(excerpt)
The first person whose home I cleaned on Monday was Astri.
Upon entering the house, I was expecting the same violent cough as last time, but all I heard instead was the sound of the TV.
Astri was sitting in the living room, drawn close to the large screen. Due to her bad eyesight, she could only see some blurry spots but had perfect hearing. She was watching the local station that was broadcasting live from Tide Village.
As it happens, we drove past Tide Village in our Land Rover the night before and saw some unusual lights in the dark. From the deer-frequented main road that didn’t go through the village, we could only get a vague sense of the unusually bright light caused by the flashing of police cars and fire engines, which led us to the conclusion that something extraordinary must have taken place in a spot where nothing ever happened.
Earlier in the morning I found out from the latest issue of the Viking Horn that what we had seen was the light of smouldering bone fires and the subsequent pandemonium. While in Budapest we were descending into a crypt to place an urn to rest, in Tide Village a fire broke out and burned down forty-two buildings, including the kindergarten, the tractor station and several dozen family homes. Not even an army of firefighters could put an end to the flames in this dry thunderstorm, but in the end they died out by themselves when the wind, having changed direction, steered them towards the freshly ploughed fields. This is how the historic centre, mainly built of wood, managed to survive and there was no loss of human life.
Astri’s television set remained unscathed, and was showing the sports centre where the victims of the fire had spent the night. They were hovering in-between the rows of camp beds with blankets on their shoulders, squinting their sleepy eyes at the camera and fighting tears when asked to give statements.
I had been visiting Astri for years, but this was the very first time I found her looking despondent. She told me that fires were particularly upsetting for her because they reminded her of their own house, and what’s more, their family-owned hotel, burning to the ground. The latter got burnt down by a short circuit, while the former by the family’s children who were left at home with the babysitter.
This wasn’t the only time she shocked me with such casually blurted out tragedies. In-between two coughing fits, she once told me that she used to take some rheumatism medication, as a side effect of which the air sacs in her lungs had suddenly tightened. She had also brought up in passing that one of her three sons committed suicide. In addition to this, I learned from Bori who was a deacon and had visited her four or five years ago, that she had lost her husband to cancer. Sitting in front of the telly, she now explained that the burning down of their hotel was a major financial disaster, because despite having an insurance, the unprofessional approach of the local fire brigade meant that the bulk of the damage had to be borne by them. Her husband was unable to handle yet another blow, so cancer was a great excuse for him to seek refuge in death.
Astri went to the laundry room to put the freshly removed bedsheets into the washing machine. She was wearing a stripy top and flared trousers. As she was walking barefoot, her feet left a touch of moisture on the floor. Her movements were those of an eighty-year-old, yet she was still walking rather pertly and with a swagger, not giving away the heavy burden of memories she was carrying.
As for my second appointment, I had never cleaned the home of this person before.
My list featured local elderly people: usually the same area and field names from Rooster Hill paired with some Northern or Germanic first name, as also borne by my colleagues. Yet this second person had a different kind of name, that wasn’t even Norwegian but vaguely European. When I asked about its origins at the office where the lists were compiled, all they could say was that this person was ‘some refugee’.
Alongside the indigenous population, the odd Bosnian refugee would occasionally make it onto the list of people needing care, but so far there was only one African, a woman from Eritrea, who went sledging in the Norwegian winter the day after she arrived from the refugee camp with her children. They were hoping to try out the brand new sledge given to them by the council, but she immediately fell over and fractured her pelvic bone and suffered a severe concussion.
I rang the bell at some length, for a few times. There was no reaction. I was about to get excited that I’d have an hour and a half to read and nap in my Land Rover, when somebody started to stir behind the neighbouring door. A golden Labrador stuck out its muzzle through the opening on the door, and then a spectacled elderly man emerged from the twilight in the flat. He was holding his walking stick in one hand, while dragging an old vacuum cleaner in the other.
– He was expecting you but had to go to the police station at Sogndal. Don’t worry, he’s not a gangster, it’s a private matter. He left the key with me, so I can let you in. You can use my hoover, as he doesn’t own one.
The man was rattling with so much excitement as if he was revealing the most important information in the world.
I had already known him by sight. His name was Joard, he was quite a character who’d regularly visit his wife, who was thirty years his junior, at the dementia ward. She developed Alzheimer’s at a very early age, in her forties, but only ended up on the ward after Joard was unable to look after her at home even with the help of carers. He’d make the journey to the dementia ward on a daily basis, and walk up and down the glass corridor leading to it with an ancient carved walking stick in his hand and his golden Labrador at his side. He’d spend hours in his wife’s apartment, looking for a vase for the flowers he had brought, making coffee, baking waffles, mixing some cordial, accompanying her to the toilet and replacing the sanitary pad in her knickers, he was unable to sit still even for a moment despite having hit eighty by that time. The fact that they’d also fit in other preoccupations only emerged when a nurse who brought over a thermometer surprised them during lovemaking.
