Days in the History of Silence (12 page)

Sometimes I collect him early, he does not seem to have anything against it, he comes with me, and I help him to put on his coat, and instead of driving home I steer the car out onto the highway, we drive out of the city, through the tunnels and all the way out to an open space where we must choose which way we are going to drive up into the mountains. That
is where you end up regardless. Then I turn around and drive back. And one night I lay close beside him, it was a dream, but I heard his heart clearly, the skin like a fine membrane and he fastened his arms around me, I pushed him up in the bed, until he was almost sitting, I climbed on top of him, pushed his erection inside me. While I did that, I noticed that I was crying. When I glanced at him again, it seemed as though he wanted to say something, but he could not manage to articulate it. I sat up, I tried to help him, there was something stuck inside him, I felt for his pulse, and when I did not find it, I moved over to the other side of the bed and pressed my hands, the palms of my hands, on his chest. He opened his eyes again as I was doing this.

When I awoke, he was lying by my side, and I sat up and felt for his pulse even though he was breathing just as softly as usual.

I
was at the church tending to the grave of the unknown boy, Simon was helping me to water the plants with the watering can, when the pastor approached us. He spoke just as quietly as I had expected from someone like him.

He said that he had seen me in the church that day, he had seen me go out again, and it was a pity we had not been able to have a chat. If there was anything I wanted, he continued, then I only had to get in touch. I gazed at his face and thought he was perhaps saying that out of a sense of duty, but he seemed sincere.

I’d like to mention that we have a baptismal service on Sunday, he said.

I nodded, I thought to say: We probably can’t manage that.

On our stroll that Sunday we noticed that there were small groups of churchgoers gathered outside the church. We peered over at the open doors with people going in and sitting down. During the service Simon closed his eyes, are you sleeping, I asked, but then he opened them again. As though he needed to shut everything out only for a moment. The child to be christened who was carried to the front by a round woman with a midlength skirt and shiny, black boots, what shall the child be named, its hat was taken off, its head held over the baptismal font. Just a few more inches farther down with the child’s head, hold it under, then it would be a completely different and terrifying type of ritual. The family stand in a row, all in their Sunday best, the child is silent, it is a boy. A girl is singing, a young girl, a psalm, an unbelievably high and delicate voice, a doll’s voice, she is singing the psalm “God is our refuge and our strength,” is that what it’s called? Out on the church steps Simon took the pastor’s hand. I did not believe it usual for clergymen to stand on the church steps. But Simon took him by the hand, he grasped it, held his hand tightly as though there was something he wanted to say, and I think the pastor was waiting for that too.

But no words came. I saw that the pastor was waiting, Simon smiled.

He could have been smiling about the pastor, about anything at all. It seemed that he was considering something.

The clergyman nodded to us in farewell.

When we went away, it came. The word Simon had perhaps been thinking about on the church steps. Brilliant, he said. It was the first word he had said in two days. Brilliant.

•

I THOUGHT ABOUT
it afterward, whether it was just a word that occurred to him. Occasionally words crop up, as though he stumbles upon them, he finds them and it appears that he explores the meaning, feels them, whether the meaning is still there, whether they are worth articulating. Other times it seems as though they take him by surprise just as much as they take me by surprise. Bankrupt, he said one day. Photocopier. Calligraphy. He peers at the newspaper and reads fragments of a text, assault, care of the elderly, tax evasion.

I thought earlier it was the beginning of something, I waited for the next thing he was going to say, and a whole day might go by. I was sure that the disconnected words could be part of an expanded monologue, that just took place over time, and that there was something in particular he wanted to express. Like the story about two trolls, or is it three, the one says something, then a hundred years pass, and the other one replies.

If I pick them up, his words, and put them together, might the collection add up to something, give some kind of meaning. Or perhaps not.

