Days in the History of Silence

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Early in the morning I enter the living room and look out at the garden. It is still only a few hours since I drove Simon to the day care center. Recently he has started to eat less, and that worries me. I am trained to worry. The important things are to get dressed, go to the toilet, eat, drink, and talk.

No matter how painful it feels, all that other stuff.

You’ll worry, Simon said. He used to say it, before. Always slightly teasing. I wish he would say it now. That I worry too much, that this is not so important after all, just a phase we have to go through.

In the mornings I always try to be the first one up, to steal a march on him, but he needs so little sleep now. He can rise before the night is over or at daybreak, but fall asleep again in the middle of the day. I don’t like him nodding off again, and he notices that, for when I catch him sleeping, he always has a book on his lap. I think he does that for my sake, pretending he is reading. We have always read, I used to read Simon’s textbooks and he mine.

Before, while he was still talking to me, coming out with more than a word here and there, he used to smile and apologize. I must have dropped off, he said. He still straightens his back when I look at him. The books are always the same ones. History books about well-known battles, especially about the First World War. He has a special interest in that, the First World War and old maps.

One day not so long ago, when he came into the kitchen, I had a feeling he thought she was here, Marija. It seemed as though he looked around and thought there was something missing. Is everything all right, I asked. He nodded, but I think he was disappointed. Perhaps he thought he had heard something, her voice, and then it dawned on him that it was only the radio.

He misses her. He told me that some time after she had gone. Not the work she did, or at least not only that. That kind of work can be done by others. He misses her.

The first home help we had was a young girl from Poland. Capable and pleasant, but preoccupied. She used to stand in the middle of the living room and talk on her cell phone, the phone was like an extension of herself, an extra sense. If it rang, she had to run immediately to answer it, no matter what else she was doing at the time. I never saw her without that phone, she talked as if there were nobody else present, absorbed in the conversations, both laughing and shaking her head like a schizophrenic would have done, someone who has exchanged his surroundings for the constant voices in his head. It seemed as though she continually found herself in a public space where people nevertheless did not need to pay attention to one other. In contrast with all the arrangements we heard her make on the phone, she never said a word to us when she was coming or going, she was suddenly standing there in the kitchen when I came in of a morning or appeared in the evening when I was about to go to bed, we never knew when she would be there next.

Lying in the kitchen are the remains of the breakfast and slices of bread Simon did not eat. I pull on my boots to fetch the newspaper and notice that it is going to be a glorious day. The house is situated at the end of a long cul-de-sac with trees on either side. The garden extends around the entire house and forms part of the little wooded area. I was the one who found it when we were house hunting many years ago, I had known for a long time that it was for sale.

I walk to the mailbox, and find the newspaper damp. The newspaper and two letters. Before we moved in here as newlyweds, we had been living for a short time on the other side of the city, down beside the harbors and the massive bridge. During our first days here, we simply walked about from room to room, and wondered where we should place our furniture. All these rooms, all these things. Like the nearby church the house is built of stone, it dates from around 1930. Both buildings are almost empty most of the time, it strikes me, apart from the few fleeting moments on feast days and special occasions when they rapidly fill up with other people. Holy days. Christmas Eve. Wedding days.

Our name is on the far too shiny mailbox, it was a gift. A present from her, from Marija. The first time I saw her, she was standing right there, with her back turned, beside the old mailbox. I saw from the window that she put something into the box, before walking off. The postman, who was on his way to us, must also have seen what she did, because after she left, he remained standing there and waited for me with the mail in his hand. I think he was pleased. Perhaps at the opportunity to say something he had long wanted to say. He didn’t smile, but he could have smiled. He had the expression of someone who wanted to smile.

I asked her, the postman said to me, what she was doing here.

Oh yes, I replied.

She didn’t answer, he went on. Perhaps she doesn’t speak Norwegian. She might be one of those East European girls who do cleaning. I think so. They’re always putting notes into the mailboxes, filling them up with trash.

He peered at the yellow note I was raking out of the box. You should phone the police, maybe she’s one of those who shouldn’t be here. What do you mean, I said, although I knew what he was getting at. It was an attempt on my part to create a kind of distance from him, what he was, that kind of person. I wanted him to understand we had nothing in common. I have seen him speaking to other neighbors once or twice, he is obviously well liked, although he delivers the mail at his own pace, it never seems to be an urgent task. Sometimes he leaves the lid of the mailbox open, with no regard for whether it is raining.

He shook his head. Now he was staring into space as though a clearer, more meaningful picture was taking shape there. Asylum seekers, he said, without legal permission to stay.

I don’t know, I said, turning away and saying thanks for his help. Thanks for helping.

Perhaps, he said, checking me with his voice just as I was about to go back inside. Perhaps you should be careful.

It sounded more like a vague threat than concerned advice.

I read her note the next day, coming across it in the kitchen where I had slipped it underneath the microwave. A short printed message. I can help you with washing and housework, looking after children. Good references. Phone me.

