Merethe Lindstrom - Days in the History of Silence

I participated in this communication as though I enjoyed it. Perhaps I did enjoy it too. The details were prosaic, monotonous. Names I did not know, places that were mentioned, people who lived there and their business. Marija tried to explain the connections to me, in one way it was gratifying to stand on the outside and at the same time take part in it all, through these short letter pages, everything described and related.

The infatuation comes slowly but surely. We are so often at home; we sit and wait to hear her insert her key into the lock. Her shouted greeting. Hello, is there anybody here . She often brought something with her. I bought a bag of buns , or I picked up a pack of little cakes on my way over . Her love of economizing led to a lot of cakes and pastries, everything with an almost rubbery consistency, purchased cheaply in a store where they had already been sitting for ages before being reduced in price. She also bought cheese on special offer, and eggs that were about to go out of date. She was aware it was a habit, she said, and begged us to overlook it as a weakness, even though we assured her it wasn’t a problem.

Sometimes she baked or prepared some other food, and that was something quite different. Marija was an accomplished and meticulous cook, I think she carried all the recipes inside her head. But she didn’t actually like preparing food, she said, she liked to read, she liked to talk about medical studies.

She wanted to hear about Simon’s profession.

Marija asked Simon to tell her about the university. She would not have made a good physician, she said, but the orderliness, the scientific building blocks were things she had an aptitude for. This enormous respect for medicine, that Simon and I believed was linked to some kind of practical-idealistic notion from her upbringing in her homeland. At the same time a form of respect for Simon. They enjoyed talking together. I could come into the living room in the evening, and they would be sitting together on the settee while he showed her something, explained.

We talked about books, she told me about Latvian authors, talking with a pleasure that seemed genuine, with an enthusiasm I thought typical of her, perhaps I am overemphasizing it now in retrospect, like everything I consider to be characteristic of her. Marija liked to make entire stories out of something that could be expressed in a couple of sentences, preferably illustrated by photographs taken with the little camera she carried with her everywhere. To take it from the beginning, she said. That monastery was not here then — but to take it from the beginning.

Simon and I listened to her, listened to the stories that were filled with detail, the tiny details that we pieced together to form a picture of her.

She admitted she was preoccupied by the thought of perhaps returning to university one day. Further studies. But I’m too old, she said. Don’t you think?

I said no, of course you’re not too old. We laughed at my lie, or what she obviously considered to be a lie, but I meant what I said. Simon and I talked about her having so much vitality, knowledge, despite a somewhat romantic view of art, literature, a peculiar tendency to speak about medicine as though it were a gift of the gods. She ought to study. We were agreed upon that. For a while we actually discussed the possibility of helping Marija. Perhaps she might study at a Norwegian university or we could lend her money to continue her studies in Latvia. But the one time we broached the subject with her, she became alarmed, saying it was only that one period of time, she did not want to study anymore. All the same we didn’t give up the idea. I wanted to help her. As though academia were the springboard we would use to save her from the quagmire of humiliation, it can be simpler to be the helper than the one who is being helped, as Simon commented later. I don’t remember why he said that. Perhaps we needed an excuse because we never helped her in any way at all. But it was an outrageous remark. We must have seemed so patronizing, we were convinced we were different from the other people she worked for. As though our attitude, what we actually wished to be, made all the conditions of her employment so much better.

THE DOG HAD started to deteriorate at this time, it suffered a number of fits, and in the end it would no longer lie down, or sleep, or rest. Its sight was already affected, and its balance. It was unable to sleep for several nights, we gave it a sedative that worked for a short while until, unsteady from the medication, it resumed its restless wandering from its blanket through the house from room to room, bumping into things, swaying, losing its balance and staggering onto its feet again, walking right into the glass door leading to the terrace, as if it were attempting to walk through without paying any attention to the glass. I thought it was wandering about because it was afraid to lie down, afraid to drop down into the darkness during the fits. It was easy to imagine its helplessness, and in an effort to escape the dog paced to and fro, to and fro, peeing on the floor beside the bookcase, tottering into the closet, into the table, thrusting its head against the cold glass of the door, becoming entangled in the curtains that draped themselves over its back like a shroud. It moved backward in an attempt to release itself from something it could not identify, sat down to gather its legs, struggled to stand up again, set off on the same round-trip. The blanket, the bookcase, the closet, the hall, the kitchen, back to the living room, the glass. Over and over again. Never lying down, never taking a break. It did not recognize us. It stared at us, the eyes, or the expression in the eyes, seemed human, it was the gaze of an old man, a woman. A child who has just had a ghastly nightmare. Who awakens, who are you, why are you doing this to me.

In the end we had to tie it up outside the house, low moaning that after a while turned into loud barking. The barking that used to indicate pleasure. In the early hours I watched him stand or try to stand, with his neck turning ecstatically from side to side, looking in the direction of the road as though he had spotted something, perhaps hallucinating, half blind. Seeing someone coming. But no one appeared.

At six o’clock the dog had been standing like this for two hours, it had started to rain, and I had been outside and tried to drag it underneath the shelter of the eaves, clapping the wet coat, drawing the dog’s body close to mine, but it was reluctant, it did not take long until the dog was out in the rain once more. I put on my slippers, went outside and talked to him. Now he seemed more disappointed, it must have dawned on him that no one was coming, his barking had become quiet and complaining. I unleashed him. He immediately resumed his wandering, the same stiff, mechanical gait with his neck thrust down between his legs and his coat saturated with rain, straight ahead now, across the terrace, over the driveway, along the road. I lay down to sleep, I was exhausted by the hours between being half asleep and wakefulness, the howling, the barking, I fell asleep and did not wake until nine o’clock, with the feeling I had overslept. Simon, who was first up, asked if I had seen the dog.

I told him I had let it go.

He looked at me. Waited in the doorway, looking at me without accusation, as though this was something I had to discover for myself. I couldn’t let it in, and it couldn’t stay like that any longer, I said.

He nodded. But there was no agreement in his gaze. We knew that I had killed it, it had not happened yet, but we knew it. By eleven o’clock it had still not returned.

We searched, Marija as well, and when we spotted Max standing by the side of the road down beside the highway two hundred yards from our house, I was certain it sensed we were there, and that was why it attempted to cross the road. There was not much traffic, it was a Sunday. It wanted to cross, its fur plastered to its skin, to its body, it was skinnier than I remembered it had been at any time before, it started to walk, and I don’t think either of us noticed the car approaching. The vehicle was driving slowly. Perhaps that was why we thought the dog had plenty of time, that it would make it, perhaps the driver also thought it would have reached the other side long before, but then the dog changed its mind, and the driver was not fast enough. It moved backward, but was hit all the same. The dog withdrew toward the side of the road again, looking down at its leg that seemed to snap, its head following its eyes downward, it fell, slumped, collapsing onto the gravel. Max lay motionless before we managed to cross over, he looked at me, I recall, with an expression of surprise, I placed my jacket over the dog’s body, though I don’t think the gesture meant much to him. Marija took my hand and Simon’s hand, held them both, we formed a circle, a little circle around the dog. She talked to the driver of the car who was repeating over and over how sorry she was, that she hadn’t seen it, that it hadn’t been easy to spot. Her children inside the vehicle, she must have forbidden them to come out, because they were staring at us through the rear window. The dog’s death had been so distressing, so dramatic, Marija made coffee and sat with us for the entire afternoon, evening, listening patiently to stories about a dog that probably had little to do with the real dog, the one that was now gone. She did not once say we could get a new dog, she said nothing. She listened, and I think Simon wept.