Merethe Lindstrom - Days in the History of Silence

She had the feeling that there might even be an expectation by the two of them, both husband and wife, that she would fill a need that the wife no longer had any wish to satisfy.

Generally she worked alone, although she would have preferred to have the company of a colleague, she liked to have a female friend to converse with. It was often too quiet in empty apartments. But there were always certain sounds that were particular to that very house. She remembered one occasion when an animal was locked inside the apartment next door. Was it a dog, a cat? The sound she heard was so low, a light and gentle clinking, that now and again it might sound like a child, as though a child were locked inside that one room in the apartment, and it was terrifying, Marija thought, that there was a possibility a child was alone in there.

The rooms resembled the pages of interior décor catalogs, she had once tried sitting on a settee, having made herself a cup of coffee using an expensive coffee machine and drunk out of one of the cups belonging to a designer set, she was embarrassed when she confided that to me.

One place was filled with exercise equipment, little else, in the kitchen there were enormous drums of protein powder, and in the living room there were two exercise machines that she dusted every time she was there. In another house there were photographs everywhere of the family who lived there. You would think they didn’t have mirrors, she laughed.

In one detached house there had been a spooky cellar, the laundry room was down there, you went down a staircase and along a narrow corridor, and deep inside hung a padlock on the door leading to a dark room, she had peeked in there, and this cellar again ended in a hole, just that hole in the wall. Like a dungeon.

Most of them were ordinary houses, terraced houses, detached houses, individual apartments. I come in, she said, and now I always know where they keep their keys, where they hide them. I know about all the hiding places. Everybody has their own hiding place, but I could open every single door in this city.

SHE MADE FRIENDS with the postman. It was the same man who had talked to me about asylum seekers. Sometimes she used to stand and wait, in fine weather she would stand and wait for the mail, or else she just peeked outside, she had this idea that she ought to fetch the mail for us on Saturdays. It was always the same guy.

I watched her from the window. Her standing on the garden path, and him approaching, walking with his mailbag on his stomach, after parking the mail van on the road. In the beginning I think he barely replied to her, since I saw that she talked to him while he brought out the mail, and that he ignored her.

But later I noticed that they stood together one Saturday and she was laughing, and it struck me that they were perhaps around the same age, he a few years older. Are they flirting? I wondered. I remembered what he had said about cleaners. But now he was standing there chatting nineteen to the dozen.

She waved when he left. She gathered up the mail, turned around and waved.

Simon mentioned his brother once to Marija, she asked whether he had any siblings, she thought he talked too little about his family, she said. And so he mentioned his brother. I was surprised. He never talked about his brother.

I looked at Simon. It was the closest he came to telling Marija about his own past. He said that he missed his brother, that they had lost contact, that they had lost contact after events that—

I thought he was about to say: took place during the war. If he had not stopped at that, he would perhaps have mentioned the hiding place.

She might perhaps have said: Why a hiding place?

Perhaps he would have told her about it then.

However, she interrupted him, saying that there was an effective way of finding missing relatives or others you had lost contact with, that she herself had found a relative, that he ought to try the foreign information service. Simon nodded and smiled, and pretended to be surprised, in a somewhat vague way, yes, he said, he said he agreed, he ought to try directory inquiries.

They are so helpful, Marija said. A woman there told me I only needed to give the name, country and preferably town, but I didn’t have the town. And all the same, only a few minutes later I was talking to Milda, and we were both overwhelmed. Milda and I who had not spoken to each other for many years.

EVENTUALLY MARIJA TERMINATED several of her work arrangements because she was tired out. The last time she was in the country, she had steady cleaning work for a storekeeper and ourselves. Only sporadically did she take on other work in other places. In places she described to me as attractive apartments, all of them almost empty. It was so easy to work there.

Norwegian houses are clean, she said. Like Norwegians. I laughed. But she was quite serious. It’s true, she said. Norwegians are. Always beautiful. And clean.

