by Linn Ullmann
“I don’t. But do you want to know what it was? I asked, and they told me.”
“I’m not sure I want to know that, Mai.”
“A girl. It was a girl.”
The episode with the baby was never mentioned again. Not the beating heart, nor the twenty-eight liters of blood. And when Mai turned forty he gave her a splendid birthday: breakfast in bed, a picnic lunch in Frognerparken, and dinner in a restaurant. His presents to her were a puppy and a little silver cross she had had her eye on. Johan was not a religious man, but Mai always said that it didn’t hurt to believe in something—although she never seemed inclined to expand this vague statement. She wore a long blue cotton dress, and in her hair, which was still fair, she had pinned a yellow rose. She looked like a young girl. The waiter in the restaurant took her for Johan’s daughter.
It was only after her hair turned gray—almost overnight, a few years before she turned fifty—that strangers stopped assuming she was Johan’s daughter. Johan, on the other hand, looked older than his years.
While sitting in the doctor’s waiting room that day, still unaware that his test results were alarming, he made the acquaintance of a little tousle-headed girl. She too was waiting to see the doctor, sitting there with her mother. How old would she have been: five? six? four?
Johan was hopeless at guessing children’s ages; he could never even remember how old Andreas was (although he never lost count of how many years it had been since they’d last spoken to each other). The tousle-headed little girl strode across the waiting room, clambered up onto a chair next to him, and in a voice bordering on a shout said, “I hope I never get as old and wrinkly as you.”
Her mother looked up from her magazine, chided her daughter, and apologized profusely to Johan, who dismissed the mother’s apologies with a shake of the head. He smiled and asked the little girl, “How old do you think I am?”
The child cocked her head and squinted to show that she was giving the matter serious consideration. She sat that way for a while, staring at Johan until he began to feel uncomfortable. Then she put out her hand, splayed her stubby fingers, their nails adorned by flaking pink polish, and stroked his cheek.
“You’re older than my grandpa,” the child said, causing her mother to raise her eyes from her magazine, shush her, and apologize again.
“And how old is your grandpa?” Johan asked.
“Eighty-four,” she said, “and sharp as a tack. Are you?”
“Am I what?” Johan asked.
“Sharp as a tack?”
“Why, I should say so,” Johan replied, speaking a little louder than necessary, “and if you must know, I’m only sixty-nine. Which makes me fifteen years younger than your grandpa!”
He knew he was overreacting, but he was, after all, waiting to see the doctor, who had called and asked him to come right away—which was in itself ominous—and then along comes this tousle-headed child with her decrepit grandpa. Johan was upset, and not only by the little girl’s outspokenness and the mother’s repeated apologies. At the same time, he wanted to show the mother that he took the child’s teasing in good fun. Never let it be said that he couldn’t laugh at himself or at a clever little child.
That same evening as he lay in bed, waiting for Mai to finish brushing her hair, he was searching for the right words. He didn’t know how to put it, but he thought, She’ll help me. I’m sick, but she’ll help me. My life has never been the picture of dignity.
“What is it, Johan?” Pale and frightened, Mai turned to face him. “There’s something you’re not telling me. What is it?”
“Mai, it’s spread. I think it’s serious.”
There. He’d said it. Mai gave a little gasp. “What did the doctor say?”
“He smelled kind of sweaty.”
“Johan!” Her voice was sharp now. “What did the doctor say?”
“He said it was alarming.”
Mai burst into tears. This time it was no act. She set the hairbrush on the table in front of the mirror, went over to him, and curled up on the bed. Johan stroked her hair.
“You’ll have to help me when the time comes,” he said.
Mai looked up at him. Her face was blotchy, streaked with tears and snot.
“What do you mean?” Her voice broke. “Of course I’ll help you.”
Johan went on stroking her hair. He said, “I want to be the one to say when it’s over. I don’t want to die now. I want to live to be a hundred, just as long as I can be with you. But when I say it’s time, I want you to help me.”
