A Fool, Free

by Beate Grimsrud

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It was my fault. I’m sorry.’ He immediately pulls a pen and pad out of his bag. ‘Write that down here,’ he shouts in an authoritarian voice. ‘That it was your fault.’ Does he have to shout? He starts to draw where he was and how I swung onto the cycle path in the wrong lane. I agree with everything.

  I’ve come straight from my therapist’s small room, which I feel might be a disadvantage. The world outside is somehow new. Even traffic regulations. With my reduced vision I’m probably not supposed to cycle at all. I couldn’t get a driving licence. I have very little in my favour. I’ve crashed into the worst person you can crash into. A policeman. He asks for my name and telephone number. I write it down, but don’t check it. Don’t see what’s written there.

  Then I take my intact bike with me on the bus out to the cottage. On the motorway, I see a man crouching down, his back to the busy motorway, picking coltsfoot. I write on the piece of paper I got from the policeman. I write over his name. Think I might need the coltsfoot-picking man who’s going to such effort more than the name of a policeman I would rather forget. The policeman rings the next day and wants more details. He rings all summer. The birds sing, and I can hardly hear the phone. I run in from all the greenery. It’s the policeman. He is obviously not able to fix his bike. Nor is anyone else. He tells me about all the bad luck he has all the time. About the leaks and the fact he can’t sleep. About his job as a mounted policeman. About the horse that kicked him. About the friend who has abandoned him. And now the broken bike. I promise to pay if he sends the bill. I feel that I have no power against a policeman. He would rather talk than sort it out.

  In the late summer, he’s still calling. New misfortunes all the time. Eventually he manages to press a charge for careless behaviour in traffic. In August, I’m sent a fine and the bill for the bike. He calls me one more time to tell me that he’s had vermin in his cupboards and has had to pull out his entire kitchen.

  Suddenly the window in the bedroom is open. Even though the dark curtains are still drawn, I immediately notice that something is different. There’s fresh spring air in the room. I open the curtains. Close my eyes and close the window. Then I notice that the other half of the window is still open. I freeze. Should I do it? Should I die? There’s a pull in the pit of my stomach. The air is right outside my walls and window.

  In fact, there’s always a danger. Part of me wants to stay in the world and the other wants to jump out and lose everything. The whole flat could tip out like a drawer. Or I could fall out. Not choose to do it, just do it. Because the air is calling. The fall. I pull my head in, reach out with shaking hands and close the window. It’s not been open for over a year.

  I hold on to the bed. What happens if I open it again? How did the window manage to open itself? I had thought of giving it a grand opening when either Jonathan or Lolo were here. As a sign that everything was better. As a small triumph. But now it’s not a triumph at all.

  One day it will be opened again. I’m determined. The dark curtains will be taken down, the windows will be washed and be ordinary windows that give light and air. Not a dangerous black hole. But I’m not there yet. It’s evening and I just hope the feeling of falling out won’t keep me awake.

  Then I realise what has happened. One of my mental health workers was here. We were cleaning today. Morgan was in the bedroom, he’s the one who draws while we’re talking and leaves behind little men all over my papers. He’s the one who helps me fix bits and bobs in the house. He’s the one who always has a good answer to all my difficult thoughts. He’s a handyman, even in his mind. Does he not know how dangerous the windows are? Or is he testing me? I ask him when he comes again. He tells me he’d thought of closing it again, but forgot. ‘Sorry.’

  One day a kitten appears. A so called street-mix from the streets of Bergen on the west coast of Norway. She comes in the middle of the night with Hild. She’s stowed away in the car. She’s curled up in the food basket, exhausted after the long journey, with the remains of the chicken. I look down at the tiny, weary grey creature and think, what is a pet? I have never had one. What is this creature that’s going to be mine? But it’s me who becomes hers.

  I think that she’s tiny and sweet, but not much more. To be honest, I think that she’s quite... empty. But how could I know? Quietly she pads around and creeps into me. When I have my back turned, she stretches inside me. Up and across, she just grows.

