To Siberia

by Per Petterson

  He was gone a long time. Marianne and Ruben had to go home, then Mogens went home, and I was left alone gazing out over the white sea waiting and waiting until the cold bit me so hard I could stand there no longer, and then I went home too.

  A boy had fallen through the ice two days earlier and disappeared, but we did not know about that. The grown-ups knew, and I had never seen my father so angry as when I arrived home alone that winter evening with my skates in one mitten and the other soaked in tears. Never again until several years later when I stood in the workshop with a big wound on my cheek, and my wrists swollen and blue from Gestapo Jørgensen’s grip, and so bereft of feeling that when I tried to pick up a cup or a glass it fell to the floor at once and broke. My father stood before me in a frenzy with his hammer and chisel in his hands, and I was telling him what had happened, but only halfway through I suddenly realized he was furious because he was frightened and could not show it in any other way. That this was how it had always been, which I had always misunderstood. And then I knew too that he was never angry with me as he could be angry with Jesper. He hurled the chisel into the wall where it lodged quivering, and with the hammer he shattered the cupboard he was making until nothing was left of it but small bits and pieces. His back bulged and his forearms bulged with the effort and then he slung the hammer at the wall after the chisel so the chisel broke and both fell on the floor and lay there. He who could never end the day without hanging his tools up clean and tidy each in its place above the bench. Then he took off his apron and flung that on the floor too, pushed me out of the door and locked it.

  I cycle north at dusk towards Kæret beach past the marshes at Rønnene where the seagulls sit in long rows in the shallows beyond the reeds, and all the rows take off as I ride past, unfold like gray-white sheets and land again in the dim light that slowly fades and disappears towards Skagen. There are thousands of them, I hear their soft rushing and feel the wind in my face as if this were the last time I would cycle here in just this way, and I see myself from the outside as more and more often I do, in a film at the Palace Theater progressively one row of seats farther back from the screen, on the same brown bicycle I have had for many years, and my hair streams back and at the same time almost merges with the advancing night, and I hear the creaking of my right pedal against the chain guard, squeak, squeak, again and again a thousand times, and my breath, puff, puff, quite alone with no other sound now the gulls are silent.

  It grows darker and darker, but I do not light my lamp, for on these flat stretches I would be seen a kilometer away and the drone from the dynamo would block out all other sounds. I dare not do it. Everything would be easier on the road to Skagen farther inland on the bridge over the Elling brook, but there is German traffic there now and it is past curfew time.

  There is not a tree to be seen, only some low bushes that cannot grow any bigger because of the wind from the sea and the reeds in front of them in a dark wall against the last light. Far ahead where the road ends I steer the bike off the gravel, out into the marram grass and right down to the dunes by the shore. There I leave it at the end of the path where I know I shall find it again.

  It is high tide. There is a dark shining mirror where you can walk dry-shod in the middle of the day, it covers everything and it is impossible to see which way the brook runs when it has left the reeds. I take my shoes off, put them beside the bike and wade out. The water comes up to my ankles, it is warm and pleasant and the bottom is soft on my soles. Little flounders have hidden themselves in the sand and they wriggle against my toes and shoot off when I put my feet down. If it had been light I could have followed the lines of whirling sand and caught them in my hands where the whirling stopped and felt them tickle my palms, put them in a bucket and watched them go flat on the bottom so as to be invisible.

  I walk cautiously through the water, narrowing my eyes and peering for the darker current where the brook runs deeper, but everything is equally dark and smooth right out to the first sandbank where the waves roll in. I lift up my dress to be prepared but still I suddenly step into much deeper water than I had expected. I sink up to my hips at first and then to my chest, and I lose my balance and fall forward until the water is up to my throat and covers the whole of my dress and thin jacket, and it is fresh water just here and much colder. I sob when I can’t feel bottom under my feet, so I draw a deep breath and start swimming the few meters until I can reach bottom and the water only comes up to my ankles again.

