A Fool, Free

by Beate Grimsrud

  And I get started straight away. A few months later, a new short story is published in the country’s biggest national paper. ‘We backed the right horse,’ the psychologist says, proudly. ‘Your aids certainly won’t be left in the loft to gather dust.’

  I ask Jonathan how you can know what sex you are if you’re sitting tied to a chair, with a blindfold over your eyes and have lost your memory.

  ‘Is that one of your fantasies?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You should just know,’ he says. ‘You know.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘How do you feel then?’

  ‘I feel like a child. A sexless child. I denied puberty.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wasn’t ready.’

  ‘You didn’t have the security and tools you needed to take the next step.’

  ‘I heard on the radio today about a man they found in the south of Sweden. He’d lost his memory and spoke poor English. He didn’t even know what his mother tongue was. And I thought, mother sex. How do you know that?’

  ‘We’ll have to talk more about your sexuality,’ Jonathan says.

  But we never do, there are always other fires that need to be put out.

  I get an internship at the Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern, arranged by the eye hospital. The idea was that I would be a set design assistant, but the play is shelved. I’m moved to lighting and plugs and sockets. Learn more about electricity than the theatre, as I had originally hoped. Occasionally I operate the follow spot for performances. My job is to follow the main character, but often I can’t see him. So I point the spot straight up at the ceiling.

  But mostly I tramp the corridors between the different stages. I don’t know what to do with myself. Hide myself away in various corners. Get there late and try to make the day pass. As an intern you’re not really a worker. No one counts on you. When I’m in Oslo over Christmas I get sick, Tim calls Dramaten to say I can’t come to work. The message is received with panic. Can’t come! Is she an actress? A stage manager? An important person? They look me up, but can’t even find me in their papers. No one misses me. I can be ill for as long as I like.

  Half a year passes and I potter about. Then my book is published. I get fantastic reviews, lots of attention and they write about me in the papers. I’m immediately transferred to the literary department and given responsibility for a drama competition in connection with the theatre’s two hundredth anniversary. A month later I have my first reading, on Dramaten’s smallest stage, it’s Imprisoned Writers’ Day. A man comes up to me afterwards and invites me to a dinner reception. Can I take Lolo with me, who was in the audience? Of course. We are guided along service corridors and through public rooms. There are women in white aprons everywhere. Crystal chandeliers on the ceiling and silver candlesticks, paintings and antiques. ‘And you can sit here,’ my host tells me, and shows me to a place in the middle next to an elderly gentleman. The food is served on silver platters. As soon as you’ve taken a sip of wine, someone is there to refill your glass.

  I notice that as soon as my table partner opens his mouth, everyone falls silent. He talks about Ingmar Bergman’s stomach. Which isn’t that interesting really, but silence reigns. Then he says politely to me: ‘I’ve seen you at Dramaten. You work there.’ You could hear a pin drop. Then I say loudly: ‘Do you work at Dramaten too?’ It is even more silent, if that’s possible. He says yes and laughs a little. I get up and go to the toilet and soon I have a gaggle of women around me. ‘How could you say that? Erland Josephson is Sweden’s best actor. Right now he’s playing the main role on the main stage and is in Tarkovsky’s film The Sacrifice.’ Oh shit.

  Making your debut is a bit like finishing a long education, I get lots of job offers. I’m asked to write articles in the country’s leading papers, to write plays and film manuscripts. I get a writer’s stipend and live off my writing. My internship at Dramaten has finished. I walk past a sports stadium every day and suddenly one day I go in and say that I want to play football again. I, who thought it was a passing phase, and that culture was now my focus, am back in the women’s team. It feels right.

  I’m worried about Dad. Worried about getting the articles written on time. Newspapers have deadlines. I’m not used to that. I get invitations to take part in debates and readings. I say yes. I say yes to nearly everything. Criss-cross the country. Until one day the radio call me and ask what I think about the interest rates. Then I realise that I have to choose which offers to accept. That I have to slow down.

