Days in the History of Silence

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In 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.

The clock that strikes so loudly, but right now the sound is not insistent. I open the door to the living room. Directly behind it is the chair where he usually sits.

Some days I almost forget his silence. Then it feels only like a momentary stillness, and that we are going to talk together soon. He is going to say something, and I am going to answer. How I miss it. I want to tell him to stop doing this to me. It feels as though it is something he has made up his mind to do, something he has chosen of his own free will. That he has shut me out, all of us out.

When we had just met, it kept crossing my mind that he was going to disappear. That one day he would sit in a train, or perhaps on an airplane, and find another place far away from me, from us.

He would leave a note, a letter. I would open it and read what he had written. It would not explain anything.

Later he told me he had thought the same about me.

I have come to realize how the voice, the words, are the way into him. But also to us. It feels as though he has withdrawn, he has closed himself off. In the same way that traffic is blocked off in the old street where we used to live when we were newlyweds, the traffic was diverted and the street deserted. It feels as though he is in a different house, a place I cannot enter, I see that he walks around in there, something he smiles at, he is busy with various things, I notice all of it, and he looks out at me through the windows, he stands in the doorway. At a distance.

A FEW YEARS before the episode occurred, when we had just moved to this part of the city, and Greta, our eldest daughter was a baby, I used to go for walks. On these walks I began to notice a boy in the neighborhood. He did not live close by, but on the other side of the field, not far from the church. He always walked on his own to and from school, without any friends. I was often out with the baby carriage at the time school finished for the day, and then I saw him walk along by the lake. He took his time. Stopping and peering at whatever there was to look at, there were several older boys there at that time, who were constantly flying kites. He kept an eye on them down by the water’s edge. I think that he was the same age as my son, the boy I gave away. It is like a game, in which you know all the time that you are creating the idea as you go along, you realize it is not real, but that has nothing to say for the illusion. I liked the notion that he could have been my son. It gave me a kind of reassurance. It was a comfortable thought, that he had done so well for himself, I must of course assume what I saw of him now meant that he must have done well for himself. I could envisage an upbringing for him, just nearby. A family of three, I saw the house where he lived, a house with a garden, in winter he probably skated on the lake, and in summer they went on visits to their cottage.

I went alone for walks in the evening and saw a light on the second floor in the room where he stayed. I spotted him at the window. He was sticking something to the upper part of the window frame, a little figure hanging by a fine thread, it began to spin around, perhaps in the heat from a radiator directly below. We both stood watching how the movement, the figure, went one way and then back the other way. Him behind the window and me outside, at a short distance. I had a feeling, or I was sure that, he was aware of me. At least once some time had passed. My restless wandering to and fro with the baby carriage. The all-too-accidental encounters. On one occasion, he was with his parents. I glimpsed him a couple of times in the schoolyard too, when I was walking past the school. Saw him with his buddies, and on his own. Another time I noticed that some boys crossed the street in front of him on the way to school, pushed him or tripped him. The group had dispersed by the time I came on the scene. He was on his knees, his heavy schoolbag preventing him from getting up.

Are you all right, I asked. He just nodded. I helped him to his feet, and when he looked me in the eye, there was no gratitude there. He hurried down along the sidewalk, and I remained standing watching him, Greta in the baby carriage started to cry, as though she sensed that I had forgotten her for a while, she continued crying until I picked her up.

Later I walked past him on the sidewalk.

I persuaded myself that we had a conversation.

He looked at me. I looked at him.

Are you all right now, I said. I would have liked to talk to you.

I don’t know who you are.

No. But I would like to explain.

He stopped making eye contact, I noticed that he was walking the same way as before, but more frequently he walked down along the lakeshore. When we bumped into each other, he always hurried by.

•

WALKING PAST SOMEONE on the street, looking at his face, seeing where he lives, knowing the route he takes every day, for example going to school. Looking at him going over, watching him cross at the same place every day. Noticing his features, such as that his face is young and unformed, that he is perhaps ten years old, perhaps twelve. He is only a boy in the neighborhood. There is the house where he lives, there is the school he attends. Here is the road he takes, sometimes he walks along by the lake.