  In many countries and for many people, a cat is just something to keep the mice away. She becomes family for me. I become a curling cat mum. We start to hang out. Play and cuddle. Kiril comes racing to the door to meet me when I come home. This meeting makes me burst with joy. I stroke her back. She runs into the living room. Lies on her back and stretches into infinity. Rolls over and does it again. I tickle her tummy. Kiril is training to be world champion in the full stretch. She’s a master at recovering. Kiril knows that muscles grow when they relax. After stretching, she lies on the window sill above the radiator, or under the duvet in the bedroom and rests. I sit for a long time looking at her as she sleeps. Or lie down beside her and am simply with someone.

  I tell things to Kiril, talk all the time, and she does to me too. This means that I talk less to the voices. I lie in bed in the mornings with a piece of bread and cheese and a cup of coffee on my bedside table and Kiril on my stomach. To think there’s a person stuffed into every body and a cat in every cat. I need more people to love and now I have one.

  Mum and Dad come to visit me in the country. I’ve booked a room for them at a guest house nearby. Dad doesn’t want to stay in a guest house, he wants to stay with me. I know him. He wants to sleep in my bedroom, be amongst all my things. Not with strangers.

  He’s not feeling very well after the journey and lies on the sofa in the kitchen. They’ve taken the train from Oslo to Stockholm and then the bus out here. The bus journey takes two hours and Dad thought he had to entertain everyone. That he had to speak Swedish. He’s exhausted. Our garden appears to make him think of his own. He says: ‘The grass at home, do you think it will have grown?’ ‘At least half a metre,’ I joke. Which I should never have done. He gets up from the sofa. ‘I have to go home and cut the grass,’ he says. ‘Lie down. You cut the grass yesterday.’ ‘I have to. I have to go home now. The grass is growing.’ He gets up again. ‘But we’ve just arrived,’ Mum says. ‘And now we’re going to go back to the guest house and sleep.’ Dad twists his mouth. ‘The grass,’ he says. ‘The grass is growing.’ He begins to fumble with his trousers, undoes his flies and takes out his willy as he totters towards the door. He gets out onto the step just in time, before he starts to pee.

  At night, he wakes up and cries. He goes out into the corridor and wakes up the manager of the guest house. ‘Please, let me go home,’ he says. ‘I think perhaps you need to see a doctor,’ the manager says. ‘I’ll get an appointment for you tomorrow. And of course you don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.’

  Dad is given tranquillisers by the local doctor, but is not examined beyond that. Mum so wants everything to be as she planned, that they’ll have the nice holiday that she’s been looking forward to. Stay in a guest house, get food served. Meet me and Lolo and all Lolo’s family in the summer houses round about. She wants to see the sea, if at all possible. Dad lies in my bed and is left alone in the house while we go down to Lolo’s relatives for a coffee and to look at the sea. Mum takes her swimsuit with her. She wants to have a quick dip at least, if nothing else. When we get back, Dad is crying and wants to go home. He’s shaking. I’m torn between Mum’s desire for a good holiday and Dad’s desperation and breakdown in unknown surroundings. I had also looked forward to showing them my life. But there’s no space.

  ‘Your dad actually looks like he’s dying,’ one of Lolo’s cousins says, and she’s right. He could die at any moment. Even on holiday. Mum has now at least seen the sea, had coffee and tasted Lolo’s relatives’ fantastic sandwiches and cakes. She has now dipp
ed her swimming costume if not her body in the brackish Baltic water. ‘We have to call an ambulance,’ Lolo says. ‘Either your dad has accelerating anxiety or he’s had another brain haemorrhage.’ Mum thinks that an ambulance sounds too scary. ‘We’ll take the bus back to Stockholm,’ she says, ‘and then we can change our train tickets home.’ And that is what happens.

  It’s horrible to see Dad so shaken and Mum so disappointed. I both want them to stay and to go home at the same time. Once we’ve explained to Dad that he’s going to go to Stockholm, then spend the night in my flat before going back to Oslo the following day, he immediately improves. He gets up and shakes less. His speech is more articulate.

