Will and Testament. Vigdis Hjorth
in Hausmanns gate, still with bare legs, although it was October, unbuttoned my coat, touched my silk blouse and told me how nice it was. I walked away, I didn’t want her eccentricity to rub off on me.
I went for a longer walk than usual although I was due in Fredrikstad that same evening. I headed into the protected forest, which was still quite green, but it didn’t have its usual calming effect on me. Trees that had keeled over during the storms in recent weeks lay with their heavy dark roots exposed and blocked the footpaths. I called both my daughters, but couldn’t get hold of them, I called my boyfriend, but couldn’t get hold of him, I had an overwhelming urge to share my news and I wondered why that was, after all nothing terrible had happened, in fact things were fine.
I thought about my earlier conversation with Astrid only a few days ago. I’d had more contact with her these last six months than I’d had for years. She was writing a collection of articles about human rights education and wanted my opinion on the layout and division into chapters which I, in my role as a magazine editor, understood. I read and commented, we talked about format and angles, and in our last conversation, only days previously, we had discussed final tweaks and publishers. That had also taken place while I was out walking; I remember shifting my mobile from one hand to the other because the phone was so cold when held without mittens. When we had finished talking about her book, I asked, as I usually did, how the family was. Well, there’s this business with Bård and the cabins, she replied, I thought she was referring to the will.
~
I went to Fredrikstad and it wasn’t until I drove into the dark, practically deserted, old part of the city that I started to calm down. I found a place to park near the B&B where I would be staying, I had stayed there before, I walked the dog along the ramparts by the river, which glowed copper red in the rays of the setting sun, I tried to focus on the seminar about the lack of contemporary Norwegian drama, but found it difficult to concentrate. I called Tale and Ebba again, but they didn’t pick up, I called Lars, but he didn’t pick up either, then I called Bo before I remembered that he was in Israel. I asked myself why it was so imperative for me to tell my daughters, my boyfriend and Bo about Mum, her overdose and the two cabins. I called my oldest friend, who was driving and so had to be quick. She had heard about Mum overdosing before, but she was interested in the inheritance dispute, she had experience of such things. They’re perfectly entitled to do what they’ve done, she said, they can dispose of their property in any way they like, but they don’t come across as generous as they did in their Christmas letter. Besides she had reflected on the issue of inheritance, she said, when her brother had inherited the family cabin because he was their parents’ favourite and she felt that she should have been given it instead as compensation for lack of love and attention.
I left Fido in my room and walked to the ferry which would take me across the river to the centre of Fredrikstad. From there I called Tale and Ebba again, but they still didn’t pick up, I called Klara and asked her why I got so wound up, why I absolutely had to talk about it, given that nothing terrible had happened.
It goes deep, Bergljot, she said. It’s seriously deep.
I got off the ferry and walked up through the streets, it started to rain, I got wet and felt heavy. It was just as Klara had said, it was how I felt, how deep it went, how it pushed me into the abyss, how it weighed me down, how I started to sink.
The debate went well, I did well. Afterwards I stayed in the café telling my fellow participants all about the cabin valuations and Mum’s overdose although I didn’t know them personally and, while I told them about it, I thought to myself that I really ought not to. I was ashamed while I spoke and ashamed when I saw the faces of my listeners and I was ashamed on my way home at having whined about cabin valuations and overdoses like a spoilt brat, in a manner that belonged to childhood and self-centred puberty, I was mired in shame the whole night, I couldn’t sleep because I was so ashamed that I hadn’t grown up, that I couldn’t talk about it in a mature and balanced fashion, that I’d become a child once more.
The day after Klara had unbuttoned my coat in Hausmanns gate and touched my silk blouse, she rang me. I was in the hall of the house where I lived with my husband and children and didn’t recognise the name. She said it again and then I remembered, then I grew scared, she had caught me off guard. She asked if I would be willing to review a book for the literary magazine she edited, I didn’t want to, I didn’t have the courage to take it on, but I didn’t have the courage to say no either. She asked if I could come over to hers tomorrow morning so we could discuss it, I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have the courage to say no either. When I arrived the next morning, she was busy trying to put together a bookcase and failing, she wasn’t following the instructions and she was drinking gin. I couldn’t drink, I was driving, so I took over the bookcase. While I worked on it, she said that the review didn’t matter, the magazine was folding, it wasn’t making money for the publishers, how would she pay her rent now? I didn’t know, I shook my head, I didn’t want to get involved with her financial problems. She was in love with a married man, she said, and my heart skipped a beat. She was pregnant by this married man and was having an abortion tomorrow; unless she did so he would refuse to see her again. I couldn’t help her, I wanted to go home, I too wanted to drink gin, I put the bookcase together and I left, I never wanted to see her again.
Sunday in the old city of Fredrikstad. Yellow, red and rotting leaves on the cobblestones, cold rain in the air. I walked along the streets feeling morose. I should never have told total strangers about the cabin valuations and the overdose. I had a compelling urge to talk about it, but I didn’t know how. Then I bumped into someone who had been present in the café last night and who asked me if I was OK, as if I wouldn’t be. She invited me back to her yellow wooden house a short distance up the street and gave me apple cake and coffee, and the tears welled up in my eyes and stories from my childhood poured out of me, and she embraced it all and spoke calmly and dispassionately about her own past. Was it possible for me to ever get to that place?
As I stood in the doorway and was about to leave, she asked me how long it was since I had last spoken to him.
Who?
Your brother.
I couldn’t remember, twenty years or more.
Call him, she said, and I had to smile because she didn’t understand what it was like. But we hugged one another as if we had exchanged presents and as I opened the gate, she called out: I’m on Bård’s side!
~
In the car home I was filled with ambivalence. Shame at yesterday’s confessions in the café, anger at myself for being so easily upset, gratitude for the invitation to coffee and cake, for meeting someone on a day like that who had given me advice. I asked myself whether my parents or Astrid and Åsa ever sought advice from anyone because it didn’t take much insight into human nature to predict that a man who takes exception to being passed over in a will is also likely to take exception to secret transfers at rates well below the market value. If they had taken advice, surely someone would have pointed this out to them. Then again, perhaps they wouldn’t have listened. Perhaps they had already made up their mind to do what they had done, regardless of the consequences.
Once I was safely home in Lier, when it had started to get dark and I was walking across the fields with the dog and it had started to snow, I called Tale and she picked up. I told her about the overdose, about the transfer of ownership and the valuations, and my daughter knew me and understood that I was going off the deep end and said that I mustn’t take it so seriously, that I mustn’t get involved, that it was just my mother creating more drama and casting herself in the leading role as the tragic victim of evil schemes, while her real goal was to silence her critics.
They’ve seen the last of me, she said, I refuse to take part in that charade any longer.
I heard what she said, I understood it at an intellectual level.
I walked for longer than usual to wear myself out, to be able to sleep, even sleep through the night; I walked a long way and then went home and sat in front of the fireplace. Astrid called and said that Mum was doing well, perhaps she thought I had been worried. Mum was still at the hospital