by Linn Ullmann
To the left of one of the armchairs by the window, Nanna’s sewing box teeters on long, slender, pale-brown wooden legs, Nanna has twenty-three thimbles in her sewing box and if you take out the top layer, the one with all the little compartments for spools, needles, and buttons, there is a large compartment underneath with room for balls of yarn, knitting needles, and a crochet hook. The dining-room furnishings are kept in dark glossy woodwork, and every mealtime she asks me to set the table with place mats kept in the same rose-patterned fabric as the armchairs. I light white candles and get the green plates, the pale-green linen napkins, and the heavy cutlery from the kitchen cupboard. The kitchen is so tiny that it fits only one person at a time. A narrow double bed in the bedroom is covered with a hand-sewn patchwork quilt. For my confirmation, Nanna has promised me a hand-sewn patchwork quilt just like this one. The finest patchwork quilts take years to make, she says. Every evening before we go to bed, she folds her quilt and places it in a drawer under the bookshelf. She would like me to sleep next to her in bed the way I did when I was little, but I’d rather sleep on the camp bed, which is usually folded and stored under Nanna’s own bed. Nanna wants me to lie in the crook of her arm, but I don’t want to. Her arm is thin and sinewy and it hurts to lie on it, and sometimes there are stains on the sheet. On the wall above the bed she has tacked a drawing I made several years earlier. It depicts a girl standing under a tree. In thick, grayish-black block letters, it says: NANNA AND THE TREE. The wall on one side of the bedroom is packed with books and there is just enough space for a small record player on the broadest shelf.
When Nanna has guests, I lie on the bed and read or listen to records—softly, so they won’t hear anything in the next room. Sometimes one of Nanna’s women friends will open the door and peek in. The guests have to pass through the bedroom to get to the bathroom. One woman friend has large spectacles and a big lipstick-red mouth. She will sneak past the bed as if to say: Don’t mind me, I’m quiet as a mouse, look, I’m not bothering anyone, I’m nearly invisible, wave, wave, I wave back. Another woman friend is tall, skinny and gray like a birch tree in winter and speaks with a loud, throaty voice. I’ve heard her voice through the wall and recognize it. Nanna has told me that she smokes too many cigarettes and has lived a hard life. When she walks through the bedroom, she always makes a full stop mid-journey to have a look at me. I put down my book and make myself as small as I can there on the bed. She crosses her skinny arms and asks which grade I’m in and how I’m getting on in school. I answer that I’m in fourth grade and that I’m getting on all right. A third woman friend, a doll-like little lady with done-up hair, pretty and freshly ironed dresses, and a stomach-turning soapy-smelling perfume, will sit down on the edge of the bed and caress my hair. She doesn’t say anything, nor do I. She’ll just sit there for so long, and so quietly, that I’ll begin to wonder whether she’s forgotten that she has to go to the bathroom.
I can’t live alone by myself, so when Mamma is away I stay with Nanna, or she stays with me. When Nanna doesn’t have time (Nanna doesn’t have time, Mamma cries and tosses her hair, Nanna doesn’t have time, hahaha, does Nanna even know what time is, does Nanna have any idea of what it’s like not to have time!), I live in Mamma’s big flat with one of a number of nannies. Mamma calls them babysitters even though I’m no longer a baby. I’m ten years old and will be starting fifth grade. When one babysitter moves in, the other moves out.
Mrs. Berg plays the piano and makes delicious food and patters around in fluttery clothes and weeps because she thinks she is a lousy babysitter.
“All I want is for you to be happy,” she sniffles, sitting on a kitchen chair with an untouched cup of tea in front of her. I stand next to her, pat her arm, and say that I am happy.
“It’s just that I know . . .” she sobs, “I know you miss your mother, and you wish she was here instead of me.”
I say that I don’t miss my mother.
She wipes her nose and looks at me with a tear-stained face.
“Do you love me a little bit too?”
She gathers me in her arms. She has bad breath and smells of cabbage. I wish I knew how to hold my nose without using my hands. The only alternative is to stop breathing.
“I love you too.”
