Encircling (21 page)
Authors: Carl Frode Tiller
“And anyway, the kids are getting big now,” he says, “they’re becoming quite independent,” he says. “Oh, yes,” I say and my voice is cold and indifferent. “Oh, don’t be so brusque,” he says. “Oh, so I’m being brusque, am I?” I ask. “Yes, Silje, you are being brusque,” he says, and he’s starting to sound exasperated. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. “Oh, come on, Silje,” he says. “Can’t we … I didn’t mean what I said about your father,” he says. “I’m sorry,” Egil says. “You already said that,” I say. “I thought we were finished with that,” I say, and a moment passes and the only sounds are the sizzle of the waffle iron and the rustle of the newspaper, and I suddenly remember that Trond just called and I realize I’m looking forward to saying that Trond will be coming on Sunday after all, it’s childish to be looking forward to telling him something that will make him mad, but I can’t help it, I turn to Egil.
“Oh, by the way,” I say, “Trond called.” “Oh,” Egil mutters. “He’s coming on Sunday after all,” I say, and Egil shuts his eyes and gives a little grunt. “Humph,” he sighs and I feel a sweet ripple of malicious glee run through me as I say it. “Humph?” I ask, injecting a note of surprise into my voice. “Yes, humph,” he says. “I’d been looking forward to a nice, quiet Sunday dinner for once,” he says. “Well, you could try toning down the big brother act,” I say and I hear Egil give a scornful little laugh. “Ah, so it’s my fault, is that what you’re saying?” Egil asks. “Not at all,” I say, grinning. “It’s all Trond’s fault, I’m sure,” I say. “Well, yes, actually I believe it is,” Egil says and a moment passes, then, “Ah,” I say with a little intake of breath and I hear how sarcastic I sound when I say it like this.
“You’re not going to start making excuses for him again, are you?” Egil says. “No, no,” I say, saying it in a bright, airy, ironic voice. Oh, come on, Silje,” he says. “It’s commendable of you to show concern for him, but … more than anything what Trond needs is for people around him to tell him in no uncertain terms when enough is enough,” he says. “Oh, right,” I say and there’s silence for a moment, then I hear Egil lay his paper on his lap again. “Silje,” he says. “Please, just drop it, will you?” he says. “Can’t we be friends?” he says. “Oh, all right,” I say. “Humph,” he grunts and then I hear him laying the paper on the table and I hear him getting up from the wicker chair and walking towards me and I pour batter onto the waffle iron and put the ladle back in the bowl, then I go over to the kitchen cupboard, take plates and glasses from the cupboard and start to lay the table.
“Are you setting places for the kids, too?” I hear him ask, and I hear how surprised he sounds, and I turn to him, I look at him and I see his surprise simply grow and grow, but I don’t feel put out, I’m perfectly calm and relaxed and I give him my indifferent smile. “Yes,” is all I say as I set down the last glass, feeling light and careless and almost happy in a strange sort of way. “But,” Egil says, and I can hear how flummoxed he is. “But aren’t they at a concert?” he asks. “At a concert? No,” I say, and I’m struck by the casualness with which I say this, and I cross to the drawers, take cutlery from the top drawer, walk over to the table and lay out the cutlery, then I look up at Egil and smile that indifferent smile again.
“But you said they were,” Egil says, and I look at him and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so flummoxed before, and I realize I get a kick out of knocking him so much
off-balance. “But you said they wouldn’t be having dinner here this evening,” he says. “I know,” I say, and I look at Egil and smile and he just stands there gaping, and a bubble of laughter breaks loose somewhere inside me and the laughter sweeps through me like a landslide and he looks so flummoxed that I almost laugh out loud, but I don’t, I simply look at him and smile. “But,” he says, then he stops and he looks at me and gives his head a little shake. “But … what was all that about the concert?” he asks, and I look at him, smiling that indifferent smile, and a moment passes and now I have to answer and I might as well be honest. “It just came out,” I say with a little shrug. “And I thought it sounded so good that I didn’t want to say it wasn’t true,” I say, setting down the last fork, and there’s silence. “It’s nothing to get upset about, is it?” I say, looking at Egil and smiling again. “No … not really,” Egil says and he pauses, gives another little shake of his head. “But it’s kind of an odd thing to lie about, don’t you think?” he says. “Yes, I suppose it is,” I say, and I smile that same smile and I see Egil’s mouth drop open again and I can tell that he’s searching for words.
