I had often thought that if Dad died first, then Mum would start to see things my way, but also that by then it would be too late. Once he had uttered those words, then it was too late. That was who I had become, who I had chosen to become, merciless. If you want to see a psychopath, just look in the mirror! That was who Dad had become, who Dad had chosen to become or he hadn’t had what he regarded as a real choice, he’d had to become merciless. I was convinced that Dad was incapable of feeling what Bård wanted him to feel, and so Bård’s email wouldn’t have the desired effect. To Dad Bård’s email would merely be evidence of his ingratitude, the word he had used about Bård and me. And Mum and Astrid and Åsa would shake their heads at Bård’s email, if they ever got to read it. A grown man, almost sixty years old, chiding his old father over nothing.
The email wouldn’t be shown to anyone but Astrid and Åsa. Should it become necessary to talk about it, to explain the situation to the rest of the family, they would say that Bård at nearly sixty was so juvenile that he was still cross with his father for not going to more of his handball matches when he was a little boy.
The email would be water off a duck’s back, and Bård knew it, he probably had no expectations of ever being understood, but for his own peace of mind he had felt a need have his say as explicitly as he had before it was too late.
I read it aloud to Lars. He listened carefully. Wow, he said when I had finished and then he fell quiet. Lars was a father, Lars had a son. Wow, he said again and grew pensive. The snow fell. We all want our fathers to notice us, he then said. That’s what it’s all about. The snow fell and the dog ran around the snow to catch the flakes. That’s the most important thing for a son, he said, for his father to notice him. That’s why Bård wrote to his father, he said.
We sat in silence for a while. Then he said that his father had also been quite distant. That many fathers of that generation were and that back then it wasn’t like today where fathers often turn up for hockey and handball games. Had my father merely been a little distant? No, I said. Because even distant fathers were proud of their sons when they won sailing competitions and ski races and would boast about their successful sons to other fathers, but Dad was incapable of giving Bård a single word of praise, of uttering one positive adjective about Bård. Dad was scared. If you’re scared, never let them see you tremble, and Dad didn’t dare tremble or show any signs of weakness, which is what he believed a compliment to Bård would represent. Dad’s regime was sustained by fear. His fear that everything might come tumbling down if he showed weakness. Dad could only accept Bård if he was humble and submissive, but Bård didn’t want to be. Dad hated Bård getting rich—although money was Dad’s yardstick—because once Bård grew rich Dad lost that power over him, which money represents.
I’m glad I’m not rich, Lars said.
Dad has probably mellowed over the years, I said, that was my impression, but he has painted himself into a corner as far as Bård is concerned. And he isn’t capable or willing to come out of it.
Bård hasn’t included the worst, I said. He merely lists the symptoms. I’m guessing the worst is too difficult to enter into and express because then he would have to become a little boy again.
December 10 and snow. I gave up doing any work, we went for a silent walk in the snow, the world was quiet and white. Lars left that night in a snowstorm and I was alone once more. The darkness came and with it came more snow. I sat in the conservatory and I smoked, although I don’t smoke. There was no wood burning stove there, so I wrapped up warm, I was completely covered up, I smoked and I drank wine, and I looked at the falling snow. I ought to be writing, editing articles, I smoked and drank in the darkness and looked at the snow, which grew higher.
When I went indoors in just after midnight, I saw that Mum had called. I had stored her number, so I wouldn’t accidentally answer the phone in case she called. She had left another message. She asked me to call her. It was this business with Bård and the cabins. Her voice wobbled as it usually did when she wanted to tug at my heartstrings, like when I was a little girl and she would sit on the edge of my bed and tell me how much it hurt her, how she would get chest pains when I didn’t do what she had told me to, when she doused me with her pain before she left, closing the door behind her, her heart unburdened, I presume, while I lay behind with mine pounding. All the times she had called me, despairing at her relationship with Rolf Sandberg, all the times she had called me to tell me she was going to kill herself and how I would spend hours consoling her and talking her out of it because we loved her so much and needed her so much, she had used me up with that tremble in her voice, which suffered as it expressed her suffering.
She had called because she believed that I would reiterate the statement I had made when she called three years ago not long after I had received the Christmas letter about the will, that I would say what she needed to hear, which was that I didn’t want a cabin on Hvaler, that I thought their will was generous—if their will was still the one referred to in the Christmas letter, that is. Because it might have been changed, but whether or not it had been, the circumstances had and were now different from when she had called me three years ago when I was in San Sebastian. I went to bed and slept badly, Bård’s email was on my mind. The next morning I wrote to ask him if he wanted me to tell the family that I shared his view of the conflict. It took a while before he replied. He wrote that he thought I should either stay silent or declare that I too felt unfairly treated.
I could see what he was saying. What he was pointing out. That I was offering to back him but was unwilling to enter the fray and express my own opinion.
But I didn’t want to argue about cabins and inheritance! I had always said that I didn’t care for any of it. I couldn’t very well join in now and demand something, it was beneath my dignity!
But then again I did share his feeling of having been let down by Dad, and by Mum who was loyal to Dad, I shared his view that the valuations were laughable, I agreed with him that Åsa and Astrid were behaving appallingly. Should I leave him all alone on stage like the villain, then sneak in and hide in his shadow?
I called Klara.
She said that I had failed to rock the boat for far too long, that it was exactly what Mum and Dad had wanted when they told us about their will that Christmas three years ago, for me not to rock the boat. It left them free to tear up the will or write a new one at any time, while all along I did nothing and regarded them as generous.
I wrote to Bård that I would write to Astrid and Åsa.
Incomprehensible