The other day, on our way to Kristiansand, we stopped in a little town off the main route to look for a spot for a picnic. It was a sunny day. We had some bread and grapes and coffee in a thermos and apples and salami. We drove through the little town and turned a bend and there we came upon an old church settled into itself with the dignity, resignation, and peace characteristic of buildings that have harbored generations. There was a strip of grass along the parking lot behind the church, which rose to a stone wall which bordered the church graveyard. There was plenty of shade under the tall birch trees. The light came through the leaves of the birches and speckled the dirt parking lot.
We got out of the car, took in the scene, adjusted to the stillness and sat down to eat. M. poured the coffee. It felt, in the tiniest way, like a safari in Africa. It felt nothing like a road trip in America. "This is not an American road trip," I had thought to myself as we puttered down the major highway going 50mph in a SAAB. (Where speed traps are frequent, and fines are impressive and inflexible, no one---not one law-abiding citizen----speeds). It is a bit like traveling in a dream, the yearning to run impeded by a weight in your legs that is hell.
I watched a couple in an old convertible come down an on-ramp up ahead. We puttered along. I watched the driver accelerate along the on-ramp and then---where traditionally one would hit the gas and leap into the traffic on the highway----the car slowed back down to join the giddy line of 45mph. The couple in the convertible were well-dressed and poised, like film stars from the 1950s taking a drive down the California coast. It was the way they slowed down to join the highway that made them suddenly seem like Barbie and Ken in a weird doll movie.
Anyway. There was a RV parked by the church, and behind the RV there were some young men laughing and hanging out. We couldn't see them but M. said, "What kind of guys hang out in a church parking lot?" I didn't know but there is much in this country that I have yet to learn. We didn't think anything more of it.
Another car pulled in, more film stars from the 50s, the man in a tuxedo and the woman with her hair up and glittery earrings. They were studying directions, I assumed, the way she was looking down reading something. But then they parked and got out. She was wearing a long, aqua blue evening gown. They each took out a pack of cigarettes and began to smoke. They were having a cigarette break on the way to somewhere, in order to not smell like smoke upon arrival. She was wearing cheap black sandals and he had on cheap black shoes too, and I have recently been informed that first impressions are often based on the shoes you are wearing, so know that, because it definitely had an effect on my impression of the movie starlet.
"What a strange church parking lot this is," I said. And everyone agreed.
A man boarded the RV. He sat in the driver's seat and watched us through the side window. I assumed he was the man who tended the graveyard. But why he would drive to work in a RV, I couldn't fathom. And why, I wondered, was he looking at us?
"Maybe he's Schmidt and he's dilly dally-ing now that his wife is dead," M. said. He did have a distant expression, in the way that an older man might not be able reach his sadness. But then, perhaps, over the years a grave-digger's face might take on a permanent shape of longing, out of respect for the dead.
We continued to eat and watch Schmitt sit in his RV and the girl in the aqua-blue evening gown smoke her cigarette, when another car pulled up and out came a woman in a bunad. A bunad is a traditional Norwegian dress, still worn for special occasions such as christenings or ... weddings.
"Really, you think so?" M. said. "It's kind of an usual time for a wedding."
"A Saturday afternoon in July? I don't think it's so radical." Our wedding was on a Tuesday in Kampala, in a lawyer's office during M's lunch break, so I guess anything else seems weird to us. It was not a glamorous affair (M. returned to work and I went out to lunch with a friend) but I've never had a moment's regret, which surprises me. I am surprised by the fact that I do not want what I am supposed to want.
Maybe I'll feel regret on my deathbed. For that and for all the things I should have done that I never did; all the things I should have said that I never said... Well, I can always say that I've had lunch at Tanum kirke, and also that we read the gravestones of the colonels and lieutenants and their wives and virgin sisters, and that one gravestone had my name Emilie on it, from one hundred years ago. How unusual to have that french name way back then in this land of Knuts and Ingrids; I'm curious about her story.
And I can always say that we all piled back into the car, and argued about the best way back to the main road, and I accelerated ever so slightly on the on-ramp then slowed down again to join the line of Norwegians heading south for the weekend.
The painting above, entitled Barnedap i Tanum kirke, is by Harriet Backer (Norway 1845-1932). It was painted in 1892.