“Tell me,” Egil says, and he looks at me and he can’t rid himself of his confusion, he just stands there gaping and the laughter resounds right through me. “Are you losing your mind?” he says. “Maybe,” I say and a moment passes. “Silje,” Egil says, raising his voice slightly now, and he eyes me gravely and I eye him in return and I smile at him as calmly as I can. “Yes,” I say. “What’s the matter?” he asks. “Nothing’s the matter,” I say. “You … you’re acting so strangely these days,” he says. “Oh, do you think so?” I ask. “Yes, I do actually,” he says. “I wish I could agree with you,” I say. I don’t know quite what I
mean by what I’m saying, it just slips out. “And what on earth is that supposed to mean?” he asks, looking at me with those bewildered eyes again. “Nothing, Egil,” I say. “I’m probably just trying to make myself a little more interesting for you,” I say and I look at Egil and smile, and he looks at me and a moment passes and all at once he starts to laugh. “You’re so weird,” he says. “Oh, well, if you say so,” I say. “Do you love me even though I’m weird?” I ask. “I love you because you’re weird,” he says, and then he comes up to me, puts his arms round me and hugs me.
“And you’re simply getting weirder and weirder, it seems!” he says. “So you don’t think I’m boring?” I say, and I hear myself ask and I’ve no idea where this question comes from. “Boring?” Egil says. “There’s a lot I could say about somebody who spins yarns like the one you just spun,” Egil says, “but one thing you’re not is boring,” he says. “Well, do you think I’m too dependent?” I blurt, and I look at him and I wonder where it comes from, all the stuff I’m saying, it’s almost as if it’s not me who’s talking, it’s as if someone were talking through me and I almost wonder whether I actually am too dependent, I mean it must come from somewhere, all this, and maybe I’m right, maybe I am too dependent. “Why on earth do you ask that?” Egil asks, his eyes searching my face. I smile at him and shrug and a moment passes.
Then: “Is it Oddrun, has she been saying things again?” Egil asks. “No, of course not,” I say and Egil looks at me, and gives a sly little smile, and I can see that he doesn’t believe me. “Did she say you were too dependent?” he asks and he laughs and shakes his head. “No,” I say. “Yes, she did,” Egil says. “I can tell by your face,” he says. “Ah,
then she must have done, mustn’t she?” I say. “Christ,” he says and he laughs again. “You shouldn’t take everything she says to heart, Silje,” he says, and he looks at me and I look at him and I can’t be bothered contradicting him again, I can’t remember Mum ever saying that I was too dependent, but it doesn’t matter, it makes no difference anyway. “It’s just that … when she delivers one of her salvoes it’s herself she’s talking about, you know,” he says. “Herself?” I say. “Silje,” Egil says, and he tilts his head forward slightly and regards me almost paternally. “Too dependent …” he says. “I would have thought that was a description more suited to women of Oddrun’s generation than to women of yours,” he says. “It’s the woman she was when she was young that she’s accusing of being too dependent,” he says. “It’s a perfectly normal psychological mechanism, a way of mourning the fact that she didn’t have the life she so much wanted to have back then,” he says. “You’ve told me yourself how much it bothered her that she didn’t dare to live her own life until she was well up in years,” he says. “Not until your father died,” he adds.
