Stella Descending (17 page)

BEE HAS HER EIGHTH BIRTHDAY. She says she would like a dog. Martin doesn’t want a dog. I don’t really want a dog either. But Bee wants a dog, and Amanda wants a dog.

“A dog wouldn’t be that much trouble, surely,” I say. “Not now that we’ve got a house.”

Martin shrugs.

“Bee doesn’t play with other children,” I say. “Nobody ever comes home with her after school; she never gets invited anywhere. She’s lonely.”

“Aren’t we all,” says Martin. “Dog or no dog.”

We find a dog through an ad in the newspaper. A family on Nesodden wants to find a home for their eight-month-old mongrel. We’re away a lot, they say, we don’t have the time, he’s well-behaved, house-trained, affectionate. The dog is gray with white paws and a white tip on his tail, little and scrawny with a big dry nose. His name is Hoffa—after Jimmy Hoffa, the union leader. Not the most fitting name, Martin and I feel, for such a little scrap of a thing, an awful lot to live up to, but a name’s a name. And Hoffa does everything Bee says. Bee says
Sit,
and Hoffa sits. Bee says
Down, boy,
and Hoffa lies down. Bee says
Come,
and Hoffa comes. Bee says
Give me a paw,
and Hoffa lays his paw in Bee’s hand. At night Hoffa sleeps under Bee’s eiderdown, curled in against her stomach. During the day he sits on the windowsill or in the garden, waiting for her to come home.

One day, Hoffa wriggles through a hole in the fence out into the street. He sits himself down on the sidewalk and takes a sniff at two girls walking past. The girls are not strangers, they are neighbors’ kids, in the same class as Bee. At one point the plan had been for these girls and Bee to walk to and from school together, but nothing ever came of it. The girls didn’t want to; it was as simple as that. Their parents apologized for the fact that the arrangement had not worked out as expected. That was a long time ago.

But now Hoffa is sitting on the sidewalk in front of our house. He sniffs at the girls walking past, and maybe he rubs up against them the way he usually does when he wants to be scratched behind the ears. But the girls have no intention of scratching behind his ears. They lift their sneaker-clad feet and kick Hoffa in the side, so hard he falls over.

I see none of this. Bee is the sole witness. She is a little farther up the road when it happens.

“No!” she shouts, and races toward the girls. “Don’t kick him!” she shouts. “Don’t kick him! Please!”

The girls turn to look at her. They snigger.

“Stupid old dog!” they yell. “Stupid old dog!”

Hoffa whimpers, still lying on the sidewalk. Flat out, as if trying to hide his skinny doggy body in the pavement, as if hoping the ground will open up and swallow him. Nose between his paws.

The girls kick Hoffa again, hard, in the stomach this time; then they both run off.

Bee stops short, turns her face to the sky, and screams. If you didn’t hear her, only saw her, as I suddenly catch sight of her through the living room window, you would have thought she was standing there on the sidewalk with her face turned to the sky, singing. But then I hear her. I hear that she is screaming— and then, only then, do I run out to ask my little girl what has happened.

Sometimes I have the thought—no, I never voice it, but I do think it—that Bee is not mine, even though, at great discomfort to both herself and to me, she fought her way out of my body, in no uncertain terms, over eight years ago. Sometimes I have thoughts I don’t want to have, pictures that come unbidden.
A
cuckoo in the nest! Bee is not one of us! Bee is an interloper!
I look at her, this strange, awkward, quiet little girl whose hand always shakes slightly, and feel nothing but exasperation, even anger, that she should be there at all, in my sight. Is it okay for me to think like that? No! No! It’s not that simple. Because at the very moment that this thought strikes me, all I want to do is to draw her close and assure her of how much I love her.

Could it be that wanting to love someone so much is also love of a sort?

Our neighbors, the girls’ parents, do eventually apologize for the incident with Hoffa, but not without observing that the dog was running loose in the street and that the girls were afraid and acted in self-defense.

Me, I sit night after night by Bee’s bed. She has pulled the eiderdown right over her head, like a little animal gone into hibernation. I try to push the quilt aside so I can stroke her cheek, but she screams
no!
or something like that, and pulls the eiderdown back over her head.

IS IT RIGHT that the dog’s nose is warm and dry?

Is it right that Bee never cries?

Is it right that the lilac in the garden has no scent?

