Child Wonder (26 page)

“You touched one! I saw you!”

Linda, however, preferred to trust her own large, puzzled eyes, which were far more reliable than Marit’s exotically-inflected claim.

“You can’t bear to lose, can you, Marit,” Uncle Tor laughed on his way to the kitchen to fetch more soda water and in passing gave Linda a pat on the head by way of acknowledgement.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Oh, put a sock in it.”

“Don’t you dare talk to her like that, Tor,” said Uncle Bjarne, who had followed him.

“I’ll talk in any bloody way I want, she’s a bad loser.”

“Take it easy now, bruv, or else I’ll give you a taste of this,” Uncle Bjarne said, holding up a fist with a jovial expression in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere that had been becoming increasingly tense as the afternoon had progressed, as though we were on an accelerating carousel. Uncle Tor planted his unpolished shoes a couple of feet apart, adopted a professional boxer’s stance and began to jig around like a second Ingemar Johansson, throwing jabs at bags of sugar, tins of coffee and a begonia that trembled on the windowsill and Mother’s pan of simmering sauerkraut, then grabbed her firmly by the waist and swung her round in a sweeping waltz, singing the theme from
The Third Man
as he did so, and for some reason the fury in the face of the successful paper-factory engineer became more and more obvious, we all saw it, something was going to happen now, but it was Aunty Marit who managed to whisper loud enough for us all to be able to hear:

“I told you we shouldn’t have come this year.”

“No, you bloody well did not!”

“Oh, didn’t I indeed?”

“No, you did not indeed, you were going to see the screwy girl, come hell or high water.”

“Bjarne, please.”

With that, the dance was over. Mother shook herself free from Uncle Tor’s arms, took three purposeful strides across the floor and, with every last drop of her strength, whacked brother number two’s face so hard he was sent reeling, and slumped down on the bench where he was wont to spend the latter part of the evening finishing off the two books he knew he would be given.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re …?”

He tried to struggle to his feet, but he was halted by a further slap and remained seated, for good. A semi-stifled howl emanated from Aunty Marit. Mother’s neck and arms were ablaze and she looked as if she were preparing to launch another onslaught, which Uncle Oskar must have noticed as well because he tried to wrap himself around her, with the result that he, too, copped one in the mush.

“Oh, now you want to intervene, do you,” she yelled. “Where were you when I needed you?!”

“What are you doing out there?” Gran called from the living room.

“Look at her!” Mother shrieked with a voice like steel, pointing to Linda who was sitting clutching a Mikado stick in one hand and me in the other, unless it was vice versa. “Can’t you see the similarity?!
Can’t you see?!”

Uncle Oskar collapsed in abject shame. “You were an adult and you saw what was going on,” Mother ploughed on. “You and that old cow in there!”

“Ouch, that hurt,” Marit said, and the other girls burst into tears one after the other, Mother now appeared to be allowing some data to percolate through, Uncle Bjarne’s incomprehensible words perhaps:

“Do you imagine it was just you he abused, you dope?”

Then there was something about the darkness in the bathroom, which I gathered involved their father, my grandfather, of whom even less was said than of my father – we hadn’t even been to his grave, it was Uncle Oskar who tended it; I had been there once, one frosty morning, Christmas Eve four years ago, to light a candle and lay a wreath among millions of others, at the time I asked if Grandad was in heaven, and Uncle Oskar mumbled quietly into his frozen breath: “No, he’s in hell.”

This was not part of Uncle Oskar’s everyday vocabulary, so I stood poking around in the snow with the tip of my shoe, but the way he expressed himself made it sound a bit like, well, we all have to live somewhere, so I forgot it again, until I saw that Uncle Tor had also been struck by some mysterious affliction and was standing with his forehead against the ice cold windowpane, crying like a baby.

“There’s obviously been a lot of fun and games in this family,” Mother snorted and announced that the party was, as far as we were concerned, over, dragged us into the hall and started dressing Linda, who stood like a candle in the dark, still holding the Mikado stick which Mother had to snap to put on her gloves, while I gathered up all our presents and tucked them into the rucksack.

