Where We Live, page 11
He feels the hot sting at the back of his nose, and gives himself a little slap on the face. Stupid useless clod. Stupid crybaby.
It hurts, his back, and pain runs down his arms and legs. He works through it until he’s too tired. That’s the thing about pain; it makes you tired. You can push through it but it grinds you down. This time he wasn’t even in worse pain than usual. He’d got off the mower, went into the truck to get his lunch, and he just couldn’t go back. Usually if he felt like that he’d just go somewhere, lie down for half an hour, even on the ground, put his legs up on a box or something to take the strain off the sciatic, wait it out. But then one day he can’t. He can’t make it back onto the tractor. It’s not his body, but something in his mind that says no more.
It’s the pain, but it’s the tiredness, really.
He reads some new posts in a thread he follows about the press only supporting the left, criticizing the right. The press and the universities, the postings say, with links to online articles, are all in cahoots; they all hoodwink the public about the way things work. They attack the common working man, the family, religion. They have a stranglehold.
Cliff isn’t sure if that’s true. He’s not much for religion, having had some bad experiences with it as an adolescent. But it seems clear that freedoms are being controlled, that only certain viewpoints are being allowed, anyway. That isn’t right. It’s not democratic. And it’s clear that ordinary people like him are struggling. Things are going downhill for people like him. Honest working guys. This is the fault of rich liberal intellectuals, who want to turn the country (not his country, but the States) into a communist regime by breaking down the businesses and the working man. He’s not sure he can see how this happens;— the whole life-cycle;— but there are sure a lot of articles about people doing really bad things, crazy, perverted things, all the while being supported by taxpayers’ money.
He thinks of his brother Ben, with his expensive stuff and education, and how he fucked up Cliff’s company, the only chance Cliff has ever had to make something of his life.
He finishes the article about the stranglehold of the press and shuts his laptop, just before Veronika puts her key in the lock. He can time his life by her.
How was your day? she asks, poking her head around the door of his office.
He doesn’t know how to answer that. How does she think? Any-way, she definitely doesn’t care. Doesn’t want to hear his complaining after a day at work. She works as a care aide, driving from home to home looking after sick old people. He guesses that she listens to complaining all day long. Doesn’t need it from him.
She’s taking off her coat and her shoes in the entry. She makes the same pattern of sounds every day: the rub and rubbery thump of her white runners coming off, the yawn and buckle of the closet door, the jingling of the clothes hanger. The rustle of her lilac polyester uniform, the padding of her slippers, the firm click of the bedroom door as she goes to change. All a pattern he knows like the rhythm of his own body.
Did you enjoy your lunch? she asks, coming to the doorway again. She means the sandwich she left him, plated, in the fridge this morning.
Yes, he calls back, thank you. He’s sick of sandwiches, he thinks. The endless chewing, the stickiness of the cheese on the palate, the slime of the ham.
The bread was dry, he says to her.
She doesn’t answer. He hears her go back into the kitchen, begin opening cupboards. She shouldn’t have to cook, after an eight-hour shift.
You don’t have to cook, he says.
Who else is going to do it? she asks. I don’t see a maid.
That’s a low blow. He gets to his feet. He doesn’t like this shouting at each other from different rooms. Things get lost in translation. He stumps his way to the kitchen. It hurts, to get up, especially for the first few minutes. His legs move like some stupid robot legs. He sat too long, but whatever the hell is he supposed to do all day? If he lies down, things go sideways. He falls asleep and then can’t sleep at night, when it’s worse to be awake, when his moving around or even having his laptop on disturbs Veronika.
Clomp, clomp, his feet go. He feels his pants slipping. He had undone the button of his pants while he was sitting at the laptop; the waistband dug into him. He is doing up the button when Veronika finally turns around to him.
I should get you some elastic-waist pants, she says. More comfortable.
She means he’s getting fat. Yep, that’s what happens when you can’t work or get any exercise.
Did you walk a bit? she asks.
No, he didn’t. But he should. He knows he should.
Take some laps up and down the hall while I put supper in the oven, she says. Or at least get out from underfoot.
He taught her that phrase, get out from underfoot. He learned it from his foster mom, likely. It makes Veronika sound like a native English speaker when she says it, though maybe one from an older generation.
He turns to leave the kitchen as she comes toward him with a casserole dish. He turns too quickly. There’s a sensation like a sword slash from his waist up to his shoulder, and for a moment, he’s paralyzed. He hears himself shriek. It’s like being reamed in two. It’s pain like a streak of white-hot light cutting him in two.
Veronika puts the pan down and says, Come, take my arm. We will walk it out.
But he can’t move. He sees that he is clinging to the refrigerator door, and he can’t move. He’s locked in place.
Veronika moves around in front of him, plants her legs apart, locks her arms around his chest and back, under his armpits. Forward! she says.
They have done this before. He shuffles one foot an inch or two along the floor, then the other. It takes him a million years to get anywhere, but if he moves his feet by more, his body seizes up entirely, and he loses balance.
