Only Human

by Kristine Naess

  Yesterday I was sitting watching TV in the dark when Beate rang. A sudden blue glow on the coffee table, followed right after by the buzz and vibration of the telephone against the tabletop. I liked that. Two screens glowing for me, and I thought: What is it that goes wrong the whole time, between people?

  Family life destroys everything.

  And that is how you become a person.

  I invited Beate for tea. Not that I needed to. She comes around quite a bit, just as often as Tuva and Georg. I make her food too. I do everything I once longed to do. Prepare tomato soup from scratch. Refrain from upkeep of the house, just clean here and there. Watch TV at all hours. Sleep when I feel like it. That’s the freedom of getting on in years and being divorced, I tell Beate.

  I have a fair idea why she comes to visit, but I do not like to think about it, I do not actually want to know any intimate details about Beate’s life, her secret dreams and ambitions. I just want her there in front of me, young, fair-haired and pretty. I am hardly somebody who ought to be admired, I think, quite the contrary, but I cannot deny her, I have to play my role to the full. I am the adult. I am that other. Not her mother, not a relation, I am the alternative. In addition to being an author, something off the beaten track. Oh, if she only knew how it was to negotiate those meandering paths on the outskirts. But she does not. To Beate I am her mother’s exotic friend. I was once her best friend, but now Anita does not want anything to do with me. She is so busy. With what I do not know, but I do not fit into it in any case. She is in a place where the future is open, whether illusory or not. There are things happening in Anita’s life all the time. Over at the university. She has a career there to devote herself to. Colleagues, money and purchasing power go along with that. She buys clothes and other beautiful items, trips and experiences, she is thriving. And me, what am I doing? I do not quite know, I wander in the shadows, and if there is one thing Anita does not want, it is shadows. Darkness and loss. I can understand that. But then neither is she exposed to the power of thoughts, those distinct thoughts, unforeseen, unexpected ones that elevate you. Stirring something great, penetrating, opening impression after impression and making the world a different place, for a while at least.

  But suppose she does concern herself with the big questions too, imagine she does have everything, and I am just someone who has lost out?

  I have baked lemon cakes and a kringle for Beate’s visit. The cakes are resting on the green glass platter, sunlight flickering here and there on the worktop, which has not been oiled for a long time, and the wood has absorbed some stains. Why does it bring tears to my eyes? Because it is beautiful, and beautiful things do one good, and good things are painful.

  I think too much.

  Good things are dangerous. They bring shame.

  Good things always slip away.

  First the thoughts are here, then they are not.

  Beate is standing in the middle of the kitchen with a bag of Twist chocolates in one hand and a new handbag in the other, or an old one rather, bought in a second-hand shop, with a catch that could surely be described as – I cannot think of the word, the image is hazy. That is surely – no. That closes securely. No, that was not what I meant. It’s retro, Beate says, and that helps, because I know what retro means, it comes from the French retriever, to get or fetch back again, recover, or as it says in the dictionary: Retriever, breed of dog used for retrieving game. But fetch what: handbags, letters, boxes of old photographs and account books, merely things others have left behind, and after all what did they know about us? I have lots of stuff like that, old stuff: letters, post office delivery notes about parcels filled with goodies on their way, postal orders, and several folders with summaries of assets and division of inheritance. Mahogany, crystal and jewellery. Easy chairs and a painting.

  The catch must be a hundred years old, and as Beate tightens the strap and sticks the prong of the buckle through, something happens in my head, I see visions and hear voices: Mama. Women fill the room (is it a church service?) wearing heavy, clammy dresses, there is powder and dust in the air, unfamiliar smells (naphthalene, camphor, sweat?). When I die I will take these images with me to the grave. The women’s feet are freezing and the sweat within the dresses makes them even chillier. How are they supposed to regulate their hormones? Their bodies are perched, out of balance, but at least they can sit idle for a while, rest, half-asleep, gazing listlessly at the untreated wood on the back of the pew in front.

