As I signaled a right turn and put on the brakes for a moment, I heard Lilly’s voice:
“Are we there soon?”
We drove west across Lauvslandsmoen, passed the new central school, and crossed the bridge over the Finsåna River, where the water was barely flowing now in the middle of summer. At the highest point on the road, we saw blue uplands stretching westward toward Audnedal, and at that moment, Lilly and Ingrid left the parish for good.
We came to Naerbø in the early afternoon, and followed the signs for Naerlandsheimen. I turned left onto a narrow gravel road running parallel to a stone fence that led straight to the sea.
Naerlandsheimen actually consisted of numerous buildings. At one time Diakonhjemmet in Oslo had bought the property for the purpose of building a work-and-care facility for the mentally disabled where a Christlike spirit of love was translated into action. At first it consisted only of the so-called Stone House, but through the decades more and more structures had been built. In addition to the white administration building, there were others of various sizes spread out over a large area; in the middle was the redbrick Stefanus church, named after the first Christian martyr, the patron saint of weavers, coachmen—and stonemasons.
I parked by the administration building and got out of the car after the long trip. It was chilly, almost cold; I smelled the fresh tang of the sea, but could not see the water from where we stood. Ingrid got out. Lilly got out. I looked for Erling, Nils, and Sverre, but there was no one to be seen.
“Where is this?” Lilly asked.
We all waited while Papa went in to say we had arrived. I got my jacket from the car.
“We’re there now,” said Mama.
The director of Naerlandsheimen gave us a tour. He showed us where the American Telegraph office had been housed until the telegraph poles were torn down and moved to Jeløya Island, in the Oslo Fjord; he showed us the new building for social worker training, and the tower that pumped seawater into a new indoor swimming pool; he showed us Stefanus church, which had been consecrated by the bishop in 1969, and the athletic field, which had been inaugurated with a soccer game between Naerlandsheimen and Bakkebø. We heard the whole history of Naerlandsheimen, from its opening in 1948, to the many additions through the years, until the day in July 1973 when we stood outside the Stone House and looked at everything.
It was an impressive institution, with almost one thousand employees. There were two bells in the Stefanus church tower. Engraved on one were these words: God wants me to be a happy child.
Finally we were shown Erling’s, Nils’s, and Sverre’s rooms, which were still in the building for asocial, mentally disabled men. Then we were led down a long corridor with closed doors on each side; at the far end was a spacious lounge with large windows facing the sea, and there they were, all three. It was strange to see them in unfamiliar surroundings. For thirty years I had been used to their living upstairs at home. The voices through the floor, the table grace before meals. The feeling didn’t let go. They really belonged with us.
“So this is where you live,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah, by George,” said Nils.
We all sat there looking at the view, for perhaps as long as fifteen minutes. And Lilly was calm, in spite of the sea.
Then came the moment we had dreaded. Ingrid was shown the room where she would live. I stood by the window staring at the ocean until we were ready to leave. Two nurses came to take care of Ingrid. Mama grasped Lilly’s arm and drew her out into the corridor.
“You’re going to stay here now, and Lilly will come with us,” Papa said cheerfully.
Ingrid stood in the middle of her new room, her eyes on me, while behind her, waves crested and broke into foaming whitecaps far out at sea. She was very quiet. The nurses were prepared to give her a sedative if necessary. She looked at me the way she had when the snake was crawling up her hand and arm. Just before she gave it to me. Perhaps she understood what was happening.
“Take care, Ingrid,” I said.
I touched her arm. Then we walked out of the room quickly, and the door closed behind us.
I left in a hurry. Down the stairs, through the corridors, across the gravel area by the entrance, and over to the car, where Lilly and Mama stood waiting. I started the engine, Papa got in beside me, Mama opened the back door and was about to get in too. We were so busy we didn’t notice that Lilly had stopped a few meters from the car and was peering at us intently.
“Come, Lilly,” Mama called. “We’re leaving now.”
“I don’t want to go,” said Lilly. “I want to stay here.”