Shuffle, shuffle, they move through the kitchen doorway. Like robots, like huge ungainly animals. Walruses locked in combat; that’s the image his mind is going for. Two walruses, massively heavy, awkward on land, thrusting against each other in mortal combat.
Except Veronika is moving backward, sliding her feet backward, supporting him. Bed or sofa? she asks.
Sofa, he thinks. Sofa. He can at least see the television, if he’s stuck there for many hours.
When was your last pill? she asks, meaning the anti-inflammatories with the analgesic. He can’t remember. Morning? Afternoon? He can take them every six hours but he doesn’t remember the last time. He’s had some today, though, he thinks.
Veronika lowers him to the sofa, her face reddening with the effort. She gives him a pill. He should give you something stronger, she says. A proper painkiller. Oxy or something.
No thanks, Cliff says. He’s read about that, people getting addicted. That’s all he needs.
The pain or the anti-inflammatories wipe out his appetite, but he eats the food Veronika brings him, anyway: the steaming cabbage rolls, the pleasant grainy texture inside the slightly bitter leaf, the spicy tomato sauce. It’s a warm comfort, going down. And it passes the time until the news.
What did you do today? Veronika asks, as they eat their dinner.
He can’t answer that. Her question is an assault. He says: Oh, sat around twiddling my thumbs, as usual. He means it as a joke but it comes out a little harsher than he intended.
Veronika is silent. Then she says: My day was okay. Mrs.;Clark offered me a cup of tea. When I made her tea she insisted I sit down for ten minutes and have tea, as well. Take a load off, she said. I never heard that saying before. Take a load off. Then Mr.;Dalgleish, in the afternoon, he asked if he could have a hug. I almost cried. Think of that; he is so alone that he has to ask a stranger, someone paid to clean his house, to give him a hug.
Cliff doesn’t want to think of that, of Veronika as paid help for some old man. It wasn’t supposed to be like that.
Did you give him a hug? he asks.
Of course. But I thought about it. Such a tragedy, to be that lonely.
Ha, Cliff grunts.
It’s a basic need, Veronika says, not looking at him. Watching the TV, chewing. Human touch.
If you say so, Cliff says.
14
At lunch, Cleo wonders whether Karsten will invite her to dinner, or something else will happen.
Lunch happens democratically in the company cafeteria, with its clean playful décor, in which all of the employees eat;— the machine operators, the secretaries, everyone. There are even small children;— employees collect their offspring from the on-site nursery and lunch with them at brightly-coloured, child-height tulip-shaped tables. They are like bright summer flowers, the tulip tables with the parents and children around them, eating, conversing.
It occurs to Cleo that her colleagues take their leisure time, their private time, more seriously than their work time. The work sessions are very light, very casual, but there is a focus to the interactions with the children at the lunch break, though the parents are all gentle and playful. She feels a kind of pang, an envy, that she had not experienced this culture of relaxed parenting with her children, who are now grown. It is not something she has seen in North America. Is it new? Or very old? Or maybe cultural?
Karsten appears at her table with his coffee and open-faced sandwich. May I sit here? he asks.
Please, sit, she says. She has been expecting him to approach her, and here he is. She likes that she was able to predict the social schedule.
So, about dinner tomorrow night, he says, not looking at her.
She feels a slight sinking in her chest cavity. He’s so diffident. He’s trying to get out of taking her to dinner, as she suspected he might.
But almost immediately, the sensation leaves. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, except that she doesn’t behave too unprofessionally and damage her relationship with Mogun, because nothing is real, here. Very little is in her control, and very little will matter, in a few days, when she returns home. It’s a dream, a temporary vacation from her real life.
If Karsten does not want to take her to dinner, that is fine. She does not mind being in a restaurant on her own. Usually, she gets put at a nice corner table and is served more quickly, perhaps out of pity, but nevertheless conveniently.
She smiles at Karsten with good humour. But they are interrupted by Jonas, whom she has not met before this trip, and who reminds her of her son Sam, with his enthusiasm, his lack of self-consciousness. Jonas pulls up a chair, sits. And then others join them.
So, Jonas says. We have the same surname; did you know that? And are you Danish too?
Swedish, I think, she says. My father came to Canada from the town with the same name, in the 1950s.
Oh, super cool, Mads says. Is the house where he lived still standing? What neighbourhood?
To Jonas and Mads, she thinks, the 1950s are the far past, like the 1920s would have been to her.
Cleo admits that she doesn’t know; she has never been to Sweden, or to Lund.
Karsten says: You’ve never been there? But it’s less than an hour’s drive from here.
It’s in Sweden, though, Cleo says. In another country.
Karsten laughs. Sure. But it’s also just across the bridge. Really, you can be there in less than an hour by train.
I should go, then, she says.
Karsten brightens. Or, you know, we will drive there. We will go there for supper.
She’d had no idea it was that close. She’d like to go, of course. She says that, impulsively. She laughs. She has no idea if his suggestion is serious or not. It’s a thing that would normally make her anxious, the absence of a plan, but really, she doesn’t care.
Okay, Karsten says. I guess we can go, then.
