Echoland

by Per Petterson

  ‘Rissoles.’

  He turned and watched the woman in the corner mechanically pulling the lever of the one-arm bandit. It was such a regular sound that after a while he wasn’t certain who was pulling what. She had a cigarette poked between her lips and it was almost burned down to the filter, ash hung off in a long arc, the cigarette kept burning, neither her face nor her mouth moved and he stared at her, wouldn’t it fall off soon? But it didn’t, and then she hit the jackpot. The bowl jingled and rattled and she released the lever and reached down with her hand to collect the money and then the ash spread over her blouse like an avalanche, he was sure there would soon be a boom, but everything was very quiet and she didn’t notice.

  The landlord came with two rissoles, a Jolly Cola and a beer on a tray. He was a big man with a leather apron covered in sticky brown stains and he spilled some of the beer on the tablecloth when he put it down.

  ‘But you don’t drink beer.’

  ‘Today I do.’ She smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t turn into an alcoholic because of one beer.’

  He didn’t think she would, but he didn’t like her drinking beer. He had never seen her drink beer. She took a large swig and obviously enjoyed it and he looked down at the rissoles and began to tuck in.

  She didn’t drink, but not everyone knew that. At home in Veitvet most people had a drink now and then, and once when they were sitting on the steps outside having coffee in the afternoon and his father came home from work, she did something unusual. She stood up and wrapped her arms around Dad’s neck and gave him a hug, for it was pay day and they were short of money. The next day their neighbour, fru Bomann, came over and said with a smarmy smile: ‘Well, fru Jansen, you were a bit drunk yesterday, weren’t you? We all are once in a while.’

  ‘But you know I don’t drink,’ his mother said.

  ‘Oh, don’t give me that. I saw you hugging your husband on the steps,’ fru Bomann said, and Arvid too thought it a bit strange because not once had he seen anyone from their terraced house give each other a hug.

  The window was filthy. He took a napkin and wiped it and looked into the street. The rain was hammering down and the wind was making Lodsgade look like the rapids in a river and then all of a sudden it stopped and everything turned oddly quiet. He held his breath and looked at his mother. She was gazing out of the window with a smile that had nothing to do with him, and the sun was shining now, steam rising from the black tarmac, they could hear the harbour train clanking past on its way to the station, sirens howled at the shipyard for lunch and the first blue-clad cyclists passed the window and it was twelve o’clock.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That German, is it true they never found him?’

  ‘Which German?’

  ‘The one who was caught in a riptide and pulled down to the bottom after the War.’

  ‘Oh him. No, they never found him. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I dream about him at night. It’s scary.’

  She reached her hand across the table and tousled his wet fringe and made it into an Elvis quiff. He let her do it.

  ‘I used to dream about him too,’ she said. ‘One winter when it seemed as if the ice had covered the whole sea I skated out to the lighthouse island with a friend. When I got home I was grounded even though I was an adult. Your grandfather was furious and he really had a temper in those days. A boy had fallen through the ice the day before and drowned, but I hadn’t heard about it. That night I dreamed it was me who fell through and sank into the cold, green water, right to the bottom, and there I saw the German.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘He was standing on the seabed, wearing a uniform and helmet, saying “Heil Hitler.”’

  ‘You couldn’t hear that underwater, could you?’

  ‘No, but there were bubbles coming out of his mouth and the bubbles said “Heil Hitler.” I could see it.’

  He was not so sure about that, the accident had happened after the War, but it was only a dream and now they shared a dream, even if the dream was a nightmare.

  ‘I’ll never forget that dream,’ she said. ‘Eat up your food now.’

  FORGET IT, ARVID SAID

  WHEN HE AWOKE in the middle of the night in his room at home in Veitvet and the window was open and it was summer, he could hear the music from Alnabru shunting station. There was a sound of singing drifting through the night and he knew what it was that made it. During the day he had stood in the field below Linderud Farm and had seen the goods trains trundling down from the Donkey’s Back into one of the many tracks that ran alongside each other at the bottom of the Grorud Valley. It was the wheels that made the sound, although in the day you never heard them, and that gave you an eerie feeling, for you never saw any people there, just the wagons rolling down, nothing pulling them, several at a time all on their own rails.

