Stella Descending

Stella Descending by Linn Ullmann Read Free Book Online

Book: Stella Descending by Linn Ullmann Read Free Book Online
Authors: Linn Ullmann
Tags: Fiction
moved in with her, as he promptly did, he asked Stella to come with him to Høylandet to meet his family. His grandmother—his father’s mother, that is—was soon to turn seventy-five, an event that was to be celebrated in grand style. I was still in the hospital. Stella was glowing when she came into my room and sat down on my bed.
    “He wants to take me way out into the middle of nowhere, by plane and train and bus and God knows what else. Me, who’s so scared of flying!”
    I looked at her, puzzled. “
He?
He who?” I asked, trying to be patient.
    “Martin!” she cried, rolling her eyes. “He wants to take me home . . . to the farm . . . to meet his family: mother, father, ostriches, the lot.”
    “Ostriches?”
    “His parents have an ostrich farm,” she explained. “It’s an experiment. His dad has been given a government permit. He thinks ostriches are going to be the farming sensation of the nineties or something. But listen! His grandmother Harriet is turning seventy-five. We’re going to a birthday party!”
    I turned away, muttering a few choice sarcastic remarks about Middle Norway, birthdays, and grandmothers. But hadn’t they, I wondered, only known each other a few weeks? Well, yes, she said, that was true, but he had already moved in with her, so surely there was nothing to keep them from going away together. She gave me a look, imploring or anxious—as if it mattered whether I gave her my blessing.
    “So when do you leave?”
    “Tomorrow.”
    “How long will you be away?”
    “Four days, maybe five.”
    “But aren’t you on duty?”
    “I can swap shifts with one of the others.”
    All I could think was that if she left the next day I would never see her again. I was due to be discharged in three days, due in three days to return to my miserable old-man’s existence. The thought of never seeing her again made me do an odd thing; ten years later I still cringe with embarrassment. I don’t know what came over me—I don’t like outbursts of any kind and prefer not to be the butt of other people’s sentimentality. Being touched by other people upsets me; I actually find it physically unpleasant, and I instinctively pull away when I sense an imminent embrace or a caress. Because the last thing I want to do is to hurt anyone, I usually feign a sneeze or a violent fit of coughing so the person closing in on me will not think I am spurning the advance. (Of course my wife, Gerd, was not fooled. How many times did I cough in her face as we lay side by side in our narrow marriage bed; how many times did she turn away with cold, wounded eyes, reproaching me with her naked, slightly coarse back, which I could never bring myself to stroke or put an arm around?) But when I realized I was never going to see Stella again, I touched her. I was sitting up in my bed, she was perched on its edge, and suddenly I grabbed her right hand and pressed it against my cheek. (She had such a slender supple wrist, no sharp rings or jangling bracelets, just warm skin.) And she did not take her hand away—even after I let go of it. She stayed where she was, very still, very close.
    Then something burst out of me: words . . . gibberish . . . sobs . . . I don’t know what all. I vomited, too, as if all the nastiness inside me was being forced up my gullet and out. And then I let out something like a howl.
    “Hush now, Axel, hush,” she whispered. “It’s going to be okay, it’ll be okay.” She spoke to me the way a mother speaks to her child, comforting it. “Hush now, Axel, hush.”
    It had been ages since anyone had called me Axel. I bowed my head. In gratitude. With Stella’s hand on my cheek.
    Then she said, “We’re going to be friends, you and I. This isn’t the last time; you know that, don’t you? I can come to see you at your apartment, and we’ll have our chats, and we’ll have coffee. I want you to meet my daughter—you know, Amanda?— she’ll be five next week. And I want you to meet

Similar Books

Nipped in the Bud

Stuart Palmer

Dead Man Riding

Gillian Linscott

Serenity

Ava O'Shay

First Kill

Lawrence Kelter

The Ties That Bind

Liliana Hart