  The wound on my cheek smarts when I stand up, water pours from hair and dress, and the dress sticks close to my skin. It’s like being touched by a hundred hands. I should have been less naked without clothes, I think and pull off jacket and dress, and at once it is so lovely that I unclasp my bra and take off my pants and walk completely naked through the water, wringing out the clothes so the water splashes around me and I can feel the big darkness close to my body. No one can see me, even the lighthouse is dark, and I am free from the eyes of Gestapo Jørgensen that have rested on me all day. But it does not take long for the gooseflesh to spread. It is autumn, and I can’t remember when summer ended. Maybe today. Maybe yesterday. Maybe long ago. With a mirror I would have seen my skin grow slowly blue in big patches around my mouth, on my shoulders and thighs. My teeth start to chatter. I cannot stop it, and it makes such a clatter I’m scared the Gestapo will hear it in Kragholmen. I put my dress on again and the thin cardigan, and it’s not easy, I have to drag the sticky dress down over my hips, and that makes me even colder. And then I start to run. In over the shoals so water and wet sand splash around my feet until I get to the beach on the other side of the reed belt around the brook, and I run north along the beach as close to the water as possible so as not to step on the mussels and sharp shells lying in a white strip where they have been washed ashore a few meters inward the whole way along, thinking that if only I run quickly enough the warmth of my body will steam the dress dry.

  I didn’t tell my father I knew where Jesper was, he was so angry I thought he might do something stupid, so he went to Uncle Nils on Søndergate to ask, but Uncle Nils was not at home. He was not at the shipyard either. He had vanished.

  I stood at the corner of our street and saw my father coming back, he didn’t turn down to the dairy shop, but went on walking to and fro on the sidewalk. He was so furious he couldn’t talk, and people who knew him hurried past when they saw his face, and finally he stripped off his jacket, walked into the road, flung it down on the cobbles, and trod on it, and not until he picked it up again did he calm down. He shook it carefully as if asking forgiveness, put it on, and I went up to him and brushed the top of his back where he could not reach. Then he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the few coins he had on him and looked at them, and I thought he was going to give them to me, but he turned and said:

  “I’ll be away an hour or so,” and walked along the block and down Havnegate to the Vinkælderen.

  For the rest of the day I stood behind the counter serving customers who came in, answering questions and smiling when they left, behaving as if nothing had happened when they stood there staring at my cheek. I was wearing a cardigan with long sleeves so the bruises should not show, and I concentrated and tried not to look down at the tiles or at the clock on the wall, and every time I picked up a bottle I used both hands in a way that looked natural. When five o’clock came I shut up shop and went upstairs for dinner stiff in every limb.

  My mother had laid a place for Jesper. She sat biting her lips not looking at his place. My father raised his eyes from his plate one single time and looked me straight in the face, and he asked why the hell I sat there smiling like that. He was probably a bit drunk, but my mother did not realize that, “but Magnus, really,” she said, and I put my hand to my mouth and felt I had not taken off my smile for the customers yet. When I finally relaxed, my face hurt. At half past eight I changed into a clean dress and my knitted jacket and cycled out of town without saying where I was going, and now I am running
along the beach in the dark as fast as I can with the sticky wet hem of my dress in one hand so as not to stumble over my own clothes and fall down.

  Sometimes when I think of Jesper all I can see is his dark back on the way across the white sea to Hirsholmene. It gets smaller and smaller and I stand at the edge of the ice feeling empty. Why didn’t he ask me to go with him? I have a will of my own, but if he had asked I wouldn’t have hesitated. I always went with him. After all, I had to look after him and he had to look after me, and my father would have been furious with us both. Staying there alone was meaningless.

  Sometimes I imagine he tells me everything, but I know that’s not true. He never told me if he went all the way to Hirsholmene. I don’t tell him everything either, but I feel he knows what I am thinking, and I know what he thinks. I have taught myself to do that.

  And yet all the same I am not sure. I stop running when I realize I’m almost at the shack. Anyone could hear my breath, and I have to bend over and lean on my knees and pant down between my thighs until my lungs calm down and my heart stops beating so loudly I can’t hear anything else.

