Josef was there in the doorway with Tone and me that evening in February 1945 when the siblings from Stavanger stood by the car in the snow. He had come downstairs from his room, which was above the entrance to the house and overlooked the ash tree. He had put on his uniform jacket, but had forgotten the medal for courage. Now he stood barefoot on a rag rug and saw the same thing we did.
“So these are the new crazies,” he said.
The siblings looked as if they had traveled twice across the Atlantic like Jensen and Matiassen, who by now had gone to bed upstairs. Lilly lined up the children—from Nils, who was the tallest, to Sverre, who was the smallest—and Papa shook hands with each one. They bowed politely, except for Erling, who just wobbled his head, and Ingrid, who curtsied almost as deeply and elegantly as Lilly. The whole time, the driver had stood shivering; now he got into the car and started the engine. The headlights came on, and again I could see the fields and the edge of the forest where the pine trees seemed to stiffen in the sudden light.
Papa glanced toward the house and saw Josef, Tone, and me standing in the doorway. A thought seemed to cross his mind. He gave us a little smile, and for a moment appeared almost ashamed, as if we had seen something we must never reveal to anyone else. The driver turned the car in a wide arc, the headlights cut through the darkness, straight into my eyes, and the night smelled of snow and exhaust fumes as we heard the car disappear down the hill. For a moment we were all left to ourselves. Papa carefully folded the contract, Mama swung Matiassen’s lantern.
“We’ll go inside now,” she said.
Mama went first, holding the lantern in her hand, Papa was last with the contract sticking out of his coat pocket, and between them, the whole flock of siblings came walking toward our house.
3.
Papa had always intended to move back to his childhood parish—despite the happy years at Dikemark—and after almost twelve years on the east coast he thought it was finally time. He’d had his eleven happy years, he had married a girl from the heart of Oslo who was also a nurse, and several months after the wedding their first child was born.
I was born in the autumn at the maternity clinic in Asker, and at first I slept in an old orange crate that once had been shipped across the China Sea. Papa had found the crate in the attic above the men’s unit, along with old sedan chairs, straitjacket beds, and other paraphernalia from the past. I don’t know why he took the orange crate, but he was allowed to keep it, and Mama made it into a baby bed. The same autumn we moved into a larger apartment in Drengsrud, not far from the Dikemark asylum, and I lived there for the first years of my life. I remember a few incidents from that time, but beginning with the war I remember almost everything.
On April 9, 1940, the day the Germans invaded, there was still snow on the ground after a long winter. My shoes were dirty; I stood in the yard outside the staff apartments and threw snowballs at the German planes that swooped in low over the mountain ridges. I remember the Steinway piano, but I don’t remember Mama or Papa or anyone else playing it. The piano stood against a wall with the cover closed over the keys, and Mama said it was much too heavy to be moved. But it got carried down the stairs anyway, and stood in the yard covered with a tarpaulin when all our things were packed and we were ready to leave.
Mama and Papa had made plans for our new life in the south of Norway. They would build a big house with many rooms and large windows. Sunlight would stream in from morning till evening; the steps leading upstairs would be wide and low, so people didn’t have to lift their legs very high. The kitchen would be spacious, with enough room to prepare food for many people. The house would be built to accommodate caring for patients—the mentally ill or disabled who needed assistance—and that way they could continue the Dikemark work in a Christlike spirit of love. They would build their own little asylum in the midst of the parish where Papa was born and grew up, a place Mama had not yet seen.
Just before the war, Papa took the train south several times. When he returned home he brought long rolls of paper that covered the entire kitchen table when he spread them out; he explained everything, and Mama lifted me up so I could see too. The house would be in the middle of the parish, just one kilometer from the store and the Christian meetinghouse. An old, drafty house had once stood on the property; it had been Papa’s childhood home, but had burned to the ground in the spring before the war. During the summer and fall the new house was built on the ruins of the old one. The rooms were large and light, just as planned, with space for beds along the walls; the windows faced east and south and west; the steps leading upstairs were wide and low, just like the drawings; the doors had large handles, and could be locked only from the outside. And when everything was finished, the war broke out.