Is it right that Amanda has to fall from world to world?

Is it right that this house is so quiet?

Is it right to have a plumber living in the attic, sending us plumbing bills we cannot pay?

Is it right to have a mother who would rather be a tree?

Is it right that I come to see you and stand in front of the gilt mirror in your hallway and see your face instead of my own?

Is it right that Martin and I never sleep?

Is it right that in the forest there lives a beast who eats children’s hearts?

Over the window in our bedroom we have hung a black shawl to block out the light. In some places the shawl is worn thin, in others it is still thick. Because of these irregularities in the fabric, not all the light is kept out, and it forms patterns and pictures on the black screen that we can look at when we lie in bed.

Now and then a face seems to present itself on the shawl. Martin sees a woman’s face. I see a man.

We call the face Herr Poppel.

Long ago, when I was pregnant with Bee, we called her Herr Poppel. Before that we called the plumber Herr Poppel. In my mind I have called you, Axel, Herr Poppel. I think almost anyone can be Herr Poppel, good or evil, big or small, dead or alive.

JUST BEFORE SHE DIES Mamma comes to me. She is a patient in my ward, though she does not want me to nurse her. She is ashamed of her illness, of her body. Nonetheless, I insist on nursing her. I don’t quite know why, what my motives are. We don’t say much to each other. I tend to her, wash her, feed her, and fluff her pillows, all with the hands of a professional. Mamma says, I have a daughter and my daughter has hands; and I say, You have a daughter and she is a nurse and she tends to you just as she tends to all the others—there’s no more to it than that. But one morning I stand by her bedside and watch her while she is sleeping. The disease has disfigured her, but at this particular moment her face is as beautiful as it used to be. Maybe it’s the morphine. Or maybe it is death, putting a period at the end of the sentence, death saying,
This is your mother’s face as it
was when it was loveliest. Forgive her or strike her. But leave it at that.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, still gazing at her, and she senses that I am close by, that I want something of her. Even with her body pumped full of morphine she senses it. Just as she opens her eyes, I lean over her and hiss, “Tell me about Ella!”

“No,” she says.

“Yes,” I say.

I rummage in my pockets and produce a tattered photograph of a plump woman with full red lips.

“I found this picture in Pappa’s desk drawer,” I say. “How many years had he been holding on to this picture, do you think? Fifteen? Twenty? How many times a day did he take it out of that drawer and look at it?”

Mamma raises her hands, wasted old hands that betray her face, hands that say the beautiful face on the pillow is nothing but a mirage. She snatches the picture and grips it tightly between her index and middle fingers. I could easily snatch it back, but I don’t. I let her keep it. She doesn’t look at it: doesn’t need to or doesn’t want to.

“We were painfully attached to one another. That’s all there is to it, Stella. I would have followed her to the ends of the earth if she had asked me to.”

Mamma breathes out, breathes in, breathes out, breathes in.

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

“No,” she says.

“Yes it does,” I say.

“No,” she says.

Her stomach rumbles. We both start. I am sitting on the edge of the bed, holding her hand. She tries to pull away, but I keep a firm grip. I’ve never heard Mamma’s stomach rumble. She cringes, looking as if she would like to hide under the covers. Her eyes plead with me: Leave me alone, go away. But I stay where I am.

“You’re not going to die alone,” I say.

“But that’s what I want,” she whispers.

“Maybe so,” I say, giving her hand a squeeze. “But you’re not going to die alone.”

And then she farts. Mamma lets off a rotten, rasping, spluttering fart that must have been stewing away inside her ever since the time when she decided, as a little girl, to become as quiet as a tree. Mamma farts, opens her eyes wide, and says, “Go away, go away,” and then she shuts her eyes, breathes in, breathes out, and dies.

I lean over her, put my lips to her ear. “Now you’re a tree,” I whisper.

Afterward I take off my shoes. I lie down beside her on the bed. I am going to lie here for a while. Later on I’ll iron the white blouse, wash the old body, and comb the lovely long hair that I longed to play with when I was a little girl, even though she never liked it when I touched her.