I say it in such way that she’ll know I’m lying. She wants to hear the words, even though she knows they’re not true.
I draw maps, make tables, and write lists. I’m skinny and pale and take ballet classes and smile politely and don’t want any more babysitters, I want the babysitters to get sick and die or be offered other babysitter jobs, for example in Australia, you can’t get much farther away than that. I want Mamma to come home and hold me close and never leave again.
When Mrs. Berg quits, a new Mrs. Berg starts. The new Mrs. Berg is older and heavier than the old Mrs. Berg. A coarser grade of paper. She has whiskers on her chin that she tries to pluck out with tweezers, and her hands tremble. The tweezers are kept in her toothbrush glass in the bathroom. She knows it’s me who steals the tweezers and yet she buys a new pair every time the old pair disappears. What I don’t understand is why she keeps putting them in the toothbrush glass when she knows I’ll find them there and steal them. She doesn’t want me to see that her hands tremble, so she always lays one hand on top of the other on the table. In the evening we play cards. She lets me win.
If you want to torment a babysitter, you have to find her weak spot. Mrs. Berg’s weak spot is Horst Tappert, the German actor famous for playing Chief Inspector Derrick every Friday night on TV. When Mrs. Berg, at the end of the workweek, finally sits down in the green sofa with a glass of sherry and a little bowl of peanuts, it is as if her whole body relaxes. Her hands guide the sherry glass to her mouth without a single tremor. Three Fridays in a row I sneak into the living room and pull out the plug. I wait until Chief Inspector Derrick appears on the screen. Then I wait a little longer. I wait until Chief Inspector Derrick turns toward Mrs. Berg and looks at her with his big, doleful eyes. All the misery in the world could fit into those eyes. And just as Mrs. Berg guides the sherry glass to her mouth, just as that good feeling begins to spread through her body, the TV screen goes black and Mrs. Berg is left sitting alone in the dark. She has no idea how to get the television going again, she knows I have something to do with the blackout, but not exactly what. After a month she writes to Mamma to tender her resignation. She wants to quit and will be moving out with immediate effect. The girl is not right in the head, she writes. And besides, she adds, Mamma should think a little less about herself and her so-called career and, instead, like a proper mother, start looking after her daughter, before the ship goes down.
When Mamma is home we have the big flat in Erling Skjalgsson Street to ourselves. Mamma sleeps late in the morning and makes fried eggs for dinner. Fried eggs are not dinner, so dinner with Mamma always feels like a party—Mamma and I are the mavericks of love and dinner. At night we sleep in the same bed. We eat when we want. Not at four o’clock, not at five o’clock, when people usually have dinner, but when it suits us. Mamma can whip up a sumptuous stew based on a canned-food concoction called Spaghetti à la Capri. Mamma’s stew consists of tomato sauce, sausages, meat balls, a little bit of paprika, herbal salt, and sugar. If we don’t have eggs or Spaghetti à la Capri in the cupboard, we take a taxi to the Chinese restaurant at Bislett. I like the crunch of bamboo shoots and water chestnuts. I’m allowed to order orange soda and ice cream for dessert. Three scoops of ice cream, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, served on an oblong platter with parasols and a wafer. The trick is to save the wafer for last and eat it in such a way that you can suck out the sugary filling.
Every once in a while, Nanna will come out and eat with us. Nanna puts on her best clothes when she goes out to a restaurant. A pretty dress and high-heeled shoes. Mamma wears a long kaftan and is impatient. She is hungry. She wants a glass of wine. She wants another glass of wine. Her nerves are frayed. There isn’t a single nerve left that can hold all the other nerves in
check. All the people who tug at her. I wonder what it looks like inside Mamma’s head. The waitress comes to take our order, it is always the same lady who takes our order, Mamma lights up with a big smile and asks how her husband is doing. Better now? Home again? Wonderful! It’s not easy being alone with all that responsibility. She uses up her very last nerve to orchestrate this conversation. Once the waitress is gone, Nanna tells us that she has been back and forth to America forty-two times, and that everyone knows her there.
“In America?” asks Mamma.
“Pardon . . . ?” Nanna looks confused.
