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In the evening we watch TV. Simon sits in his chair. I am uncertain whether he follows the action, although sometimes he too switches on the set, perhaps one of the things he does automatically, from old habit. There is something paradoxical about his benevolence toward this screen, with all its pestering, jabbering that never ends, even when there is the occasional break, it demands attention. He stares at the screen regardless of what is being shown, as though it is exactly that and nothing else he has been waiting for. I ask if it’s a bit cold, whether I should fetch a jacket. In the wardrobe I catch sight of the snail shell still lying there, I hold it in my hand for a moment. It is solid, but when I hold it up to the lamp, the light shines through the delicate edges. I wonder when the snail disappeared, why it abandoned such a perfect place, the exquisite curved corridor. I stroke the surface, a golden veneer, brittle and yet durable, before replacing it and closing the door.
I put the jacket over Simon’s shoulders, he nods as though I have asked him something. Perhaps it is a delayed reply. The TV continues droning. I open the book that Helena has left on the coffee table, the book about the First World War, I look quickly through it. Here is the old Europe. Lost platoons of soldiers, trench warfare on the western front. Attempts to break through. The Battle of the Somme. For days, months the slaughter continues, from July to November, the young boys fall through the paper pages. Names such as Tannenberg, Somme, Verdun. Between the dust jacket and the first page there is a folded sheet of paper. To my girls it says on this folded sheet. He has written it in his slightly shaky handwriting. Of course I don’t know how long it has lain there, but it is Simon’s handwriting, it must have been written more than a year ago, while he was still able to write.
I feel helpless at the sight of this letter that I had not asked to see. As with the application form, I don’t know what I should do with it. I stand there hesitating, before opening it and reading.
Not so long ago, when I was looking through some of our old papers, the papers belonging to Simon and me, I found another letter, or a rough draft of something that was probably intended to be a letter. I recognized the handwriting, it was inside a blank envelope, but I was unsure whether it was of any significance, it took some time for me to realize what it contained. When Simon was a relatively newly qualified physician, he made a friend. A friendship he later maintained through all these years. They went out and had dinner with other colleagues, and I think they talked about their work since they were in the same profession. It was a formal friendship, I don’t imagine that they ever confided much, a conventional relationship, deriving from and dependent on the codes that applied to friendship at that time. Naturally it came about that we invited this friend and his wife to various social events. We used to send them Christmas cards, in fact it was often me who wrote them. The couple responded with postcards to us every Christmas, formally decorated cards with the obligatory greetings.
I had never considered the friendship to be close enough to include letters, on the contrary. A personal letter seemed to conflict with the distance and formality that the limited seasonal contact depended upon. The letter must also have been an attempt to break through the conformity. Simon wrote to this man, his wife had evidently been ill, I couldn’t remember anything about it. He tried to comfort him and say something beyond their well-established politeness. He had obviously given up the effort since the letter had never been sent. It was so helpless, what was stated on the sheet of paper, there were several forms of words embarked upon, crossed out, as though he had tried to arrive at a sentence or a collection of them that could cover something he perhaps did not even grasp himself. Or perhaps he had some idea, but these sentences and attempts were far too much of a contrast to what their friendship had been up to that point. In order to achieve that, he had to go beyond the boundaries of what was possible, who he himself could and would appear to be, and so he became all the more constrained by his own limits. It seemed so desperate.
I felt sorry for him, and all the same I was annoyed that I had been kept outside, that he had not mentioned anything to me.
I THINK ABOUT this letter to his colleague now that I am reading what he has attempted to write to his daughters. For the letter is to them. I can see that he has tried, he has really tried to formulate something, and if they had opened it, they would have seen his handwriting and these attempts to describe, impart, pass something on, to them. To Helena and her sisters. But he cannot. He has to give up, it is a long time since he was clever at that. It is only a rough draft, a sheet of paper he has left there all the same. Dear Helena, Greta and Kirsten, he writes, I have something I— He gives up. A fresh attempt. He is sorry that it has taken so long, he is sorry about it all. He writes that he first bought paper for a letter, that the storekeeper misunderstood, he got the wrong kind. Today the first signs of summer are here, he writes, the summer is going to be fine, I do think so. And I hope that you all manage to have a vacation. Mother and I both consider that you work too hard. But I have always worked too hard myself, so it is obviously hereditary, that kind of thing. Now I have decided to tell you something I have neglected to say for far too—
I can’t manage to interpret the continuation of the sentence, it is nearly rubbed out because of a faulty pen. But I believe the final word is long. Far too long. My girls, he continues, you have become so big. So grown up. He starts over again, trying to find an introduction.
I become angry, I become angry because he has decided to tell them on his own, without having talked to me about it first.
He is still sitting with his gaze directed at the screen. I don’t feel sorry for you, I want to say. You sit there and are immune. No matter what I say, you are going to stare into space and smile. I want to face him. Listen, Simon, don’t turn away. I don’t feel sorry for you. You let me down, I want to say.
How could he let me down like this, leave me behind in silence with this letter? I want to tell him.
He just sits there.
What can I say?
There he sits. In his chair, and there is nothing to say.
I sit on the settee beside the chair, placing my fingers on his lips. I love you, I think. Have I said it, I can’t recall whether I have said it, but I really must have. I remember that I tried to purge the word from my pupils’ vocabulary, because they loved everything and nothing, eradicating all meaning. It is a word that doesn’t say anything, I told them.
Simon looks at me. In the background a woman is waving from the TV screen, she is standing on the deck of a boat gliding across the water. His name, I think. Simon. It means someone who listens.
DARKNESS HAS FALLEN by the time I fetch the telephone and dial the number. It rings for a long time. The sleepy voice. I have awakened her.