BIRDS


As I sat on the toilet menstruating, a fairly large part of my brain fell down into the toilet bowl. I’d seen brains on TV, so could easily differentiate a piece of brain from a piece of mucosa. There it was—not black and clumpy, but brownish pink and shiny. I said nothing when I went back into the kitchen, I just sat down and ate my tacos as if nothing had happened. I did a few quick checks to make sure I was still functioning—did I understand requests like “pass me the sour cream” or “can I have the taco sauce, please”? I ran through the names and ages of everyone around the table, my husband and three children, and I looked out the window to see if I still knew where I was. Then, as I chewed, I quickly estimated the dimensions of the kitchen, rattled off the alphabet in my head, ran through the lineage on my side of the family, and Tom’s. Everything seemed to be in working order. But later, when I went back up to my office and sat down to work, I saw something hanging from the yellow desk light that I didn’t recognize. From the way it was hanging, it must have been there for some time, it certainly wasn’t new. It was a peculiar shape, a kind of half-moon, with an uneven curve and a kind of tip at one end. The tip was black. The underside was yellow and the topside a darker yellow and black, and some white with something that resembled a human eye in it, only when I looked closer, it lacked the white of an eye. Across what I would call the back of the half-moon were some cuts that looked like parallel grooves, which ran back toward the flat end. When Hans popped his head in around the door a little later, I took the thing off the lamp and held it up. Hans was ten, so might possibly know what the thing was, if he wasn’t too young. What is this, Hans? I said. He looked at me, a little nervous. It’s … it’s a kind of tit, but I’m not sure what kind, please don’t be angry. Angry, I said, why would I be angry? You normally get angry when I don’t know exactly what kind of bird it is, or what sound it makes. Oh, I said. So what’s a tit? Mommy, you’re the one who can answer that, he said, exasperated, I can only tell you it’s a bird! A small bird from the tit family. He threw up his hands and closed the door. So the thing in front of me was something he called a bird, from the tit family; none of it made any sense to me. I googled. “Bird.” I was presented with a list of things similar to the thing that is called bird in the singular, birds in the plural. It was a living creature, and I could see that they all had that tip coming out of what I’d come to realize was their head, but the tip varied in size and shape, and was actually called a beak. And birds could fly—I had to laugh out loud when I discovered that. These were creatures that could actually fly! I heard a knock on the door. My husband stuck his head in. Hans said that you asked him what sort of tit it was, Tom said. Nina, surely there’s a limit to how many categories you expect them to know, isn’t it enough that they know it’s a tit? Yes, of course, I said. He seemed to soften. I know that your defense is coming up, and I understand, I really do. But you can be certain that you won’t be asked to classify the tit family. He came over and gave me a hug. He looked at my screen, which was full of images of different birds. He laughed. Back to basics, I see, he said, and left the room.

I noticed that there was a Word document on the toolbar. Apparently it was my thesis, as my name was on the front. It turned out that I’d written my thesis on rheumatism in the snipe family. It transpired that I was an ornithologist. I googled myself and found out that I was employed by the University of Bergen as a researcher and I was going to defend my doctoral thesis in three weeks’ time. I thought about the piece of brain that I’d flushed down the toilet. It was now clear that I’d lost the part of my brain that held all my knowledge about birds. It probably goes without saying that I felt extremely anxious as I sat there at the desk. I felt stunned, sick to the core, and scared, then suddenly one of those creatures came flying through the air and landed on the veranda outside my office window, and looked at me through the glass. I laughed, I’d never seen anything like it before. It was a black-and-white bird, and it started to hop mischievously toward the balustrade before opening its wings and flying off. I laughed so loudly that Tom stuck his head back around the door, with a folded T-shirt in his hands. What’s going on? he said. I saw a black-and-white bird out there on the veranda, I said. A black-and-white bird, Tom said, and looked at me pensively as he put the folded T-shirt down on a pile of already folded clothes on a chair by the veranda door. You mean a magpie? Yes, a magpie, I said, and felt myself blush. Nina, I think you should take a week off, he said. Go and stay with your parents, go for walks, relax, don’t think about your defense.

And so I went home to my parents for a week. I tried to read up on the snipe family as my father practiced Handel’s Messiah for a Christmas concert and my mother went to meetings. They tried to get me to do what Mom said Tom had told them I should do in a secret phone call, not to think about birds, to go out for walks, to the cinema, to eat food, to sleep. My mother took me on several canoe trips, but I kept getting distracted whenever a bird landed on the water, and then I got stressed because I couldn’t remember what kind of bird it was. Mom pretended that there weren’t any birds, no matter what happened, not even when we went for a walk at dusk one day and spotted a plump bird, almost half a meter tall, with big round eyes, up a tree. She pretended not to see it when I pointed, busied herself with getting a bar of chocolate out of her anorak pocket, then broke off a piece and said: Here. When we got home, I overheard her telling my father that we’d seen an eagle owl, and that was a first; there had been rumors that there was an eagle owl in the area, but my mother had certainly never seen an eagle owl before. I googled “eagle owl” and saw that she was right: we had seen an eagle owl. Now, when I could no longer fully appreciate it. I hadn’t even been able to place the plump and apparently very rare bird in the owl family.

