Merethe Lindstrom - Days in the History of Silence

But these conversations I hear. I think I hear his voice, the words are difficult to understand clearly. Once I thought he spoke her name, Marija. I hurried in to him, I think his lips were moving.

Eva.

Perhaps I hear him from the living room, and I go in, and he is sitting with his eyes closed.

I hear his voice, because I want to hear it, a hallucination of sound, like an echo of music or noise that lingers when you have been to a party or concert and return home, as though the brain continues to transmit the sound, as though the inner ear continues to repeat the oscillations, in the place where sound is converted and interpreted as something meaningful.

Eva.

I listen to the clock. It is situated in the living room despite its insistent sound reminiscent of the old grandfather clocks. It seems as though it forces out every single stroke, second, sharp as a hammer blow against hard material, like the workers who were busy outside the church that morning I was there, who were busy knocking something together, or perhaps they were pulling something apart. But the point is that I do not hear it, most of the day as I am pottering about in the house, or sitting in the living room, I do not hear the clock. Apart from a few times in the course of the day, when I suddenly notice it, and when that happens it is difficult to fathom how I can disregard it the rest of the time. Of course I know why, I understand how the brain shuts out impressions that are there all the time, everything that is repeated over and over again, it would be impossible to take in everything at once, always sensing every single smell, hearing every sound, thinking every thought; if the mind did not do so, life would be intolerable. We can concentrate on only a small fraction at a time. Does that apply to your conscience as well?

SOMETIMES WE GO to the cinema. Matinees. The movies vary in genre, comedy, teen movie, romantic drama. I would prefer something different, something historical, but it seems as though these are the only movies shown so early in the day. Simon does not fall asleep, he watches the screen, I think he does that the entire time. The auditorium is almost empty, there are often some teenagers sitting farther back. Several times I have noticed a man who usually goes to the same movies together with his son. He enters immediately after the lights are dimmed, accompanied by a young boy. The youngster is just as tall as his father, I see their silhouettes in the pliant, colored light from the projector as it is reflected back at the audience. Their profiles are similar, he must be the father. But in addition the son has a double chin and his head is too large. The father indicates where his son should sit, they sit down side by side, always near the front, always beside the exit. Just before the end of the movie, as the music signifies an obvious conclusion, the father lifts his son’s jacket and makes him bend forward, guiding his arms into the sleeves, as you do only with children, the boy’s face is still fixed on the screen and as the first credits roll into view, the father takes the grown-up boy by the hand and leads him out. It happens every time. The young man keeps pace with his father on the way out, but turns around to the screen one more time. The father who is escorting him to the exit before the lights go up. There is a hideous thoughtfulness in his action.

WE DID NOT manage to accept it. This lacking ability to accept an essential aspect of each other. My absent ability to acknowledge his sorrow, and his inability to accept my deficiency of sorrow, regret. He wanted me to recount the story of the child, my love for the boy I gave away. It is not my story, I said. He continued to insist that we ought to search for him. That it would be easier for him as a physician to do so. Eventually he discovered something, via contacts as he put it. A name, a totally ordinary surname, an address not far from us.

Simon thought he had found him, my son. He wanted me to go and look. Meet him. He lives here, he said. He has lived here in this city the whole time, not far away from us. It isn’t him, I said. It’s a common name. I did not want to go there.

After a while he stopped begging me, gave up talking about it. But I don’t believe he forgot it.

An address, a name.

He felt there had to be a common factor between my love for him, for our girls and this story about the adoption. He could not understand that it was not like that. He said that I was fond of the girls of course. I said it was not the same. He could not go along with that. He wanted something more, something else. There had to be something else.

He came out with theories.

When we were sitting up at night, he might start to talk about the boy. He thought it was possible that I had been suffering from depression, women could get a postpartum type. A depression that prevented me from bonding with the child. There was no selfishness involved in that. If I had suffered from depression, it was not uncommon.

Another time, he said something about the boy while Marija was there. A comment, an isolated remark I don’t recall. But I do remember I was afraid Marija would get to know that about me, that she would find out about the boy. Perhaps because there would then be two people who knew. Or perhaps because she with her Orthodox Catholic background, or what I persuaded myself at least was such, would consider this an unacceptable thing to do, the adoption. It seems paradoxical when I think about it now. In fact she once found the photograph of my son and me, I had put it together with photos of the girls as children. She initially thought it was one of them.

No, I said.

Who is it then, she asked and looked at the photograph and then at me. And then I convinced myself she perhaps realized who he was. But how on earth could she have done that. It’s a boy, I said.

She put the photograph away. I always wanted a son, she said.

We had a dog at the time Marija was here. An old dog. It had been a long time since it had given up regarding itself as a guard dog with the garden as its territory. Now it mostly lay on its woolen blanket in the living room, by the window, the deep tan coloring of its pelt faded, white hairs on the girdle of black around its back, the terrier ears that had been glued when it was a puppy, to train them into the correct shape, still capturing sounds from outside, sounds that were now more a source of skittishness than curiosity. Simon likes dogs. The girls used to say that. Daddy and his dogs.

He was always approaching dogs, puppies. But he did not want to have a dog. It was the girls who pestered us to get Max. Simon repeatedly said he did not want a dog, they ought to have known that.

They went on and on about wanting a puppy. Every birthday, Christmas. Every time they spotted a dog they liked. He became furious, irritated by all the nagging, it was not until long after they were grown up, the girls came home and had bought it and gave it to us as a present. For company, they said. It was a poor show. Simon did not want Max. He said it was a living creature, that they should have asked him. They had wanted to please us, the girls said and were disappointed. It became my task to persuade him.

I tried to talk to him about it.

It’s only a dog. You can’t blame the dog.

I’ve given my opinion on it, Simon said.

But it’s hard for them to understand, I said, since you like dogs so much.

He did not relent, and I appreciated he had his reasons, the girls would have to look after the dog, they shared that duty for a while. In the end it landed at our house all the same. I went for walks on my own with it in the beginning. He disliked all the responsibility, he said. But after a period of time I noticed him talking to the dog, scratching behind its ears.