Toxic, p.17
Toxic, page 17
‘Why are they so agitated,’ asks Mathilde, ‘do they not want to go up the mountain?’
Mum rolls her eyes as she turns to her brother.
‘They’re calling to each other,’ I explain, ‘the lambs got separated from their mothers in all the commotion, and now they’re trying to find each other.’
‘Poor things,’ says Mathilde warmly as she looks towards the sheep.
‘Don’t feel sorry for them, they’re going on a summer holiday,’ I say.
‘Up the hill to eat lots of grass and get nice and fat,’ says Mathilde, ‘isn’t mutton a bit overproduced?’
Mum walks away from us.
Mathilde does everything wrong. Mum is in charge, as usual, despite the fact that they are someone else’s sheep, and she sends Mathilde up ahead to stand in the neighbour’s driveway and protect her flower bed. I was busy deworming the sheep when she left and didn’t have time to object, but an hour later I’m finally on my way with the flock and when I see her in the distance I realise she is standing far too close to the road. I try calling her phone, but she doesn’t answer, so as we get closer I start waving my arms, and she waves back. When the leading sheep notice her, they slow down, attempt to turn around, causing chaos, and a confused panic erupts in the middle of the flock as a result of being chased from all directions. They jump over each other, before several of them escape to the sides, among the houses and sheds and barns, while Mathilde, still standing in the driveway, continues to wave her arms, although now a little more hesitantly.
‘Is she totally stupid?’ Mum yells at me while chasing a couple of sheep that are heading full-tilt towards Turid’s much-loved vegetable garden.
I try shouting to Mathilde, but I’m drowned out by the noise of shouting and bleating, and I can’t get around the flock, which is still on the road, without causing more chaos, so I take out my phone again, but just as I’m about to call her, I see Andres running up behind her and I’m both relieved and worried about what he is likely to say. He drags her into the driveway and they disappear behind a shed.
We follow the herd up to the summer farm. I’ve been looking forward to showing it to Mathilde, and late June is the most beautiful time to see it, when it looks like a National Romantic painting, with green grass, black mountains with white snow patches and the old log cabin, supported by flagstones, which Andres and I restored a couple of years ago. But the start of the trip has ruined some of the joy for me, and for Mathilde, obviously, who went straight on the defensive after being reunited with the rest of us once we’d retrieved all the sheep. ‘Your mum told me to stand there,’ she said loudly to me while Mum was walking just a metre in front of us, although she didn’t turn around. ‘No one told me that I needed to hide, I thought the whole point was that they were meant to see me,’ she said. I was torn between having to explain to Mum that it was me who actually told her that, and comforting Mathilde, and once again having to correct the impression Mum had of her. I wound up not saying anything, and Mathilde was left walking at the back with my cousin and Andres for the remainder of the trip.
When the rest of us, including the sheep, have been at the summer farm for twenty minutes, my cousin comes walking up the path.
‘Did you lose our helpful guest on your way here,’ Mum asks.
‘No, they’re coming,’ he says.
‘They?’
‘Andres waited for her,’ my cousin says. ‘She needed to rest, I think she overpacked.’ Mum pulls a telling face at me, stands up and starts unrolling some wire fencing. Andres and Mathilde don’t arrive for a good half an hour. Andres has fastened her bag on top of his own and is walking slowly behind her, which I’m impressed by, patience isn’t exactly his strong point, normally he gets annoyed if someone walks too slowly in front of him on the path. ‘You can just let me past if you’re having a leisurely stroll,’ he’ll say, or ‘it must be great to have so much of someone else’s time to kill,’ and he’ll always be first to reach the top. I also feel a tiny bit guilty for having left Mathilde alone, or with Andres, but more guilty for not defending her in front of Mum. I’ve been cursing myself and Mum for precisely that reason all the way here, as usual formulating sentences that should be easy to say only to stop when confronted by Mum’s cold stare. Mathilde raises both hands triumphantly when she realises that she has arrived.
‘You could have said we’re going mountaineering,’ she says to me, before flopping onto the grass beside us.
