A Fool, Free
Page 30
‘How lucky that you managed to get out,’ I say, glad that I wasn’t there at the time. ‘Oh, it wasn’t that dramatic. It was nothing really. I’d tried to kill myself with some pills in the unit a couple of days before. I’d smuggled them in under my hat, had more than a hundred pills. They usually check your bag, don’t they? I’ve decided not to commit suicide at home. Don’t want my family to find me. I locked myself into the toilet and had managed to swallow at least half of them when Ingemar realised something was up and opened the door with a master key. He always knows when I’m about to put my plans into action. I wasn’t very happy that he’d found me. I kicked him. You know what I’m like, want what I don’t want. But as I didn’t die in the fire, it must mean it’s not my time to die yet. So I’ve decided to live, no matter what life’s like.’
We get a cup of coffee and talk about other things. It’s an enormous exception to be alive.
I unexpectedly win a literary prize. From one of the biggest national papers. I’m taken out to dinner by my publisher, and it turns out to be the prize ceremony. It’s a surprise and the whole of the arts section is there. There are speeches and a three-course meal. A special menu with my name on the front. I weave my way home with a cheque and a framed copy of tomorrow’s arts page with a picture of me and the justification for giving me the prize. I prop it up behind the cooker. It stays there until it’s illegible because of all the grease. Then I put it at the back of the cupboard.
I need the money for everyday expenses, but can’t help celebrating a little. I go to a tailor and order a suit for Prince Eugen. It’s black and white pinstripe with a fitted tailcoat. I show it to Jonathan. He thinks it’s elegant, but that I shouldn’t buy clothes for Prince Eugen. ‘I buy for myself as well,’ I say and sashay into the bedroom to get changed. I come out in a white skirt with fur trimmings and a white jacket with fur trimmings, have even bought myself white flared trousers to go with it. ‘This is all for Eli,’ I say. I’ve been told that I look like Elvis Presley in the white jacket and trousers and my black platform shoes. ‘Now I can go to the wedding in Norway.’
It’s the time of year between the bird cherry blossoming and the lilac. But I’m not aware of it. Elsa asks me to look up at the cherry blossom. She asks me to look down at the orange tulips between the pavement and the road. She bends down. ‘Look how pointed the leaves are. Aren’t they beautiful?’ I try. ‘Smell the bird cherry.’ I breathe in the scent. We’re on our way to the cinema. ‘Have you seen the chestnut tree over there? With the vines growing up its trunk?’ I haven’t.
We walk past the depressing pub where I used to go for a whisky when I was in hospital ten years ago. It always fills me with a feeling of unease and a feeling of relief. It would never cross my mind to go in there now for a drink for my nerves. Nerves should be used to observe.
Elsa guides me through the city all the way to the cinema. She lifts my eyes, opens my nose. Present, present, present. I fall asleep during the film, but saw half of it and thought that half was good.
I’m practising for a talk that I’m going to give in English. Lolo is my audience. I’m serious and clear my throat. Then I begin. There’s something about my pronunciation, the way I say things that makes Lolo laugh. I laugh with her. We can’t stop. We squirm, about to wet ourselves. This kind of laughter has been absent for so long. And now it’s back again and doesn’t want to stop.
The whole summer has been good. I’ve slept. I haven’t gone to bed during the day as I did last summer. I’ve made meals for Lolo and all our summer guests, been sociable and taken part. I’ve written almost every day. But I can’t beat Lolo. She’s woken me every morning with coffee and freshly baked bread, has been awake since half past five and moved plants around in the garden while they were still asleep. I don’t understand how plants can thrive better in one hole than another. I love the flowers but can’t bring myself to pick off dead leaves and sit there talking to them. I haven’t broken the code to gardening.
But when we need to build a wall, I’m there. Natural stone and hand-mixed cement, something durable. The wall doesn’t need to be cut, fertilised, watered or talked to. And it won’t be eaten by the deer. But imagine if I could bake bread! One morning I try. And then I think, you don’t need to be able to do everything.
I have a slight dip when I come back from the cottage. The transition to being on my own in the flat again. Hard to settle back into daily routines. Things are quite demanding now in the final stages of the Kiril film.
