high-level haze in the sky, you’re ashamed to be drinking wine in the morning and I tell you it’s always winetime somewhere. You have droplets of water around your throat, and there’s nothing else we long for. Three weeks later I am sitting at a table in Bistro Amika scribbling down two lines on the back of a McDonald’s receipt, you are on the operating table in the building next door, it’s raining outside the window, a real downpour, the onslaught makes a booming sound as it comes down over the NeuroCentre. I had those lines published much later, but they did not fit in the poetry collection, they were diminished among all the epic lines there. I think about them sometimes, not every day but often, and I want so much to wander back to 29 August 2004, and sit next to the Tom who wrote them: It’s not the rain that’s falling, it’s the lakes rising. I wouldn’t have the capacity to console him, but I would tell him that these two lines are still very important to Tom, ten years on.

  I change nappies, wash clothes, I go shopping at Hemköp and tie the carrier bags onto the buggy and fill the rucksack with vegetables and fruit, I cook, I bathe her, vacuum the floor and listen to Argerich’s interpretations of Chopin and Ciccolini’s interpretations of Satie but always come back to Richter’s recordings of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, I scour the floors, I let her sit on my shoulders, I talk to her, I explain why I am doing what I am doing, like a sort of sports commentator, she listens, she understands, she has a sense of humour, she learns many words although she has trouble pronouncing them, she prefers Miyazaki’s films to Teletubbies, and Shaun Tan’s fairy tales to picture books, I realise that she is gifted but I think it’s mostly about her need for closeness, she is socially minded, intuitive as you were, she notices that I get more involved if I also enjoy the film or book, I pay the bills, I can only write when she’s asleep but not more than a couple of hours, I can’t manage more than that, I go to sleep with the laptop resting on my belly, and then she gets a high fever, she shivers and wakes in the night, she vomits and shits in the bed, I get the winter vomiting disease myself, I still have to force myself up and wash the bedlinen, I get on all fours scrubbing the toilet bowl, I try to get her to drink something, I fetch wet towels, I fan her with a T-shirt, I make an attempt to keep my thoughts of impending disasters to myself, and then she recovers, I change nappies, go shopping, cook, console and bathe her, I brush her golden-coloured hair, cut her nails, vacuum, I change the soil in the flower pots and read on the net about plastics that disrupt hormones and reproduction and can also be neurotoxic for little children, I feel like an irresponsible parent, I throw out all the plastic that I suspect may be dangerous, she calls out for me, but I am tired now, I have never been so tired, I even have trouble reaching for the books on the top shelf, I push the toys into the corners with my foot, I forget to flush the toilet, I open the fridge and then just stand there facing the zinc-white innards, the cold light radiating from fifteen watts.

  I have nightmares about her not existing anywhere, I launch myself out of bed and call out for you, I roar something about how she is gone, I realise that I am dreaming about the time before she existed, while you were still here, and I no longer know what’s a nightmare and what isn’t, a few times more recently I have woken up with memories of that intensive care nurse, the one at Söder Hospital, who shut me out of Room B and stole time from us when it was its most important, in my dreams I meet him alone in an open space of artificial ice, I let go of my club and take off my hockey gloves.

  Your mother often gets in touch via text, she writes: Grateful for a sign of life, I worry so much these days. I don’t get irritated about her anxieties as much as you used to, I just answer: All is well with us. Once or twice I punch in the door code of the Neonatal ward when I’m outside the house in Lundagatan, it’s as if it’s lodged in my muscular memory. Does it make any sense to you when I say that I miss Karolinska? The midwives and Neonatal nurses who lift me up, my friends who stay the night with me in Family Room 1 and cry when I cry and the long corridors that always lead to something important? Livia’s tears run remarkably slowly when she gets upset, it reminds me of liquid glass, she’s so real, beautiful, true, she has a smile that acknowledges not only me, but everything about me, good or bad, she looks at me with eyes that have known me all of her life. You know I love her with all the weight of us, still it feels as if I have the best behind me and t
he most important in front of me, some nights I only want to lie naked in a cave like Mikael in Huddinge, curl up in the mother’s womb and close my eyes until I am unborn. I lay my hand on your breast and ask you not to call it sad.

  I say: Shhh.

  And I say: My daydreams of you are beautiful.

