NOVEL

This Is What I’ve Been Waiting For

The Love We Had, Chapter 37

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37

My head is heavy, my body feels like lead. I wake up far away in a dark forest. I feel insecure on everything. I know I’m a prisoner and I must fight myself free. I dream in waking state. I ask myself how it would have been, whether he was capable to change.

I ask myself if my husband would be able to behave towards me not like who he is, but like another. I think he has long been distant; he and I have slipped from one another. We have become two strangers living under the same roof. He and me — two strangers sleeping in the same bed on either side with a massive, invisible wall in between.

He and I have lived the days between the same things, he and I together, but two strangers in this house. Then one day something happens. He comes to me. In my dream, Lars comes to me in the kitchen where only he and I are. He puts his hand kind of random on my shoulder. I turn my face against him, and he looks me in the eye.

I know he wants something and I think that he’s trying to come back to me, to what once existed between him and me, and I’m not indifferent. I feel like I in a few short seconds am lifted as if I were weightless. I sense he’s taking me by the arm, not hard, reckless as my body expects. He grabs me by the arm in a different way; not like he did when it happened — which I do not want to remember. No, his hand is cautious, inquiring, and my body remembers my husband, Lars, as he could be.

It feels as if he’s approaching, in a new way, Lars, my husband — he’s on his way back to me. He tries to find back to who he was, to who I was when everything just had begun. And if this hadn’t been a dream — would I then think that this is what I’ve been waiting for?

I walk down the Baker Road, I take a shortcut down to the grocery store — going to purchase necessary items for this day and for the days ahead. I feel it tingle in the neck I turn around, but there is no one behind me.

I look towards the windows of the houses I pass by. I can’t see anyone there, but I know they are there. They sit behind their window. They look and I know that their glance is on me, maybe follow me wherever I go with the handbag down the road, on the way to the grocery store. I know someone is watching me, someone looks at me that way which I would rather not have been watched. They see me, but not as I would like to be seen.

From experience, I can actually say a little about the good life. A good life — it is a sea of emotions and feelings. There are conflicts and challenges, but there are also moments of happiness. The good life, when I think about it — I have not really experienced it that much.

The good life — is it having it relaxed, free from difficult emotions and conflicts, or is it on the contrary going through challenges, taking on challenges and living through crises, facing unknown and difficult issues, and relating to them and tackling them? Is it to dare to experience something other than the ordinary, or to avoid experiencing things that we have not asked for — what should we consider as a good life?

The good life is about finding oneself and being a bit lucky with the person that I by chance come along with.

The good life is about me, about myself, who I am and what I do. In meeting with the other maybe we two can create our common bright future

I feel like someone is looking at me when I’m out. Eyes sees me when I am inside. There’s somebody who watches when I don’t see, some people who are talking together when I don’t hear.

I know for sure there’s talk. I feel the eyes against my back, a gaze that slides away when I turn around.

— What is betrayal, what is fidelity? Betrayal to him, betrayal to me, myself? Whom do I owe allegiance?

In a town like this, it is not just the physical buildings, streets, and mountains that are important. The people in the city matter. How they live, how they are and behave towards each other, how they see each other, how they judge each other.

This is a small and transparent town, and I think that the people who live and work in this town are mostly happy here. This town with its small streets and open spaces, its stone park and the quays — and the mountains leaning dark and gloomy over people and buildings down on the river plain — it is a place where people go out, walk, meet, see each other, talk.

An international travel agency visited the city some years ago, and they named the city “the ugliest city in the world”. Although there may be an argument for saying something like that, it might be a little unfair. First of all, there are many ugly cities, and on a hot, sunny day this is not the ugliest. The city under the mountains is not the one that looks best, I think, but neither is it the worst.

But on the other hand, the town can be nasty to some of the people who live there, and many of those who live here are people who in a way live with their guard lifted.

Due to the high mountain peaks that hang over the city, and despite the fact that the streets almost always look lonely, it is in many ways a very crowded city. Many things are not really good here. In a big city, you can get away, you can hide, you can make yourself almost invisible. But this is not a big city. Here you do not escape so easily. It is a city where there is an invisible crowd; glances, voices, whispers, murmurs, laughter, irritation, shocked raised eyebrows; indifference after all.

There are still many who hide here. They hide from others; they hide from the eyes of others. Some will probably think about this as a problem. It is a challenge that you are not completely free. You do not feel beautiful in a city that some describe as ugly, and where you feel the judgmental gaze of the invisible others. A city where many adult people look at others and think that there is something wrong with everyone but themselves.

But is this so special for this city, actually? Is not this quite typical and characteristic of human living conditions in many dense, small communities? Societies where most things are in order and well-functioning, and where people, whether they are bored or not, have time and space to think about the others, point at things they are jealous of and dream about.

Nor should we forget that most people who live here, have their place and their lives here, within this framework. And most people probably do the best they can and try for the longest time not to judge the others — maybe because they fear being judged themselves.

The story that the novel tells takes place in a small industrial town at the end of a fjord in western Norway. The story being told and the characters are fictional.

The photos included in the chapters are taken on location in Odda and in the Odda Smelter (Odda Smelteverk, 1906–2003), the carbide factory that is part of the story.

The Love We Had

Part 1 The Longest Night -chapters 1–3, told by Lars. Part 2 The Light Inside -chapters 4–17, told by Aslak. Part 3 Save Our Secret Love -chapters 18–48, told by Eira.

For quick access to all chapters, go here.

Previous: Chapter 36 The Road I Have Gone

Next: Chapter 38 “You Have Yours Around You”

Øivind H. Solheim writes fiction, essays and articles aiming to help others understanding life, other humans and themselves. He has published five novels, two non-fiction books and a poetry book.

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