The house was what they had imagined, what they had dreamed of: their own little Dikemark, with the same pine trees outside, but without a fence, and without bars on the windows. Our new house lay at the edge of the forest, with gently rolling fields around it and a road that wound right through the farmyard and on to the neighboring farm where a childless couple, Hans and Anna, lived. Hans worked the farm and Anna was musically gifted, almost like Mama; she played the old reed organ in the church balcony for Sunday services, Papa told us. At the bottom of the road was the milk platform, where dairy trucks picked up full milk cans and dropped off empty ones, and from there the country road continued toward the store and the meetinghouse and the doctor’s office, which also served as the public library. In the spring the road was muddy and rutted with deep wheel tracks, while in the summer, dust from the road drifted sideways with the wind. Several hundred meters north of the house was a lake where you could go swimming.
I already saw it in my mind.
This is what the new world was like.
Our own asylum, in the midst of the forest, in the midst of the parish, forty kilometers from the coast. But without patients at the moment; at the moment there was just the Steinway piano, the Junghans clock Mama and Papa got as a wedding present, the old orange crate from the attic at Dikemark, and me. And there was Tone, who still lay in Mama’s stomach.
4.
I know the sun was shining the day we left, because I remember the way our shadows stretched across the yard and seemed to consider how far they dared to go with us. It was the middle of May, I’d seen long columns of German soldiers in town, and the trees were just beginning to turn green as we sat on the train headed toward Drammen. Through the window I saw the harbor, the huge cranes standing motionless in the shimmering heat, and the sea sparkling around the cargo boats along the pier. Some snow still remained on the hills west of the river. The train stopped with a jolt; people got on board, shoved suitcases onto the luggage racks, took off their coats and hung them on hooks by the windows. We continued farther inland, but when we got to Kongsberg the bridge across the Lågen River had been blown up, so everyone had to get out and go on foot. Papa put me down onto the crushed rock and we had to walk a long way along the tracks and then on the road, until finally we crossed the river below the demolished bridge. The water was flowing rapidly, sunlight glittered like silver on its muddy surface; Mama held Papa’s arm tightly, and everyone could see she was pregnant. We waited on the other side of the river for a new train that would take us farther south. Mama sat down on the suitcase, Papa whistled softly to himself, and I thought about the new life waiting for us somewhere at the end of the train tracks.
We rode through sparse pine forests and past marshlands still brown after the winter. White wooden houses, farmyards with moldering mounds of snow, and small, newly plowed fields streamed past the window. I ran back and forth in the train, but each time it hurtled through a tunnel I curled up by Mama’s feet and sat there until we were out in the light.
Late in the evening we reached Kristiansand. I could smell the sea, and I saw that the ships along the pier were dark because of the wartime blackout. We stayed overnight at Hotel Bondeheimen, next to Børs Park. There were just two beds in the
room, and I slept with Mama that night. It took me a long time to get to sleep; the mattress smelled strange, I heard the sounds of the city. Mama lay close behind me, I felt her large, warm stomach against my back and her even breathing on my neck.
The next day we continued by bus from the central square, where the cathedral spire had been shattered during the bombing in April, and west of the city we saw the harbor entrance and the vast ocean beyond. We had seen German soldiers in Kristiansand, but there were fewer as we got farther from the city. The bus drove west at first, then turned north and headed inland. I don’t know what I’d imagined, but when we neared Papa’s home parish I had the strange feeling that I’d been there before. The hills were the same as back in Drengsrud, the sun glistened on the same lakes, and the forest was the same as the thick, dark woods behind the Castle at Dikemark. It was almost like coming home. Long, tranquil mountain ridges rose green and dark blue in the distance, and when we came down the hill by Lake Livannet I saw the parish for the first time. We rode slowly past the Brandsvoll meetinghouse, which at the time was filled with elderly people who needed care after being evacuated from a nursing home in town. When we got to the fork in the road, the bus stopped in front of the store and I looked in the windows at the counter and the shelves and the sacks of seed grain—but what I noticed most was the elegant balcony that hung out over the road.
