Doppler (3 page)

But Mr Hat was gone from my mind as I lay there in the heather. The songs had fallen quiet. And by some miracle all my bathroom thoughts had called it a day. I could hardly remember the last time I wasn’t thinking about the bathroom. But now it had gone from my mind. All of a sudden I wasn’t thinking about whether we should have Italian tiles or Spanish ones or matt or gloss, or whether we should simply treat ourselves to glass mosaic, which of course my wife was really keen on. Not to mention colour. I wasn’t even thinking about colours. Not about blue. Not about green. Not about white. It wasn’t that I no longer cared about the colour of the ceiling or the tiles, but the very idea of it had simply disappeared. I had been spared this eternal merry-go-round in my head. And I wasn’t thinking about the mixer taps, either, even though they are available in seven hundred different types and can be delivered in six weeks if they are in brushed steel or quicker if you’re happy with the standard model, but why make do with the standard model, or the bathtub which we’d had to discuss the same day as USA and England had begun their campaign in Iraq. I remember being irritated when I discovered that now we would also have to take a stance on this war. It was very distracting. As if it wasn’t enough to have to decide on all this bathroom stuff. Now we would have to take sides in Iraq. I didn’t like things going on in the world which in effect reduced what I used my brainpower on to trivia. Not only did I not have my perspectives clarified, but I didn’t want them to be. For weeks it had irritated me that they couldn’t wait to start the bombing down there until we had finished doing up the bathroom. To hell with them, I thought. Should we go for the Polish tub which was considerably cheaper than the Swedish one which we were also quite fond of? Or should we take a hard line and consistently go for quality over economy? After all there were good and bad things to be said about both tubs. It wasn’t as if the Swedish one was better in every respect. We discussed where to place the bath and drew up lists of the pros and cons with the Polish and Swedish models while the bombs rained down on the Euphrates, or maybe the Tigris, or both, on the TV, though we had turned down the sound, and this process is so exhausting, so absorbing that if you suddenly don’t think it’s important any more the whole project collapses, and perhaps the marriage, too.

And I wasn’t thinking about the toilet, either, as I was lying in the heather. Whether it should be wall mounted, which is the most stylish at the moment, or whether we could make do with a more classical floor-mounted model. And the conversations with the plumber were also light miles away that afternoon in the forest. Especially the upsetting conversation when he expressed his opinion that the first plumber had made it impossible for the poo to get to where it should be going in the concrete and, for that reason, in a few seconds he was going to set about breaking up the whole floor and installing new pipes.

All that was gone. There were a lot of things I suddenly wasn’t thinking about any more.

