Garbo’s Faces

a Novel — Part 12: Letters

The trip back to London was long and gloomy.

Harriet didn’t want to come to the airport. She disliked drawn out goodbyes, she said, and instead gave me a long hug on her landing, kissed me on both cheeks, and then gave me a sealed envelope. Read it on the plane, she said, and shut the door on me.

I missed her already. She had grown into a presence: Harriet, my mother.

Leaning back into my seat, I put the envelope to my nose and inhaled. It smelled faintly of lemon, her perfume.

Using the key to my flat, I opened it carefully — a proceeding that caught the eye of a lady across the aisle from me, but she quickly looked away when our eyes met.

Inside the envelope I found many sheets, carefully written. The airline hostess startled me when she seemingly out of nowhere leaned down and asked me if I needed something. I looked up into a friendly face, professionally so. No thanks. Can I get you a coffee? No. Well, a cup of tea perhaps. She soon brought it.

I unfolded and smoothed the many fine pages in my lap, peripherally aware that the lady across the aisle was still taking note of the proceedings.

Then I read:

Dear Nachiketa,

To tell you the truth, I feel more comfortable writing than talking. It gives me time to think things through, you see, and time to find the right word to tell those thoughts. I am not very good with words, not with English words anyway, as you may have noticed, and I am still self-conscious about my accent, it is obviously the accent of an uneducated dumbbell from Sweden, so obvious to everyone. But the pen does not betray me, at least not as much, and besides, I can take as long as I want to find just the right word — le mot juste, as Flaubert put it — since my bedroom, as I’m sure you noticed, has become home to many stray dictionaries.

Did our Christmas Morning adventure happen? Did it really? Pearly Soames. All those snakes, and the poor man who lost his head. And the song, the psalm so strangely but beautifully played.

In the light of day (I say light of day though it is still dark outside) it is hard to believe that it took place at all. But equally hard to deny under starry sky. Was it your magic, Nachiketa, or was it mine? Or ours? And the horse — was it his magic? Where did he come from? How did he find us? And in all that snow.

Or was it that we dreamed the same dream? The same so very vivid dream. That must have been it, don’t you think? All that glogg. We dreamed the same dream. We dreamed it so hard we made it real.

Sitting here, alone with my thoughts — you’re still asleep in the guest room as I write this — that’s what the silence tells me, that’s what the sky, still dark outside my window, tells me. What the faint aroma of glogg which still lingers — you’ve noticed it too, I’m sure — tells me. That it was a dream, our dream. Helped along by the glogg, don’t you think, Nachiketa? Must have been. No?

You know, it was Jiddu who insisted on your name. I had wanted to name you Karl after my father, but Jiddu was dead set against it. With an Indian father, he said, you must have an Indian name. And that name was Nachiketa. He was adamant about that. I asked him what it meant and he told me that Nachiketa was the name of the young boy who in the Katha Upanishad got to meet Yama, the Lord of Death, and who got to ask many questions of him. I remember that when I read it years later, I was very happy to have a son with that name. And now that I have met you, and have dreamed with you, I am even happier that you have such a magical name.

Remember how on Christmas Eve you told me I should have been a poet and I replied that I’ve tried. That is true, Nachiketa, I really have tried.

Here is one of my many tryings — though I’m sure that’s not even a word, it should be attempts, I guess. Even though I wrote this some time ago, I might as well have written it just now, for this says what I want to say to you, Nachiketa, about our dream:

If I were nothing but heart within a nothing but cage then I would wish I could tell us apart though I would not know where to start

If I were nothing but word upon a nothing but page then I would offer my life to be heard though you may well find that absurd

And when I dream my life away as no doubt I will this is what I wish to say dreaming harder still

If I were nothing but song upon a nothing but stage then I would wish I could shine and be strong that I would be where I belong

But I am nothing but now within a nothing but age within a heart and a song and a vow that I will find you here somehow

And when I dream my life away as indeed I will this is what I came to say dreaming harder still

If I am dreaming then so are you give me your hand and I will see us through

If I am dreaming then so are you please take my hand and I will see us through

Do you like it, Nachiketa?

But then again — and this though keeps rearing its head — what if, what if it wasn’t a dream? What if what we saw, the horse and the horrible man Pearly Soames and all those candles were real? And the beheading? My Lord. What if the snowstorm was real, and the ride and everything, Nachiketa? What if it was not a dream?

I am sure it was a dream (really, how could it have been anything else?) but how come we dreamed the same thing? And everything so real that we talked about it in the kitchen as if it had happened.

And the psalm. Not only did we dream the same dream, in the dream we heard the same song, and this song sang us both the same sleepy cows and faraway cuckoo that it sang for me so long ago in the Sofia Church back home (yes, I’m sure now that it was the Sofia Church). Oj, oj, oj, this all a little too much for my Swedish dumbbell brain.