Mama went over, put her hand on Lilly’s shoulder, and said something softly that only Lilly could hear. But then Lilly screamed. She tore herself loose from Mama and shrieked so loudly it resounded all through Naerlandsheimen.
“No!” she screamed. “No! No! No!”
We all realized it would be impossible.
We had to wait perhaps an hour to take care of the formalities. Papa and Mama sat in the director’s office and signed several papers. Nurses had taken Lilly up to Ingrid’s room. The two sisters were reunited, and a temporary room for Lilly was arranged. Mama explained about Lilly’s fear of water and made sure her room had a view facing Naerbø and the hills beyond, so she wouldn’t see the ocean. Perhaps she would be transferred to Bakkebø later; perhaps she would be able to stay at Naerlandsheimen with Ingrid and the others.
The director couldn’t promise anything.
Meanwhile the sky had become overcast. I was sitting alone in the car when the rain started. Quietly and gently at first, just enough to cloud the windshield, then harder. The rain streamed down the glass in small, irregular rivulets. I sat there gazing out at the gray, pockmarked North Sea as the rain gradually increased, until finally it was whipping against the car.
At last we could leave. Mama and Papa stood under the small overhang outside the administration building and shook hands with the director while rain splattered the deserted front yard. They stood waiting for the downpour to end. But it didn’t let up; I felt the wind seize the car, and rain drummed loudly on the hood. Finally, they had to run across the yard—Mama with her purse over her head, Papa with the contract papers in his hand. I started the engine, Papa got into the backseat, and Mama sat down next to me.
“Are we ready to go?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Papa. “Everything is taken care of. Just go.”
I turned in front of Stefanus church, which had long, dark water stains from the rain, and we came out onto the narrow road leading toward Naerbø. The windows fogged up, and I turned on the heater full blast. At first I drove slowly, in case Lilly changed her mind, in case she came running after us. I glanced in the rearview mirror, but saw nothing except sky and sea. Lilly did not change her mind. No one came running after us. We were alone on the road and I drove faster. Lilly stayed there, far out by the sea, together with Ingrid and her three brothers. After twenty-eight years Mama and Papa were free from caregiving at last. We didn’t say anything. The rain blew in from the sea; I turned right at the first crossroad, and we headed home along the broad beaches of Jaeren.
10.
I was finished at last. The house was empty, Mama’s clothes had been sent to Russia, the Steinway piano had arrived safely at Astrid’s apartment in Oslo, and I had found a new place for Herbert Andersson’s painting. I’d taken the bag of Tone’s clothes home with me. For a long time it just sat there, I didn’t open it, nor did anyone else, and finally I put it away. Tone’s clothes I wrote on the bag with an indelible pen. To whomever it might concern.
Two years went by.
It was December 1996. We had discovered that the house was in worse shape than we had thought. The roof leaked; when it rained the water ran down along the chimney, through Josef’s room, and all the way down to the stove from Drammens Ironworks. Window putty cracked, a pane fell out one night with a west wind. Carpenter ants came in under the doorsill, and later into the kitchen
. The deterioration had increased during the past two years. Rainwater must have run down between the walls for years, also when Mama lived there. Several beams had rotted. When the heat was turned off, large damp stains spread across the wallpaper in Josef’s room, and also in Jensen and Matiassen’s room. The doors warped and were difficult to close. I knew the house was drafty and poorly insulated; I remembered the rag rugs that froze to the floorboards, the burlap sacks that Papa cut into strips and stuffed around the windows, but I had no idea things were so bad. Astrid and I decided the house should be torn down. It had been Mama and Papa’s dream to build their own asylum, their own little Dikemark, in the midst of the parish, far from the sea. Papa had perhaps imagined that the eleven happy years would continue, and Mama, who had never been there before, had dreamed of the house before we left Oslo in May 1940. In her mind she had seen the house standing at the edge of the woods. And when we finally arrived, she had to sit down on a stool in the middle of the empty room since she was six months pregnant; she had been quite overwhelmed, because the house was exactly as she had seen it in her dreams.