  It’s the 30th of April, Walpurgis Night. I go to meet my friend Sonja, her husband and their little boy. We’re going to meet by the bonfire. There’s a lot of people there. I can’t find my friends, and start to circle the fire. I’m convinced that I’ll spot them. At any moment, that everything will be fine. People are sitting on blankets on the grass, eating and drinking. This is the evening when teenagers often get drunk for the first time. I walk round and round the bonfire for hours and can’t understand why I can’t find my friends. If they had been here, we would have bumped into each other. I’ve made myself as visible as possible. But I can’t give up. Can’t understand. It was agreed.

  The place starts to empty as families leave. The bonfire burns down. Only a few groups of young people left. I walk round the dying fire. It’s dark and the air is heavy. I’ve got stuck. I only live a few hundred metres away. I walk further up into the park. Have got it into my head that I have to walk. That something horrible will happen if I don’t carry on. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ It’s Emil and Erik who want to talk to me. I acknowledge that they’re there, but don’t want to engage in a conversation. ‘You can’t go home,’ Erik says, and I’ve already heard that. ‘You have to look until you find them. You have to stay in the park all night.’

  ‘I want to go home to bed.’

  ‘You’re lost.’

  It’s true. I’m lost. I don’t know where I live. I try to guide my feet out of the park, but don’t manage. Where is my bed? At the top of the building somewhere. Suddenly all the paths look so unfamiliar. As though I had never been here before. I normally run in this park. The air solidifies in front of me, I’m forced to walk in zigzags. It’s not me that’s deciding my direction. The April evening is chilly and I start to freeze. Night takes over the park. No street lights. No fire. Only witches. Only Emil and Erik. Words, words, birds, birds. The dark hangs in the air like a threat.

  I eventually lie down on a bench with my hands under my cheek and pull up my hood. Hear the teenage gangs making a racket in the distance. My sensitivity to sound increases, their voices get closer like rockets. Fired off from far away and exploding in my head. I’m freezing, I fall asleep and start to dream. My friends turn up in my dream. They disappear when I reach out my hands to touch them. I wake up several times during the night, frozen to the bone and frightened.

  My dad survives. He has lost nearly all power of speech. He can’t paint any more, as he dreamed of doing full time when he became a pensioner. He can’t figure out money and numbers. Forgets all the time. Can’t remember what he’s just done or what happened yesterday. But he knows who we are, that we belong to him. He’s much calmer and more good-natured.

  After a year of therapy, he slowly regains one ability after the other. But he still can’t paint. The walls in the house are full of his paintings. He lies on the sofa and looks at them for hours. Talks about them. The composition of colours. Points and shows that there’s an invisible circle in the square paintings. He starts doing woodwork instead. He still fumbles for words and can’t count. He starts to cry at the slightest thing. Is that the illness or grief?

  Mum, who has said she looks forward to spending her old age with someone she has so many shared experiences with, now has a husband who can only remember things from the time before they met. But he still has his sense of humour. He has more brain haemorrhages, some bigger, some smaller. When he is no longer able to make things with wood, he starts to
make rag rugs and work in the garden. Vegetables and flowers. When he can’t read any more, he looks at books with photographs of art and listens to the radio. When he can no longer speak, he starts to sing.

  ‘Where are we, and why? I’m not quite with you,’ Jonathan says.

  ‘The voices have been going on about it raining all weekend. Over and over again they say the word rain, rain, rain.’ Outside the snow is lying white and fluffy. The trees have soft white muscles. Why do they insist that it’s raining? ‘Do you think they mean crying?’

  ‘In psychodynamic therapy it could be interpreted that way,’ Jonathan says. ‘But I don’t know.’

  ‘The crying could be my dad calling.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘We’re sitting together, I can’t look in the mirror any more and be him. See him in my thoughts and go in.’

  ‘You need to get up from that table in that little Norwegian house and walk away. Sit here with me in the kitchen and be an adult instead. Torvald had already left your childhood kitchen back then. Now it’s your turn to leave.’

  ‘When Torvald is faced with problems, he lets them go, walks around and carries on, whereas I stand there banging my head.’