But if it was a dream, which surely it was, whose dream was it, Nachiketa? Were you in mine or was I in yours? And in the psalm, perhaps we were both in his, Oskar’s dream? Oh, yes, that’s another thing: I remember his name. It’s Oskar. I asked him, and he told me. His name was Oskar, he said. Oskar. I wonder what ever came of him.

Can you really talk to snakes? Or was our conversation by the kitchen table — while we finished that last of the glogg — part of the dream as well?

Oh, Nachiketa, it’s so hard to make any sense of this, for right now, in this very moment, I am all sure it happened for very real, and then, right now, just an eye-blink later, I now know, all sure as well, that it was only a dream. Mine, or yours, or Oskar’s.

I hope your trip back is going well, and that they are treating you well on the airplane. The little poem (the little trying) is my gift to you, for if I am dreaming, then so are you, give me your hand and I will see us through. Or, perhaps (you are so fond of using that word, perhaps, instead of maybe, have you noticed, Nachiketa?), perhaps it is your song to me, your dream that I am dreaming?

I am so very glad that you came to see me, and so very glad that I have come to know you. I know that we will meet soon again, whether for real or in our dreams.

Signed, simply, Harriet.

None of the record shops or music stores that I tried had heard of a Swedish organist named Oskar.

“Would that be with a ‘c’ or ‘k’, sir?”

“Try ‘k’,” I said.

The clerk looked through his files. Took his time. “Nothing, sir.”

“Perhaps it’s ‘c’,” I said.

The clerk, in a show of being put out, re-checked his files. Took his time. “No, sir. No Oscars with a ‘c’ either, I’m afraid.” Not afraid at all. Really, there’s something about the English sales clerk that seems to repel sales. I mumbled a thanks, I’m sure, but not much more.

I may have checked a dozen or so places, same outcome. Truth was, if what I wanted to know did not have to do with Tommy Steele, or Elvis Presley, or Cliff Richard and the Shadows, they were simply not interested. “Going through the motions” describes it pretty well.

Maybe Harriet was mistaken: Oskar was not his name. If indeed there was a name, or an organist in a Sofia Church, or a psalm. The more stores I visited, the more he didn’t exist. The more places I called, the more likely it seemed that we had indeed dreamed a common dream, my mother and I, psalm included.

London was nothing but gloom that winter. It snowed on several occasions, snow that quickly turned into slush, then fog, then smog in the cold evenings when the whole city warmed itself by coal fires. Gloom indeed, and work — which I still enjoyed, by the way. And, of course, her letters. I received them weekly, sometimes twice a week. She wrote long, well thought out letters where I could see her clearly. They were what I hoped to find on the floor just inside my door every evening when I came home, they were what I looked forward to on my tube rides from the office. It felt so right to have a mother, and that it should be Harriet. Despite the gloomy weather, at heart, I was a happy person. Very.

In the late spring of 1959 I get this letter:

Dear Nachiketa,

Did you know that the Secretary General of the United Nations and I were born the same year? His name, as you probably know, is Dag Hammarskjold. I met him the other night at a party and that’s when we discovered we were both born in 1905.

We are fellow Swedes, you know, and we had a nice, long, quiet conversation where I got to at least glimpse the man behind the man that the world gets to see. I’m not sure that I let him glimpse the woman behind the woman the world gets to see (or used to). I’m not very good at that, as you know. I don’t like to show myself.

And he made me remember hearing his name when I was a child, Hammarskjold. My dad used to say it now and then, and not kindly. Come to find out that his father, Hjalmar, was the Swedish prime minister when I was about ten. I had never made the connection until he told me. Isn’t that amazing?

He told me about his childhood in Jonkoping, that’s a small town in Smaland, in southern Sweden. And he talked about his job and about the strains of just about every day and in a way it felt good to know that I’m not the only one who is not all that happy with life.

He is an amazing man, Nachiketa, I wish I can get to know him better. He is a loner, just like I am.

But I have a terrible confession to make. At one point he told me that one thing that helps keep him collected (that was the word he used), under all those pressures, is a diary that he keeps, and has kept for years. He says he puts in it things he doesn’t want to lose sight of. “Fixed points,” he said, “that were on no account to be lost sight of.” Things he has realized along the way, and wants to make very sure he remembers, and can review when he needs to, if he needs to, is how he put it.

“When do we get to read it?” I ask him, more as a joke, but I have to admit I was curious too. What would a man like that find too important to lose sight of? What things would he realize?