“What are you doing out there?” Gran called.

“Nothing,” Mother said. “As always.”

It can’t have been more than four o’clock. All the streets were silent, and all the houses, and the heavens too, and we did not say a word either, as we trudged off in the powdery snow until we found ourselves under the railway bridge by the timber yard, where Mother came to a sudden halt and looked down at me:

“Did you know this was going to happen?”

“Not sure.” I shrank under her gaze. But she crouched down and would not let the matter rest, grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me and stared into the depths of what was left of me. “Did you know this was going to happen,

Finn?”

“Not sure,” I said. “But I think I can
see
… something.”

“What? What can you see?”

Perhaps I had a chance here to find her again, but that would have required more from me than I was capable of, I was on the verge of tears.

“Don’t you start as well,” she said, straightening up and looking around at the snowy railway bridge and the carless road that forked here, the glistening snow-covered ground that lay ahead of us, a good kilometre’s walk home in the cold early Christmas darkness, as though again she was wondering where on earth she was when she tore off one of Linda’s mittens and saw blood on her hand.

“My God, what’s this?”

Linda looked crestfallen. “What
is
it? Answer me, girl!”

“I stabbed her in the thigh.”

“What?”

Linda repeated the sentence, abashed.

“Who did you stab in the thigh?”

“Marit. With the stick.”

Mother and I exchanged glances, me desperately hoping that we might be able to laugh together again, at long last, the laughter of ours which had vanished. But she was lost to me, and remained so.

“God Almighty. Unwrap them.”

“Unwrap what?”

“These,” she repeated with resolve, grabbing the skis I was carrying on my shoulder and passed them to Linda, who was watching her, wide-eyed.

“Here?”

“Yes, here, missie, come on now.”

Linda stood still, smiled, opened the gift tag and read – To Linda from Mamma and Finn – and began to remove the paper, with infinite care so as not to ruin it, folded it up and put it in her school bag while Mother and I looked on.

A pair of Splitkein skis, one metre forty long, which Kristian had impregnated and strapped together with a small wooden block in the middle to retain the elasticity, with Kandahar bindings that can be adjusted on both sides using small brass screws; there is something dependable and cultivated about a pair of Splitkeins that speaks to your heart of snowy landscapes, the glossy, mahogany-brown surface with light-coloured inlays oozing chocolate and time-honoured solidity, libraries and violins.

“She hasn’t got any boots, has she?”

“Yes, she has. Here.”

Mother unhitched her rucksack, pulled out Linda’s pitch-seam skiing boots, ordered her to sit down and changed her footwear while I loosened the straps and realised there was no wax under the skis, just a black impregnate which still stank of tar. Linda carefully placed her boots in the bindings so that I could fasten and adjust them. Mother said:

“Off you go now.”

Linda took two steps and fell, I got her on her feet, and she fell again. Mother removed the rope from the rucksack and tied a loop at one end. “Hold onto this and we’ll pull you.”

Linda grabbed the rope and we dragged her up through Muselunden Park and Disen estate, it was like a Nativity scene depicting life’s most fundamental relationship. I caught Mother smiling once, and then a second time. She slipped on the ice beneath the snow, went flying and sat eating snow from her gloves, laughing and commenting on Linda’s skiing style, Linda lost her temper and tried to dunk Mother in the snow, and they began to wrestle while I looked on, a spectator, because – in front of my very eyes – yet another chapter had opened in Mother’s unfathomable nature.