One day when I was sitting at the living room table with my laptop open, Mom came up behind without me noticing, and saw what I was reading about on the internet: the snipe family. She said she’d been thinking about sorting out the family snapshots that were just lying in a box in the loft, and putting them into albums, and wondered if I wanted to help. She held up a large plastic bag with five big black photo albums in it. Of course, I said, and closed my laptop. Mom must have forgotten there were pictures from a family trip to the bird cliffs on Runde when we were small. I held a photograph up for Dad, and he squinted over his glasses, looked at his three children lying on the edge of the cliff, our hair blowing in the wind. We were laughing and smiling at the photographer. Below us was a sheer cliff face, with thousands of tiny white specks. What are those specks? I asked my father, as he sat there practicing Handel’s Messiah. Goodness, not easy to say, really, Dad said, as though he were struggling to see. Are they birds? I asked, pointing at a bird that was closer to us, and recognizable as just that: a bird in the air. Yes, it could well be, Dad said, then sighed and added that it was the cliffs at Runde. We often went there when you were children. Hm, I said. He stroked my cheek. It’ll be fine, he said. Everything will be fine. You don’t need to worry about it. He gave me a hug, and I shed a few tears. I didn’t say that a part of my brain had fallen out, and that I’d lost everything I’d ever known about birds, and that I had ridiculously little time to build up all that knowledge again in order to defend my thesis. That it wouldn’t be fine, that I would stand there like an idiot, with only piecemeal knowledge about the snipe family.

Having read a bit about the snipe family, I could understand why I’d become so fascinated with the bird at some point in time. There were several different types, even the names were interesting. For example, there were common snipes and great snipes. As if a common me and a great me might exist as well, I thought. I saw a picture of a great snipe on the internet, and thought that it was called a great snipe because it had two beaks, one higher up on the face and the other a bit farther down on the neck. But then I realized that the great snipe in question was standing with its beak open, and it wasn’t a double beak, it was the upper bill and the lower bill of the same beak. There were also giant snipes and imperial snipes. Imperial snipes! And the jack snipe, which was smaller and had “shorter legs” than the common snipe, according to the Great Norwegian Encyclopedia. But the best thing about the jack snipe, apart from its name, I thought, was that it sounded like a galloping horse when it plummeted through the air. I could just imagine it: that I was standing on a heath and could hear a horse galloping toward me, then I turned to face the sound and instead saw a falling bird. I started to cry again. That was me. I was standing on the heath listening to what I’d once been, but then I saw myself approaching. Not a galloping horse, but a falling bird.

My supervisor called me one day when I was walking in the mountains alone. I saw her name run across the screen again and again, but couldn’t bring myself to answer. What was I going to say? That I’d had my period and everything I knew about birds had been sucked out of me along with it? Yes, I know, it’s unbelievable. Yes, it really is a shame. Yes, I’m reading for dear life now. I know the differences among a common snipe, a great snipe, and a jack snipe. I reached the tarn that I’d set as my destination. The surface was still, and there, on a small stone out in the water, I spotted what I believed was a common snipe, incredibly enough. He was standing on one leg, motionless, and looked like he was wading, as we say about birds who watch the surface of the water for food. Because I couldn’t stop myself in time when I saw him, he heard me and flew up. And it was then that I could confirm that it was a common snipe and not a great snipe. Because, unlike the great snipe, the common snipe does not fly straight up, but zigzags here and there, just as this example of the snipe family had done. Yes, I said to myself, as though I’d just won a competition. But there was not so much as a ripple on the water, the mountains remained silent and orange, majestic with white peaks, the October day was cold and clear, and there was no one else here to witness that I’d managed to guess right, it meant nothing to my surroundings. Was that why I felt so sad? I suddenly pictured Hans’s little frightened face in the doorway, when he thought that I wanted him to identify the tit I was holding in my hand, whereas in fact I just wanted to know what on earth it was. What had I become, I thought as I sat there on a stone by the water and peeled an orange, someone who got angry with their kids when they couldn’t classify a tit? I took a deep breath. What was it I was feeling, why did I suddenly want to cry, why did it feel like my heart was broken, the kind of grief you feel when something you have lost still exists? The water gave no answer, nor did the mountains, but the air around me was sparklingly clear.


THE THREAD


There is no one else in the pool. The surface of the water is shiny and still, and the water is deep and light blue. No one knows that I’m slipping into the water now.

