Breathless (15 page)

At some time in the middle of the day I hear ringing, far away in another world; the ringing comes nearer and nearer as I gradually surface from unconsciousness to half awake and then at last shake off my drowsiness. I grasp for the phone and pull the handset toward me so fast that it hits me on the forehead, a real crack. It is not Lukas but a stranger who asks me in English to come down to reception. A hint of irritation in the voice. I quickly drag on my shorts and T-shirt, throw together my things and grab the giant panda that is leaning against the minibar looking at me, and go down. It was checking-out time almost two hours ago, says the young woman in reception, the same one as yesterday but with a different shade of lipstick, and she looks stony when she sees me come down alone.

“Where's your brother? Has he sent you to pay?” Pay? I don't have a single penny on me. The only thing I have is a headache and a giant panda that's big enough to carry me. My head is throbbing, I'm screwing up my eyes to ease the pain, rapidly need to come up with a lie to get out of here, but I can't find one.

“He's not here, he's gone,” I say truthfully.

“Your brother?”

“No, the one who booked the room—he's not my brother.” She looks at me, for so long that I begin to itch all over. There's something in the way she looks at me that stings. Little friend, she says, and it's impossible to avoid her eyes.

“Sorry,” I mumble, for want of anything else to say.

“No, don't say sorry. I suspected he wasn't your brother. He behaved oddly. I should have realized.”

I have no time to pull my head out of the way before she takes hold of my chin and examines my face under the light.

“What's this?” My forehead. No doubt there is an obvious red mark by now. “What a swine,” she exclaims. “What else has he done to you?” Now she catches sight of the split in my lip, the spinning-top split, from the first ride when I wasn't prepared for the force and the speed. Swine? Done? I have no time to reply, my mind as blank as an icy road. “Has he brought you here from Sweden?” I nod. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“No, no, no. You don't need to lie to me. How old?”

“I was fifteen yesterday.”

“You don't need to lie, I said. I don't want to hurt you. I'm going to help you. Is there someone I can call? Your parents?”

That would be the end. Mama would report Lukas to the police for kidnapping, if she hasn't already done so. Then she herself would be charged with retaliation. Something with the ax. I just have to try to get away from here, and then get home under my own steam without a cent.

—

Exploitation of a child—he'd said it would no longer be called that if he and I . . . if we. But we didn't, would I not remember, however out of it I was? The labels on the beer belied its strength and Lukas was horny, I knew he was, but that sort of thing happened, it wasn't the first time, he just used to hide it better.
This is a man's world,
James Brown sang on the all-night radio. How could you stop yourself being aroused by that? I was too, but more . . . kind of mentally. Kind of mentally . . . Lukas bit my ear.

“
Kind of mentally?
For God's sake, Lo . . .” We were dancing, the elephants were dancing, the froth was dancing, the plastic chandelier in the ceiling was spinning. Lukas pretended I wasn't stepping on his toes. This is a man's world—but it wouldn't be nothing, nothing . . . without a woman or a girl . . . I remember that, then I don't remember much more.

A
fter the year of the snake comes the year of the rat, the monkey, the dog. Let life run between your fingers like a red thread. Movement holds the promise of arriving one day, perhaps stillness does too, like here on Mama's doorstep. Home is where nothing smells strange. Papa's father could distinguish his trees by their smell. The cypress smelled of insecticide, the acacia of boy's sweat, the sequoia of cheap Russian cigarettes after the war. The war was just a strand in time for me, however much Grandfather talked about it.

I peer in between the trees in the arboretum. Mama is not there. I have waited, searched, called out. She should have been standing here in the doorway when I arrived home, when I swung the car in and parked under the white birch—she can usually tell when I'm approaching from miles away. The sun is strong but cold. I tuck my hands under my arms, my eye drawn down to Lukas's house. It looks just the same as usual, at least from a distance. No, don't think about Lukas now. Only good thoughts.

I shut my eyes and let the men in my memory slide along like rosary beads. Hard, smooth, they resemble pearls, without blemish. “Perfect” means complete and by extension dead. Not like Lukas—nothing perfect about him. And neither before nor after Copenhagen could we talk about what happened.