  Is my life a result of this, an imbalance, a skewed relationship between wealth and earnings, work and rest, gender and longing?

  My thoughts are out of control, I cannot steer the visions, I am a novel without a plot. Because an intrigue implies something definite, but I cannot manage to find the words for what that is. Just know it. And I am supposed to be some kind of writer? Is there something wrong with me, I wonder, growing frightened, am I sick, suffering the onset of dementia?

  Do you think I’m very absent-minded, I ask Beate, but Beate’s mind is filled with thoughts of men. It must be, after all she is only twenty and has not had a boyfriend yet. Not that I know of anyhow. Beate in tight-fitting, faded jeans and thick mascara. Do men scare her, or does she scare them? And how is that I, a middle-aged woman, cannot formulate an answer to this question: Is it normal for young women to be frightened of men? All my experiences and memories suddenly flutter, come loose, blow away, and rush off, I am sat here and I know nothing. And this ‘am sat’. I have never used that before. Do I not always say ‘am sitting’? I AM SITTING HERE AND I DO NOT KNOW. Christ above. It is like one of the songs they play at the gym: Fuck you. Fuck you-ou-ou. That’s how it goes. One random word says it all. That is as close as I get at the moment. But Lily Allen has a tune – fuck you-ou-ou – I do not, I only have an isolated word or two. That means it is probably not Alzheimer’s after all, because at least then there are other words, instead of saying ‘knickers’ you come out with ‘glasses’, and instead of ‘man’ you say ‘cry’, and that makes for a different jigsaw puzzle, but the overall picture makes no sense, it is chaotic. It is rather the password that I lack, the key, the tune. A plot presupposes at least one connection. A causal connection.

  I put on Leonard Cohen, it is for Beate’s sake, I have to give her something with love, but I do not know if Beate understands what I want her to hear in the line where he says, if it’s the person’s will, he won’t speak anymore, he will still his voice, as before.

  I know what he means but I cannot say it, it would sound ridiculous, not just to Beate but to anyone, to try and explain an intuitive understanding with exalted, religious concepts. Besides, what is the point in consoling someone who is not sad?

  Beate is not unhappy, as well as which my son could not possibly seem frightening to girls. Granted, Georg is himself young, just turned nineteen, but I cannot picture him ever becoming a man it was dangerous to fall in love with. I still maintain that everything is different for the young, for Beate, Georg and Tuva. They are not aware, nor should they be aware, of how things can go the wrong way, how a girl can practically invite a man to cause her pain. Penetration entails that. What is it about that, or the absence of it? That accounts for so many unhappy moments. It is beyond the reckoning of time, but that is hardly a sensible answer. It can be just as pleasurable as painful, but you do not know when it is going to be one or the other, you do not know why, and sometimes it can be both simultaneously. Is it perhaps a break in the narrative, in the personal storyline? Before it begins again, and moves in another direction?

  I am not supposed to be able to explain everything.

  I cannot.

  Gender values change.

  I hardly know anything.

  These circumstances begin anew every day.

  I am not lonely, not in the physical sense. Actually, yes, of course, particularly in the physical sense. The body is always alone. But seen from the outside. No. A mother is not lonely.

  On occasion, I go to Halvorsen’s
bakery with Mum and Dad, it is a compromise, because Dad would rather not spend money on cafés or restaurants. But Halvorsen’s is different. Granny would always take him there when he was small and buy him a millefeuille. Pity you can’t eat two slices, he says, lifting the plate and licking it clean, but they’re so bloody expensive. Mum looks another way. So eat two, you can afford it, she says. But the second one doesn’t taste as good, he replies, you mustn’t have too much of something. Nor too little, Mum mumbles, and asks for a top-up of her coffee.

  Or nothing at all, I think. Nor the opposite of not getting: being pushed away.

