No one can console her like Hartvig. Only Mama. Anyway, where would she go? Hartvig is not able to take any more of her outbursts, he says. What can she say then? She is speechless. Because one would have a hard time finding anyone as boring as Hartvig. The pedant. He is not how a man ought to be. And then he thinks he is the one who will leave her. Perhaps even feels sorry for her. As though he were the attractive one. Talk about back to front, and she cannot even say it. Still, maybe she will speak with Dr Vold about it.
The desk is brown, the chair, the walls, everything is brown except the Persian rug, and the cushions on the chair which are dark green. The traffic rushes by on wet cobblestones outside. There is so much she could have said, but as soon as she is sitting in Dr Vold’s office, it all collapses into something soft, jelly-like. Tiredness overwhelms her. The images move too quickly for her to see them clearly. Rooms, houses, directions. The words conceal something. Or is it the faces?
Hartvig is just a name.
Imagine, she said. Hartvig is just a word.
The doctor thinks she seems agitated. Not so strange perhaps, divorce is a serious matter, he says. Or is it a question? She just nods, cries a little. But it is the doctor’s office that gives rise to her anxiety, not Hartvig’s talk of divorce. There is something here and she does not know what it is. Something she visualises as a scorching hot liquid. Gas. A laboratory. Is it a hospital, is she being admitted now? She cannot get hold of it. Is it something impending or something that has occurred? Is this perhaps the closest she will get to anything resembling the feeling of God? Dr Vold? He is neither good nor evil. But the sight of him is the sight of something to come. Future. Help me, oh, help me. She does not say it, but on the inside, oh, on the inside she is a solitary scream. Not enough allowance is made for how mentally weak she is, they should know better, all of them. She has no one.
The manly, trousered legs under the desk scare her. But then she is not a child either? Everything is very confusing. Hartvig is not enough of a man, that is what it is. He does not frighten her the way Dr Vold does.
The smell of medicine. Seething. Like it said in the newspapers. The world is seething, Europe is at war. That may bloody well be but what good is that? Her thoughts spin on the same wheel. Rat in a cage. This room cannot disappear. She feels she is connected to Dr Vold’s brain, but what is inside it? When he writes in the journal, she no longer knows what might happen. Perhaps Dr Vold is only the beginning. The office is a waiting room. A big city awaits her. Not that huge, unfinished house in that dismal garden between the pine trees. She reads the newspapers, she knows that certain women can also accomplish great things. But to be alone? No. Dr Vold is not considering admitting her to hospital? No, he reassures her, only should she wish it herself, he does not perceive the situation as being that acute. She just needs to ensure she gets sufficient rest.
They used to joke about it. That the house would take as long to build as City Hall. Neither it nor their own house are finished yet. The claw-foot table and six matching chairs were delivered on the back of a lorry. All the furniture standing in the snow in the garden when they returned from town. It was a wedding gift from Papa. She did not know if his intentions were good or bad. If it was to make her feel guilty for not having invited him. Or if it was to make up for something. In which case it would have to be both at the same time. Papa would never do anything for her without at the same time wanting to torment her, confuse her, laugh at her. He enjoyed it. Anyway, she did not care about the table. It could go in the dining room as far as she was concerned, she would never feel at home here. And Hartvig was absolutely delighted to save the expense on furnishings. Naturally.
7
Beate is going to the lecture today. It is easy, all she has to do is get into the car with Mum. She works in administration at the university library, in Georg Sverdrup’s House. Once Bea Britt had said that she wished her surname were Sverdrup. Sverdrup or Seip or Vogt or Bonnevie, or one of those kind of names, you know, she said, when you’re born into a family like that there’s no doubt you’ll go far. Why, Beate asked, why’s that, everything’s different now, anyone can get an education and be something if they want. Bea Britt was not convinced. It’s to do with confidence, she said, with a gloomy look, it’s passed down, in the blood.
But isn’t that almost how they thought in the thirties, Beate asked, who had just read about the inter-war years, only they spoke about genetic inheritance and gene transmission? They believed that intelligence and all the best qualities were concentrated in lineages that could pass them on. By selection, or something like that, I didn’t quite get it. But that’s probably where the saying ‘in the best of families’ comes from.
