Merethe Lindstrom - Days in the History of Silence

I went alone for walks in the evening and saw a light on the second floor in the room where he stayed. I spotted him at the window. He was sticking something to the upper part of the window frame, a little figure hanging by a fine thread, it began to spin around, perhaps in the heat from a radiator directly below. We both stood watching how the movement, the figure, went one way and then back the other way. Him behind the window and me outside, at a short distance. I had a feeling, or I was sure that, he was aware of me. At least once some time had passed. My restless wandering to and fro with the baby carriage. The all-too-accidental encounters. On one occasion, he was with his parents. I glimpsed him a couple of times in the schoolyard too, when I was walking past the school. Saw him with his buddies, and on his own. Another time I noticed that some boys crossed the street in front of him on the way to school, pushed him or tripped him. The group had dispersed by the time I came on the scene. He was on his knees, his heavy schoolbag preventing him from getting up.

Are you all right, I asked. He just nodded. I helped him to his feet, and when he looked me in the eye, there was no gratitude there. He hurried down along the sidewalk, and I remained standing watching him, Greta in the baby carriage started to cry, as though she sensed that I had forgotten her for a while, she continued crying until I picked her up.

Later I walked past him on the sidewalk.

I persuaded myself that we had a conversation.

He looked at me. I looked at him.

Are you all right now , I said. I would have liked to talk to you .

I don’t know who you are .

No. But I would like to explain .

He stopped making eye contact, I noticed that he was walking the same way as before, but more frequently he walked down along the lakeshore. When we bumped into each other, he always hurried by.

•

WALKING PAST SOMEONE on the street, looking at his face, seeing where he lives, knowing the route he takes every day, for example going to school. Looking at him going over, watching him cross at the same place every day. Noticing his features, such as that his face is young and unformed, that he is perhaps ten years old, perhaps twelve. He is only a boy in the neighborhood. There is the house where he lives, there is the school he attends. Here is the road he takes, sometimes he walks along by the lake.

I have often thought about him, I try to find his face, hold it fast in my thoughts, the face of that boy. He has nothing to do with the episode, in the same way that he has nothing to do with the boy in the grave, but all the same it has taken on an association in my thoughts, as though their shapes are superimposed on one another, and again I think about a photograph, a photograph that is overexposed and shows two subjects, melding together in an accidental combination. As your memories always do in your consciousness.

I WAS UP in the churchyard one day, and there was another woman there, a woman of my own age. I noticed that she paused for a moment beside the grave. I felt curiosity about who she was, whether she could tell me anything, I wanted to talk to her and rushed to approach her, but when I reached the spot, she had already started to move away, and the more I think about it, the less certain I feel that she actually stopped beside the grave. That she stopped there longer than beside any of the others. She was probably searching for another grave, perhaps she was simply a person who went about reading the names on the gravestones.

Why does that unsettle me so, that absence of love, of care. The loneliness of the name and the little pile of earth. That no one comes, that there is never anybody there. I remember when I was a child and accompanied an older relative to the churchyard on Sundays, a little graveyard hidden away behind an old church, I used to play there as if it were a little park while my grandmother tended the graves. She took care of the dead. She seldom told stories about them or described their lives, there were few details available except for the ones who were placed in clear view on the walls of her house, framed portraits from which those who had passed away stared back with hazy eyes, but there was care in the way she picked stones from the earth and carefully planted fresh flowers among those already growing there. It seemed as though she tucked them in with the dark, heavy soil between her hands, in winter she removed the snow, and around Christmastime she lit a tapered lamp that she left sitting there when we went home. As though the dead also needed light.

I HAVE THE application in front of me, I have let it lie on the coffee table, I think I creased the edge of the paper when I removed it from the envelope. He is old, it is best for both of us that I give him away. Helena thinks that we have talked about it. Don’t you remember, Mom? That I ought to give him away. Have I talked about it. I can’t remember that. Her sisters probably agree. It’s likely they are behind it, pushing her forward on the makeshift stage in the living room. She began to cry, it often happened that she started to cry. She tried to do what they wanted. She should dance, it was a part of the performance. Or sing, tell a joke, perform a conjuring trick.

Make him disappear. They have decided. His stay at the day care center is not enough, he needs a better facility. A home for the elderly. I must appreciate that. Our solidarity has something suspect about it now, something presumptuous.

Simon who used to sit in his chair and sleep for hours, he can in the afternoon. I look at him then and wait for him to awaken. Occasionally he says something in his sleep, but it is nothing I can manage to make out. When our daughters were children, I looked at them sometimes too when they were sleeping, they could fall asleep anywhere at that time, on my lap, on a stair, on the bus home, in the back of the car on the way home from a late party, or as on that August night on the way back from the cottage, it always happened suddenly, they went from being wide awake to fast asleep in an instant, as though they folded themselves up, spinning sleep around themselves like a larva spinning itself into a chrysalis, their eyes slid closed, and it was almost impossible to wake them until several hours had elapsed, and when I looked at them, the thought passed through my head that I actually did not know them. In sleep, during the hours they forgot us, I thought about what harmed them every day, what was shaping them or was in the process of shaping them, what they were afraid of, which I did not know about, had no notion of figuring out, but perhaps was visible to them inside there. I felt so helpless. They seemed, and still seem, so close to me, but nevertheless they live their own lives, I don’t know if I know them so well. I used to think: Whom do they resemble, what family traits are visible in them, features from people long gone. The application form on the coffee table. I have found a pen, the pen has the logo of a hotel chain, a telephone number, the address of a Web page. I have no idea how it has ended up here. Who has left it on the table?

Surname, it states, please use capital letters. I put a dot on the sheet of paper, it is blue. Think I hear Simon breathing out. Previously he often breathed like that when he wanted to say something, like an exhalation to gather strength. But he is not here. It is my own breath I hear. I stare at the pen, and at my hand holding it.

THE BOY I gave birth to, my son. I have thought about how I watched him lying in his own bed and sleeping, waking. Sleeping again.

I rarely lifted him, only when I had to feed him or change his diaper.

Otherwise he lay in the little cot, and most of the time he cried. Variations in crying, from quiet sobbing to a terrified, loud scream, a howl. It went on for hours until the weeping eventually died away and was replaced by silence. In the daylight I could see streaks on the skin of his face, they resembled scars. His hands were often clasped together. He could look at me with what I interpreted as fear, I believe he was afraid of the dark, the sounds from the street, perhaps he was afraid of me.