Days in the History of Silence (17 page)

A new dog could guard the house as well.

She did not like dogs, Marija, but when I reflect on it, I can’t recall that she ever gave a good reason for why she felt that way, that she ever explained it in a rational fashion, or in a fashion I could understand. It was not true that she was afraid of them.

She just did not like them.

M
arija’s daughter managed to throw her man out, was it in May during the spring that she came running to tell me that? Marija had phoned her every single day, and in the middle of her work she would have to answer her phone, something she never did otherwise. We appreciated that it was important, we heard her walking to and fro out in the hallway, we could not of course understand what she was saying. But we could make out our own names. Afterward she came through to the kitchen and told us that some important things were going to take place now.

We invited her to dinner. First she cleaned the house, helped out in the kitchen and afterward sat down in the dining room as though she had just come in the door, she had
changed her clothes, she had a different smell. She must have dabbed on perfume, it was slightly unfamiliar, later I associated the evening with the scent of that perfume, a distinctive odor of chrysanthemums. But perhaps she had also used it before, she used it on special occasions such as when she was looking forward to something.

Sit down and eat, I said.

I really should have prepared the food, she said. But I told her that it was not necessary, I had already roasted the meat and boiled the potatoes and broccoli, and while we were eating, her phone rang. We heard her speaking in this language that I actually cannot recall ever hearing before Marija came here. Now it has happened, she shouted and began to tell us about it while she was still standing out in the hallway. She has left him. And best of all: She’s coming, Marija said, with the phone in her hand. At last she’s coming!

Her daughter was to arrive the following Sunday, together with Marija’s brother. They were both going to stay at Marija’s house, and although I offered them accommodation at our house, Marija turned that down for quite a while. She was unwilling. I said that I would not give in. Then she yielded reluctantly. They would not be any bother, she said.

I was not looking forward to it, I was happy about her excitement, but it is true, I was not happy about having strangers in the house.

The uncle, Marija’s brother, was a man with thinning hair and an outbreak of rosacea spreading a blush across his face
and giving him an agitated appearance, he was also unusually tall, like having a giant come to visit, a giant who went around the house and never seemed able to find a chair to fit. In any case he seldom sat down. When he spoke his voice contrasted starkly with his appearance, soft and high pitched. He offered to repair an old refrigerator we have in the garage, but on Marija’s advice we refused the offer, he cannot repair anything, she said, he works at the cash desk in a gas station, he is just trying to be useful. Marija had told us that her daughter was totally different from her, and that was true. She seemed shy and depressed, she was small, slim and had a little girl with her who continually sat on her lap. The uncle smoked with the terrace doors slightly ajar, something that led to a constant draft during those days. The girl, the child, was called something beginning with
B
, a name I learned to pronounce, but that I have forgotten now.

Marija prepared the meals, several every day, and I discovered that I enjoyed the company. Even the girl who sat up late in the evenings until she fell asleep on her mother’s knee and was carried up to bed. The uncle was simply present, he sat still for a few minutes at a time, before obviously feeling the need to move again, to try out a new chair, a different position while he peered in the direction of the garage door and the broken lamp on the outdoor light. He asked several times whether he could fix something. We went on an outing to the aquarium at Nordnes. B had a special way
of showing eagerness, instead of smiling or shouting like the other children who were there, she clenched her fists, tightening her jaw, as though her excitement was almost unbearable. Especially when one of the employees came to feed the penguins, she tensed up in that way, almost like a temporary spasticity.

Marija was concerned about her, I saw that she kept her eye on the girl. The child had experienced problems at school, Marija explained, she had become a scapegoat, for no reason whatsoever, these things of course happen for no reason at all, she said. She did not know what she should do. Take her out, find another school, when she talked about it, the daughter did not want to listen, she already had too many worries about her job and her former boyfriend. Marija held her granddaughter’s hand and bought her whatever she wanted, a book of fairy tales, a soft toy animal, in the evening she read the girl a fairy story, a Norwegian edition of
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
, she read the Norwegian text and translated it.

Who is it that took the children away with him? The Pied Piper of Hamelin, he played his pipe and lured all the rats to follow him in a long line down to the river where they drowned. When he returned to Hamelin, they did not think they needed to keep their promise to him. They would not pay him.

She read everything on the page, did not skip over anything. She conjured it up, and the girl tensed her jaw.

When he began to play again, it was not the rats that followed the Pied Piper through the town’s narrow streets, but all the boys and girls, all the children of Hamelin. They came out from the schools, from the houses.

I observed Marija and her granddaughter as Marija read the distressing story to the little girl who sat there with her eyes full of terror. While I listened, I suddenly felt unwell, perhaps it was something to do with the ghastly story. Simon had already gone to bed. He was lying in bed with the light on, I put my arm around him, and he put his arm around me. I think we both lay listening to the voices, the foreign language. People we barely knew, who were occupying our living room.

The Pied Piper has a pipe, and the children follow him. They follow him in a long line, he leads them out of Hamelin, toward a mountain. He plays his pipe louder, an opening appears. Right into the mountainside, into a cavern, he leads them inside. And there they vanish.

AFTER THEY HAD
left, she was brokenhearted. She spoke to her daughter on her phone again, the daughter’s unpleasant boyfriend had returned. Marija said there was nothing she could do for her, for the young girl. She was discouraged about being so far away, but she felt that it would not have been any different if she had visited them. She would not listen, she said about her daughter. We talked about our daughters, how it was impossible to control other people’s lives, but instead we had to sit and watch things happen.

