Stella Descending (12 page)

MARTIN: Let me explain about the silver forks, the silver knives, and the silver spoons. They were a gift from Stella’s mother, my mother-in-law, the lady whose stomach never rumbled, not till she was lying on her deathbed. Isn’t that right, Stella?

STELLA: Well, yes. But have some respect for the dead, please.

MARTIN: Why the dead more than the living?

STELLA: Because they can’t defend themselves.

MARTIN: And you think the living can?

STELLA: No, that’s not what I think—

MARTIN: The fact is, Stella’s mother, whose stomach never rumbled till she was lying on her deathbed, felt we ought to have some silverware in our drawer. She was quite a lady, was Stella’s mother.

STELLA: She was not a lady, she was a tree.

MARTIN: Come again, Stella?

STELLA: Mamma wanted to be a tree. When I was little, I once asked her, Why are you always so quiet, Mamma? To which she replied, Because I want to be as quiet as a tree. And I said, What sort of tree? And Mamma said, It makes no difference.

MARTIN: Nevertheless, it would have been a fine tree. Not a fir tree, at any rate.

STELLA: Maybe a Siberian weeping birch.

MARTIN: No, not her. You’re a Siberian weeping birch, Stella. Not your mother. She was a cherry tree.

STELLA: Who gave us gifts of silverware.

MARTIN: Exactly. Every Christmas we were presented with more silver. She had a system, too. I like that. A regular system. Everyone should have a system. It went like this: On Stella’s birthdays she gave us knives. On my birthdays she gave us forks. For Christmas she gave us spoons. What is Stella’s mother actually thinking here? She’s thinking, Stella is a knife, so I’ll give her knives. Which is, in fact, very apt, seeing as Stella actually sleeps with a knife under her pillow, in case the beast should come to get her. And I am a fork. Martin is a fork, Stella’s mother thinks. Look at that silver fork there, get a really good shot of that silver fork, Stella, a close-up, so Mr. Gunnar R. Owesen, insurance broker, can gaze upon it in all its splendor. That fork has something in common with me—okay, now turn the camera on me, Stella—but I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it is I have in common with a fork. Why did Stella’s mother give me forks for my birthday every year?

STELLA: Maybe because forks are jagged.

MARTIN: Or five-fingered.

STELLA: They’re called tines, Martin. And there are only four.

MARTIN: Forks are too straight for my liking.

STELLA: But unlike knives they split at the tip.

MARTIN: Which brings us to the spoons. Because every Christmas Eve, Stella and I received a joint present from Stella’s mother. One teaspoon and one soupspoon. Look at this spoon. A close-up of the spoon, Stella! I’ve chosen the soupspoon. I prefer the soupspoon to the teaspoon. The teaspoon is ditzy. The teaspoon is a poodle, a pocket mirror, a skinny straitlaced woman. The soupspoon, on the other hand, is all rounded and soft and nice and, unlike knives and forks, it’s not dangerous to put in your mouth. The soupspoon reminds me of you curled up against me and me curled up against you at night. . . . Anyway, that was the story of the nine knives and the nine forks and the ten spoons. Unfortunately, Stella’s mother died around Christmas-time a year ago. She just managed to give us the tenth teaspoon and the tenth soupspoon before drawing her last breath and ascending to heaven.

STELLA: Martin, would you take the camera now?

MARTIN: Okay.

STELLA: I want you to come over here.

MARTIN: Over where?

STELLA: Into the hall. I want you to get a shot of this. Because from a purely objective point of view, it actually is valuable.

MARTIN: I think it’s hideous, Stella.

STELLA: It is not. It’s lovely.

MARTIN: A stuffed female torso draped in an old pink lace dress. Hideous!

STELLA: It’s a dressmaker’s dummy, Martin. I want you to get a shot of it. You shoot it and I’ll do the talking.

MARTIN: I’ll shoot and you’ll do the talking.

STELLA: I want to say something about this lace dress. Can you shut up for one minute?