  But at night the sounds were clear, like a chorus of notes and he didn’t have to get out of bed to know the sky was lit up above Alnabru, yellow and red and orange that gave the music colour. Sometimes he got up anyway when he couldn’t sleep. Then he leaned on the window-sill thinking he would like to work there when he grew up or on one of the trains that passed by and see the lights close up and feel the excitement of them at night. But he was twelve years old and he knew that life was already heading somewhere else.

  When he woke up in the room above the dairy shop and the window was open it took him time to realise that the music from the railway wagons wasn’t there, and when he did, he was wide awake.

  Lying in bed between his mother and father was too hot, he couldn’t sleep like that any more, it was ridiculous, he had to get up. The alarm clock by the bedhead showed half-past two, but never mind, he couldn’t sleep. He wriggled out of bed, dressed and went into the living room. There wasn’t enough space here, Grandfather was snoring on the divan, so he went out past the kitchen and down the stairs. The dairy shop door was open. He could hear Grandmother talking to herself or to God in the Aquarium. The key was in the yard door and he opened it and went out. He stood still on the tarmac and could feel it was a little too cold for just a T-shirt, so he went back in, up the stairs, fetched a sweater, and when he went outside again he was fine. The sky was overcast, but it was dry and the grey weather and semi-gloom made the air seem as if it were filled with thin smoke, smoke you couldn’t see but knew was there.

  There was a bike stand against one wall of the outside toilet, which wasn’t a proper outside toilet because it had a flush, and he went over and climbed on to the bike stand and stretched up and, once he had a good grip of the edge of the roof, he pulled himself up.

  He lay on the roof looking into the air, it was three o’clock in the morning and in his mouth he had one of his mother’s cigarettes. He didn’t light it, he didn’t even have any matches and he had no wish to smoke either, it just felt right to have it there. There was a smell of menthol tobacco and roofing felt and the faint perfume of roses from the toilet wall and several other smells he couldn’t name. They came from the street and down from the harbour and from the fields to the west of town.

  You could breathe here, he drew the air deep down into his lungs and slowly released it and heard the rush in his ears. He lay quite still and heard another rush and it was the sea. In the far distance he heard a dog barking and suddenly it howled and then went quiet.

  On a house on the other side of the backyard there was a big picture advertising Tuborg beer. It was hard to read through the smoky air, but he knew what it said and the man in the picture seemed more alive now than during the day. Mogens lived in that house. His window faced the yard and Arvid picked up a little stone from the roof, stood up, and sent the stone flying, and he was good at it, the stone hit the target and Arvid was startled by the loud, sharp crack on the window-pane. He didn’t dare try again and when no one opened up he lay back down. He closed his eyes and thought he was finally tired enough to sleep, but then he heard a voice, saying: ‘Wha
t the hell! Is that you there?’

  He opened his eyes and Mogens was standing in the window and he was naked from the waist up and his hair was dishevelled.

  ‘Yep,’ Arvid said.

  ‘A bit crowded indoors?’ Mogens said, and his voice was loud between the houses and Arvid didn’t like it. He didn’t answer and Mogens rubbed his eyes and scratched his head and dropped his hands, probably to scratch his crotch.

  ‘Shall we go fishing?’ he said.

  ‘Now?’ Arvid said. ‘Where?’

  ‘From the mole. It’s good there. I can’t sleep any more anyway.’ Arvid gave the idea some thought, the wind wasn’t blowing now, everywhere it was still, everything was quite different, so he said: ‘Yes, OK, but I don’t feel like going back in.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ve got two rods,’ Mogens said. ‘Hang on a moment and I’ll be with you.’

  Arvid lay on the roof waiting with the cigarette bobbing up and down between his lips until Mogens came and banged the fishing rods on the roof, and then he crawled over the edge and eased himself down. Mogens had an extra windcheater too and Arvid put it on.

