The hallway lies in semi-darkness, even though the ceiling light is on, because the windows are small and set high up in the wall. I usually ‘see’ things when I stand here: wrought-iron and ivy, dilapidated parks, townhouse gardens, thicket, and shadows of houses across the tarmac, strips of strong, yellow sunlight. I know I am in Granny’s time. There are no people at first. Just places. But I can tell by the light, the difference in how it falls, making things appear with a sharpness I would not ordinarily see, in the material of the attire, for example, the fibres in the weave of the woollen clothing, the burls, the shiny lining discernible on the inside of the coat sleeve. This is a winter’s day. I am walking on the street, the dirty blue tram passing by. I come to a pastry shop, enter and stand by the glass counter. A heavy chandelier hangs above my head. The ceiling is high. Large windowpanes face the snow outside, the light is harsh, making me squint. A woman in a white apron and bonnet stands in front of a shiny metal drum. She turns the black tap and hot chocolate runs into my cup. She places the cup and saucer on a tray and slides it down towards the till. The cashier provides everyone with cream from a bowl beside her, using a large spoon, she leans forward and tips the cream into the cup. In the park across the street, heavy snow lies upon the trees, the benches and atop the litter bins, the railings, on the little bridge over the pond. Black open water, two solitary ducks, males.
Where is this park? And why is nobody there?
I come near the inside of a coat, the form of a large man on a deserted street. Johan Andreas Walter. Suit trousers beneath his coat, the lining moving smoothly over the knees. It is winter, an icy wind. Underneath the clothes his body is strong, but unfit, his stomach white and soft, legs and chest slightly hairy, nipples pink. If I am Granny now, then I do not like this body, it is forcing itself in. From a different time. The men from childhood. Granny is tired of men. The road leads neither forwards nor backwards. Snow, cream. Ice, crystal, it does not become anything else, as it were. A bad dream.
Johan Andreas Walter. Granny once showed me that name. She had begun to research her family tree and I was visiting, sitting on her red sofa and reading the names on the genealogical charts she showed me. She had handwritten them in black ink, entered years of birth and death, who was married to whom, and what kind of titles they had. She had transferred the two latest generations to a drawing of a large family tree. My name was included, with a dash after the year of my birth and a space for the year of my death. But I already knew that I was never going to die. Granddad’s name had a big black cross beside it. Between his name and her own, Granny had drawn a knife dripping with blood. She had written ‘Bastard’ in large letters with an arrow pointing to Granddad. She had only put in her own past relatives.
Look, Granny said, our ancestors came from Schleswig-Holstein in the eighteenth century. She pointed to some names. Proper German sailors, she said, yes, of high rank and all, chief officers and captains, that kind of thing. Johan Andreas married a Danish woman, and one of their sons went to Norway and married there, he was a merchant.
And then, after that? I asked.
No, everything gets hard to follow from then on, Granny said, lit up a cigarette, and turned towards the window, the blue sky, the apartment block across the street, the rows of white balconies. I don’t really know if I’ll bother doing much more on it. Nobody is interested in it anyway.
I’m interested, I said, but she pretended not to hear.
I was a very clumsy nine-year-old. Granny looked at my body, and then I understood I had a defect. All the same, she told me about her father. What he made her do.
Why did he do that? I asked.
Because he was mean. He was a mean, mean man, Granny said.
We sat in silence for a while, Granny in the chair, me on the sofa. I did not dare go for a piddle, because then she would see me from behind, and no doubt say I was stout. That meant fat. The sun was about to break through the cloud cover, only a snowflake or two still sailing through the air. The sunlight lay in warm strips across the wall opposite us, where Granny had her portraits, both paintings and photographs. One of the paintings was of her, in a white dress and dark high-button boots, her fair hair falling loose over her shoulders, the front up in a ribbon on one side of her head.
You were pretty, I said.
Yes, I was fetching, quite fetching, Granny replied.
I think I look like you in that picture, I said.
Really, you think so? Granny responded.
I get the red bucket from the cellar. Fill it with hot water and green soap. Switch on the light in the hallway and wash the floor covering, it is linoleum and depicts a Persian rug. I bought the art-deco lamp hanging from the ceiling in a second-hand shop in Amsterdam fourteen years ago. I was there with some friends and fellow writers. On a cultural holiday. We were at both the Rembrandt and the Van Gogh museums. My thoughts were unsettled, the museum spaces big and airy, I do not remember too much about the pictures. The staircase to the Secret Annexe where Anne Frank lived on the other hand was packed with people, we shuffled through in a queue and no one got to see the rooms properly. All that stood out to me was a firewood box, painted an optimistic shade of blue. Anne Frank used to sit on the box, I recalled that from the book, that she was a light-hearted girl. Memory is selective.
And what happens to our memories when we die? Are they arranged according to age, do they lose colour, float in a lake in a dark wood? Do they revolve in a circle, as in life, not leaving us in peace? Or do they become dazzling works of art in our abstract bodies? Maybe Dante was closer to the truth than he knew, maybe after death we no longer have any control over time, we are here one minute, and there the next, in forms unimaginable to us. Heavily regulated, that is the common feature. Controlled by poverty or wealth, age or gender: each body in its own cage, that is hell.
Anyway, I was in Amsterdam at the time, with a group of young, well-functioning women. Being young is an asset. Having many friends who live and think the same way you do also helps, a little apparatus of power.
In the evenings we drank red wine and talked about art and men. It was easy. I was recently divorced, released. Does anyone really understand how important motherhood is? I shouted across the table, not of course that you’re allowed to say that, the law of life isn’t allowed to apply. Yes, my friends shouted, you are allowed to say anything, here’s to motherhood, and we drank champagne, here’s to Jesus Maria, I shouted at the top of my voice, and the bubbles rose in the glass, they are one.
The children and I lived in a rented apartment in Torshov, I was young and anticipating everything to come, not least admiration and recognition: I would take up my deserved place as an author. Not to mention love.
I rinse and wring out the floor cloth in the warm soapy water, fix it to the end of the mop handle and push it with long strokes over the dark, floral-patterned linoleum. It is dusk and I switch on the wall lamp with the red shade. A key on a string hangs from the brass fitting. They found it among Granny’s things, Dad thought it was a house key but it did not fit. The lock must have been changed, he said, because he recognised the key. It was the one she took from him, the one he was not allowed to have any more, because Granny wanted to decide when he was in or out. He was not allowed in when she was resting, nor if he was petulant, or if his sisters had any little girls visiting.