MeMag - Me Magazine

Surprisingly, I managed to sleep for a few hours the night before my departure. E15 had gone to the party after all the night before and when I fell asleep, she hadn’t yet returned. I awoke at seven, before my alarm clock had the chance to pester me for the last time. Stumbling around in a nervous daze, I managed to get all my belongings out of my room and downstairs next to the door. I then waited for M to awake, wondering if I should make some sort of attempt at a goodbye if E15 remained in bed.

M got up and made sure that E15 did too. There were no protests. E15 seemed calm and in a fairly friendly mood. Still I couldn’t think of anything to say as we all squeezed into the taxi and headed for the airport. We drove through a fairly empty Santiago. Very little was said.

At the airport we spent some time in a café that had 13 varieties of cheesecake. I looked around me but nobody seemed to be eating any of them. Nor did I. M kept asking and asking me if I wanted something and E15 once again came to my rescue, asking her to leave me alone. “Can’t you see he’s nervous?”, she said. I felt fine but my hands were shaking and I felt disoriented. In my mind I tried to compose Spanish sentences in order to say something meaningful to E15. Nothing came. Finally I just said, in English, that she was welcome to visit me any time she wanted. After that I felt that this was perhaps the wrong thing to say, possibly indicating that I would never return. Then again, will I?

I also said that I would be very happy to see her on the chat from time to time and that I would make an effort to learn more Spanish. Maybe she could try and learn more English and we could meet half way. M translated. E15 was calm but didn’t say very much. Always hungry, she was struggling to find a good attack point at a huge hamburger.

After a while of silence, I decided that it was best to wrap everything up before the girl got impatient and grumpy. We went downstairs and parted at the entrance to the departure area. I hugged M and mumbled thank you for letting me stay and so on. I then hugged E15 for a while and told her that I love her and that I will miss her. That was all. Not exactly the Casablanca scene I had imagined. There were no fog banks or trenchcoats. No one singing As Time Goes By… But it was still a quietly moving moment. No one cried. I walked away. A few feet inside the door I turned and we all looked at each other. M held her hand over her heart in a silent goodbye message. Who knows if I will see her again. All our petty arguing suddenly seemed unimportant.

I was now in the clutches of the machinery of modern airline travel. Cold, confusing yet efficient. The flight seemed a lot shorter this time, even though it really was over 27 hours from door to door. Again I couldn’t manage to sleep. Unlike when I flew the other way, we now all had to debark in Sao Paulo and wait around the airport for a while. Not wanting to get lost, I stayed right there by the boarding gate. everywhere there were tv screens playing soccer clips. Outside it was getting dark. As the plane took off I put my earphones on. The music turned into a soundtrack for the landscape below us, -a seemingly endless landscape of lights. I felt good in a nostalgic way.

At Frankfurt Airport we enjoyed being in a holding pattern for a while before landing. I then needed to check in for the flight to Oslo which was extremely complicated. I was tired and didn’t understand anything. I asked various Lufthansa people for help and they sent me in the wrong directions. And so on. Luckily there was plenty of time.

I finally found myself in an airport bar next to a one armed man. Everyone were drinking beers and eating some sort of pretzels. Wanting to try my German, I suddenly realized that all I could think of saying was in Spanish. Suddenly and a bit too late I seemed able to compose any sentence needed in my mind to get around an airport. Except that this airport was on the wrong continent. I was too nervous to sit there for long and so again I waited by the gate the rest of the time until my flight left.

On the plane to Norway, the purser didn’t catch that I was speaking Norwegian to me and so he answered me in English. So for the rest of that short talk about airline food I spoke English to him too. I then sat quietly doing a big crossword puzzle in a Norwegian newspaper they gave me. It was a short flight, less than two hours.

When I debarked, I left the nearly completed crossword puzzle on my seat. As I was walking through the corridors to the main terminal, I heard three men talking about me, just behind my back. “Did you see that guy who did that huge crossword puzzle in like half the flight? He sat in the front on the left side. He spoke a mix of German, English and Norwegian and Danish or something”. They voices were excited, like they had just shared a flight with a rock star or the guy who invented bubble wrap.

In fact I hadn’t gotten all of the crossword puzzle right. And I never spoke any German or Danish. they just heard the English and Norwegian mix while I was talking to the purser and their minds filled in the rest. Maybe German because they came from there. But in any case I felt very exotic for a while. For that short walk through that corridor I was a wise old traveler. Someone who has been to the other side, gone through a full life as a family man, raising a teenage daughter and learning a new language. And how to cook. All in the span of just four months.

I have been through the vortex. I have faced my fears and dreams and gained nothing except the knowledge that all we do in life is in vain, and yet the acts of doing it can be so fulfilling. I have gained a child and then seen her grow independent of me, her fears turning into indifference. All without once having a proper conversation with her. I have not found a place to fit in, but I still feel great. Because the quest continues. And journeys are filled with the anticipation of change. The unwritten pages of possibility. And adventure.

The last few days have been spent preparing for my departure. I have packed and repacked my suitcase over and over again trying to get rid of excess weight. Which isn’t easy. Because of thing like gifts from M’s parents to my parents I’ve had to send another box of my own stuff by mail. Which isn’t cheap. I have been to the bank to withdraw money twice since the time I was sure was the last.

Yesterday I went to a café with my Spanish teacher, to say goodbye. Since I had pre-paid a class I wasn’t interested in having, she said she had cleared two hours off her calendar in case I changed my mind and wanted to repeat something or learn something new. We sat for a while in the classrom and went through some new grammar that she thought I should know, before going to a diner to indulge in junk food and ice cream. M now referrs to my teacher as “your girl”. “Are you going to see your girl today?”, she asked me yesterday. “Yes”, I said. “Fine”, she said, looking very unhappy.

