Stig Dagerman - A Burnt Child

But he is not afraid of what will happen. For within us, we all carry an image of something dreadful that will happen to us one day when it’s very dark; an image of someone we will meet one night when it’s very rainy and stormy; an image of someone waiting behind a door for us when we enter a dark room someday. We all carry an image of a ghost within us. And this is why we are never truly afraid at that dreadful encounter, because every time it gets dark, we are already expecting it. A sensation of confirmation mingled with terror is all that we feel.

This is why—when the woman answers in his ear, The Lantern Theater—he can very calmly say into the receiver:

Are there any tickets left for the nine o’clock show?

Yes, the soft voice answers impatiently, but the film has already started.

Sorry, he is able to say and still remain quite calm.

Now Bengt can hang up.

Gun has already done so.

Dear Bengt!

Today at three o’clock it was exactly three months since Mama died. Tonight, while we were eating our soup, Papa suddenly pulled out his watch. After looking at it for a while, he looked at me and asked whether I knew what day it was. I said it was Friday. Then he told me that Mama had died three months ago today. Of course, I knew that, but it wasn’t so critical that I had to stand by the window at precisely three o’clock today and think, It’s exactly three months to the second since my mother fell off a chair and onto the ground of David Englund’s butcher shop. After all, such a thought didn’t do any good. It’s three o’clock every day. Therefore, you could, strictly speaking, be justified in thinking the same thought every day in front of the window at three o’clock. Besides, three months is a rather arbitrary amount of time, especially in this case. And because February only has twenty-eight days, these three months don’t even make up ninety days anyway.

I told all of this to him, not because I wanted to hurt him in any way or to show any lack of respect for Mama’s memory, but because of my genuine belief that you can’t bind your remembrance of a dead person to a specific time and date. The loss of Mother is constantly alive for me, which is why a fixed date doesn’t mean the same to me as it does for someone grieving less. However, I noticed that he was hurt, so in order to soften my words (not because I thought I was wrong in any way, but because I knew that he, with his undeveloped sense of the value of words and of the sincerity of intonation, misunderstood what I had meant), I said, Hasn’t it been longer since Mama died? My words didn’t express what I was really feeling, didn’t express anything at all; it was just a placating phrase purposely meant to reassure him. Since you know him as well as I do, you know how easy it really is to reassure him, if you’re clever enough to hit on the right word. But the words I uttered didn’t seem to be the right ones, because instead of reassuring him, I made him more upset. Have you already forgotten your mother, Bengt? he asked.

I have to admit that I was genuinely shocked by the question. This was truly the last thing I expected him to ask me. It came so abruptly and seemed so cruel and unfair that I couldn’t get a single word out. I was on the verge of asking him what right he had to say something so brutal and untrue to me, but out of consideration for his feelings, I held back my words. You see, everyone who knows him knows just how wrongly, in the truest sense of the word, he treated Mama. And I’m positive that he knows what others think about him, too, so I didn’t have to remind him. But I can personally swear to you that I didn’t let him off so easily. I personally condemned him a long time ago, and if I could have, I would have abandoned him a long time ago, too.

For the time being, I’m unfortunately dependent on him and his goodwill that allows me to continue my studies. If I had wanted to tonight, I could have pinned him to the wall with one word, one intimation, and forced him to realize how horribly he wronged me with his suspicion. I remember, for example, a little episode that occurred the day after Mama died. It was a Sunday. We were sitting at the table in the other room and both reading the paper. We hadn’t said a word to each other all day. Then the clock struck three. As I walked to the window, I said to him: it’s exactly twenty-four hours since Mama died. He didn’t respond. When I repeated it, he crumpled up his paper and left the room. That evening, he didn’t wind up the clock like he usually did on Sundays, so it stopped that night. And when I asked him why he didn’t wind it up, he said that he had lost the key. It wasn’t true then, but it’s true enough now, I suppose.

I could have reminded him of this if I wanted to. But I don’t want to hurt him too much, even though he deserves to be hurt badly. He is still my father, and I suppose you have to forgive your father things that you wouldn’t be able to forgive anyone else.

Of course, I’m aware enough of my own feelings about Mama not to let them be contaminated by insidious questions from someone who doesn’t even have the right to ask them. The three months since her death haven’t meant anything to me but continuous martyrdom. Now, I know from my own bitter experience how a dead person is so far from being obliterated from existence that she instead continues to live on in the acts and dreams of the one who really loved her. No one can deny that she hasn’t left my side even once this whole time. She is constantly in my thoughts all day and constantly in my dreams at night. I once told you that I had a dream about her red dress. Since then, the dream has recurred in different forms. I’m just as frightened every time I wake up, but at the same time I get a feeling almost of happiness at the thought of someone I loved being so alive in me. I could almost say delight instead of joy, because in the dream it’s truly delight I feel. It’s so beautiful yet frightening at the same time. Twice I have dreamt that I was holding her foot in my hands. I kissed it both times because it was so beautiful. I still consider this martyrdom because my aching for Mama and the forms it has taken against my will have made it impossible for me to work.

For example, yesterday it was my intention to take the exam, but since I couldn’t study as I wanted to, I had to pass on it. I had tried by all means to devote myself to studying, but thinking about Mama—perhaps mostly about the pain Papa had inflicted on her—made it truly impossible for me to concentrate. Everything in the apartment is impregnated with her. Every chair you sit on, every spoon you put into your mouth, every stocking you trip over when opening the closet, every handkerchief, every brooch, and every letter that catches your eye as soon as you open a drawer. Sometimes, especially lately, it’s even been impossible for me to stay indoors. So I’ve had to go out for walks, but as soon as I’m outside, I feel absolutely weak. I cannot go very far, so I just roam around the block and come back home. But to avoid going home, sometimes I go to the cinema. And quite often lately. The theater is nice, better than books. And whether you want to or not, you are forced to focus all your thoughts on one thing, on whatever is happening on the white screen.

Papa has been acting quite strangely lately. Sometimes I think he’s starting to suffer from a persecution complex. No matter where I go, I run into him and his black dog. I think he’s hunting me with that dog, having him track my scent. I can’t describe it any other way but that he is constantly on my heels as soon as I leave the house. And the other day, I noticed that he had put a rubber band around the bottle of aquavit, as though he imagines me drinking in secret while he’s away at work. His dirty suspicion irritated me and to get back at him I poured myself a pretty large glass and pulled the rubber band down. Besides, it’s very stupid to use a rubber band if you want to see whether there’s less alcohol in the bottle. All you have to do is move the rubber band.