Emilie should not have been walking alone on the road at that precise time. I imagine that is what he thinks. Not in words, of course, more something he feels. That it was not so much his fault, as it were. He could not help it. But it is over now. She is gone. Swallowed by the air. Only her body remains, and in a while neither will that, everything will have disappeared, as though nothing had been, nothing mattered.
No, I do not know.
I have no access to the inner workings of his mind. Flickerings, a lot of light, vague images.
When something that is gone recurs.
In the head. In the hands. In the soul, the heart, the genes. That is inheritance.
In direct descent.
But what is genetic inheritance and what is merely Freudian repetition compulsion?
I think about the process in relation to Granny’s death. Her last days. But life is no simple process. All the threads. The path of rage for example. From one generation to the next. The fierce urge to expend energy. The need for intoxication. And the darkness. A will that digs, gnaws, is distraught, at a loss.
I wonder if Granny had images of the sea in her head, if that was why she went there. Did she picture the waves? Did the sea fill her mind because her forebears were from the coast, worked on the sea and were sometimes taken by it? Like her beloved brother Finn.
No, what she saw and what she thought? I do not know, I am fantasising. She probably saw something quite different than I did, but just as confusing.
Was she perhaps just filled with restlessness that night? She went to bed but got back up, put something on and walked out through the brightly lit doors of the nursing home without anybody noticing. Maybe her feet just moved of their own accord along the roads she knew so well, out there in Blommenholm, and that was how she ended up on the nearby beach, by chance. Maybe she was not following any plan nor was guided unconsciously by inner images, but it still seems oddly loaded with meaning that she should go there, to the sea. She stripped off nearly all her clothes, lay down on the cool sand and fell asleep. Even though it was June she was freezing when they found her, but if that was the reason she fell into a coma from which she did not come out, I do not know. Nobody said anything about it and neither did I ask. She died within a week, ninety-four years old. I was there with Dad on the last day. They had rung from the hospital and said she would no longer eat, neither solids nor liquids.
Her lips were pale blue and cracked, but she managed to press them hard together when the nurse attempted to moisten her mouth with a cotton bud soaked with liquid. To alleviate the discomfort, she said, this is like dying of thirst.
Granny’s eyes were closed and she did not answer when we spoke to her.
Mum, Dad said, Mum. She lay quite still. Cecilie, he said, Cecilie.
Yes, she said then, out loud, yes.
Dad stroked her across the cheek with one finger. Back and forth. I do not think it was a caress. He was looking for a reaction. Look, he said, look, she is smacking her lips. It’s because I provoked the sucking reflex.
I nodded.
Shall we go? Dad asked. And then we left.