In any case we had a nice lunch. It was the first time in four months that I have been out with someone that I know and not someone who is a friend of M’s. I asked my teacher directly if the other older and crazier teacher was her mother. Her eyes fell. “How did you know?”, she asked, staring at her hamburger. “Oh, I have my sources”, I answered. She has gone to great length to conceal this information, often referring to the other teacher by name in a conversation, and then moments later to her mother as if they were two separate people. They look and act very differently and I wasn’t even completely sure they were related even though someone told me that they were.

M says that E15 is very insecure and confused about me leaving. Frankly I’m not sure I believe her this time. She often tells me how the girl feels about things, but I have come to believe that she is just trying to get me to approach E15 more directly and tell her how much I love her, etc. I’m not at all convinced that this would be a good idea. She seems quite ready to get rid of me at this point, and I know she has complained to her mother that she is being pressured to feel things she don’t really feel.

Still I have to find some way of saying goodbye to her. In the morning when I leave, I’m sure she will be asleep. And waking her up to have a last minute father-daughter talk in spanglish doesn’t sound like an option. In any case I wouldn’t have the guts to. M wanted me to go into E15’s room and wake her up once before, but I couldn’t do it. She would only scream at me and I would draw further away from her. This time around at least, I have felt for a long time that E15 and me is a lost battle.

Another lost battle is our last evening together. The quiet family dinner I had wanted without any of M’s friends is not to be. She had agreed to letting me go without a farewell party. But of course, I never expected that she would respect my wishes. Yesterday she said that one of her friends had asked if he could come over for a short visit on the last night. I said of course. During the day, as I have talked to M about various stuff, various other names have come up. She has invited them all. “Don’t worry, I will take care of everything”, she says. But that is of course nonsense since she is at work, and if someone is going to cook the promised dinner for all these people, it will have to be me.

I told M that since we may not have food for everybody, she would have to come up with something herself. I didn’t feel like going to the supermarket for a fourth time, but eventually I did. I remembered that my friend at the embassy once told me a story about a carrot cake she had baked. The Chileans loved it and ate heartily until someone asked what it was made of. When they found out, the immediately stopped eating, more or less spitting out what they already had in their mouths. I felt like repeating the experiment, but unfortunately, once the cake was on the table, everyone seemed to love it.

I really did end up having a great evening. M and her friends chatted away in Spanish and I sat by myself for the most part, not understanding much. But they are nice people really and having them around on my last evening helped to take my mind off of the long journey ahead and the still overweight suitcase.

E15 stayed in her room. She argued for a while with M and then refused to come down to dinner. I heard her crying upstairs. For a brief moment I thought maybe it was because of me leaving, but it turned out to have nothing to do with that. She wanted to go to a party and stay over, but M insisted that she come home afterwards instead. In the living room, M was making fun of E15, immitating her and saying teenage things like “I hate you, you have ruined my life!” I thought it was a bit cruel for them to laugh loudly about that while the girl was upstairs crying. M’s voice carries. It carries far.

M and I have been getting along rather well for the last few days. She is really making an effort to give me a good last impression of her and has re-adopted the soft calm voice and helpful attitude she had when I first arrived here. Maybe she is just happy to get rid of me.

She did complain about one of the plates I had washed when doing the dishes yesterday. She held it up to my face to show me that there were fingerprints on the bottom of it. How shameful. Besides little things like that, everything is perfectly fine. E15 and I no longer communicate at all, except to maybe mumble hello every two or three days. I feel that I should say something more to her before I leave than just bye. But I don’t know how to go about doing that.

My mother wrote me to say that she had called Lufthansa’s offices in Oslo to ask about the price for extra weight on suitcases. To her they said NOK40 per kilo, which is about six times less than $40 per kilo that they told M when she called. So I called myself to the Santiago offices and they told me $35 per kilo. A second call to the helpdesk in Norway, which of course is really in Dublin Ireland, revealed that the rate is different on varying weekdays. For this Saturday, the rate will be $39.67 which is fairly close to the $40 answer they gave to M. I have a feeling that my suitcase is still going to be awfully heavy. But I don’t have any way of checking that without an accurate scale.

Having to face these authoritarian arrogant people in uniforms is always a sorce for nervousness for me. I hate not knowing if I will have to pay a few hundred $s and if they will accept my card as payment. Maybe I will have to take half of my stuff out and throw them in the nearest waste basket. And there are no clear answers. When calling Lufthansa you need to adopt the same technique as when calling internet support from the phone company in Norway; you call four or five times, or however many times it takes until you get two answers that are the same or at least very close. This will be the correct answer.

M tells me that they have now introduced a new airport tax here. In order to be allowed to leave Chile I will have to pay $4. Even though my ticket is supposed to include all airport taxes. They will only accept USD and only cash. Since I don’t have any dollar bills, M will have to see if she can get some. The minimum ammount I can change here is $300 and since I’m not sure that I can withdraw a large sum of money a second time in les than a week, I may not even have that option. I wonder where they store the passengers who don’t have $ bills on them. Maybe there is a prison camp of some kind for passengers with no US money in their pockets. An old empty hangar maybe. We will see.

Even though I had decided not to go on any more trips downtown I did just that today. I also had a big cup of coffee before I left even though I had decided not to have more coffees before going on trips. My plan was to buy paper cups for another batch of apple muffins for E15. She liked those even though she didn’t discover their goodness before they were several days old and no longer fresh.