“What a lot you know,” I say, and I look at him and I smile that indifferent smile. “Hey, Silje,” he says. “Don’t start that again.” “No, no,” I say. “Okay, but do you think she’s right?” he asks. “I don’t really know,” I say. “But,” Egil says, then he stops himself and looks at me, laughs and shakes his head. “Well, if so, in what way would you say you were too dependent?” he says. “You have so many options open to you,” he goes on, “all you have to do is get out there and make the most of them,” he says. “Yes, I suppose so,” I say and then there’s silence and we just stand there looking at one another. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Silje,” he says. “What’s stopping you?” he asks, and he
spreads his hands. “Have I ever stopped you from doing anything you wanted to do?” he asks and he looks at me, waiting to hear what I’ll say, but I don’t really know what to say, it’s as if someone is talking through me and I’m just standing here waiting to hear what I’m going to say. “I don’t know what’s stopping me,” I say. “Well … er, what would you like to do?” he asks. “I don’t know what I’d like to do,” I say. “I just sort of do the things you’re supposed to do,” I say and I hear what I’m saying and I wonder where all this is coming from. “Is that what you mean when you say you’re ‘too dependent’?” Egil asks. “Maybe,” I say, and then I pause. “I’ve never really thought about any of this before,” I say, and I see how bewildered Egil looks and a moment passes and then I start to laugh and Egil just stands there staring at me, then he shakes his head. “What on earth’s the matter with you?” he says. “First making up stories, then beating yourself up like this, and then … what is all this?” he says, looking helpless and I look at him and laugh and Egil raises his eyebrows and shakes his head and then he starts to laugh, too. “Oh, God,” he chuckles and he runs his hand through his thin hair. “I think it’s just as well we’re off to Brazil soon,” he says, “I think you need a little holiday,” he says.
The time I devised an experiment:
I have no more idea of how we got up there than of what we were doing there, but at any rate we were standing on the top of the corn silo, gazing out across Namsos town centre. To begin with the cars reminded me of guinea pigs and then, because of the way they were darting up and down the narrow, maze-like streets, of rabbits in an experiment of some sort, and this may have been what led me, just after this, to come up with the silly little phrase that I would later use as an amusing, off-the-cuff test as to whether I found a man interesting or not. In any case, I suddenly turned to you and asked what was the first thing that came into your mind when I said “bunny in the bush”, and when you replied simply and with a perfectly straight face that you pictured a rabbit with an Afro, I let out a happy ripple of laughter, and I think I was even more surprised than you when I then came straight out and told you I was in love with you (boring men obviously pictured a twat surrounded by a bush of pubic hair). Lightly, with a smile and the hint of a shrug, you said you were a little in
love with me, too, and after looking each other in the eye for two, maybe three, seconds, we both laughed. We didn’t hold hands afterwards. We didn’t say anything either. We merely stood gazing out across the town, smiling, with the wind in our hair. I clearly remember an SAS plane slicing across the grey sky.
The time when I had a nightmare:
The day before we left, over at Jon’s house, we’d watched a stupid film on video. There was one scene in which eight black-clad special-force cops jumped out of a helicopter and slithered down ropes onto the roof of a warehouse where some aliens from outer space were hiding. In my nightmare these were transformed into eight spiders, all spinning their threads and lowering themselves onto the roof of the mountain tent in which we were sleeping, exhausted after trudging for miles through a soggy, sucking bog. I don’t suffer from arachnophobia and I never have done, but in my dream, probably because of the green Ajungilak sleeping bag I was tucked up inside, I had turned into a plump green grub and I was absolutely terrified because the spiders were going to eat me. On the few other occasions when I’ve had nightmares the fear has subsided as soon as I opened my eyes, but not this time. When a little gust of wind set the canvas billowing and a couple of drops of condensation fell off the inside of the tent roof, landed on my brow and woke me up, I was sure they’d been dislodged by the weight of the spiders, and when I sat up sharply the sight of the sleeping bag only confirmed, as it were, that I really did have the slippery green body of a grub. I went into absolute hysterics; screaming and wriggling exactly
like a grub I wormed my way frantically out of the tent (which I had now got it into my head was my chrysalis), then I rolled down the gentle slope to the kingcup-fringed lake. I lay there on the bank on my back, panic-stricken and perfectly still, so the spiders wouldn’t find me. What were actually crows in the treetops looked to me like blueberries dangling high up in the heather and I was sure that the plane cutting across the deep-blue sky was a white bird.
I don’t know how long I lay like that, wide-eyed and rigid with fear (probably no more than a second or two), but when you called my name, once and then again, the dream began to loosen its grip on me. Little by little the countryside took shape around me, in much the same way that toads and trolls revert to being trees and roots when the fog lifts, and by the time you dropped to your knees beside me and I saw your big, worried face come floating down towards me (rather as I imagine a father’s face would seem to a feverish child as he bent over its cot to feel whether it was hot), I was almost wide awake.
