Wolf Hour

37 A Desolate Place, September 2022

The priest at the Mindekirken, Jon Erland, greets me in the lobby connecting the church itself to the offices. When I called him before my departure from Norway and told him about the book I was writing he said he hadn’t actually known my cousin, only my uncle, and that I should really try some other source. But once he became aware of my theological background, and I had hinted that it was memories of the Mindekirken when I was a child that had inspired me, he agreed to meet me anyway. Jon Erland looks to be in his seventies and speaks with the same Norwegian dialect as I do, not so surprising since the Norwegian Bible Belt is in the south of the country, like it is in the USA. But he uses words that became obsolete back home in Norway many years ago. He is professionally friendly and open — an American openness that seems to have worn off some of that traditional Scandinavian reserve. He shows me round. The Mindekirken is mostly still as I recall it. Large but austere, as Lutheran churches should be. As far as I can see the only thing that’s new is the air conditioning. He suggests we talk in his office. On our way there we pass a Norwegian flag and photographs of the Norwegian king and queen, flatteringly young. Along with the gifts from earlier visitors from Norway it gives the church a strangely museum-like atmosphere, at once calming and a little disturbing. In his office Jon Erland tells me that he only met my relatives at church services, which are still held twice a day every Sunday, one in Norwegian at nine o’clock, which usually attracts a congregation of about forty or fifty, and the second in English at eleven o’clock at which a congregation of between fifteen and twenty is about all they can expect. He tells me that my uncle is buried in the family grave at the Lakewood Cemetery, as I already knew.

‘What do people say about my cousin, after what happened?’ I ask.

‘You mean his posthumous reputation, his legacy?’

‘I mean, do people regard him as a hero?’

Jon Erland raises an eyebrow, clearly surprised. ‘Why? The whole thing ended in the most appalling tragedy. The best thing one could say about your cousin is that he was a poor misguided soul.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it—’ I start to say.

‘No!’ says Jon Erland. ‘It is the truth. And as we all know, there is only one truth.’

I look at him. ‘Only one truth,’ I echo. And in that same instant, remember why it was I could never have been a priest.

38 The Rage of Abandonment, October 2016

It was dark but the rain had stopped by the time Bob reached the house. He rang the bell. Heard the footsteps inside, recognised them as Alice’s, knew which slippers she was wearing, also that she would be wearing the white lamb’s wool sweater she always wore when it was cold.

She opened the door. Smiled. And it seemed to him that she was still the same, beautiful Alice, with her hair tied up in a knot and stray honey-blonde locks of hair tapping at the corners of her mouth, though the wrinkles around her eyes were now more pronounced.

‘Come in,’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and tried not to think how odd it was to be invited to enter his own house. ‘And thank you for seeing me.’

He removed his coat and hung it on one of the vacant hooks. Tried not to wonder whether she might have removed one of Stan’s jackets from the same hook just before he rang the bell.

She led the way into the kitchen. He registered that she was back to her familiar Alice size, the curves had returned, there was a little more flesh on the bones, all of which suggested to him that she was doing well. Immediately following Frankie’s death she had lost weight dramatically, and then gained it so swiftly she became a sort of inflated version of herself. And then lost it again. It was as though she had gone through the whole repertoire of eating disorders familiar to her from her patients. Or maybe it was the pills.

They sat in their usual seats on opposite sides of the kitchen table. She laced her fingers around a large teacup. How many times had he seen her do that, warming her hands, with her shoulders slightly hunched? He noticed that the picture of Frankie on the refrigerator was still there. And next to it, one of Frankie, Bob and Alice together.

‘Like something to drink?’

‘Water,’ he said and stood up. Took a glass from the cupboard above the sink, turned on the tap and said, without turning round:

‘I’m sorry for having behaved like an idiot. I want to sign those papers as soon as possible, so that you’re also the formal owner of the house, you don’t just live here.’

‘What?’ she said, as though the running water had drowned out what he was saying.

Bob turned off the tap, took the glass and sat back down opposite her. ‘On one condition.’

She gave him a cautious look. ‘And that is?’

‘That we lower the price.’

‘Lower? Don’t you mean raise?’

‘No, lower. Even you won’t be able to pay off the loan if we stick to the current valuation.’

‘But...’

‘If in due course Stan the Man wants to buy himself in then, of course, you can pay me more.’

Bob looked at the disbelieving face before emptying the glass in a single long swallow. As he put the glass down he could see that she believed him. Her eyes were shining. A slight shiver passed between her shoulders, as though she wanted to put her hand onto his.

‘And there’s one more thing I want from you,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Explain loneliness to me.’

‘Loneliness?’

‘In technical terms.’

‘Are you lonely?’

‘I’m asking you to explain it, not me.’

‘OK.’ She folded her arms, breathed deeply and calmly and fixed her gaze some place just above his head the way she did when she was concentrating. He waited. Waited the way he had waited outside her flat before those first, comically old-fashioned dates. Outside her workplace after they became a couple. Outside the bathroom after they started living together and she was getting ready to go out to a party. Outside the delivery room when Frankie was born. Waiting for Alice was something he associated with happiness, because he was waiting for something good. But there would be no more waiting. He knew that now. There was nothing left to wait for.

‘The language that describes loneliness is limited,’ she began slowly, as though testing her way. ‘But first you have existential loneliness. The knowledge that you have been thrown into this world, and that you, me and everybody else are all, in the final analysis, alone. And then you have interpersonal loneliness. A lack of belonging, the feeling that you are alone even when with friends. You feel as though you’re inside a bubble, the others seem far, far away because you are, emotionally speaking, somewhere else.’