Dad laughs at her. ‘This was your shepherd’s test,’ he says, ‘you’re one of us now.’ Mathilde kicks off her shoes and wriggles out of her T-shirt. The white gym-top she has on underneath is wet with sweat and the tanned skin on her chest and stomach glistens in the sun. She smiles at him before lying back down and breathing so that her whole upper body rises and falls. I notice a tiny mark from a piercing just above her navel, and swallow. Dad, Andres and I sit in silence, just looking at her for a few seconds, before looking at each other. I turn my head to see Mum standing behind us, and catch the tail end of how she’s looking at Mathilde, a look I’ve never seen before, and then she composes herself.
‘Let’s eat,’ she says.
‘Do you remember how Johannes used to sit here and play to the sheep?’ asks Dad, obviously trying to placate Mum.
‘And how they would immediately run away. They couldn’t stand the Hardanger fiddle, like many of us,’ says Andres.
Mathilde laughs loudly. Mum stands up and walks into the cabin.
‘He was genuinely offended by those sheep,’ continued Andres, ‘do you remember that?’ he says to me.
I nod. ‘But he was drunk,’ I say, ‘a piece of granite would offend him when he was drunk.’
‘Drunk, yeah, shitfaced on the beer Grandma had carried up in her rucksack, because he had to bring his fiddle with him, like it was a matter of life and death.’
Dad looks nervously at the cabin door, and I don’t answer.
‘Seriously?’ Mathilde says.
‘No,’ I say.
‘Erm, yes,’ says Andres who has drunk at least three beers and is no doubt tipsy himself. ‘He always had to have his special beer up here, locally brewed and in glass bottles. Poor Grandma almost buckled under the weight of that bag.’
‘My God,’ says Mathilde. ‘Why couldn’t he carry his own beer?’
‘Because no one else was allowed to carry the fiddle, of course,’ says Andres, ‘Johannes thought that women and fiddles meant bad luck.’ Mum slams the cabin door, and I stare at Andres, not quite sure what’s come over him. Within the family we can occasionally make affectionate fun of Johannes, especially when Mum’s not around, but if anyone else is present the normal rules apply: we don’t talk about that in front of others, as Mum said about most things when I was growing up. And I agree, especially in Mathilde’s case; we should be giving her a totally different impression of the occasion, the summer farm and the family, to the one Andres is now creating.
‘Will the sheep just stay up here?’ Mathilde asks when I start packing to go home.
Andres has been sleeping in the heather for two hours, while we have been repairing the fence, putting out salt blocks and cleaning the place. He wakes up and stretches, Mathilde sits beside him and packs her bag.
‘Yes, they roam freely up here all summer,’ says my uncle. ‘We’re talking proper free-range,’ he says, nodding at Andres and me.
‘Free-range?’ asks Mathilde, trying to stuff a coat into her already-full rucksack.
‘He’s just talking rubbish,’ says Dad, ‘he’s always claiming that his sheep are better off than our cows.’
‘It’s not a claim,’ says the uncle, ‘it’s a fact. Just look around you,’ he continues, waving his arm towards the mountains.
I feel stressed all over again, because it seems like everyone is insisting on being the worst and most caricatured version of themselves today, and this discussion always ends with shouting and swearing, no one ever comes to an agreement, and they all know it.
‘Let’s see how many of your sheep get mauled and killed by wolves and lynxes this summer,’ says Dad.
‘Oh, are there wolves here?’ Mathilde asks excitedly.
‘Unfortunately,’ says Mum from behind us, and I say a silent prayer that she won’t deliver her lecture right now. Two years ago she wound up on a national TV debate after writing a column about wolves, or rather against wolves, and considering the response, and the threats – from all the ‘so-called animal protectionists who’ve never set foot in a sheep-shed’, as Mum said – I can make a fair guess as to what Mathilde’s position is.
‘Do you want me to take your jacket?’ I ask Mathilde before Mum can say any more.