MARTIN: By all means. I shoot, you talk, right? Okay, Stella, fire away!

STELLA: Thank you, Martin.... The pink lace dress you see hanging here was left to me by my mother—

MARTIN: Who gave birth to my darling Stella without feeling any pain. She did not feel the slightest twinge of pain, Stella’s mother, my mother-in-law, whose stomach never rumbled till she was lying on her deathbed.

STELLA: You’re interrupting again!

MARTIN: Sorry, Stella. But I think the insurance broker ought to hear this story. Picture her if you will, Mr. Gunnar R. Owesen: Long-haired Edith Lind, Stella’s mother, my mother-in-law, whose stomach never rumbled till she was lying on her deathbed, sitting on a windowsill in the maternity ward, reading a book. The contractions are coming at two-minute intervals, and later at one-minute intervals. There is little doubt that she is in the last stages of labor. And yet there is nothing about Edith’s actions, her facial expression, or her voice to indicate that she is in pain. Occasionally the midwife has to ask her to put down her book so she can listen to her stomach. The baby’s heartbeat is rapid and strong, but the midwife can hear other sounds, too. What is it with this child? she thinks. What kind of noises is it making, there in its mother’s womb? You may think, Gunnar R. Owesen, that all the midwife can hear when she listens at the mother’s stomach is the baby’s heartbeat. Not so. The midwife can hear all sorts of noises. Sometimes she hears sighs, gurgles, whispers, laughter, whistling, at other times something that sounds like shouts, from children who don’t wish to be born, perhaps. And this time she hears sounds not unlike crying, not unlike screams, right, Stella?

STELLA: Right.

MARTIN: After the midwife has listened to her stomach, long-haired Edith Lind, my mother-in-law, whose stomach never rumbled till she was lying on her deathbed, reads a verse out loud. And the midwife will remember that verse for a long time, to this very day, in fact, because Edith reads it several times, in a soft singing voice, a very beautiful voice. The midwife, that splendid old woman, thinks to herself that all women have their own way of bidding a new baby welcome, and this is Edith Lind’s way. To read or to sing, because it is as if she is singing when she reads, a verse about love. But that’s not the case, is it, Stella? The midwife is mistaken. It’s not you Edith Lind is thinking of when she sings. It’s not you. She doesn’t even feel pain; she feels no more pain than that stuffed torso over there; her face doesn’t change color when the contractions surge through her body, she turns neither red nor white, she is just as pale and composed as the lace dress. Does she feel anything at all? Well, possibly a restless sense of discomfort at being there. She would much rather be somewhere else . . . so she sings. How does that Swedish song go again?

STELLA: I pull her golden locks...

MARTIN: Is it you, O impossible one?

STELLA: Is it you?

MARTIN: Bewildered I gaze into her face . . .

STELLA: Are the gods, then, playing with us?

MARTIN: Eventually the midwife has to ask Edith to settle herself in the birthing chair, but she doesn’t want to. She wants to stand. So Edith stands bolt upright on the floor, clinging to a young nurse who has come in to assist and who is soon to have her young life ruined by your arrival, Stella. The midwife hunkers down in front of Edith, preparing to catch the child. And she can see inside Edith now, up into her, way up inside her, and what she sees is big and red and wet, that’s you, Stella, and you’re screaming even before you come into the world. You fall down through Edith’s birth canal, fall into the world, fall into the splendid old midwife’s splendid old hands; you fall wide-eyed, long and slender, like a diver from a cliff—but with an unearthly scream that bursts the young nurse’s eardrum, with the result that today, thirty-five years later, she is still deaf in the left ear.

STELLA: She’s gone deaf in the right ear, too.

MARTIN: Well, I’ll be. . . . How did you know that?