Then he tells me that he was thinking of publishing it, but not until after he’s dead, as a sort of requiem, yes that’s what he said, a requiem, but I think perhaps he meant an epitaph, but that’s beside the point. The point is, and this is what’s so terrible, that as soon as he said that, even as he said it, the moment the meaning of what he said was clear to me, I wished him dead. Wished him dead, Nachiketa, just so that I could read the diary. The thought, the wish came so fast, so unbidden, so out of nowhere that I know it was a true wish, and I’m so ashamed. And I’m also a little scared, for sometimes my wishes come true.

You see, there was nothing I wished for more as a child than to become an actress. It was a wish so strong that the word wish is no longer the right word for it. It was so strong it was more like a a future certainty than a wish — but when things we know will happen have not happened yet, I think we call them wishes. At least the strong ones.

Actually, Nachiketa, I am very scared. What if he dies tomorrow? But enough of that.

I asked him if he wouldn’t let me have just a little peek, but he just smiled, and then looked at me with his pale blue eyes, and said that I would have to kill him first, for he must stay true to his own decision, he said. He must have seen how my face lost all color, for he immediately said that he was only kidding, of course. Of course, I said back, of course. But I felt that somehow he knew, somewhere inside him my wish had made an echo. What do you think, Nachiketa? Am I evil? That was an evil, and very selfish wish, was it not? And part of me, that’s the hard thing to tell, but part of me is that selfish woman who wishes United Nations General Secretaries dead so she can read their diaries. You can tell, can’t you, that I’m shaking my head in disbelief and not a little disgust. But it’s true, that is who I am.

Other than that, Mercedes is making an absolute nuisance of herself and people won’t leave me alone. Even my walks get interrupted many times by strangers wanting to talk or to get my autograph. It’s very difficult. Some days I just stay inside and drift in and out through the windows.

Signed, as always, “Harriet.”

At this time I was not yet in the habit of keeping copies of my correspondence, so I don’t know exactly what I answered her, but I must have tried to assuage her bitter self-reproach by saying that I’m sure we all wish some people dead sometimes; and I must also have mentioned that I had read somewhere that if thoughts could in fact kill we would depopulate the planet in a matter of days, for she makes a reference to that in her reply, guessing, she said, it would take hours, not days.

On occasion she’d call me on the telephone, but not very often. She told me more than once that she much preferred to write. The telephone, she said, made her self-conscious and made it hard for her to “find the right word” especially when speaking English. But on the 23rd of June — I’ve checked my journal — she called.

It was a wonderful summer’s day, I remember it well, looking out onto very green trees as I answered.

“Lindberg,” she said. No preamble, no “Hello.”

Her voice sounded very clear for a cross-Atlantic call.

“Lindberg?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Oskar Lindberg.”

“Ah.” I made the connection. “The organist. Are you sure?” I had told her of my failure to track him down.

“Oh yes, absolutely. He was the organist at Engelbrekts Church in Stockholm until 1955, when he died.”

“How did you find out?”

“I asked the right people.”

“Who?” I thought I had asked the right people.

“I was in a second-hand bookstore yesterday, when I saw this old man looking through a very large book on organ construction. I saw him, with the book, across the aisle. I looked at the book twice. I could see the cover, for he was holding it up, close to his face. I guess he was nearsighted. Organ Construction, it said.

“‘Are you interested in organs?’ I asked him.

“He lowered the book enough to get a good look at me; a little perplexed I guess, and also a little amused. You know, with a ‘why would I be reading a book on organ construction if I had no interest in them?’ sort of look.

“But he was polite and a gentlemen about it. All he said was, ‘Yes.’

“‘Do you know about organists?’ I asked

“‘One or two,’ he said, with a smile that said he knew many more than that.

“‘Have you ever heard of a Swedish organist, he must be long dead by now, whose first name was Oskar?’ I asked.

“‘Lindberg,’ he said. Just like that. Lindberg.

“‘Lindberg?’ I asked.

“He closed the book but marked his place with his finger. ‘Oskar Lindberg. The only Oskar of note. He was the organist at the Engelbrekts Church in Stockholm from 1914 to 1955, which is when he died. Prior to that he was the organist at Trinity Church, in the same city. This was from 1906 until his 1914 appointment to the more prestigious Engelbrekts Church. Well, maybe not more prestigious, but it had, in fact it still has, a much better organ. An important consideration for organists,’ he added.

“‘Lindberg,’ I said again. ‘How can you be so sure?’

“‘As I said, the only Oskar of note. Swedish or otherwise.’

“‘Oskar Lindberg,’ I said, more to myself this time.

“‘Yes,’ he said. Politely. Then he returned to his book. When I hadn’t moved for quite a little while, he looked at me again, curious about why I was still there, but he said nothing.

