Майя Лунде - The End of the Ocean

“Damn Oslo hippies, go home!”

Svein spoke more loudly, asked them to calm down, turned towards Daddy and Lars.

“Give us an answer, then we’ll leave right away and let you pack up in peace.”

Lars and Daddy had a hushed, intense discussion. Daddy sullen, furious. “No. They’re not going to fucking win this.”

But Lars spread his arms out before him.

“There are children here. Anger like this… Nothing good can come from it.”

The others nodded. Daddy was the only one who opposed them and I walked over to him and stood beside him.

“If we leave, we lose.”

Daddy started.

“Signe, no. You have to leave.”

“But you’re staying, aren’t you?”

Daddy’s voice became more high-pitched: “You and Magnus are going to drive down right now, you understand?”

Then Lars grinned. “So you want to protect your own daughter, while the others’ daughters don’t matter so much?”

I didn’t hear Daddy’s reply, but as I walked towards the tent, towards Magnus, I could feel the heat rushing to my cheeks. Daddy didn’t take me seriously—I was still a child for him, a little girl, it infuriated me and at the same time I was embarrassed for his sake, because I saw Daddy the way Lars had seen him, someone who had said and done everything right, by the book, but who, when it came right down to it, with a knife against his throat, was just as irrational and selfish as everyone else. Daddy wanted to be like Lars, but would never be able to fill his shoes.

I approached the tent. It was starting to get dark and I stumbled on the uneven ground, but managed to recover my balance at the last moment. At the same time I heard steps behind me and somebody calling my name.

She jogged towards me. At first I didn’t recognize her. In her ski pants and parka she almost looked like a young boy and she moved with the same lightness as before, as if she weren’t a day older.

It was Mom.

Mom and Svein, Svein and Mom, of course she’d come up with him. Else was surely looking after the little boys, my half-brothers whom I barely knew, and Mom had come here to support Svein, support the village and emphasize which side she was on, the hotel’s side, but first and foremost, her new little family’s side. Unnecessary, I thought, so horribly unnecessary, you didn’t need to do it, we know it already, we know where you stand, what you want, how you make your money and how you’ve planned to ensure your children’s futures. Why did you want to come here, to demonstrate it yet again, in yet another manner, why did you want yet again to dissociate yourself from me and everything that’s mine, from what you and Daddy once had?

I stopped. I wanted to scream but couldn’t, because tears would also come with the scream, I could feel it now, the fierceness with which they were rising, so I just stood there like that, completely silent, and waited for what she was going to say, how she would yet again declare her loyalties, like rubbing salt in a wound.

But she said none of this.

“My dear child…” She took a step towards me. “My dear, you’re dirty.”

I swallowed; it was impossible to hold back the tears, because I was dirty and Mom saw it and, even though she said nothing more than this, I suddenly knew what she really wanted to say: come home with me and take a bath, come home with me. I’ll draw a bath for you, all the way to the rim of the tub, fill the tub with scalding-hot water and bubble bath, bubbles that smell clean, you can help yourself, take as much as you want, and let me wash your hair, with Timotei shampoo, massage it into your scalp for a long time and scrub your back, with the hard brush that removes dead skin cells and makes you soft as a baby, and let me lift you up and wrap you in the largest, cleanest towel I have and rub you down until you’re dry and warm and your skin is burning, and let me lend you my bathrobe, the big, thick one, and stay with you all the time, because this time I’m not going to leave you to go scream at your father, I’m not going to forget about you until the bathwater turns cold. This time I will stay with you until you fall asleep.

I could have gone with her, now, immediately, gotten into her clean, warm car with an engine that ran more quietly than any other car’s and driven to the hotel, to the wing, driven home.

I drew a breath.

No.

No.

She wanted to bribe me, a double betrayal, she came here to flag her side, show everyone where her loyalties were, maybe even lead them, and simultaneously, she wanted to bribe me. Were there no limits?

I turned away from her, walked away as quickly as I could, towards Magnus and the tent, hoping my back was enough of a rejection, but she followed me.

“Wait, Signe, stop!”

Now Magnus noticed her, he stopped working; the tent was already halfway down.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “The tent stays up.”

But he just looked at Mom behind me. “Iris?”

Mom came all the way over to us, raised her arms towards me, as if she wanted to hug me, but I crossed my own.

“Sweetie,” she said. “I wish you could understand my thinking. That it’s you and the boys I’m thinking about.”

“You’re thinking about me?” I so wanted my voice to be calm but could hear how it trembled. “How can you be thinking about me when you’re doing something like this?”

Then she turned towards Magnus. “I told you it would be like this.”

“What!” I said. “Have you talked about this? Have you talked about me?”

“We care about you, Signe,” Mom said.

We?

“What is this?” I asked and noticed how my voice came back. “A sewing club where you discuss Signe’s well-being?”

I looked back and forth from one to the other, unable to comprehend the bond between them. “I thought this was about the falls,” I said. “About Eidesdalen?”

Magnus and Mom held each other’s gazes. They stood there so calmly, so balanced, and almost simultaneously they turned towards me and stared at me with the same amazement I had previously seen on Magnus’s face. All at once I felt stupid—with all my strong words, my loud voice—and like an outsider. The two of them were the same, I was completely different and this difference they tried to understand, with the best intentions, even though they would never get it. Because the pragmatic human being doesn’t understand passion.

“I don’t think you should be up here, especially not now,” Mommy said.

I turned to face Magnus and now I no longer managed to hold back the tears. He had told her.

“I’m staying,” I say to Magnus. “Do you understand—put down the damn tent peg, I’m staying up here.”

Magnus threw down what he was holding in his hands, reached out for me with them; whether he was despondent or wanted to make peace, I didn’t know, but I didn’t care either. I just wanted to escape the sight of him, his calm demeanor, escape hearing any more of that calm voice. But it wasn’t over, I still couldn’t get away, because he had even more to say.

“Svein has arranged a job for me, Signe. I wanted to tell you before, but then all of this happened. Your mother and Svein want to hire me at Ringfallene, they need engineers and we can move back. The salary is much better than what I could hope for anywhere else. You won’t need to work, we’ll be able to afford to take care of the child, you can write, sail, do the things you love, we can live here and it will be a good life, Signe. A good life.”

This was what he had always wanted, this was what he had imagined, a house by the water, a bench on the mountainside, where we would sit when we were old and look at the view. A garden with a wharf where Blue could be docked. I could go out fishing, he could take care of the garden, even spend time in the kitchen on the odd Sunday to prepare food for a party the guests would praise him for, but first and foremost he had imagined the trip he would make every day to and from this house, to and fro. The suit he would wear—the suit, the symbol of stability, respectability—maybe even a briefcase, the office where he would sit, the secretary he would have eventually, the carbon paper, the file cabinet, the promotion, the reassuring scent of ink, freshly brewed coffee, and the paycheck he would receive every single month—a piece of paper, tangible proof of his proficiency, which he would put into the bank where the money would grow, so that eventually he could buy a larger house by the fjord, a nicer car, matching floor lamps for the living room, winter clothes for the children, a girl and a boy.