Gunnhild Øyehaug
Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson
1.
The dog came pelting towards me. Mouth half-closed around a stick, coat rippling. Freeze time, I thought, so we stay like this forever, me here in the field, open and white, and him with the snow glittering and swirling around him in midflight.
It was afternoon by the time we turned home. The dog ran in front of me, behind me, beside me. Completely untroubled. When we got to the cabin, dusk was falling. I brushed the snow from us, gave the dog some food, water, lit the fire.
Later in the evening there was a knock at the door. It was Sonja, who owned the dog. The dog leapt to its feet, ran to its owner, and jumped up, Sonja laughed and said doggy things to the dog, Sonja looked at me with a questioning and slightly dumbfounded smile, as though she was saying to me, without saying, you could just have rung and told me. Freeze time, I thought, as I stood watching the dog jumping up at Sonja and Sonja looking at me with her gently quizzical smile, as though she wondered who I was, who could just take the dog like that and not say anything, again. You like the dog, Sonja said, and I nodded. You can come and visit, you know, Sonja said. I nodded again, would you like something to eat, I asked, I’ve just baked some rolls. Sonja looked at me, as though taken aback, either because I’d baked the rolls or because she wasn’t sure what to do, OK, she said.
I put the rolls and a pot of tea on the table. Sonja looked around the cabin; the dog was lying on a blanket on the sofa, asleep. I hoped that I wasn’t dreaming, that I wouldn’t wake up and it would all be a romantic dream, that a person and a dog had come to visit me, that I’d made them food, that I’d put cheese on the table, that I saw a person standing there looking at my family pictures hanging on the wall, as though she was genuinely interested, and the dog lay sleeping on the sofa, and felt cared for and safe. And I liked the way I had written this, intimate and honest, and I liked the fact that Sonja was named after a variety of apple.
2.
The class clapped. The author showed a page from a fruit encyclopaedia on the digital blackboard, with an illustration of a round, red apple, and the text underneath said that Sonja was an autumn apple, resistant to apple scab, sweet in flavour, with a rich red colour and good keeping quality. Well, the author said, that was something I wrote yesterday to show you a way to turn everything upside down at the last moment, first: a realistic story without any meta levels, where “I” has a dog and is happy and looking for moments to freeze, and then at the very end destroys everything by saying “I liked the way I had written this,” so everyone falls out of the story, and knows that what they have just read is fiction. Obviously, it’s not a style I would use for anything I was going to publish, said the author who was the lecturer that day. The creative writing class at the creative studies college looked at the author. They didn’t actually chorus “oh”, but might well have done by the look on their faces. The author was tall, had dark hair and a long, pointed nose that gave him a distinctive profile, his slim hands holding a pen as he spoke. He looked at the class. His name was Aksel, after his farmer father’s favourite potato. Aksel caught young Signe’s look of scepticism—or was she irritated or annoyed? She had a slightly protruding upper lip, and a very sweet mouth, and when she didn’t believe something, the pout became even more pronounced. Her eyes were big and serious, and it was clear she was thinking something. Her hair was light brown and cut in a bob that framed her face. Aksel waited, he waited for a critical comment, or at least a question, from Signe. Does anyone have any strong objections to the text? Aksel said. A hand went up, we don’t know very much about his background, the student said, we aren’t told much about why it’s so important to him that someone comes to visit, what it is that he finds difficult with other people. Aksel nodded. True, he said. Perhaps there could be something in the room that gives a clue, he could have an aquarium or something like that, the aquarium could represent the confined, introverted space, keeping all the fish at a distance from him, another student said, which made Aksel smile, good idea, he said. An aquarium in a cabin? a third student said, that’s not very realistic. No, that’s true, the second student said. And what would the aquarium symbolise, would the aquarium symbolise him, that he was an aquarium with fish in it, with a glass wall to keep the world out, or would the fish represent the world he couldn’t connect with because he was outside the aquarium? a fourth student wondered. Let’s forget the aquarium! the second student said. Everyone laughed, and the corners of Signe’s mouth turned up, but barely. Why does he want to freeze time? another student asked. Signe turned to the student, but that’s obvious, Signe said, who usually corrected everyone, he wants to freeze time because it’s much easier to live in a happy moment than with all the difficult stuff before and after, and in any case, it’s a device to illustrate writing, writing is an attempt to stop the constant flow of all that is difficult, to hold it still, to observe it. Signe glanced at Aksel, just long enough for him to realise that she wondered if he was impressed by what she’d said, before she looked at the floor. Her objection didn’t come until the day was over and he was out on the street that ran like a long sentence past the creative studies college, which lay more or less in the heart of Oslo, not far from the fjord. Signe came out with her bag through the glass doors, and stepped onto the pavement where Aksel was standing lighting a cigarette. She looked at him with the same sceptical expression, pout, and eyes. Let’s continue in the present