  Livia wakes up with the sun and sits up, my name is Papa, she calls out for me again and I don’t have time for brooding or even feeling. Like you, she takes note of the small things in life, the spectrum of colour in spilled oil, the gooseberry mite on the end of a broom handle, a scratch on my elbow, a spider’s skein between the crystal lobes of the chandelier on the ceiling, even a rusty bottle top is something magic to her. She knows that the photos of you are valuable, I keep them next to me in bed and I say good morning and goodnight to them, she touches them and I have learned to say: Darling, Daddy is not sad because of anything you have done.

  * * *

  —

  I stop outside one of the allotments and adjust the buggy’s handlebar. Four women sit at a garden table, they talk loudly, all have short white hair and black sunglasses, they seem to have just had their breakfast, I see two empty bottles of rosé in the grass under the table. Livia has learned that there’s an echo between the pillars of Liljeholmen Bridge, she hollers, listens for the response, bends back her head towards me, she wants me to make a noise as well. The willows lean over the water and, in the light breeze, trail their long sprays across the footpath. Livia holds on to the bar with both hands when I run with the buggy through the leaves all the way to the pontoon swimming baths. Again, she says.

  I get out a tissue from my pocket and wipe her nose. No, Papa, she says and pushes me away. She looks at the mallards under Reimersholme Bridge. The sailing dinghies recently put in the water at the sailing club jetty smell of wood tar and turpentine. Livia wants to throw a willow leaf that has caught in the buggy into the water. I help her.

  * * *

  —

  Last Thursday I found a letter you started on your computer, dated January 2012. They are the only words where you directly address her. You move in my belly. It’s grey outside, no snow, mainly sleet, but soon it’ll be spring and then you’ll be here! Don’t think you’re kicking as yet, mainly you just turn around. You move quite a lot, especially when I am lying still. It is not difficult to memorise the essential, and I become one with the letter as one day she will also become one with it, just as you two were one.

  She is naked and jumps into a cloud of water from a sprinkler, she stands with her legs wide apart behind a forsythia bush to pee, she has a black ant in an insect tin, she wants a plaster on her finger. I love listening to her role-playing, the shifting nuances of her voice when she plays on her own, I remove the stabilisers of her bicycle and run behind her as your father once ran behind you, and she makes drawings and asks me to send them to you.

  I have never hated as I hate now, it has no direction, no meaning, and every time I try to understand it, attach words to it, define it, control it, I start crying so violently that I am afraid of waking her even if I am in a different room, and I put my hand over my eyes and I hear myself saying: It’s only make-believe.

  I ask you not to call it sad, either.

  Other women will come into her life and hug her on her birthdays and offer advice, we’ll move away from Lundagatan to another street, another city, another country, she falls in love with an older boy or girl, she skives off school and goes swimming in flooded mine shafts and smokes marijuana on a roof, over long periods she does not ask about you, she calls home while on a trip abroad, she misses home, I meet her at the airport, she says she thought she saw you, she loves your clothes, she finds a receipt in the pocket of your duffel coat from a shop that no longer exists, she finds me critical and unfair, she cites Simone de Beauvoir, she pulls the duvet over her head.

  She says: Shhh.

  And she says: I often dream about my mother.

  Then she turns thirty-five, and, getting married in your red dress with white dots, she has your fingers, they feel like your hands when I let go of her, and she gets older, our daughter walks with a crutch over the chalk-white pier towards the stone house, she lets the cat out and goes inside. She looks at you, thinking that the photo is old.