She was proud of having learnt so much, of remembering and understanding it, of speaking like a grown-up.
So what? Bea Britt said. No matter what you call what’s passed on to you, it’s still yours. And coming from a good family has always helped.
Not me, Beate replied, I’d sooner have freedom than inheritance. I can be whom I want.
Christ, Bea Britt said, and went out into the garden.
What’s with Bea Britt? Beate asks her mother, a question she has put previously, without getting any clear answers. Her mother shrugs, says something about how talented Bea Britt is. It was too bad about the divorce, she will say, but her two kids are extraordinary. Then she will talk about Tuva, who is so intelligent and funny and outgoing, she always brings her up. As though Tuva’s cheerful temperament can make up for Bea Britt’s gloomy disposition.
Mum wears tan leather gloves when driving. Driving gloves, she says, they give feeling, and feeling is the big difference between boring and fun. Her hair sweeps over her chin and mouth as she twists around to reverse out of the parking spot.
Beate thinks Mum working at the university library complicates things. For instance, she does not want to sit there to study even though her friends do, does not want Mum to see how she lives her life. Erik usually sits there, on the third floor, and Beate would like to go up, pretend not to notice him, walk slowly between the rows of desks in the reading room, keeping an eye out for an empty spot, act like she does not see him before he has had ample opportunity to look at her body. She knows it looks good to boys, and reckons Erik is a boy who is used to hooking up with girls who look good. Who only wants girls who look good.
She also likes walking around Akademika, the campus bookshop, browsing the titles, taking them off the shelves and leafing through them, looking at the pictures if they are art books. But Mum does that too. They have often run into one another there. In wintertime, Mum wears her red coat, the same one as when Beate was small, it never seems to wear, Mum says and laughs, because in truth it is practically hanging off her, the lining is torn, there are buttons missing and the wool is nubbled. All the same she still wears it, wants to feel young, she says, and that is daft, Beate tells her, because the coat is old and makes her look old. But Mum is not bothered, and when Beate rounds the corner of a bookshelf, she can sometimes be standing there, in the red coat, concentrating deeply on reading. If she looks up and catches sight of Beate she smiles so as to melt her, at least that is what happens: Beate loves Mum’s smile. That is the reason she needs to avoid her up here at Blindern, she does not want to feel like going home with her mother all the time. It is impossible to be angry with Mum.
Mum drives fast, but not too fast, Dad says she is an amazing driver. She puts music on, Lady Gaga, loud of course, rolls down the window and sings along.
You and Tuva are actually quite alike, Beate says, and I bear a resemblance to Bea Britt, isn’t that strange, we’re not related after all? And I’m named after her and everything.
But that makes Mum cross, and she says she completely disagrees, not at all, she says. Tuva takes after Bea Britt, no doubt about it, and only you could have been mine, are mine, she says. Well, and your Dad’s, of course, but it sounds as though she thinks that is neither here nor there. Mum and Dad are so differen
t, and Beate does not know why this is, but they both feel like something she can sink into at any time, like sleep. What stands out most about Mum is her smile, her face, and her smell. When she was small it was just as if she and Mum were one and the same. When Mum was nearby everything was good. When she was gone things could become scary and unpleasant. She could begin to get cold. Get a lump in her throat. Not manage to say anything. Not if Dad was there of course. He would pick her up and carry her away from any difficulties, whether her mittens were cold and wet, or some older children spoke to her whom she did not dare to answer. She would sway off on his arm, and leave the problems behind them, she would not see them any longer. Sometimes he carried her around the living room while she rested her head on his shoulder. He looked at the TV and spoke to Mum at the same time, and his voice rumbled and vibrated in her body. He would hold her like that whenever she asked even long after she had begun at school. She remembers him helping her move last year, seeing him carry her boxes and furniture up all the steps. Dad can carry a lot, and she tells him things she never says to Mum. About what she is worried she will not manage. That she wants him to teach her to drive, but does not want Mum to know. Mum is so good at everything, she is sort of everywhere and knows best, but it cannot go on like that.