I must get up before I'm fixed to the spot, my backside numb as two deep-frozen ham steaks. I walk around the house, looking at Mama's miniature world from the outside. Seeing her life like a very big girl looking into a very small doll's house and wishing there was room for me inside. But there is no longer space for me here. Some things have shrunk and others have grown. All I can do is put my hand inside and touch the little velour sofa, the minute velvet lamp, the tiny radio, the miniature fruit bowl, the fringe on the rug, the hem of her skirt, the doll's house full of objects and habits that have become her life. Long for the past. It seems so strange that the same word, “longing,” can be used for both wishing yourself away and wishing yourself back home.

When I met Lukas I was still a small child in Wellington boots that were far too big, a hippie youngster without hippie parents. The feelings of the person I was when I lived here are roused as soon as I return. Not exactly unpleasant, but remarkable that this person remains inside me.

I don't like going into the house when Mama's not at home. It's her life now, not mine. But in the end I can wait no longer; I go and fetch the key from the garden shed. The sound of the wind reverberates in the long hallways even though all the windows are closed. It was never cold like this when the house was full of people. The rooms smell white. Like Mama's almond soap, a tinge of scorched milk and the faint scent of new-fallen snow, though it is not the time for snow.

—

The world's smallest film festival. Two women and a guide dog. The hitchhiker I picked up on the way here laughed when I said where I was going.

“So . . . you and your blind mother have a film festival together, and you two are the only audience?”

“Yes, but we don't use that word.”

“Film festival?”

“Blind.” We behave as if nothing has happened. She wants everything to be as it was, the same routines, that's all she wishes for now.

I can't say no. Of course I should be able to say no, but I can't. When Mama rings to announce that another film festival is coming up, I pack my bag and set off home, wherever I happen to be.

—

But this time she's not here. I arrive at a dark house, all locked up. Go around looking for a message, the north room, south room, east room, west room, even the attic that she never uses. I can still smell the sickly sweet scent from before that I didn't realize back then came from the grass Rikard used to smoke up here. After Mama's little sister drowned he was the youngest in the family and everyone's eyes were upon him. When I was born he was at last free from the nagging and scolding. Perhaps that's why he loved me so unreservedly. Called me his favorite jewel. Mama called me her favorite worry.

In my memory this house is still full of people. Mama can't fill all the rooms with life on her own and I can't get used to the emptiness. The sound of my own breathing rebounds from the walls like faint sighs. I stiffen when I see the dog lying on the bat chair in the upper lounge. She can't possibly know that I'm the daughter here—daughters and mothers don't share an identical smell—and yet she doesn't even open her eyes as I pass on my way to Mama's bedroom. I lie down on the bed, numb because she should have been here and isn't. Tired after the long journey, I fall asleep.

—

I fall asleep hungry and awaken famished. Two headlights sweep over the faded cloudberry wallpaper. I manage to reach the bottom of the stairs and see Mama close the car door, before the stranger, whose face I don't catch, rolls away in a dilapidated old white Citroën.

Mama feels her way toward the house, up the outside steps, starts when she senses someone is standing in the doorway.

“It's only me, Mama.”

“Lo! You frightened me!” A kiss on the cheek. An unusual greeting for her. In the hall she stumbles on my bags, pulls a face as she picks herself up, but waves away my offer of help. “Why have you got so much stuff with you? Everything's here. Clothes as well, if you need to borrow anything.”

“I have to move on soon, Mama. I told you on the phone. Can't stay long.”

She isn't listening. Her thoughts are elsewhere. Goes in with her boots still on, right up to the stove she uses.

“You could have lit it, couldn't you, it's freezing in here.” The temperature must mean that she has been away for quite a while. An explanation would be in order, but no . . . she seems to be preoccupied. Who was he, the man in the white car? That she, after all these lonely years of “beware of men,” might have met someone is inconceivable.