I couldn’t help crying when I told you about my dream and how terribly frightened I had been, but as the knowledge that it had only been a dream took root in me the tears gradually gave way to giggles, and as I sat there hiccuping and giggling I found myself feeling something of what I had felt after Dad’s first operation was safely over and we thought he was going to be okay after all. The fear and despair I had felt in the hours before and during the operation had still not entirely left me, but I was imbued with an indescribable sense of relief and joy, and in this intermediate state I was filled with gratitude and overcome by a powerful, almost heady urge to be good and sincere to everyone around me. No, more than that. As I recall, I was filled with a conviction that the world
and all mankind were essentially good and that nothing was stronger than love.
I had much the same feeling this time too, albeit in a far milder form, and once we were back inside the tent, lying side by side in our sleeping bags with our hands behind our heads, everything in me told me that I loved and trusted you. As a result I was unusually open with you and this must have rubbed off on you because, after we’d been talking for a while, when I happened to say that I didn’t mind the fact that my mum had slept with so many different men, you said that at least it was better than trying to escape from her own sexuality the way your mother did.
As far as you could tell, Berit seemed to find sex and everything to do with sex disgusting and she cultivated the habits and manners, values and norms that would save her from talking about it, thinking of it and most certainly from having it. This problematic attitude to sex was also, you suspected, the reason why she had married Arvid, because not only was he a clergyman and hence particularly wary of being accused of not being sufficiently respectable or proper – something which made him easy to control sexually – he was also, as a person, almost asexual. He was snobbish and pernickety and could be shocked and appalled by the merest glimpse of a bare breast on television, you told me. And then, with your eyes fixed on the billowing tent roof, you said you were afraid that Berit’s aversion to sex might stem from the fact that your real father had been a sexual molester who had raped her and got her pregnant. This would explain why your mother refused to talk about him and why she was so dead set against revealing his identity. It would also explain why the unknown woman in the orange Audi, who – according to this same theory – was another of your biological father’s victims, had looked so
horrified when she caught sight of you outside our house; she had, as I happened to remark when we were standing there on the steps, seen something of your father in you and thus relived the rape to which she had once been subjected.
After a half-hearted attempt on my part to remind you that this was, after all, pure speculation, I remember that we lay for some moments in silence. The conversation had begun and ended somewhat abruptly and this, together with the seriousness of the subject matter, had left me feeling dumbfounded and confused, as were you I realized when I turned and met your eye (you’re not the most open person I’ve ever met, to put it mildly, and you probably hadn’t planned to say what you had said). The rather comical aspect of the situation, with the two of us lying there feeling equally perplexed by the turn the conversation had taken, prompted us both to burst out laughing, suddenly and at exactly the same moment, and shortly afterwards, when we crawled out of the tent and made a start on the day, we were feeling on top of the world.
We tried to do a bit of fishing before breakfast, I remember. There was a slight breeze and our red-and-white styrofoam floats were nudged back and forth by the choppy little ripples on the water. Every now and again we had to reel in our lines and cast again as the wind caused the floats to drift slowly but steadily into the shallows, among the reeds that stuck up out of the water here and there, rather like hair after a botched hair transplant.
One of the countless times we performed for Mum’s guests:
The neck of the double bass jutted through the thin, faintly rippling veil of cigarette smoke, not unlike a mountain peak
rising out of the morning mist, and as Jon’s fingers loped like lumbering bear paws over the strings, Mum’s guests sat listening, mildly pissed on red wine, their ears wrapping themselves around the notes and cherishing them the way mussels close around their pearls and cherish them (wow, so beautiful). You were next to Jon, standing perfectly still, your arms hanging by your sides, head bent, eyes fixed on your feet, and your long hair hanging down on either side of your face like heavy curtains. Then, as Jon suddenly switched tempo and his fingers changed from loping bear paws into pelting kangaroo feet bounding across the strings, you raised your right hand, clenched the mike – much as a mafioso would slap his hand down on the shoulder of a man he wanted to put the frighteners on (menacing in a matey fashion) – snatched it up to your lips and wailed out the lyrics I had written, lyrics I thought I had kept and which I have therefore spent the whole of this morning searching for, although I had actually made up my mind not to leave Mum’s flat for a while yet.
