Merethe Lindstrom - Days in the History of Silence

I couldn’t say a word. I looked at him, he smiled. A troubled smile that was insistent and said they’ll probably be here soon .

We tried to phone them, but no one answered. We continued this performance. I think neither of us knew how to conclude it. Restless actors who have reached a point in the play and there are no instructions or possibilities for further improvisation, and all that remains is to decide how to bring it to a close. He straightened a plate, placed a fresh candle in one of the candlesticks, it struck me that we had forgotten to set out napkins.

We circled around the conspicuous emptiness. I picked up a book, pretending to read. I knew I had to say something, I didn’t have the strength.

He walked across the floor, turned and again came to a halt.

Eva, he said, I don’t think—

Before he reached the end of his sentence, we heard the doorbell. We looked at each other.

HE WAS THE one who went to open the door.

They came in together. He and Helena. She was wearing a flimsy dress with long sleeves. She came over to me and gave me a hug.

We sat inside, although it was a warm evening, the lanterns outside the window, the ones he had placed at the bottom of the garden and planned to light at dusk.

I want to say something, she said.

But she didn’t say anything immediately. The music was still playing, softly and floating on the brink of being inaudible.

We ate and perhaps tried to find a reason to avoid saying anything. We all knew what it was about. The irritation that had built up, the girls were in a way punishing us, for something they could not fathom.

Helena put it into words, although we already knew by then. That their anger was connected with their irritation over Marija’s dismissal, and it had led to other annoyances coming to the surface. Now they had decided, all of them, to stay at home. Punish us. She did not say that, but I suspected it was so. I don’t understand it, she said after a while, none of us understands it, but I accept it. If you could only give a better explanation. Especially for Kirsten and Greta. Explain to them what it’s all about.

She had brought a gift with her, a vase, she flattened and smoothed out the wrapping paper, folding the corners carefully, layer upon layer. And now it was a square in her hands. They think we are stubborn, Simon said, smiling and stroking Helena on the cheek.

Mom, Helena said, turning to me.

But there is nothing to be said, I replied.

She looked at me, she was so disappointed.

SHE LEFT AFTER a couple of hours, we ate some of the chicken wings, Helena did most of the talking. Simon did not say so much. We held the wings between our fingers, I had never liked holding on to bones while I was eating. I ate only a few. Helena was telling us something, I can no longer remember what, I don’t even know if I was listening. Afterward she helped me to tidy up. We put the rest of the food into the fridge, I filled the kitchen sink with water, outside the light was tinged with red as though it had really been the day we had hoped for and now it was over, I leaned across the sink.

Helena hugged me before she left. She always does that.

It is unfair, I thought, but also our own fault.

I COULD PHONE them, say that I thought it was unfair, but in a way they had a right, I thought, to such anger. After all we had held back from them throughout the years, not only about Marija, but all the other things too. As though we had been lying.

It was never the intention, I would say, we only thought it was for the best. For everyone. He would avoid going through it again, the sadness, the depression. There are things we cannot understand, I felt.

And me? Perhaps I was cowardly.

I have understood that I have been wrong, I would say. But would that help? It was all a mean, contemptible little protest, I thought. We cleared the table while we walked around the house, in the silence.

I so wanted to say something, ease some of the pain. I said that he didn’t need to do it all now, some things could wait till the next day. I know that, he replied. His hands were shaking, he cleared away the dinner service. In order to avoid waking up and finding it there, a confirmation of the disappointment.

I saw him that evening, going around the garden taking down the colorful lanterns one by one. I remember it crossing my mind that now we’ll never see how they shine.

THEY PHONED LATER and said that there had been a misunderstanding, pleaded an excuse. What did they blame it on? I don’t remember. We knew that they were lying, and of course they knew it too. I believe they regretted it, of course they did, it was a rotten thing to do. We accepted their excuses and had some kind of celebration a short time afterward, but it was not as we had planned, it was not our big day. We knew, and they knew.

HE WANTED TO tell them about it. He said it was time the girls got to know. During the following days he prepared himself, made himself ready to talk about what we have not managed to say during all these years, I believe he was searching for the right moment. Will it change anything, I recall thinking. Will they not simply become even angrier, because we haven’t said anything before? He could not stop talking about it. It was as though he were ready to spring, over and over again. I was the one he talked to, I heard about the people who surrounded him when he was a child, women, men, families, names that are forgotten.

One night he woke and told me he could see the apartment he had lived in as a child, before the war, before the Germans occupied his hometown. He was able to go inside it. Even in his thoughts he opened the door gingerly, in case anything was waiting inside for him that he had not anticipated, he stepped inside, he said, evidently after everyone had departed. The long curtains that reach the floor in front of each of the living room windows, he has a glimpse of the kitchen, glasses and plates are washed and sitting on the kitchen counter, with the towel draped over them. In this illusion, this memory, he sees himself open the closet in the hallway, smells the familiar odor of them, but his parents’ clothes are not there. He goes around and catches sight of his brother’s shoes, his own. He continues into the foyer. It feels as though they are present and at the same time he realizes that they are not. In the living room he remains standing in a particular spot where he remembers standing when he was little, a spot that gave him a kind of overview of what the others were doing, his parents who used to walk to and fro through the rooms, occupied with various tasks.

There is sunshine outside the window, he said, but the ocher-colored woven curtains are drawn, rather than the blackout blinds. Except for one window, where the black blind is pulled down as though it is a wall, a fireplace wall.

He also catches sight of something else.

Simon is thinking about his young aunt and cousin, the two who stayed on, waiting for the boy’s father and for the helpers who were to take them to him.

That is what he sees; sometimes when he believes he is in this apartment, he notices something lying on a counter, he picks it up and it is a pair of glasses, the frame is strengthened around the thick lenses, but the glasses themselves are not large. One of the little screws is slightly loose, he lifts them up, the gentle curve at the end of the leg, the hoop that attaches behind the ear, beneath the hair. He clutches the glasses, they smell of something he recognizes, earwax. There is in fact a certain smell of earwax, he notices it, he imagines he smells it, now there is no difference between the two things. He thinks he remembers his cousin used to put them down when he washed himself, that he has seen them there before. He discovers the washing water sitting undisturbed in a bowl, a bluish film on top, the remains of the soap. And he understands that they were picked up suddenly, forced out, his cousin who can’t see properly, who has this visual impairment, everything is just a fog without his glasses, they would not have left without his glasses if there was time, and that’s the way he knows, he tells me, knows that they were chased out, and his cousin who probably can’t distinguish anything other than hazy colors and light, figures merging together and dividing up again. And perhaps, he says, it is just as well.