Getting paper cups for muffins required me to go to a special bakery store downtown. It involved going through three different Metro lines and then walking, map in hand through the insanity of mid day downtown. Everone that passed me seemed to be eating ice cream and after a while I could resist no longer. I bought one which tasted absolutely nothing so I threw it in a wastebasked and continued walking.

A couple of blocks later I realized that I was going in the wrong direction. I noticed this when passing a café I have been to a couple of times before. So I thought… I’m on the right street, all I need to do is to go back the way I came and then continue for a block more in that same direction. But first another coffee.

Knowing that the café has an actual working bathroom, I had two cups of coffee and another ice cream. I also bought a pack of Luckies just to get one cigarette. I had left mine at home on purpose since I didn’t have any more space in my pockets. But now all the coffee was making me increasingly nervous. The cigarettes and ice cream made me realize that this was one of those days where I make all bad decisions. I was beginning to think that some horrible accident would befall me now, so close to my return home. I headed for the bathroom.

Somehow the bathroom door had grown since my last visit. It was now too big to fit into the doorframe. Closing the door was impossible. Since my body refuses to function when people keep walking in behind my back, I gave up and left. I headed back along the same street I had arrived on. But even though I kept walking in a straight line, it never brought me back to the plaza with the Metro station. I don’t know how that is possible. I never once turned a corner. Yet nothing along the way now looked familiar. I kept walking even though I knew I should have arrived at the plaza several blocks ago. More bad decisions.

I ended up in a completely different neighborhood, an area M has warned me about since there are gangs of small children who jump all over you and take all your stuff. I never saw any, but there were a great deal of young women looking like gypsies. They were all demanding the same thing, cigarettes. Even though I had more than I needed, I felt it odd that they all said the same thing. It had to be the setup for some scam. So I walked quickly past them all. In any case they didn’t say the magic word. I’m not completely heartless. I did give a cigarette to a nice little old lady with no teeth outside my building the other day. She kissed me on my arm.

A week before leaving for home, I have already started doing a few of my rutines for the last time. I have, I think, been to the bank for the last time. I have had my last Spanish class. I have baked the last pie. And today I went for the last time to M’s parent’s house to have lunch and say goodbye.

M had reassured me that we wouldn’t have to leave as early as the other times. There would be time to go to the open air market first and then relax around the house for a few hours. Neverhteless, earlier than we have gone the other times, M suddenly stood in my doorway asking if I was ready. Annoyed I protested that she had said that we would go later in the day. I had after all not long ago had a huge late breakfast. And now we were already going for another meal. “We will leave in ten minutes”, she coldly commanded. And left.

So again we trekked along the dusty highway from where the bus stops to where M’s mother were supposed to pick us up with the car. The girls in front, side by side, talking. And me silently behind. Of course… M had forgotten to actually call her mother and tell her when we would arrive. And her cell phone was apparently out of money again even though I was under the impression that she had filled it up yesterday. My phone was empty as well, and E15’s. So there we were.

Since E15 hadn’t gone with us to the market earlier, I had spent less money than usual and was therefor quite able to pay for a taxi. It came to a little more than $1. At the house, we ate and then the girls played cards while I sat in my chair as usual, being bored. Luckilly we didn’t stay until late this time. And the goodbye with her parents was shorter and less awkward than I had feared.

Her father had bought two books and a calendar for my parents and me. Which was nice. As we were leaving, he hugged me in a very sentimental goodbye, which I wouldn’t have expected of him from how people describe him as a tough macho man.

M’s mother drove us to the bus stop where we stood for a while waiting for the bus. M was suddenly convinced that they had changed the bus route since last week and that the bus no longer stopped there. I suggested that we at least wait ten minutes to see, but she and E15 now headed off looking for someone to ask. I was certain that the bus would show up while we were away from the stop, but it didn’t. A bus company employee at a bus depot for another line across the street told her that the bus did indeed stop there like before.

We went back and waited for two more minutes before M, seemingly conviced that the man hadn’t known what he was talking about, headed off again. E15 followed her. She then started running after a bus going the other way, waving her arms. I ran after. The bus stopped and she asked the driver the same question. Same answer. We went back again and minutes later, our bus appeared.

It didn’t stop however, and just went on by us. It was clearly not taking on passengers. Nevertheless, M started running again with E15 after her. And me. She caught up with the bus at a red light a bit down the street. The driver would not open the door. She didn’t give up. After a while he finally opened the door, explaining that the ticket machine didn’t work so they weren’t taking on passengers. M called him a bastard.

We went back to the bus stop again. And waited some more. I was now extremely stressed and my head was aching from the running and the anger of being led around on one wild bus chase after another. Why not just wait some more? Why not take a taxi to the nearest Metro station? I said nothing, knowing that I would only have to pay a prize for my stupidity should I speak.

A short while later the next bus came along and we went home. An uneventful ride, except for some noisy kids that sat right behind us and M shushing them and then demonstrating to E15 and me how annoying the little girls voice was by screaming herself for a bit. She then had us change places to the back of the bus where there were even more kids. Allthough none of them screamed as loud as the girl in front.

M and I had planned to go to some friends of hers for homemade Sushi. For once I was looking forward to going out. First of all I have met the woman we were going to before and she was really nice. Not one of M’s regular new age hippie Tai Chi buddies, she seemed blissfully sensible by comparison. We were scheduled to be there at 8pm.

