Long, gray days of rain arrived.
I knocked on the siblings’ door.
“Can Ingrid come outside?” I asked when Lilly opened the door.
“No,” said Lilly. “It’s raining. Ingrid can only go out when it’s sunny.”
I kept standing in the doorway.
“Then can I come in?” I asked.
“Okay,” she said. She let me in and shut the door, and I stayed there until Papa came up to get me that evening.
I lay in bed and heard Mama and Papa talking softly in the living room. It was Mama’s voice I heard; Papa only made comments that didn’t need many words. After a while she rose, walked across the room, and slammed the door. I could tell that she stood for a moment in the front hall, perhaps she looked toward the door of the little room where I lay, perhaps she wondered if I was asleep. I closed my eyes and heard her take her coat from the row of coat hooks and then sit down on the chair by the mirror to put on her shoes. Next I heard the front door open, and then Mama disappeared into the night. I lay in bed and sensed how quiet everything became when she left. Through the half-open window I heard her quick footsteps going down the road; they grew more and more distant, and finally faded away completely.
I understood that something had happened. A few days later Mama’s suitcase was in the front hall, the same suitcase she used when we left Drengsrud and when she traveled alone to Kristiansand when Tone was born. The suitcase was there when I came from school. No one said anything, but I realized something had happened. Papa was upstairs with Jensen and Matiassen, Mama was in the kitchen. I went upstairs and knocked on the siblings’ door.
Everything was quiet during the evening.
The house lay under a starry sky and I listened for footsteps, for voices. But no one spoke, no one walked across the floor. Mama and Papa sat together in the living room, but they didn’t say a word. I realized that Mama was going away, her suitcase was packed, but I hadn’t dared to ask where she was going.
The next day the yard lay in tranquil autumn sunlight, the hay barn cast sharp shadows toward the west, the leaves on the ash tree had lost their color, and a gentle breeze turned the edge of the woods into trickling gold.
Papa carried the suitcase outside and set it down at the bottom of the front steps. Hans and Anna strolled through the garden and stopped by the hawthorn hedge. Mama knelt in front of me; she buttoned the two top buttons on my jacket, then changed her mind and unbuttoned the top one, moistened a finger with saliva, and rubbed away a spot on the arm.
“You must be good to Josef,” she said.
I nodded.
“And keep an eye on Ingrid and the others,” she continued.
I nodded again.
“Promise me?”
“Yes,” I said.
Then she stood up, gave me a light, absentminded pat on the head, and turned to look at Papa, but I didn’t see her face.
“You can come with me down to the milk platform if you wish,” she said to the siblings.
And that’s what happened.
Mama and Papa went first, then Erling, who tramped so hard the dust rose from his shoes, next came Nils with his hands in his pockets, Lilly led Sverre by the hand, and Ingrid and I brought up the rear.
“Greet the king for me!” Josef shouted from his window upstairs.
As we passed the hawthorn hedge Hans raised his hand to us, and Anna clutched her sweater more tightly around her.
When we got to the milk platform, Papa set down the suitcase in the gravel and rubbed his hand up and down over his face the way he had on the front steps. We all stood looking at him. I waited for him to say something, or for Mama to say something, but nothing was said—not until we heard the hum of a vehicle in the distance and the bus came into view. Then Ingrid began a soft, restrained howling. I took her hand and she quieted down. We all watched as the bus slowed and finally stopped in front of us. There was a warm smell of diesel as the engine idled, and the shaking made the windows rattle. I saw people sitting inside, but I didn’t know any of them. It was the same driver who had shouted at us the day Papa’s face hardened, but now there were no youngsters pressing their noses against the windowpanes, and this time the driver didn’t say a word. Papa picked up the suitcase and went on the bus with Mama. The two of them stood between the rows of seats for a moment, but I didn’t see their faces, just their chests and part of their arms. Then Papa turned around and stepped down from the running board empty-handed. The bus started with a jolt, and we watched it disappear around the bend in the road.
7.