Mai became very still. She stared at Johan. Then she sat up in bed and slapped his face, the flat of her hand cracking off his left cheek. Johan grabbed her slender wrist and threaded his fingers through hers. She began to cry again.
“Not that!” she whispered. “Not that. Don’t ask that of me. I couldn’t bring myself to do that for you.”
After a long silence, which neither could break, Johan bowed his head. Then he said, “Mai, my life has never been the picture of dignity.”
A boil would later erupt on the spot where Mai slapped him. Obviously there was no medical connection between the slap and the eruption, but Johan looked upon the boil as something they had created together. The conjoining of her hand and his cheek had borne fruit; his face had opened up, and he had given birth to a boil. It was a throbbing boil, a repulsive sight. For this reason, for as long as he could, he lay on his side, so that only the unblemished side of his face was visible. One day, though, he forgot himself. When a stray visitor wandered into his hospital room by mistake, he raised his head off the pillow to ask if he could help her. When the woman saw his face, she put her hand to her mouth, yelped something that might have been the word sorry, and dashed out of the room.
The boil was a part of him, transforming him, even in his own eyes, into a monster with two heads, one big and one little, that scared other people away. But the boil was also a being in its own right. It had a life of its own. Sometimes it was huge, pulsating and purple as an eggplant; sometimes it was pallid and lackluster. Like a newborn infant, it had to be tended and soothed. It was drained of fluid, smeared with salves, and occasionally even swathed in bandages.
He once claimed to have been woken by the sound of the boil crying.
When Mai ran her fingers over the boil, Johan said, “We made it together, you and I. I carried it. My face opened up and gave it life.”
II
THE MIRROR
The surgeons had operated on his body seven times in all. They had taken X-rays and done ultrasound scans. They had examined him, cut him open, and stitched him up again. They had discussed his case and written it up on a chart. Johan Sletten was no stranger. He belonged to them now, to the white coats.
Parked outside the hospital were bicycles fitted with child seats and shopping baskets, hefty chains locked around their wheels. The bicycles testified to the existence of one set of this building’s inhabitants: the Healthy, those who left every evening and went home to do the things that healthy people did. For Johan, who was now counted among the others, the hospital had become a home. Once, when he went for a walk in the corridor, a middle-aged woman had stopped him to ask the way to the office of a particular physician. Johan happened to know where this doctor was to be found and gave the woman precise and elaborate directions. He was a guide. The woman thanked him and hurried on her way.
While he lived, Johan had three friends: Geir Hernes, Odd Karlsen, and Ole Torjussen. He often thought of Ole Torjussen, the one he liked best of the three: journalist, colleague.
Many years ago, Ole Torjussen fell in love with a young American woman with dark brown eyes, and in a moment of heady recklessness he gave up his job at Norway’s third biggest newspaper, left his wife and two children (a boy of twelve and a girl of fourteen), and moved with the young woman to New York. They had six months together before she kicked him out. He flew home to Oslo and his wife, who took him back for the sake of the children. Freelance assignments
offered by his old newspaper made it possible for him to earn a living. Four years later he would die of leukemia.
Ole Torjussen could tell Johan very little about his six months in New York. He had been perfectly happy, he said, right up until the day the girl asked him to leave. And the happiest moment of all had come one Sunday morning in May when she had sent him out to buy bread and coffee and the papers.
The lovers lived in a tiny apartment on West 73rd Street near Central Park. The girl was studying literature at New York University and managed on money from home. Torjussen read books, cooked, kept the apartment tidy, and managed on money he had stashed away in a bank account of which his wife knew nothing.
This, then, is what happened on the happiest day of Ole Torjussen’s life. He came walking out of the shop on the corner where he always bought his bread, coffee, and newspapers. (Yes, always! This shop was part of the order of his new life, like the spot close to Strawberry Fields he took whenever he went to the park to read. Always the same little French place in the Village, too, whenever he had a yen for escargots.) When Ole Torjussen came walking out of the shop on the corner, he was stopped by a tourist—a young man in a T-shirt with white arms and a bag slung over his shoulder, a stranger in the city, no question about it—who asked the way to the nearest subway station.