Perhaps that’s how it was.
Astrid and I decided to have the house burned down, and the fire department gave us permission.
It was December 4. Mild, misty, a Wednesday. Astrid had returned to Oslo the night before. She couldn’t bear to stay. I understood her, I’d have preferred to not be there too, but it would be worse to know the house was destroyed without my being there. I’d rather see it burn down.
The tops of the pine trees were blurred by the gray sky. There were four fire engines; two had backed onto the field far from the house, the other two were parked halfway down the hill, well shielded behind the hawthorn hedge. Fire hoses crisscrossed the yard in every direction. I stood a good distance away and drew my jacket tighter around me.
This would be a controlled burn.
All the doors and windows had been removed. Four men had carried out the wood-burning stove from Drammens Ironworks, and Josef’s Jøtul stove tilted next to it in the grass. I saw the dancing couple and the black letters that once had branded Tone.
First they started several small blazes. They set fires and put them out maybe four, maybe five times. The last one in Josef’s room. They let that burn until the flames burst out the window and the room was black and smoldering. Afterward there was a dark stripe up the paneling. Steam rose from the walls and water dripped from the ceiling beams, but the siblings’ room was still unharmed. I was cold, my feet were freezing, but I wanted to stand there and watch.
After a few minutes’ discussion, they decided to set the entire house on fire.
Two men went inside. They were away for a long time. I heard their voices in the front hall. I knew where they would light the fire: in the center of the house, in the little storeroom under the stairs where I’d found the tin plates and Matiassen’s lantern. They were wearing smoke diver gear, and when they shouted to each other their voices became distorted through the masks. Finally, they appeared in the doorway, like two creatures from outer space. Everyone waited as the flames rose inside. I heard a crackling sound that slowly became louder. It grew stronger, wilder. Now and then we heard a crash, followed by a slight, sharp echo at the edge of the woods. Smoke came out of the roof and between gaps in the outside walls upstairs. The firemen stood ready with fire hoses, the generators hummed, and the water pumps shook the two closest fire trucks. More crashes were heard from inside the house. It sounded like something shattered and gave way; perhaps the entire stairway had collapsed. The flames were much bigger now. Great pillars of smoke emerged from Josef’s window and from the two windows in Jensen and Matiassen’s room. Smoke poured from the entire house, it gathered in a bluish-black column several meters above the roof and slowly drifted north on an imperceptible current of air. The flames first broke out of Josef’s room, and about the same time the firemen sprayed powerful streams of water up the wall. For a moment the fire was beaten back, but soon the flames reappeared, and this time they had gathered force and broke through the roof. I was standing about forty meters away, but I felt the heat on my face, chest, and trousers. It was a scene I’d never imagined I would see. It was a scene I will never forget. Steam rose from the ground for several meters in all directions. One man was assigned to hose down the ash tree, but the heat from the house was so intense that thin wisps of smoke swirled from the outermost branches, like extinguished matches. It had taken months to build the house back then just before the war; it took minutes to burn it down. The walls were thin, the framework poor. I remembered how plainly I heard Jensen’s conversations with Our Lord, and Mama’s clear voice when she sang for Erling and Ingrid. I remembered how well you could hear someone climbing the stairs, how Tone and I lay in bed listening. Now I saw the framework appear behind the outer walls, and at one point I could see straight through the upstairs, from the charred remains of Josef’s room to the treetops on the other side.
More minutes went by, the house was still standing. I moved a little closer. Steam rose from the sleeves of my jacket, I felt raindrops in my hair, and then suddenly the east side of the house collapsed. Half of the roof, as well as Jensen and Matiassen’s room, plunged into the living room; a sea of sparks flew into the air, and afterward burning planks and beams lay everywhere. The west side of the house remained standing for a while longer. It was impossible to say what held it up. Everything was aflame. But it stayed upright for several more minutes before the siblings’ room collapsed too, leaving the house below in ruins. The fire created an aureole in the mist. Only then did I notice Anna. She was standing in the garden outside her house. Lightly clad, only a thin cardigan over her shoulders. She stood watching, just like me. At first I considered going down there, but I didn’t do that. We each stood alone and watched the house burn down.
