All suffering to end.
I’d be lying if I said I was surprised by Oskar’s death. It had been coming for months. He started to look grey, his cheeks sunken, his eyes bruised around the edges. I’ll say this for him, he never lost his sparkle. Even on his death bed there was a light in his eyes. I don’t know why we had to do Hamlet again.
‘What about Miss Julie?’
‘No. It has to be Hamlet. They expect it,’ he blustered.
‘Well can’t you at least do less. Why don’t you do Osric? You used to make a wonderful fop.’
‘No.’
‘It’s just you get so carried away.’
He was silent and for a moment I thought he would reconsider.
‘They expect me to give them everything. I am the ghost,’ he had said and we left it at that. I almost told him to go and see the doctor but I knew he would pick Henrik. That would be no good.
When he left I looked across to the corner of the room at the horse. Over the years I fool myself and say I've become better at interpreting it’s slightest signs. Looking back I think it knew what would happen.
When they brought Oskar back from the theatre and he was dying I wanted to scream into his face, ‘I told you, you were too weak.’
The moment they carried him in you could see he was done for. Of course, we did everything and got the good doctor, not Henrik. We tried medicines, prayed even. We tried as you do but I don’t think anyone said, ‘Don’t worry Emilie, he’s strong, he’ll pull through.’
It was all, ‘He won’t suffer. He’s slipping away.’
In the time it took him to die Oskar seemed to be quite happy. Maybe there is something to Henrik’s thinking. Maybe believing makes a difference in the end. If this had happened five years earlier we would have had Henrik by the bedside, gentle, kindly, wise Henrik who gave Alexander the magnet for his little theatre and showed the boy how it attracted things.
'Attraction is a mystery, between metals, between men and women,' Henrik said and laughed, pinching Alex's cheek.
I thought of that when they bought Oskar back. He had an attraction that drew others close.
We couldn't call Henrik to attend because these days he’s ‘distracted’. If you met him now and hadn’t known him before you would say his brain’s addled but even after he changed, we still went to see him again and again.
The last time, no more than a week before Oskar’s death, Henrik was in his garden, sitting out in the freezing cold, surrounded by his ‘texts’. For whatever reason he was convinced the world was ending, that his sums were right and other people’s were wrong.
‘Millenarian nonsense. The world will end but they got the figures wrong. It’s all in the bible. The end is coming and soon,’ he had said and tapped a tract under his hand. He was wearing blue woollen gloves with the fingers missing. His blackened nails tapped the sheet and I remember the title on the front page, ‘All suffering to end’.
He drummed the table as he spoke, ‘But it’s not going to be the Christian nonsense people spout. The end will be wonderful for everyone, everyone who is decent. These priests who wish for a hell? Well maybe they are the ones who will get to meet the devil when the time comes. Be careful. That’s what I always say Oskar. Be careful what you wish for.’
He handed over the yellowing sheet and on the way home my husband said, ‘He may have a point the old man. He knows a thing or two.’
Well it was right for you my husband. Your suffering ended. In fact, as we waited in the bedroom you hardly suffered at all. You just died.
Your mother sat in the corner of the bedroom in that horrible purple outfit and watched me swab your poor mouth. The 'good' doctor wandered around with his head bent like some kind of large bird and the horse stood by the Japanese screen. At times it’s brown coat glows and at that time, as it stood next to the yellow of the screen it seemed to begin to disappear. For one moment I felt faint with hope and thought this would be it, the release, the moment the horse would leave. I had this overwhelming rush of optimism that made the hair on my neck rise and my skin tingle. The old woman looked at me and nodded, thinking I was shivering with fear. Then you died and the horse stayed, tied to my life.
There was only one time I was tempted to tell someone about the horse. I had it all prepared. To being with I would explain how it appeared in the country when we went out to Arhus for the summer. I was eight and we stayed at my twelve year old cousin's farm. Katerina was a real Tomboy and it's ironic that I'm the one who got saddled, if you'll excuse the pun, with the horse. She loved riding.
'It's wonderful. To have such a magnificent beast under your control. It makes me feel strong,' she said the day before the accident.
I hated the country. When we went through one village I cried at the smell of the children and the stink of some drunken men. On the day of Katerina's accident I saw the dead badger, lying in a ditch on its back like a stuffed toy, rigid, it's limbs stiff in the air it's black and white fur as coarse and sharp as thorns.
I was waiting by a hedge when it happened. Something spooked the horses, they think a gunshot from two men out fowling and Katerina's horse bolted and turned for home. The poor girl had no control and clung on as she headed across the field back towards the farmyard. Every rider talked about 'the tree', a big old oak with one deadly low branch that you had to avoid coming back to the farm. Katerina hit it at full speed. The branch smashed into her back, picked her off the horse and threw her to the ground. She broke her collarbone and shoulder. One mended but the other wouldn’t set, I can't remember which, and she simply withered away, a sickly invalid, dying at eighteen.
I first saw my horse standing by that tree when the accident happened. Ever after, all my life, it appeared, the same small, perfect animal, everywhere but not all of the time.
I had this story prepared a few years ago for Henrik. It was summer and we three were in the garden with Oskar off down by the river fussing over bees. I had Henrik to myself and waited for the moment. He began to talk.
'Did I tell you about Susannah? Her husband has taken her to Austria to see some Jew. The poor woman. Hysteria. I've read about it and they say it only affects women. At least that's one thing electricity's good for, hysteria. A few shocks and she'll be cured.'
Needless to say I decided not to tell my story.
I don’t care what people thought that night when Oskar died. I know I screamed for hours like an animal. I couldn’t use words. I couldn’t scream to his corpse, ‘I just wanted you to say to me once that you saw it. It is the only thing I ever wanted Oskar, my only wish.’
I screamed so hard I couldn’t speak for hours afterwards. My voice came out as a faint high croak until the words disappeared. I stood by your body and the horse waited by the coffin. That day its coat seemed to darken, a black brown like horse chestnut. When it moved I could pick out and count every rose, every lily, every long thin candle against its skin.
When the Bishop came I expected his condolences but not the comfort. The children, smart in their matching outfits, behaved well although I worried for Alexander because he can be such a mouse. I sat whilst the Bishop spoke to us about heaven and redemption and the promise of a good life hereafter for the just and, as he spoke, I watched the horse. It did nothing. What did I expect? A sign? Without turning I could sense the man near to me, sense him reaching out to touch and in that instance I saw without seeing, like a vision, Katerina, broken in the spindly wheeled contraption, crippled, smelling of decay. I felt revolted, sickened, nauseous and he must have seen me shiver with pity and disgust. All the time he was with me the horse never moved.
And then came the dinner and it was the same. The horse gave no sign. . I called that meal Oskar's last supper, with all the town there to eat one last time at his table. My mother-in-law sat at the centre in her glory but I could hardly begrudge her this moment, again in the spotlight.
I wouldn’t say I was surprised by what happened. It was more than that.
One moment small talk, the ordinary stuff of life, observing the funeral rites and then, the Bishop leaning quite close to me and saying, only for my ear, 'I think you have a beautiful horse.'