“You said that everyone knows you there,” says Mamma. “Did you mean that everyone knows you in the United States? I assume you mean the United States when you say America?”
“There are many people who know me, yes,” says Nanna. “You are forgetting that I have been back and forth forty-two times.”
“Many or everyone?” Mamma asks.
“Pardon . . . ?”
“Does everyone in the United States know you, or do many people know you?”
“Let me tell you,” says Nanna, and looks at me with what she herself would describe as a mischievous glance. She chooses to ignore Mamma.
“Let me tell you. When I landed at Kennedy Airport a few years ago, I was recognized by the immigration officer. Guess what he said?”
I shake my head and cast a worried glance at Mamma.
“He said . . .” says Nanna leaning forward, “He said: Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Ullmann come to visit us again? Welcome back to New York!”
Mamma stares out the window.
“Why do you always have to exaggerate,” she says quietly.
“I never exaggerate,” says Nanna.
“You always exaggerate,” says Mamma. “I’m so sick and tired of all your exaggerating.”
I have many nicknames. Pappa calls me “My Little Chinese” because I’m well mannered and smile politely. I doubt if Pappa knows the slightest thing about China, apart from what he has read in the papers, he has never eaten Chinese food, or any dish containing fruit, vegetables, garlic, spices, and sauce, truth is that any food not prepared by Ingrid gives him a stomachache. The year is 1977, I am eleven years old. Any knowledge Pappa has about China has been gleaned from reading Chinese poetry. The good rain knows when to fall. I think Pappa calls me My Little Chinese because he has this idea that Chinese girls are always smiling and polite and not given to displays of emotion and I can be all of those things when I want to. Nanna has taught me pretty much all I need to know about good manners and polite behavior, among other things:
One gives up one’s seat for old people on the tram.
One curtsies and says a proper hello and goodbye.
One says thank you and eats up all the food on one’s plate.
One pays attention to one’s grammar, one washes one’s face, ears, neck, and hands every day, grooms one’s nails, places the knife on the right side and the fork on the left, addresses adults by their last names (in which back alley did we end up on a first-name basis, may I ask?).
On escalators, one stands on the right and walks on the left.
When finding one’s seat in a theater or cinema, one moves along the row facing the people already seated (no one wants another person’s bum in their face!).
One keeps one’s feelings to oneself and conducts oneself politely regardless of the situation.
Pappa doesn’t like to travel, but now he has gone off to Germany and made his home in Munich, he has left Sweden for good, taking Ingrid with him. Mamma explains that he didn’t want to go, but he had no choice. He has done nothing wrong, she adds.
“Your father has paid his taxes just like everyone else. Don’t worry about what the newspapers say.”
“What do the newspapers say?”
“They say that your father has cheated on his taxes, but he hasn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
Mamma sighs and looks up at the ceiling. Three nerves, two nerves, one nerve left to answer the question.
“Of course I’m sure.”
If Mamma had known that Pappa calls me My Little Chinese, she would probably have protested. She does not think that I am always smiling and well mannered and good at keeping my feelings to myself. Mamma calls me Mouse. Mamma and Pappa don’t know about each other’s nicknames for me. Actually, I don’t really mind that Pappa has moved to Germany. I don’t think about him that much or where he is when he’s not at Hammars. When Mamma is away I miss her all the time. I long for her from the moment she walks out the door until the moment she comes back. I miss her so much that I need an extra body: one body for me, one body for all the longing.
When I was almost two and soon to be christened, my father wrote in a letter: I wish for you constant longing and hope, for without longing we cannot live.
