NOVEL DRAFT

The Beauty in Our Days

The challenging everyday life of humans. 1

A message to the reader:

This is a draft of the first chapter of a new novel, with the working title The Beautiful in Life.

There will be two main parts, Part 1, where she tells the story, and Part 2 where the reader gets the story from his perspective.

The author would like to receive feedback on the reading experience in this first chapter. — Is this engaging, does this text make you want to read more?

Part 1 She writes

“We must take care of the beauty of the days.”

In the kitchen drawer, she has a secret notebook, a kind of journal where she writes about some of the small events in the everyday life.

She writes a few words if during the day if she has talked to her mother on the phone, or if she has been out in the morning and had a coffee with a friend.

She also uses to write short notes about the weather, whether it is sun, wind or snow:

“Called mom. She was fine.” … “Good weather today, a little sun.” Or: “Cloudy, is it raining?” Or: “Snow today.” … “Wind in pine wood.” … “The snow melted. Rain.”

She almost always writes only a few words, telegram style. She does not quite know with herself exactly why she is doing this. When she thinks about it once in a while, after she has written a few words, she mostly thinks that it is good that it has been done. An everyday ritual, to keep the weekdays in place.

She is cohabiting with Mikael. They have three children together. She waited for him to ask her to marry him, but it never happened. Instead, life took hold of them. First she got pregnant with the boy, then closely followed the two girls, all in just under five years.

She lives with a man who does not communicate, who is not present, and who is simple and rude in the way he enjoys and treats her.

“You walk like a man,” he said to her one day.

“You just trample like an elephant across the floor.”

Then he is quiet. Several days and almost not a word.

Then it’s evening and they’re in the bedroom.

“Come here,” he says.

“No wait a minute, no -.

“Yes, listen, come on. I know you like it.”

She thought: How can he know what I like?

He turned away from her. Said nothing. Shook his head.

She noticed the bitter look on his face. It told her almost everything.

She thought, “I don’t want it that way anymore. I want something else. I want closeness. Human warmth. I want a man who sees me. One that touches me without me stiffening inside. “

She thought, “I want change. But I can not go. I’m dependent on him. The house stands on him. And the car. I do not have a permanent job. And my salary is too bad. No, I can not go away. And the kids. We have them together. We’ve got them together. I can not fail them. I can not leave them to him. I must stay here, even if it is a betrayal of myself. “

If she tells him she wants out, she’s sure he’s going to get angry. And he will rage against her. Call her with all the words he has ever used against her. He will go hard, he will want to take everything.

“The winner takes it all!” is what he uses to say about such. About when people stand steeply against each other in a crisis situation and one has to give up. No, she can not walk away.

That’s the way he is. When he speaks, it comes in capital letters. What he says is always right. When she answers, he bites her off. He does not let her speak. He must be allowed to speak. He has the right to speak first. He must finish saying what he had begun to say.

— It’s always him. He. He.

She does not know what to do. It’s so hard.

She loved him. She knew that, there was no doubt at the time. Was at least blindly in love. Got pregnant on the first try. He was clearly proud. He was on the phone, probably with a friend, one of whom he goes out to drink beer with. She could hear his excitement on the phone, she could imagine what he was saying.

“Made her … yes on the first charge!”

“Yes. It was a good scrub.”

“Oh? You say that!”

“Damn good. Women, women, yes.”

“No, you must not accept that … no.”

“Are you going now?”

“Are you going out now. Are you going to town now?”

She sat with the child in her lap. The boy no longer cried. She felt that it was quieter in the house. And quieter inside her.

“But us then, what about us?”

She thought of what she could say to him when he returned.

“After all, it’s a little boy that you have been co-responsible for and put into the world.”

She heard the words she had said before he left. She heard an echo of her own words inside her. She heard it was unreasonable. At least a little unreasonable. She was not very nice to him, she could see that.

She said no. She had to say no, because she felt suffocated.

In the beginning, she blamed them for being young. They had been young when they met, and they had been young when they had the boy. But not so young. Not so it was unreasonable. Or especially risky.

She had thought a lot about it. She knew what the requirements were for a mother of a newborn baby boy. She knew what she had to give up. What she had to put on. And she also knew very well what she had to take on as her responsibility.

She had dreams. They had both shared their dreams. Dreams that embraced them both, that included him and her, he in the driver’s seat, he as the strong, the governing. And she as the strong at home. She who should have the overview, which was the fixed safe point for the little ones, as they grew up.

She had no doubts. He was a good man, a good man, as her father would have said, if he had lived long enough and gotten to know him, as he was in the beginning.

Now, however, it was perhaps best that it was as it was. That father did not see her, as it had been over the years. She was overjoyed that Dad did not see her oppressed, dominated by this man she had given herself to, whom she had thought she loved.

He who had gradually shown himself from his true side.

She saw herself from the outside. It was a technique she had learned. She was fully aware of it — it was to survive, to get through the days, all the gray and sad days.

“You are who you are,” he could tell her.

“You are hopeless, you just mess it up. It does not matter what I say to you, you are just like that. Hopeless messy.”

“Why don’t you come,” he could say.

“I’m waiting! Come on!”

And other times, when he was in that mood: “You’re ruining everything.”

He was annoyed. He stopped, pulled out. He was limp, soft. She no longer felt him. The stiff, hard one was gone. Back was a limp, soft one. He did not look comfortable.

Okay. She thought: “At least it’s good that he notices it. It would have been worse if he just rolled over on his back and fell asleep right away.”

2020 © Øivind H. Solheim , @oivind47, teacher, author of novels, poetry, articles, essays, short fiction and experimental writing. [email protected]