IT IS NIGHTTIME. The bathroom is lined with mirrors so I can see that my face is pale and blotchy. I unpack the pregnancy test kit, hold the stick between my legs, and pee over both the stick and my hand. I remain seated on the toilet, waiting for the result. Slowly the blue line starts to show. A blue sky, I think to myself. A blue dress. A blue sheet. I get up from the toilet seat, stand in front of the mirror, and breathe out, making my stomach swell. It will be some months before it really starts to show. A blue vein over my hip bone. When I breathe in I can see my ribs. Mamma once told me I was so skinny that I looked like something out of Belsen. I didn’t know what Belsen was, but I thought it was great to have Mamma make any comment at all about my body. There is a fetus growing inside me. I can picture those photographs by Lennart Nilsson. A blue fetus. Blue water. Blue hands. Slowly I am going to be brought back to life. Slowly I am going to be brought back to life, and Martin will be able to sleep again, with no dreams.

In a minute I’ll go down to Martin and say, Listen to me! Put down that video camera. I haven’t been swallowing the birth control pills you’ve been giving me, not for ages. I want to hear a baby crying in this house. I don’t want all this silence.

I THINK OF YOU, Axel. You are so old. It is not your face I see now. It is not your face I see in the mirror. It is mine. I am Stella. I am thirty-five years old. I live here, in this house. It is August 27, 2000. Soon it will be morning. Next spring I am going to have a baby, and by that time you are sure to be dead. Which is as it should be.

(IV)

FALL

Ella Dalby
Witness

I was standing there, scissors in hand, snipping away, when I saw it.

Some girls had come running over to me with a long piece of rope they had found behind a tree in the park. They wanted to know if I had a pair of scissors and would cut the rope in half, to shorten it. They wanted to use it for a jump rope, they said.

Why, of course I have scissors, I said, opening my purse. I always carry a pair of scissors.

The girls weren’t really paying any attention to me. They stood in a huddle, sharing a bag of candy, talking among themselves and waiting for me to do as they asked. They cannot possibly have seen what I saw.

What did I see?

I saw a man and a woman, way over there, way up there on the roof, and both of them dangerously close to the edge. They teetered back and forth, back and forth, and I wanted to shout at them to stop it, to get down from there; they were putting their lives at risk. But I was far too far away. I was in the park; they were up on the roof. We were separated not only by a street but by cars and people and trees. And then she tripped toward him. The woman tripped into the man and he caught her in his arms, and they stood there embracing for ages. I breathed out, relieved, turned to the girls, cut the rope—and saw her fall.

I saw her fall. A flutter, a movement in the corner of my eye. The rest of my gaze was on the girls, the park, the trees—all that greenery. I saw her fall, a dark speck on the edge of a green picture.

But if you ask me whether she tripped, was pushed, or jumped, I could not say. Nor is it any of my concern.

Axel

As to Stella’s funeral, there’s not much to say. She’s ashes now.

The walk in the sunshine from Majorstuen to the crematorium was not pleasant, partly because I got sunburned, on the back of my neck and my earlobes—it still hurts, and putting cream on the afflicted areas does no good—and partly because the blister on my right foot made it virtually impossible for me to walk the whole way in my new shoes, with the result that I arrived at the chapel of the crematorium limping and close to tears. Usually when I go for a walk, I wear a pair of gleaming-white sneakers, but that would never have done for today. A black suit and gleaming white sneakers is not a happy combination, not unless you’re a pop star or something of the sort. Naturally, I did consider walking to the chapel in my sneakers and changing into my dress shoes for the funeral, but I have never approved of carrying one’s good shoes to one’s destination in a plastic bag, as my fellow countrymen are given to doing—when it snows, for example. And I could just imagine what insurmountable difficulties this alternative would present in terms of the actual changing of the shoes. First I would have to find a bench close to the chapel—a little out of the way so as not to attract any attention—then untie the laces, remove the sneakers, and put on my dress shoes. Then I would have to put the sneakers in the bag and, in short, show myself to be, or have become, the very sort of man I despise: a man who carries his shoes in a plastic bag. So there you have it, the reason I did not opt for this alternative and the explanation for my hobbling into the chapel, tortured and tearful. You know, it is remarkable how a measly blister can completely overshadow such entities as God and death. As the service got under way, I could not have cared less what the minister had to say about anything whatsoever. I had only one thing on my mind: whether it would be possible to unlace my right shoe and kick it off—during the first hymn, perhaps—without the other mourners noticing, and by doing so ease my right foot. This I succeeded in doing, and the minute the shoe was no longer pressing on the blister, the pain stopped. What bliss! Such was the relief that although I did not mean to, I simply could not help but utter a loud
ahhhh!

