But that is not why I am weeping. I could have gone outside and laid myself down in the snow until the cold made me numb, to get as close to death as possible, to find out what it feels like. I could easily have made myself ready. But then it is not death I fear. I turn to the small bedside table and look at the shining face of the clock. It says six. It’s my time. I have to get going. I sweep the duvet aside and swing myself up. This time my back feels fine, and I sit on the edge of the bed with my feet on a rug I have put on the floor so that the shock to my soles will not be so terrible in the cold season. I ought to lay a new floor with insulation. Maybe in the spring I will, if I’m not skint. Of course I won’t be skint. When will I stop worrying about that? I switch on the bedside light. I feel for my trousers hanging over a chair and get my hands on them and take hold, but then I stop there. I don’t know. I am not ready, it seems. There are things I must do. There are floorboards to replace on the doorstep before someone falls through and breaks a leg, that was what I was going to do today. I have bought impregnated boards and three-inch nails, that should do it, four-inch ones would be too long, I think, and then there’s the splitting of the chunks from the fallen spruce into firewood sizes, that remains to be done still and it goes without saying should not be postponed now that winter is coming in earnest. That’s how it looks, anyway, and then Lars is coming up later, and we will haul the big root off with chains and a car. It will be good fun, I reckon, to deal with that. I look out the window. It has stopped snowing. I can faintly see the outlines of the piled-up snowbank down the road. Perhaps working outdoors will not be so easy today.
I let go of my trousers and lie down again. There was something about that dream which was disturbing. I know I can work it out if I try, I’m good at that, I used to be anyway, but I don’t know whether I want to. It was an erotic dream, I often have them, I admit it, after all they are not reserved for teenagers. Jon’s mother was in it, as she was that summer of 1948, and I as I am now, sixty-seven years old and more than fifty years later, and maybe my father was in it somewhere, in the background, in the shadows, it seems he was, and if I so much as touch the dream there is a tension in my gut. I think I must let it go, let it fall back and sink down to rest among the others I have had and do not dare to touch. That part of my life when I could turn the dreams to some use is behind me now. I am not going to change anything any more. I am staying here. If I can manage. That is my plan.
So I get up. Six fifteen. Lyra leaves her place beside the stove and goes to the kitchen door to wait. She turns her head and looks at me, and there is a trustfulness in that look I probably do not deserve. But maybe that is not the point, to deserve it or not, perhaps it just exists, that trust, disconnected from who you are and what you have done, and is not to be measured in any way. That’s a nice thought. Good dog, Lyra, I think, good dog. I open the door and let her out into the hall and then onto the doorstep. I switch on the outside light from inside and follow her out and stand there, looking. Lyra jumps straight out into the yellow-lit snow lying in huge drifts except where Åslien has shovelled the yard so expertly in a big circle and avoided my car by a few centimetres only and pushed the big root back and forth with the ploughshare as it must have been in the way the whole time, and finally moved it to the side of the yard settled where it is now; ready and accessible for later removal. He has even cleared a strip alongside one wall of the house where I usually go for a leak at the edge of the wood when I don’t want to over-use the outdoor lavatory. Maybe he was suggesting I should leave my car there in the future so it will not be in the tractor’s way, or perhaps he has an outdoor lavatory himself?
I leave Lyra in the yard to sniff around on her own in the new white world and close the door and go in to make a fire in the stove. No problem with that today, soon it is crackling away with a crisp and reassuring sound behind the black iron plates, and I don’t switch on the ceiling light at once but leave the room in twilight so the yellow flames in the stove flicker brightly over the floor and walls. The sight of them slows my breathing down and makes me calm as it must have done for men through thousands of years: let the wolves howl, here by the fire it’s safe.
I lay the table for breakfast still without the light on. Then I let Lyra in from the cold so she can lie beside the stove a while before we go out together. I sit down and look out the window. I have turned the outside light off again so only the surface of things themselves will shine, but it is too early still for daylight to come, only the faintest tinge of pink above the trees towards the lake; vague streaks like the marks of a hard crayon, and nevertheless everything stands out more distinctly than before, because of the snow; a clear line between sky and earth, and that is something new this autumn. And then I eat slowly, not thinking of the dream any more, and when I have finished I clear the table and go out into the hall and put my tall boots on and the warm old pea jacket and a cap with earflaps and mittens and the woollen scarf I have worn round my neck for at least twenty years, which someone knitted for me when I was a single and divorced man, and now I cannot recall her name, but I remember her hands from the time we spent together; they were never still. Apart from that she was still and discreet in her ways; only the click of her knitting needles could be heard through the silence, and it was all too low-key for me, and the relationship dwindled quietly into nothing.