I’ve signed up for a music workshop with Lisen. We’re going to go to Malmö and stay in her half-sister’s flat. Lolo doesn’t think I should go. Jonathan is doubtful. We sit in the garden outside my workspace in the late summer sun and make lists for and against. The first advantage I list is: Won’t have to be at home on my own. ‘That doesn’t count,’ Jonathan says. But then he changes his mind. ‘Okay, leave it, otherwise I’m a dictator and not a therapist.’ Under disadvantages, I write: Can I face meeting so many new people? Will I cope with a six-berth compartment on the night train?
But I don’t want my illness to prevent me from doing what I want. I want to do unexpected things that have nothing to do with my work. I want to play the drums. I played the snare drum when I was little, in the school band, marched through the streets on Norway’s constitution day and played the drum cadence. Can I still twirl drumsticks? What if my leg starts to shake under the bass drum instead of keeping the beat? I want to write lyrics. Have got a commission from a Norwegian popstar and want to try it out. The seminar will close on the Sunday with a concert in a big venue in the centre of Malmö. What if I’m out of rhythm? The list for is twice as long as the list against. I get five minutes to think about it, and then say: ‘I’m going.’
Playing is fine. It’s like cycling, my arms and legs obey me. A tune somewhere in my body. A rhythm that has lain dormant. In the afternoon, we go to Lisen’s sister’s flat. Five cool and sweet lesbians in their twenties live there. Lisen’s sister is wearing a trendy pink checked baseball cap, which I compliment. She says that I can have it, and it doesn’t leave my head for the whole weekend.
The flat is big and messy. I ask if I should go and buy some food. ‘We dumpster dive,’ they tell me. ‘What’s does that mean?’ ‘We look in bins and containers and find our food there. There’s a bakery next door. And leftovers from restaurants and shops, we live well on it.’ They’re vegetarians and teetotallers. Probably a good thing, as I don’t think that Systembolaget, the Swedish alcohol monopoly, uses containers. Imagine if I’d known when I was twenty that you could be a teetotaller. They make food, and I eat with a healthy appetite. It’s exciting to be eating rubbish. See that there’s a list on the wall of who’s doing the washing up, the cleaning and the dumpster diving. I become pensive. ‘But tomorrow morning. What about coffee? Will there be any?’ ‘Relax,’ Lisen’s sister says. ‘What happens happens. Forget your routines.’ ‘That’s fine,’ I say. ‘I don’t have that many.’ If only Jonathan could hear me, all the routines that we follow.
I’m filled with their youthful enthusiasm. Sleep through the night. I’m grateful and think that rubbish makes you sleep well. Take a morning dip in the sea, then go to the music workshop. We’re divided up into five bands, and have to write two songs, set them to music, and then perform at the concert the next day. One of the instructors comes into the rehearsal room and tells me that the drummer’s role is to keep the band in order. Help, I’m used to other people keeping me in order.
I immediately attach myself to the vocalist and guitarist. She speaks in a Skåne dialect. ‘I’m going to play some mean music on my axe,’ she says, picks up her guitar and goes over to the mike. I thought she was a man at first. She’s got short hair, a peaked hat and a black t-shirt. She says that she’s in between man and woman. Neither King nor Queen, but a Queeing fighter. ‘Lots of people are,’ she says, and changes from a man to a woman with a big smile that covers her face. ‘I’m sure,’ I say, and think: m
aybe me too.
I quickly write down some lines. Suddenly it’s no problem to rhyme. It feels good and unpretentious, the words just flow onto the paper and soon I’ve written two songs. The others write the music. Make the melody, the refrain, rhythm, verse and solo.
In the last hours before the concert, I hit a big low. I’m out of rhythm, the drum solos are either too slow or too fast. Lisen has to devise a movement with the bass to help me come in at the right place. Slightly nervous, we make our way to the venue. We rehearse once before the audience arrives. It goes well. It goes even better when the audience is swaying in front of the stage.