She hands me a large puffer jacket, which, for some inexplicable reason, she chose to bring with her on a hot summer day, and I have to really force it into my rucksack. When the jacket’s finally in and I’ve tied up my bag, I turn to make a comment to Mathilde, and I’m not quite sure what I see: it could be Andres retracting his arm, or Mathilde pushing his arm away, it happens so fast, and before I can give it any more thought, Andres has jumped to his feet.
‘God, is this some kind of Sunday outing? Come on, hurry up, Kristin’s got a nice dinner waiting for me,’ he says, throwing his rucksack on his back and walking quickly down the path.
f#
JOHS
Thanks for everything, it said in italics on one part of the ribbon attached to the wreath on the front of the coffin. Johannes, it said on the other. He hadn’t written it himself, and it had been the only thing he’d complied with. He became very difficult before the funeral, when Mum said he should have his own wreath on Grandma’s coffin. ‘“Thanks for everything”,’ he mimicked, ‘that doesn’t mean anything.’ Then he cried, and it was so overdone and surprising I was unable to speak. Mum got up and left the room, but I sat there in silence with Johannes as he cried and sobbed with his hands over his face. Finally I placed my hand gently on his left shoulder, expecting him to push it away, but after a second or two he placed his right hand over mine.
He didn’t cry in the church, before the ceremony, he turned round in his seat in the first row, sighed loudly, and looked disapprovingly at the organist, who he’d always considered entirely talentless, for no good reason; Johannes hadn’t set foot in the church for thirty years, except for a couple of funerals.
‘Can you hear what on earth he’s attempting to play?’ he whispered loudly to Andres, who was sitting right behind him.
Andres looked like he was trying to nod and shake his head at the same time, then glanced nervously at Mum. But Mum was sitting like a statue beside Dad, staring straight ahead, shoulders back, pale and distant, like she’d been ever since we heard that Grandma had died.
‘What are you talking about?’ she yelled at Dad two days before the funeral. ‘You know nothing, Tormod, nothing!’ He’d been trying to persuade her to read a eulogy in the church, saying that she would regret it if she didn’t. Andres and I were sitting on the steps outside and could hear them through the open bedroom window. ‘She was your mother, despite how angry you were with her,’ Dad said. I’d never heard Mum’s voice like that before, strained and distorted, ‘Get out, who do you think you’re talking to, get off, don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t.’ Andres clasped his hands tightly around his knees as we listened to her sobbing, one of them closed the window, and it went quiet.
Johannes looked relieved as we followed the coffin out of the church, he nodded and even smiled at a couple of the other mourners, and walked with the same gait as he did on stage, loose-jointed and with bent knees. Mum’s brothers, their sons and Andres carried the coffin in front; he didn’t look at it, just averted his eyes to the right and left. The church had been totally full, there were even people standing outside who couldn’t get a seat; I was sure that more than half of them didn’t know Grandma. After the burial, when Johannes stood and received condolences, he was totally in character, mirroring the expressions of those condoling him, tilting his head in the same direction, blinking in sync, taking the mourner’s hands in his, thanking them softly in the same tone of voice.
We held the wake at home in the old lounge, surrounded by Johannes’s heirlooms, nothing in the house was Grandma’s, she wasn’t there at all, not in the silver spoons hanging from the corner cupboard, not in the woven blankets on the four-poster beds, nor the damask tablecloths, nor the candlesticks, nor the crockery, nor the photograph of Johannes’s ancestors on the walls, everything was his. It was barely noticeable that she wasn’t there in person.
One of my uncles rose to his feet and welcomed me, but neither he nor his brother nor my mother gave a eulogy. My father did, but he was never keen on – or good at – speaking at gatherings, he blamed his hearing and kept it short, repeating much of what the priest had said in church: that Grandma was unassuming, she was self-sacrificing and found the most joy in making others happy. Mum stared down at her plate, while Johannes looked mostly impatient, he hadn’t taken part in the planning and had flatly refused to speak at the wake, but when Dad handed the floor to Ingebjørg, my cousin, who had been asked to sing, Johannes looked incensed. He drummed his fingers on the table throughout the entire song, and Ingebjørg had barely sat down before Johannes stood up and tapped a knife against his glass.