  The bus journey is long, but Dad doesn’t do the entertaining this time. He sits there dozing. I really regret saying what I did about the grass, that it was half a metre high. But he normally jokes like that himself. At home in my small flat, he gets into my bed. Mum and I sit in the kitchen. ‘I so wanted to go to a restaurant before I went home,’ she says. ‘There’s one in Tantolunden, just over the street. Dad can stay in bed. Maybe we can take some food back for him.’

  We have to wake him and say that we’re going, so he won’t feel abandoned when he wakes up. ‘We’re going out to eat in a restaurant. But it’s just over the street,’ I say, and go back into the kitchen. ‘It’ll be fine,’ I say to Mum. Then Dad comes out of the bedroom in his lovely beige summer suit. He looks so elegant. Though his white hair is unkempt and doesn’t really go with the suit. ‘Where are you off to?’ Mum asks. ‘To eat in the restaurant, of course.’ And so all three of us go.

  The next day, I go with them to the station. Dad seems to be happy but tense. In the evening I speak to Mum on the phone. She tells me that Dad got better and better the closer to Norway they got. It’s the last time Dad goes on holiday.

  ‘Move your arse and your mind will follow,’ Jonathan says. He wants me to take action. Participate. Follow the programme. Get out of bed. When I was a child, I always found things to do. Not only as a child, but up until only a few years ago. I, who didn’t understand how anyone could be bored, can now spend hours sitting there doing nothing. Lying in bed with the same commercial radio station thumping into my ears.

  ‘You have to build a life that involves more than just writing,’ Jonathan says. I’m fine on weekdays, when I go to my workspace, write and meet colleagues. Then I go to boxing. But at the weekends there are hours of: what do I do now? A long silence. An empty space. If I don’t go out to the country. ‘You could write a bit at home at the weekends too. Write about different things than you do during the week.’

  ‘I can’t write at home.’

  ‘But surely the words come from inside you and not the workspace?’

  Doesn’t seem like that.

  ‘It says in your file that you should call someone. Do you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  I look up at the cartoon on the fridge. Two men sitting looking out over a depressing landscape of factory chimneys. One says: ‘We’re all going to die one day.’ The other replies: ‘And on all the other days, we don’t.’

  Dad has another huge brain haemorrhage and completely loses touch. He lives at home and Mum cares for him. He cries a lot. Groans when he walks and says that it hurts. Has his pain threshold fallen, or does he really hurt all over? The doctors find nothing.

  Until it’s too late. Until the cancer has spread throughout his body. He’s admitted to hospital. His memory is very poor because of all the haemorrhages. We hang his paintings on the walls and a photograph of the house where his mother grew up. A torp which he has called the manor for as long as I can remember.

  He tries, he pretends to follow and repeats what we say. I read for him from my latest book. I read the good reviews that it’s got, and he starts to cry. He’s so proud. How much has he understood? I don’t know. We listen to music. Dance. But he soon gets tired. Then he stands still and holds out his arm so I can swing around it.

  We talk about the past, about when he was little, and for short periods he’s there. I show him photographs of his children and grandchildren, think that he knows they belong to him. I show him pictures of me from the newspaper, where I’m posing in a ski jump position. Dad starts to cry again. Is he happy? I don’t really know, he cries all the time now. But singing is good. He remembers the words. We sing ‘Fairest Lord Jesus’ and folk songs. I start to cry. He pats me on the head. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he repeats several times. ‘Everyone has their trials and tribulations.’ Does he know that he’s going to die? He can’t die.

  Then one day I think: he has to die. I creep into his bed and lie there beside him. I think I have to be close to him and save the moments.

  One warm night in the middle of summer, my father dies. I haven’t been to see him for a while. I’ve been running a course for new writers and am at the cottage, on my way to see him the next day. The ticket is lying ready, my bags are packed. I’ve enlarged photographs of his grandchildren, as his eyesight is so poor now. I’m looking forward to seeing him.