I have often thought about him, I try to find his face, hold it fast in my thoughts, the face of that boy. He has nothing to do with the episode, in the same way that he has nothing to do with the boy in the grave, but all the same it has taken on an association in my thoughts, as though their shapes are superimposed on one another, and again I think about a photograph, a photograph that is overexposed and shows two subjects, melding together in an accidental combination. As your memories always do in your consciousness.

I WAS UP in the churchyard one day, and there was another woman there, a woman of my own age. I noticed that she paused for a moment beside the grave. I felt curiosity about who she was, whether she could tell me anything, I wanted to talk to her and rushed to approach her, but when I reached the spot, she had already started to move away, and the more I think about it, the less certain I feel that she actually stopped beside the grave. That she stopped there longer than beside any of the others. She was probably searching for another grave, perhaps she was simply a person who went about reading the names on the gravestones.

Why does that unsettle me so, that absence of love, of care. The loneliness of the name and the little pile of earth. That no one comes, that there is never anybody there. I remember when I was a child and accompanied an older relative to the churchyard on Sundays, a little graveyard hidden away behind an old church, I used to play there as if it were a little park while my grandmother tended the graves. She took care of the dead. She seldom told stories about them or described their lives, there were few details available except for the ones who were placed in clear view on the walls of her house, framed portraits from which those who had passed away stared back with hazy eyes, but there was care in the way she picked stones from the earth and carefully planted fresh flowers among those already growing there. It seemed as though she tucked them in with the dark, heavy soil between her hands, in winter she removed the snow, and around Christmastime she lit a tapered lamp that she left sitting there when we went home. As though the dead also needed light.

I HAVE THE application in front of me, I have let it lie on the coffee table, I think I creased the edge of the paper when I removed it from the envelope. He is old, it is best for both of us that I give him away. Helena thinks that we have talked about it. Don’t you remember, Mom? That I ought to give him away. Have I talked about it. I can’t remember that. Her sisters probably agree. It’s likely they are behind it, pushing her forward on the makeshift stage in the living room. She began to cry, it often happened that she started to cry. She tried to do what they wanted. She should dance, it was a part of the performance. Or sing, tell a joke, perform a conjuring trick.

Make him disappear. They have decided. His stay at the day care center is not enough, he needs a better facility. A home for the elderly. I must appreciate that. Our solidarity has something suspect about it now, something presumptuous.

Simon who used to sit in his chair and sleep for hours, he can in the afternoon. I look at him then and wait for him to awaken. Occasionally he says something in his sleep, but it is nothing I can manage to make out. When our daughters were children, I looked at them sometimes too when they were sleeping, they could fall asleep anywhere at that time, on my lap, on a stair, on the bus home, in the back of the car on the way home from a late party, or as on that August night on the way back from the cottage, it always happened suddenly, they went from being wide awake to fast asleep in an instant, as though they folded themselves up, spinning sleep around themselves like a larva spinning itself into a chrysalis, their eyes slid closed, and it was almost impossible to wake them until several hours had elapsed, and when I looked at them, the thought passed through my head that I actually did not know them. In sleep, during the hours they forgot us, I thought about what harmed them every day, what was shaping them or was in the process of shaping them, what they were afraid of, which I did not know about, had no notion of figuring out, but perhaps was visible to them inside there. I felt so helpless. They seemed, and still seem, so close to me, but nevertheless they live their own lives, I don’t know if I know them so well. I used to think: Whom do they resemble, what family traits are visible in them, features from people long gone. The application form on the coffee table. I have found a pen, the pen has the logo of a hotel chain, a telephone number, the address of a Web page. I have no idea how it has ended up here. Who has left it on the table?

Surname, it states, please use capital letters. I put a dot on the sheet of paper, it is blue. Think I hear Simon breathing out. Previously he often breathed like that when he wanted to say something, like an exhalation to gather strength. But he is not here. It is my own breath I hear. I stare at the pen, and at my hand holding it.

THE BOY I gave birth to, my son. I have thought about how I watched him lying in his own bed and sleeping, waking. Sleeping again.

I rarely lifted him, only when I had to feed him or change his diaper.