Several hundred meters farther west, we drove over the Djupåna River and continued across the rolling hills past the home of the church sexton, Reinert Sløgedal. I looked at Mama, I looked at Papa, who had stopped whistling long ago. He just sat watching the road. I realized we had arrived when I saw the milk platform he had talked about. The bus slowed down, it stopped, the door swung open, I smelled road dust and horse manure, and when we got out, Anna and Hans were there to meet us.
Mama came down the steps heavily with Papa holding her arm, and he didn’t let go until she stood among the yellow dandelions at the side of the road. Then, while the engine idled, he got our two suitcases, and when the bus finally drove away, there wasn’t a sound.
“Is this the end of the world?” Mama asked.
Hans and Anna had been standing on the other side of the road, and now calmly came toward us. Papa glanced at Mama. Hans ran his hand through his hair. Then Anna began to laugh.
“Yes. Welcome to the end of the world,” she said.
Anna laughed, Mama laughed, Hans ran his fingers through his hair again and spat to the side, and then they all shook hands. Hans had brought his horse harnessed to a cart; the front wheels were at a slant and cast delicate shadows in the grass. Papa slung the suitcases onto the cart, and the four of us climbed into the back. I smelled the horse, my feet dangled in the air, and I remember Mama’s sudden laughter when the horse jerked in the shafts, how she grabbed Papa’s arm and held tight as the creaking wheels began to roll.
I remember the laughter, the wind in the trees, the cart wheels’ flickering shadows, and I remember that when we reached the house Mama stood in the garden under the ash tree. Everything was about the way I had imagined it, except for the hayloft, which stood there from before, the outhouse—a small, chilly cubicle with two black holes above the empty manure cellar—and the ash tree, which was old and moss covered and surely had been there for hundreds of years.
Papa hadn’t said a word about the ash tree.
We walked around the house from room to room while Mama murmured softly to herself. Papa went first, then Mama, and I followed right behind. We went slowly up the stairs to the second floor, into the rooms on the right, into the rooms on the left, then down the stairs again, into the space that would be the kitchen, into the front hall, into what would be the living room. The whole time, Mama walked ahead of me talking softly to herself. I don’t know whether it was from disappointment or enthusiasm, but finally she sat down on a backless stool that had been left in the middle of the floor and that still showed the carpenters’ shoeprints. She just sat there with her hands in her lap, staring straight ahead.
Maybe she had imagined something else. Maybe she was disappointed. Maybe she was just tired. She was six months pregnant.
That stool would later become Matiassen’s stool. Our own furniture arrived a few days later by horse and cart from town. The orange crate, the wall clock, the Steinway piano. Hans delivered everything with his horse. The cart stood in the middle of the yard with wood blocks under the wheels while Papa and Hans, with the help of several men from neighboring farms, maneuvered the heavy piano up the front steps and into the living room.
Before long, we had two cows in the barn stalls, Papa bought a horse with long, bristly hair that hung down over its eyes, and Anna gave Mama a thick sweater to wear in the barn. After just a few weeks Matiassen and Jensen came from the Eg asylum in Kristiansand, and later Uncle Josef moved from the Røyken care facility. He was then about fifty years old, skinny as a rail, but he had a broad smile in the picture on his Border Resident card, and he was overjoyed to see Mama again.
“My dear little Karin,” he shouted when he arrived in the yard. “Is this really where you live?”
“Yes,” Mama replied. “Who would have believed it?”
Josef set down his small suitcase and went over to her.
“Can I get a hug?”