There were plenty of other people he could have asked, Torjussen said later; the street was awake even early on a Sunday morning. People were on their way to the 77th Street flea market; people were walking their dogs; people like himself were running out for breakfast and the Sunday paper.
But the young man didn’t ask anyone else for directions, he asked Ole Torjussen. And Torjussen gave him precise directions, even explaining where he could switch to the express to save time. Ole Torjussen had become a guide in the metropolis of New York. It was nothing, really, but as he walked back to the apartment on 73rd Street with the newspapers under his arm and the bread in a plastic bag and the coffee dripping in a paper sack, he felt as if he had conquered the world.
Johan had been in the hospital for several weeks when the attending physician on his ward decided that he could go home. Dr. Meyer, who knew Mai slightly from years before, reminded him of a ballet dancer: she spoke with her arms, her hands, her whole body. Every time she uttered a word, moved around doing what doctors do, or stood perfectly still, just listening to him, she seemed to be onstage, dancing. She was beautiful, flat-chested and lightly clad under her white coat. When she came to see him she would perch on the edge of his bed. She was never in a hurry. And one day the following happened.
Dr. Meyer got up from the bed and walked over to the window. Johan could hear piano music. He was about to ask her—Could she hear it too? Was it Tchaikovsky? Something from Giselle?—but he couldn’t open his mouth, couldn’t take his eyes off her as she stood in the light from the window. Suddenly she rose up onto her toes and went into a deep bend from the waist, her body forming a spectacular curve. It was a beautiful, perfect movement. Johan was not quite sure what he was witnessing, but when she finished, he thanked her.
She sat on the edge of his bed again.
“Is it the morphine that makes me think you’re always dancing?” he asked. “Is it my imagination?”
“No,” she said, straightening his pillow, “it’s not your imagination.” She made another gesture. “It’s time to leave,” she said, still smiling, “for a while, at any rate.”
He noted those words, for a while. The life that went on outside, among the healthy, was no longer his life. But he was to be allowed to mingle with them one last time. The pain had abated somewhat, and his body was responding well to treatment.
“But,” said Dr. Meyer, who never showed the slightest sign of dancing when Mai was around, “don’t hesitate to call me if anything happens.”
Mai took her spindly husband by the hand and led him out of the hospital and into the car, driving straight to the cottage in Värmland. It sat on its own by a lake, just over the border from Norway, surrounded by forest. A peaceful spot.
Johan slept right through that first night, and on the first morning he made love to his wife. His wasted body wound itself round hers until she gently guided his soft penis inside her and moaned.
Even now, when I’m half dead, she manages to take pleasure in me, he thought with wonder.
Afterward, Mai cleaned his boil, drained it of fluid, and tenderly kissed his face.
He so much wanted to savor this time. He wasn’t in much pain. It was almost as if he had managed to slip away from the illness. Not that he would have voiced such a thought; he never said, “I’ve slipped away from my illness.” He knew that if he uttered such words, the beast would find him and make him pay. Best to tread softly and try to enjoy life a little. Not too much, just a little. Although even this little bit of enjoyment was not easy to extract, for on their first morning in Värmland, Johan had woken up with a sty on his right eyelid. It stung and itched and suppurated, and his eyelid swelled. Mai had a Swedish colleague write out a prescription for eyedrops. Now they sat, each in his own chair in the living room, Johan inspecting the inflamed spot in Mai’s compact. He said, “Do you think it could be anything other than an ordinary sty?”
“No,” she said flatly.
Johan blinked again. “The drops aren’t doing any good, Mai.”
“It’ll probably take a day or two.”
“But it’s stinging even more than it was this morning.”
“Johan, it’s a perfectly ordinary sty.”
Johan opened his eye and felt it throbbing. “You don’t suppose it could be anything—you know—serious?”
Mai heaved a sigh. “No, I don’t. You’ve got a sty on your eyelid, that’s all.”