Beate does not need Erik. She thinks about it as she cuts diagonally across the quad, that Erik is probably the opposite of the right one, that he will act as a poison in her body, she pictures sperm spurting out of a hole in his penis, and it is the dark gate to hell, I am afraid, Beate thinks, I do not understand any of this.
She gets there late and sits at the back. The lecture has begun and she cannot concentrate, she looks for Erik, his brown head of hair. She cannot see him. She looks slowly around the auditorium once more, lets her gaze sweep along row after row, the back of every boy’s neck. Her hands around one of them. No one knows what might happen.
Erik is not here today, she can imagine where he is. In his room at the student residence in Kringsjå with a girl. Definitely. The communal kitchen swollen with sunshine, the cheese slicer cutting deep in a block of yellow cheese. She has been at Erik’s, to a party on his floor, but it was chaotic. She saw him snog several different girls, at one point he looked her in the eyes at the same time as he stood kissing Sølvi in a doorway. When they broke off he smiled to Beate, and raised a beer bottle by way of greeting. Even Sølvi, who is willing to do pretty much anything to land a boyfriend, and therefore never gets one, had the brains to leave. Fuck’s sake, she said, and marched off demonstratively into the kitchen where there was some sort of quiz going on. Still, Erik did not come over to Beate, he just stood there, leaning against the door frame smiling, but not long enough for it to be embarrassing, for her to get something on him. Is this some kind of game? Beate thought, as she watched him disappear, off into another room, or maybe he left, because she did not see him again that night.
Someone opens the door of the auditorium. It could be him. She turns her head slightly, but keeps her eyes fixed on the lecturer. Everyone says she has a beautiful profile.
Whomever just entered has not moved, is still standing by the door. Jesus, then it is him, she thinks, it is happening now, it has started. She feels an uncontrollable pounding inside. Sometimes things are just like this. Everything just happens, goes quickly and turns out exactly as she imagined. As she is imagining it. No, right before. Like when she is writing assignments and the words come before the thoughts, or is it the other way around? Her thoughts tear down barriers, she is in any case in front of herself as it were, ahead of what is going to happen, like now, as she turns and sees Erik over by the door. He lights up and waves, squeezes past the person sitting at the end of her row and comes toward her with his jacket open and his bag in his hand. She smiles and holds the folding seat beside her down so he can sit. He smells of soap, deodorant and aftershave, boy’s smells, she feels a tingling in her chest. He bends over his bag to take out a ring binder. He cannot find a pen and asks to borrow one, she gives him her own and takes out another for herself from her pencil case. They smile to one another, then he turns his head and looks towards the lecturer. He seems to be listening but does not write anything down. She glances over at his notes from yesterday, they are going in all directions on the page, some are boxed off and underlined, others are crossed out in heavy pen. After a while he places one hand on the table. She understands that it is a signal, that it is for her if she wants it.
8
It is her nerves. They are overstrained. So Dr Vold says. He has not said anything else so far, not even after she told him about Hartvig’s plans to divorce. Only that it would probably be best if they both came in to talk to him.
She remembers one time in late winter, standing in the wardrobe among the winter overcoats and jackets. The sun was shining through the little window and it was warm. It was time to tidy away galoshes, pitch-seam skiing and winter boots. But it was as though she were paralysed. How was she to manage all this? Finn and Hartvig. The house. It required too much of her. Could she not just – what did all this have to do with her? The house, clothes, the roads up here, the large gardens.
Sometimes she sees Papa down on the road. He wears a dark coat all year round. Stops at the gate. He takes the underground from the city for the sole purpose of standing to look at the house she lives in. Then he walks off. She cries. She is never going to say what he did. What was it anyway? There does not seem to be anything left of it other than the images she has of his big white face. The feeling. The anger, his or hers. The hatred in his features. The leather seat of the chair, his hand. Papa was horrid.