What on the other hand I
did
think about as I lay injured in the heather, letting the spring sun warm my face, was that my father was gone and would always be gone and that I had never really known him and that I didn’t even feel anything special when my mother told me he was dead. He had died in the course of the night. Very suddenly. And very peacefully. But in the heather all of this hit me with all its gravity. The drama of it all. You’re here and then you’re not. From one day to the next. I saw it all in a flash and realised that the difference is so overwhelming that the mind has to acknowledge its limitations and pass. All the things you can be and have, and then at the drop of a hat all things you cannot be and have because you have been and had for the last time. It’s a repugnant construct.  One of the alternatives contains everything and the other nothing.  The emptiness following from these thoughts, combined with the bang on the head, caused me to go to drop off for a while. On waking I thought of something my sixteen-year-old daughter had said a few days earlier when we were sitting in a café after seeing
Lord of the Rings
–
The Two Towers
at the Colosseum cinema. She’d seen it eleven times before and now she considered that it was shameful that I hadn’t seen it. Anyway, she no longer wanted to accept that her father couldn’t be part of what for her was an adrenalin rush of historic dimensions. She had lain in a queue on the pavement for a couple of weeks to get tickets for the premiere. She and her boyfriend and her girlfriends and their boyfriends. Dressed as elves. We had had a few tough sessions with the school to get them to accept her being absent for so long in the middle of the school year, but she is a model pupil and the English teacher had vouched for her, and what’s more Tolkien is great when it comes to stimulating young people’s curiosity, they say, so, fine, and we’ve got a warm sleeping bag and all that. Anyway. In the film there is a sequence when the evil Saruman, incidentally very reminiscent of the late Hamas boss - the one with the white hair and beard who was in a wheelchair and said in a squeaky voice that the Palestinians would never give in no matter what - has his mines and tower dramatically destroyed after he had spent a long time rearing what are known as orcs, bad troll-like monsters whom he has now sent on a mission to kill everything good. His plans are thwarted by some living trees which the hobbits have persuaded to go into action. Among other things they destroy a dam with the result that the water floods out and causes a lot of damage to Saruman. On the way out of the cinema I happened to say that it would be quite some time before Saruman built a new tower at the foot of a dam. My daughter let the comment pass, but on arriving at the café she had a wild look in her eyes. I was keen to know what was up with her, though I wouldn’t say that I was afraid of what she might come out with. From my perspective, she was so inscrutable that I was constantly on the alert for anything. Teenage girls have always seemed mysterious to me, not least when I was their age. Since then the distance between us has just increased, as is natural, and now of course I have my own, and the way I saw things that evening almost six months ago, the possibilities were endless. Take the most irrational thing you can think of and multiply it by the biggest number you can imagine, and you’ve got my daughter down to a T, I would say.

We arrived at the café and sat down. What’s up? I said at length.

She said she was shocked that my first comment after seeing an epic like that could be so cynical and so unaffected by the marvellous story I had just been immersed in.

Immersed? I’m not so sure about that, I said. We’ve seen an unusually expensive film about trolls. It was exciting. And I’m happy I’ve seen that side of life which means so much to you.

She said she couldn’t accept that and it confirmed to her that the distance between her and me was as great as she feared, or if possible, even greater.

What do you want me to say? I asked.

We’ve seen a tale about good and evil, my daughter said. Do you feel nothing in your heart?

Yes, I certainly do. I’ve already said it was exciting. I understand that the ring is treacherous and that many people want to get hold of it, and it was very well done, he, what’s his name, the transparent one who eats fish …?

Gollum, she said.

That’s the one, I said. He was very well done. I don’t quite know how they did it, but it was impressive. And the battle scenes were great and everything.

Do you know what your problem is, Dad? she said.

I shook my head.

You don’t like people, she said. You’re not a people person.

And that’s why I don’t like you.

She got up and left.

She finished with me as if I were her boyfriend. That was actually quite impressive. For a moment I was almost proud of her. There goes my daughter, I thought, as she departed. She’ll make out fine. Afterwards I ordered a beer and filed the event in the folder for irrational behaviour, thinking that in a couple of days she would be herself again. And indeed she was, more or less.

But lying there in the heather a few days later feeling the pain in my hip and the sun on my face I realised that my daughter was right.

I don’t like people.

I don’t like what they do. I don’t like what they are. I don’t like what they say.

My daughter had put her finger on my affliction. She had put words to something I had been trying to avoid coming to terms with for a long time. In recent years I had gradually distanced myself more and more from the people around me. I had lost interest in my work and also to some extent in my home. My wife had commented on this several times. She thought there was something wrong with her and I let her believe that for want of a better explanation. Admitting that it’s you there’s something wrong with is totally untenable. At any rate, as long as there’s someone else ready to take the blame. I found myself almost constantly in a state where I registered what was going on in the world, but it never crossed my mind that it might have anything to do with me. And my daughter, in her elf outfit, said it did and hit the nail on the head.

I lay in the heather for a long time that afternoon. I threw up a couple of times and when after a while I got hungry I tried to knock down a squirrel with my cycle pump, but I failed. And then my wife rang wondering what had happened to me. I’ve fallen off my bike, I said, and tried to get to my feet. I managed somehow. I’m coming now, I said, and began to limp homewards supporting myself on my bike.