‘Talk about loneliness when the most important people in your life are gone,’ said Bob. ‘Someone you love. And children.’

It was as though he had pressed a button. Her lips twisted and tears at once sprang to her eyes. ‘Bob, please don’t start again...’ Her voice was hoarse.

‘I’m not starting again,’ he said. ‘I’m not talking about us, Alice. This is about Tomás Gomez, the killer we’re looking for. He lost his family, they were shot. What I’m wondering about is whether loneliness by itself can have driven him to want to avenge their deaths.’

She blinked twice.

‘Go ahead,’ said Bob.

She swallowed. Fixed her gaze back onto the wall above him. ‘That’s trauma,’ she said. ‘Trauma, not loneliness. Trauma arises when you lose someone you thought you would be spending the rest of your life with. When it was more than an expectation, it was a conviction. Something you based your whole life on. Something that was everything.’ She lowered her gaze to meet his. ‘The trauma is the wound. But the loneliness that comes with it locks you to your trauma. Sometimes there are physical manifestations. Often intolerable pains that follow the spine down toward the stomach.’ She put a hand to her own stomach. ‘You feel you want to disappear, but the body is frozen up, and you become simply incapable of drawing warmth from those around you.’

‘Silent, locked in?’

‘Or raging. Everyone reacts differently. But we often share the feeling that something drastic has to be done. Traumatic memory is circular. Meaning that when something happens that reminds us of a previous trauma it can awaken rage, in this case the rage of abandonment. Everything that has happened before happens again. The whole weight of those previous experiences invades the present. The grief that has up to that point been frozen explodes in a vengeful rage. The violence of trauma is often extreme. People stab in a frenzy, they molest the body, not uncommonly there are elements of sadism.’

Bob nodded slowly. ‘The rage of abandonment.’

‘That’s the technical term.’

‘Thank you.’ He turned the empty glass in his hand. ‘Alice, has it ever...?’ He stopped.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Have you ever felt afraid of me?’

Alice tilted her head. ‘No. But as a psychologist I know that as a rule people overestimate their ability to predict how those closest to them will react, especially if the person concerned has been traumatised. Maybe that’s exactly the mistake I’m making now. Given your sometimes aggressive behaviour, it is definitely not doing things by the book for me to meet you here alone, like this, where all the memories are.’

Bob gave a crooked smile. ‘You mean you should be afraid, but you aren’t?’

She nodded. ‘I’m probably more worried about what you might do to yourself than to me. Tell me...’ Now it was her turn to stop.

‘Yes?’

‘Are things getting better, Bob?’

‘Better? Oh, no question.’ Bob smiled and knew that if he squeezed the glass any harder it would break. ‘I’m over the worst. I accept that life goes on. I remember you saying that the rational mind forgets things it has no use for. That’s true. I can feel how I’m thinking less about both you and Frankie with each day that passes. And you’ll see, they’ll be even better now that I’m getting rid of the house. It’ll be as though none of this—’ he gestured toward the photos on the refrigerator — ‘ever happened. Don’t you think?’ He was smiling so hard the corners of his mouth ached and through the tears her face grew fluid and indistinct. It felt as though his skin was on fire. ‘But then, there’s a part of my brain that isn’t rational and smart, and that can’t forget, even though it knows it should.’

Alice nodded. ‘Maybe we don’t have to forget, Bob. Maybe it’s more about treasuring the good memories and learning to live with the not so good ones. And... carrying on.’ Her hesitation had been brief, but Alice was like a song Bob knew off by heart. He knew at once that that pause, short as it had been, meant something. And suddenly he understood what it was.

‘Carrying on?’ he said. And steeled himself as he waited for what he knew must come. Because of course he’d seen it as soon as he arrived, the way she looked just the way she had done back then.

Alice wrapped her fingers around her teacup and looked down into it.

‘Yes, I’m...’ She seemed to ready herself, then looked up and directly into Bob’s eyes. ‘I’m pregnant.’

Bob nodded and nodded, his head going up and down like that dog on the parcel shelf in the back of his parents’ car.

‘Congratulations,’ he said, his voice thick and hoarse.

‘Thanks,’ she said quietly.

‘No, I really mean it,’ he said. ‘I’m... happy for you.’

‘I know you are.’

‘You do?’

‘Of course,’ she said.

They looked at each other. He smiled. She gave a cautious smile in return.

‘You’ve been dreading giving me the news?’ he asked.

‘A bit,’ she said. ‘So it’s OK?’

‘Yes, it’s OK.’ He thought about it. It really was. More than OK. It felt... yes, like a relief. Alice was pregnant again, and in some strange way it felt as though he now had one life less on his conscience. He’d never thought of it like that before, never realised that he might instinctively react like that to news that could only take her even further away from him.

‘Girl or a boy?’ he asked.

‘We’re going for an ultrasound on Monday. I guess we’ll find out then.’

‘Exciting.’ Bob was still nodding. If he did it much longer his head would probably fall off. ‘Thanks for talking to me, Alice. Thanks for... well, everything really. I’ll be on my way.’

They said goodbye without touching each other. When she shut the door behind him, and he headed out into the chill autumn night, it was as though his step was lighter. But then it was as though a pendulum swung across his chest, across his heart, and for a moment he stood by his car, doubled over in pain. Then the pendulum swung the other way, and he drove off to Motörhead’s idiotically cheerful ‘On Parole’ with the volume up full, singing along as the tears rolled down his cheeks.