At 8:30pm I called M. She hadn’t returned home yet and I wanted to suggest that she should perhaps call her friends and tell them that we would be a bit late. Her phone was off. At 9pm I called again. Her phone was off. Her telephone tends to conveniently run out of money when she has screwed up something and has the whole world waiting. The down side is that she can’t call anyone and update them on what’s happening without revealing that the phone actually works. So everyone is kept in the dark.

She then called the house phone saying something to E15. Not to me. I heard E15 going through stuff in the room next door, apparently looking for the phone number to M’s friends. “It’s 9:15 now! Why didn’t you call before now about this?”, the girl complained. E15 then had to call M’s friends and I overheard something about being late because of a doctors appointment. Why did M make an appointment to have dinner at 8 if she knew she was going to the doctor at 7:30? On the other side of the city? One hour away. Still no explanations to me. I waited.

A while later M called me on my cell phone from her cell phone, explaining that she couldn’t
talk because she had no money left. Could I call her? I did. She asked me to meet her on the way but I wasn’t able to understand if she meant that I was to meet her in 15 minutes or if I was to wait 15 minutes and then leave. Her directions can be somewhat unprecise at times. By this time, having had nothing to do all afternoon but to look at the clock and waiting for her, I was getting extremely stressed and nervous.

M asked me to bring a bottle of wine that was either on top of the refrigerator or on the top shelf inside the refrigerator. I couldn’t tell what she meant. In any case I looked for it but couldn’t find it. I was now fairly certain that it was actually there but that I couldn’t see it because I was too stressed. Then my cell phone ran out of money even though I filled it last week and have only used it twice since. I hate that little thing. Can’t wait to get rid of it before going back home.

While I was walking out of the kitchen and then back in again to clear my eyes, M called E15 and asked the girl to call her back. E15 was now very angry since she kept getting interrupted in her video watching. I went to her room, expecting that M had called because she wanted to continue the conversation with me. But no. E15 wondered what (the hell) I wanted. I tried to explain but she just turned her back.

She then ran past me, still on the phone, and started looking for the wine bottle in all kinds of odd places. I wanted to talk to M and have her try to explain to me again where it was. E15 finally checked the refrigerator where the bottle turned out to be, right where I had looked three times already. Even though M had said that it was blue and different looking, my brain hadn’t been able to recognize it as a wine bottle. E15 handed it to me and left, shaking her head at what a useless idiot I was.

This is what happens every time people force me to make appointments. The first thing I told M when I met her was that this would be the last time I would go along for any more of these arrangements while I was here. She agreed. Neverhteless, the next day she would be on the phone, both with her mother and with other people, negotiating my itinerary for the upcoming week.

The next morning I was looking forward to a day of rest. Finally I would have a chance to have my planned Chorizo lunch that I have wanted for two weeks now. However, M did not want me to cook these sausages, as she had just started the washing machine in the kitchen. According to her, the clothes, inside the closed washing machine, about to be washed, would smell of sausage if I was to cook one. I calmly said ok and went out for lunch.

In the evening, M said she was meeting one of her friends in a café and asked me if I wanted to come. I said that I probably wouldn’t. I was on my out to buy something and M said she would leave me a note if she went out before I got back. Even though I would then know where she was and who she was meeting.

M doesn’t get the concept of notes. The reason why she said she would leave me one at all was that the night before while we were having Sushi, she had tried to explain to her friends how impossible I was all the time. And to M’s surprise, even though she gave some examples presented very much from her point of view, they were on my side, shocked to hear that she wouldn’t let me know in advance where we were going. And that she would at times disappear for a day without leaving a note or a message of any kind. M dismissed what they said as nonsense, but the next day she was being very nice to me, offering to write me a note. Even though it would just be saying something I already knew.

A very late Sushi dinner

Returning to Spanish classes yesterday, my teacher and I ended up spending half of the time discussing marital and domestic problems. It may seem strange to pay someone to teach you a language and then spend the time discussing her problems. But I found it interesting. In any case I realize that with less than two weeks left here, I will not be able to learn much more Spanish.

Returning home I baked bread, again with only a semi-successful result. E15 returned late from school and went straight to bed. She isn’t well, her mother told me. Could be something she ate. I think I am innocent since I have also been eating the different things I have cooked with no bad results.

M was back to her good old angry self in the evening. She has repeatedly complained that I never recycle empty bottles. Which is almost true. Not being used to recycling, I often forget to bring the empties next to the refrigerator when I go out. M has explained that things that come in returnable bottles are more expensive and that she would never consider buying them.

Still, it seems that one of the bottles I had thrown in the recycle bin outside today was indeed returnable. It was standing with the other bottles looking very normal and unreturnable. M called me an idiot. I then calmly told her I had done it on purpose to piss her off, which I’m sure she believes anyway.

The next morning I felt relaxed, having enjoyed around eight hours of sleep. When I arrived in class I noticed that my brain had once again stalled. I didn’t understand anything. My teacher tried to give me some easy repeat excercises instead, consisting of things I should know well. I didn’t understand any of that either. So she tried to explain old things all over again, in simple terms. I didn’t understand a single sentence. It may as well have been chinese. I couldn’t read any of it. So I finally gave up and went home. I will take no more Spanish classes. The next class, which I have already paid for, will be spent eating lunch and saying goodbye.

After the failed class, I was angry at myself for being an idiot and for giving up. I walked around for a while, feeling worried and lost, all the time thinking that something bad was about to happen. Even the traffic was difficult to read and I kept expecting to be hit by a bus any second.

After visiting two cafés I returned home. The maid soon arrived and started taking over the apartment. Sice her cleaning the two bathrooms simultaneously once again prevented me from using any of them, I decided to evacuate the premises. I walked around for a while, not knowing where to go. Then I went to a few stores, one of which is a shopping mall with restrooms.