I had extensive grazing and a bruise which was yellow and reddish and the size of a wienerschnitzel, or something like that, and what I presumed was some kind of concussion. My wife bandaged the wounds and I said it wasn’t her there was something wrong with, it was me. Oh yes, she said. What’s wrong then? It’s a bit too early to say, I said. But I was thinking a bit when I was lying in the forest. Good, she said.

The following days I didn’t go to work. I got a sick note from the doctor and was told to take it easy for a week or two.

My daughter continued to watch
Lord of The Rings
again and again, and she made it clear she didn’t want any more sarcastic comments from me, and my son, Gregus, God knows why I ever agreed to him being called that, watched his excruciating videos at all hours of the day and night when he wasn’t in the nursery school. God bless the nursery school.

One day when my sick note was drawing to a close I began to flick through a pile of papers and pictures my mother had given me after my father had died. There were receipts and notes and lots of pictures of toilets, of all things. I rang my mother who explained that dad had been in the habit of taking pictures of toilets he had used in the final years of his life. He had never explained why he had taken the snaps and kept stumm. The result was hundreds of photos of toilets and trees and rocks and other places where you might have a piss outdoors. It struck me that I knew him even less well than I thought, but I liked the pictures and the thought of him having taken photos of all the places he’d had a piss. It was just like him. My father, the toilet photographer. As a consequence of this, or as a consequence of the feeling all this created in me, or at least hopefully as a consequence of something or other which had to do with something, I packed my bag on what seemed to be a sudden impulse, and which still feels like that, and wandered into the forest. I left a note on the kitchen worktop in which I briefly explained that I had gone for a walk in the forest and didn’t know how long I would be gone but they shouldn’t expect me for dinner. That’s about six months ago now and I’ve only seen my wife a handful of times since then. She’s been up to the tent twice to have sex and to persuade me to go home, and even though I’ve promised her both times to do so, I haven’t. I say I’ll go but I don’t. I suppose, in a way, it’s close to a lie, but so what, it’s my life and I need to be in the forest for a while.

My wife is concerned by what people think and believe, as she says. It doesn’t bother me any more. Nothing could bother me less than what people think. People can think what they like. In general I don’t like them anyway and seldom respect their opinions. I haven’t had any interest in our so-called friends for a long time. They pop by to see us and we them. It’s an eternal hassle with dinners and kids and weekend walking trips and rented houses in the summer. And of course I’ve always strung along and as a result in a despicable way been part and parcel of it. That must have made them think when I headed for the woods. Doppler, of all people, they must have thought. A good job, a nice family and a big house in the process of being tastefully redecorated; and what should I say to those who ask? my wife has said several times with desperation in her voice. Say what you want, I said. Say that I’ve become manically obsessed with flora and fauna, say that I’ve gone mad. Say what you want.

I realise that my behaviour has been very trying for my wife and I’ve tried to explain that my little adventure has nothing to do with her. That’s difficult for her to believe, I’ve noticed. At the start she suspected I had something going with another woman, but she doesn’t think so any longer. Now, in a sense, she has resigned herself to the fact that I live in a tent even though she doesn’t understand why. In good times and bad, they said when we got married. The problem with this is, of course, that any one time can be good for one person and bad for the other.

I’m pregnant, she then said, as we stood in front of the packet soup shelf in Norway’s biggest ICA supermarket.

Crikey, I said. Again? We’ve barely had any sex since I moved out into the tent. As I said, it could only be a matter of two or three times. She came to see me at night and left again after a short session during which she could hardly be bothered to remove her outer clothing.

Due in May, she said. And if you’re not back home by then you can forget the whole thing. Then it’s over. Got it?

I hear what you’re saying, I said.

And I’m sick of being on my own with the kids and not having your income any more, she said.