  He knew I would come. I straighten up and see a shadow a few meters away and I jump, but he says:

  “Hi. I rather expected you earlier.”

  “It wasn’t easy to get away, and I didn’t want to start before it got dark.” It is hard to talk, I’m still panting.

  “That was good. Did you come along Skagensvejen?”

  “There’s German traffic on Skagensvejen, I took the coast road and then walked along the beach. No one saw me. I didn’t meet a soul, only a crowd of seagulls. But maybe seagulls have souls. It’s curfew now, after all.”

  “You had to cross the brook, then. It’s deep there this time of day.”

  I start to laugh. “I know that,” I say.

  I can see him better now, his black hair, the dark shadows around his eyes, and he can see me.

  “You’re soaking wet,” he says. “Come on.”

  He takes my hand and leads me through the darkness. His feet know the way so well he doesn’t stumble even once though the path turns sharply and goes up and down, he goes first and I follow, it is like a dance through the marram grass and reeds until the still darker shack is right in front of us, and his hand is dry and warm around mine. He pulls the blanket aside, we bend down and go in. It is impossible to see anything. He lets go of my hand and searches in the dark while I stand bent over waiting, my teeth chatter again, and then I hear the scrape of a match. It lights up and Jesus lives is embroidered over the window and on the wall hang Lenin and Jesper and me. I have not been here for four years. Everything is the same except for the paraffin lamp, which is new. He takes off the glass and lights it, then he blows out the match and throws it on the sandy floor before putting the glass in place on the lamp again and adjusting the flame. He hangs a gunnysack over the embroidery in the window so no light can shine out and then he turns to me.

  “Hey, you’re damned freezing, Sistermine. We must find you something dry.”

  “It’s all right, I’m fine.”

  “Rubbish.” He rummages in a heap in the corner and finds a woolen sweater and an old pair of trousers he has used for fishing.

  “Sorry, this is all I’ve got.”

  “That’ll do fine,” I say.

  The clothes smell faintly of fish and salt and Jesper. I do not know where to change. There is not much room in the little shack, the lamp lights up the whole of it, and I am wet right through. Jesper just sits there unthinking as usual, and it would be too silly to go out into the dark again. I don’t want to anyway, so I turn my back and take off my jacket and pull my dress slowly over my head. I unfasten the bra and lay it all in a heap on the floor while I try to avoid Gestapo Jørgensen’s gaze. I can’t quite do it, I shut my eyes and then Jesper says quietly behind me:

  “I’ve got to go to Sweden tonight.”

  I feel myself stiffen. Of course he must get away. He cannot stay in this shack long, he must have food and drink and someone must get it out to him. No one knows when the war will end, and as long as it lasts he must stay hidden. It’s no good. Sooner or later he would be caught. But it had not occurred to me.

  I have been standing bent over to hide my body, but now I straighten up and turn around slowly as calmly as I can, I have the sweater in my hand and I try to stop my teeth chattering. I am frightened and determined. He is squatting down looking at his shoes and then he raises his head and sees me in the light of the paraffin lamp. His face is quite clear and the flame of the lamp flickers in his eyes and I have to look past him to Lenin on the wall, but Jesper smiles and looks at me without saying anything and then he says:

  “You’re a good looker now, Sistermine.”

  “Gestapo Jørgensen says we sleep together.”

  I swallow, there is something in my throat I can’t get down so I swallow again, but it does not help. Jesper just smiles.

  “But we don’t, do we.”

  “No,” I say, and it is then he sees the wound on my face and the big blue marks on my arms. He gets up.

  “Did Jørgensen do that?”

  I do not reply. He takes the few steps toward me slightly bent under the roof, I swallow and drop the jumper.

  “Hell, the swine,” says Jesper and raises his hand to touch the wound with his fingertips carefully. I lean my cheek against his palm, lightly at first and then harder and we stand there and he leans his forehead against my temple, his shirt just brushes my bare breasts, I meet him, I do not breathe, and he says:

  “You’re freezing.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a sweet brave sister.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  He bends down carefully with my cheek in his hand and picks up the sweater.

