Days in the History of Silence by Merethe Lindstrom Page A

while longer they took part in the same game. I saw Simon watching them intently, watching the boy. When the lad was called over by a woman standing at some distance, who did not even once step foot on the grass dividing the playgroundfrom the remainder of the campsite, but almost intoned the boy’s name with a certain threatening edge, I saw that Simon took on an expression resembling disappointment, as though he had hoped no one would appear, that the boy would turn out to be abandoned and would perhaps be persuaded to come along with us. He remained silent for most of the afternoon.
    In the evening, after the girls had gone to bed, we started to argue. One of the few arguments we have had over the years. I remember I said:
    He wasn’t even yours. It was before I met you.
    He looked at me.
    No, he said eventually, you never gave him the chance to become that. Or were those the words he used? It seems too emphatic. Perhaps I have changed them with the passage of time, but I understood that was what he meant. Nevertheless I felt he was less concerned about the boy than about me, about this deficiency of mine.
    That night as I lay in the cottage with the rain hammering so hard against the roof that it kept me awake for several hours, I wondered whether it would change. I thought about how he regarded me, with this shortcoming, this part of me that was missing and that he was determined to find again. How can he be so sure, I thought, that it is a valuable part, a worthwhile quality, something worth finding.
    I BELIEVE I was pretty for a short while as a young girl. It felt like a distraction. To be looked at, liked by reason ofthat characteristic, such a debatable characteristic. It never seemed to be something I could make use of for my own sake. It was not worth anything to me, only to others. I knew how I could compel other people to look and regard it as a talent, or something I had earned and about which I ought to be proud. A quality on which far too much importance was placed. In the same way as a disability would have been. Although no one would regard it as a disability. Prettiness and me. We did not get along well together. I did not like the attention it brought me or my own attitude toward it, the significance of it. What it made me.
    Simon saw me somewhere, we were young. A look, a dance, we conversed a little that evening. He walked me home, again and again. I sought out the place where we met, a place where young people like us met up, he was there and I remember that we danced a little. We both knew that something was about to happen, but there was a balance, a balance between interest and the trajectory as a result of that, a hand, a glance. A balanced equation. We were trying so hard to be young. He was a dark-haired boy at that time, but older than me, more than ten years older, to me he was a man, his eyes framed by something dark, the lashes, the dark lines I did not appreciate were caused by insomnia, but that made his eyes seem an even brighter blue. In the beginning I could become angry because he had fallen for my prettiness, because it had influenced him, and I was jealous, I wanted him to see me, see who I was, not allow anything so obvious to be a deciding factor. But at the same time I was scared toshow him anything else. If there was anything else there. I was not sure, I was young. He said I was difficult, and I finished with him before we had really embarked on anything, I said we should not go out together any longer. He looked at me in surprise. I remember he walked off. Hurt. I thought he would never return. But he did come back. He rang the doorbell. I watched him from the window, he was standing down in the street, and I did not want to let him in. I had heard some people calling him the refugee, but this was long after the war. He came around several evenings, rang the doorbell. At last I opened the door, we sat in my tiny single-room flat. I remember we sat for one entire day in that