A Blessed Child

by Linn Ullmann

  “And the meeting was awful,” he said. “I didn’t manage to say a single thing I’d planned. I was stupid and clumsy.”

  Laura was standing at the counter in the Turkish greengrocer’s, considering one tomato against another. She said: “Why did the doctor need to do so many tests?”

  “Just routine.”

  Laura pressed the phone to her ear.

  “Are you sure?”

  “They always do lots of tests, Laura. I’m sure.”

  Laura stared at the tomatoes. Another customer elbowed her from behind.

  “I’m sure you were fine at the meeting.”

  “No, I wasn’t. I fucked it up.”

  “I’m cooking something nice for you tonight.”

  She could hear Lars-Eivind’s breathing at the other end. He was breathing. He was alive. He was nearby. He had a face and a body and two hands and a voice that was talking to her at this moment. Laura put both tomatoes into her basket. She needed many more things; she had planned a big meal and would need more vegetables; then she would go to the fishmonger’s and the wineshop and the supermarket, but right now she couldn’t focus on anything but the two tomatoes.

  “What have you been doing today?” asked Lars-Eivind. “On your day off?”

  “I don’t know,” Laura whispered. She had to get away from the greengrocer’s counter. “I haven’t done much. Talked to Erika. She’s on her way to Hammarsö. She’s going to visit Father.”

  Lars-Eivind faded out for a moment. Someone wherever he was called out to him or demanded his attention. Then he was back.

  “Speak to you later, Laura. I’ll ring later this afternoon. Everything’s all right.”

  Chapter 42

  Laura was lying alone in her own bed, in her own room. That was the way Rosa wanted it to be. Each sister in her own room, in her own bed. In summer, it never got completely dark. Maybe in August, but in June and July it never got completely dark. Not on Hammarsö, at any rate. The Hammarsö Pageant marked the transition from July to August, summer to autumn, light to darkness. After the Hammarsö Pageant ended, there would still be three weeks of the summer holidays left, and yet in a way the summer holidays were over. In August it got dark quickly in the evenings and everybody asked if you were looking forward to the start of term. And even if you weren’t looking forward to it, even if you hated going to school, you had to say you were. It was expected, said Rosa, who always knew what you should say or do in any situation. You were meant to look forward to seeing your teacher and your classmates and to learning new things. But now, at this moment, August was a long way off. It was only the beginning of July, and as always at the beginning of July it was impossible to shut out the light, even though Rosa had been to the mainland and bought curtain material that promised to do just that. The light always found a chink or crack or hole to creep through, or a threadbare patch to dance on. The window was usually left slightly open, and although it was hot, with hardly a breath of wind (yes, they said it was the hottest summer since 1874), the curtains were moving vaguely to and fro, and that made it easy for the light. If Laura opened her eyes she could see the radio on the bedside table; on the walls the pictures of dogs, horses, and pop and film stars; the Donald Duck comics on the floor; the clothes she had been wearing and had taken off and would put on again the next day, in a little pile on the chair.

  Chapter 43

  Laura closed the veranda door behind her. She was going to take the shortcut down to the beach to go swimming. She had packed everything she needed in a big blue bag that was hanging from her shoulder. Bikini, towel, tape recorder, magazines, potato chips, soda, chocolate, sweets: everything she had bought with her own money, hoarded and kept hidden from Rosa’s eyes. Rosa said you were allowed to eat only half a packet of chips and one bar of chocolate a week, and that had to be on a Friday or a Saturday and on no account on a Wednesday, for example.

  Right outside the house, under a tree, a bird lay on the ground, quivering. It flapped its wings but couldn’t take off and fly; it just lay there struggling. It wasn’t cheeping or twittering or singing or crying; Laura didn’t know what sounds birds were supposed to make when they were lying on the ground and couldn’t fly. This bird was silent, at any rate, not a sound from its beak. The only thing she could hear was the noise of its wings beating against the ground. The bird didn’t give up. It tensed, and braced itself, and flapped its wings as hard as it could, and when nothing happened it folded in on itself and waited awhile before trying once more. This happened over and over again. Laura wished she hadn’t seen the bird. She was on her way down to the beach to go swimming and the day stretched before her, long and bright, and then the bird was lying there struggling; it was in a terrible way and would die soon and it was her responsibility to help it. She could just walk on, of course, leave it lying there, flapping its wings, convince herself that she’d be able to forget it as the day wore on. And maybe she would forget for a little while, but something was bound to remind her. It could be absolutely anything: the swans on the sea, a stone at the water’s edge, a song on her tape recorder.

  Laura looked at the bird that had become her responsibility now. Stupid bird! Stupid bird! Everything had been so nice, and now this stupid bird was demanding that she do something, anything to put an end to the pain. She’d have to kill it; that was what you did with birds who couldn’t fly and lay on the ground flapping their wings and got tangled up in themselves and flapped their wings again. Laura prodded the bird with her foot and the bird gave a start and that startled Laura, too. She sat down on the ground beside it and felt the tears coming and stroked the little bird body with her finger. It was like stroking a patch of moss. I’ve got to kill you, stupid bird, I’ve got to, because you can’t fly. She went on stroking it. She thought she could stamp on it, but then she’d feel it in her foot for the rest of the day, maybe the rest of her life. She could stand up, shut her eyes, and drop her beach bag on it, which was heavy; but then she would get dead bird on it, blood and goo and feathers and bird guts, and she wouldn’t be able to use it anymore.