Otherwise he lay in the little cot, and most of the time he cried. Variations in crying, from quiet sobbing to a terrified, loud scream, a howl. It went on for hours until the weeping eventually died away and was replaced by silence. In the daylight I could see streaks on the skin of his face, they resembled scars. His hands were often clasped together. He could look at me with what I interpreted as fear, I believe he was afraid of the dark, the sounds from the street, perhaps he was afraid of me.

He drank the milk I gave him from a bottle, always restless, always a movement from his arms or legs. As though there was no place to find respite.

When he was a few months old, he attempted to lift his head and upper body, to rise up, perhaps he was peeking out looking for me, or maybe for a way out, but in the same way as someone at the opposite end of life, an old man fettered to the bed, he was getting nowhere. He let his heavy head fall back against the pillow and mattress.

The crying.

It continued. It was all he had. He became big enough to sit up, looking at me with the same scared expression, his eyes flickering. I can’t recall him smiling, but I never smiled at him, so it was never noticeable.

I wanted to give him away immediately, but someone, I think it was one of my parents, had said that since I had him and had landed myself in this situation, then I must take responsibility. And so I sat there with him. He wanted me, but I did not want him.

There were other moments too, perhaps when he was sleeping, perhaps when he looked at me without wanting something, that I could experience peace, when I did not feel shame and anger, that it was not so bleak. I sat up one night with him when he was sick, the pediatrician had said I had to keep him up, I was forced to sit with him on my lap while he slept, stirred, fell asleep again. When he awoke, he looked at me and I at him. For a second I thought he was about to smile, something at the corner of his mouth.

I lay him down in his cot again, perhaps from anxiety. Scared that he would change something, that he would push his way in, find a place inside me and claim it as his own. That he would stay there without me being able to disregard it, his insistence, his screaming. I let him lie. He screamed and screamed.

The times I took him out with me, I went for a walk in the park, or let him sleep in the baby carriage out in the backyard or down at the foot of the stairs.

He was perhaps five months old, and I went for some walks on my own. He cried when I left, as though he understood that I was going away and wondered whether I would come back. Although of course he was too little to think that, to comprehend.

Once I went out of the house, down the stairs, continued down the street and on to the city center. I found a cinema, bought a ticket and watched the movie that started half an hour later. When I returned the house was silent. I thought that he perhaps was sleeping, but when he fell asleep after crying, his nose was always blocked, and he usually made a noise, a snoring sound. I did not hear anything like that now. It was completely silent. I remember that I stepped across the floor and over to the cot, that it took some time to reach the bed.

When I peered in, he lay looking back at me, blinked, as though he had been lying waiting and had decided to be patient. He followed me with his gaze as I walked around the cot. And then he closed his eyes.

A CHILDREN’S NURSE I spoke to. She helped me to find out where I had to go, what papers I had to sign. She said nothing. She had come across women like me before, I don’t believe I was the only one who gave her son away. He was six months old when I gave him up. He wore a knitted jacket and cap. I sat with him on my knee in a tiny office. Outside there was grass and a garden. I had seen that when I arrived. A little garden outside the house. When I lifted him out of the baby carriage, naturally he started to cry. But inside the office he stopped, he kept his eyes on me when they carried him out. And with that he was gone.

They said I could have an address, but I did not want that. I was so relieved when I got rid of him. Those round cheeks, those arms that clutched at the air. All that crying. Years went by before I thought of him again, or allowed myself to think about him. It was an unfortunate relationship, the only thing I felt was relief.

But later I thought about him, I wondered perhaps where he was, who was looking after him. Whether they were treating him better than I had.

THE APPLICATION FORM has no address, nothing to indicate where it should go, who it is intended for. It can be sent or not sent. I don’t know where I should go with it or hand it in. Helena will probably tell me what to do. The smooth sheet is placed between the papers. I have started to fill it out, I have put it down again. It makes me feel slightly numb, nauseous, I always feel that I need to go to the toilet when I take it out. Nervousness makes me need to go to the toilet.

