Back in the city, I check to see if Kiril’s nipples have started to grow. I spend a lot of time with her. We eat breakfast in bed and play hide and seek. She hides behind the shower curtain. Her tail sticks out. It swishes up and down in exultation when I find her. I film her. She hides between the sheet and duvet. Manages to lie still for a while, but then her tail starts swishing again and she gives herself away. I press her little body to my face. Lie with my ear against the purring warm soul that never ceases to enjoy herself. I feel her heart beating under her fur.
I start to piece together a film idea. I’m going to build a palace for the kittens. I’m going to film their birth and development and add a voice-over about curling parents and ordinary children.
I go to the animal hospital for an ultrasound, and film it. There are at least two tiny beating hearts on the screen. ‘Tick, tick, tick,’ says the enthusiastic vet, ‘can you see it?’ I write to the head of documentaries on Swedish TV with a short description of my idea. Two days later I get a yes. I build a two storey house for them in the living room at the cottage. There’s sheepskin in all the rooms and a roof terrace. White balls hanging from the ceiling to play with.
Four days before Kiril is due to give birth, she doesn’t come back in the evening. The rain is pelting down and I think that she might be sheltering under one of the outhouses. I go out into the rain and call for her. She doesn’t come back the following night, nor the night after that. She should come and settle into her new home. Every word is a cry for others. She doesn’t come running over the field with her tail in the air in answer to my calls. Has she hidden herself away somewhere to give birth? Apparently it’s quite usual. I persuade myself there’s no danger, but there’s a silent scream inside me. On the fourth evening, I take the scream with me out into the forest and release it. The forest is like a sieve with an infinite number of holes to hide in. It’s soughing. The birds reply like kittens. It has to be as I thought. As I had planned and looked forward to. I mustn’t lose it.
The neighbour’s boy helps me to look. I film and he looks straight into the camera and explains: ‘I think she’s maybe gone this way.’ He points. ‘Or that. Or over there.’ There’s no direction left. ‘But not that way.’ He stops, draws a circle with his hand. ‘Or she’s gone like this.’
I drive around on my moped and put up notices. I put an advert in the local paper with a five thousand kroner reward, and get phone calls from near and far about cats that people have found. I don’t dare look in the ditches alongside the country roads. Scared to find her run over. The old farmer’s wife tells me that cats are like sweeties for the fox. And there are plenty of foxes. I’m deaf in both ears.
If I had been an animal amongst animals, or a tree amongst trees, life would have meaning. My consciousness lies between them and me. People can only exist in time. We have all snapped up a life, but none of us can keep them. Everything will be replaced by something almost the same. New, new new.
The weeks pass. I think that she’ll come back with her kittens in her mouth any day. I am prepared. I leave the front door ajar every night. Fill Kiril’s bowl with prawns. One morning they’re gone. Has Kiril been here incognito and then left again? My hope rises.
I dream about Kiril at night. She’s locked in various houses. People have closed up and gone on holiday. She’s skinny. Crying for help and I can’t hear her.
Am I writing or not writing? Can’t write, but do it all the same. A glance. A moment. A glimpse, a flash. The inner eye, the evil eye. A blindspot. Cat mint. Cat grass. Catastrophe. Cat’s eyes light up in the dark, which is why I go out looking at night with a torch and the neighbour’s boy.
Kiril and I didn’t talk about memories. We were together in the present. And of course we had routines. Routines, routines, routines. Real time, real cuddles, real fun and good food. Don’t even know if she knew she was pregnant. Planning is my secret, my humanity. But right now, if she’s giving birth somewhere, she knows everything.
I can’t stop looking. Kiril, come out! Something bursts. I dream that I find her all dirty and emaciated. She’s a dog. The voices that have been absent for so long force their way back. ‘I’ll look after you,’ Emil says. ‘If you don’t stop looking, I’ll close your eyes for good,’ Erik says. ‘Are you being systematic?’ Mum asks on the phone. It’s like mathematics. Queen of science. Systematic. I certainly go in all directions. Here and there and back again. Calling. No longer have control over my thoughts. The voices are given free reign. Am awake at night and see Tusse eating Kiril’s last prawn.
