A Burnt Child: A Novel

A Letter in May from Himself to Himself

106 A Letter in May from Himself to Himself Bengt! I’m all alone as I write this, alone in my room. And he’s alone in his. The other night he asked, Shall we play a game of chess like we used to, or a little poker? Come on, let’s go to the other room. He went first and evidently thought I would follow him. When he noticed that I wasn’t coming, he asked if I didn’t like playing chess. Now, he knows very well how much I like to play chess. He also knows that I like playing with him—in the kitchen or in my room. However, he also knows that I’ve been refusing to go into the other room lately. He hasn’t asked why, because he knows all too well. Night after night, he’s tried to beguile me by any means necessary into breaking my promise to myself. As for me, I’m always trying to make him ask me, Won’t you tell me why you’re avoiding the other room? I’d be very glad if he asked because I have a crushing answer on hand. My answer: Because you and she have made the room so filthy that only the two of you can go into it without feeling ashamed. If 107 A Letter in May I were to go in, I would not only defile myself but also my pure memory of Mama. It’s possible that he might not understand this at all, because I think parents always have a different understanding of purity from what their children do. For them, at least as far as my own experience goes, the quality of purity has lost every semblance of practical meaning. It may be possible for them to consider it something worth aspiring to for teenagers going through their “awkward years,” but in their own actions, parents constantly deny that such a concept even exists. Parents always live a more sordid life than their children because parents have always condoned all the things they do themselves. That is, to be able to excuse everything for themselves, yet practically nothing for their children, is the reward that “experience” affords adults. What parents call experience is really nothing but their attempts—successful to the point of sheer cynicism— to deny everything they once considered pure, true, and right when they were young. They themselves don’t realize the terrible cynicism behind all the incessant talk of “experience” as life’s highest goal. They only notice the “inexperience” in their children; that is, the kind of inexperience called purity and honesty, and then they become irritated. And when they’re irritated, they take their irritation out on their children. They call this “raising children” because what else is raising children but the attempt of frustrated parents to stifle in the child what they recognize as the stifled goodness in themselves? And if they aren’t vexed, they act superior, superior because they erroneously pride themselves in their great life experience, as if it were particularly respectable and remarkable to destroy the best within us. Papa is arrogant. I think he’s far too aware of the wrong he’s doing and has done to want to “raise” me to accept it as simply something every experienced adult can do without remorse or feelings of shame or guilt. Instead, he acts as if I’ll see that he, at least, isn’t bothered by it. And nowadays he 108 A Letter in May doesn’t even make the slightest attempt to hide it when he visits her. He often goes so far as to extend her regards to me and facetiously says that she’s looking forward to seeing me again. So she thinks I’m sweet. Very sweet. And it’s just like her to use such a word, as if there weren’t any less vulgar words to flatter someone. Now, I know very well that it’s only flattery because not even Berit has ever told me that I’m especially handsome. They also have other ways of trying to win me over. For instance, she apparently promised me free tickets to her theater, according to Papa, as if it’s really so great to go to such a tiny, dirty, and sordid place as the Lantern with its old, dreadful films. I do...