It started snowing again, white ash fluttering down from a black void and turning yellow in the street lights from Trondhjemsveien before settling on skin and clothes and ground. They sat beside each other like two young schoolgirls, and it is thanks to this image that I always think of childhood as yellow, these lights that, for once, shone for no purpose, there was not a car to be seen, my heart was ticking in a bell of matt glass – when Mother began to speak in the same earnest manner that she had used when leaving us on the island in the summer, about this hospital she had been to, which was no ordinary hospital like Aker, for example, which we could just see through the falling snow, where you had your tonsils or appendix removed, but a hospital that worked to eradicate bad memories, such as being locked up and knocked senseless in your childhood, by your own father, memories that remained and bled like a burst appendix in your mind, no matter how old you became, and threatened to poison even the smallest thought, so even though we might have considered this to have been a difficult year it had been good for her, when all was said and done, she just hadn’t realised it until now, this very minute, thanks to the mysterious hospital the gift of Linda, who had given her fresh courage and taught her something she believed she would never unlearn, and also you, she added, fortunately, I was still there and was not exhibiting any signs of going mad, not just yet.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you, Finn?” she said in much too loud a voice, but with a broad smile, for it was meant in jest, she sat there so in control and unvanquished and secure.

“Yes,” I said, compliant rather than enlightened. Linda said yes as well and nodded a couple of times because it was important here to have agreement, we perceived it that way at least, and for Mother to be at ease with herself, and that was more than enough.

It had just turned six when we clattered into the flat where Mother went into action frying the chops and rissoles which had been intended for Christmas Day. I wrapped Linda up in a duvet and sat her in front of the Christmas tree which this year not only had egg-carton decorations but proper red-and-white hearts, woven by Linda and me and Freddy 1, who created the biggest of them all, a yellow one. We devoured home-made marzipan and pepper nuts for all we were worth until dinner was on the table. And then at last we were ready for some hearty laughter, what an evening, tomorrow we would have to make do with sauerkraut and gravy!

After the food, there were even more presents. Clothes and an autograph album for Linda, a watch for Mother from Kristian, who this year was also celebrating with his family, plus a pile of books for me.

But, when Linda had fallen asleep and we were listening to carols on the radio and I was reading
Five Go To Smugglers’ Top
and Mother was drinking red wine, three glasses already, and was snugly ensconced in her armchair gawping at the Christmas tree, unhappily there came a devastating postscript to the relief I had felt out in the snow.

“Do you think I should marry Kristian?”

She was winding the wrist watch that she had unpacked with a much more practised air than when the gold hare first made its appearance.

“He’s asked me. What do you think?”

I said no without a moment’s hesitation. Repeated it, too, quite loud.

“Why not?”

“Why?”

Because men were just comic characters, I had a dead father, a grandfather in hell, I knew Frank from over the way, who whistled and smelled of horses, Freddy 1’s father who was never there, Jan with the dry ice and the high-pitched voice, who had same ill-fated profession as Uncle Tor; Uncle Oskar was the only one I got along with, in my own way, but he, too, was guilty of something I dare not even imagine. And the very thought of Mother going to bed with the lodger in the temporary digs made my spine run cold.

“I know, I know, he’s a deceitful devil,” she mumbled unprompted, but with a strange laugh.

“I don’t want to be adopted by Kristian,” I said.

“Yes, there is that,” she said with the same casual intonation, letting the watch dangle from around her wrist like a noose. But then something occurred to her. “But then we won’t be able to sort out Linda’s papers.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a single mother, Finn. Only married women are allowed to adopt. And all this mess we’ve made …”

This was a reference to everything from Linda’s being given medicines, which was tantamount to child abuse, to the row at school, to Linda’s possible dyslexia or whatever the thing was bloody called and to this thing that wasn’t there but nonetheless would not go away. And, as I had nothing to add, because I had no brain left to think with, that was when it came:

“Someone is ruining everything for us, but I’m not allowed to see the papers, all they tell me is that it could take a bit more time, a bit longer … And …”

“Yes?” I said as she paused.

“And then they come up with this business about me having been unwell …”

“But there’s nothing wrong with you!”

“No, of course not …”

I wanted to scream, the evening was being blown sky-high after all, I would have jumped up and run away, had it not been for the fact that I had already done so, I wanted to see black and white pictures of people sitting by a tent holding a cup of coffee, standing in a field with pitchforks over their shoulders and looking as if they were enjoying themselves, I wanted to see an invisible crane driver and Mother on the bumper of a Ford, above all I wanted to see her as she had been only a few hours ago, sitting beside Linda, eating snow and saying, in an almost credible way, it had been a great year.