I realise that I loved Kiril too much. That we were too close. The summer passes. Lolo falls in love and stays in town more and more. Sonja comes to stay, comes with me out into the cow field to look and call. She’s desperate to help, thinks she spots Kiril several times. Kristin leaves her one-year-old son in Oslo and comes to visit. She wants to support me and take part in the search. On the anniversary of Dad’s death, I’m certain that I’m going to find her. She must have understood somewhere that she couldn’t leave me. That I can’t sleep, that things are on the turn. People warn me: ‘You’re looking too hard. If she comes, she comes. Cats don’t work like that.’ But I can’t stop looking. Can’t stop hoping.
The summer fades and I go back to town. When I open the door to my flat, I’m sure that she’s found her way there, navigated the hundred and thirty kilometres, and let herself in with her own key. That she’ll come charging towards me and roll around on the doormat.
It’s empty. I cry as I pick up her toys and put away her food dish. I leave the netting on the balcony, and her climbing tree. You never know. Listen to a programme on the radio where a man tells a touching story about losing his parrot. His grief was overwhelming. He had never felt anything like it. Parrots are supposed to live for seventy years. He had seen a lot in his life, but it was the parrot dying that broke him. That caused his emotions to spill over.
I tell the television people that the star has disappeared, but I’m thinking about making a film about loss, disappearance and searching, how one disappearance recalls others. I found, I found that loss looks for other open wounds. I think about Dad. He was old, had had numerous brain haemorrhages, lost his memory and had cancer. But Kiril shouldn’t have died, she was only four years old. She was about to give birth.
I’ve been looking too hard, too deep. Too everywhere. There’s a dangerous hole inside me. With only a thin cover. No one can knock.
I think about what the minister said at Dad’s funeral. ‘If you look at the bigger picture, take in the whole universe, then it’s an exception, an enormous exception, to be alive.’
4
I’m sitting in my workspace waiting for Sonja. There are piles of paper everywhere. I’ve started writing a new novel. Finished filming the Kiril film, Things Normally Work Out, where I find all kinds of things other than Kiril. I’m in the middle of writing the scripts for ten short films for TV. I’ve rented one of the most expensive cutting suites in town. The production company pulls out. Money that was never there is trickling away. The producer has got another job and just vanishes. I get myself a lawyer. Film is conflict. Film is money.
I’m impatient, can’t concentrate. I’m going to have a meeting with the TV documentary team the next day and want to show some clips. The film about Kiril has to be finished. I chew a pen to pieces. My thoughts split and latch onto new ones. Wonder if anyone is guiding them. ‘Loss looks for open wounds,’ I write apropos nothing. I have to work. ‘Write,’ Prince Eugen says. ‘Write yourself back into the world.’ I can feel it deep down in my belly, that I’m splitting. That I have to hide myself. Further, and even deeper inside myself.
Finally Sonja arrives. She’s got a caffè latte with her. Does she know anything? I see us both from outside. See Sonja’s hand moving in slow motion. Then she speaks my thought. ‘How are things?’ ‘Good,’ I whisper. Sonja asks such difficult questions. Talks so fast. So quietly. So far away. Only half of me is in the room. I�
��m holding a cup of coffee. Am I holding a cup of coffee? Try to feel the coffee as I drink. Say thank you several times. It slips down a stranger’s throat, tastes strange. Sonja is in a rush, has to get a move on. She takes hold of me, shakes me fondly and asks again how things are. I don’t know.
Late in the evening at home in my flat, there’s a ring at the door. It’s Sonja. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Have you eaten?’ I lie. I haven’t done anything. ‘Well, I’d better be getting back to the children then,’ she says. ‘Everything’s fine,’ I lie. When she’s left, I turn on the tap, maybe to do the washing up. Espen sobs.