But it seems that I’m dreaming.

I see my hand down there on the duvet, thin and wrinkled. I’m not in a pool at all. I’m in my room in the care home, and it’s eight o’clock in the morning. It’s St. Lucia’s Day, the festival of light in midwinter, and I’m waiting for someone to come in and sing for me. I just fell asleep while I was waiting. I’m waiting to hear someone singing in the distance, down the corridor, and to hear them come closer and closer, like a small river … Dark the night falls, hiding stables and homes … When I was little, this was the day I longed for when December came around. It was the dark, and the tinsel, and the light, and the Lucia song that made everything glittery, secret, and safe. Here in my room, it’s pitch-black. Well: the emergency exit sign above the door is lit. There’s also some light outside the window, it must be from the small park just opposite. Light enough for me to see the tube that rises up like a silent whisper from my hand to the shiny bag on the stand beside me. I didn’t think I’d experience this feeling again, that I’m so happy that I feel I have to run, but it’s actually running through me now, as I lie here and will never run again. The Lucia procession will come and sing for me. They will come in with burning candles. As I imagine I will do too, soon. My light is running out into the dark like a small river.

Can I be in a care home and not in a hospital, if I have a drip in my hand? And who am “I,” in fact, in this short story? It can’t possibly be me, me with my hand on the duvet. I can’t possibly be in a short story, and it can’t be me who’s the narrator. And yet … It’s as if that which could have been me is gathered in the single word I and allows all these possibilities to play out at the same time, in the present, as these sentences claim it’s happening now, here. If it were actually true that I was now lying in a room in a care home or hospital and dozing in and out of this moment, I wouldn’t be able to communicate it to anyone, to you, like this. But it seems I’m able to do it, all the same, and it puzzles me. It’s possible that I am a character in a movie. I imagine that the correct way for my condition to be communicated would not be through a thread of thoughts and words, but rather images, which would slide slowly past your eyes. Images of the pool. Images of my hand. Images of my daughter. A slow motion of the drip moving up toward the ceiling, illuminated by the soft light from the park outside. My daughter slipped in there suddenly, unintroduced, but that’s because she’s something I’m thinking about, something that lies behind all the other stuff that has surfaced in me, like things rise to the surface in a bog. I’m thinking that when it happens, when my light runs out into the dark like a small river, I want my daughter to be with me. She will sit by my bedside and see my light flowing out. My daughter, Gunnhild, who lives in Denmark.

In many ways it’s quite strange, I have to say, that she lives in Denmark, because when she was a child, Gunnhild was always so upset that she had the same name as the wicked Queen Gunnhild who lived in the tenth century. If I was going to have a queen’s name, could it not have been a good queen instead! she said to me, angrily. And not a queen that was found in a bog hundreds of years later! Queen Gunnhild was lured to Denmark after her husband died, I’m sure you remember. She was going to marry Harald Bluetooth, but what Harald Bluetooth did was lure her there, then drown her in a bog. And when the villagers found a body in the bog at Vejle in the 1800s, they believed it was Queen Gunnhild who had risen again. Aha, that must have been the thought underlying all the other thoughts rising up in me, when I thought that the way in which I was communicating these thoughts of mine, rising up in me, was like things slowly rising up in a bog. It was this body in the bog all the time. Anyway, they later found out that it wasn’t the wicked Queen Gunnhild who had been found in the bog, it turned out it was an ordinary woman, pinned down in the bog by wooden pegs at the elbows and knees.

Now I want the Lucia procession to come soon and sing for me, and give me something to drink. But there’s not a sound in the corridor. Not even a Lucia bun falling from the piled-high basket and hitting the linoleum with a dull bun thud. I want them to phone Gunnhild and tell her she has to come quickly. That she must drop whatever she has in her hands and come.

What does make me happy, though, is to think that these thoughts of mine have been communicated to you, even though I’m lying here without being able to move much at all, because they have. I have no idea how, I barely know that I thought them. And yet they have risen up here in this room, almost weightless, I feel that I can see them, I feel that I can see my thoughts, they’re floating just under the ceiling, flickering past; my hand, the pool, the bog, Queen Gunnhild, my daughter. Now I’m communicating to you the image of my own thin, wrinkled hand trying to grasp something in the air, but it catches nothing and falls back to rest on the white duvet. I wonder if it’s you that I’m trying to grasp, as though you were the end of a thread.