At night sometimes I awaken with a sense of unease, not fear or anxiety. It is perhaps the episode with the intruder I am thinking about, it is so old now, it is an unease I cannot explain. I pad through the house, check the lights, tidy away a newspaper on the table, a cup left behind in the living room, food Simon has left lying on a plate, things like that. I enter the kitchen and check that the burners are switched off, the coffee percolator, that everything is as it should be, I look around. Sometimes I drink a glass of water, switching off the light and returning to bed where I most often fall into a deep sleep, as you do when you are far too tired. But one night not so long ago I remained standing in the living room looking out the window, out into the garden, as I often do, but not at that time of night, and everything was truly different, it was so early in the morning. The light bluish, as though the darkness was just being diluted, gradually replaced by more and more radiance, only the silhouettes remained without being washed out. I stood looking at the garden that now had such an unfamiliar character. The houses on the other side, several up on the hillside, the regulation distance. We know very few of them, even though we live so close, although we have spent all these years here; the young couple in the neighboring property, another couple just beside us, they have recently retired I believe, the guy with the young cleaner. I wonder what they say about us. While I stood there, I began to think about Simon, whether he missed having someone to confide in. I thought about his wish for me to look for my son. Again that thought pops up, that underneath everything, the house, the children, all the years of movement and unrest, there has been, this silence. That it has simply risen to the surface, pushed up by external changes. Like a splinter of stone is forced up by the innards of the earth, by disturbances in the soil, and gradually comes to light in the spring. And that is what really frightens me. How it reminds me of something else. Is it meaninglessness?

ANOTHER NIGHT I dreamed that Simon was what he has always been, that he came and sat down on the edge of the bed, in fact I thought I had just awoken from a dream, and he had coffee and newspapers with him and one of those scones Marija sometimes baked and put in the freezer, and that make me believe that she is still here, that she is standing out in the kitchen or some other place in the house busy with something, and I was happy about it and at the same time that Simon was eating again, and Simon was talking incessantly, it was obviously an important conversation, or: What he said was important, but when I tried to understand what it was, the words seemed disconnected, I could not manage to put them together into meaningful sentences.

When I awoke, really awoke, he was lying beside me.

I could take his hand, stroke his freckled hands, his gray hair. But I couldn’t manage to do that. I can’t manage to accept it. I had an urge to say, pull yourself together, say something. This is not you. Be who you are, the person I recognize, now I am tired of this.

But I didn’t do that. I had also become silent. I got up, and when I turned around he was lying there watching me from the bed, and his expression was clear and present, I wondered whether it was lust I saw in his eyes. I was taken aback. I pulled on my dressing gown and left the room.

NOT SO LONG ago I woke and saw that a wasp had come into the bedroom. Simon has developed an allergy to wasps, or perhaps he has always had it, in theory a sting could kill him. The window was open, it must have come in that way, managing to force its way through the flimsy curtain covering the opening, perhaps only a few minutes earlier, or it could have circled around the room for a while, maybe it had not woken me until it approached the bed. It seemed confused, it was making a noise that was low and intense.

He was sleeping, I noticed that the wasp was moving along the exposed part of his forearm, he was sleeping on his side with one hand under his cheek and the other naked arm across his head, as though trying to protect it. He often sleeps like that. It was early morning. I slept deeply and must have awoken gradually although I felt I had awoken abruptly, and only a few inches in front of me, I saw the movement. I remained lying completely still and watched. Close up it was large, even when I looked at it compared to his arm, his hand. Simon’s skin, pale with freckles over the back of his hand. The wasp remained motionless on his skin, lifting and lowering its wings.

Both equally helpless, the wasp that probably had no harmful intention, and Simon’s bare arm that he was unable to pull away in his sleep, the danger he could not see. They were left to their own devices.

I was the only one who could do something.

If he had been awake, he would have lain completely still, stiff, while we both would have expected me to get rid of the insect.

I stared at it, now it flew to the skin beside his temple.

After a spell it took off, circled the bed, resting somewhere on the white bedside table, and so on around the room, I got up, found a newspaper and chased it toward the open window. When I lay down in bed again, Simon had wakened, he looked at me, in the same way as I had looked at the wasp, without making any move.

He said: Did you get it out?

I got it out, I said, surprised to hear his voice.

Thanks, he said.

I remember I remained lying there looking at the ceiling, with him lying silently at my side. He did not say anything more.