In the morning I wake up on the kitchen floor and someone is ringing on the doorbell. I get the feeling that I need to put a hat on to keep my head together. It’s Sonja again. She makes coffee and asks if I’ve eaten breakfast. I haven’t. I tell her about the presentation I’m going to give for the TV people at three o’clock. They have to accept the changes in my film idea. Maybe I should have a shower and change my clothes, as I’ve slept with my clothes on. ‘You don’t need to,’ says Erik. I go into the bathroom and pretend to shower. I find a hat that sits tight on my head. We eat breakfast. Erik talks incessantly. He’s so happy about the documentary. ‘It’s going to be a fantastic film,’ he says. Everything’s fine. Then suddenly his mood changes. ‘Watch yourself,’ he warns. He orders me to stand in the corner of the kitchen and wave my arms. Sonja stares, but says nothing. I sit down again. My right leg is shaking. It has to come out somewhere. ‘How does that feel in your bones?’ Sonja asks. ‘There’s a long lump that’s vibrating.’ ‘Can you sit still if you want to?’ ‘I don’t know.’ I have to be still when I meet the TV people.
Suddenly Sonja stands up and goes over to the phone. She dials and then speaks to someone. ‘We’ve got an appointment with the doctor up at the hospital,’ she says. The unit has moved since I was last there. ‘Think about the film,’ Erik says. ‘Don’t ruin everything. The people at the hospital are dangerous.’ ‘They’re going to call back,’ Sonja says. The phone rings and I answer. The man on the other end asks me what my name is and I can’t remember. Sonja takes the receiver and tells him my name. They ask for my ID number. I have no idea. We start to hunt around the flat and find a nasal spray with my number on it. I rattle it off and hang up. Sonja stares at me and says: ‘Don’t you know what you’re called?’
‘Was it my dad who was asking?’ I wonder. ‘Your dad? What’s he got to do with it? We were talking to someone at the hospital, not your dad.’ ‘Sounded like Dad. He can’t remember who I am any more.’ ‘Your dad is dead. We have to go.’
I think I have the right to know who it was. ‘It was a psychologist, but you don’t know him,’ Sonja says. ‘Put your coat on.’ I can’t work it out. What did he want from me? I have to protect myself and know who I’m talking to. I don’t even know who I am myself.
Up at the hospital, we sit and wait. I look at the clock the whole time. ‘You know that I’ve got a meeting with the TV people at three?’ I say to Sonja, again and again. We talk to the doctor at the day centre first. She asks me what month and year it is. I can’t answer. ‘I think you should talk to another doctor in the secure unit,’ she says eventually. We have to wait again.
There’s a hole under me. An empty space under the floor, where everything is alien and empty. Where the answer should be, but it isn’t. Am I still me? I wander back and forth, like an impatient dream. I put one foot in front of the other and the floor doesn’t break. They’ve told me that I’m called Eli. Who should I trust? There’s just a slim strip in my head where I can trust anyone. Only the tiniest strip that belongs to reality. It feels like I’m shrinking closer to the ground. So much of me has to carry all this unknown emptiness around. That’s under the floor. My right leg is shaking.
I stand up and go over to the reception. Say to one of the secretaries that I can’t wait any longer, that I have to go. I’ve got an important presentation for the TV. It’s the only thing on my mind. I take my jacket and am about to leave. Someone locks the door and says that the doctor will be there any minute. Sonja phones the producer and says that I’ve got a cold and I’m waiting to see the doctor, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.
The doctor is called Manne. We sit down in one of the consultancy rooms. A nurse, who I recognise from previous stays in the unit, comes in. He says that he’s followed my progress and success as an author with delight. Another nurse comes in. His name is Olof. He introduces himself and says that he will be my care coordinator. What kind of care do I need now? ‘What day is it? What month?’ I have no idea. He asks if I’m sleeping at night. I think so.
My mobile phone rings. I talk to the producer, say that I will get there as soon as I can. Sonja takes the handset and says that we’re at the doctor’s, Eli’s got flu, so we won’t be coming at all. She hangs up. I stand up and want to call back. Surely this won’t take that long. ‘Sit down, please,’ Olof says. I go out into the corridor, but am quickly pulled back in. The doctor says that I can either choose to be admitted, or I can be sectioned. ‘I’ll think about it.’ That’s not possible. ‘I’ll get back to you after my meeting,’ I say. ‘You’re not going to any meeting. You’re being sectioned.’
And that’s what happens. We go through the glass doors and they are locked behind me. The last thing I say to Sonja is: ‘Don’t leave me here.’ Sonja gives me a hug. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, and the day after.’ The following day, Sonja and I have a conversation with the doctor. He says that if I run away, the police will pick me up. I tell him that I’m a writer. He tells me that he’s a musician in his spare time. We could perhaps have found a lot to talk about if the question of medication was not in the way. I don’t want to have any medicine.
