Skomsvold - Monsterhuman

Monsterhuman

Kjersti Skomsvold

MONSTERHUMAN

Translated from the Norwegian by Becky L. Crook

DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS

Originally published in Norwegian by Forlaget Oktober as Monstermenneske in 2012.

Copyright 2012 by Kjersti Skomsvold

Translation copyright 2017 by Becky L. Crook

First Dalkey Archive edition, 2017.

All rights reserved.

Names: Skomsvold, Kjersti A., 1979- author. | Crook, Becky L., translator.

Title: Monsterhuman / by Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold ; translated from the Norwegian by Becky L. Crook.

Other titles: Monstermenneske. English.

Description: Victoria, TX : Dalkey Archive Press, 2017. | Originally published in Norwegian by Forlaget Oktober in 2012.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017010275 | ISBN 9781628971804 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Chronic fatigue syndrome--Fiction. | GSAFD: Autobiographical fiction

Classification: LCC PT8952.29.K65 M6613 2017 | DDC 839.823/8--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010275

This translation has been published with the financial support of the NORLA (Norwegian Literature Abroad) foundation.

www.dalkeyarchive.com

Victoria, TX / McLean, IL / Dublin

Dalkey Archive Press publications are, in part, made possible through the support of the University of Houston-Victoria and its programs in creative writing, publishing, and translation.

Printed on permanent/durable acid-free paper

The only reason for time is so that everything doesnt happen at once.

Albert Einstein

Contents

The Old Folks Home

THE SOUND OF COWBELLS keeps me awake at night, but I fall asleep eventually, I suppose, because the same sound wakes me again in the morning. Clink-clank, all day long. Ive gotten up several times to look out at the dark, windswept landscape, straining to spot the cows beyond the white painted flagpole, in the light of one of the buildings windows. The night guards shadow passes within the square of light. But theres never a cow to be seen. So I return to bed, snack on potato chips to quell the worst hunger pangs before creeping once more beneath the white institutional sheets, I lie on my right side, and instead of cowbells I listen to the woman who is dying in the room next door. She gurgles and moans, empties out the remaining sounds of her life and suffering into my ear.

We sleep side by side, like a married couple, but with a thin wall between. I pity myself mostly, who cannot sleep, I havent seen her. Perhaps thats when I get the feeling, I often have this feeling, of lying upon my own deathbed, time passes so swiftly. But not yet. I will see the woman for the first time tomorrow, my last day here, she is a heap of clothes on a gurney, but so far Ive only seen the nurses who go in and out of her room with skillets. Bodil, who is the closest thing I have to a big sister, tells me the skillets are bedpans. The woman is dying in the mornings too, and at midday, when I am forced to rest on my bed, or on the floor with my legs on or beneath the nightstand, for the sake of variation. This is the lesson Ive learned here: the importance of balancing rest and activity. The dying is worst to deal with at night, maybe because sleeping reminds me of the same thing, of resting in peace.

Im awakened by a crash, open my eyes, in the half darkness I can make out the contours of knots in the wood paneling. Did you hear that? I say, not daring to move, a friend sleeps behind my back, on the other side of the little room, two other friends are in the room across the hall. No, she says. But why, then, is she so wide awake in the middle of the night? I turn over onto my left side, hesitantly, switch on the lamp. She is lying at a tilt, her head down at floor level, legs in the air, and gazing up toward the ceiling, the bed has collapsed on one end. She acts like nothing has happened, her hands are folded across her blanket. But.

This is not happening now, Im not a little girl with her friends on a sleepover at Mimmi and Grandpas summerhouse, Im laid out like a relic in a nursing home, in the westernmost edges of the country. I should be a young student in another city, I should be more in the middle of everything.

The cows have been up for a long time by now, shouldnt the radio switch on soon, I would like some noise to dampen deaths onslaught next door. A voice strains out through the speakers, its talking about a new Jewish museum, despite their tragic history, Jews have a fantastic sense of humor, its helped them greatly. What is the difference between a Rottweiler and a Jewish mom? The Rottweiler will eventually let you go. But.

This is still so far off, I will wake up each morning longing for death, I am not sick, only ugly, soon the world will see how ugly I am, and I wish I were a Jew in a concentration camp, hungry for life. Schopenhauer, who got so angry at a man, an unknown man, simply for being ugly, a punishment for nothing, his whole life. He stood up from his caf table, went right over and knocked the man over. But.

I get up and turn off the radio, I cant face it, dont dare to listen, I must protect myself from noises, I will be just as diligent as the other patients here, theyre always careful not to crochet too much, have too-lengthy conversations, take too many steps, read too much at once. Ive been granted time off from my studies to recover, Im supposed to be getting so much better while Im here, and I dont understand why I get sicker with each passing day. I phoned several times in the fall to be sure I would have a spot, and the support group lady said yes, and that I didnt need to ask anymore. She told me about the stairs up and down to the dining room, there was an elevator, but it was so noisy, and a portion of the program would take place in another building, fifty yards away, would I be able to handle that? I think so, I said. Besides, its a while until November, and Im sure Ill be much better by then. From her silence I understood that she thought I was suffering from delusions, and I remembered how, before soccer practice and matches, Id call up the coach, each time apologetic about not being able to come. But Ill probably make it next week, Id say. In the end, the coach asked me to stop calling, as this lady did too. I felt dumb, wondered whether they missed me. Just come when you can, Kjersti, he said, that was years ago.

Ive been daydreaming about playing on the mens national soccer team, I say over breakfast in the dining hall, when I finally fall asleep I dream so much and cant help but tell it to the others, its so strange to see people every morning. No one is interested in other peoples dreams, only those who believe that dreams mean something, that they say something about your personality, and those are people that you have to watch out for. But now Ive been dreaming it at night too, I continue, the daydream followed itself into sleep. When I need comforting, I intentionally daydream that Ive scored a goal and that Im being hoisted by muscular men, they carry me around, Mathea will have the same dream, that shes being carried around on a grass field, shes always found the idea of being carried so appealing. But.

I havent yet discovered who Mathea is, and I dont know whether these memories of mine from the old folks home are reliable, the nausea and the hunger, the pain like a nail in my eye, the old women who want me to pull up their tanned stockings, the old men who ask me to buy them porn magazines, the smell of decaying bodies and jars of medicine concealed behind a haze of accordion music and cakes for dessert and the deafening noise of the television that is suspended in the air, old people have to turn the volume up so high so they can hear all of the news from the real world, the world is another place and so infinitely far away. Arent all of my memories rather the fear that this wont help, that Im not good enough, that I will never become a computer engineer?