“And at that point, I swear, Nachiketa, although I wanted to ask him some more questions about Oskar Lindberg, I began to feel like Alexander the Great casting an unwanted shadow on Diogenes, who in this case was too much of a gentleman to ask me to move away and out of the sun. So I mumbled, ‘If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes,’ and turned to go. I didn’t mean for him to hear me, but he must have.”

I burst out laughing at the picture she painted.

“And he must have read the same story, for then he said, ‘Diogenes appreciates that,’ without hardly even looking up. An amazing man. But then he did look up and added, ‘Good day to you, Ms. Brown.’ I thanked him and left. By the door I looked back at him and he had returned to his book, apparently not a thought left for me.”

“A true Diogenes,” I said. “Not awed by fame.”

“Yes,” she said, “that was a rare, amazing man.”

Armed with a last name this time, it only took me three days to track down a recording of it, and it was indeed the song. There was no doubt about it. Its Swedish name was Gammal Fabodpsalm, which translates to “Old Mountain Pasture Psalm.” Written, indeed, just like Harriet had told me, by an Oskar. She was absolutely right. And so was Diogenes — his last name was indeed Lindberg, Swedish organist and composer. A small record store on Googe Street had what amounted to an EP, for the psalm was over six minutes long. It was a Swedish recording from 1953 with Lindberg himself at the organ, and they wanted twenty pounds for it, a small fortune. “Rare,” said the proprietor, a balding, serious man with a dark blue bow tie and light blue vest. “Very rare.” As if that explained pretty much everything, the current political situation included.

“I would have to hear it first,” I said, “before I pay that kind of money.”

And he said, “Fine.” Not quite frowning. With smooth and practiced motions — which struck me as a ritual more than anything else — he then slipped the record out of its colorful cover, then out of its inner sleeve, careful not to touch the tracks, then gently placed the black little disc on a large turntable, before handing me two handheld, once-white earphones, one for each ear. I sat down by the counter and brought the foam-covered little speakers into position.

Not correctly, apparently, for as fastidious man pointed out, “Sir, the one marked ‘L’ goes over the left ear.”

I complied — not that anything recorded in 1953 would be in stereo, but I did not raise that issue.

With the same ritualistic care he then lowered the stylus onto the record. First came the faint scraping of needle on empty groove, two, perhaps three, revolutions, then the faint stirring of a large organ filling its lungs with air.

Then it sang: it was the song.

Every bit of it the very song we had heard that Christmas morning, in that candlelit church, in that dream of ours, if a dream it was. And, I’m sure, the very song Harriet had heard so many years earlier, while Lindberg was still writing it, in that Sofia Church of hers. Twenty pounds was a steal, as they say nowadays.

I had to call and tell her on the telephone.

She didn’t answer at first. So I called back, twice. Claire finally picked up at the other end. Once she recognized me, however, she shouted something into the apartment I couldn’t make out but which had my name in it, and then Harriet was on the line.

“Nachiketa?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What time is it there?”

“It’s eight o’clock in the evening,” I said.

“It’s three in the afternoon here.”

“I found it,” I said.

“Found what?”

“The song. Oskar Lindberg’s song.”

She didn’t say anything for so long I thought she might have hung up.

“It is the song,” I said. “The song we heard.”

Then she answered: “So it wasn’t a dream?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“I mean, everything,” she replied. “If the song is real, does that not make everything else real, too? The snowstorm, the church, the horse, the beheading?”

And that, of course, was the question — was the very disturbing question that finding the record had brought back to life.

“I think it does,” I said. “I think it happened. All of it.”

She fell silent again. I could hear other conversations on the line, faint, ghost talk. Then she spoke again. “Can I hear it?”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

Well, I should have foreseen that, of course. “Just a second,” I said, and put the receiver down. I then pulled the gramophone — a pretty bulky thing — as close to the telephone as the electrical cord would allow. It seemed close enough. “Just a second,” I said again into the receiver, and placed the record on the turntable.

As the song played, I held the mouthpiece as close to the speaker as it would go, hoping she could hear it well enough at the other end.

When it had finished, I asked her, “Is that as you remember it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.” And then added, “It would have been so much easier, wouldn’t it, had it not been.”

I didn’t understand, and said so.

“Magic is hard to come to grips with. To accept. It is so hard on the soul.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant, but I said, “I don’t know about magic.”

“If not magic, then what?” she asked.

“It happened. It just happened. We were there. We rode Phantom. We heard the song. It happened.”

Again, she had fallen silent, thinking. I could picture her face in a frown.

“So you actually can talk to snakes?”

“Why, yes. Yes, that’s always been true.”

Another silence. “Can I come and see you?”

“Of course.”

“Maybe Cecil could arrange it.”

“I’ll ask him to call you,” I said.

© Wolfstuff