  ‘It’s not that warm out,’ said Mogens, who had remembered the key to the metal gate, and he unlocked it and it creaked and swung open and they walked down Lodsgade. There wasn’t a soul around, only the empty street and a cat that shot round the corner of a house, but cats don’t have souls.

  ‘Do you want me to light that?’ Mogens said, taking a match from his pocket. Arvid felt his lips and the cigarette was still there.

  ‘No,’ he said, and took it out of his mouth and put it into the windcheater pocket.

  It was slowly getting lighter, but the smoke held and softened the air, and made all the brick walls seem soft as well. He slid his hand around the corner of a house and was surprised when something felt hard against his palm.

  ‘Shit,’ said Mogens, ‘I forgot the bait. We’ve got to have some bait.’

  ‘What kind of bait?’

  ‘Lugworms. That’s the best, that’s what fish like best.’

  ‘Where are we going to get hold of that now?’

  Mogens turned and went back and Arvid followed him. They went up Danmarksgade and started to walk north. The street was empty and strange here too, apart from a man who was walking ahead of them and singing: ‘I’m an oat plant, of bells I am made. More than twenty, I think, on every blade.’ He was drunk, his body was made of soft rubber, but his singing was good and it was a sad song to listen to in an empty street at night. He didn’t hit a wrong note, but he needed the whole pavement to move forward.

  ‘His name’s Mortensen,’ Mogens said. ‘He used to work at the shipyard as a turner, but then he got divorced, went nuts and now he drinks all the time.’

  Mogens crossed the street. Arvid watched Mortensen, who slowly became smaller and smaller until he turned a corner and vanished. He couldn’t quite cope with the bend and had to step into the street. Arvid didn’t know anyone who was divorced, it must have been hell. You got divorced and went crazy and then you began to drink. That’s how it was.

  He crossed the street after Mogens, who had stopped in front of a sports shop. Beside the display window was a machine, identical to the one that the baker’s had. There were lots of small windows, one on top of the other, and if you inserted two 25-øre coins you could open one of the windows and behind it was a coconut slice or a butter cookie or a cinnamon biscuit or some other delicacy. But there were no cakes here. Behind every window was a paper cup, and in the cup were maggots, lugworms, that people had dug up on the beach after high tide and sold to the sports shop. Mogens put in four 25-øre coins and opened two of the windows and took the cups out. He gave one to Arvid.

  ‘That should do us for now,’ he said. ‘Just empty the cup into your jacket pocket. I’ve had worms in there before.’

  It was disgusting to walk with worms in your pocket, but he did as Mogens said. It came to mind too late that he had poured the mess over his cigarette that he had planned to put back in the Cooly packet.

  They took a different way to the harbour from the one Arvid was used to. They came from the north this time, from Gammeltorv and the courthouse and the gaol, and they went down by Admiral Tordenskjold’s house. Tordenskjold had lived there once, they claimed, and on a sign in black, peeling letters under one gable it said TORDENSKJOLD HOUSE. Arvid didn’t think that was proof enough, for the house was an old shack and he couldn’t picture Tordenskjold with his three-cornered hat and long curls and smart stick coming out of that splintered brown door. Tordenskjold was Norwegian, but there was a picture of him on all Danish matchboxes. If he had lived in this house he would have taken better care of it.

  There were many old houses here with crooked roofs, but a fresh coat of paint made them look nice in yellow with black timbers, and the road was made of ancient cobblestones, which were hard to walk on without tripping, and between the houses you could see through to a long, brown beach where seaweed lay in great piles like birds’ nests.

  Arvid pointed and said: ‘That’s where Terje Vigen came ashore.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Terje Vigen,’ Arvid said.

  ‘Who the hell is he?’

  ‘Was,’ Arvid said. ‘Don’t you know who Terje Vigen was?’