I thought maybe she would come back the next day. I thought maybe she spent the night at Hotel Bondeheimen, that she slept in the same room where I’d heard the sounds of the city and felt her stomach against my back. I lay in my bed while Papa took care of Jensen and Matiassen upstairs, I heard his voice and footsteps crossing the floor, and I heard the commotion from the other end of the hall as Lilly put the siblings to bed. Finally everything was quiet.
Mama did not return.
I thought maybe she would come the following day, but she didn’t. That afternoon I saw the bus, but it didn’t stop at the milk platform, it just continued on, with hardly a sound.
The Virginia tobacco was gone.
Lying in bed at night, I smelled the scent of carnations. I heard the British bombers roaring in from the sea in the southwest, I heard the metal machines flying high above the clouds and the forest and the house.
Then suddenly I remembered the war was over.
I remembered the time Tone was born. Everything Mama had told me.
Mama had traveled alone to Kristiansand, to St. Josef’s hospital, not far from the Aladdin cinema. Through gaps in the blackout curtains she had seen the sky and the clouds drifting in from the sea. In the evening the baby was brought to her. The little girl had been bathed and fed and lay quietly in her arms while Mama heard the German soldiers come out after the last showing at the Aladdin. The soldiers walked past the hospital windows in a cheerful mood and their shadows flowed together on the ceiling above her. The men continued across town, and when they were far away, Mama heard them singing. Soon there were only the scattered sounds of the city, and then the rain came in from the sea in the southwest.
I lay in the dark and pictured everything in my mind.
Later, someone carefully picked up the little girl without waking her, and rolled her into the nursery where the other newborns were sleeping. The light was turned off; Mama lay alone in bed, drew the blankets around her, and listened to the sound of the rain. It was impossible to sleep. She lay awake the whole night. The wind and rain intensified, and now and then she heard babies crying somewhere far away, but it was not her baby.
She was absolutely sure. It was not her baby.
I remembered the day Papa and Josef and I went to get Mama and Tone at the hospital, while Anna and Hans cared for Matiassen and Jensen. Josef stood in the front hall in his well-worn uniform jacket and fastened Matiassen’s shiny, newly polished medal on his lapel. He had his Border Resident card in his pocket, and smoothed his bristly mustache with a shoe brush.
I remembered the corridors at St. Josef’s hospital, and how Mama had to coax Josef and me over to the hospital bed.
“Come and see your sister,” she said encouragingly.
But I didn’t want to do that. Josef seemed anxious; I held his hand, but neither of us dared to take the first step.
“She already has a name,” Mama continued. “Her name is Tone.”
“Tone?” said Josef.
“Tone?” I repeated.
“Yes,” said Mama. “Isn’t that a nice name?”
I drew Josef across the room to Mama, and then we both saw the small creature lying in her arms. It was the first time I saw Tone, the date was September 15, 1940, and in the hospital garden, the wind surged through the elm trees like huge waves. That was the day I saw the ocean for the second time.
I didn’t remember anything about the tri
p back home, but I remembered the lights were on in Jensen and Matiassen’s room when we arrived that evening. Tone was asleep in Mama’s arms when Mama carried her into the house. Josef and I stood in the front hall like two strangers while Papa went to the shed for firewood. I had a sister, and the sea had been silver-gray when we left Kristiansand. Papa lit Matiassen’s lantern and disappeared into the darkness surrounded by the bluish light. After a while he returned with an armful of firewood and the lantern dangling from his forearm. Josef and I watched as he made a pyramid of dry birch kindling and lit it in the black stove from Drammens Ironworks. Soon the fire was blazing brightly; we heard the cheerful rattling of the black iron plate engraved with a couple dancing close together beneath an equally black, shining sun. Josef and I sat in front of the stove while Papa was upstairs looking after Jensen and Matiassen. I heard Papa talking, but neither Matiassen nor Jensen came down to see the baby. It was just the four of us. Papa rolled up his shirtsleeves and wound the Junghans clock. The gleaming clock struck each hour and half hour loudly; it had once had a carved eagle at the top, but Papa had burned the eagle the day the war broke out. Now he adjusted the hands to show the correct time and set the pendulum in motion. He turned on the wrought iron lamp, Tone opened her eyes slightly, and soon the heat from the fire streamed toward my face.