This will become our main source of conflict. And I am in and out of the unit for the next six years.
The chicken wire still encloses the balcony. It looks like I’ve got a cat. Jonathan hasn’t mentioned taking it down. None of my friends have offered to help me take it down. Now it’s there to stop me falling or jumping out. If Kiril could have fallen and killed herself when she balanced on the railing, so can I. I was her mother and put it up so she would survive. Now I have to be my own mother. A curling-Eli-mother. All dangers have to be swept away from in front of me.
I don’t remember much from those first days. Sonja, Lolo, Tim, Harald and Lisen come. The first week is worst. I don’t know the staff and am unsure of my fellow patients. I draw arrows to my ears, above and below. It’s the route of the voices.
One of my fellow patients walks stiffly up and down the corridor. She’s tall and thin. She’s wearing white shoes, white trousers, a white shirt and has a white scarf wrapped around her head. I think of her as the pill. And then there’s the old, clearly attractive, woman with grey permed hair and lacy shirt. And her endless yelling. A never-ending torrent of swearwords and abuse. Calls all the women bloody whores. Lies on her bed shouting. Sits in a chair shouting. Shouts in the dining room. She’s got a loud piercing voice that never rests. We all heave a sigh of relief when there’s a few minutes’ silence. Then she starts again. You prick, you cunt. You arsehole, you brat. You pig.
I sleep badly despite all the sleeping pills. Go into the smoking room around two in the morning. There’s a woman sitting there, fast asleep. I sit down beside her on the rickety garden bench. Furniture that is too old and worn to be kept elsewhere ends up here. There’s a knock on the glass door. I get up to open it. A woman on crutches wants help to get in. She points at me with her crutch. ‘The police came and got me. If they’d called me, I would have come of my own accord. My neighbours had phoned them. Said that I was ringing on their doors and calling their phones. I don’t have my neighbours’ telephone numbers, don’t even know what they’re called. And since then I’ve had this pain in my hips.’
But why did they come and get her? I wonder. She sits down and takes out a cigarette. She’s pale. Black under the eyes. We’re all wearing
the long white hospital gowns with buttons down the front. ‘I was sectioned,’ she says, ‘even though I would have come here on my own. Everything started to go wrong after I was admitted to the unit six years ago. It’s Manne, my doctor’s fault. He mixes my psychosis medicine with the painkillers that I get from the medical centre. I’m in pain, I’ve got kidney problems and problems sleeping, but I’m not psychotic. I’d have come on my crutches if they’d called and let me know. But enough is enough. I’m going to change hospital now. If I stay here and make a fuss and tell people what it’s really like, I’ll just be sectioned. Manne has ruined my kidneys with all the Trilafon. I’ve reported him four times, but filled in the papers wrong.’
‘Trilafon is good,’ the sleeping woman beside me suddenly pipes up. It’s a three-way conversation now. ‘I like Manne. Now that I’ve switched to Trilafon, everything is much better. Except that I shake all the time, but you do too. But you don’t get toothache and put on weight,’ she adds. Then she appears to fall asleep and we are two again. The woman with the crutches whispers: ‘Manne’s got some really dangerous patients from al-Qaida. The kind of people who should be locked up come round to my flat. I’ve seen them through the keyhole. Really dangerous people in full al-Qaeda gear. It’s Manne who sends them.’
Suddenly I feel sorry for Manne. How can I feel more sorry for him than I do for someone who thinks they’re being followed?
We’ve both finished our cigarettes. But meet again an hour later in the smoking room. The woman whose teeth are better has disappeared.
I’m woken on the morning of Christmas Eve by Hanna, the nurse. She gives me five different kinds of biscuits in bed. She often has things with her from home. Expensive chocolates and waffles for the patients. I get the traditional Christmas porridge with cinnamon and sugar, with my coffee. I lie in bed and eat my breakfast. She likes me. There are three of us in a double room, I’m in the extra bed. No bedside light, no chair and nowhere to put my things. No cupboard, no key. You never know how many petty thieves might be here. Or notorious collectors.
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