Merethe Lindstrom: Days in the History of Silence

I was the one who let him in.

Later I called him the intruder, but he did not break in. He rang the doorbell as anyone at all might have done, and I opened the door. It unsettles me still when I think about it. Really that could be what bothers me most. He rang the doorbell, and I opened the door.

So mundane.

Perhaps I had caught a glimpse of him that very morning at the bottom of the garden when Simon went to work. Standing down there between the trees. A young man, nineteen or twenty years old.

When I opened the door, he stood on the stairs just waiting to be let in. Anyone at all, he could have been anyone at all.

Good day, he said. I’d like to use the telephone.

There was something about good day . Nowadays there are not so many people who say that, it was more common at that time, in the middle of the nineteen sixties. But all the same he did not say it as if he meant it, as if there were something good about the day, or he wished me that. I felt it seemed like something he simply said, meant for everyone and no one.

We don’t have a telephone, I wanted to answer. But that was clearly a lie.

I heard the children from inside the living room. Helena was just a baby at that time, she was lying in a sleeping bag while the other two were playing on the floor beside her. I heard the time signal on the radio, behind him lay the garden, at that early hour the air is motionless, the rain from the previous evening only a slight dampness on the leaves, the green grass, newly wakened, dazed, something quivering in the transition from shadow to the sudden touch of sunlight. I don’t know what I was on the lookout for, perhaps an excuse to shut the door.

The connection’s not very good, I remarked.

That’s all right, he replied. I wondered whether it was up to him to say. Was it not me who should have said that?

We had already been standing there for a few minutes, and the feeling of being impolite eventually made me open the door and stand aside. When I let him in, as he walked past me, I noticed there was an odor about him. It was the smell of a different person, someone who has come too close, and the impression was heightened by my unease. Inside the hallway he looked around, for the telephone or something else. I nodded toward the hall table, but he only lifted the receiver, the sound of the dial tone as he held it above the dial, and the click when he replaced it on the instrument.

He had not intended to use the phone. It was obvious now he had no intention of phoning. What he was looking for, it could have been anything at all.

Nice house, he said.

Yes, I replied.

I had spotted the case attached to his belt, a little container that might hold something, a tool, a folding pocketknife? He must have caught sight of the children then. Greta on her stomach with a large sheet of paper in front of her, concentrating on the drawing, beside her coloring crayons she had emptied out onto the rug. Kirsten’s dress had slid up and the diaper she still wore, was visible, she was building a tower with bricks, stacking each one on top of the other. He must have watched them, standing like that looking for a little while before they noticed him, as I felt the unease increasing. I thought I should open the door and ask him to leave, but it was impossible to do so.

A quiet voice on the radio like a whisper, the long branches on the tree swaying in the wind outside, and giving the impression that something was approaching and pulling back again. I have often lain awake thinking about it, the children looking up, glancing inquiringly at him, at me. Helena’s arms waving conspicuously above the edge of the sleeping bag. She had been awake for a while, and I knew she would soon start to cry, from boredom or because she was hungry.

I walk past him through the living room door, a reflex making me lift the sleeping bag farther along the broad dining table, away from him, placing it there. At the far end of the room.

He has taken a couple of steps inside, standing focusing his eyes on the girls, the lines Greta is drawing become a big house, a girl with a triangular frock, the sun in the right-hand corner. She is still toiling over a flower.

Why are they sitting on the floor, he asked.

They are playing, I responded.

That wasn’t what I asked, he said. The irritation in his voice. I heard it. We are approaching something, I thought, perhaps whatever he has come for. Maybe he intends us to be here, it is here he has wanted to be all along, on this very spot.

Would you like some coffee, I asked in an attempt to avoid it, take a step back to something this might have been, this visit of his.

He shook his head. I don’t want anything.

It was not true that he did not want anything, I had understood that.

Helena’s waving arms, she was trying to grasp her fingers. Greta who had stood up, who was standing looking at us.

It was a chance I took.

I have some money, I said. And felt how something contracted in my abdomen, it seemed at first he had not heard, or was not bothered, as though money did not clarify anything either. I considered: if he only wanted money. He approached the windows overlooking the garden. The house was the same then, we have not rebuilt it much. Only the garden was smaller, there were several trees, more of the forest extended into the actual garden area, trees we later cut down.

How much do you have, he said as he turned around, standing like a silhouette with his back to the light, his face in darkness.

When I went toward my purse in the hallway, he followed me.

Twenty kroner, I said. That’s all.

I placed them in his hand. A pale hand, I remember the hand, I think I will always remember that. He held it out as though he had not thought to take them, just accept them, as though there were a great difference. I noticed it. It was not much, but neither was it a small amount at that time. He thrust the coins into his pocket, and I looked at him, and for the first time had the sense of making eye contact. As though I had not reached his eyes earlier. I felt my heart, it must have missed a beat, thumping against the wall of my chest, faster and faster, unable to calm down again.

I think we both turned around at the same time as it happened. Greta is climbing up on one of the dining chairs, perhaps in an effort to comfort the baby who has started to cry. She tugs the light sleeping bag toward her, the chair tips over, and she just misses dragging the bag with her in the fall. Greta howls, gets to her feet and screams. The baby becomes scared and screams even louder. I console Greta, holding her close to me, rubbing the angry red mark that has appeared on her shin. I lift the sleeping bag. I forget him, forget he is standing there right behind me.

And when I turn around, he is not. He is not there, and neither is Kirsten. For a moment all is silent. The children have stopped crying, the voice on the radio pauses, and only the branch outside the window stirs.

I want to cry out, but Greta is right beside me. I say it carefully. Kirsten, I say, Kirsten. I begin to search, peering around me as though only my own confusion is preventing me from seeing her. Just as I am about to run down the basement steps, I discover that the terrace doors are open.

There is a faint breeze in the garden, I don’t know what I am wearing, a thin sweater and trousers, or a dress, perhaps with an apron on top, I used to wear one at that time. The garden is brightening up, I feel the moisture on the grass. At the bottom is the entrance to a little grove of trees. In the years to come we chop down the trees all around, but we leave some standing because we have a notion that the children should see trees, that it is something they need. I walk in between the bushes, into the grove.