A couple of weeks went by before I called.

THE NEXT TIME I saw her, she was standing in front of the bookshelves in the part of the living room we like to call the library, even though that formal name is an exaggerated description of our book collection, which is undeniably large, but arranged in a completely chaotic way, with books in both rows and stacks. She was tall, unusually tall, I remember thinking she was a woman who could lift any man without a problem. She wanted to tell me about herself, she spoke good Norwegian.

She shook my hand. Marija, she announced clearly and with stress on each syllable, as though I would need help to remember it. Her short hair, the side parting and the fringe I remember used to fall over her face anytime she turned to look at me, she wheeled around or glanced upward and her hair would drop like that. A face of the type that people would certainly have called attractive, not too much makeup, aged around fifty or a couple of years younger, I never asked her about her age. Her handshake, a soft hand that did not release its grip immediately. She did not want coffee, but when Simon said he was going to make some anyway, she said yes please all the same. Just a little cup. Always just a little cup. She had a kind of rational modesty that did not seem to be an affectation. This is my husband, I said. Simon.

We agreed she should clean the house once a week, and probably wash some clothes. She seemed pleased, she said she was happy to get as much work as possible. I’m not afraid of working, she commented, speaking in all seriousness.

All the same we were content with the meeting, with ourselves, Simon and I.

I am standing in the garden and feeling the heat. One or two of the windows are slightly ajar. Helena phoned early today, asking if there was anything I needed. I stand there looking at the wide lawn and the two trees at the end beside the low wall, the entrance to the little grove of trees where the intruder may have disappeared.

No, I said to her. I don’t need anything in particular.

But now I’m wondering if I should perhaps have asked her to come over, maybe she wanted me to ask her, she has always been circumspect, there was something she wanted to say to me. Her expression is cautious, unassuming, she has been like that ever since she was small, the complete opposite of her two older sisters. She resembles her father, she resembles Simon. There can be so much I miss out on, that I do not understand. The application form she gave me is still lying on the hall table. The application about residential care for Simon. Somewhere he can stay. A so-called home for the elderly. She no longer wants him to stay here with me. If only he would keep calm, she says. And if you had talked together like before. Yes indeed, I miss Marija. It is a lie that I don’t, I would have asked her what she thought. The conversations we would have had about Helena, about the recent silence, Simon’s silence. All the same it seems as though his silence and her absence are connected. If Marija had never left, everything would have continued as before. I sit down on one of the garden chairs on the terrace. I eat a candy, it seems strangely insubstantial, it does not remind me of anything I have ever tasted before.

Mom, Helena said on the phone. I’m so worried about you, you and Dad.

SHE HAS NO idea that I nearly gave him away once before, many years earlier. How would she have remembered that time, his depression, she was so little then.

It began with some letters arriving, several letters. He found out more about what had happened to his relatives during the war. Almost all his relations apart from his mother, father and brother were sent to extermination camps in the course of the war years. It was only thanks to the hiding place he hated so much that they were saved, he and his parents, his brother. The others are crossed out of history. Friends he played with, girls he liked, neighbors, the man in the store, teachers, classmates, every single member of his mother’s and father’s family, they are all gone. He felt guilty, I think he felt guilty to be alive, as perhaps everyone would have felt guilty. One day you awaken, and it is like an eclipse of the sun, one of those rare ones when the surface of the full moon covers the sun completely and it becomes dark at midday. You go out with your sandwiches at lunchtime and sit down in the park, beside the lake, looking at the trees, at the texture of the leaves, at the people walking past, now and again someone you know, who perhaps says hello, recognizing you, everything is so indisputably alive, you do not go home, you do not go anywhere. You wish for nothing more than to sit there. For hours. Before someone catches sight of you, becomes concerned and phones somewhere.

And then the dreams. Performances just as clear and transparent as daylight, reproductions of events. They come more and more often when you are awake. The hiding place, the mustiness, the listening silence. The stairway.

He could still feel it in his body, Simon said, the moment on the stairs, as though he were still standing on the stair outside the hiding place that afternoon, looking at the men in uniforms down in the street. Heard their shouts, heard them running up the stairs, at that time when he thought they were surely about to spot him. He is sitting on the same step, not knowing what he should do now that everything is over. The moment lasts, he hears them distinctly, thinks he notices them standing above him with their weapons trained on his head. He looks up, there is no one there. He still hears them, but they are not here, they are in the entry next door, running up the stairs, shouting, knocking, he thinks they smash down a door. He can still see a glimpse of the street through the window. From the corner where he has curled up, he sees a family being led out. An elderly couple, three younger women, a middle-aged man carrying a baby on his arm. One of them drops something, a scarf, a blanket, or a jacket, he sees anyhow one of them dropping something on the cobblestones, and being shoved forward. Simon does not know who they are. He has been shut inside all the time he has been living here in this street. He cannot manage to feel sorry for them. He is relieved of course, although that word is a simplification compared to what he is feeling. In his thoughts this is not only something he observes, he wonders if there is not some kind of connection, a causality between his forbidden interlude on the stairway outside the hiding place and these people, the old couple, a family being picked up by the police. Perhaps he is one of the last to see them together.