E15 came home late from school today, after M had returned from work. Today she didn’t even want to look at me or say hello. So be it. As usual, the girls spent most of the evening in M’s big bed, watching tv. Had it been possible on such a short notice, I would have changed my ticket again and left tomorrow. I have had it with all of this now. Let them live in their world. And let me return to mine. There is nothing for me here now.

This day was entirely spent making pies. At this point it seems that just about all E15 wants from me is more peach pie. So why not. I was supposed to have a Spanish class but my teacher simply didn’t have the time. So instead I went out looking for the perfect peaches. There are virtually as many varieties of them here as there are types of cheeses in France. And the best ones for pies I have found to be some bright yellow ones that in this neighborhood can be found in a tiny fruit store run by about four young voluptuous sisters, ever giggling.

My plan was to make one pie, but that somehow turned into two. So I had to go for a second shopping trip to find raspberries which aren’t too common here this time of year. I eventually found some but the guy would only sell a full shopping bag and nothing less. So I bought more berries than any family could ever hope to be able to eat, knowing that other families don’t have an E15 around, -the most perfectly evolved eating machine nature has produced since the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

By the time I got back from this second expedition, the maid was back. I managed to claim my territory in the kitchen and she had to make do with other chores, such as vacuuming. She was supposed to be there at 11, but it was around 2pm before she arrived, looking tired. She moved sluggishly around with the vacuum cleaner for a while, then sat for half an hour on the sofa with her head in her hands.

Late in the afternoon I finally finished the pies which meant rearranging the refrigerator completely three times in order to find room for them. Then dishes. Fearing that M would get furious at the sight of that many empty calories in her fridge, I sent her a message warning her in advance of the pie takeover. She was pleased.

Two friends of her arrived just as we were trying to figure out how to get rid of the pie surplus. One of M’s friends asked how E15 and I communicated if we didn’t speak each others language. “We don’t”, I said. She seemed uncomfortable by that answer. I could tell she wanted to ask more, like Chileans do, but she let it go. Instead she insisted that we come for dinner this weekend. That way she will have another chance to get answers. She said it would probably be nice for me to discuss our mutual culture with her German husband. An annoyed M told her that Norway and Germany are two very different countries with individual languages and cultures. The woman seemed sceptical.

E15 frantically ate four big pieces to make sure she would get her fill before it was too late. Me staying here has seriously begun to threaten her slim figure. She didn’t speak much while at the table but she did insist that we should speak Spanish and not English. I said “but… I don’t speak Spanish”. “Well, then don’t say anything.” She sent me a quick joking look. Just a short movent of contact. Then she returned to her room.

When I awoke I found a very grumpy M in the kitchen, reading a cookbook while washing clothes. I manouvered carefully around her so as not to set off some fit of rage, while trying to make myself a sandwhich for breakfast.

M said that she would not be going to the open air market today, since she had a splitting headache and a bad stomach. I gave her my sympathy and started preparing for a solo expedition. When I was ready to leave, a surprised M asked me why I wanted to leave before her. It seemed she was going to the market after all.

Back home after our trip, the girls watched a movie together in bed as usual while I tried to sleep. It was impossible with the heat and the light and the loose metal window frame making a hell of a racket in the wind. Several times I have thought I’ve managed to fix it, but the noises keep coming back. I was lying there thinking about my life as a dog here, getting angrier and angrier.

Finally it was time to go to a birthday party for one of M’s friends. Not wanting to waste money on a nice gift, M stopped by the supermarket and bought some chocolate for him. I pointed to a bag of small chocolates of the same brand which seemed more festive than just the plain ordinary bar. The girls explained to me that this was school chocolate and not intended for ordinary eating. School chocolate? Apparently the kids here get a piece of free chocolate in school every day. You can also buy chewing gum in school. No wonder so many children here are obese.

It was a nice birthday party. Mainly because it was a very short one. People mingled for a little while, then most of the guests left. We stayed for maybe fifteen minutes more. Tomorrow is the beginning of E15’s next schoolyear. She will have to get up early. Also I have been told that the maid will start coming in again starting tomorrow. Something I’m not looking forward to. I had sort of hoped that the girls would have a chance to see how much of a mess they generate in just a day if no one is there to clean some of it up after them. I don’t do all that much, but at least I manage to keep some of the chaos at bay. Yet M seems to think that I do nothing.

Coming home from the birthday party, I went out on the terrace to smoke half a cigarette. E15 came up to the door, sniffing and complained to her mother that she smelled smoke. M then slammed the door shut and lit one of her nasty incences which fills the entire apartment with the stink of 10.000 cheap whorehouses. It’s like setting fire to toilet freshner.

M and I on our way home from the birthday party. E15 quickly moved out of frame when she realized there was a loaded camera unholstered

Time for another visit to M’s parents’ house. In the morning M suggested that I not take breakfast except for a cup of coffee. After all we were to have lunch there. “We will leave in about an hour”, she said. About 50 minutes later she made breakfast in bed for E15 and herself and they put on a movie. I waited. The next day I would use this event when M asked me to give her just one example of an occasion where she hadn’t been punctual. She became angry and said “That is just because you didn’t know that I talked to my sister on the phone afterwards and she said that she would drive us but it would have to be at that (later) time.” “Well… Isn’t it still an example of you telling me when someting is going to happen and then not keeping it?” “No it isn’t! I don’t have to tell you everything!”

She then proceded to quote Einstein to me, but not understanding anything of his work, she just trailed off in the middle of it. The main point was that she had dropped the name of the great Einstein into the conversation, thereby having him on her learned side. Anything I would say from there would be dismissed as childish nonsense. So I kept quiet.

