Uddrag fra
Lyse tider
Af Juliane Preisler
“Yes, but I just want everything to be fine,” he said. “Can’t we just say that everything’s fine?”
And she thinks about the cat in the windowsill. And about the dog in the courtyard. And about all sorts of small animals that are just running around. About the stars that simply shine. Stones that lie on the ground. Rain that falls. And about all the other people who also just want things to be fine.
“Can’t we just say that everything’s fine?”
She thinks about the people who found each other, and yet didn’t after all. She thinks about all those people who are in different places at the same time. How sad that is. And about those who have never slept together and suddenly can’t sleep without each other. Even though they’ve still never done that. Slept together. She thinks about all this while she listens to him saying:
“Can’t we just say that everything’s fine?”
He could easily imagine that the Station was a swimming hall. The train station, that is. It has that echoing quality. All that’s missing is water. Definitely missing water.
He’s sitting on the south bench. He calls it the south bench because it’s somehow closest to the light, whenever there is any light. Outside. Like right now. It’s summer, and people are wearing strange clothing, and not much of it either. Sandals so you can see their ugly feet. Amazing how many ugly feet there are if you stop to think about it.
He himself is reasonably inconspicuous with his long hair and long beard, wearing a little more clothing than the others if anyone happens to look closely, but no one does. Why should they? He’s just sitting there, wrapped up in hair and fabric, with no place to live. Except here.
Tourists are arriving. Those from other countries and those from here, the ones who don’t belong. In principle they speak the same language, maybe even look pretty much the same, but they don’t belong. Their feet are too bare, their shirts too checkered, their hair too combed. Or something like that.
It’s still early in the day. You can tell by the sounds: that special echo that changes with the number of people. It seems to get deeper or higher, depending on how many people there are.
They’ve just moved in, and there’s a very high ceiling. It’s so high that she can’t imagine touching it. It’s like being inside a box without being able to reach all the sides. The thought makes her uneasy, the fact that she can’t reach it. She pictures herself standing on a ladder and doing just that, touching the ceiling, placing the palm of her hand against it, but tall ladders like that don’t exist. At least not here.
There’s also a fireplace. In the big room with the ceiling that’s much too high there’s a fireplace at one end, and she wants to light a fire in it because she thinks that this will somehow bring the ceiling and floor closer together. She has never had a fireplace before. She doesn’t know how to go about lighting it, and when she asks him, he says that’s not something you can just do. Just light it. It has to be cleaned out to make an airway. A peculiar word. She looks at his lips as he pronounces it; how peculiar it is. Airway. And even if that's done, there's no guarantee the whole thing will work, because there might not be enough draft. Draft? She gives up. The fireplace stands there gaping at the end of the big room with the high ceiling.
Way over from the darkest end, meaning from the north bench, he can see Sonja come lurching toward him. She lurches most in the morning; it’s as if she somehow manages to straighten up as the day progresses, and the more she drinks. It could be that she drinks herself sober.
But right now she’s lurching like a ship without a rudder, and he knows from experience that she’s also sniveling. So much so that it’s almost impossible to understand what she says. And he has no desire to talk to her this early; it often turns into too much of a monologue. He could get up and leave, but he doesn’t feel like it. She lurches closer. And sits down. Sigh.
And then she starts sniveling something about some trees or leaves, or whatever it is. And Sonja is really the ONLY one who can talk about trees or leaves in the middle of the Station. In the morning. When it’s echoing. But she’s a Finn, after all. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.
There’s one tree out in the yard. There probably could have been more, but there is only one. She imagines it getting up with her in the morning, even though she knows perfectly well that it has been standing out there all night long. She avoids the yard when it’s dark, she doesn’t really know why, maybe it’s just because it’s still unfamiliar to her. But he goes in and out, even at night; he goes out and maybe stands under the stars or the moon if there is one. Or maybe it’s just something she dreams that he does, maybe he doesn’t do anything out there, just goes out to get some air.
“Can’t we just say that everything’s fine?”
And things are fine. They are.
But now it’s morning, and he has driven off to work before she leaves, and there’s that silence that appears whenever he leaves the house. And her, leaves her. Sometimes she wishes he would leave something of himself behind, maybe just a little note. But he doesn’t do that. Ever. For him things are just... fine.
