Grace by Linn Ullmann

the pictures of a fetus at various stages of development and the heart that pumped twenty-eight liters of blood a day.
    In time, however, when Johan’s condition worsened, and the pain with it, the signs would cease to appear, cease to be signs, showing themselves to be simply random occurrences. Just as Johan himself was a random occurrence. There would come a time when Johan would realize that the world wasn’t trying to tell him anything, that his body was saying nothing, that the pain offered nothing; that the body is flesh and flesh decays. It was simply there—all of it. He had no tacit understanding with the world. Sunshine was sunshine. Rain was rain. Flesh was flesh. Pain was pain. And there would come a time when Johan would clasp his hands and whisper, “Why?” And the answer would make no more sense than the question: “Because.”
    But now, standing in front of the mirror, he was still hoping something would happen, hoping for a sign, hoping the beast that had taken up residence inside him and cast its shadow over his life would give way to long, unchanging, sunlit days.
    My . . . life, he thought. He didn’t know what else to call it. He would have liked to have come up with something grand and eloquent, there in front of the mirror. “My . . . life. My life.” That was all he could muster. Sip a glass of cold beer. Read. Go fishing. Lie next to Mai, hand in hand, with the scent of her hair and body in his nostrils.
    At the same time, listening to his body, he was conscious of a slight headache and a touch of nausea. The nausea frightened him. It didn’t take much to scare him into imagining that something nameless, terrible, unthinkable, was about to happen, something he could not foresee and therefore could not guard against or control. Convulsions. Hemorrhaging. Choking fits.
    Being hours away from a big, bright, modern hospital worried him. He’d been looking forward to getting away, but now “away” didn’t seem a safe place at all. He didn’t want to be “away.” He wanted to be where it would be technically possible to save his life. Someplace he wouldn’t die just like that, with only the trees, the grass, and the still waters of the lake bearing witness. Who would save him if he were suddenly to collapse right now? Mai? She’d barely give him a Valium if he complained of feeling agitated. She was a doctor, but she lacked access to the necessary facilities and drugs and didn’t have the specialist’s skills. A man in Johan’s condition needed the utmost expertise. He took a deep breath.
A man in my condition needs the utmost expertise.
He stared at the gaunt face in the mirror and held his breath. The nausea was stronger now, a gagging sensation, as if someone had rammed a stick down his throat. Was the headache worse? He went on holding his breath. He didn’t want to start retching, because once begun it would go on and on until he was laid out, drained, on the bathroom floor, like a broken twig. Who would save him then?
    When Johan was a boy, he and his friends used to have contests to see who could hold his breath the longest. Underwater, in railway tunnels, while someone counted to fifty or seventy or even a hundred. When Andreas was ten, Johan found him shut up inside a wardrobe with a plastic bag over his head. Johan tore off the bag in terrible fear and slapped the boy’s face.
    “What made you do such a thing, Andreas?”
    The boy merely shrugged and walked away.
    Once, many years later, he asked Mai, “What is it about suffocation that children find so seductive?”
    Mai thought for a moment. Then she put her finger on his windpipe and pressed, then pressed a little harder and kept pressing until he pushed her away.
    He exhaled, stared at his face in the mirror, took a step back, and looked himself up and down: the old man’s chest; the long, thin fingers; the nails that had not been cut in a while (he must remember to do that first thing, once he was finished here!);