tense. It’s easier, when it comes to dramatic experience: I know, Aksel says, I know I shouldn’t. By this, he means smoking. There was something, Signe says, something I thought about that text you read out today. I could tell, Aksel says. Signe looks surprised. Oh, she says, because she doesn’t really like the author’s overconfidence. What I thought was this: I liked the story without the meta sentence at the end, which just ruined the whole thing. I liked it when he was out in the snow with the dog, and he was happy, and that then he went back to the cabin and baked rolls and had a visitor. End of. What you’re saying is that you like a realistic narrative, Aksel says. What I’m saying is that I like stories that are genuine, Signe says. That are not clever and pretending to be something they’re not. But it was only an example, the author says. I don’t believe you, Signe says. I think you liked it when you were writing it. I think you were into it. I think you were in the landscape in your head, I think you pictured the snow, and the dog, and I think you liked that there was something about the dog that the protagonist longed for, and I think you thought that if you named a person after an apple, the meta device you used to leave your own story would somehow feel less obvious because of the symbolism of the person growing out of the soil, which we all do really, in a way. AND: I don’t for a second believe that you actually wanted to deconstruct it at the end, I think it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but you’re trying to camouflage it. Aksel: I don’t mean that all stories should finish with “I liked the way I had written this.” Signe: And I don’t mean that that’s what you meant. I think you have a longing, and that’s alright. Aksel: I’ve never said that it’s not alright to long for something. Signe: But that’s precisely what you do when you undermine your own story about it. Aksel: I don’t agree. Signe: What’s your argument? Aksel: I’ll have to think first before I can answer that. Signe: Have you read Inger Christensen’s poem about dreams? Aksel looks at her. Every time she opens her mouth she makes him a little more like a snowy field inside—empty, he has nothing to say. It’s something about her eyes, they’re so incredibly big and see right through him, he can’t hide anywhere, he feels nervous, or is it anxious? I can’t remember, he says. It’s in Alphabet, Signe says, and it, or rather she, compares an apricot tree in bloom with someone who’s dreaming, when the tree is flowering, it’s full of dreams, apricot blossoms are the dreams, you understand? And then she says she finally understood that “A dreamer / must dream like trees / be a dreamer / of fruit to the last.” That’s utterly wonderful, Aksel says. And it is wonderfully true. But you know, he says and looks at Signe, in the same collection of poems there’s another apricot tree in a dream that someone dreams, and did you notice what that apricot tree does? Signe’s eyes flicker. The apricot tree scrutinises the dreamer, the “I” that is, before turning around and leaving suddenly. What do you think about that? Aksel says and takes a drag on his cigarette before dropping it to the ground and stepping on it with the toe of his shoe. Signe looks at the stubbed-out cigarette. The stubbed-out cigarette grows into a symbol. She looks at him with a stubbed-out cigarette in her eyes. I think I need to think about it again, Signe says, because she’s actually never thought about it, the fact that this collection of poems that she loves for its tangible content (apricot trees exist, etc.) and strong morals (take care of the planet), also uses meta devices. She, who normally catches everything, has failed to catch something so fundamental. What we are witnessing is an intellectual turning point for Signe. And Signe would no doubt wish that this entire conversation had a different outcome from the one it did, that she had not become the apricot that she naturally became for him, in fact, it took her several years to get over it, that she had gone home with him, this and that happened, in short, that in the course of a few months they went through the whole tiresome young woman/older man relationship that inevitably follows its necessary dramaturgy based on the young woman’s need to be seen and her essentially mature mind that finds no resonance in her male peers, and the older man’s attraction to youth and constant longing to be seen, a longing that for some men is voracious and never satisfied, so constantly seeks out new, fantastic girls, but time and again these girls’ lack of life experience seems to ruin the relationship for the older man, whereas the man’s lack of listening ears appears to ruin the relationship for the young woman, not least, that he almost exactingly uncovers great flaws in her not yet fully developed sense of self (which is exactly what provokes the need in him to carry on searching for the perfect woman who does not have this flaw), but the most frustrating thing of all, says Signe, and surveys her students at the University of Bergen, who are sitting listening to her story, which she has slipped into so unexpectedly, was that it ended just as I had wanted his story about the cabin and the dog to end, with fruit, that’s to say, my bare arse, to put it humorously, and normally that would have been the kind of irony that I appreciate, but now I’m so old, and this is my last day as professor at this institute, and this story is what started it all for me, the reason I became a literary scholar in the first place, and I feel, actually . . . nothing. Nothing at all. The students clap uncertainly. Signe smiles at them, she is sixty-eight years old and a rather large lady, and she has to bend over slowly to pick up her bag from the floor. She takes her coat from the chair and leaves Auditorium A at the university for the last time.
3.