•

IT WAS NOT possible to explain. He could not explain it to anyone, it happened so suddenly. The depression. In those difficult periods he could continue for several weeks without being present, without noticing the days pass. I was the only one who knew. Not the children. I haven’t told them about it, about the eclipse of the sun. About their relatives, all the people from his past who are gone.

Our conversations about it later, when he had changed his mind and felt that we should talk, tell them. I recall it as a clear picture, an imprint on my retina. I remember he was young, that he was still a young man, and we two were sitting beside each other, he in the driver’s seat, I beside him, we were driving along a stretch of straight road with summer cottages and cabins, extensive fields, small gardens, huge farms with barns and farmhouses.

We had been at our summer cottage that day. The cottage was new, and we were so proud of it. An ordinary little cottage by the sea. It had been hard work to pack everything into the car when it was time to drive home. The children, tired out after swimming, falling asleep in the rear seat.

Simon’s hand on the steering wheel. I remember it having a pale synthetic leather cover. That bright afternoon. And what he was talking about, the thoughts he was struggling with, that continued to bother him. It was like driving into a tunnel, shutting out the light.

I don’t think we should talk about it now, I said.

But when will we talk about it, he whispered.

Once I turned away. I glanced at the girls sleeping on the backseat. They were lying in a heap, their skinny arms, breastbones, knees, brown from the sun. Only Helena was moving in her sleep, her tummy had been a bit sore before she dropped off, like the others she had hauled off her T-shirt and was lying with her top bare, it was before seat belts were compulsory, they were just lying there, as though we had flung them down, almost naked, they liked to snooze like that. The warm August sunlight was shining all around us. Simon by my side. He was wearing rectangular, black sunglasses, a severe style I thought emphasized his gravity when he talked. I did not want that seriousness. I have a memory of turning around and stretching my arms behind me, covering the girls with a sheet because of the open window.

What he talked about. The children sleeping. I wanted to keep it separate, keep them outside that dark tunnel. They are going to want it themselves, he said, to get to know something about it.

I looked around at the stores we were driving past, the tiny houses and gardens. I wanted to be a part of all that outside, that was what I wanted.

They are so little, I said.

Yes, but later, he replied.

He asked if I wanted them to grow up without knowing who he was, his background, the Jewish family. He turned to face me.

I do not remember if I returned his gaze, he had taken off the sunglasses, the deep impression on his nose left by the plastic, or whether I turned away, toward the window. I was scared. I visualized him on the bench in the city park when the darkness descended. I thought of the young women he had told me about, being led across the street toward the waiting vehicle. The baby.

He had already spoken a few times about the possibility of finding out more about his own family, there had been several relatives, a young aunt, a cousin too. He knew nothing about them, no one knew anything about them, what had happened after they had been discovered. They were gone, they were sent off in the same way as the family he had seen on the street that day. Probably for extermination, the atrocities in the camps.

Why now, what good will it do, I think I said. There’s nobody left, why should you keep looking?

Once he had shown me photographs of children on their way to a gas chamber, they could have been pupils in single file on a school outing, eight or nine years old and carrying what I recall as bags or small bundles in their hands, dressed in warm coats, but with bare, skinny legs above their shoes. Youngsters glancing at the photographer as they walked past. He had asked me what I thought, how anyone could kill a child. Do you practice in advance, he asked, do you calculate how long it will take? And what do you do afterward. Do you just make your way home?

He was talking about it again as we drove. I thought there was something tactless about it, as though he were being indiscreet, coarse, as though he were relating something inappropriate. It was not suitable.

The movement of the car. Our daughters sleeping.

I shushed him.

Don’t drag all that darkness in here, I said.

I don’t understand, he said. How it’s possible to stop thinking about it.

And when he said that, it felt like a complaint, I felt insulted. He continued to talk for a while longer there in the car, until perhaps I asked him to stop, or perhaps he stopped by himself.

I looked nervously behind me at the children, at him with his suntanned hand on the steering wheel. The August sunlight through the car window. At any rate that is how I picture it now, afterward.

Later, when the girls were teenagers, they wanted to know things about us, they wondered why we never visited any of his relatives. It is surprisingly easy not to say anything, not to tell, to remain silent. I did not want to be part of it. For the girls to become part of it. We told them it had been a small family, we said nothing about the brother Simon had lost contact with, we stated that his parents had been old, they were gone now. Which of course was also true. His parents were already old immediately after the war.

We waited so long to tell them about it. I think we waited too long. By a certain point it had become too late.

I look at Simon and it strikes me that the worry caused his face to age many years before its time, his frontal bone marked with a fine horizontal line I have always assumed to be a scar from his childhood, a little wound that has healed. The kind of scar children get easily when they are playing. But it could also be an expression he often has, a way of wrinkling his brow, that has left its mark.