At that, an elderly woman with eyes as big as saucers turned to look at me and held my gaze. Everyone was singing, but this woman had heard me. I knew because the look she gave me was a stern one, and this so unsettled me that I let out another
ahhhh!,
this time putting into my voice all the anguish I could muster, in order to persuade her that what she was hearing were the sounds of an old man sobbing over the death of a young woman and not the blissful sighs of an old man easing his aching foot. The strange woman’s eyes promptly softened, and she even smiled a sympathetic smile. Then she nodded, and I nodded, confidentially, sorrowfully, eloquently, as people are wont to nod to one another at times of mourning.

I was sitting well to the back of the chapel. I did not speak to anyone except Amanda, little dark-haired Amanda, with fury in her blue eyes and one arm wrapped protectively around her sister, the quiet one. There weren’t many people there. Martin, of course, and three old women, each uglier than the one before, the least hideous being the lady with whom I had exchanged such eloquent nods. There were other people there, too, but, as I say, not many. The chapel was empty and silent. I thought it odd that not more people had shown up. But perhaps another ceremony was being conducted elsewhere. Perhaps Stella’s friends and workmates were actually somewhere else, in a church maybe, not here with us. I ran an eye over those in attendance: pale unapproachable strangers, not here with us, the dying. In my mind’s eye I saw people bursting with life, a packed flower-bedecked church, eulogies, comforting hands.

I have tried, over the years, to imagine Stella’s day-to-day life. Did she laugh and cry with girlfriends, attend dinner parties, cast her vote at election time, talk on the telephone, read the newspaper, dance until the wee small hours, write letters, go skiing (no, now that I come to think of it, she never went skiing; that I do know), frequent cafés, take part in demonstrations, campaign for—yes, for what?—read books, see films, listen to music? Oh, dear little Stella. My dear Stella.

Once the coffin had been duly lowered into the floor, I slipped my right foot into my shoe, tied the laces, and walked out, more or less erect, into the late-August light. I offered my condolences to Martin, that pompous ass, who did not deserve her. He thanked me and looked away. Finally, I limped off in the sunlight to pick up my old blue Volkswagen Beetle from the repair shop.

That was when it happened. Just as I was getting into the car to drive off after a lot of hemming and hawing, Amanda suddenly whipped open the door on the other side, jumped into the front seat, and said, “Come on, drive! Let’s get out of here!” Her mischievous blue eyes were full of tears, her hair messed up, her cheeks blotched. Over her plum-colored dress she was wearing a long baggy black cardigan.

“But Amanda, dear,” I whispered, “why aren’t you with your family?”

“Drive, Axel!” she screamed.

I started the car and turned out onto the road. The miles don’t exactly fly by when I’m behind the wheel. Amanda sighed under her breath, obviously wishing I would step on it. With what in mind had the child followed me from the crematorium to the repair shop and jumped into the car? That we would drive off a cliff and into the sunset, like a couple of outlaws from the Old West? It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that if you’re going to turn your life into a drama, you need to choose your co-stars with care. An old man with a Volkswagen Beetle was not what she needed right now. Had I been seventy years younger, maybe, and driving an old Ford—but I bit it back. I felt deeply sorry for her, but there was nothing I could do other than drive her to the house on Hamborgveien where she lived. And I was tired. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be alone.

“I don’t have a family,” Amanda said.

“Excuse me?”

“You asked why I wasn’t with my family, and I said,
I don’t
have a family.
”

“You have a sister who needs you,” I said. “You have to be brave now, for Bee’s sake.”

It occurred to me that I was being rather harsh, telling a fifteen-year-old who had just lost her mother that she had to be strong for someone else, even if the other person was younger and weaker than herself. After all, it was true what she said: Amanda had no family, apart from Bee. As far as I knew, Amanda’s father was in Australia—if he was still alive, that is. Stella never talked about him.

“Bee’s too good for this world,” muttered Amanda. “That’s what Mamma said. And now she’s got nobody but the ostrich king—”

“And you, Amanda,” I interrupted.

“I don’t know about that,” she mumbled. “Don’t know about that.”

We drove for a while in silence. At Ullevål Hospital I turned into Sognsveien.