She asked me to carry my camera gear to take some family portraits. I agreed and hauled everything with me. We took the bus and then walked for a while. The plan was to take a taxi the rest of the way since there is no way to get all the way to the house without wheels. I never understood why we had to walk for half a mile along the hot dusty road before flagging down a taxi. We could have done that from where the bus stopped.

Instead of waiting for a free taxi, M waved down one that was almost full, suggesting that we split up. She ordered E15 and me to go first. I didn’t want to. There was little room in there and I had all my stuff with me. And I was very stressed by the situation. An angry M said “well… I found you a taxi but you didn’t get in.” She then explained that it would be impossible to find an empty one. I don’t see why. We have stood in the exact same place before, on the same weekday at more or less the same time and had no problem finding a taxi. It just takes a little while between each one.

Hearing some of this, a nice local man with a pickup truck offered to drop us off. As we drove along, he chatted with me and I tried to get by saying as little as possible. I understood most of what he said. He had an uncle in Norway who according to him was the Prime Minister. I have never heard his name. Still, I’m not exactly up to date on politics. Conversing in Spanish is a great deal more difficult for me when the girls are around listening. I get stage fright. And this was an especially nervous day for me, fueled on by the fact that I had drunk coffee for breakfast and hadn’t gone to the bathroom before leaving.

M’s mother had made a great big lunch with two different hot meals and ice cream for dessert. For some reason we all ate 20 minutes before her sister and her kids arrived. They pulled up in their car as we were finishing. We then had to remain at the table watching them eat the same courses we had just taken in. Nothing wrong in that. Just a bit odd.

The rest of the day was painfully boring. The women played around in the swimming pool while M’s father took a nap. Her sister and the kids left. So I was sitting by myself for a few hours, doing absolutely nothing. Just waiting. I did sit with them for a while by the pool until the sun became too much for me.

While I was by the pool, E15 felt brave enough in company of the others to say a few things to me. We talked about fear of spiders. She shares that phobia with me yet still thinks I’m too old for such nonsense. Which I suppose is true. I tried making a joke involving a spider “the size of a VolksWagen” . Translator M didn’t get it. “But a VolksWagen is a car”, she said. “Not a spider”. I tried to explain the concept of metaphors and similes and she finally translated it to E15 as a spider that was “super grande”. The joke was lost. “Spiders aren’t super big”, E15 dryly explained. “They can’t grow much bigger than a hand”. “I know”, I said. They then all went inside to have another lunch. I was still bursting from the first one.

Meanwhile the sun was going down and I was losing the light for photos. M had told me that if I didn’t take any photos after dragging all that stuff along, she would be very angry. I didn’t. The situation was very stressful and I just realized that I wasn’t able to concentrate or to come up with any brilliant settings in the short time available before it became too dark. M didn’t become angry after all. Instead she covered for me, or for herself, by telling the others that it was too late and that there was not enough light.

In reality the light was at that time perfect and I had found the perfect setting by some trees behind the house. But it was just too much. M wanted me to take the photos in front of the house, which made me think that her parents would probably object to being photographed in the less groomed area around the back. I was imagining protests and people directing me. E15 of course said that she would smash my camera and format the hard drive of my computer if I tried takeing more photos of her. She knows I have taken a couple of snapshots of her and allthough she seemed to think it was ok at the time, she wants me to delete the photos now.

After my failure at photography, I sat outside watching the city lights below us and the moon reflecting in the swimming pool. I was very depressed. The others were inside watching tv. When I went back inside M decided to test E15 by casually mentioning, in a deadpan way, that it was getting late, especially for me since I had changed my tickets and would leave tomorrow. E15 didn’t flinch. “But he will have time to pack everything?”, she said. “Yes”, M continued. “He isn’t leaving until the evening.” “Well then, what is the problem?” E15 went back to watching tv. M and I were both silent.

A few hours later, M’s pre-ordered taxi finally arrived and we went home. They then watched another movie while I sulked in my room.

Suddenly my Spanish has started working. Not all the time, but it kicks in from time to time and decodes things that have up until now just been blabber. Today I had a weird experience when all the incomprehendable garbled chatter that is thrown at me at my favourite café suddenly seemed to form neatly into sentences. It was like using the squelch button on a Walkie Talkie or suddenly being able to tune onto a weak radio station. Words instead of noise. I still don’t understand what people say most of the time. But I seem to be able to distinguish the individual words of a sentence now.

Not having the heart to act upon my plan of starving E15 since she hadn’t bought the bread I asked her to get yesterday, I brought her home a sandwich. Then I forgot about it. While the hungry teenager was rummaging through the kitchen for scraps of food, I obliviously stayed in my room playing with my computer.

Finally she logged onto MSN and asked me directly if she could have the sandwich and I said yes. M later said that she had called her at work asking advice about how to go about the situation. E15 then said thank you and quickly logged off again before I had the time to start any form of conversation. But… after all, she is in the room next to mine so logging off a chat may not ensure complete safety. I went to her room and asked if she wanted a couple of DVD movies I have bought earlier and seen. She seemed very insecure so I left it at that and returned to my room. Feeling equally nervous myself.

In the evening I went out and bought meat, a rare item in M’s vegetarian household. While cooking it I was anxiously awaiting the inspection, but I managed to nearly finish before M came in, complaining about smoke. I could tell that she was angry, but she remained calm. Probably she doesn’t want any more big arguments.