  I have a very restless night, as if I’m angry in my sleep. In the middle of the night, Mum phones to tell me that Dad has died. But she doesn’t say died. She says ‘has left us’. Or does she say that we have lost him? I don’t really hear. She’s been at the hospice all night, and now she’s going home to rest. I wake Lolo.

  My flight isn’t until midday. Everything is as planned, only the person I’m going to see is no longer alive. I can’t get back to sleep. I go out into the garden in my pyjamas and cry and pick flowers. They’re for Mum. Because she had the strength to call me in the middle of the night and tell me herself. Because she sat with him and told him he didn’t need to suffer or be in pain. She told him he could die. And then he did.

  I pick a flower and look at it. As if it had also been alive and lost its life here in my hand. The sight of a butterfly increases the volume of my tears. I am careful to walk in the patches of morning sun, as if they were stepping stones. Nothing in nature is black. I suddenly remember Dad’s words. I suddenly want to tell him that I agree.

  I run the two kilometres down to the water. Take off my pyjamas and dive naked from the rocks into the rippling waves. Dawn breaks.

  Torvald meets me at the station. He’s crying. I haven’t seen him cry since we were children. When we get to the hospice, I see that the flag is flying at half mast. That’s for Dad, I think, and start to cry. I walk into the room and see Dad lying dead in the bed. It’s so real. It’s like seeing someone who isn’t there. ‘You can give him a hug,’ Torvald says. I gently stroke his cold, yellow-tinted cheek. He, who was always so warm. I embrace him. Feel his beard scratching, like when I was a child. Torvald asks if I want to be on my own with him. He goes out and I really am alone in the room. I sit down on a chair beside the bed and sing. Dad doesn’t sing with me.

  I take Kiril for a walk on the lead round all the blocks of flats where I live. It’s not easy to follow a cat. I don’t dare take her off the lead. But in the country, she’s allowed to run free and dashes past like a sprinter. I now often leave my workspace and events early because I feel that she wants company. I know that you shouldn’t humanise animals. But I do all the same, and I’m sure that Kiril catifies me. She wakes me every morning. Rubs against me and gently bites my ear. I don’t get up. She continues. She forces me up. But this closeness also creates problems. I get asthma. I’m allergic to the very thing I love. I’ve stopped giving her contraceptive pills. I don’t have children myself, but would love her to have kittens.

  I’m woken in the middle of the night by a terrible noise and leap out of bed. Kiril has tried to mate with a brown paper bag. The handle is stuck round her tummy. The whole bag stinks and is flecked with God knows what.

  I take the hint, it’s time to go to the country. Time to find a nice tomcat. We take the first bus the next morning. I’ve barely opened the door to the carrier before she’s off like a flash to the neighbour’s, where the white, deaf tom
cat Tusse lives. Soon they’re back in our garden. I’ve got a film camera with me and follow them around. At first, it seems like Tusse doesn’t twig. Kiril lies on her back in front of him and wriggles. Tusse looks away. Kiril runs in front of him, stops and checks that he’s following. Finally he gets it, she scampers off and he follows. They play the whole day, but nothing more happens. They lie beside each other and look expectantly at each other, but don’t touch. It’s a real spring day, with unfurling leaves and birdsong.

  The next day, the glass veranda is full of white hairs. There’s been a fight here. When I go out I see Kiril over by the wood block, she’s lying down with her backside in the air and a white cat on either side. Does she have two? I get the camera. It’s such a good image with little grey Kiril between the two big white toms. They run towards me. Kiril in front, her two suitors behind. Kiril is taken on the step. Not by Tusse, but the other one, Tusse’s father, Simon. Tusse sits beside them and yowls. Kiril yowls as well. The whole thing seems so brutal. Simon bites Kiril in the neck and lifts her up from the step out onto the lawn. Then he gets on top of her and starts to pump again. Suddenly Kiril musters all her strength, throws him off and leaps away. She releases a primal scream. Mission accomplished.