STELLA: I met her through my work. At a conference. Her name is Alma Blom. She’s over sixty now. When I introduced myself, she asked if I was Edith Lind’s daughter, and when I said yes, she realized who I was and we had quite a long chat. I knew my mother had kept in touch with her for years after I was born, had sent her letters and sometimes even money, in compensation for the damage to her ear. Alma confirmed all this. She confirmed that my mother seemed to feel no pain during labor, that she sang of love during the contractions, and that she left the hospital that same day, just a few hours after I was born, with me wrapped in a pink blanket. Oh, and of course she confirmed that I burst her eardrum the moment I fell into the world.

MARTIN: And what did you say to that?

STELLA: I said I was sorry.

MARTIN: And what did she say?

STELLA: She said you can’t blame a child for the things she does before she’s even a minute old. Besides which, she’d gone deaf in the right ear, too.

MARTIN: Another baby?

STELLA: No. She gave up obstetrics after the incident with me and switched to working with cancer patients instead—in other words, we’re colleagues. I don’t know why she went deaf in her right ear. But she can read lips and she speaks clearly, so carrying on a conversation with her is no problem at all.

MARTIN: Take a good look at this dressmaker’s dummy, take a good look at this lace dress. The dress is old. An antique. How much do you think it’s worth, Stella?

STELLA: I’ve no idea.

MARTIN: She has no idea. We’ll need to find out what it’s worth. A good few thousand kroner, I’d imagine. Stella inherited it from her mother, and it was a present to Stella’s mother from a lady by the name of Ella. You see, Mr. Gunnar R. Owesen, even though Stella and I have never met Ella, she is a part of our life, so she figures in our conversation. Ella was, by all accounts, the only person in the world ever to hear long-haired Edith Lind, Stella’s mother, my mother-in-law, whose stomach never rumbled till she was lying on her deathbed, cry out loud. Make any sound at all. You know the sort of sounds I’m talking about, don’t you, Owesen? Laughter, Owesen. Moans of desire. Have you ever heard a naked woman burp with pleasure? Edith Lind left her husband and her little daughter as often as she could to be with Ella, and when she came home, the only signs that she had been cheating on her husband were flushed cheeks and an extra dash of pepper on her dinner. Stella has a photograph of her mother’s lover. She found it in one of her father’s desk drawers when he died. An elegant, fair-haired, plump woman, around fortyfive in this picture, although they had been lovers for many years before it was taken. How many years, Stella?

STELLA: Twenty years.

MARTIN: Twenty years. All those years when you were growing up, they were lovers. She’s dead now, Ella is. They’re all dead now. Stella’s mother, Ella, and Stella’s father. Stella’s the only one left. Her and her kids.

STELLA: I wish you wouldn’t say it like that.

MARTIN: Like what?

STELLA: The way you said it. Stella’s the only one left. Her and
her kids.

MARTIN: But it’s true, isn’t it?

STELLA: You know what I think, Martin? I think the difference between you and me, and what makes you sometimes such a pain in the ass and so cold, is that you were loved as a child. It’s made you spoiled and inconsiderate.

MARTIN: What in the world? Where did all this anger come from?

STELLA: Good night, Martin.

MARTIN: We’re not done yet.

STELLA: We’re done.

Corinne

“The nights were awful. Awful.” Martin said, putting his head in his hands.

Outside it was dark, November dark, even though it was September and the heat of the last few days had been anything but autumnal. In the apartment all was quiet. If Martin had been talking louder, instead of telling his story in something close to a whisper, we would have heard the faint echo of his voice in that room with its remarkable acoustics.

“What makes you say that?” I asked him.

“Because nights with Stella were anything but good,” he said.

“In what way, anything but good?” I said.

“We never slept.”

“You never slept. Ever?”