I don’t sleep well on the night train home. But it doesn’t matter. Lie there eating crisps, trying to do it quietly. I feel a bit claustrophobic, but deal with it. I say no to the voices. They’re just a whisper far away and I can imagine that they’re helping me. The train speeds through the night. I, who normally feels homeless, who normally feels that the journey there and back is going away, feel that I’m heading home. I know that I won’t lose touch any more. I know that light times lie ahead. That things will happen that I never believed could happen. That I’ll grow. I lick the salt from my fingers and know that Eli is the index finger.
I speed through sleep and into the future. I’ve done this before. Someone is broken and I’m going to fix her. There’s a bunk in the room and all the equipment needed for an examination. No windows, just pale green, calming walls. I’ve got a mouth mask pulled up over my face, like in a film. It’s chaotic. We have to heal this person urgently. There are others waiting for their turn. This is the future. It depends on me. It depends on cooperation. I am highly competent. The scalpels lie gleaming in front of me on a tray.
I am an androgyne, I think happily. I’ve read that they’re the best bosses. There are eight of us in the room. But every time I try to heal someone with my colleagues, it turns out that they’re not my colleagues at all. And that I’m the patient. It’s me that is broken.
This is a recurring dream. I’m just as surprised every time. And I thought... This time I’m certain that I’m on the helpers’ side. I start as the doctor and end up as the patient who destroys the whole examination room and is restrained. I start with a feeling of competency, camaraderie and unity, centred on the patient’s problems. How can we best resolve this? I can operate and I can calm people down. I know everything there is to know about medicine. I end in desperation. This is not the future.
I don’t give up. I never give up. Wake up. Elsa calls on my mobile phone and I tell her about my dream. ‘You are the doctor,’ she says. ‘Without you, you can’t be healed. And you are getting stronger every day.’
I found, I found... When I get home, there’s a letter waiting for me. ‘We would like to invite you to give a reading in Havana, Cuba.’ Something I wrote over twenty years ago has been translated into Spanish. If I can go to Malmö, I can go to Cuba. If my writing finds its way to Cuba, it can find its way anywhere.
The next day, I go to my workspace. I feel happy and proud that I managed the trip so well. I’ve been inspired to write lyrics, so when I sit down to write my novel, I start to rhyme.
~
We hope you enjoyed this book.
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About Beate Grimsrud
An invitation from the publisher
About A Fool, Free
Eli Larsen is a talented author and film-maker. She writes books. She directs films. She wins awards. She is a success.
But Eli has a secret. Since she was a child she has shared her life with Espen, Erik, Prince Eugen and Emil – or, rather, with their voices. Sometimes they’re friendly, sometimes comforting, but sometimes they want to hurt Eli and the people she loves most.
Tracing her illness from childhood, Eli shows us what it is to be creative, charming, talented and deeply disturbed.
In this candid and beautiful novel, Beate Grimsrud offers an unflinching insight into the secret world of the mind.
Reviews
“A deeply insightful and independent work. A portrait of a violent power of conviction, whether Eli’s unstoppable creativity, her self-destructiveness and aggression, or her struggle to cope with everyday life.”
Aftenposten
“A voice and literary style and authorship that’s second to none in Norwegian contemporary literature.”
Dagbladet
About Beate Grimsrud
BEATE GRIMSRUD is an award-winning Norwegian author and playwright. Having suffered from mental illness all her life, she published A Fool, Free in 2010 to rave reviews, winning the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature. She lives in Sweden.
A Letter from the Publisher
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The story starts here.
Originally published in the Norwegian language as En Dåre Fri by Beate Grimsrud. Copyright 2010, Cappelen Damm AS.
First published in the UK in 2015 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
This edition is published by agreement with Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN in association with Cappelen Damm AS, Akersgata 47/49, Oslo, Norway.
Copyright © Beate Grimsrud, 2010
Translation copyright © Kari Dickson, 2015
This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA.
Jacket photograph: © Tomohiro Tsushi
Author photograph: © Henrik Lindal
The moral right of Beate Grimsrud to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB) 9781781851371
ISBN (E) 978178185658
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Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
About A Fool, Free
Reviews
About Beate Grimsrud
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright