To Mervas (19 page)

It was when it was already too late and he'd fallen from his wheelchair and lay in a mess on the floor that I saw him looking at me – how his gaze burned, concise, relentless. That's when I came to my senses. He wasn't me, his eyes said, he was separate, his fate was his own. A wide gash in his head was bleeding and suddenly the whole apartment filled with his scream and I fell to the floor and slid my hands under his head and placed my cheek against his and I whispered
I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
but not a sound came from my lips and I could feel life leaving him, could feel how it stole away from him and was gone. I carefully removed my hands and sat up and prayed to the God that couldn't possibly exist, prayed to him to let me die with the boy, to let it all end. I've broken the fundament of life, I've broken the covenant, so let me now die with the boy.

I'd cut him off, cut off his gaze upon the world, killed his gaze. Sebastian's gaze. And his eyes weren't mine, no, not even his pain or his disappointment was mine. There's space between people, and it is necessary, it's a boundary that must not be crossed, you have to stay behind it.
There's space between people, and it is necessary, it's a boundary that must not be crossed, you have to stay behind it.

I must not say the words: I killed my boy whose name was Sebastian, I crushed his head the way Arnold crushed the head of the moose calf. Those words are unspeakable. How could I have told Lilldolly? Yet she's the only one I've met whom I'd even considered telling.

“Be calm, my child,” begins a poem by –

It was evening, already late, when Kosti arrived. Marta was sitting at the table writing in her diary and he just stood there, in the doorway.

“Sorry for barging in,” he said, and his voice sounded large and deep in her ears.

She inhaled.

“I didn't hear you. I didn't hear you coming.”

Then they didn't say a word.

“Shall we . . . Shall we say hello?” Kosti asked.

Marta closed the diary and placed her palms on the tabletop to pull herself up. Inside, she was tumbling round and round.

“Are you in pain?” he asked.

“No, no, I was just surprised to see you, my legs . . . I see that it's you, I recognize you . . .”

Suddenly, she felt his hands around her waist; he had helped her up, he held her, and she remembered what it was like to be touched, how incredible it felt. They now stood face-to-face, very close; she looked at his neck, the skin had become thin and wrinkled.

“Of course you recognized me,” he said amiably. “I recognized you too.”

“Yes, but that's not what I meant. I recognized you from seeing you here in Mervas. You stood looking at me early one morning when I lay sleeping in the car.”

He didn't respond and when she looked up at his face she thought he looked distressed.

“So you saw me even though you were asleep?” he asked, almost teasing.

Marta said nothing. She recognized him now, the way he was, the way he behaved.

“Shouldn't we say hello?” Kosti said again. “I'll start. Hi, Mart! Welcome to Mervas!”

“Hi, Kosti,” she whispered.

And they embraced, but not as hard and long as in her dream that first night, but more tentatively, anxiously; they didn't quite know how to connect. Perhaps they were also embarrassed by all the years that had passed by and made them old. By everything they didn't know about each other. They remained standing for a while with their hands hanging. Kosti stepped aside and took off his rubber boots and hung his green jacket on a crooked stick driven into the wall. Marta removed her diary from the table and tucked it into her bag under the bed.

“Have you seen
Uncle Vanya?”
she asked Kosti. “The version they showed on television a long time ago . . .”

“Ah, you mean the one with that actress Lena Granhagen, and whoever else was in it . . . No, I didn't. You used to talk about it back then too. About that performance.”

He watched Marta, sort of surprised, and laughed.

“Well, I've been thinking about it,” she said in a slightly stiff monotone. “Don't you think that all that's happening now, that it's a kind of
afterward
? As if everything has already happened. That our meeting here is – a kind of
afterward.
In some way. I can't explain it; you have to have seen the scene I'm thinking about.”

“But I don't think that everything has already happened,” Kosti said. “I don't even like that notion.”

“Are you married?”

He shook his head.

“Have you been married?”

He shook his head again.

“Why not?” she continued. “Why have you never married? Then you have no children either?”

Her voice, which had become hard and shrill, suddenly broke.

“Why the hell didn't you get married and have children?” she sobbed. “Then it's all nonsense! Then everything is completely meaningless!”

She tried to get past Kosti and get out of the cabin, but he blocked her way and caught her.

“What are you doing, Mart? Stay here, come on, look at me.”

His grip was fierce, she thought. He was stronger than she was. But she looked down and averted her face, it was contorted with tears that would not spill and she didn't want him to see it.

“I've got to get out,” she whimpered, and tried to wriggle loose.

“Pull yourself together. You can at least look at me!”

She turned her face toward his but kept her gaze down.

“It's too much. All this is too much.”

He moved his head so he could meet her eyes from below.

“Yes, it is, and that's exactly why we have to talk and look at each other,” he said. “Not throw words around as if we were splashing water and then running away. Right?”

She took a deep breath and looked at him. “I guess you're right,” she said quietly. “But I'm not used to it . . .”

He laughed.

“No, it's not easy for me either, to see you after almost twenty-five years. I mean, it's not easy for either of us.”

The grasp around her upper arms had loosened, but she couldn't see
anything, there was a storm in the darkness, a storm raging through the dark city, she could hear its sounds: sheet metal, glass, wind through the shaft.

“Are you hungry?” she asked with a great distance in her voice, as if she were someone else.

“Yes, finally! Yes, I'll take out something for us to eat. Let's set the table and make it nice here. I've got a bottle somewhere too. For God's sake, Marta, calm down a little, will you? We're not strangers. We've come here to see each other wholly of our own free will. Why don't we try to be a little happy, a little lighthearted?”

She looked at him, at his face, which made her feel at home. A deep feeling inside, she thought, and now she was smiling too, she noticed how the smile tore at her face, how it was pulling it to pieces. She lifted her hand and carefully stroked his cheek.

“You've grown a beard,” she said.

“Yes, that's what happens when you don't shave.”

He let his fingers lightly brush against her face.

“And you have wrinkles,” he smiled. “Tiny, fine wrinkles.”

It felt as if the touch gave her a face, as if he were drawing it with his fingertips.

“I found your pipe cleaner,” she heard herself say. “Over by the school. I've got it in the glove compartment. That's when I knew you were here; it was before I found the cabin.”

“And my letter? You haven't thanked me for the letter!”

“Yes, it made me happy. But these things are difficult. Difficult for me. You know, I've been so lonely. I don't know exactly what life has done to me.”

“But I told you that you weren't all alone.”

“Yes. But perhaps that's not how it is.”

“If it hadn't been true, I'd never have contacted you.”

“I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt you.”

“Now, Mart, now we're going to set the table and make everything pleasant. Let's try to be
here
for a while,
here!
Everything isn't in the past, even though much is. Can you agree with me about that?”

She looked at him. Oh, this was Kosti; this was how he was, now she remembered.

“Let me smell you,” she whispered. “I want to feel your scent.”

He put his arms around her and she pressed her head against his chest and neck and inhaled that nice, grassy smell of his, mixed with whiffs of his pipe tobacco and mosquito repellant. Her eyes burned and then the tears came like a river. She didn't sob, didn't make any crying noises, the tears just fell.

“I'm not sad,” she whispered. “I don't want you to think that I'm sad.”

“No, I know that,” he said. “I've cried too.”

“I know,” she said. “I saw you crying.”

“Yes, you saw it when you were asleep, didn't you?”

He let his lips touch her eyes, first one, and then the other. She saw that he smiled a little.

Marta's voice, whispering out of the half darkness.