  The book was on a shelf at home between Helge Ingstad’s Trapper Life and Maxim Gorky’s My Childhood. It was his father’s bookcase from before the War, but Arvid had never seen him reading any of the books in it. In the evening his father usually sat in a chair and dozed off with a Morgan Kane or Walt Slade Western in his lap. His hands were so big that the small, trashy books nearly vanished, and when they fell to the floor Arvid would say: ‘You dropped your book.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You fell asleep.’

  ‘I did not.’

  But he had and Arvid looked over at the bookcase and knew they couldn’t talk about what was there, the conversation would be over before it even started, and he had to travel alone.

  He did travel alone and he went wherever he wanted: he skied across Greenland, sailed on the Gjøa through the North-west Passage, stood two years before the mast in the storms around Cape Horn, saw the English pounding away at the fortifications around Sevastopol with bullets whizzing round their heads and the young count who was still not famous shouted: Get under cover, you young fool! He lay in the grass on the banks of the Mississippi and saw Huck Finn get on board the raft with the fish they were going to fry on the fire, and with Martin Eden he walked into the bourgeois houses of San Francisco afraid his broad shoulders would knock all the porcelain over when he turned round, and he didn’t even know how to eat with a knife and fork like they did but decided he would learn everything that they knew and more. And he rowed with Terje Vigen from Norway to Denmark because his wife and children were starving and he made land right here, with aching hands and fingers that couldn’t be straightened after all those freezing hours grasping the oars. He must have been so exhausted, and his back stiff as a board, but pleased too as he rowed back with what he came for. And then he strayed into the English blockade and everything was lost.

  ‘Who was he then?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Terje Vigen!’

  ‘Forget it,’ Arvid said.

  The island lay to the north and was barely visible, morning hadn’t broken there yet, and was shrouded in mist, but it was lighter on the footpath and that was because they were here and not there. Halfway along the mole they climbed over the windbreak and jumped from one boulder to the next down to the water. These rocks were bigger than any he had seen in Denmark and he wondered how they had ended up here. His father said they had come with the ice from Norway in the Ice Age and that the whole of Denmark had in fact been left behind by Norway when the ice withdrew and that was a good thing for otherwise the Oslo Fjord wouldn’t be there. But that didn’t explain why the rocks were so neatly lined up along the mole.

  Mogens assembled the rods and saw to th
e lines and reels and gave one to Arvid. When Arvid and his father went fishing at home in the Bunne Fjord they always fished from the shore using lures or jigged from a boat using mussels as bait on the many hooks hanging one above the other, but Mogens only used one hook with a lugworm. They cast the line with a lead weight and a float beyond the seaweed that was bobbing up and down in the shallow water, and the red and white float settled on the waves and floated as it was meant to. Then they slowly drew in the line and jerked up the hook before it got snagged in the seaweed and cast out again, leaving the hook in peace for a while before they reeled in again.

  Mogens took hold of Arvid’s arm and tried to help him as he was about to cast, but Arvid shook off his hand and said: ‘I can do this on my own,’ but he couldn’t. The first two attempts the hook got caught in the seaweed and he had to kneel down to untangle it and the sleeve of his jacket got soaked through. Gradually though he got the knack of it.

  ‘What kind of fish are we after?’ Arvid said.

  ‘Flatfish,’ Mogens said. ‘Plaice.’

  ‘Oh, no, not plaice!’

  ‘You’re not the only one who’s sick of plaice,’ Mogens said. ‘Everyone in this town is sick of plaice. But it’s different when you catch them yourself.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Arvid said.

  His cast this time was perfect, the line flew through the air and the float landed well out. It was just a fluke, but Mogens smiled and gave a nod and after that they stood for a good while casting and reeling in, and as they fished the sun rose. He could feel its warmth straight away, it hit him in the face and chest and he decided that from now on everything would turn out fine. He tested himself, and thought about Mortensen really hard to see if it made him sad, but Mortensen was almost gone, the gloom in the streets was hard to imagine now, everywhere there was light and water, and beyond the water lay Sweden, but he couldn’t see Sweden and he didn’t want to either.

  ‘How old is your sister, anyway?’ Mogens asked.

  ‘Almost fourteen.’