“Are you taking me home now, Axel?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Couldn’t I come to your place for a while instead? Please? Couldn’t we play cards, or drink cocoa, or do magic, or just have a bit of a chat . . . about Mamma or whatever? I don’t want to go home!” Her voice was close to breaking. “I don’t want to go home!”

A little girl, a little dark-haired girl, sits in my car, crying and saying she doesn’t want to go home, and there is nothing I can do. I cannot, I don’t know how.

“Not now, Amanda,” I said wearily. “I’m taking you home.”

“Please. I—”

“Not now!”

She’s not mine, I thought to myself. She is not mine.

Stella was mine . . . my friend. Amanda is not mine.

I drove, and the girl wept, and all I wanted was to get out of this.

“I think he pushed her,” she said, out of nowhere. “The police were at the house all night, talking to him. Martin’s a murderer, just so you know.”

“No, he’s not, Amanda,” I replied despairingly. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you. In cases like this the police always interview the immediate family. It’s . . . routine.”

She turned and looked at me. Even from where I sat behind the wheel, I could see the look in her eyes, the fury.

“Why couldn’t you have died instead?” she blurted out. “You’re old, you’ve been around for almost a hundred years, you’ve got no children who care about you, you’re tired, worn out, decrepit, you’ve got no guts, and you probably can’t wait to die.”

“You’re right about that, Amanda,” I replied softly, turning into Hamborgveien. “And if it were up to me I’d be only too happy to take Stella’s place.”

I brought the car to a halt outside the house. A garden with a scattering of withering flowers in a bed next to the fence, a lawn that needed cutting, and a flag at half mast. No lights in the windows. There were no plans for any sort of reception after the funeral. Martin’s car was parked on the street outside, so I took it that he was home.

“Is it all right if we say goodbye here, Amanda?”

I had no wish to see her to the door and have to stand there talking to the widower.

Amanda made no move to get out.

I opened the door on my side and squirmed my way out, bumping my head on the rim; I was aching all over—my head, my back, my hip, my right foot. Okay, I thought, now this young lady is getting out whether she likes it or not. I limped around to the other side, opened the door, and said, “Amanda! You’re going to get out of my car this minute, and then I’ll get back in, shut the door, and drive home to my apartment. I am an old man!”

She buried her face in her hands and wept. “I’m so alone, Axel. I’m so awfully alone.”

I cast a glance all around. Wasn’t anyone going to come and help me out here, keep me from having to ring the doorbell and explain the situation to the man in there? No one came. But Amanda stopped crying, pulled her cardigan tight around herself, and got out of the car. She did not say a word, merely sniffed a little. Wiped her face with the back of her hand. She walked up to the house, without looking back.

“Goodbye, Amanda,” I called.

No reply. I saw that slim back, a child’s back, and the new angular hips that would soon be catching men’s eyes, if they weren’t already.

“This is a difficult time,” I called. “Maybe you could come and see me in a day or so, and I’ll teach you a new trick . . . or we can just talk, if you like.”

She did not turn around. I saw her stop outside the main door, hunt for something in her cardigan pocket, produce a key, and let herself into the house.

Nothing today has gone as I planned. I did not, for instance, have time to buy my entrecôte of venison or my bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and there’s nothing in the house to eat except half a loaf in the bread bin, a banana, and some instant coffee. Two hours until the evening news. Money Sørensen went home hours ago. She has cleaned and dusted, but in her usual slapdash fashion. There are fingerprints on the mirror in the hall. Next time she comes I’m going to tell her what I think of her. Not that she’s an old hag, I won’t say that. I will be extremely civil, but I will make it quite clear that I feel the time has come for us to go our separate ways.

I fetch a cloth and try to wipe off the fingerprints. For a moment I think I see Stella’s face in the mirror.

“I miss you,” I sniff. “I’m aching all over.”

She looks puzzled.

I shut my eyes. She is still there. Her face, back there, in my mind’s eye.

“I want to be with you,” I whisper. “Come, let me be with you.”

And now what? What about the remainder of this wretched day? First of all I am going to put on my gleaming-white sneakers and walk down to the newsstand manned by the girl with the blank eyes. I am going to say, “You don’t know me, you don’t remember my face, but every morning I buy the same five newspapers from you, as I did today before getting dressed to go to my friend’s funeral. Right now, though, I don’t want any newspapers. What I want is cigarettes. Give me a pack. Doesn’t matter which brand. And to hell with everything and everybody.”