Lyra wags her tail at the door, alert and ready, and I take the torch from its shelf and unscrew one end and exchange the old batteries for the new ones waiting on that same shelf, and then we’re off. I go first and she follows when she is told. I am the boss, we both know that, but she is happy to wait because she knows our system too and smiles as only a dog can smile and jumps a good metre into the air straight up and out over the whole flight of steps when I quietly say: Come on! She lands almost in my arms, standing. She still has the puppy inside her.
I switch on the torch and we start walking down the slope where Åslien has cleared the snow into sharply edged banks in an elegant curve over to the bridge across the little river and Lars’ cottage on the other side and pretty certainly on to the highway right through the spruce trees, and then we stop and I point the torch at the path we usually take along the stream to the lake. There is a lot of snow there now and I don’t know whether I can cope with trudging that way. But then there is only one other direction I can choose, and that is straight ahead. We have never before been that way together, the last stretch to the main road and then along it, because it means I have to put Lyra on the lead on account of the traffic, and it is not very satisfying for either of us. In that case I might as well have stayed on in the city, plodding up and down the same dreary streets I had walked for three years thinking there must be an end to this, now something will have to happen, or I am finished. So I say to myself: why should I not get tired, what else is there in my life I am saving my strength for? And I stride over the snowbank and the first drifts and start to walk with my torch on, and in some places the path has been blown clear of snow and feels nice and hard to walk on, while in others the snow lies in high drifts, and it was really smart to put my tall boots on, I lift them well and swing one leg before the other in front of me, the right leg first and let it sink, and then the left one and let it sink, and then the same movement over again, and in that way I am toiling through the worst places. The sky above me is clearing and some stars can be seen, rather pale now at night’s end, but there will be no more snow for now. When it is fully light the sun will come out, if not as blazing or as vibrantly hot as a day it suddenly occurs to me to think back on now, one day in late June 1945, when my sister and I stood at the window on the first floor with a view over the inner Oslo fjord and of Nesoddlandet and the Bunnefjord, and it was summertime with a dazzling light on the water and hysterical boats zigzagging from shore to shore, cruising on with all sails set in the brilliance of liberated Norway and they almost tacked with enthusiasm and never grew tired, and they sang, those who were on board, and were not ashamed, and that of
course was fine for them. But I was tired of it all already, worn out with waiting, I had seen those people so many times, on Karl Johan Street in town and on Østmarksetra in the woods, at Ingierstrand baths and at Fagerstrand when we went out there in a borrowed boat and many other places where they hollered and yelled and never realised the party was over. That was why we were not gazing out to the fjord that day, nothing came from that direction worth waiting for. What we did, my sister and I, was to peer down the road where my father came slowly walking up the steep Nielsenbakken from Ljan Station on his way home from Sweden after the war, much delayed, with much caution, in a worn grey suit and a grey sack on his back from which something poked up that looked like a fishing rod, and he did not drag his foot, he had no limp, he was not wounded that we could see, but still he came so slowly up, as if inside a vast silence, inside a vacuum, and why we stood there at the window and had not been to the station well before the train arrived or down in the road to meet him and greet him, I cannot today remember. Perhaps we were shy. I know at least I must have been, as I always was shy, and my mother stood in the open doorway on the ground floor biting her lip and twisting the soaking handkerchief in her hand, unable to control her feet. She was hopping up and down as if she had to go to the bathroom, and then she could not hold herself back any longer and pulled herself free of the door-frame and ran down the road, and witnessed by spectators in several gardens she threw herself at my father. That was what she was supposed to do, of course, what she had to do, and she was still young then and light on her feet, but the way I remember her is the way she became later. Bitter, marked and much heavier.
My father must have expected a reception like that, I am convinced he did. We had not seen him for eight months and had not heard a word until two days before, so we knew he was coming. My sister ran clattering down the stairs and out into the road where she copied every single movement my mother made, much to my embarrassment, and I slowly followed; it was not easy for me to let myself get carried away, that was not who I was. I stopped by the letter box and leaned against it and looked at the two of them standing in the middle of the road clinging to my father. I glimpsed his face over their shoulders; confused at first and helpless, and then his eyes sought mine, and mine sought his. I nodded lightly. He nodded back and smiled faintly, a smile meant for me alone, a secret smile, and I realised that from now on it was all about the two of us, that we had a pact. And no matter how long he had been away he seemed closer that day than before the war started. I was twelve years old, and in the passing of one moment my life shifted from one point to another, from her to him, and took a new course.
But maybe I was too eager.
I puff my way right to the bench covered in snow at the edge of the water, or Swan Lake, as I name it now to myself, as a child would have done, and Swan Lake lies open and black in the torchlight. The ice has not settled yet, it has not been that cold. No swans to be seen either, at this time. Probably they stay in the dense rushes on dry land through the night, with their long necks like feather-clad loops in white bows, and their heads under their wings, I can picture it well, and they do not swim out until light has come to graze along the bank while the water is still open. What they will do when the ice settles is something I have not thought about, why do they not fly south to ice-free lakes, will they stay here until spring? Do swans stay in Norway during winter-time? I must find that out.
