On all fours I found my way to the stairs and then up, step by step, and I swear there were more of them now than there used to be.
Siri was standing in the doorway to our room. She said:
‘Tommy, what are we going to do now.’
I wasn’t able to answer, I stood up to my full height, my neck hurt, and my throat, where his fingers had squeezed and held me against the wall while he beat me.
‘Under my bed,’ I said.
She went into the room, across the floor and knelt down to look under my bed. There was only one thing there. She backed out with her behind in the air and got up with the bat in her hand. I had been the best in the school at rounders, I hit the ball hardest, I hit it in the meat every time on its way down and it flew out of the school grounds and all the goddamn way into eternity where no one could find it.
‘Is that such a good idea, Tommy,’ Siri said. She was twelve years old, I was thirteen and a half, fourteen soon. We were older than that.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
I walked towards the door, and then she said:
‘Can I stay here meanwhile.’
‘You just stay here,’ I said.
He was still in the chair. I am sure he knew I was coming, but he didn’t move at all, and then I was behind him, and I just lifted the bat over my shoulder so my knuckles touched my ear and with all the strength I had left, I struck out in a fierce blow and hit his leg, the kicking leg, and it broke with a sound I can still remember. And even though he was sitting well back in the chair, he fell forward, over his knees and down on to the floor, and he rolled around and lay straight out on his back. He didn’t reach for his leg although his ankle was bent at an unheard-of angle, an angle never seen, and he did not make a sound, not a sigh, not a groan, and I fell to my knees and held his head and said:
‘Does it hurt, Dad’, and then I said: ‘Daddy, Daddy, does it hurt a lot,’ I said, and I didn’t even know why he was at home that day, when he should have been at work. Perhaps he had been fired, what did I know, for something that was not his fault, or perhaps he finally had kicked one of the drivers out of his seat, one who had deserved it. One who had always looked down on him because he couldn’t rise to the place behind the wheel, as the drivers had, and ride the shiny dustcart, but instead toiled his guts out on the roads with one bin on each shoulder and was the strongest man in the district. And he had been alone with us for almost two years, and now we were celebrating Whit as we always did, and although it wasn’t much to brag about, still the lilacs were in bloom and their fragrance was drifting from house to house, and perhaps he had kept it a secret from us what had really happened that day while we were at school, or the day before. It could have been many things. I didn’t know, and I hadn’t asked.
I sat on his bulging chest with the broad shoulders between my legs and my numb, red and grazed hands against the ears either side of his square head. He lay quite still and looked quite small where he lay, quite short, shorter than me, even, I hadn’t noticed until then, and his eyes were squeezed shut, and I had smashed his ankle with the bat, and he smelt faintly of garbage, and I thought, it’s an honest job, someone has to do it, or else it will pile up and stink in the heat, but I couldn’t take the smell any more. It made me feel sick and confused, it lay swathed mummy-like around his body, the filthy bandages from top to toe, around his boots in layer on layer, for ever and always.
I stood up, put the bat down on the floor beside his smashed leg for everyone to see. And then I called Siri.
She came down the stairs. She was crying and smiling and was in the same state that I was in behind my one eye. She hooked her arm under mine, around my back, and I said nothing about the pain her arm inflicted as she tried to lift me the way we had seen in films when they helped the wounded soldiers from the trenches, and the war was won, but the battle lost, and she was too light, of course, and I was too heavy, yet we walked through the hall in that fashion, through the door and into the light, and the sun slapped me gently on my face and was still shining from the same blinding white sky as it had early this morning and had stopped in its course on this very special day when something was going to happen that everyone had been waiting for, and now it had.
In this way, Siri and I walked to the house further up the road, where Jim lived with his mother, there was nowhere else to go, and several neighbours came out on to their doorsteps to watch us limp by, but no one came down to give a helping hand, and if someone had, I would have struck that hand. Right off.
BEHIND THE MILL ⋅ 1966
‘DO YOU THINK it’s true what they say about the cogwheel and your conscience.’
‘No, what.’
‘Well, that your conscience is like a cogwheel, or even like a circular saw, whirring round, and its sharp teeth are biting into your soul, hurting like hell and each time you do something really bad your blood is spurting, but then you do more and more bad things and the teeth are ground down and your soul becomes all calloused and then you don’t feel anything when the wheel goes round and then that’s who you are.’
‘Who.’
The one who does terrible things and doesn’t even notice.’
‘Are you talking about what you did to your dad.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you must notice when you do something that’s really bad.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe I noticed a little when it happenend, but I don’t now. I don’t feel what I did was terrible. It doesn’t hurt anywhere, except in my eye and rib and he did that to me.’
‘Perhaps you’ll feel it in time.’
‘I don’t think so. Maybe I don’t have a soul.’
‘Sure you do. But then what you did wasn’t terrible. It was something you had to do. I know you.’
‘Do you think so.’
‘Sure I do. I am the most Christian of us, so I must know.’
‘I did what it says you’re supposed to do in the Bible. I turned the other cheek. Ha ha. It’s true.’
‘You did. Turn your head. Ah, that looks bad.’
‘It’s started to heal. I can touch it now.’
‘That’s fine. It didn’t do you much good, then, turning the other cheek, and there wasn’t anything you could have done than what you did.’
‘I don’t think Jesus would have done what I did.’
‘Take it easy. You’re not Jesus.’
‘No, sure I’m not. I’m not Jesus. That would have been something, right. Jesus of Mørk. Ha ha.’
JIM ⋅ TOMMY ⋅ 1966
THEY STOOD UP, brushed the soil off the back of their trousers and set off walking around the mill, which smelt of fodder and dust and something else that only mills smell of, malt perhaps, something to do with beer, and they went along the river towards the waterfall which in the olden days drove the millstones against each other and ground the wheat to flour, but today the water fell metre upon metre without rhyme or reason, the boss of the mill said. He saw only the use in everything, saw what everything could be used for, what could earn money, and the moon shining on fresh snow and the blue anemones on the hillsides and the bluebells in the meadows and the wind over the seas and the wind through the rye and the red ridges in the autumn and the birds that travelled here and left again, yes, everything that came here and left, none of this held any meaning for him, it couldn’t be added up, it couldn’t be multiplied, and a waterfall that only fell, it fell into nothing and that was a view that was shared by many. But a child could feel all of this on the palms of its hands, on its hips and legs and could be a blind child and still see it.