But like so much else from that time those song lyrics must have been lost during one of the many moves I’ve made in my adult life and the only lines I remember clearly are “They’ve put Pan-flute railings round Vivaldi and walled the bugger up in brick / we’re gonna blow up the supermarket, ’cos the whole thing makes us sick” – lines that I can tell could only have come from me and no one else, but which are also so strongly coloured by the youthful rage, intensity and sense of commitment that we possessed back then that they nevertheless seem foreign to me today, now that I have – sad to say – become such a thoroughly tragic figure that in my darker moments there’s another line I wrote which I feel sums me up perfectly: “She is a star, she shines, but her light died long ago.”
Mum and her friends belonged to a world where the emphasis was on creativity and originality and even though some of those present must surely have detected the amateurishness of the lyrics, the music and the performance, they clapped and cheered wildly when we were finished; applause which you, whose ambitions inclined more towards fine art and literature than to music, appreciated, but no more than that, but which Jon, as usual, allowed to go to his head. He spent the rest of the evening going around fishing for more compliments, and he received plenty to begin with, but there were limits to the praise people were prepared to shower on his bass playing, and eventually – although he wasn’t aware of it – people started doing their best to avoid him. They suddenly found they had to go to the bathroom when he came over or they pretended not to notice when he tried to catch their eye, and later in the evening when everybody was drunk and no longer as strictly bound by the rules of good behaviour, one of Mum’s friends lost patience with him and told him to go to hell. That woke Jon up and jolted him out of both his alcoholic haze and his ego trip. He hung around for a while with an anguished little smile on his face, saying nothing, but eventually the embarrassment became too much for him, he pleaded a headache and left the party, looking like a wounded animal, as he always did when things went the slightest bit against him.
Actually, it was cowardice and lack of backbone that prevented him from becoming a serious musician. Instead, he wound up as a youth worker and bass player with various useless Trøndelag rock bands (or at least that’s what he was doing when I ran into him some years back). He used to say that he had turned down a place at music school because he had to stay home and look after his mother, but although
she may sometimes have been ill, she wasn’t as sick as all that and you and I both knew that this was simply a good excuse for not trying to make a go if it with his music. He exasperated and infuriated us, but we tried not to let it show, because that was exactly what he wanted. He loved to see and hear people lamenting the fact that he wasn’t making the most of his gifts. I’ve never seen him happier than when some guitarist hero whose name I’ve forgotten (a long-haired jazz musician who held a workshop in Namsos) told him that he could have been one of the very best if only he had put his mind to it.
Writing this it occurs to me that it was much the same story with all of Jon’s half-hearted suicide attempts. Unlike you and me, who understood the importance of making choices and knew that it is actually possible to break out of the patterns ingrained in one since childhood, Jon regarded himself as purely a product of his environment and it may have been all of the maudlin sentimentality and self-pity that this victim mentality brought with it that made him threaten to take his own life every now and again. You and I knew, of course, that he was only looking for attention and sympathy and that he would never dream of killing himself, but this was not something we could discuss with anyone else – we would have been considered cold and callous. But then he went and ruined my eighteenth birthday by locking himself in the loo and threatening to slit his wrists with a razor blade. That did it, I’d had enough, and with everyone else at the party listening in I grinned and yelled, “Go right ahead, but be quick about it because there’s a lot of beer to be flushed out in there tonight.” I don’t think Jon ever forgave me for that. He tried to make out that he’d been a lot drunker than he actually was and that he didn’t remember a thing
(as usual), but the gap that had already opened up between us grew even wider that evening.
The time when a fat middle-aged woman hurled a sour remark at us:
The boathouse had just been oiled and a little metal ladder covered in old paint stains was still propped against its wall, so we’d been able to climb up onto the roof, dripping wet after our swim. We lay on our backs on the rough, black, sun-baked roofing felt, you with your hands under your head and me with my arms by my sides. The warm breeze brushed my slightly goose-pimpled skin and, while my hair, which was long and caught back into a red band, was still wet and lay cold and rather heavy on my shoulder, my bikini was already dry, as were your blue Adidas shorts by the way – I noticed this when I turned my head slightly to check whether your dick was making a bulge in the flimsy material but, disappointingly, it wasn’t.