He always had his Border Resident card in his jacket pocket, even long after the war was over; it would gradually become tattered and worn at the edges, but in the picture his smile was as broad as ever. By August that first year of the war Josef had settled into the room above the front entrance, while Jensen and Matiassen shared the room that faced east toward the forest, and at long last we could begin our new life.
5.
More than four years later, on that evening in February 1945, we accompanied the siblings from Stavanger upstairs to the large room prepared for them. Papa had painted the walls pale green, Mama had scrubbed the floor, five beds were set up along the walls, and in the middle of the room stood a kitchen table and chairs. It had become a kind of home. Mama had put a cloth on the table along with five new tin plates; Papa had hammered a nail in the wall between the windows and hung a picture of Our Lord with a shepherd’s staff and a lamb in his arms.
“This is where we thought you’d live,” said Papa. He turned on the light and ushered them in.
The five followed him. Sverre clung to Lilly’s skirt, Nils kept his hands in his pockets to hold up his pants, and Erling stood as he had in the yard, his head wobbling rhythmically as if from a foolish thought he could not escape.
“Here are the beds,” Papa went on. “And you can eat here at the table.”
“Will we get food?” Lilly asked.
“Yes, of course you’ll get food,” Papa replied.
The five stared at Papa as he went over to the table and pulled out a chair. Tone and I stood just behind Josef and peered through the doorway. It was as if nothing the siblings saw made any impression on them. They just looked wide-eyed at Papa, who was now sitting on the chair. I glanced at Ingrid, who seemed about the same age as me, or perhaps a little younger. Her eyes were slanted, her hair bristly, her cheeks ruddy, and she licked herself around the mouth.
“I hope you’ll like it here,” said Papa, getting to his feet.
Nils went straight over to the chair, sat down with satisfaction, took his hands out of his pockets, and crossed his arms. Erling walked over to one of the beds and sat down on it. Papa looked at Lilly, then at Mama, and at Lilly again. She stepped forward.
“Can we eat now?” she asked.
Fifty years later the tin plates showed up again. I found them neatly stacked in the storage room under the stairs when I cleared out the house. There were ten of them. Matiassen’s lantern was there in the darkness too, with a cracked glass. The plates were dented and thick with dust, and as I held one in my hands I saw in my mind the five sitting at the table. For us downstairs, the siblings’ meals were always accompanied by a terrible racket: scraping chair legs, clattering cutlery,
minor squabbles, and general pandemonium. It felt as if the table and chairs and soup plates and everything else might crash through the floor at any moment. But at some point they always grew quiet. At some point they all found their places around the table, Lilly dished up the soup, and then they sang a table grace. Everyone sang, except for Ingrid, who howled softly, and they always sang “Blessed Lord, Be Our Guest.” After the table grace, the scraping and clattering and bickering continued until the meal was finished, and then Lilly put the tin plates and cups and utensils on a tray and carried everything down to the kitchen.
That’s what always happened, beginning with their very first meal upstairs that evening. Mama and Papa brought the food up to them, and when they were finished Lilly gathered up the tin plates and came downstairs to the kitchen.
“Thank you for the food, ma’am,” she said, and curtsied deeply with the tray still in her hands.
“You’re welcome,” said Mama as she took the tray.
Then Lilly disappeared upstairs, and I wondered who in the world had taught them to sing so well.
They had come to a new world. The snow lay a meter deep outside the house and woodlands stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see. The ocean, which they were used to in Stavanger, was far away; the closest thing to it was Lake Djupesland, which still lay white and silent several hundred meters north of the house. Mama and Papa were busy with the siblings that entire evening, and after Tone and I had gone to bed in our small room we lay very still and listened to all the new sounds filling the house. Running children’s feet, bedlam and bawling, furniture shoved back and forth across the floor. The floorboards overhead seemed to sway in time with the hullabaloo. But then things calmed down, and finally there was complete silence. The door closed softly, Mama and Papa came downstairs, and it was clear that the siblings had gone to bed.
“What are they doing now?” Tone whispered beside me.
Across the China Sea Page 2