She did manage to comment on the fact that I was using a cooking cream similar to Creme Fraiche to make a sauce. Chileans don’t use sauces of any kind so what she saw was someone ruining expensive meat. “Good luck with that”, she said sarcastically and left.

The food was finished and E15 seemed to love sinking her teeth into something more substantial than what she usually gets. Earlier in the day I had baked some apple muffins with a hint of pepper and nutmeg to contrast the sweetness. They were very good but now M didn’t want any since they were apparently ruined by the smell of cooking meat. Even though they had been carefully covered up at the time. Finally she agreed to have one. I have no idea if she liked it or just ate to be polite. It is possible that in her imagination, she could taste the offensive meat on them.

Lately she has reinitiated her war on the teenagers laughing and talking loudly on the bench in the park outside. Our supply of lemons is yet again dwindling. Since lemons are too expensive to throw at people in the long run, M is now planning to revert to one of the stronger weapons in her arsenal; the telephone.

She proudly boasts of the effectiveness of one of her phone calls. She calls the police, saying that there is a gang of criminals outside, using and selling drugs. That she thinks she even saw a gun. The police arrives and take care of the loud youngsters.

I cannot begin to say how much this kind of thing infuriates me. Neighbors informing on neighbors, making up stories and justifying it all by claiming that they themselves are the victims. “I have the right to sleep”, M insists. I however don’t think that anyone can expect silence in a city of over five million. If it is a basic human right to have absolute silence during the night, then that surely doesn’t justify ruining another persons life by giving them a night in jail followed by a permanent record and possibly a sentence as a drug dealer.

I asked M how she would feel if the police suddenly kicked down her door because some neighbor had invented a story about her. She didn’t get the point. I think what angers me the most is the fact that M thinks of herself as some kind of partisan hero because she went to a few protest marches in her youth, “fighting with the police in the streets.” Now she is basically advocating a fascist state while still sitting around with her old communist friends from time to time, singing protest songs. She will gladly inform on anyone she sees doing something she finds shocking, such as drinking a beer in public. What a sad pathetic development in a persons life.

Another day of Spanish classes. I left E15 a note, this time with a request that she’d buy bread and avocados from the shop downstairs. Next to it I left some money. I felt good about myself, both because the note had a few lines of what I believe to be functional Spanish, and also because it is the first time I have asked her to do something. She never did of course, but maybe she at least looked at the note. I can’t draw very well, but it’s still a bit more fun than just writing a message.

My other, somewhat eccentric Spanish teacher has eloped to the north with a new boyfriend. A 33 hour bus ride from here. So my regular teacher is left with twice as many students. Still she was in a cheerful mood as always. I told her the dramatic story of how I met M and a bit of what has happened afterwards. She knows pretty much everything by now. M would be furious if she knew that I confided in her rival.

She would also be quite displeased had she seen the eyes I made at the new student who has just arrived, -a girl from Brazil. Before E15’s school trip to that same country, I joked to M about the Brazilians being the most beautiful people on earth and that the young one would be faced with plenty of temptation, being used to only short fat Chileans. M however thinks that Brazilians are all hideous. Seems to have something to do with pigmentation.

M has decided to have a big farewell-party for me. Her plan is to invite all her friends, most of whom I don’t really know at all. I carefully suggested that maybe I should invite someone I knew, such as my teacher. But M thought that was a bad idea. She plain out admitted that she would treat any woman I would invite badly. I could invite someone if I absolutely wanted to, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. So I told her that I didn’t want to have a party. She said I would have one anyway. Another fight in the making.

I went to the post office today and bought myself a nice big box which I will fill with stuff that won’t fit into my suitcase. I weighed my cargo yesterday and I am about $350 overweight by Lufthansa’s going rates. I think they have changed the maximum allowed weight while I have been here. There was a note about that on their web page earlier, but I can’t find it now. So if you bought a round-trip ticket before december, you are expected to throw away ten kilos of your luggage before returning home.

I either have to leave a lot of my stuff behind or I can send it to myself by mail. I prefer the mail solution. I have told M that if she and her parents insist on sending heavy gifts to my parents, they will have to pay for it. When arriving at the airport, my suitcase will be exactly within the allowed limit. I’m not going to pay $40 extra because they want to save postal charges and have me carry things for my folks and other friends in Norway. If I can send my own stuff by mail, they can too. M called me a bastard.

Time passes very slowly. At the moment I am very set on returning home to more familiar surroundings. And I keep looking at the calendar, counting the days. Seventeen days. Seventeen eternities. Maybe what I need is a new hobby. Something to make the remaining time go faster. I do have some new work I need to start on this week. But at the same time as I long for something to pass the time with, the thought of starting another great big workload reminds me of how old and tired I feel. My hair has started to turn grey while I’ve been here. I’m sure that in seventeen days it will all have fallen off.

M wants to meet me downtown after her work to go to a hat store so that I can try different hats. I have earlier mentioned that maybe I wanted a hat, but it was just a passing notion, something I thought of when we were at the beach. I really feel that wearing an old fashioned hat would make me look as if I’m on my way to a maskerade. Allthough I do think many other people look good in hats, I’m sure that I would just appear stupid. Hats are also impractical. You need to take them off from time to time and find places to put them. What to do with a hat on the plane home? It wouldn’t fit in my suitcase. But I know it is a friendly gesture from her side. I have said a few times now that my original hat idea was a bad one. Yet she persists with great enthusiasm. If I don’t go to look at hats now I will let her down.

E15 got up fairly early. Today, surprisingly, she got dressed instead of spending the day in her pyjamas or nightie. The reason was that she was going out to a friend’s house. Again I was free from having to compose notes explaining where I was to be during the day or when I would return. I felt good.