  ‘Stood there banging your head. You now have an alternative.’

  It’s a wonderful day. It’s the season’s first football match on grass. The one you long for after winter training. It’s wonderful until about twenty minutes into the first half. I’ve been playing from the start, have been on top form, get a fantastic chance. The ball rolls towards the other team’s goal, there’s only one obstacle between me and the goalie, a huge centre back. In my head I’m already past her. Feint to the left, around. I even feint the goal keeper... but before that the centre back has no doubt been told to think clearance in a tight corner. She must have got to the ball first, a leap forwards and then THWACK! Everything goes black. I get the ball with her foot behind it in my face. The black is splintered by white and then the sky.

  I ask: ‘Can I carry on playing? Do I need to leave the pitch?’ ‘You’re off the pitch,’ the trainer says and looks down at me. I put my hands to my eyes. I’ve played in glasses for fifteen years and it’s always been fine. I’m bleeding from cuts all over my face. The glass and frames have cut the skin in several places.

  I sit in a car with two men I don’t know and press the towel to my face. It sucks up the dark red blood. The men are the boyfriends of a couple of girls on the team. When we get to the hospital, one of them says: ‘We’ll get back just in time for the second half.’ I realise then that they’re not coming in, that I’ve been substituted for the whole match and won’t be making a comeback in the second half. I’m dispensable. I’m abandoned at the entrance to A&E. A voice in reception asks me for ID. I lower the towel. She sees my bloody face. I say: ‘Ball in the eye.’

  From then on I get full service. I’m the only one who is allowed to lie down. I start to enjoy myself. Everything’s great here in A&E. I close my eyes. Fall and fall, as if I was coming from a party. I’ve got a little inflatable swimming ring round my arm that someone keeps blowing up. Everything is great and beautiful. I can relax. I imagine that I’m lying in an architectural gem. I smile. The only thing is that I’m ravenous. Then I see a trolley being wheeled in. The person pushing it is an old-fashioned nurse, maybe a kind Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. A little white cap with a red cross on it. The trolley is full of soft white sandwiches full of air and cheese. I imagine reaching out and threading ten sandwiches on a straw and then popping them in my mouth and sucking on them like you do with wild strawberries.

  I’m plastered and sewn up in several places on my face. Then I’m rolled along corridors under the hospital. I lie in the bed on wheels and continue to wax lyrical about how beautiful everything is. I end up in the intensive care ward, with tubes in my arms and a drip. I’m now wearing a white nightie. My football boots and strip are on a chair next to the bed. I’m obviously spending the night here. It’s one of Sweden’s largest hospitals, and yet everything feels small and pretend. Pretend serious. But comfortable, absolutely. They ask if I can remember the actual impact and if I lost consciousness. I can’t answer. Just say that I’m interested in architecture and that it’s so beautiful here. It’s actually a very run-down hospital.

  They ask me my name and I don’t know. I don’t know where I’ve got this positive feeling from. And all this beauty, where do I see it? In reality, I am confused and frightened, but it’s a lovely feeling that Sweden doesn’t want Ball in the Eye to die. That Sweden wants me to be comfortable, wants to help me, to look after me. Here I lie, barely able to recognise myself... and am looked after. Not because of who I am, but just because... because I exist, or am... broken. Outside the window, because I’m quite high up in the hospital now, I can see all the houses I’ve stayed in. Even my lovely little workspace. I look onto my desk and see to my delight that a lot has already been written of the feature film manuscript that I’m working on. And I’ve been struggling with it. At a complete standstill. An endless starting block.

  Everything seems to be going my way at the moment. I see my flat. My childhood home. The garden with the gnarled apple trees. The folk high schools. The low accommodation blocks. I see the water. It moves in waves and I close my eyes. Which pulls at the stitches. My heart pounds. Where am I? I don’t dare ask the question. I just say thank you and smile. Why am I thanking everyone? I’m scared. Everything’s fine, I tell myself over and over again. This is just a dream. Soon you’ll wake up. I ask the woman in the bed beside me what’s wrong with her. ‘Bitten by a cat,’ she replies. The ward for minor injuries, Ball in the Eye thinks. The woman adds that she might have to have an amputation.

