by Linn Ullmann
Ellen nodded, her eyes flickering to Mai. “Shall I send it here or to your home address or what?”
Mai was about to answer, but Johan beat her to it. “Send it to me here at the hospital. That way I can look at it at night before I go to sleep.”
Ellen nodded again but pointed to her stomach. “It might be a while—I doubt I’ll manage to get the pictures developed before the baby comes. I could go into labor any time now, but I have to be two weeks overdue before they’ll even think of inducing me.” She gabbled on. “So I don’t know exactly when I’ll have a chance to send it.”
“Whenever you can, my dear,” said Johan. “Whenever you can. And don’t forget to send me a picture of the baby too.”
Ellen looked at Andreas, smiled, and nodded emphatically.
“I’d like a picture of the moment the baby …” Johan cleared his throat. “I’d like a picture of the moment your baby turns to you and touches you for the first time. Could you send me a picture like that, Ellen?”
She nodded again, though she must already have been envisaging the difficulties of taking precisely such a picture.
“Ellen,” Johan said.
The pregnant girl looked at him.
He nodded at his son, still holding Ellen’s blue eyes with his own.
“Stay with him!” he said.
“Oh, yes!” she said, squeezing his son’s hand. “You bet I will.”
The days that followed found him screaming in pain. But his screams cannot have been very loud, since no one heard them. His head felt close to exploding. He remembered something Mai had once told him about Schumann. As the darkness invaded his mind, he heard a constant A note. This was before he came to be haunted by the uncannily beautiful music that he could neither write down nor play. Night and day that A, that constant A. It was the same with Johan: a humming sound in his head just kept swelling and swelling. He had no ear for music. He could have mistaken it for a dial tone, and the dial tone was high A; everybody knew that. A for amor, A for arsenic, A for aspect, A for apple, A for angst, A for abracadabra, A for ashes. A for Mai !
“Did you call me?” Her voice came from far away.
“Can’t you do something?” he pleaded.
“I’m holding your hand. Can you feel it?”
“But can’t you do something, Mai?”
Moments of confusion. Babble. Words all jumbled up. Backward and forward. Hey, ho! Sing, sing, sing! Mai’s tears. A whisper, a long way off, addressed not to him but to someone else: “He doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore.”
And moments of clarity. Standing in front of the mirror that day in Värmland.
This is my life. This is my … life. And in his mind’s eye all he could see was a long straight line, like Mai’s braid. Was that all there was? Dearest Mai, was that all there was? Not one little curve?
This set him thinking. He wanted a curve. It grows light in the morning, and dark in the evening, and in the course of the day he turns and looks up at the sky or down the road. It makes no difference. But he turns. There is a curve. To turn is to make a curve. An exquisite, consummate movement.
It grows light in the morning and dark in the evening, and in the course of the day he turns.
There.
Now he could sleep. That was what he meant. All he had to do was turn, and then he could sleep.
“Johan.”
Mai was standing over him.
“Johan.”
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. She was smiling.
“Did I wake you?”
He shook his head.
“Ellen and Andreas have a daughter. Seven pounds ten ounces. Delivered by cesarean section this morning at five past seven. Mother and baby are both doing well. They’re going to call her Agnes.”
“After my mother,” he breathed.
“Yes.”
“Good,” he whispered, and drifted back to sleep.
More days of babble. Again he hears her speaking to one of the white coats. “He doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s miles away now.” Again he hears her weep, and the white coats comfort her. He wants to shout, “No! I’m not miles away. I’m here!” But it hurts and he can’t do it. Other sounds escape from his lips.
One night she comes to him. It must be night, because he hasn’t heard a sound for hours. She sits down on his bed.
“Johan,” she says.
“Yes, Mai.”
“Johan,” she says, again.
It occurs to him that maybe she can’t hear him, so he opens his eyes and looks at her.
“It’s time … isn’t it?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m lying here waiting for it to grow light. Listen: It grows light in the morning and dark in the evening, and in the course of the day I turn. It’s as simple as that.” He tries to laugh. “It’s a sort of mantra. It doesn’t mean anything, but if you say it over and over again it helps.”