His wife had passed away that spring, after seven year on the ward. Joard stopped visiting the dementia ward, but he’d regularly turn up on the untrodden road that led from the centre of Rooster Hill to the graveyard, meandering between a few massive rocks – one of which was Murder Rock – and the softly billowing bright green pastures. He carried on with his trademark hasty and agitated pace despite suffering a minor stroke after the funeral, and neither his GP, nor the county doctor or the nurses on the dementia ward were able to convince him to seek treatment in the care centre even though they tried everyting, from nice words to outright scaremongering. He didn’t listen to anyone and got through his illness on foot, but didn’t end up with any side effects apart from a slight limp. So he just leaned on his walking stick, and with the golden Labrador by his side, he turned into the graveyard and carefully closed the creaking gate behind him. While he took a seat on the bench nearest to his wife’s grave, the Labrador climbed on top of the pile formed by the wreaths and wilted bouquets still displayed on the grave and just lay there.
On this occasion, Joard and his Labrador entered the flat in front of me. I followed them, already dragging the loaned vacuum cleaner behind me. I remembered the accounts of carers whom he allowed to visit him during the critical days after his stroke, all mentioning the mess, filth and stench in his home. This flat next door, on the other hand, had a positively pleasant smell. I could sense that this wasn’t due to the artificial mix of chemical air fresheners and washing powders but to a blend of various natural scents, such as herbs and medicinal plants.
Joard wanted to give me a tour of the flat but I reassured him that I had already cleaned dozens of similar council flats. After he left with his Labrador, I switched on the vacuum cleaner, coated in a velvety layer of filth. It started off with a loud initial roar but then suddenly fell silent, letting out a last growl and showing no further signs of wanting to operate. I opened the door to the laundry room, but instead of detergents I found jars of home-made jams lined up on the selves. In fact, only some of the jars contained jam, the others were filled with all sorts of herbs, leaves, fruit and berries preserved in liquid. In the narrow space, the council-provided washing machine was squeezed in-between two hard-working freezers. I went up to one of the cooing freezers to check inside but my curiosity took revenge on me. I managed to kick a bucket brimming with seawater and bubble moss. So my shoes and trouserlegs got wet, but in the end I found an empty bucket under the kitchen sink. Since I came equipped with floor washing cloths and a mop, I could now get started.
The main living room wall featured a large poster: a full-figure standing portrait of a hawk-nosed Mediterranean-looking man, dressed in white and wearing a towering chef’s hat. He reminded me of the young Ceaușescu, Romania’s Communist president, though I was aware that I knew who the man was, despite not recognising him straightway. I took a step closer to read the caption in the right corner.
Paul Bocuse, Nouvelle cuisine.
Who on earth can this refugee be?
Next to the poster, there was a shelf with some books. Two dozen cookery books in English and French, and in some other languages I couldn’t identify except for the fact that they were using the Latin alphabet.
I also came across some French poetry books, for example a volume of French classical poets edited by Georges Pompidou, Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal and Le Spleen de Paris, Victor Hugo’s La Légende des siècles, Apollinaire’s Alcools, Guillaume Métayer’s Fugues. When I spotted the same edition of Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer that I was carrying around with me at the time, my heart started to pound. It felt as if I had discovered the library of my French alter ego and found myself transported to a desert island.
Our most treasured secrets, the relics of our fallibility that we think we cannot share with anyone. Pointless junk that we keep dusting off compulsively. I manged to get rid of mine by throwing them out – or at least the bulk of it anyway. This was relatively easy for me because I had been living an ascetic life for a very long time. The risk of starvation prevented me from leaving society behind in a physical sense, but I could retreat from it in a spiritual sense. Thus, I wasn’t in the least concerned with my reputation, but I accepted that others were most definitely preoccupied with theirs. Despite my natural curiosity, I refrained from seeking out the secrets of others because I genuinely believed that such unduly acquired knowledge would lead me astray. Yet on this occasion, I couldn’t help going up to the desk where the unknown refugee’s papers were lying about. There were a few official documents but before I could have checked them out, something else caught my eye that triggered a lot more interest. It was a print-out of a French text, written in a poetic form, to be precise in classical Alexandrine rhyme. This form of poetry had long been tenuous, relegated to a cob-webbed corner of rhymeless French poetry at least since the days of Louis Aragon. That said, after reading the poem I didn’t have the impression that this was the work of just a random rhymester, seeing that the author had handled the outdated form lightly, freely and with subtle irony, turning it into something truly beautiful and entirely modern.
It’s impossible to translate poetry, one can only write something similar if starting from scratch. I can’t offer to do this here, but I’m copying in the literal version of the French poem, even if this can only convey a slight hint of the original’s magic.
If I locate his latest hiding place, and
find the Smallest God at last
in the cold corner of a northern cave,
where he’s hiding like a cave mushroom
left behind from the Ice Age,
I’ll start a new religion. I’ll hold ceremonies
in the kitchen, with a twenty-litre pot behind me,
from which beef and thyme ragout can never run out.
I’ll point towards salvation with the boning knife
I used to quarter a stray pig.
But I’m chopping onions with another sharp knife
in honour of my latest dead,
I thinly roll out the pie dough,
bake it, fill it and roll it up to remember them all.
I wash the dishes for the sake of future generations,
to alleviate their misery.
I conjure up spirits by making pumpkin soup,
I call the greater gods
by cutting hot peppers into strips.
I get hopefully close to the Unattainable
by adding rapeseed oil to egg yolk to make mayonnaise.
I knead all my teachings into banana scones,
which I fry until golden yellow, so we can be saved.
Take it and eat it!
Enjoy your meal!
At the end of the printed text, I finally saw the name of the person in whose flat I was, signed in an impeccable hand: Justin Walter.
Translated by Jozefina Komporaly