  As she sat there puzzling, Isak came along. He often took a walk around the house at about that time. Round and round. He had a part in the Hammarsö Pageant, and when he walked around the house like that in the mornings, Laura knew he was practicing his lines. He could never remember them, of course. He had the script in his hand and had to keep checking. Isak could do everything, remember everything, even difficult poems nobody understood, about sinking into absorption, but he couldn’t get a handle on his lines for that year’s Hammarsö Pageant. Isak stopped when he saw Laura and the bird on the ground.

  “Oh, dear,” he said, and prodded the bird with his foot just as his daughter had done. “Well, we’ll have to kill it,” he said. “Put it out of its misery.”

  The bird flapped its wings. Isak sat down on the ground and sighed; he rested the whole weight of his big body on the ground, and Laura thought that if only he had sat on the bird it would all be over by now; but Isak didn’t sit on the bird, he sat so he and Laura had the trembling bird between them. Laura went on stroking its body with her finger. Isak frowned.

  “Maybe I could give it an injection,” he said. “Or I could pick it up and hurl it at the ground, that would do the trick. Poor bird,” he said. He looked at Laura. “I feel sorry for it, don’t you?”

  Laura nodded.

  Neither of them did anything. Laura was glad her father had come, for now it was no longer her responsibility to kill the bird, but why didn’t he get on with it? Why was he just sitting there on the ground, doing nothing? Sometimes it seemed her father wanted the two of them to talk about important things together, now that Laura was bigger. It seemed as though he wanted to hear what she had to say; it was as if he was expecting something from her in the form of words, for her to open her mouth and share her insights, ideas, thoughts, and visions with him. Once he had even asked her what her vision of the future was, but Laura didn’t know what a vision was
so she just shook her head and shrugged her shoulders, and then her father had looked disappointed. Laura knew it was because he loved her most. He loved her more than Erika and Molly. Not because of anything she had done herself or because she was so special, but because he loved her mother so much, because Rosa had saved him from the abyss, he would say, and Laura had no idea what he meant by that.

  You are a love child, he would tell her, you are special, and as time went by it came to sound like a sort of reproach. She wasn’t small and pretty and funny like Molly, or tall and striking with good marks like Erika. She couldn’t come up with any interesting things to say as they sat there with the dying bird between them, and she had no vision, she was more or less sure of that, at least not the kind Isak would nod appreciatively at and say, Yes, Laura! Yes! That’s right! What a wise girl you are! Laura had asked Rosa if she had visions, but Rosa said that all she had was clothes on her body and food in her belly and sleep at night and that was all she needed, too, and that Laura should stop putting on airs with fancy pleas nobody had any use for.

  Laura looked at her father. He smiled at her.

  “So here we are, you and I,” he said.

  “Yes, but aren’t you going to kill it soon?” said Laura impatiently. “I was on my way to the beach to sunbathe.”

  Isak sighed and looked away.

  Laura took her father’s hand and squeezed it.

  “But now we’re here, you and me,” she repeated, and then he smiled again.

  Laura and Isak sat there on the ground for a long time, holding hands, and the bird flapped its wings occasionally and quivered, and Laura was aware that her father thought this was an important moment—he even said so: he said, You’ll remember this moment all your life—but Laura wanted to get up and stretch her legs, she needed to pee, she wanted to go down to the beach for a swim before it clouded over and turned chilly. And at last Rosa emerged through the veranda door with a thermos flask in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Rosa liked to spend time on her own in the morning, drinking coffee and reading. When she saw Laura and Isak sitting on the ground, she stopped short, put the flask and paper down on the garden table, and said: “What in the world are you doing?”

  “We’re sitting here watching over a bird dying,” replied Isak.

  Rosa came a few steps closer, frowned, and put her hands on her hips. She nodded in Laura’s direction.

  “Get up, girl,” she said. “You’ll get a chill and end up with a bladder infection, sitting on the ground like that.”

  She nodded in Isak’s direction.

  “Do you want Laura to get a bladder infection? You call yourself a doctor? Get up, the two of you!”

  She stretched out her arms, gave them each a hand, and pulled them up.

  Then she bent down to look at the bird.

  “We’ll have to finish it off,” she said, and turned on her heel and disappeared behind the house.

  Laura and Isak stood there, saying nothing. Laura looked at the bird. When it wasn’t flapping its wings but was just lying there to rest between its exertions, she could see the little body rising and falling. It was breathing. Its heart was beating. This wasn’t absorption. Laura looked defiantly at Isak. She said nothing. But the bird wasn’t longing for absorption.

  It was a swirl of breath and warmth and light.

  Rosa came back with a shovel that Isak had bought the previous summer to dig ditches round the house. She went straight over to the bird.

  “Out of the way, both of you,” she said, gesturing impatiently. Laura and Isak took a few steps back.

  Rosa raised the shovel, took a breath and brought it down sharply.