SOME DAYS HE simply goes to the car after breakfast, installing himself in the passenger’s seat and waiting until it’s time to drive to the day care center. If I haven’t followed him after about ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, he presses the horn. It varies how long he waits, once when I came out he had fallen asleep. He presses only once. If I don’t arrive, he sits for a while longer, and if I still do not come, he opens the door and struggles to stand upright again. Gives the door a little push. He walks disappointedly back to the house. At least he appears disappointed, his expression is grave and reflective. He never asks why I haven’t come.

He goes out to the car. Waits. I let him wait.

He will not speak, I will not drive. He sits in the car for almost half an hour. I see the back of his head from the window, it strikes me that he is sitting too quietly, in a moment I will make a move to run outside, but then he moves.

He comes in again, sitting down on the chair in the hallway without removing his overcoat, he looks through the hall window, staring out at the car. I say nothing.

I look at him. I think about what he would have said.

Usually I come before he sounds the horn. I sit down beside him. Sometimes he gives a satisfied little snort, and camouflages it by lifting his pocket handkerchief, he wipes himself continually with the handkerchief now, it might be a habit from his childhood he has resurrected, as though someone or other, perhaps his mother, might be standing over him telling him to remember his handkerchief. When I leave him in the corridors of the day care center, it still feels as though I have abandoned him for good, as though the entire car journey here has had the aim of placing him and leaving him there while I make my way as quickly as possible to the exit, and escape.

Before I leave, I always kiss him on the cheek, his soft skin, and feel his cheekbone beneath my lips.

ON THE DAYS he is not at the center, he wants us to drive. He does not say where he wants to go, but I know that he wants us to seek out places we have visited before. He seems contented then.

I drive him.

There’s a pleasant smell of leather in the car, no matter the time of year it is always snug and secure, I have the feeling of being in a house, a movable house that has been built around us. Most often we go nowhere.

The drives started many years ago, but they had a more fixed purpose at that time. We were on our way to the cottage, or to visit my relatives, one of the children who was studying in a different city, or some of his colleagues. We still sometimes go on extended journeys. We drive out of the city, perhaps the sun is striking the roofs of the passing cars, a stream of cars. Soon, up in the mountains, they disperse and disappear, only one or two will follow us farther up, but then they too are gone. It is spring, almost summer or fall, early fall. He often sits with his head sideways, resting on his shoulder, he is sleeping or just leaning his head there. His gray hair against the seat fabric, the heat of the car. Previously he was often the one who drove. We would talk about things we saw, sometimes it was a river coming up on one side, meandering its way down the valley. The water and the earth beneath appear green, a turquoise color, and in one particular spot it is like a whirlpool, churning, an agitated movement, as though trying to run the other way, against its own power that draws it downward. Other rivers are clear and slow, melted glass running over stones, perhaps the valley stretches itself out in front of you, no people, only grass, a derelict, transparent house, the walls disappearing, soon only a framework remains under the roof that disintegrates stone by stone. A pile of glass, an accumulation of materials, a defective angle, a distortion of the surrounding landscape. The loneliness that exists in some places. It is impossible not to be moved by it. It happens so abruptly. Maybe we have been there before, maybe he says that, maybe we talk about it, an everyday conversation, music on the car radio, voices coming and going. I remember we liked to sit and listen to the radio. But that is the past. The trips we take now are without purpose, we do not talk, we don’t really go anywhere, and it is just the trip for its own sake. But recently I have had a feeling that we are nevertheless bound for or at least looking for something. We drove through the forest a few days ago, and while we were still inside a canopy of leaves, it struck me that this, that the forest I saw, was an inherited visual impression, that it had always been there. Of course not seen through a car windshield, but the same picture in any case. In contrast to the asphalt road, the road signs, the exit roads to picnic areas. While I drove he sat beside me sleeping, I wanted to wake him, I wanted us to see this together, that we should talk about it, as I think we used to do. Or did we only talk about the children, about work and the house and finances. I don’t remember. But I felt it so strongly, it was something quite special. I began to consider what it was that was going on inside him, when he sat like that with his eyes closed, once sleep had taken a grip on him.