What did he mean by that? Without longing we cannot live? He couldn’t have meant this madness. This hunger. This fear. I miss Mamma all the time. And now she’s gone away again. To America this time. Next time I’ll get to go with her, she says, but now she wants me to stay in Oslo and go to school. Nanna will look after me. Mamma will be gone for several months. I’m scared of losing her, scared that she won’t come back, scared that she’ll disappear. But fear is not what Pappa means by the words constant longing. Mamma and I talk on the phone and before we hang up we always agree on a time for her next call. Which is today. Which is now, soon. Half an hour before the agreed-upon time I feel sick, keeping vigil by the phone. It rings, it is three minutes before the agreed-upon time—but it isn’t Mamma. It’s a chipper lady who wants to speak to Nanna. Why isn’t it Mamma? Why doesn’t Mamma call three minutes before our agreed-upon time to save me from this fear? Constant longing. And why does the lady asking for Nanna have such a chipper voice? Doesn’t she know that my mother is dead? Nanna takes the receiver, exchanges some words, but ends the call quickly. She tells the lady that we’re expecting an overseas call from the United States. I sit on the straight-backed chair, squirming. Nanna hangs up the receiver and looks at me.
“If you sit there waiting for her to call, you’ll only start to worry,” she says.
“I’m not waiting on anyone.”
“It’s waiting for someone, not on someone.”
“I’m not waiting for anyone.”
Nanna looks at her watch. Why is she looking at her watch?
“Why are you looking at your watch?”
“I don’t know, I’m just looking at it. No reason.”
“Are you worried?”
“Absolutely not. There’s no reason to be worried. Why should I be worried?”
“Because Mamma isn’t calling.”
“She’ll call soon.”
There are countless ways to die. Airplane crashes. Murder. Embolism. All the clocks in the flat have now passed the agreed-upon time. People vanish off the face of the Earth. Mamma is fleeting, not entirely part of this world, maybe she has fallen off a cliff. I imagine her falling and falling and falling. It’s fifteen minutes past the agreed-upon time. Will Nanna and I sit hand in hand in the church when Mamma is buried? I begin to cry. For without longing we cannot live. What are the chances that Mamma would make me wait when she knows how scared I get? What are the chances that something has happened to her? It is now forty-five minutes past the agreed-upon time. I get up from the chair, I stand upright, I get up from the chair and stand upright, I get up, I get up, I stand upright, and then I begin to cry.
“She’s . . . hysterical,” whispers Nanna.
I stand on the floor crying. I walk across the floor crying. Nanna clutches the phone, follows me with her eyes, she has called a doctor.
Now it’s one hour past the agreed-upon time, and I walk from room to room in Mamma’s big flat. I don’t want to stop walking, I don’t want to stop crying. I have walked like this for a hundred thousand years and can walk for another hundred thousand. You don’t need consonants to mourn. Only vowels. Only this one single sound. I’ll pie
rce the sky with sound. There is magic in this, in walking and crying, but only as long as I don’t stop. The flat is full of things. No one has as many things as Mamma. And then she leaves all her things and gets herself new things, and then she leaves those, and all across the world there are flats and houses and hotel rooms filled with Mamma’s things. Vases, bowls, dolls, photographs, big sofas, coffee tables, chairs with silk slipcovers, even more photographs, vermilion curtains, silk flowers, footstools, dresses, bedcovers, paintings, writing desks, dressers, suitcases, rugs, plates . . . we cannot live.
Two hours have passed since the agreed-upon time and no one can tell me that Mamma is alive. No one can promise me that. Nanna begs me to stop.
She says: “Mamma has been held up. Anyone can be late. She’ll call when she gets a chance and when she can find a telephone.”
“Can you swear that nothing has happened to her?”
Nanna hesitates.
“I can’t swear to anything, but I’m sure it hasn’t.”
Not good enough. I go back to crying and walking, and curse Nanna because she made me stop.
When the doorbell rings, it’s the doctor, but I’m sure it’s the minister coming to deliver the bad news. I’ve seen it in movies. It’s either the minister or the police. God does not rescue. If I continue to walk from room to room in the big flat, crying, if I don’t give in, if I can prove that I can walk like this from room to room without ever resting, then maybe I can bring her back. I will not stop. Nanna has called the doctor, I recognize her, it’s the tall, skinny lady with the throaty voice, the one who’s lived a hard life and who always stands with her arms crossed and asks me how I’m getting on at school. Now she’s here, shaking her head, saying: “This isn’t normal.”
Arms crossed. I don’t know what Nanna has told her. The doctor takes out her stethoscope and wants to listen to my heart and starts following me from room to room, but eventually gives up.