Merethe Lindstrom - Days in the History of Silence

He remembers two things: The cousin has a visual impairment, he has strong glasses it is forbidden to touch, without them he would just stumble around helplessly, and if he gets milk, something there is very little of anyway, he becomes ill. He vomits on the kitchen floor, the smell permeating the entire apartment. Simon comes into the kitchen, and there is vomit on the tablecloth and across the floor, his cousin has been taken behind a curtain to be washed. It is a curtain made of hand towels. Behind that curtain is a tub of water, and there are voices there, probably his aunt, the young mother, talking to her son. He remembers it like that. He remembers everything else so perfectly well, but not his cousin. Only these two commands. Don’t touch his glasses, don’t give him milk. That his cousin’s glasses should not be touched is something Simon has been told by his mother, probably also that he is helpless without them, for he has no memory of that, no picture in his memory of his cousin at all. He is hidden behind the curtain of towels, he only pops up in his mother’s admonitory voice about his glasses, the sight and smell of vomit, the open windows in the tiny kitchen. Simon is confused, he can’t recall anything about this boy, he searches in the photographs his second cousin sent, rummages through the words he believes he has heard.

It was as though he avoided being seen, he told me. His cousin was small, he sometimes sat by the window, his face directed out toward the street. No, that was himself. Simon sat looking out the window and down into the street, he loved to look out the window. He thinks he waited while his cousin was on the toilet, heard him in there. Does he ever come out? He goes past him in the dark passageway, the cousin looking away, they take a photograph, the cousin stoops down. But in one or two of the photographs he is visible all the same, a newborn in a blanket, a tiny speck bundled up in another lighter speck.

HE HAS MORE dreams about his cousin later. A shadow he knows must be him. He almost always dreams the same thing, Simon says. He is in the old street where he lived as a child, he has been inside the old apartment, his cousin is waiting outside. Sometimes the cousin is a child, sometimes he is grown up. When he is a child, he is sitting in the enormous tree in the yard, a tree that is much larger and sturdier in the dream than Simon remembers in reality. Simon walks by, his cousin shouts, he calls out something, but Simon does not look at him. He thinks it is a dreadful thing to do, but he will not stop. It is even worse those times when the cousin is grown up. Then he is standing in the courtyard outside, they meet and take each other by the hand, say hello, sometimes the dream starts when he is going down the stairs, Simon says, and he knows there is something he wants to avoid, he searches for opportunities to leave, but there is no opportunity, he has to go out the same door, out into the same courtyard where his cousin is standing, good day, they greet each other, his cousin takes him by the hand, walks by his side, but the cousin isn’t going anywhere. He asks Simon where he is going. And Simon is going to work, that is what he says. His cousin asks if he can accompany him. If he can come with Simon. Yes, Simon answers, because the question is like the narrow passageway, there is no other response, no other possibility, but nevertheless he knows that his cousin cannot tag along, and therefore he has to come up with a lie, and in his dream he is sweating, he is wriggling away, he has to run from his cousin, but can’t manage to do so. He awakens, lies there feeling as though his cousin has taken up residence within him. He never actually sees his cousin’s face now either, it reminds him of others, it is complex, it can’t be brought out of the dream. But then the dream or dreams change at some point in time. Now the cousin as child and adult are interchangeable, he stands there like a beggar, child, adult, old. And he always wants the same thing and Simon knows that it’s not possible, he can’t keep company with this creature, ghost, Gespenst , that is what he is. He says that. You can’t come with me. No, he says. Why not, his cousin asks. Because you are dead, Simon answers. The cousin looks at him, and appears to be just as alive as everything else Simon senses exists in this dream. You died as a child. How? his cousin asks and is so young, old enough to understand the words, but not to comprehend. He is eight or nine years old, older than he was when he disappeared. Simon cannot answer. I don’t know, he says. His cousin asks if that is why he cannot come with him, if that is how it is. Yes, Simon says. He wakes. He falls asleep again, he dreams the same thing, with only small variations, with only small changes. He has this recurrent dream for several years. It constantly torments him. Sometimes Simon thinks he sees his cousin when he is awake too, he says, sees him someplace or other, in the background, in a corner of his own field of vision, but when he tries to turn around, he is erased. This ghost, this intruder.

I phone Helena and invite her to come over, I need a few groceries. Yes, that is something she can help me with all the same. If she has time.

She seems pleased. I can do the shopping, she says. Just tell me what you need.

After twenty minutes I hear her car driving up in front of the house.

It’s me, Mom, she calls out. As if it could be anyone else. And then she says no more for a few minutes, before standing in the kitchen doorway.

The application form, she says. It’s still lying here.

Disappointment. Her face and her voice, her hand with the letter.

She gives it to me. And now I have to open the envelope, I have to look at the sheet of paper with the blank spaces where Simon’s name should be. I have to say oh, I have to say I must have forgotten about it. I have to find an excuse, she is right to be displeased with me, she has taken over that role. It is the intention that I should feel ashamed.

I’m a bit disorganized, I say and apologize to my daughter. She says it’s all right, Mom. Fetching my glasses, she places them in front of me on the table and puts the grocery bags on the counter. Sit down in the living room, Mom, I’ll sort out the groceries. I go into the living room and put the application form down in front of me on the coffee table, closing my eyes as Simon usually does. Open them again. From the window I see a flock of sparrows gathered on the terrace. The radio is playing the Beatles. It must be the Beatles, Simon likes them, he has never been too old for the Beatles. What’s that called, the song they’re singing. “Michelle.” It’s a long time since I heard that. Simon should have been here now.

The newspaper is lying folded on the table. She is busy tidying up out there, opening and closing the doors to the fridge, the kitchen cabinet. I read the newspaper headlines upside down, managing to read a whole column, a whole paragraph. I watch the sparrows. Michelle, ma belle, these are words that go together well . Simon loves that song.

Or am I the one who loves it.

Do you remember that book Dad liked so much? she shouts. The history book.

I know what she means. His great hobby, battles of the First World War. She is still standing in the kitchen, shouting. Yes, I say.

I promised him I would read it.

Michelle, ma belle, sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble .

But the truth is I haven’t got the time.

Très bien ensemble .

I don’t think I’m going to do it, she says, there isn’t really any point. Now.

Is it written to a sweetheart, I wonder. The song. It really must be.

I don’t understand why they haven’t delivered the newspaper, I say. It didn’t come yesterday, but today it was there again.