THE THREAD 2


Protest

We herewith wish to submit a written complaint against the previous text. We wish to protest that it ends with the old lady lying there, thirsty, waiting and fumbling for something ungraspable in the air in a room, and that no one comes. If one watches a nature program and sees unbearable situations—that is different. One then often sees terrible things, but without the expectation that someone will intervene and change the sequence of events. Like when one sees polar bear cubs starving to death, or when one sees orcas killing seals, or when one sees lions running and jumping up on an elephant and biting the elephant’s neck and after a long time forcing the bleeding and exhausted elephant to its knees. In such cases, one cannot expect that the person filming will intervene, even though one might hope they would when one is a child. As an adult, one does not expect it, one knows that wildlife photographers cannot change the course of nature, or a predator’s nature, or put themselves in danger in order to distract a hungry lion. But in fiction: here every possibility is available. We wish to point this out here in protest, and also to point out that it should not be necessary to have to point this out at all. One does not have to let an old woman lie alone, confused and half dreaming, longing for her daughter in Denmark, in a hospital room or a care home room with an emergency exit sign shining green above the door. And on St. Lucia’s Day, of all days.

We would like to propose that you expand the previous text. We propose that the woman can be lying in bed, as she is, but then suddenly she hears someone at the door. This makes her happy, because she thinks it’s one of the care workers. She’s particularly fond of a care worker called Torunn, she hopes that it’s Torunn. But it’s not Torunn, because Torunn is at the dentist’s—in comes a lion instead. The lion moves slowly toward the bed and the old woman, who should also have a name, we suggest Nikka, as it sounds old. It would be good if Nikka tries to lift her head a little at this point, to see if she can see Torunn, but sees that it can’t be Torunn after all, as the unexpected visitor is far too short. The lion will now, at our suggestion, approach the bed. In a nature program, the lion would jump up onto Nikka and bite her with the intention of eating her, and the lion would stand on Nikka and eat her up until no one could say for sure, before doing a dental exam on what remained of Nikka’s teeth, that it was in fact Nikka who had been lying there—and it was. But: because this is fiction, things don’t need to take the same course that they would in a nature program. The photographer, who in this case is you, the author, can instead write that the lion goes over to the small table, where an enormous pork chop has been left untouched because Nikka is far too old and her teeth are too bad for her to be able to chew it. The lion can now grab the chop in her mouth (because it has to be reasonable that the lion doesn’t eat Nikka, even though she has the chance) and trot happily out.

Sudden interventions like this can happen. Do you recall that on February 7, 1910, Virginia Woolf dressed up as an Abyssinian prince and boarded the jewel in the crown of the Royal Navy, HMS Dreadnought, together with five friends from the Bloomsbury Group? It’s known as “the Dreadnought hoax” and the Royal Navy was horrified that it had truly believed it was being visited by six princes, who in fact were only six authors, who they treated royally for real. Well, we’ve always liked to imagine how quiet it must have been in the boat as they approached the ship, the six, and to think about Virginia’s plan to keep her mouth shut, as she would give away that she was a woman if she said anything, and that she succeeded in her plan. If we close our eyes, we can imagine the sound of the sea in the dark against the prow of the boat, where the six were sitting in disguise. The gentle clucking. The even oar strokes, the “princes” rowing steadily toward the ship. The fact that we can do this, almost be at the prow of the boat of the prince pretenders, is evidence enough, we believe, to condemn the previous text: our ability to imagine would have no problem picking up the phone to ring Gunnhild in Denmark, and Gunnhild would be able to come, problem solved, and we would then not have to think that there are old people hovering between wakefulness and half death, with an emergency exit light shining far too symbolically above the door—that they exist, and that these half states exist too, without any obvious or lightning-flash solution.


THE THREAD 3


Small letter from Queen Gunnhild

In the small letter we found under the door (it’s perhaps more of a note, pushed in through the gap between the door and the doorframe), it says that Queen Gunnhild is unfortunately unable to come. She is, at the time of writing, transformed into a swallow and sitting outside a loft window in Scotland, screeching and screeching so that Egil Skallagrimsson cannot concentrate on composing the poem of praise he is sitting inside the loft trying to write, which he wants to present to Eric Bloodaxe, Queen Gunnhild’s husband, who intends to chop off Egil’s head tomorrow. You can read about this, Queen Gunnhild writes, in Egil’s Saga, where it explains in note no. 124 that a “shape-shifter” is someone who can change shape with the help of magic, and then says “it must have been Gunnhild who has transformed herself into a swallow,” and she just wants to confirm that that is the case, so there is no doubt whatsoever. We stand in this breeze from the past, fluttering. Queen Gunnhild. Screeching swallow. Shape-shifter. Slowly we come to ourselves again and go out onto the veranda to breathe in some fresh air. The sun is going down over the fjord, a tourist boat lies peacefully on the water, present time—did the present twitch at this unexpected letter, or did it stand as solid as cast concrete? A magpie lands on the ridge of a roof, we eye it skeptically, but it seems there can be little doubt that it is just a magpie, and not the evil Queen Gunnhild, who did her best to annoy the author in the loft so he could not write a single verse.


Copyright © 2020 by Kolon forlag

Copyright © 2023 by Kari Dickson