She is not listening. “I think it’s time, Johan.” This time she isn’t asking.
“But I just told you … you’re not listening.”
“I know you better than anybody else,” she goes on.
“I don’t know about that,” he says.
“And we have a language all our own, you and I.”
Now look who’s babbling, he thinks to himself. A language all our own! Have you ever heard such a thing? Oh, no, Mai. Maj from Malö. We don’t have any language all our own, you and I.
“Another language,” she says.
He stares at her.
“And it’s time.”
“No,” he says. But she doesn’t hear. “No,” he says again. “Don’t, Mai! Not yet! Please! Wait till it grows light.”
“I love you,” she whispers. Then she takes his hand in hers, moistens his upper arm with a wad of cotton, and injects him with the barbiturate. She sees that he is sleeping and that he is in no pain, that it is good. So she gives him the lethal injection. She watches and waits. So quick and yet so imperceptible. No change in his expression. A trickle of blood from the boil, and that is all. She clasps her hands and says a prayer, not because she’s particularly religious, or because Johan was, but because somehow it seems the right thing to do.
She leaves the room, shutting the door behind her, and pulls something from her purse. It is her cell phone. She calls Dr. Emma Meyer at home. This is not the sort of conversation one begins by apologizing for calling so late and waking the whole house, though it is late. It is no longer night. Soon it will be light, and Dr. Meyer listens to what Mai has to say: that she’s prepared to give herself up to the police. That she’s prepared to stand trial. That she has followed her conscience. She made a promise and she has kept it.
Dr. Meyer says, “He was going to die soon anyway.”
Mai starts to cry.
“I won’t tell anyone about this, Mai, not if you don’t.”
Mai’s voice, surprised, faint: “You won’t?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Dr. Meyer is silent. Then she says, “Because you respected Johan’s wishes. You knew him; I didn’t. Nor did any of those people who would feel justified in judging you if this were to get out.”
Mai has no answer to this.
Dr. Meyer says, “Wait right there, Mai. I’m on my way. We’ll have some coffee and a sandwich. After that you’re going home to get some sleep. And then, a few hours from now, the day can begin.”
Mai nods, the way small children nod when they are talking on the telephone, heedless that the person they are talking to cannot see them.
Dr. Meyer’s voice again: “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes.”
“Not a word, Mai. There’s no point trying to explain… .”
“No.”
“Are we agreed?”
“Yes.”
After her conversation with the doctor, Mai goes back to Johan and sits down on his bed. The door stands open, a band of light streaming into the roo
m from the corridor. He looks just the same. No change yet. She takes his hand to kiss it, but it is cold and she drops it.
She looks around.
There was no point coming in here.
What was it she wanted, to talk to him one more time? To hear him say it was good finally to rest?
She stands up and walks to the door.
Had he still been alive he would have said, “Her tread is not heavy, but she is tired. So very, very tired. She is tired when she lies down to sleep, and when she wakes up she is tired.”
Mai shuts the door behind her, not turning to look back.
It grows dark. A deep darkness falls on Johan Sletten’s face.
He would have said, “And your hair, Mai, is more beautiful this morning than on any other.”
LINN ULLMANN
Grace
Born in 1966, Linn Ullmann is a graduate of New York University, where she studied English literature and began work on her Ph.D. In 1990 she returned to her native Norway to pursue a career in journalism, becoming a prominent literary critic. She is the author of the novels Before You Sleep and Stella Descending, and she also writes a column for Norway’s leading morning newspaper. In Norway Grace won the prestigious Reader’s Prize. Ullmann lives in Oslo with her husband and their four children.
ALSO BY LINN ULLMANN
Before You Sleep
Stella Descending
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2006
Translation copyright © 2005 by Forlaget Oktober AS
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Ullmann, Linn, [date]
[Nåde. English]
Grace / Linn Ullmann ; translated from the Norwegian by Barbara Haveland.
p. cm.
I. Haveland, Barbara. II. Title.
PT8951.31.L56T513 2005
839.8’2374—dc22
2004048601
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eISBN: 978-0-307-41534-9
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