Maybe I'll be forced to get used to the inconceivable. Just have to let it sink in before I can ask her about it.

“That dog you've got,” I say instead. “Isn't it the idea that you should take her with you when you go out?”

“She's a guard dog,” Mama says. No, she's not, actually. God knows how long the waiting list is for such a . . .

“. . . specially trained guide dog for the blind, Mama.” I risk saying it; she detests the word.

“I don't want her. I've asked them to come and take her away. I'm not
that
blind.”

That's what she wants everyone to believe, but she can't fool me. I can tell that she doesn't see me. She always used to have a special expression when she looked at me, like watching a favorite problem, with a sort of affection, however hopeless it might be.

Tales of blindness are just romantic stories about wisdom and a noble spiritual life. In reality it is bruises and spilled milk, burned flesh, windows not cleaned, a constant searching for missing items, and stumbling over everyday obstacles. Seeing her walk into chairs and doors hurts me. Especially when she doesn't complain.

When I have made an effort to prepare some food, I receive a mild telling off for not putting everything back in the right place afterward.

“Knives, for goodness' sake, Lo, knives—go in the side drawer.” I have the urge to go up and put my arm around her and say, what's the matter, Mama? She doesn't normally go on like that . . . as if she's trying to stem a much greater chaos. Knives. Spice jars. Shoes. Death. In the side drawer, Lo, the side drawer.

“I don't understand how you can look after your own home.” She sighs and sorts through everything that has been done wrong. But I don't, I have no home, or none that I feel at home in. It's me and the dogs.

Dogs? Mama turns her empty gaze toward me. Yes, dogs. I can't explain.

Immortal, despite a life of hunger, despite the dogcatchers' nets and traps, zigzagging through the traffic. In all the unfamiliar towns I come to, the wild dogs are the least alien. They roam where they want, do as they wish, crap where they like, don't care a jot about anything they dislike. A free and perilous life. If I'd been one of them, I would have died long ago, and yet it still attracts me. A dog's only task is to be a dog, sleep in the sun, be four-legged. Just to be a human, however, is not sufficient. Life has to be lived inside the lines.

—

All those years I avoided my mother's eyes:

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Sometime.”

“You're coming home for summer, aren't you?”

“Maybe.”

All the long journeys and secret men, unanswered telephone calls, vague addresses, poste restante so-and-so. Those eyes that I avoided for so long, I miss them now. It is a desperately bleak feeling, being the only sighted person in the house. Now I'm the one who has to keep watch over her. If an atomic cloud started to grow on the horizon, she wouldn't notice. But at least she would die without being afraid.

—

I sense a pattern. Of love. Want to see her eating and sleeping to make herself strong, enjoy the sun on the steps, comb her hair, keep her safe. When she goes out alone she gets lost and has to be driven home by strange people in strange cars. Can hardly see her way around now, but that doesn't prevent her from chopping wood and cycling, and last summer she went down to bathe in the lake, lost all idea of where the shore was, swam around and around in circles until she almost couldn't keep on. At the last moment she felt the bottom beneath her feet and managed to find her way onto land.

“Close to the eye.” She pulls a wry smile.

The feeling between us is changing. A new mixture of tenderness and irritation. I want to nourish and feed her, like a little child or a sensitive love. As she can't see I pour extra oil into the coleslaw and cream into the egg sauce. In my nightmares I see myself slowly being transformed into Nurse Ratched in
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest,
the little white hat over the stiff hair, zealously conscientious, a witch in a starched collar who means well but does harm. Must be careful not to be like that.

I don't like the thinness around her hips and neck. Her jeans are loose. Sad to eat alone . . . but Mama never complains about loneliness, even though she stopped eating for a time when she was first on her own in the house, when Papa's father was no longer there. Later on she seemed to have made the decision that she had to survive that as well. To lose yourself is the most dangerous of all. She tried to teach me that when I was younger. If you lose something else you can always get it back—but if you lose yourself, who is going to search? While other mothers warned their daughters about rapists, unwanted pregnancies, and venereal diseases, she was always warning me about losing myself to someone.