7
In the newspapers, on the radio and on TV it was early summer. The national days had been celebrated, first the Norwegian and then the Swedish, with flag-waving, royalty, and parades with bands playing. The usual euphoria surrounding those national days was now gradually evolving into the usual euphoria surrounding midsummer. On the news, on talk shows, and in documentaries, they had just finished picking over the to-be-or-not-to-be of the monarchy and the eternal question of why the Norwegians were so much more energetic in their national celebrations than the Swedes, and were just starting to fill report after report and feature after feature with the price of strawberries and new potatoes, and with midsummer poles ready to be danced around, regional variations on the national costume, wooden horses from Dalarna, with islands in the archipelago, barn dances and red-painted cottages, with herring and aquavit, drunken parties and drunk driving offenses. Obviously the old traditions were being kept alive out there. But here inside the unit we celebrated neither the one nor the other; we saw no sign of a flag or a midsummer pole. Aquavit and herring were not on the menu. We could get fresh strawberries all year round, they were grown in a greenhouse in the galleria, and I never heard anyone mention new potatoes. Personally, I have always thought that new potatoes taste unpleasantly doughy, somehow.
It was, however, time for the monthly welcome party, and I had decided to go. I had wanted to dress in a feminine way, but none of my dresses fit me any more. So I stuck to pants, shirt and jacket. I had put weight on all over my body, and had even grown the hint of a double chin. For those who didn’t know me or didn’t know about my condition, and weren’t expecting to see a pregnant dispensable person, I expect I just looked fat. That suited me perfectly, because I didn’t want to offend any of the new arrivals, didn’t want to cause any kind of unpleasantness or consternation. Not tonight. Tonight I was in the mood to have fun. I was in the mood to dance and get to know some new people.
I combed my hair, then stood there looking at my reflection, alternating between the front view and profile. I pushed my hands into my pockets-in the left was the fossil stone, in the right the key card. I stood up straight. I actually looked strong; it was easy to understand why people were happy to believe that I was. I looked indomitable. I looked as if I had authority.
The menu consisted of apple and cauliflower salad with a yogurt dressing, butterfly salmon with teriyaki sauce and stir-fried vegetables, plus, for dessert, chocolate and orange cream with mascarpone and crushed cookies. I was sharing a table with Mats, Vivi and a new arrival, Miranda, who was a sculptor. Like most new arrivals she was very quiet, poking unhappily at her food. I decided to make a point of talking to her during the party, to try to make her feel better. We started chatting, during the meal at first and then later in the bar as we tried out different drinks with umbrellas in them.
The band hadn’t started playing yet, and slow, rhythmic music was churning out of the loudspeakers at a relatively low volume. Miranda was telling me about her work. She made small and large sculptures in clay-the biggest the size of a human, the smallest the size of thimbles-depicting humanlike figures in contorted postures. She had, as she put it, “a weakness for contorted bodies,” and saw a great deal of beauty in the crooked, the misshapen and the scarred.
“There is,” she said, “actually something beautiful in suffering. Even in purely physical pain. Does that sound perverse? Does it sound as if I’m a psychopath?”
“Well…” I said. “Maybe it does. But I presume that an artistic eye, an eye that doesn’t evaluate and analyze, but primarily observes, ought to be able to perceive beauty in more or less any shape or expression.”
“Oh, it’s so nice to talk to someone who understands!” said Miranda. “Because that’s exactly how it is; it isn’t about my evaluation, it isn’t that I think it’s cool if someone is deformed or suffering or in pain. I just happen to think it’s beautiful.”
There was something about her that reminded me of Majken. She was like “the dark side of Majken,” she was the same but the reverse, you might say. And I told her about Majken’s picture of the deformed fetus that was now hanging above the desk in my apartment.
“I’d really like to see that,” said Miranda, and I told her where I lived and said she was welcome to drop by any time.
Just as I said that, the rock band came on stage. I only needed to hear the first two or three beats of the intro to recognize the ballad “For My Girl,” and out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure approaching from the side with a self-assured walk, straight-backed, lithe, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his forearms muscular, his face weather-beaten and healthy and with a slightly cheeky but somehow shy smile, sparkling eyes, a playful look in those eyes that were-so it seemed to me-seeking mine; and as he came closer I turned slowly to face him, ready to hear him say: “Dorrit, you look lovely tonight,” and to bow and kiss my hand.
But it was someone else of course, someone I had never seen before, someone who didn’t even stop, but just walked past me with a polite nod.
Miranda said something to me, I didn’t hear what it was, the music was loud now. I was just going to ask her to repeat it when there was a movement inside me, a push or a kick. Automatically I pressed my hand against my stomach. Another push now, against my hand, very clear. It was as if we were giving each other a high five, and I wanted to tell someone-no, not someone, I wanted to tell Johannes, I wanted to tell Johannes and no one else that I had just done a high five with our baby. I wanted to take his hand and place it on my stomach, feel the warmth of his hand, let him feel the movements of our child. Let him say hello to his baby.
I could see that Miranda was saying something else, closer now, right next to me. She looked troubled, I thought, but I still couldn’t hear what she was saying, and suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth and speak. I must have looked like an idiot, staring at her vacantly and stupidly, as if I suddenly had no idea who she was. But the baby was somehow pressing on my bladder, because all of a sudden I was desperate for a pee, and I came to my senses, smiled apologetically at Miranda, and said:
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“Don’t you feel well?” she almost shouted.
“I’m fine, it’s just… It’s just… it’s this song, it… Old memories, you know.”
She nodded.
“Do you feel like dancing?” she asked.
“Sure. But I have to go the bathroom first,” I replied. “I’m bursting. Back soon, I won’t be long!”
I pushed my way through the sea of happy party people, residents and staff mixing together; many well-known faces, roughly the same number vaguely familiar, and a small number completely unknown, I said hi and nodded and waved to the left and the right and soon I had reached the toilets at the far end of the room: a row of doors with people going in and out. Voices rumbling and roaring, laughing and shouting, music pulsating from the main room: “This is for my girl, this is for my woman, for my world. Baby, baby, this is all for you…”
The baby must have taken its foot off my bladder-or moved its bottom or head or elbow-because the pressure had gone and suddenly I didn’t need to go to the bathroom at all. Perhaps that was why I now noticed three extra doors at the end without the toilet symbol on them. These three were a bit smaller and looked more like some kind of decoration, a kind of fake door rather than real doors. There were no signs on them, no handles, and it was only when I-sauntering up and down in front of the doors in an attempt to look as if I were desperate to pee-got really close that I saw the narrow metal-framed slot in the door frame.