There’s so much that she still doesn’t know. About him. Maybe also about herself. And at that particular time of the morning it all seems to accumulate, everything that she doesn’t know. Almost echoing. Sort of the way certain places echo.
A little later she takes off too, and the house stays behind with its yard and its solitary tree, and then it’s completely different. There’s just that moment in the morning when she... can’t see that things are fine.
She smells. Sonja smells. He does too, he knows that, even though he tries to keep it to a minimum by washing whenever he goes past a sink. In his case it’s mostly his clothes. But Sonja smells different. He doesn’t think anyone else smells like that, not anywhere. Not really filthy, he wouldn’t call it that, maybe like... harvested grain, such a surprising, rather sharp smell. People who haven’t ever been among newly harvested grain might think that it smells green or aromatic, but it smells more... sharp. Dry. Why is he thinking about this? It’s because of how she smells, that’s right, and all her sniveling about plants.
Two police officers walk past on their morning rounds, looking very tired, the way they do only in the morning. As if they’ve worn out their feet during the course of the night. Sonja flinches, just at the sight of them, the officers, that is, not their feet, but she stays where she is and keeps sniveling. Sigh.
The officers glance in their direction and try to look stern, which kind of falls flat, the way they’re dragging their feet... Neither he nor Sonja turns to look back; that’s not something you do. It would be almost like shouting or creating some kind of scene.
On her way into town she passes all the other trees. And she thinks about her solitary tree back home; now it’s really all alone. And about the fact that it would be possible to live somewhere else entirely, maybe out in the country. And there would be trees everywhere, and none would be all alone, and there wouldn’t be any of this going out and coming back home, you could just stay out there. How strange. It might be like standing still inside yourself.
Suddenly she recognizes a game that she hasn’t played with herself since she was a child. Back then she would imagine a grown-up life and how it might be. But now that she has a grown-up life, it will have to be different. A different life, that is. Life in a different place, with someone else, with a different job or none at all. Other children or none at all. It’s practically impossible to imagine the silence of having no children. And yet, they’re not home anymore, her two children, Sarah and William; they’re almost grown up and have left home and are on their own. It IS almost silent around her, though it will never be completely silent. In some sense they’ll always be there. Not always her first thought when she wakes up, she can’t say that; so much happens during the night, dreams, a half-waking life. But the children are always her last thought before she falls asleep. Keep them safe, she thinks. She doesn’t know who she’s addressing her thoughts to. Probably to those who decide. But to have no one to think about or to keep safe, and that... silence. How strange. And the trees rush past, just like the days. How strange.
That’s one thing she’s good at, Sonja is. No matter how drunk she is or how much she snivels, she manages never to create a scene if the police are nearby. She can handle the basics. But now they’ve gone past with their tired feet, and now she’s sniveling again about forest lakes and the reflections of clouds. Clouds!
“Shut up, Sonja,” he says.
Why didn’t she just stay out there? At the lakes. Under the clouds.
And yet she’s managed to capture a small part of him with her crazy sniveling, because now he suddenly notices a... smell. Aside from his own smell, mostly his clothes, and aside from hers, he notices a totally extraneous smell, as if from... grass, possibly. Or trees. How strange.
And actually it would have been very nice if he could have told someone about it, other than Sonja, that is; about that smell, and how extraordinary it is. But there’s no one else, and she’s sniveling, and he shuts her out and looks at the people instead, and that’s fine too. Sort of.
She’s at her own office. For some reason she can still hear the slam of the car door when she got out of the car, but now she’s actually in the office, and everything about it is completely familiar. She’s the one who suddenly seems to have become slightly foreign, among the trees, or wherever it was. And now she starts taking care of things that have to be taken care of, organizing her day, so to speak. She has to pick someone up at the main train station right after lunch. How annoying. It’s always annoying whenever she has to leave the office after she’s finally gotten there, but that’s how it always is. So she’d better get some work done before then. And she does get all kinds of work done, and she doesn’t think about much in the meantime. But strangely enough, she happens to think about him, her husband; she doesn't usually do that when she's at work, but suddenly he's there saying something about having enough draft in the fireplace, and it's confusing, because she doesn’t usually think about home when she's here. How confusing. Yet she can hear his voice, saying what it's saying. About enough draft. In the fireplace.Then she goes back to focusing on getting her work done.