I WAS IN
a church as a child, Simon told me many years ago. He had two memories of this church. The first was one ordinary day, before the war, a small gang of boys was wandering around aimlessly. Simon, his little brother, a friend, maybe one or two more. The group stood in front of the church that was located in a quiet street. They were the only ones present,
there were no adults in the vicinity. And the church that none of them thought appeared impressive, it was just like other churches, a cruciform church, built in the shape of a cross, a construction based on the Latin cross, in which the central nave is long. It was situated on an open square, with a few houses and other buildings on the outer edges. No one watched over the church, why should anyone watch over a church, they are on a reconnoitering expedition around the building, a massive stone edifice with gray ashlar, and the tall tower, the spire. They have never been inside. This building that they must have seen before, but perhaps have never paid attention to, has become the object of something not yet formulated, waiting to turn up, to take shape inside their thoughts. What if they scrawled something, spat on it, what if they climbed a tree and clambered onto the lowest section of the roof or carved a message on the church wall. None of them has anything to write with, no chalk. That is when the eldest of them opens his trousers. Shocked and excited they observe, understanding his intention, what he is planning. But his fear makes him unable to pee, only a couple of sparse drops emerge and settle as a tiny stain on the pale wall, at the foot of the building, beside the staircase. They stare at the dark stain, is it possible that it’s growing, spreading outward, that it’s forming into a complete picture, a pattern? The eldest boy is still standing with his hands on the waistband of his trousers, the sun shining on the dark stain, and they hear an orchestra playing in a side street, not long before the war. A church.

A man in a dark-colored coat comes up the street, an adult. They start to run, they sprint as boys can at that age. Across the public space, down the street, vanishing over the cobbles. They will never return. At that time the very thought causes Simon to awaken in fear at night. On a couple of occasions later he walks down that street, and every time he has a feeling, he relates, that the stain is visible, that it continues to spread outward, just waiting to be noticed and it is only a question of time, soon it will be visible to all, the entire city.

THE VISIT OCCURRED
awhile later. I went there with a female friend of my mother’s, Simon said, someone who subsequently also helped us to find the hiding place during the war. He said his mother had to overcome her pride in order to accept assistance, there was a conflict between her and one of the helpers, a conflict that had arisen because of him and this visit of his to the church. I remember her vaguely, he said. The female friend. Perhaps her hair was brown, perhaps she wore it long, to her shoulders, perhaps her upper teeth were slightly protruding, slightly crooked, perhaps she smiled with her crooked teeth and dark red lipstick, and her long hair lay on her shoulders and swept over them when she turned her head, the people from that time are so evasive, he complained, the simplest characteristics elude memory, although individual traits stand out distinctly, almost overexposed in one’s memory. Such as that she was carrying
handkerchiefs and continually picked at my clothes, he said, hairs, tiny specks, particles of dust that were lodged there. It was this church she liked to frequent, she was probably Protestant, he remembered there being a Protestant atmosphere inside the church. She is a woman or girl in her late twenties, a friend of my parents’, he said, it is easy to forget they were quite young themselves, they became old so quickly after the war. Although I don’t have any reason for knowing it, he continued, I am convinced she did not have any intention of converting me. She was just sharing a story that engrossed her, and the church was the place where the story would best be told. Through her knowledge and understanding both the Old and the New Testaments became a multicolored parade, and her low voice a cast-iron bridge over which the entire story proceeded into his more than appreciative child’s brain. She retold the Bible stories with intensity in that voice, sad, beautiful, grotesque, loud, what else. Simon used words like that when he talked about it. And then there was the actual visit to the church.

Perhaps it is a morning, or perhaps an evening, there are the enormous windows, the pictures above the altar, the anticipation, the church organ. The organ music slams against the walls, Simon is sensitive to noise after several ear infections, but he tolerates it, is not tempted to stick his fingers in his ear canals in order to muffle the sound, there are other children there like him, maybe they believe he is her son, he believes himself that he is her son. Perhaps he stands up with the others, folds his hands like they do, imitates their
gestures, what is it they are articulating. No one folds his hands or prays in his own home.