Later I was told that the fire’s aureole could be seen in most of the parish. First an aureole, then at last the house tore loose from the masonry and rose above the woods. The house rose higher and higher—even though, unlike the story I’d told Tone, nobody played the heavy Steinway piano, and Josef didn’t strike a key.
Then it was gone.
The fire burned quietly for several more hours.
Dusk began to fall about three o’clock. At four-thirty the sky was completely dark, but flames still lit up one side of the ash tree. The ground was warm and dry, and I went over to look at the trunk more closely. The bark had opened on the side facing the house. They had hosed the tree continuously, but that hadn’t been enough; the bark had pulled back, and I couldn’t tell whether the tree was dead or alive.
Two firemen stayed through the evening. They sat in the fire engine’s cab with the doors open, the radio on, and disco music streaming into the darkness. I stayed too. I felt I had to be there. The rain increased, acidic smoke hovered over the field, and soon there were no visible flames, just occasional flashes of glowing red timber under a layer of ash. The house was gone, only the two chimneys remained. They made it possible for me to picture the rooms and the stairway, the living room and the small bedroom and the kitchen, and how every thing had been. We had all lived around these two black towers, but nobody had known that, and I was the only one who would see them still standing.
I returned the next day. Everything was burned out, the fire engines had left muddy tire tracks. I buttoned my jacket. The air was rancid from smoke and ashes. Then I heard footsteps coming up the road, and I knew who it was before I turned around.
“I never thought I’d see this,” said Anna when she reached me.
“I didn’t either,” I replied.
“But maybe it was for the best,” she added.
“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”
Then I showed her the ash tree, the long, gaping gash that began almost at the ground. It was as if the tree itself had opened, and this had happened despite the firemen hosing it down to save it. The gash in the tree was as wide as my hand.
“Do you think it wil
l survive?” I said.
Anna placed her hand on the trunk.
“We won’t know until spring,” she said.
11.
A few weeks before Christmas the same year, I took the train westward from Kristiansand. I’d long thought I should visit them, but hadn’t done so.
Not until now.
It was the same train route that Erling, Sverre, and Nils had taken so many times when they came home for Christmas and summer vacation. I saw the same landscape they must have seen; I glided slowly along the same gray Lake Lundevatnet, past the small railroad town of Moi, through wild mountain scenery with sheer precipices and dark canyons, until we neared the coast again at Egersund. I got off there and waited for the local train that would take me the final stretch to Naerbø station. In Egersund the snow had turned into rain and sleet; I stood on the platform with my back to the wind and both hands deep in my jacket pockets. After perhaps twenty minutes, the train arrived. I sat down in the last car and waited while the doors stood open and raindrops streamed down the windows, but no one else came aboard. I appeared to be riding alone along the Jaeren coastline, and I had a clear view over the cold, bleak North Sea. It was an old train, with worn leather seats and swaying coat hangers by the doors, and it stopped at station after station without anyone getting on or off as far as I could tell.
At Naerbø station, I got off in wind and driving rain. I found a store nearby and bought five sweet buns, five bottles of soda, and a package of cookies.
From Naerbø I took a taxi out toward the sea and Naerlandsheimen. I remembered the fields, the stone fences that seemed to link the farms together in gray chains, and soon I saw the distinctive pyramid-shaped spire of Stefanus church.
I arranged for the driver to pick me up in two hours. Then I closed the door of the taxi, waited until it had driven away, and walked the final distance alone. Out here the wind was even stronger. The rain furiously pelted the bag of sodas and buns. I walked across the area in front of the Stone House and the former American Telegraph office. For almost fifty years Naerlandsheimen had been a home for the mentally disabled, but now the organization was phasing out. The siblings had moved to a row of small, identical houses that looked out toward the athletic field. My shoulders and trouser legs were wet, water seeped into my shoes.
Across the China Sea Page 18