People, yes, well. Such a... variety. Different sizes, colors, open and closed faces, a lot of clothes or very little, bags or no bags, baby carriages, suitcases... He himself is big. Everything about him is big: his body, his head, his hands, feet, hair, beard. That’s his way of being. But other people have different ways of being: small and delicate, or tall and thin, bald or toothless ways, for example.
As Sonja keeps on sniveling, he sees an old man in a elegant suit. It looks like it might have been custom-tailored, quite unusual. He’s walking with difficulty, using a cane and carrying a folded newspaper, and he doesn’t know where he is, or rather, he knows where he is but not why. For him time has stood still ever since that suit was made and he put it on for the first time. And everything that has happened since then and that might be mentioned in the newspaper under his arm hasn’t really made an impression but seems to just float... past. Must be strange. Rather nice, actually. And then he sees just as clearly two young guys with hard faces; they’re at the age when they become deadly whenever there’s more than one of them, and they’re walking along eyeing the old man. Considering it. Just for a moment. But then they let him slip past. It’s hard to know why something like that happens or doesn’t happen; maybe he looked too strange, in his pocket of time. That was probably it.
Now it’s time for lunch and all the other people and a certain type of conversation. Everyone emerges from their offices to get something to eat and wants to have a chat, but they don’t want to overdo it; that’s not what they’re there for, after all, and it’s actually rather embarrassing if anyone happens to talk about anything serious. She ended up doing that once, and she can still remember that feeling in her ears, how her voice changed from its usual light and casual tone and seemed to acquire a slower resonance, and how everything grew quiet around her. Much too quiet.
Well, she isn’t going to think about that now. She’s thinking about lunch and what she has to do afterwards, and her voice sounds completely normal. Except for the fact that he keeps on talking about that fireplace. It’s a little strange. Sometimes it’s hard for her to hear what the other people are saying, but it’s probably not very important anyway.
And then lunch is over and she has to leave for the train station and pick up a business associate. Why is she the one who has to do this? It’s such an interruption in her day; it would have been much better to go back to her office. But she has been appointed to do it, and so she has to go, and there are no trees on these streets in the center of town, no fireplaces either. Where did that come from?
Okay, now she has to go inside and find him, that business associate, and she’s been told what his name is and what he looks like: tall, thin, dark-haired. It shouldn’t be difficult.
A long time has passed, a very long time, and it happened in a way that makes you not really notice it, a good way. More people have started to arrive now; it’s going to be harder to keep an eye on specific people. Sonja is no longer sniveling. She has fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder and now she’s snoring instead, and that smell, the grain smell is a little too close. Besides, he doesn’t like sitting with her like this; they might be taken for a couple, and that embarrasses him. It really does. To be taken for a couple with someone he’s not really with. Like Sonja. It’s important to maintain certain proprieties.
He wonders vaguely if she’s dreaming about those trees or clouds or whatever it was, but that’s her own business. Dreams are actually rather strange things, if you really think about it, but he doesn’t need to do that, not right now at any rate.
There’s a buzzing sound. A buzzing around him from the post-lunch hubbub, not like the end-of-the-workday hubbub, not at all, but still a buzzing. And it’s nice, and he lets the buzzing keep going.
Tall, thin, dark-haired, standing under the clock. Surely it couldn’t be that difficult. She’s standing under the clock, isn’t she? She looks up and then feels stupid, because of course she is, she’s standing right under the clock. So it’s just a matter of waiting and glancing around, but it’s hard to feel completely calm as she waits, with all this... buzzing around her. And she keeps seeing something else and someone else, and she gets caught up in that instead of searching for someone tall, thin, dark.
Over on that bench, for example. There sit two... what is it they’re called? Well, two of those types. She’s sound asleep, she can almost hear her snoring all the way over here. He’s... big. Very, very big, everything about him is so big; you could practically get lost in his hair. Where did that come from? Well, it’s true, you could practically get lost in his hair. Strangely enough it actually looks quite clean, his beard too. And there’s something about him that... something about him.