‘Thanks, Ingebjørg, no one needs to wonder where your genes came from,’ he said before pointing his thumb at his chest. ‘Anna and I had our wedding reception here, in this room, in fifty-three.’ He clicked his fingers in the air. ‘Can someone get my fiddle?’
One of my cousins leapt to his feet and ran downstairs to get the fiddle.
‘At the wedding I played the gangar dance tune about Hjerki Haukeland. Do you know it?’
Some answered yes, others shook their heads. Mum was still looking straight down. I knew it well, Johannes had played it for Andres and me several times. Johannes took the fiddle and tuned it while he continued:
‘Hjerki Haukeland was a girl from Bergen, who was engaged to Øystein Lurås from Tinn. Øystein was an excellent chap, a rose painter, fiddler and great dancer. His rose painting took him all over the country, and that’s how he met Hjerki. It was a meeting he would regret for the rest of his life, poor bugger, they got engaged anyway, and he gave her a silver belt as an engagement present. Then he went home to Tinn to pick up his brother, Knut, who was to play at the wedding. Back then, this was in the 1800s, getting from west to east took a long time, and if you’d chosen an impatient woman you only had yourself to blame. Because just listen to this: when Øystein and Knut returned to Haukeland, Hjerki was celebrating her marriage to somebody else – Captain Moe from Voss. When Øystein saw that Hjerki had betrayed him, he asked Knut to play the tune he’d written for Hjerki while they were travelling. He invited her to dance – but he was furious, understandably, and as they danced he tore off her silver belt before knocking a chandelier down from the ceiling. He then left Haukeland, and never saw Hjerki again.’
Johannes put his fiddle to his chest.
‘If you ask me, it ought to be called Øystein Lurås, an unstable woman like Hjerki Haukeland doesn’t deserve to have her name on such a good tune, but that’s what happened,’ said Johannes, and then he played the whole tune with his eyes fixed on the picture of Grandma, which for the occasion was standing on the cupboard in front of a bouquet of what someone thought were her favourite flowers.
Mathilde sits on the sofa with her legs tucked under her. We’ve been watching YouTube clips of fiddle competitions, she wanted to see me in my ‘element’, as she put it when she finally came for the fiddle lesson we agreed on several weeks ago and which she has constantly postponed. For the last twelve days I’ve only seen her in glimpses, the birch leaves in front of her window are now too dense, and the bright summer evenings have ruined what was already a poor view of her bedroom. On a few nights it also looked like she may have drawn her curtains. I cringe at the thought that she’s perhaps noticed me at the window.
‘What does dagalaus mean?’ asks Mathilde after watching a film I shot on my phone at a competition where I seem to have been trying to capture the special, post-contest atmosphere of us sitting around the table, drinking and playing and talking.
‘It’s a word for when a cow has passed her due date,’ I say, ‘why do you ask?’
‘Your friend just said it,’ she says, pointing at my screen, ‘when he tried to get the pregnant lady to sit on his lap.’
I haven’t seen any of the film.
‘Oh yes, yes, it was probably Tone, she was heavily pregnant last year,’ I say.
‘Do they normally refer to women as cows?’ asks Mathilde.
‘Only those who look like them,’ I say, and raise my hands in the air as Mathilde kicks at me with her bare foot, which I catch and hold firmly, her toes are straight, clean. Nice. She lets me hold her foot for a moment, before pulling it away again.
‘Shall we play then?’ she asks.
‘I’ll play you the dance tune about Hjerki Haukeland,’ I say while Mathilde holds my fiddle. She is careful, too afraid of holding it by the neck so she ends up holding it in her arms like a baby, which makes me smile.
‘Hjerki,’ she says, ‘that’s quite a name.’
‘It’s quite a story,’ I say before telling her the story as Johannes told it to me.
‘But why did she marry someone else?’ she asks once I’ve finished.