It was completely dark. She could not find a door, the floor was cold and scraped the skin on her knees when she fell. Weeping, scrambling. She could not go anywhere, could not go out. No Mama, nothing. When he finally opened up, it was too late. She was empty, blown clean through. He sat her at the table and made her eat the cold leftovers from dinner. It was something in thick gravy. The sun shone right in the windows, the surface of the table was scorching hot. She thought the room was visiting the house and that she would never come home again. Now and then they heard the black children yell and shout in the blocks beyond.
Sunday. Heat everywhere. White Sunday dress, white socks, sweaty shoes. Boredom. She has been told to wait, not to get dirty. The stairs have two planks on every step with a little gap between each. She jumps up on the first step, hops on one leg to the next, alternates between two feet and one. Up on the veranda she turns and does the same back down. The grass is bare at the bottom of the steps, a little hollow formed by all the feet walking here every day. Dry sand is sent into the air when she lands in the sunken patch, covering her shoes in a thin layer of dust. She draws a line with her forefinger, one on the tip of each shoe. Her back is sweaty and hot. Her dress tight and stuffy, her stomach quivers when she jumps, and her socks are warm and itchy. It is hard to breathe. The heat makes her throat feel thick. The windows in the house are open. Cessi hears their voices, not what they are saying, but what Papa is doing, that he is drinking, from both the big and the little glass. Hears him moving around the living room, raising his voice to Mama, he is teasing her, in that way she does not like. Why are they not coming? She clambers into the hammock on the veranda. It is lovely and shaded there, and she wants to swing but her feet do not reach the ground. She pulls herself up and stands, holding on to the frame, she sets the hammock in motion by bending her knees. Up and down, up and down. She is not allowed to stand in the hammock with shoes on. Not in her bare feet either. But she only does it once, to get it moving. Then she slides down into the seat. The speed is such that the frame lifts a little from the ground. She sits with legs outstretched and the tips of her shoes touch the edge of the table when the hammock swings forward. Then the table lifts a little too, the legs scraping on the veranda floor. She bends forward and backward, throwing her back into the seat and bending far forward to see if she can manage to keep the speed up that way.
She does not know how long he has been standing at the veranda door watching her. He is smiling, but is angry. She notices he has taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves even though they are to go for an outing in the park. Her brother Finn cries in the living room and Mama says a few words to him. Papa has probably said that they are not going. Or that Finn cannot come along. Then Mama calls out: Johan, can you please come in? And bring Cessi with you.
Papa does not answer. He looks at her as she sits unmoving in the hammock. It is only rocking ever so slightly now.
Are you bored, Cecilie? Papa smiles and smiles.
She nods.
I gathered that. Since you were standing in the hammock with your shoes on. He roars the last part. The fear gives her a bad taste in the mouth. When he is like this it turns white, cold and flowing in her all at the same time. She sits completely still so as not to do anything that could provoke him. That is what Mama says: Try not to provoke him.
Get up. His voice is calm but not kind. She waits a moment. Then he comes towards her, takes hold of her arm, squeezes it, lifts her up, hurting her under the arm and in the shoulder. He puts her down hard on the floor, and she stumbles, has to take a step backwards and feels the seat hit the backs of her knees, making them give, and she falls back onto the hammock again.
Stand still! he roars, pulls her up from the seat but does not strike her. He seldom hits her, but it can happen, and she never knows when it is coming. Usually not when Mama is at home, not when she can hear in any case. Now she is standing in the doorway with Finn on her arm shouting something to Papa which Cessi cannot hear because her heart is pounding so loudly in her ears. But Mama says it again: Papa has to come now. They’re ready to go. Papa does not want to. He tells Mama to stop nagging. She can take her mummy’s boy with her, yes, she and Finn can go to the park on their own. He is going to cure Cessi of her boredom, they are going to take a walk. He pulls her down the steps. Mama follows after, she calls out for him to stop with this foolishness. And Cecilie doesn’t have a hat, she cries out, you can’t take her anywhere in this heat. Finn wails, but Papa leaves with her. His hand is angry and squeezes hers much too tightly. He walks too quickly as well.
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