  * * *

  —

  The pre-school is housed in a manorial building from the eighteenth century. Patinated roof-tiles, brown-ochre pointing and white columns at the entrance. It has been a nursery since the forties. Parents and children enter at the back of the building. A tall, white-blooming cherry tree stands in a corner of the courtyard. In the little vestibule I put on some light blue shoe covers and carry Livia into the section they call the Frogs’ Room. Livia presses her nose into my throat. Ulla, one of the older and more experienced teachers, catches sight of us. Good morning, Livia, she says, crouching towards her. Livia peers at her, and she adds: And good morning, Livia’s dad. Hello, I answer. She takes down a folder from a shelf above the sofa, where two nappy-wearing children are sitting. They glare at Livia and at me. I just want to check with you, if something comes up and we can’t get hold of you, who should we contact? she asks. I’m the one to contact, I answer. She looks a bit puzzled. One of Livia’s grandmothers, I’m pretty sure I left their numbers with you, aren’t they there? I ask. She looks in her folder. No, doesn’t look like it, she answers. I put Livia down, she immediately wants to be picked up again. She clings onto my leg as I drag myself over to the table to have a look. I’m fairly sure I gave them to you, I say. Ah, well, no, we only have your number, she says. Okay, right, can I write here next to that, or…? Yes, that’s fine, she answers. Hello, Livia, says Irja, another teacher, and then goes on: Do you have some favourite song, something you like? ‘I Drew My Ship’ by Shirley Collins, also Nina Simone, there are others, Joni Mitchell, I answer, and Irja interrupts me with a laugh that she only seems capable of offloading by bending her head back and opening her mouth very wide. I was thinking of some children’s song, ‘The Bear Is Sleeping’ or ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes’ or something like that, she says. She has raven-black hair, she could be about twenty years younger than Ulla, both of them are short and slightly rotund. Yes, I got that, I answer. I was thinking we could start with some song that you recognise when we sing at the morning assembly, she explains, making a face at Livia. Oh right, okay, that’s nice, no, I really don’t know, I answer. So we’ll just go ahead as per normal, she says and gives Livia a pat before she goes back to reading a book for the children on the sofa. Livia hugs me hard. Ulla clasps her hands together over her stomach and asks me to go with her. She walks into a cloakroom and stands by a wall decorated with drawings. She pulls out a blue plastic storage drawer. This is Livia’s, if you could bring in a change of clothes that would be great, an extra pair of trousers and a jumper, it’s good to have some rain clothes, wellies are useful to have, the yard can turn into a real mudbath, she says. I’ve brought clothes in the buggy bag, I answer. Would you mind leaving them in the drawer, we don’t want to dig about in your bag, she says. Okay, yeah, but I haven’t brought any rain clothes, should I go and get them now? I ask. No, you can just bring them in tomorrow. Sure, of course, oh and I was wondering one thing, I say as we walk through the hall towards the yard. Ulla stops, looks at me, and I continue: I read that there used to be a textile factory here and some chemicals were dumped, do you know anything about that? I don’t, I’m afraid, but we’ve had the courtyard checked on several occasions, there’s nothing dangerous here, not at the pre-school anyway, she answers. I mean, Livia puts things she finds in her mouth, I point out. Children do that, no, there’s nothing to worry about, as I said, the yard’s been checked several times, she says, and looks down at the sandy slope, stamping her foot and adding: It’s just mud here. She makes eye contact with Livia and says: You’re going to have so much fun here when Daddy’s working. Livia pokes the tip of her tongue out, and her cheeks go all rosy. I always have my phone on me, if anything
comes up just call me, I’m nearby, it’ll take me ten minutes, max, to get here. She nods at my shoes and blinks: Livia, now your papa has forgotten about his shoe covers. I take them off at once and I’m already heading back to the vestibule when she says: You can just give them to me. Uh-huh, okay, thanks. She stuffs the shoe covers into the pocket of her mustard-yellow windbreaker and slaps me on my back: This will be just fine. She leans towards Livia: You’re a very sociable and secure girl, you’re going to make lots of new friends here, and the weather’s nice too, this’ll be just perfect. I squat down and give Livia a hug. Darling, Papa’s going home now to work, but I’m not far away, I’ll only be gone for a little while, I say. Livia pinches her lips together when Ulla picks her up. Shall we wave to Papa? she asks.

  A teacher from another group stops me by the gate. Livia’s dad? he says. I nod at him. You have to fill in what days you’re on holiday, he says, handing over a few stapled papers, and then goes on: We’re closed from week twenty-nine up to and including week thirty-two, if you need a pre-school spot at this time we pool our resources with other pre-schools. I don’t think we’re going anywhere, I tell him. Fill it in and hand it in once you know, it would be good if we could have it this week, he says. Okay, thanks, I answer and secure the gate. I fold down the cover of the buggy. Ulla holds Livia up by the fence at the closest point to the gravel path. She’s placed her feet on the crossbar. Livia doesn’t seem to know how to wave, she just stares at me, it strikes me that I have never been away from her for so long that waving has been necessary. Behind the stone wall by Anders Reimers Väg I stop again to wave, but they’ve gone, I take off my sunglasses, I squint at the yard, the sandpits, carts, buckets, toy cars, spring animal rockers, teachers with skipping ropes, climbing frames, cones, a slide, three-wheelers, children everywhere; but then she’s there in her sunhat with the floppy brim and her jacket with the floral pattern. She’s waving, under the cherry tree.