  “You’re freezing,” he says.

  Jesper takes the photograph of the two of us from the wall and leaves Lenin hanging there.

  “I’m taking this with me. If they ever find the shack they’ll think it’s the headquarters of the Communist Party. But we mustn’t be seen in such company,” he says, “you in particular,” and he puts out the flame of the paraffin lamp, and we bend down and go outside into the night and stand there until our eyes are accustomed to the dark, and then we start walking along the beach. He has the photograph in one hand and his shoes in the other. I carry my wet dress and jacket in a bundle under my arm. We walk the whole way without saying anything until we have to go into the shallow water before the reeds and the stream that runs out past the reeds, and it is still high tide. We roll up our trouser legs and wade. Jesper stops when we get near the stream outlet.

  “It’d be pretty silly to get wet now,” he says. “Wait here.”

  He wades off into the reeds, I hear splashing in there, but I can’t see anything before there’s a rustling again, and only then do I see his bare head faintly and he is standing in a rowboat poling his way out. It must have a flat bottom, for it’s floating in the shallows.

  “You didn’t know about this, did you?” he says.

  “No.”

  “It was on the wrong side, though. The owners will have to wade for it now. I’ve made use of it a lot.”

  He poles it right up to me, and I put the bundle of clothes into the boat and get in, and he pushes off with the oar and we glide over the brook until we scrape the bottom on the other side and then we jump out, and Jesper pulls the boat into the reeds and hides it there. We go on to the beach in the ankle-high water. It’s darker than when I came. I cannot see farther than the back in front of me, but the water feels warm now, and I could go on for a long time in this way, just walking and walking and hearing the soft ripple of water around our ankles and never going in, but suddenly we are there. The sand is colder on our feet than the water was, it sticks to our wet feet when they sink into it, it irritates me, and I have to search until I find the bicycle. I’m quite cold even though I’m wearing the sweater, but I’m naked underneath.

  “Here it is,”
I say aloud. Jesper follows my voice and comes up. I brush the worst of the sand off my feet before pushing them into my shoes.

  “If you hold the picture for me you can sit behind me while I cycle,” he says.

  “Where’s the bike you had?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  He pushes the bike up the path and on to the road, I walk behind him. Once he stops and listens and we stand quite still.

  “False alarm,” he says.

  When we’re out on the road I roll up the dress and jacket tightly and put the roll under the seat, then I sit on the luggage carrier with the photograph in one hand and the other on the seat, and when Jesper sits down I take my hand from the seat and hold on to the underneath of the bar so as not to touch him.

  He hears the pedal rubbing against the chain guard right away.

  “That won’t do,” he says, and I have to get off again. He lays the cycle down on the road and gives the chain guard a hard knock, and when we ride off the bike makes no sound. All I hear is the faint hum of the tires on the gravel, I hold tight to the bar so as not to fall off, and I weep so quietly Jesper does not notice.

  Near the Seaman’s School we hear the sound of a motorcycle, and we see the light of its lamp so clearly that we have time to get off the road and in behind one of the big dog rose bushes that grow so plentifully there. It’s a German patrol, we see the motorbike go slowly past and the helmet of the man sitting in the side car and the blunt barrel of the submachine gun barely poking up.

  We crouch down waiting till we are sure there are no more coming. Silence falls again.

  “Did you actually get as far as Hirsholmen that time?” I ask, voicing my thoughts. He knows what I mean instantly.

  “No.”

  “Was it too far?”

  “Maybe. But what happened was that when I was halfway to the lighthouse I saw a cap lying on the ice all by itself with no one about. It really was a long way out to sea, and the uncanny thing was that it was so like the one I had. It just lay there in all that whiteness and I didn’t get past it even though I’d been determined to. I had to turn around, and I was frightened the whole way back. Much more frightened than I am now.” He smiles and he does not look frightened, and I am not frightened either, just empty.