Ane Riel - Resin

They were having meatloaf for dinner. Jens had loved his mother’s meatloaf ever since he was a boy, and Else harboured a slender hope that he might sense her goodwill through the food.

If he did, he hid it well. He ate, but apparently more out of hunger or habit than pleasure. Else wasn’t even sure that he noticed what he was eating because he stared at the table most of the time and moved his fork without looking at it. He seemed to have aged greatly overnight.

No one was interested in the bottle of wine on the table.

Maria also ate her dinner, but as usual without saying a word, and she completely ignored the fact that Liv was poking at the meatloaf suspiciously and sorting pieces of carrot, leek and onion into small piles on her plate so that quite a lot of the meatloaf dropped on to the tablecloth.

Else was about to rebuke the girl when she realized that, if she did, those might be the only words spoken at dinner and so she changed tack. ‘Are you looking forward to Christmas, Liv?’ she asked her granddaughter instead.

Liv looked up from the chaos that was unfurling on her plate. She nodded and smiled for a moment like a child who looks forward to Christmas. Oh, thank God, a glimpse of normality, Else thought, and returned her smile.

There were no protests when Else volunteered to clear the table and wash up. It seemed everyone had expected her to. In a matter of seconds Jens and Maria had retired to the workshop and bedroom respectively, and Liv was playing in the living room. Else could hear the child chattering to herself.

Before she retired to her own room, she drank a glass of wine at the kitchen table. She had done the dishes, but it was a kitchen which was impossible to clean. The darkness penetrated everywhere.

She started to cry.

Outside, an owl hooted.

When Jens told his daughter that darkness swallowed up all pain, he hadn’t been completely untruthful. He felt more comfortable in the darkness, when it enveloped him in its warm embrace. Somewhere in his memories he felt his father’s arms in the coffin, his warm breath against his neck, the scent of freshly planed wood. Understanding, trust, safety.

Jens knew exactly where everything was in their bedroom when it was dark. He didn’t want to wake Maria, so he slipped carefully out of bed without turning on the light or stepping on the books or bumping into the sewing machine or the empty aquarium or a single one of the boxes which pretty much blocked the path from the bed to the door. And he moved quietly along the passage, down the stairs, through the hallway, and out through the front door.

The workshop lay diagonally in front of him like a rectangular shadow in the early dawn. The white room, where his mother was asleep, was at the far end. He had never thought how misleading the name ‘white room’ had grown over time. Of all the things to come into his mind at this moment.

A cold wind blew from the forest, carrying with it a few snowflakes, like a fleeting premonition of a white Christmas. He gasped, a little startled, when he stepped on a small spruce decoration which had blown from the nail on the door to the white room. He wasn’t used to there being anything on the ground in that spot. The pillow with which he intended to suffocate his mother was tucked under his arm.

The door wasn’t locked. Else and Silas had never bothered locking the doors on the Head, and Jens wondered whether she ever locked her door in town. All those people. Someone might turn up and do something, take something.

He always locked the door.

He could hear loud snoring from the bed. It was a familiar sound to Jens, and he found it both comforting and repellent. Right now, it was helping him by acting as a sort of beacon and an assurance that his mother was fast sleep. He stepped cautiously inside and closed the door behind him with a faint click. He stood very still for several minutes, listening to her snoring while his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside. Contours slowly started to emerge, including the outline of his daughter getting up noiselessly from the other side of the bed.

‘Liv?’ he whispered. ‘What are you doing here?’

Liv walked across to her father with silent footsteps, and he knelt down in front of her so they were at eye level.

‘I’m practising for when I next go out at night,’ she whispered enthusiastically. ‘I’m getting really good, Dad. Look at all the stuff in her bags. There’s so much.’

Then she put her hand on his knee. ‘But what are you doing in here?’ she asked, with a puzzled look at the pillow. ‘Are you going to sleep here?’

‘No, but I…’ Jens hesitated. Sending her away felt wrong. In some inexplicable sense it even seemed right that she was there. She was used to being involved in everything.

‘Liv, do you remember how killing the old stag was the right thing to do?’

She nodded eagerly.

‘At this moment in time, killing your granny is the right thing to do.’

Jens studied his daughter’s face. Her eager nodding was instantly replaced by complete immobility. He could see her shining eyes.

‘OK,’ she said at last. Her whisper had taken on a pensive quality it hadn’t had before. Something not entirely childlike, something approaching an adult understanding. ‘But why?’

‘She has lived a long and good life, and she’s ready to move on.’

‘Yes, but… I mean, she’s your mum ? She told me so the other day, and you said that it was true.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it all right to kill your mum?’

‘Liv, if I don’t do it, she’ll take you away from us. Then you wouldn’t live here any more. Your mum and I wouldn’t be able to cope with that… Would you?’

Liv shook her head firmly. Over in the bed the deep snoring continued with soothing regularity.

Then Liv placed her hands on her father’s shoulders, leaned towards him and whispered into his ear.

‘Then I guess you’d better do it.’

Jens put his arm around his daughter and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. ‘Right, darling,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll do it so quickly that she won’t feel a thing.’

‘And besides, it’s dark.’

Jens nodded, released his hold of her and slowly got up.

‘But, Dad,’ Liv whispered, grabbing his arm, ‘how are you going to do it?’

There was silence for a moment. Total silence, because Else Horder’s snoring had suddenly stopped. Now they could hear the faint sound of snowflakes striking the wall like soft crystals.

They heard her stir, pull the duvet over her and exhale a sigh, which could be anything between sleeping and being awake.

They waited.

Finally her breathing grew heavier, until it culminated in the usual deep inhale.

And Jens finally answered his daughter.

‘I’ll do it with this.’ He grabbed the pillow firmly. Then he looked at Liv again. He could see her clearly in the darkness now, but he was aware that she could see him even more clearly. Her night vision was impressive. ‘Perhaps you had better leave?’

‘No, I want to be here.’ she replied without hesitation. Liv could be very strong-minded.

Jens felt a strange joy in his stomach. He wanted her to be there, this little spirit who always made him feel less alone in the world. He was glad that they would have this together, just like all the other things they shared.

‘Then go and stand over there,’ he whispered, and nodded towards the far end of the bed. ‘Don’t get too close. She’ll probably flop about a bit.’

‘Like the flounders?’

‘Yes, just like the flounders.’

Else Horder lay on her back with her hands folded on top of her duvet as if in prayer. It was almost as if she had heard their conversation and wanted to make the job easier for her son.