I remembered everything.
It was as though Tone’s life rolled slowly like a film in the darkness overhead; everything I thought I’d forgotten, everything I didn’t think I had noticed, everything I did in fact remember. Tone’s life glided past me like the English bombers high above the clouds.
I wished it were wartime again.
I remembered Tone’s baptism, when I sat between Mama and Papa in the front row at church. Jensen sat beside Papa wearing his thick glasses on his nose, and next to him, by the center aisle, sat Josef in his uniform jacket. Suspended in front of us was the pulpit with its painting of the three evangelists by a young man from the parish; I gazed up at the three Roman arches, and at the altar painting of the Ascension with its rolling, ashen landscape and the outline of Our Lord’s feet still visible on the ground.
Tjomsland stood inside the altar railing in a long black cassock. I turned my head slightly and saw Papa’s face in profile: the high forehead with its irregular furrows and the hair brushed back smoothly. I remembered the candles, how they burned steadily while Tjomsland turned toward the altar and folded his hands to pray. I remembered that it was so quiet I heard the wax dripping onto the floor, and I saw the bright, pure, bluish core in each flame.
As we stood in the churchyard afterward, near the two iron slabs with old-fashioned writing, we cast long shadows across the cemetery. Anna had climbed down the steep steps from the organ loft and stood with Hans and Jon and Tilla. We were surrounded by people from the parish whom Papa had known in another life, and now they all came to greet him. Sløgedal and Tjomsland, and even the sheriff, came and shook hands with Josef and Jensen and Mama. It was the first time Josef and Mama had met the sheriff; Josef beamed instantly, and after shaking hands he stayed beside the sheriff until we were ready to leave. I remembered all of us standing there. The worship service was over; Mama held Tone in her arms, partially hidden under her gray coat, and I leaned my head back and saw the weather vane in the church tower, black and motionless, pointing north. I remembered that Tone cried just before and just after the actual baptism, but when Tjomsland poured water over her head, the crying stopped. There was a moment of complete calm; she lay perfectly quiet, looking up at him in wonder.
I remembered the baptism and I remembered the winter evening three years later when Tone burned herself on the stove in the living room. She was running around naked, the fire was blazing, and no one was there when it happened: she bumped into the glowing-hot stove, right by the words Drammens Ironworks. I remembered her screams and how Mama and Papa came running, and I remembered that they later teased her about being branded with ns on one buttock.
I lay in the dark and thought about the orange crate that once flew across the China Sea filled with oranges; I remembered the first time Tone slept in it, her face defenseless and turned to the side, her hands barely open in the semidarkness. I remembered the day she was big enough to sleep in the bed with me. How Tone and I lay side by side in the little room, how she lay without moving and listened to me tell about Uncle Josef, who had fallen out of the carriage long ago and hit his head on a rock, about Eugen Olsen at Dikemark, who always thought the building was burning, or about Mama and Papa walking along the road in the dark, years before either Tone or I existed. Her eyes always changed when I told her things: first they grew large, then distant, and sometimes they also grew dark and fearful. At times she woke up at night because she had nightmares about something I’d told her before we went to sleep. I said that Jensen was Satan in disguise, that Matiassen unscrewed his head and put it in a box under his bed every night. That they peeked down at us through the knotholes in the floor. I turned out the light, but later awoke with a start because she was kicking her legs under the duvet and calling for Mama. Tone shouted, and soon we heard footsteps in the hall, the door to our little room opened, and Mama came toward us with Matiassen’s miner’s lantern in her hand.
Mama sat down on the edge of the bed and Tone crawled into her lap sniffling. The bomber planes flew past, soon everything was quiet. I heard my voice shouting that she had to crawl forward. The cart had tipped over, time had stopped, but she had heard me. She had crept forward, even though time stood still.
8.
In a way it was easier that Mama wasn’t in the house. Josef lay in his room humming to himself, Matiassen sat in the garden even if the weather was chilly, the siblings sang the table grace while Papa was in the barn caring for the cows and the horse.
