Merethe Lindstrom - Days in the History of Silence

Sometimes I collect him early, he does not seem to have anything against it, he comes with me, and I help him to put on his coat, and instead of driving home I steer the car out onto the highway, we drive out of the city, through the tunnels and all the way out to an open space where we must choose which way we are going to drive up into the mountains. That is where you end up regardless. Then I turn around and drive back. And one night I lay close beside him, it was a dream, but I heard his heart clearly, the skin like a fine membrane and he fastened his arms around me, I pushed him up in the bed, until he was almost sitting, I climbed on top of him, pushed his erection inside me. While I did that, I noticed that I was crying. When I glanced at him again, it seemed as though he wanted to say something, but he could not manage to articulate it. I sat up, I tried to help him, there was something stuck inside him, I felt for his pulse, and when I did not find it, I moved over to the other side of the bed and pressed my hands, the palms of my hands, on his chest. He opened his eyes again as I was doing this.

When I awoke, he was lying by my side, and I sat up and felt for his pulse even though he was breathing just as softly as usual.

I was at the church tending to the grave of the unknown boy, Simon was helping me to water the plants with the watering can, when the pastor approached us. He spoke just as quietly as I had expected from someone like him.

He said that he had seen me in the church that day, he had seen me go out again, and it was a pity we had not been able to have a chat. If there was anything I wanted, he continued, then I only had to get in touch. I gazed at his face and thought he was perhaps saying that out of a sense of duty, but he seemed sincere.

I’d like to mention that we have a baptismal service on Sunday, he said.

I nodded, I thought to say: We probably can’t manage that.

On our stroll that Sunday we noticed that there were small groups of churchgoers gathered outside the church. We peered over at the open doors with people going in and sitting down. During the service Simon closed his eyes, are you sleeping, I asked, but then he opened them again. As though he needed to shut everything out only for a moment. The child to be christened who was carried to the front by a round woman with a midlength skirt and shiny, black boots, what shall the child be named, its hat was taken off, its head held over the baptismal font. Just a few more inches farther down with the child’s head, hold it under, then it would be a completely different and terrifying type of ritual. The family stand in a row, all in their Sunday best, the child is silent, it is a boy. A girl is singing, a young girl, a psalm, an unbelievably high and delicate voice, a doll’s voice, she is singing the psalm “God is our refuge and our strength,” is that what it’s called? Out on the church steps Simon took the pastor’s hand. I did not believe it usual for clergymen to stand on the church steps. But Simon took him by the hand, he grasped it, held his hand tightly as though there was something he wanted to say, and I think the pastor was waiting for that too.

But no words came. I saw that the pastor was waiting, Simon smiled.

He could have been smiling about the pastor, about anything at all. It seemed that he was considering something.

The clergyman nodded to us in farewell.

When we went away, it came. The word Simon had perhaps been thinking about on the church steps. Brilliant, he said. It was the first word he had said in two days. Brilliant.

•

I THOUGHT ABOUT it afterward, whether it was just a word that occurred to him. Occasionally words crop up, as though he stumbles upon them, he finds them and it appears that he explores the meaning, feels them, whether the meaning is still there, whether they are worth articulating. Other times it seems as though they take him by surprise just as much as they take me by surprise. Bankrupt, he said one day. Photocopier. Calligraphy. He peers at the newspaper and reads fragments of a text, assault, care of the elderly, tax evasion.

I thought earlier it was the beginning of something, I waited for the next thing he was going to say, and a whole day might go by. I was sure that the disconnected words could be part of an expanded monologue, that just took place over time, and that there was something in particular he wanted to express. Like the story about two trolls, or is it three, the one says something, then a hundred years pass, and the other one replies.

If I pick them up, his words, and put them together, might the collection add up to something, give some kind of meaning. Or perhaps not.

I WAS IN a church as a child, Simon told me many years ago. He had two memories of this church. The first was one ordinary day, before the war, a small gang of boys was wandering around aimlessly. Simon, his little brother, a friend, maybe one or two more. The group stood in front of the church that was located in a quiet street. They were the only ones present, there were no adults in the vicinity. And the church that none of them thought appeared impressive, it was just like other churches, a cruciform church, built in the shape of a cross, a construction based on the Latin cross, in which the central nave is long. It was situated on an open square, with a few houses and other buildings on the outer edges. No one watched over the church, why should anyone watch over a church, they are on a reconnoitering expedition around the building, a massive stone edifice with gray ashlar, and the tall tower, the spire. They have never been inside. This building that they must have seen before, but perhaps have never paid attention to, has become the object of something not yet formulated, waiting to turn up, to take shape inside their thoughts. What if they scrawled something, spat on it, what if they climbed a tree and clambered onto the lowest section of the roof or carved a message on the church wall. None of them has anything to write with, no chalk. That is when the eldest of them opens his trousers. Shocked and excited they observe, understanding his intention, what he is planning. But his fear makes him unable to pee, only a couple of sparse drops emerge and settle as a tiny stain on the pale wall, at the foot of the building, beside the staircase. They stare at the dark stain, is it possible that it’s growing, spreading outward, that it’s forming into a complete picture, a pattern? The eldest boy is still standing with his hands on the waistband of his trousers, the sun shining on the dark stain, and they hear an orchestra playing in a side street, not long before the war. A church.

A man in a dark-colored coat comes up the street, an adult. They start to run, they sprint as boys can at that age. Across the public space, down the street, vanishing over the cobbles. They will never return. At that time the very thought causes Simon to awaken in fear at night. On a couple of occasions later he walks down that street, and every time he has a feeling, he relates, that the stain is visible, that it continues to spread outward, just waiting to be noticed and it is only a question of time, soon it will be visible to all, the entire city.

THE VISIT OCCURRED awhile later. I went there with a female friend of my mother’s, Simon said, someone who subsequently also helped us to find the hiding place during the war. He said his mother had to overcome her pride in order to accept assistance, there was a conflict between her and one of the helpers, a conflict that had arisen because of him and this visit of his to the church. I remember her vaguely, he said. The female friend. Perhaps her hair was brown, perhaps she wore it long, to her shoulders, perhaps her upper teeth were slightly protruding, slightly crooked, perhaps she smiled with her crooked teeth and dark red lipstick, and her long hair lay on her shoulders and swept over them when she turned her head, the people from that time are so evasive, he complained, the simplest characteristics elude memory, although individual traits stand out distinctly, almost overexposed in one’s memory. Such as that she was carrying handkerchiefs and continually picked at my clothes, he said, hairs, tiny specks, particles of dust that were lodged there. It was this church she liked to frequent, she was probably Protestant, he remembered there being a Protestant atmosphere inside the church. She is a woman or girl in her late twenties, a friend of my parents’, he said, it is easy to forget they were quite young themselves, they became old so quickly after the war. Although I don’t have any reason for knowing it, he continued, I am convinced she did not have any intention of converting me. She was just sharing a story that engrossed her, and the church was the place where the story would best be told. Through her knowledge and understanding both the Old and the New Testaments became a multicolored parade, and her low voice a cast-iron bridge over which the entire story proceeded into his more than appreciative child’s brain. She retold the Bible stories with intensity in that voice, sad, beautiful, grotesque, loud, what else. Simon used words like that when he talked about it. And then there was the actual visit to the church.