Outside, the sky is blue, it’s late May, and Signe walks to the bus that will take her home. She passes a flower shop, which is blooming with bouquets of tulips and roses and anemones, and bushes she does not know the name of, which are temptingly green in their own way standing there in their pots, but at the back, right against the flower shop window, on a small table, is a little tree that catches her eye, and she stops. And this is what the scene looks like from the outside: a stout, older woman stands looking at a tree. She holds her bag with both hands in front of her girth, resting the bag on her stomach, as older women with bags often do. And what is happening inside her is this, she is asking the question: What kind of tree is that? She leans over to look at the label where the name of the tree is written. And it says: Sonja.
Next scene: Signe takes the apple tree to the counter, she pays, the apple tree is given to her in a plastic bag, but that doesn’t work, Signe has to carry the apple tree in her hands. Thankfully the tree is small and thin, and it’s not far to the bus.
For the entire bus journey home, Signe is in a strange mood. Another line from Inger Christensen’s book pops into her mind, perhaps because she is carrying an apple tree: right at the end of the collection, there’s a poem about some children sitting by a road after a war, and they have lost everything. And then the poem says: there is no one to carry them anymore. She sits with the apple tree on her lap and looks out at the sky. It’s blue, with wispy white clouds. When she eventually gets home, she lets herself into the small, red house in a garden that is so well-suited to an older woman of girth, and puts down the apple tree in the hall. Sonja? Signe calls. The story crackles with surprise. Sonja answers from one of the rooms, but Signe can’t make out if it’s the kitchen or the living room. Mum! Sonja shouts. Sonja comes hopping out into the hall—Sonja is Signe’s forty-five-year-old daughter. She has Down syndrome and works in a sheltered workplace, where, in her own words, she makes “everything” and always finishes for the day half an hour before Signe comes home from university. Sonja is the result of the months when Signe and Aksel went through the relationship dramaturgy of young woman/older man, and Signe has been alone in her responsibility for Sonja, from the time even before she discovered she was pregnant, as Aksel disappeared in a way that no one can really hold against him: he drowned in the Mediterranean, he dove in too deep, down to a coral reef, and he should perhaps have remembered the discussion in class about the aquarium as a possible symbol, he might perhaps have seen that it was in fact a foreshadowing, but he didn’t, he dove down and there he drowned, in all that blue, with fish of all colours swimming cheerfully around him. Signe hugs Sonja. Let’s make dinner now, Signe says. Signe feels a lump in her throat a number of times through dinner, it must be because it was her last day as a professional, now she’s a pensioner, all that’s missing is the big farewell party, and so she embarks on the final stage of her life. How will Sonja get on without her is a question that has cropped up more than once, even though she’s not ill, she’s just old, there’s no doubt about that. She tries to keep the chitchat going, asks in a thick voice: So how was it at work today? Just like normal, Sonja says. I love you, Signe wants to say. And was Andrea nice today? Signe asks. Andrea Liliane Hamar, Sonja corrects her. Signe smiles. Was Andrea Liliane Hamar nice today? Signe asks, it’s easier now, she will be able to eat without crying. She is always nice, Sonja says. Oh, Signe says, I had the impression that Andrea could be a little naughty at times. Yes, Sonja says. But not today. She’s learnt to behave herself. That’s good, Signe says.
Sonja and Signe do the washing up. Signe washes and Sonja dries. Signe looks at her, looks at her daughter who is standing there drying the plates with such care, the tears well up in her eyes, freeze time, Signe thinks, freeze time as I stand here looking at her! But time does not freeze, Signe hands her an already dried plate. There! Sonja says. Now we’ll have coffee! Yes, Signe says, and swallows. But first, I’ve got a surprise for you, Signe says, wait a moment. Signe goes out into the hall, and comes back into the kitchen with the small apple tree. Oh! Sonja cries. A tree! It’s an apple tree, Signe says, and it’s called the same as you. Sonja Olsen? Sonja says. Just Sonja, Signe says. I thought we could plant it in the garden. Let’s plant it now, Sonja says. OK, Signe says.
4.
Signe and Sonja kneel in the garden and pat down the soil around the trunk of the small tree. They are both wearing gardening gloves. The story is unsure as to where it should end. If it should end here, or if it should end with Signe’s young fingers that once leafed through a book and found a poem by Inger Christensen where it said that “A dreamer / must dream like trees / of fruit to the last,” and she felt that this was so true that it couldn’t be truer, that it was a truth that was radiant and luminous—or if it should stop with an open, white landscape where Aksel is throwing a stick to a dog that’s not his, that he has borrowed, or if it should stop when the dog picks up the stick and comes running back in a way that is ridiculously happy, as though the dog is smiling (but it’s actually because it has a stick in its mouth) and its long black-and-white fur ripples around the dog’s body as it jumps through the circus director’s hula-hoop-like hoop, stretched with thin greaseproof paper. Sonja, the small tree, has no answer, just a thin trunk and a few branches, and some budding leaves. And in this moment, she stands there in the garden, a tree in waiting, something that will grow, blossom, bear fruit, lose fruit, lose her leaves, be covered in snow, etc. with an astonishing patience and the peace that is particular to apple trees.