“Never. I didn’t want to sleep anymore. Bee was haunting me . . . this little baby . . . she did it on purpose, I’m sure of it, invaded my dreams, and it was getting so I hated her. My dreams were becoming more and more violent, more and more— how can I put it?—disgusting. In them I took off my clothes and jumped on her like an animal, entering her, fucking her, a baby, a deformed, abused, skinny, scabby baby—we were both deformed . . . one-legged, thirteen-fingered, dying things . . . in the end there was no knowing which was her and which was me . . . it was sick . . . and I’m not like that, you know? I’m not like that. It was just in these dreams. God, how I hated her! Not only at night but during the day too. This silent helpless little creature who never took her eyes off me and never behaved like other babies. And I couldn’t tell any of this to Stella. She was the child’s mother. I told her I had terrible nightmares, but not what they were about, just that I could no longer bear to sleep at night. I preferred to sleep during the day, when it was light, because then the pictures weren’t as vivid. I switched jobs, gave up selling furniture for a while, took to working nights, stacking crates in a warehouse. I’d come home at four in the morning and wake Stella.”

“What did you do for the rest of the night once you’d woken Stella?” I ask.

“We made up games to pass the time. We’d always played games anyway, daring each other to do things, telling each other stories, messing around. . . .

“During the day, Stella went to work, took care of the children, cooked dinner, went to PTA meetings, visited women friends and Axel Grutt—all while I was asleep. I no longer participated in the day-to-day side of our life together. Not that I lay in bed and slept all day, that’s not what I mean; we ate our meals together, we dealt with the house, behaved like parents of a sort. Occasionally I might even take the girls into town or to the movies or help them with their homework. The years passed, and Bee got bigger. But to me she was still repulsive. When I went anywhere with children, I would make a point of holding Amanda’s hand, not Bee’s, and when Amanda got so big she wouldn’t hold my hand anymore, I told her she should at least hold her sister’s hand, so she wouldn’t get lost, although the truth is I had this fantasy that she
would
get lost and never come back, find a gingerbread house in the woods. But I became expert at hiding all this, and Stella was happy to see me getting involved with the kids—thinking up fun things to do with them, taking an interest in their welfare, kissing Bee in the presence of witnesses. Kissing Amanda cost me nothing, but then Amanda had always pulled away from me.

“Like I said, I didn’t sleep all day, even though I worked nights, but I went through the motions, in my sleep as it were; taking in the day’s events much, I guess, as other people would take in some crazy dream: like a succession of abstract, often disjointed pictures that had both something and nothing to do with me. When evening came I would liven up. I went to work, and Stella went to bed early.

“Eventually it reached the point where we lived—talked, fucked, and played—at night, in the hours between three and six—”

Martin broke off, got up from his chair, and left the room.

“I just have to get something,” he called back, and I heard his footsteps going up the stairs to the second floor and the three bedrooms: Stella and Martin’s room, Amanda’s room, Bee’s room. Moments later he returned. In his hands he had a large black blanket or shawl.

“This shawl hung over the window in the bedroom to block out the morning light,” he said. “It began with this shawl, our nighttime games. How many years ago I couldn’t say, it must have been spring or summertime, Bee would have been about three, or maybe four. At any rate it was a nuisance, its being so warm and light outside both day and night, so Stella found this shawl in the attic and hung it over the window. I came home as usual around three or four in the morning and climbed into bed beside her. Then we lay there hand in hand, perfectly still, and watched the morning light gradually filtering in through the dark fabric, which was more worn in some places than others. Stella said, ‘Look at the woman on the shawl.’ ‘What woman?’ I said. ‘The woman bending down to pick a child up off the grass,’ she said. And then I saw it, the outline of a flickering magic-lantern slide: a woman bending down to pick a child up off the grass. But then the woman turned into a car driving flat out along a deserted freeway in the middle of the night. I told Stella that the woman had turned into a car driving flat out along a deserted freeway in the middle of the night, and she said that the freeway was actually a skyscraper, or a tower, and on the top of the skyscraper or tower was a tightrope walker, standing on one leg, singing. Yeah—and so it went on. We started up our own all-night picture show . . . and one night Stella said—or maybe it was me who said it—that the pictures might be trying to tell us something.”

Martin ran a hand over the shawl before giving it to me.

“To lie in bed at night and look at the black shawl over the window was a little like lying in the grass and looking at the clouds. Pictures would start to form. Faces. Nice or nasty, depending.”