was wrong with me? I visited Klara and drank in the company of strangers who had failed at life, I spent the night there and woke up the next morning in the bright light of day surrounded by broken, filthy people and I rushed home to hug my children and husband, wanting to live for ever in the big, airy, clean house, I promised myself never to leave it, but I would soon be back at Klara’s, drawn to my destruction.
Four days after the overdose, the same day that Rolf Sandberg’s obituary appeared in the newspaper, Mum and Dad celebrated their big birthdays in Bråteveien. When Tale heard that Søren and Ebba were going, she was outraged. Why were they playing along with it? Putting on a brave face and accepting the Bråteveien version of events, pretending that nothing had happened? That was why the world was going to hell in a handcart, she said, because people didn’t set boundaries, weren’t honest and acted hypocritically in order not to upset anyone, why were Søren and Ebba going to Bråteveien to take part in this appalling performance? She herself would never set foot in Bråteveien again, she would tell her grandparents that immediately.
I advised her against it. If she got involved in the inheritance dispute, they would merely think that she wanted a cabin on Hvaler.
On the day of the birthday party I felt twitchy. I knew I was safe, but it made no difference. My doors were locked, Søren and Ebba were grown-ups and could handle themselves, and yet I was on edge as I always was whenever my children visited Bråteveien. I kept looking at the clock as it got closer to the starting time as though a bomb might go off. I imagined Søren and Ebba crossing the threshold, hugging my parents, whom I hadn’t seen for years and could no longer be sure of recognising, imagined them hugging or shaking hands with Astrid and her husband and their children, Åsa and her husband and their children, imagined Søren and Ebba’s faces and felt sorry for them, or was I projecting and was I really feeling sorry for myself? I wondered what they would say, the usual greetings and congratulations, nothing about the real issues, the inheritance, the overdose, Rolf Sandberg’s obituary or the elephant in the room, those of us who weren’t there, Bård and I, and Bård’s children.
The time passed slowly, I waited impatiently without knowing what for. I knew what my children would say, it had gone well, they had kept to safe topics, updated one another about careers and education, and yet I felt apprehensive. It was just like when my children visited Bråteveien before Christmas and were given presents, and I would be on tenterhooks until they returned. My fear was irrational, it was the non-financial legacy of my upbringing. An irrational sense of guilt because I had opted out, cut contact, because I had done what you weren’t supposed to do, refused to see my ageing parents, because I was like that, vile. The party started at six, it was eight o’clock now and my children hadn’t called and I didn’t want to call them in case they were still there. At eight thirty Søren rang me and said that it had gone well although my Mum had got drunk very quickly and my Dad had just sat brooding in his armchair, more taciturn than usual. Bård and his children hadn’t been there, but Astrid and Åsa had been there with theirs, of course, and Astrid had made a speech saying that she and Åsa were happy to be so close to Mum and Dad, how they always had such nice times together, how they saw one another often, several times a week usually, not to mention all the lovely long summers on Hvaler.
Søren remarked and he sounded rather glum, I thought, that perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Åsa and Astrid would inherit more than ‘us’, given how much time they spent with my Mum and Dad and how fond they were of them.
If I didn’t know that your parents had two other children, he said, I would think it was a normal, happy family.
The first time I met Bo Schjerven was a Sunday, on Book Day at the Norwegian Theatre. The event included readings from that autumn’s new publications in the theatre’s several auditoria, and various arts and literature magazines had stands in the foyer including the latest arrival, Incomprehensible Publications, founded and developed in the early morning hours in Klara’s flat by one of her friends from Renna Bar who had literary ambitions. Klara was staffing the stand between one and three in the afternoon, and I had promised to stop by. When I arrived, I spotted her under a parasol with Incomprehensible Publications printed on it and stuck into one of the theatre’s big plant pots. She looked uncomfortable, she had had several hostile encounters with authors whose work had been criticized in the magazine, a crime writer had even threatened her with a knife. Writing the reviews had been more fun than publishing them, she acknowledged, she needed a beer. She went to the café and I had taken her place under the parasol when a man came towards me, snatched a copy of the magazine, sat down on the stairs, started reading it and let out a loud sigh, please come back soon, Klara. The man got up, came over to me and informed me that he had translated the poetry anthology which Incomprehensible Publications had described as a particularly incomprehensible publication. I said that I had nothing to do with the magazine. The small, bespectacled man looked at me over the rim of his glasses and asked if the editor of Incomprehensible Publications knew anything about the political situation in Russia in the 1920s. I said that I didn’t know and reiterated that I had nothing to do with Incomprehensible Publications, so he asked why I was then staffing the stand of this ridiculous magazine. He asked me if the editor knew anything about the revolutionary ideas popular with literary circles in 1920s St Petersburg; I said I didn’t know, that I suspected that she didn’t. The pale, stern man then asked if the editor had ever heard of Ivan Yegoryev, the essayist. I didn’t know, please come back soon, Klara. He asked if the editor of Incomprehensible Publications had read any Russian history or Russian poets, if she knew of the tradition of which the poetry anthology Autumn Apples was a part. I didn’t know, I suspected that she didn’t, please come back soon, Klara. The serious man leaned forwards and declared that the lines which the moronic reviewer in Incomprehensible Publications had found particularly incomprehensible were absolutely crucial because they paraphrased the politician V. G. Korolenko’s speech at the Communist Party’s Fourth Party Congress. The small man, who by now had become quite loud, said that if one was to review a poetry anthology like the one he had translated, one had a duty to familiarise oneself with one’s subject, it was the critic’s responsibility because if the critic didn’t take poetry seriously, who would? He said that if the presumably young and hopelessly arrogant woman who had reviewed Autumn Apples in Incomprehensible Publications had bothered to get to know her subject, she would have got so much more out of the anthology to the point where it might have changed her life. He studied my face. Changed your life, he said, and my heart sank. Fortunately someone he knew turned up at that point, he put down the magazine and left. I looked around for Klara, I didn’t want to sit there any longer. Then the man suddenly came back and asked me to lend him a hundred kroner. His brother had turned up and wanted to have coffee with him in the café, but he had no money and didn’t want to say so because he didn’t want to worry his brother. I gave him a hundred kroner and he insisted on getting my bank details. The following week one hundred and ten kroner were paid into my bank account, the extra ten kroner being interest.
We had arranged to meet at the Grand Hotel. It was my idea. I went out so rarely that I simply blurted out the name. I texted Bård, please would he book the table?
On my way there I suddenly remembered that Mum always used to meet her friends at the Grand in the old days when they went out shopping and were ladies who lunched. I myself had been out shopping with Mum a couple of times, was it the memory of Mum that had made me pick the Grand? I hoped my childhood wasn’t coming back, I hoped I wasn’t going back to my childhood, and that that explained why I was shaking. I opened the door, there was a queue to get into the restaurant, the pre-Christmas rush, and many smartly dressed older people, I shouldn’t have picked the Grand. I might bump into Mum and her friends, surely there was a woman who looked like Mum, like I remembered her, in the corner, I turned away, I wanted to leave, then I saw someone who looked like him, like I remembered him, his back and the back of his head, Bård, I said, and he turned around and it was him, twenty years older. He recognised me, also twenty years older, we hugged one another like you do when you’re brother and sister and there are no inheritance disputes separating you—as far as we knew. A woman who knew him came over, they said hello and hugged one another, and he introduced me as his younger sister, my oldest younger sister, he said. Then we fell silent. We couldn’t very well start