He’s intense, but also diffident. His intensity isn’t personal. She can’t tell if he really wants to do it, or if he felt he must make the offer. But she doesn’t get tied up in finding out; there’s no point in her dancing around, or overthinking this. She really doesn’t mind, either way. She has nothing riding on this. She has no anxiety about pleasing Karsten. It’s like she’s dealing with one of her friends’ husbands, or one of her son Sam’s friends;— someone with whom she has a very casual but friendly relationship, right?
You really didn’t have a plan for dinner, did you, she teases him, smiling.
Karsten laughs. He puts down his sandwich and turns his hands over, palms up, in that ageless no weapons gesture. You have found me out.
The others think that Karsten and Cleo going to Lund for supper is a good idea.
Is it really feasible? Cleo asks.
Oh, yes, Mads says. They go to his girlfriend’s mother’s house in Falsterbo for Sunday lunch, often, he says. It’s no further. The others chime in. Everyone agrees that they must have a Swedish meal. Anders recommends a place called Mat och Destillat. Food and distilled liquor, Cleo understands, from the few words she knows, and suppresses a shudder, remembering her hangover from her first visit. Pernille says, but don’t go to the place by the cathedral: the portions are very tiny and the waiters very snobbish.
But what is in Lund? Cleo asks. What do we go see?
There is a Romanesque cathedral, Karsten says.
There is always a Romanesque cathedral, Jonas says.
But it is eleventh century, Mads says.
Everyone is delighted to suggest things to do. It occurs to Cleo that it must be a responsibility for this small firm to entertain her for days, to make it worth her trip. They take it seriously, as they do their process of consensus. They are all happy to participate in planning this outing.
And there is an open-air museum, Jonas says. Almost as good as the one in Stockholm. With houses from medieval to 1930s.
But is it feasible? Is there really time to see these things?
We will compress the afternoon meeting, Pernille says. We will cut it short. Anything we don’t cover can be postponed until the next day.
Everyone agrees: they will cut tomorrow’s agenda a little short, so that Karsten and Cleo may have an early start.
I believe there is a television series, Karsten says, featuring this bridge. A detective series.
Oh, yes; Cleo has not seen it, but she remembers her book club talking about it.
You talk about television shows, in your book club?
Well, yes. In fact, it should probably be called a television club. Only Cleo would be excluded, as she doesn’t really watch any television.
I do not either, Karsten says. Except for football, soccer I mean, and the news. And golf, recently. And handball. And international hockey, of course. He gives her a shamefaced grin.
Cleo laughs. She would find this claim, so clearly compromised, annoying, at home, but here it is just absurd. Delightfully absurd.
Because nothing is at stake.
They have left Copenhagen in late afternoon, and traffic is heavy, and when they make Lund, there is only enough time to visit one attraction before closing time. Kulturen or cathedral? Karsten asks.
Cathedral, Cleo says. It’s raining.
Cathedral it is, Karsten says. He is driving a black Volvo which seems to be the default car, in Denmark or Sweden. How do people find their own, in supermarket parking lots? Karsten had offered (weirdly, but maybe sweetly?) to let her drive, and held out his key fob, but she had declined. Driving in a foreign country, where the street signs are in an unfamiliar language, does not appeal to her.
I can’t read the traffic signs, she had said.
Sure you can, Karsten had said. They are all cognates, no, those traffic words?
There are all of those o’s with slashes through them, Cleo said. They give me dyslexia.
The eueh, Karsten said. They are nothing. Just an extra vowel. He had laughed.
It occurs to Cleo now that Karsten imagines she travels in Europe frequently, rents cars and zooms from place to place, sluicing through those strange roundabouts and knotted double overpasses as if navigating her own suburban cul-de-sacs. It’s charming, that he would make that assumption. She doesn’t mind. It’s enchanting, to feel that she is that person, even in someone’s imagination.
Lund is a university town, full of students, international as well as local, and therefore the kinds of shops and cafés that appeal to students, which gives it a kind of holiday vibe, Cleo thinks. Much of the old town has been preserved: there are winding cobbled streets, half-timbered houses painted Falun red, the deep Swedish house red, and golden yellow.
Karsten drives smoothly, efficiently through the town. They park in the cathedral parking lot and get out. He is wearing, Cleo notices, dark jeans that may have been pressed, a subtly striped grey cotton shirt, a tan jacket. She hopes she has dressed appropriately. Linen trousers; dark beige; an off-white cardigan; a T-shirt the colour of spruce trees. Simple, rather expensive, but well-made things she had bought in Denmark on her last trip.
She pays attention to how she dresses, and notices others’ clothes. Clothing is not just a consumerist means of self-expression, but for her, another skin. Also, she had been poor, as a child, and not allowed to choose her own clothing, as a teenager. She likes, now, to wear things that are beautifully made, simple, sustainable. She has had these items for four years, and they show no sign of wear or becoming dated.
The cathedral is very old: nearly a thousand years old. It’s difficult to get her mind around that. She tells herself: the people who built this were alive a thousand years ago. She knows that she is not really processing that idea, though. What she feels, really, is a sense of randomness, her own randomness. So much time, so many lives. And hers is just one, a chance occurrence.