  I open my mouth, always hungry. ‘No food for you,’ says the nurse. ‘You’ve got a drip.’ I feel hungry to the marrow. I look out of the window and don’t see the low building where I lived. I see instead that I’m high, high up. I haven’t spoken to anyone I know. I haven’t remembered any telephone numbers so the staff can call. I’m not Eli. I’m not the boys. I don’t know who I am. Other than Ball in the Eye. I’m not happy any more. I’m frightened.

  They say it was a mild concussion and that I’m not in any danger. Why am I so confused then? They don’t understand. ‘Think about it, then you’ll know,’ they say.

  I think: I’m in a bed in a room with unfamiliar bodies and voices. Exposed. In a room with machines and strange smells. I’m lying free in the air. My body is resting on nothing. It’s flying without a pilot. I have cuts on my face, which is starting to swell. People crying and shouting for help. No one knows that I’m here. It’s a long weekend. Lolo is in the country and thinks I’m playing football. The football trainer, where’s he? Why hasn’t he come to see how I am? Could I have died?

  It’s time for me to go home. I put on my football strip, have new plasters put on the small cuts and a big white bandage over my forehead and right eye. My face is swollen in several places, the blue blending into yellow. I think I look worse now than when I came in. It’s the body’s way of healing, creating disharmony in order to fall into harmony again. I feel unsteady on my feet after several days in bed. It’s not dangerous, I tell myself. But the thought of an inner landslide doesn’t let go. The air has changed. It lies in front of me in great lumps that I have to shy away from. And she who shies away is layer upon layer of me. Ball in the Eye, the boys and so deep inside she’s almost invisible, Eli. The fact that the health services can’t see the difference between concussion and psychosis is appalling.

  I walk down the slope and out onto the street. Think about food, about gnawing on a hard bone. Think that I could eat a whole pig now. Crunch it between my teeth. ‘Hello,’ a voice calls. I don’t want to meet anyone, I want to go home and eat a whole pig. ‘Hello,’ the voice says again. I don’t want to show myself, I don’t want anything to stop me. I look down, and a hand is stretched out towards me. I take it and slowly raise my eyes. From th
e heavy boots, the dirty workman’s trousers and jacket, and finally to the face. It’s like looking straight into the mirror, he looks wild. He has exactly the same bandage as I do round his head and over one eye. Bruises and a black eye. I shake his hand and say: ‘Ball in the eye.’ ‘Fell with my hands in my pocket,’ he replies. We stand looking at each other, until he says: ‘Want to come for a coffee?’ I shake my head. Black coffee, the very thought makes me retch. I can’t say that I’m more interested in a whole pig. I turn and walk away. He shouts after me: ‘Maybe not worth it, people might think that we’re married.’

  Two weeks later, I go to Oslo to meet the producer of the film that I’m supposed to be writing. I tell her the truth, that I haven’t managed to write much. ‘But goodness, what’s happened?’ she interrupts. ‘Nothing in particular, really.’ ‘I mean with your face?’ ‘Oh that.’ ‘Did someone beat you up?’

  I tell her the whole story. I sit up. Can tell that the producer is listening. She’s with me, nodding, smiling. I only tell what is glorious and funny. Say nothing about the fear, that I still haven’t got over the feeling of being abandoned. That the psychosis is still here, humming inside. That the fear is still there. That I’m floating in a room of strangers and can’t see anyone I know. Can’t tell whether I’m awake or dreaming. Can’t tell whether I’m dying or in the midst of life.

  But I tell the story with great animation, horrible experiences can become great art. You just need to work on it. I tell her about the guy on the street. That it was like looking into a mirror when I saw his face. That we were like twins. And when I say that he shouted after me, ‘Maybe not worth it, people might think that we’re married,’ I find myself adding, without giving it a thought: ‘And that is the opening of the film.’ ‘Great,’ the producer says. ‘All you need to do now is go home and write the rest of it.’