  I speak to old friends on the telephone sometimes. The mobile vibrates and lights up, and I do have a social life of sorts. Sometimes we meet up and drink wine. Knut calls me up every now and again as well, to talk about the children. He does not visit of course. That would not be on, him being my ex-husband. That is how he speaks, that is one of his stock phrases: That kind of thing is just not on. Actually, did he not die? It feels like that at times, and I grieve. I sometimes ask Tuva as well: Is he alive? Oh yeah, absolutely, she will reply, in such a way that I gather he is very much in evidence. With his obstinacy, no doubt. But he loves the children.

  I would love to hold his hand, tell him loneliness drove us apart, but that it was not our fault. It was all God’s fault. Thoughts like that make me well up. Everything could have been so good, could it not? Love, no bed of roses? Then I remember. The irritation and everything just building up: anger, furious anger, the subsequent cold stand-off and finally nothing at all. He was so tight-fisted and so demanding. He was a drain on me, a huge drain and I was so empty.

  You should get him a dog, I tell Tuva. It might be good for him. Mum, she says, laughing. You’re the one who needs a dog.

  4

  She can hear the tram coming down the hill, tell exactly where it is by the sound and adjust her tempo accordingly, how long she takes to button her coat, how quickly she walks. The gate has to be lifted slightly as she opens it, so as not to scrape the ground.

  The sense of liberation at leaving the house, of turning the right way, downhill towards the station, of stepping onto the tram and heading into town, where there is life. Even though she is only going to Dr Vold. As well as running a few errands perhaps, if she is up to it. She must not manage to do too much though, that would only make Hartvig suspicious.

  The doctor seems to be sitting far away from her. She is nearly falling asleep in her chair, this happens every time: she enters, sits down on the opposite side of the desk, and suddenly experiences a floating sensation, like when she dozes in bed with the curtains drawn in the afternoons. She also feels extremely tired. She tells him that the boy has been in the country and is soon coming home.

  She says she has heard that children should not be too dependent on their mothers. Dr Vold seems neither to agree nor to disagree. Perhaps not, he says, probably unwise, generally speaking.

  He is terribly difficult.

  My nerves can’t take it.

  He won’t behave as I want him to.

  She says things like this and feels like crying. Imagine she could accompany the doctor home, was invited to dinner, was placed at the middle of the table with the doctor and his wife at each end, looking at her amicably, nodding when she spoke, thinking her charming and fascinating to converse with. Dr Vold would then see that she was funny, spirited and kind. Because she is kind.

  Her eyes drift around the room while the doctor is speaking, asking her questions that she answers, about what time she is going to bed, if she is devoting enough of her day to diversions, eating regularly. She notices a green brooch on the Persian rug, enamel and shiny, slightly bent, with two tulip leaves on it.

  There is a long, brown leather couch in Dr Vold’s office. He has never asked her to lie down upon it. Perhaps she is not sick enough. She wonders what his wife is like. Beautiful, of course, and slender. Is it her brooch on the carpet? Has she been to visit, has she lain here, on the floor, her clothes in disarray with his hand on its way up under her skirt? She has only seen him once without that white coat, she had been the last patient of the day, perhaps he was hot and tired, was thinking about getting home and had readied himself to leave as soon as their appointment was finished. His trousers were tight across his bottom. Narrow hips and long legs. Strong hands with hair creeping further up under his shirt cuffs. He is manly. Yes indeed, she could imagine what they get up to. Even professors have appetites. Yes, is he in fact a professor? See, she does not know. Dr Vold is a respected neurologist, Hartvig says. He was the one who suggested him of course. One does not contact a GP for an illness of this character, he said, as though he knew something about it. A doctor cures illnesses, she had replied, not characters. That was well said.

  She does not quite know what is wrong with her, she says. Tiredness, headaches, dizziness. As well as which she is irascible. Hartvig cannot cope with that. He is weary of her neuroses, he says. Yes, him, who scarcely knows what a neurosis is. She is the one who is weary, weary beyond words. But I am not mad, really, she said to Dr Vold during her first consultation, and they both laughed, no, nobody thought that, he assured her.