  “There!” she said.

  She turned to Laura and Isak.

  Rosa always had such flushed red cheeks.

  She tugged on Laura’s plait and said: “Don’t forget to change into a dry bikini after you’ve been in the water! A bladder infection is no laughing matter.”

  Chapter 44

  But that’s how it always is, thought Laura. It was snowing again and in less than an hour it would be entirely dark. What a waste of a day! Before long she would have to fetch Jesper from his nursery and Julia from her after-school club and nothing she had planned had got done. She had bought two tomatoes and a bunch of white tulips and was now standing on the pavement somewhere between the supermarket and the church, letting the snow fall on her, on her shopping trolley. But now I’ll get a grip. I’ll go to the wineshop, the fishmonger’s, and the supermarket, and then I’m going back to the Turkish shop to buy everything else I need. Then I’m going to fetch Jesper from nursery and Julia from after-school club. We will play in the garden. We will make a snowman. I will not rush it. I will cook a delicious dinner. She stood there. She thought: If I say right foot up and take one step forward, then it will automatically rise and take one step forward. And if I say left foot up and take one step forward, then it will automatically rise and take one step forward, and then I’ll be walking, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot, through the snow. I will get my mobile phone out of my bag and ring Jonas Guave and tell him we’re not selling the house after all. Lars-Eivind sometimes talked about wanting to die in that house. Not now, but after many years. He wanted to see the children grow up; he wanted to surround himself with grandchildren; he wanted to grow old with Laura and then he wanted to die. All in the same house. So what I said this morning was just a whim. The whole lot. Jonas Guave could forget he had ever met her. I will do all those things. All those things. She stood there. It was snowing on her hat, on the plait sticking out from under her hat, her anorak, trousers, shoes, and the shopping trolley that wasn’t properly closed, so it was snowing on the two tomatoes and the white tulips inside. Laura shut her eyes and opened them again. Here we go. Right foot first and then the left. Still nothing. She stood there. Laura stood there until a young man came along on the pavement, talking on his phone and carrying a bag from the supermarket. The man bumped into Laura and walked on. It didn’t hurt, but the contact was still hard, disturbing, intrusive, invasive. The man had walked straight into her, into her and through her and on along the pavement as if she weren’t there, as if she didn’t exist or occupy space.

  “Excuse me!” she called after him.

  The man turned around. He still had his mobile clasped to his ear.

  “Excuse you,” he called back.

  “You walked straight into me!” said Laura. “You can’t just walk straight into people!”

  “If people stand in the middle of the pavement and can’t be bothered to move aside, then I can,” he said.

  He walked off. Laura took hold of her shopping trolley and followed him. He couldn’t just run into her and then walk off like that. She wanted to call after him. She wanted to fight, but she didn’t know how. She wanted to kick him in the back and then, when he turned around, punch him on the jaw. The man walked faster. Laura walked faster. He should leave people in peace. Laura simply wanted to be left in peace. The man stopped; he turned and looked at her.

  “Hey, lay off!” he said. “Just drop it!”

  “But couldn’t you have just let me stand there?” asked Laura. “Couldn’t you have just let me stand there on the pavement in peace?”

  The man shook his head, fed up with her, and walked on. He crossed the road and vanished around a corner.

  And it was then that Laura found herself standing outside the church. She and Lars-Eivind had lived in the Colony for six years, and this was the church they belonged to; in this church they had been married and their children had been christened. The door was locked, of course.

  When Laura was twenty-four and her mother fell ill and could neither move nor speak (Rosa was in a wheelchair and communicated with her eyes or by typing the words yes, no, tired, enough into a small computer), she asked her daughter to take her to church occasionally. So Laura did.

  And long before that, long before Laura was grown up and Rosa fell ill, long before Erika and Molly c
ame into her life, Laura would go with Rosa to the shop on Hammarsö. On the way home they went past the stone church; they always went past the stone church on the way home from the shop, and Rosa would tell her that it was many hundreds of years old, that it held many secrets and its bells struck every hour and half hour, all day and all night, all year round. On Hammarsö the church door was never locked (the islanders maintained that they remembered God even though God had forgotten them), and Laura had tugged at Rosa and asked if they could go inside and look. So they did. Then Laura tugged at Rosa again and asked if she could have fifty öre to light a candle.

  “Who are you going to light a candle for, then?” Rosa asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Laura, and laughed. “Maybe I’ll light a candle for you, if you give me fifty öre.”

  Rosa gave her fifty öre.

  A thin woman with beautiful long dark hair, wearing a short orange-striped dress, came gliding silently over the floor of the church and stopped beside them.

  The woman said quietly: “So here you are, Rosa Lövenstad, lighting candles with your daughter.”

  Rosa jumped and quickly turned to the woman.

  “Ann-Kristin! You scared me.”

  The woman laughed, almost to herself.

  “I expect I often do that.”

  “Do what?” said Rosa.

  “Scare you.”

  Rosa took Laura’s hand and said: “No, Ann-Kristin, you don’t scare me.”

  “Ragnar’s been ill. He’s had a temperature. I’m tired.”

  “But he’s better now?” Rosa asked.