That was when I suggested that she continue to live here with us for a while, in the meantime at least. She had problems where she was living, an increase in rent that meant she had to look for another place all the same. You can stay with us, we told her, while you are looking.

Marija stayed with us for several weeks, occupying one room. Several weeks, was it not longer? They were peaceful weeks. So surprising. As though she had always stayed there, eating, sleeping, getting up there, being together with us. In the afternoons we ate dinner in the dining room, we seldom do that otherwise, we set the table with enthusiasm and took ages discussing places we had visited and foodstuffs we preferred, vacation destinations we would like to revisit. Marija said we must come to Latvia. We must visit her hometown someday, she would show us around. I think we envisioned at that particular time, we would travel with Marija, eat local food, meet the uncle, daughter, grandchild again. The rest of the family.

Both Simon and I participated in these conversations with unusual eagerness.

In the evenings we formed a little group distributed among the settee and our three chairs, never facing the television, but each with a book or bent over the chessboard. Simon showed her his books, the history books with detailed descriptions of areas where important battles have been fought, he had marked all of them on various maps, look at the mountain ranges, these long river courses, I will show you what happened, if you see that line there, what it indicates, he talked as
though he himself had seen armies fall on the battlefield. She seemed like a friend, he said later. A true friend, did she not?

She was indeed, I said. That was after she had left, after her dismissal.

They were lovely, those days she stayed here. We have never had many friends.

T
he new cleaner arrives around ten. Once a week, mostly on Wednesdays. This one works in several other places, before holidays she brings a friend with her, they work together and clean the entire house. I hear the key in the door, and sometimes, if I am not particularly observant or have forgotten that she is coming, I think for a moment that it is Marija out in the hallway. She always calls out her name. It is Ana, she says, or is it pronounced Anna. Then she places the key on the bureau with a little bang. But she doesn’t come into the living room to chat, only if there is something in particular. As a rule she gives me instructions before she leaves. She fetches the vacuum cleaner that Marija was in the habit of using. She has pointed out that it needs a
new nozzle, really we need a whole new machine, it does not work the way it should, she says.

But she does not insist.

She lets herself out.

And then it is silent again.

IT BECAME SILENT
after Marija. She might just as well have let the house remain empty. Removed the furniture in every single room and just left the marks behind, shadows and pale spaces.

It was on my birthday that it began. What I still don’t completely understand, and have spent a great deal of time considering. Immediately after that evening I could still blame it on hidden misunderstandings, other interpretations. But now that is of course no longer any consolation, Marija herself helped me to clarify it. For a time it upset me that I could not replay our conversation like a recording in my memory, what was said that evening. All I remember is some disconnected fragments of a conversation. Simon had booked tickets for a concert, a concert by a well-known philharmonic orchestra, several weeks in advance he came and said: What about inviting her to come with us.

Marija? I said, I was taken aback, even though this was actually something we had briefly discussed, that she should celebrate with us.

Why not, he said.

No, I responded, happy, why not indeed. We were in such
agreement, he was fulfilling something I myself had mulled over in my mind. It was his idea. But it could have been mine, if he hadn’t managed to come up with it first. She had also talked about the concert in the Grieg Hall, part of the music festival. I wouldn’t believe for a moment that she had any ulterior motives about it, she was not trying to persuade me to invite her along, she was not the kind of person who had ulterior motives, I am sure of that. She simply liked to talk about the event, the actual concert, that particular orchestra, I know she also said that we ought to attend, Simon and I, that it was something we shouldn’t miss.

I phoned the box office and made reservations. When I first received the tickets, it was as though this had been the intention all along. We always agreed about her, about Marija. That was perhaps why it felt shameful later. Shame that we had been so mistaken about her? In a way it felt like our responsibility. And simultaneously: shame about what we had not spoken about and that had turned into a lie, nothing that could be explained. We participated in it as though it were our own downfall. That was how we saw it.

AT FIRST SHE
would not accept the ticket, no, it was impossible. She couldn’t. And I recall that birthday, from the morning onward: Outside there is fog, but Simon says that it is going to be fine, that they have said it is going to be a fine day. I hear him out in the kitchen. He is making coffee, he is placing slices of cake neatly on a plate with a napkin.

Happy birthday, he says as he sits down on the edge of the bed.

How old am I, I say.

He just smiles. Kisses me.

The phone rings, once, then once more. I talk to the children. I put down the receiver and look in the mirror. Marija knocks on the door.

It’s your birthday, she says. You are going to a concert. Now you’ll both have a nice day.

Then you must come too, Simon says.

SHE JUST LAUGHED
. But he insisted. When it dawned on her that he was serious, that we really had bought her a ticket, she became solemn and concerned. It was too much, she said, far too much.

Not until we were in the taxi that evening did she become animated again. She had dressed so beautifully, had borrowed a dress from a friend, a short black jacket, with a lilac coat. Stockings with threads like a fine net. She talked to the taxi driver and told him we were going to a concert, as though everybody had to know about this special occasion, she laughed at something he said, her dress, her hairstyle and the stockings obviously made her extra outgoing. I believe the same applied to our silence, her sociability made us slightly self-conscious, and I think she noticed that, because afterward she said something about just being so happy about this, that we were able to go together.

The taxi drew to a halt outside the Grieg Hall. Marija chattered all the way in. When we sat down she talked about what good seats we had, and for the next few minutes she spoke about how long it would be until the concert started. When the conductor made his entrance, she took my hand and squeezed it.

During the first movement, I was aware that we were leaning back, both of us. I breathed in time to the music, she kept hold of my hand. Simon on the other side of me, it was so long since we had been to a concert.

At the intermission she was enthusiastic, we were all enthusiastic.