  It grows quiet. Dr Vold apologises for the noise of the traffic outside and closes the window. She asks for a glass of water. His secretary brings it in. The doctor shifts in his chair, causing the material on his shirt front to crease. She knows that he was born in the same year as her. Just think, she is thirty-seven years old. She will be forty before long. Now that is old. But Dr Vold’s skin is smooth and his hair is dark. Sometimes, on entering his office, she experiences a certain sensation in her stomach, not unlike delight. The two of them could just as well be sitting flirting in a restaurant, he could be admiring her, her looks, how witty she is. Not in reality of course, she does not fit in with the likes of him. A doctor. Besides, most of the time she considers him as being around the same age as her father. That mean man. There is a large portrait on the wall by the door, not of Dr Vold, but of a well-known senior consultant. Or is he the director of a hospital? She could not remember what Hartvig had said, he told her after they had been there the first time, when he had accompanied her. Why had he done that actually? Had she asked him? She could not remember that either.

  How is it that some people can do anything and know almost everything, are they born that way, are they some sort of miracle? The consultant in the painting looks quite normal, a man of mature years, of ordinary appearance. Ordinary people are the worst thing she knows of. His doctor’s coat is only buttoned over his stomach, a blue waistcoat visible beneath. He is holding his pocket watch in his hand, part of the watch chain hanging down between his fingers. She does not think he looks mean.

  It is different with Dr Vold. Does he think there is something seriously wrong with her?

  It is first and foremost a feeling that arises when she attempts to discern the nature of her sickness. A feeling of everything being terrible, unbearable. She is wicked, the world is wicked. Everyone is mean and nasty, even Mama. Even though there is nobody who dislikes Mama, she is so lovable. So how could her daughter turn out like this? She knows they think she is difficult. Hartvig and his family, her parents-in-law, sister-in-law, all those cousins, uncles and aunts, ugh, there are so many of them. An artistic temperament, Mama says, in her defence. That just makes Cessi angry. But I’m not an artist, she screams, I’m nothing. Nothing but mean and horrible, I know that’s what you all really think. And that upsets Mama, so she goes out in the garden to Finn, while Hartvig laughs. Not out loud, but you can see it in his face. What did I tell you, his expression says, what did I tell you. Outwardly pleased.

  Moreover, there’s her hysterics. She gets in such a state of excitability, Hartvig says, and if he is irate enough he accuses her of putting on an act, of feigning more than feeling genuine despair. But that is not true. It just flares up, cannot be controlled, she really can do nothing for it. Because Hartvig is like a wall. Cold and immovable even when he i
s worked up. That lack of response. Impossible to budge him. He is wilful and obstinate as well. The way he sees it, if something has been decided upon then that is that, and everything must be thought through thoroughly all over again if anything crops up requiring a change of plan. But with Hartvig things rarely change. She is simply helpless.

  The room will not stop moving, the air turning grainy when she notices Dr Vold looking at her. Is this the only possibility of any form of contact between them? Images race through her mind, the wind in the trees, over the small forest lake, through the boy’s hair. She would rather be sitting on the tartan blanket by Mindedammen now, watching him swim. She does love the boy, in spite of everything. But where would Dr Vold fit in this scene? This is becoming too difficult. These troublesome images, they often overpower her. They are like photographs, only sharper, and in colour. As though she is there, almost there. But they are taking place in her head. The visions: hospital beds. A bedpan. Deaconesses. Light blue bonnets, light blue tablets. The trees in the forest.

  The tram passes by outside. He asks what she is thinking about and she replies that she wishes he was an older gentleman, she likes old men. There are so many tiny dots in her vision that she can hardly make him out, she should not have said that, because now he asks if she and Hartvig have sexual intercourse. It is as though they are actually sitting in that restaurant she pictured earlier and she has had one drink too many. Her laughter is high-pitched and excessive because the question is so impertinent, because she was not prepared for anything like that, and does not know what to answer. So she shakes her head. It does happen of course, Hartvig will come to her and she is, as he quite rightly points out, his wife. But she does not feel any actual desire to be intimate with Hartvig.