Deciding that I wanted to exactly the same as yesterday, I headed for my regular café. The walk takes around 25 minutes and is a good way to start the day. Arriving at the café, I found it completely packed with people. So instead I sought refuge from the sun on a shady bench where I sat for a while waiting for lunch time to be over. Meanwhile I had lost the interest in having exactly the same sandwich as the day before so I tried to find another new place instead. I couldn’t. So I headed back home.

On the way I once more met the girls who have a friend who looks like me. But I found myself too shy to ask if she could mail me the photo of him, like I had planned to. My mood was worsening. At home I started making myself lunch before realizing that the young female monster had eaten all the avocados I had just bought. I didn’t feel like going out again and had a boring dry piece of bread with cheese instead.

Then, fearing another outburst from M later, I vacuumed the floors. I didn’t mention this to her, even when later she would say that if I was bored I could vacuum the floors. I’m cynically storing it for use later in case she should suddenly scream that I never clean the house. “Well… I did vacuum yesterday”, I can say, all casual like. I also did other invisible chores, like filling ice cube trays with water.

Again she brought me a small gift like she tends to do a few times a week. It is always something small I don’t want and I know it is the thought that counts. But it still annoys me. I’m probably expected to buy her things every other day too. Nice expensive things. I won’t. It’s not like I’m sleeping with her or anything. I don’t want to shower her with presents.

Todays gift was paper cups for baking muffins. Eerily sililar to yesterdays gift which was paper cups for baking muffins. I have been looking for such items, but I still feel uncomfortable when they are presented to me as a gift like that. At least it wasn’t a hat. I was afraid she would come home with a horrible one and present it to me with a proud ta-taaa.

I had managed to stay mostly clear of the kitchen all day, but in the evening I became hungry and ten minutes later when M came home, I was using half the things in there to make omelets filled with cheese and various other leftovers. I felt a jolt of fear as she walked in the door. I was just about to clean a frying pan with a thick coat of burned rice in the bottom. I expected to get it but nothing happened.

We ate. E15 was commenting on the horrible fact that I had salad on the same plate as the omelet and that it was in danger of being contaminated by vinegar. I started saying something about that but she coldly barked that she wasn’t talking to me, she was talking to her mother. So I quietly continued eating while they were debating my performance. I actually did get vinegar on my omelet eventually. And it was the best part.

Hanging around the quiet apartment in the morning, I was once again afflicted with a case of fear of teenagers. I didn’t feel like facing E15. Except for a few sentences regarding an oven, we haven’t spoken for a couple of days. All the time I feel I should say something, but I don’t know how. I have plenty of imaginary dialogues with her but even in those, I keep running out of things to say. The moment never seems right to have a father-daughter conversation and I know that no matter what I want to say, I either don’t know enough Spanish or I get nervous and fumble everything up completely.

My only option was to go out for the day, but that would mean leaving a note saying where I was. And I couldn’t come up with anything to say even in writing. It seems pretty straight forward to write a simple note, but I couldn’t get my head around it. I would much rather have dug an escape tunnel and disappear quietly, but it just wasn’t the right thing to do. Instead I waited, chatting to M on MSN about a birthday party I am supposed to go to for one of her friends.

Since he has asked me twice about how to prepare Mango Chutney after our Indian dinner, I decided that it would be a good idea to cook up a jar for him. I carefully suggested this to M not knowing how she currently feels about me being in her kitchen. She said it was a great idea. For me it was an excuse to get out of the house to do some shopping for hard to find spices.

E15 finally awoke and I waited some more until she was up and in her seat by the computer. “I’m going out”, I said. She didn’t understand me. I repeated it. She said ok. As our conversations go, this was a fairly avrage exchange of words in a day.

I found everything I needed for the chutney and spent a long time in my regular café. I then went home. About that time I realized that the chutney guy is not the person we are going to see this weekend. The chutney guy hasn’t got a birthday at all. I returned to my bed.

A little later, M came home. After looking into the kitchen, she went straight to my room and in a raised very angry voice said “you didn’t do the dishes from last night!” She was steaming with anger. Suddenly I was really afraid. Like you get if someone bigger than you want to fight. I tried to say something but she marched out.

I had indeed noticed a bit of dishes in the kitchen. Not too much really. The girls had indulged on a late night feast in bed the night before on the pancakes I made. The usual rule I have been told about is that he who cooks does not do dishes. Still I had planned to, then hesitated since she has yelled at me for doing so the last two times. “We don’t waste water in this house” is what I get when filling the sink to do dishes. So I had made sure not to produce a single dirty spoon myself in case it would be turned against me.

After a while I went downstairs with the intent to have a talk with her about all this. I had already started thinking about what to put into which suitcase. As I entered the kitchen she apologized. During the next few hours she would continue apologizing maybe a dozen times. I told her to forget it. Really I wanted to go on and list a bunch of examples of how badly I think she has treated me lately. But I let it go.

I then learnt that the chutney guy was coming over this evening for one of their sessions of some kind of spiritual new age nonsense, as I tolerantly think of it. He places magnets on M and they discuss their yings and yangs or something. It doesn’t seem to actually cure any of M’s physical ailments but apparently it’s phenomenal anyway. For once, as they were talking, I was glad I had the alibi of not speaking Spanish. I would never have gotten through a discussion about that stuff without piercing a few holes in their highly inflated enthusiasm. Which would lead to reprimands later.

So while they were doing their thing, I finally made the mango chutney. And it was great. I gave a jar to the man and we were all happy. He is a very nice person really. It’s just a shame that I’m not.