Johan laughed shortly. “Ever since I was a boy I’ve been scared of going blind. I don’t mean to be dramatic, Mai. I know you think I tend to be dramatic. But I’ve always been scared of going blind, and this doesn’t feel like an ordinary sty to me. It’s something more serious. It’s definitely something more serious.”
Mai tossed her book onto the floor and looked straight at Johan. “You’ve got a sty, Johan. You’re not going to go blind. I can’t believe how you can …”
She left the sentence unfinished.
“You can’t believe how I can …”—Johan breathed— “seeing as I’m going to …”
He left this sentence unfinished too.
The next morning the inflamed spot on his right eyelid was almost gone.
Some days later at breakfast, Johan announced that he thought they should get a dog. They’d had one before, and now he had the urge to get another. It wasn’t as if he’d given it much thought. It wasn’t even a serious suggestion. He said it on impulse, out of a longing for a cold, wet dog muzzle against the tip of his own nose, the smell of a dog’s paws, the warmth and vitality of a dog’s body against his own nervy form. All this prompted him to say, “I think we should get a dog.”
Mai put down the book she had been reading, looked down at her plate, and fingered a slice of tomato. She didn’t say anything—she merely sighed, once, twice—but Johan knew exactly what she was thinking: I’m not looking after a dog on my own.
“Forget it,” Johan said. “It was thoughtless of me. The last thing you need right now is a dog on your hands.”
Mai looked at him and smiled.
“What good would a dog be to you, anyway?” he went on. “You don’t even like going for walks.” She was still looking at him. “Anyway, you’ve got me instead,” he said. “Woof, woof.”
“Johan, please… . Maybe when you’re better.”
“Woof, woof!”
“Johan. Please. Don’t do that. When you’re better.”
“I’m not going to get better, Mai. For Christ’s sake, look at me! I’m not going to get better.”
Johan remembered that time a dozen years ago when Mai turned forty—when her hair had still been fair and people were still taking her for his daughter—and he had g
iven her the silver cross and the puppy. To be honest, it was Johan who wanted a puppy—all his life, really—so he gave one to Mai as a present. The puppy was an albino-white Labrador retriever named Charley. Even though the puppy was a bitch, Johan decided to call her Charley; she wouldn’t answer to Clara or Kira or Carla or any other name they tried.
Charley was the sort of dog who seemed old as soon as she was past the puppy stage. She was slow and heavy and slightly lame due to a displaced hip, a birth defect undiscovered until she was eighteen months old. When she wasn’t ambling through the forest with Johan—she was never nimble enough to run and play with other dogs—she slept in a basket in the hallway, curled up with her big tulip-red nose cradled in her forepaws.
Charley was the most devoted of dogs. Her trust knew no bounds. She greeted everyone with the same affection and gratitude. And one day the following happened.
Charley and Johan were taking a walk around Sognsvann Pond. Halfway round they came upon a young couple barbecuing by the water’s edge. The girl was dressed in a strapless floral-print summer dress, and the young man, who was exceptionally well built and clearly enjoyed showing off his physique, was stripped to the waist. When Charley limped over to him, tempted by the sausage dangling from his fingers, the young man stood up and kicked her. Charley moaned, the way dogs do, and keeled over.
From a little way off, Johan saw the whole thing: the kick, the dog moaning and struggling to get back onto her feet, the muscled young man still dangling a sausage, now with a self-satisfied grin on his face. Johan knew it was time to act. It was the time for Johan Sletten to show the world what he was made of. It was time for him to defend his defenseless dog. Johan should have marched right up to the cruel young man, ripped the sausage from his sausage fingers, and knocked him flat on his back, goddammit! But Johan did no such thing. He took two steps back and hid behind a tree. Johan was no muscleman. Mai called him a string bean, and string beans don’t go picking fights with cruel young men. So he took two steps back, hid behind a tree, and called to Charley in a whisper—softly, softly, so as not to give any offense or cause any unpleasantness. Just loud enough for an old dog to catch the sound of her master’s voice, get up, and slink off to find him.