While she looks at those two who are not the ones she’s supposed to be meeting, he keeps on talking about the fireplace somewhere in the back of her mind, and that is actually quite incredible.
People are always standing under the clock waiting for each other. Once in a while they look up at the clock in a stupid way, either to be sure that they are in fact standing under it or to see what time it is. Again.
Well, right now there’s a... woman standing there. Not young, not old, not beautiful, not ugly, but not in between all those things either. Slightly inexplicable. Searching. Mysterious? But not searching in the right way. She should be standing there and looking around for someone she’s supposed to meet, shouldn’t she? Isn’t that what people usually do? But she’s not doing that; she’s getting lost in all sorts of places, even in Sonja, even in him, strangely enough. He can feel her gaze lose itself, and he looks away for a moment. As if to give her permission.
Okay, now she pulls herself together and looks around, doing a thorough job of it, searching for the one she’s supposed to search for. There’s something about her, as if she’s not really there at that spot where she’s standing, as if instead she’s... somewhere with trees... or clouds... There they were again, those trees. How annoying that is. And then there’s something mysterious, if that’s what it is; there’s something about her.
She turns around and catches sight of something or other. He can follow her gaze, now more focused, to the other end of the platforms, where a tall, thin man is approaching, dragging his suitcase. She gives a look of recognition, though still hesitant, so it’s probably someone who has merely been described to her. The man with the suitcase drags himself closer. Behind him he sees the two young guys from before; they’re ambling along, thinking about the possibility. Again.
So there he is, over there near the platforms. He’s dragging a suitcase, which looks heavy; she thought he was staying only a couple of days. But she sees him and he sees her, and just for an instant it occurs to her that SHE has also been described to him, and she wonders in what way, but then she forgets about it. She shouldn’t wave, should she? She doesn’t wave, just gives him a look of acknowledgment, a suitably sweet smile, and stays where she is under the clock.
As he comes closer, she has such a sensation of... sunshine. She can’t explain it in any other way, maybe as if a ray of sun had come through the roof, or some dust was dancing. How strange. It has nothing to do with him or his suitcase, it’s more as if it’s inside of her. Inexplicable. And simultaneous.
And he’s dragging the suitcase and some young guys are ambling along behind him; maybe they could have helped him carry it, in another time, another place, but the sunshine and... trees. There they were again, the trees.
Sunshine. A man with a suitcase is moving toward a woman who is waiting, and for a moment everything is so... normal, and he can feel the sunshine outside; it hasn’t penetrated indoors and yet it’s there with its normality and its trees. Sonja’s trees. Couldn’t she just keep them to herself?
And there is a smooth transition, very smooth, from dragging to waiting to ambling to... something else. Then things happen fast, then it’s the two young guys who suddenly make up their minds, and it’s broad daylight, but they probably don’t know that, and they’re right behind the man with the suitcase, very close, much too close. And there’s nothing to be done about it. About anything. One guy has grabbed hold of him, and the other has something in his hand. Is it a knife? In broad daylight. And he himself has jumped up from the bench and is in motion before he even realizes it, and much closer now, so he can see the whole thing. The idiot gives up the suitcase but not his wallet or whatever it is they want; he lets go of the suitcase and starts flailing his arms and legs. Idiot. He almost reaches them, he almost reaches them in time to grab the guy with the knife before the guy with the knife grabs the man with the suitcase. Almost, but not soon enough, he doesn’t quite make it.
He looks perfectly normal with his suitcase and the sunshine that isn’t actually inside, and she’s about to move forward to greet him, or else she’ll stay under the clock; maybe that’s what she should do...
But suddenly the two young guys are very close, much too close. Arms, legs, a knife, why isn’t anyone doing anything, why isn’t she doing anything? But she doesn’t budge from under the clock while the man from the bench with the mass of hair and big beard almost reaches the guy with the knife and the tall dark-haired man, who is flailing his arms and legs. She manages to think that he didn’t look like someone who could move so fast, that big guy, and then the tall thin man is down, curled up on the ground, and she can’t see the knife anymore, and the two young guys have taken off. Running. Running fast, very fast. And they’re gone.