It was almost a relief.
Every day I knocked on the siblings’ door, and I sat at the table and sang with them more and more often.
At first it seemed unnatural.
“Why is he here?” Nils asked.
All eyes turned to Lilly, but she didn’t say anything.
“Is he going to eat here?” said Nils.
He sat staring at me with his spoon in his hand. I looked at Lilly.
“He can do that,” she replied.
So it was decided. They placed an extra chair between Ingrid and Erling. We sang “Blessed Lord,” Lilly looked at me, Nils looked at me, Erling’s head wobbled; everyone sang except for Ingrid, who howled, and after that Lilly dished up soup for each of us.
“Please eat,” she said.
We ate in silence, and afterward everyone licked their plates clean. I had a tin plate, just like the others. After a while it was almost natural. Every afternoon after school I went upstairs and knocked softly on the door, and the table was set for me. No one asked why I sat there. Papa ate alone down in the kitchen, while I ate with the siblings upstairs. It was almost natural. After we had eaten, Lilly cleared the table so I could sit there to do my homework while Ingrid and Erling watched.
In the evening Papa came to get me. We heard a soft knock on the door, Lilly opened it, and Papa stood out in the hall.
“What do you want?” Lilly said.
“It’s bedtime,” said Papa, looking at me. “Are you coming?”
I slid down from the chair and left the room as the eyes of the five siblings followed me. At the doorway I turned around.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” I said.
Erling gradually lost interest in my schoolwork. Instead, he sat on his bed gently thumping his head against the wall while he watched Sverre crawl around on the floor. Only Ingrid seemed genuinely curious about what I was doing. She moved her chair closer and watched while I wrote in my notebook. I tried to teach her the alphabet; I drew an A, and then she drew something that looked like an A.
“Say A,” I said.
And Ingrid said something that perhaps was A. After that I drew a B; she copied the letter on a piece of paper as well as she
could, and we continued like that until Papa came to get me.
“Good night, Ingrid,” I said in the doorway.
She didn’t say anything, but gave me a gentle look.
One day she was allowed to go to school with me.
She was, after all, nine years old.
Lilly packed a lunch for her, tied a ribbon in her hair, and gave her words of advice and encouragement, and when we finally set off down the road, the other siblings stood by the window watching us. We walked the two kilometers to the Hønemyr schoolhouse slowly. The sky was almost dark when we left, but it grew lighter on the way. I walked ahead, Ingrid a few meters behind. I heard her uneven, slightly halting footsteps, and it was almost as if Tone were walking behind me kicking pinecones and pebbles so they bounced into the ditch. I stopped and pointed to Lake Djupesland in the dusky light.
“Look,” I said. “We’ve been there. Do you remember that?”
Ingrid nodded, and we continued walking. She lost her breath quickly, so we had to stop often. Sometimes she took a bottle of juice from her backpack and stood drinking it by the roadside for a long time as juice ran from the corners of her mouth.
That’s how we got to school.
Nils Apesland stood by his desk as usual when we came in; he took Ingrid’s hand and asked her name.
“Her name is Ingrid,” I replied. “Can she be here during the class?”
“How old are you?” Nils asked.
“She’s nine; she can sit at my desk. She doesn’t say anything. She’s mentally disabled, you see.”
Nils stood in front of us, directing, and we all sang while Ingrid sat with her hands folded on the desk, silently observing the other girls. Nils Apesland wrote arithmetic problems neatly on the blackboard and we all had to copy them in our notebooks; Ingrid got a piece of paper on which she tried to draw numbers too. During recess, Ingrid was allowed to erase everything on the blackboard. I showed her how to dip the sponge in the water bucket by the teacher’s desk, and how to wring it out before she began, and in the end she finished the job herself. Then we put on our coats. I found a cloth and wiped away the worst dribble from her cheek and jaw, and we went outside where the other children were playing. Ingrid stayed right behind me, followed me like a shadow, out onto the steps and into the front yard. I showed her the shed with two outdoor toilets, and was aware that the others were looking at us.
Across the China Sea Page 8