Had she asked him not to say anything, invented some reason so that the grown-ups in his home would not know about it? It had to be a secret between them, and therefore he saw it as their story. The angel, the Christmas Gospel, Golgotha, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection. The church building from outside looks like all churches, molded and massive, like concrete, although it might be older, ancient, even beautiful, but she sits beside him and holds his hand, and once during this period of time there she stands up and accompanies a little flock of people up to the arch in front of the altar, she has signaled with her hand that he should wait, and he does so and notices that the other children do the same. While the children’s parents walk forward in a disorderly line along the floor, they kneel, lean forward and kneel as they receive something into their mouths. He thinks it is something good and is slightly disappointed not to get any, it is seldom that anything good is handed out.

But afterward, when they leave, she explains to him that it is not as he thinks. He walks along and holds her hand, she is almost solemn as though she has made a conquest, he imagines, as it now strikes him as an adult. He thinks they stop at a café and he has something to drink. Lemonade, tea. He is contented, she continues to tell him about the Testament, but when they approach the house where he lives, she asks him not to say anything to his brother, he might be jealous. Perhaps
not to your parents either. Has he intended to tell them? No, he hasn’t.

The visits, for there were several, were discovered. The book he had kept hidden under his mattress too. The New Testament that he had read and regarded as a fable with magicians and wizards. The New Testament that I hadn’t exactly swallowed and digested, Simon said, but that had at least made an impression, especially the story about the Resurrection, about the women at Jesus’s empty tomb, I liked the parts that seemed like magic, although I am uncertain why I associated it with something so cheerful. The Crucifixion, how it shaped itself into some idea of an exciting fairy tale. It must have been the way it was told, how Mother’s friend told it to me. It devastated them. My parents. The visits and everything it must have led to (what it had led to, he did not know) enraged them, not because they were religious, on the contrary, but because in their opinion she, their friend, was trying to give me something fraudulent, something that did not belong to us, Simon said. It was not the religion, but the lack of respect, neither of them being particularly religious, but it had to do with identity, his father said. Who they were. Who are we, he had wanted to ask. Mother who was angry, Father’s face, sad, old even though he was still young. He did not believe in anything. Simon has never believed in any testament either, but he told me about this memory with pleasure, he had been taken to a place, it was secret, like a secret show,
a performance. He walked past the church several years later, the church building was dark and closed then, there was nobody there. He still remembered that the doors had opened, the candles, the organ, the theater stage. The whole sparkling story. Brilliant.

I
n the stores and on the streets down in the city there is movement that I miss otherwise. I have become one of those women who view the world from bus seats, out through windows. From park benches and waiting rooms. I disturb no one and am not disturbed. I can go wherever I want without being obtrusive, my body is hardly visible within a group of people, I am neither fat nor thin, neither quiet-spoken nor loudmouthed. Should I make more of myself? After a few hours in the city, it’s like being inside a churning, whining machine, and when I return home, I am grateful for the silence as an insomniac would be for sleep.

I think up different tasks to do in the hours until I have to collect him. Sometimes I go around the house without
finding anything to do. I can stand for ages staring at the clock and without noticing it lift my hands to my mouth and then feel the contours of my face, just standing there like that as I stroke my face with a repeated motion until I become conscious once more of what I am doing. I look at my body and it dawns on me that I should be satisfied now that it does not express anything other than what I am, that I no longer need to relate to a beauty I cannot stand for, a type of femininity I have never felt entirely comfortable with. But my body gives me more validity, the physiology, the machinery, is more conspicuous than ever before. Everything that was hidden and displaced to the background is taking its revenge and has moved into the foreground, the malfunctioning lubrication of the joints, even peristalsis, the bowel movements that mark the times of day more clearly than any other events, there is a certain comedy in that. It is genuine. At the very least you cannot claim it lacks authenticity.