“Kosti, Kosti, are you awake? Can I tell you one more thing? About afterward. I want you to understand what I mean by afterward. It's what comes afterward, after the tears and the screams, after the great infatuation and after the crazy dreams that haunt you. It's when you make a cup of tea and you know it's over and you sit at the kitchen table dipping the tea bag in and out of your cup, and the apartment is completely silent, there's only the light of your lamp and silence and the steam from the tea on your face. It's afterward, you see, after all your losing battles – and the terrible shame that's left – the shame of being who you are. It's after all that, after the tears, when you feel your body soften and give in and a stillness comes over you. You're sort of a small child and your mother has finally heard you, heard you crying and fussing and screaming and now she has lifted you up and is holding you tightly to her. Yes, you know what I mean, it's afterward and a sense of calm, a heavy, warm calm spreads through you – ”

Kosti turns in the bunk above her. “But what you're talking about is death – ”

“No, it's not about death at all. I'm talking about consolation. About atonement. The consolation afterward.”

“I think I understand, Mart. But I have to sleep now. I'm already
almost asleep. But can I also say one more thing, before I fall asleep? It's strange that it doesn't feel strange when we touch each other.”

“Yes, it is strange. Good night.”

“Good night, my dear, my own dear – ”

After a moment's silence, Kosti's voice comes from the upper bunk.

“Mart? Are you sleeping? Have you fallen asleep?”

“No, I'm awake. Barely awake.”

“Can I tell you something else? One more thing. I want you to understand what I said, what I wrote. It's important, you see. It's important that you understand. You weren't alone, Mart. I was part of it, part of what happened. Even though you feel all alone, even if you felt alone then, I want you at least to try to accept what I'm saying because it was a big thing for me when I understood that. It was incredible. It shook me; my entire life was turned upside down by it. But I knew that I was responsible for what happened, knew that my life also was determined by it, that my fate belonged with yours. I'm not saying that I've suffered like you or that I've experienced the torment you have. I don't want to take anything away from you. I only want you to understand that you weren't entirely alone, not entirely – Can you understand that, Mart? I've got to get an answer from you because sometimes I've thought that I was simply crazy, just out of my mind.”

“Kosti? Kosti. It's not so easy. It feels like I'm about to break; I understand what you're saying, I'll try to absorb it. But I have to do it little by little, I can't take it all in at once. Your solitude becomes enmeshed with you. It sticks to you, covers you like skin. But I'm happy. You hear me? I'm happy that you're here.”

“I'm happy too. Let's say good night now. Let's sleep.”

“Good night. Sleep well.”

I can see through the darkness now. What was blurry is clear. Now I see so clearly in the light of the extinguished lamps. I see her, the woman who was my mother. Now she will be sacrificed. We children are sitting on the floor, completely silent. All we have to do is watch. It's Daddy, he's on top of her pushing, and he's pushing life and death into her womb. It's as if the lights had not been extinguished but lit. A light beyond words falls on them. Someone has to be sacrificed. Someone always has to be sacrificed in order for the others to see. And darkness settles. That's also how it is. Darkness settles.

In the morning, Marta woke up before Kosti. She was afraid. Without making a sound, she took her clothes and slipped out of the cabin. She dressed outside and drank some water from the bucket. Then, with fear somersaulting inside her, she started walking. She didn't know where she was going; she walked where her legs carried her.

Down on the slope, the mining tower looked like a big animal, a solid, immobile body drinking its own shadow in the early morning light. She walked in under the structure, between the four heavy legs and under the concrete belly, which had cracked in an intricate pattern of tangled tendrils. She curled up there, on the ground, and tried to breathe. It was as if someone or something had chased her out of her sleep and away from the cabin, along the path and down the hill. She was dizzy. She wanted to hide, but how was she to know what a good hiding place would be when she didn't know what was pursuing her? Were the woods a good hiding place, or the branches of a tall tree, or the narrow beach? Was the mining tower a good place?

She grabbed tiny concrete shards and sharp gravel from the ground and squeezed her fists tightly around them. It hurt; it was meant to hurt. She pressed the sharp shards against her face. They cut into her skin. She moved her hand around and around against her cheek. Then she began crying. The tears stung on her face and she pushed her forehead as hard
as she could against the rough ground. Her whimpering turned into small cries. She was afraid of Kosti. She knew that now.