Whatever it was that has held her motionless now releases its grip, and she too is running. It looks as if he’s curled up around his stomach, which is not good, it doesn’t look good. And now she reaches him, and the dark hair is thin, she can see his scalp through it, and that has nothing to do with anything, and the big man is trying to unfold the thin man or do something like that. To help. And someone is still talking about a fireplace.
And suddenly two police officers are there too, in the confusion, down around the man on the ground, up around the man who is standing. Where did they come from?
He doesn’t make it, just like when... you can’t reach something. The edge of the swimming pool, the sidewalk before the truck appears. He doesn’t really see where the knife enters, but it doesn’t look good, doesn’t feel good. In the stomach. They run off, and there’s no sense in running after them; he can’t run that fast, no one can. He tries to unfold the man, to see what has happened. Blood? Yes, there’s blood. He tries to help. And he senses rather than sees her, the woman, she’s there too, and suddenly someone grabs hold of him, and it can’t be her. It’s the two police officers, and he knows what is going to happen before it happens in that... weary way in which you simply know.
They hold onto him tightly and unfold the man. What a hell of a lot of arms two officers can have, and there’s a lot of blood. A lot. And the woman, she flutters around and is of absolutely no use at all, and why should she be, and it’s odd, because it’s irrelevant, but he can sense her fluttering. Like... inside his mind, fluttering like a butterfly in... the sun.
Too many arms and legs, she can’t see that it’s doing any good, she can’t see any sense in holding onto the big man. Until she sees the knife.
“It wasn’t him,” she says.
They’re not listening. They’re holding on and unfolding and not listening.
“It wasn’t him!” she says louder.
Now one of them casts a glance at her, so at least he did hear her, but that glance doesn’t look promising; actually, nothing at all looks promising right now. Blood? Yes, there’s blood, a lot of it. And she has the absurd feeling that she shouldn’t be surprised and yet she is; she knows full well that blood is that color, almost glistening, and that there’s a lot of it, and that it’s real. Yes.
She feels slightly nauseated, she’s tried this before; you swallow and think about... anything. Sunshine, for example.
Or about being somewhere that’s bright and... fluttering. Differently bright and fluttering, any place but here. And shut up about that fireplace, it’s really incredible. Incredible!
“It wasn’t him,” she says.
Once, quite normally, then a little louder when they don’t pay any attention. And he shouldn’t be surprised, but he is all the same; he’s not often surprised. About anything.
Well, the whole thing takes a long time, much too long, while the tall man lies there bleeding. You can see his scalp through his thin hair, and that’s sort of a shame. That too.
Finally more people show up who know how to do more than just grab and hold on, people who can get the bleeding man up off the ground and do something with him, get him carried out.
He sees his scalp disappear off to the side, a tall, thin figure under a blanket on a stretcher, and he doesn’t know if there’s any chance. Maybe. Maybe not.
One of the officers stays behind in bewilderment with the heavy suitcase, and the thin-haired man doesn’t care, that’s quite certain; he’s way, way beyond the place where a person watches out for his possessions.
“That’s his,” he says, nevertheless, just for the sake of propriety.
The woman, the fluttering one, is also being held, and there’s really no reason for that; surely no one thinks that she did it, but that’s how they are. They hold on.
For some reason they keep a tight hold on her. She has no intention of running off anywhere, but she still feels a slight shock inside when they carry him out. Should she have been there? How far does it go, her responsibility for someone she was about to meet, was supposed to have met? And the suitcase is still there; he, at least, doesn’t care, but maybe she’s the one who should somehow take care of it. Someone says that it’s his suitcase. Fine.
At the very moment that they carry him out, it seems as if the sunshine that isn’t there grows stronger, and she thinks that maybe it will all work out after all; maybe they’ll manage to patch him up somehow, maybe not, but anyway it’ll be a long time before he needs his suitcase again, that’s for sure.
She wants to go out in the sunshine, and she wishes they would release their grip and just let her go. But no.
“You’re coming down to the station, both of you,” says one of the officers.
Both of them? They mean her and the big man with the beard, as if they were some kind of conspirators. And she looks at him out of the corner of her eye, and the strange thing is that in some way that’s what they actually might be. Conspirators.
Something seems to flutter between them, something inexplicable, like the sunshine that isn’t there. And the fireplace, that has nothing to do with any of this whatsoever.
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