Using my arm I shovel snow off the bench, making big circular movements and then with my mittens brush off what is still there and I pull my jacket well down over my behind and sit down. Lyra snorts at the snow and romps about happily, in one spot she throws herself down and rolls over again and again, her legs in the air, twisting and turning her back in the snow with delight at absorbing into her fur the scent of something that has been here before. A fox maybe. If so she will have to be washed when we get home, for it is not the first time this has happened, and I know what the smell will be like when we are inside the kitchen. But now it is still dark, and I can sit here by Swan Lake thinking about whatever I choose.
15
I walk back up the hill to my house. Daylight breaks in full red and yellow, the temperature rises, I feel it on my face, and no doubt most of the snow will soon melt, maybe already by this evening. No matter what I have said before, that would be a disappointment just now.
There is a car parked in the yard beside mine. I can see it clearly from down the slope, it’s a white Mitsubishi Spacewagon, rather like the one I considered buying myself as it looked robust and suited the place I had bought and was going to move to, and that was how I saw my situation then, after I had made my decision; as slightly robust, and I liked that, I felt rather robust myself after three years in a hall of glass where the slightest of movements set everything crackling, and the first shirt I fell for after the move was a red-and-black checked, thick flannel one of a kind I had not worn since the Fifties.
Someone is standing in front of the white Mitsubishi, a lady, by the looks of it, in a dark coat, bare-headed, and her hair is fair and curly for natural or more technical reasons, and she has left the engine running, I can see the exhaust rising noiselessly and white against the darker trees behind the yard. She stands, relaxed, waiting with one hand to her forehead or in her hair, looking down the road to where I am walking up, and there is something about that figure I have seen before, and then Lyra catches sight of her and throws herself forward and runs like the wind towards her. I have not heard any car approaching, and neither did I notice any tyre marks in the snow when I came out on the road from the path, but then I was not expecting any car, not at this time of day. It cannot be more than eight o’clock. I look at my watch and it says half past eight. Ah, well.
It is my daughter standing there. The elder of two. Her name is Ellen. She has lit a cigarette and holds it the way she always has, in stretched fingers away from her body as if she is on the point of giving it to someone else, or pretending it is not hers. That alone would have made me recognise her. I swiftly calculate that she must be thirty-nine now. She is still an attractive lady. I do not think it’s me she takes after, but her mother was certainly good looking. I have not seen Ellen for six months at least, and have not spoken to her since I moved, or well before, actually. To be honest, I have not given her much thought, nor her sister, for that matter. There has been so much else. I get to the top of the slope and Lyra is standing in front of Ellen, wagging her tail and having her head patted, and the two of them do not know each other, but she is fond of dogs, and they trust her at once. It has been like that since she was little. I seem to recall she had a dog herself when I went to see her last. A brown dog. That is all I can remember. It’s quite a while ago now. I stop and smile my most natural smile and she straightens up and looks at me.
‘So it’s you,’ I say.
‘Yes, it is. Did I surprise you?’
‘Can’t be denied,’ I say. ‘You’re out early.’
She smiles a kind of half smile that soon fades, and takes a drag on the cigarette, exhales again slowly and holds it away from her body with her arm almost straight out. She is not smiling any more. That rather worries me. She says:
‘Early? Maybe it is. Anyway, I slept so badly I thought I might as well get an early start. I left about seven, as soon as the ones supposed to leave the house had actually left. I’ve given myself a day off, I decided on that long ago. It didn’t take me much more than an hour to drive out here. I had expected it to be longer. It felt good, in fact, that it wasn’t any further. I just arrived. About fifteen minutes ago.’
‘I didn’t hear the car,’ I said. ‘I was in the woods, down there by the lake. There was plenty of snow.’ I turn and point, and before I have turned back she has stubbed out her cigarette in my yard and taken the few steps towards me and put her arms round my neck and given me a hug. She smells good and is still the same height. Which is not so strange, you do not grow much between thirty and forty, but there was a time when I was away t
ravelling most of the year, back and forth, back and forth in every possible direction in Norway, and both girls had grown each time I came home, or that is how it seemed to me, and they sat so quietly side by side on the sofa, and I knew they were staring at the door where I would soon come in, and it made me confused, I recall, and uneasy at times, when finally I did come and saw them sitting there, shy and full of expectation. I feel a bit ill at ease now too, for she hugs me hard and says:
‘Hi, my old dad. It’s good to see you.’
‘Hi, my girl, the same to you,’ I say, and she does not let go, but stays in that position and says very softly into my neck:
‘I had to call all the town councils for eighty miles around and more to find out where you lived. I’ve been doing it for weeks. You don’t even have a telephone.’