I Curse the River of Time

by Per Petterson

  I came home, walked to the kitchen, took the juice from the fridge and, leaning against the kitchen counter, I drank a big glass and went into the living room and pulled the bed linen out from behind the sofa and lay down under the duvet and stayed there staring at the ceiling. I tried to collect all that was in my head into one straight line.

  I slept until late in the afternoon and was still lying on the sofa bed when she came back from school on the tram. She let herself in, and I heard her take off her coat, her scarf and mittens in the hall. My clothes were already hanging there, so she could see that I was home, but she just went on into the kitchen like a grown woman would, with her regular habits after many years in the same flat, and filled the kettle and put it on the stove. I heard the drops of water hiss against the hotplate. She always made tea when she came home from school, and she no longer had to throw up in the morning and only went to see her parents a couple of times a week. Perhaps this was home to her now. Then she pulled her books out of her satchel and put them on the kitchen table and spent an hour or more doing her homework, and I was lying dozily expectant in the living room, and then she came in and lay down next to me under the duvet, and afterwards we sat on the sofa bed with the duvet wrapped around us as we always sat, and it was evening still, it was dark early as always in December, but not completely dark. I smoked a cigarette, and the tip glowed, and the grey and white smoke coiled almost invisibly above our heads before it was carried off by the draught along the wall and out through the open window to Finnmarkgata. Outside the traffic was still rushing past in both directions, and the lights from the cars reflected in the double-glazed windows and swept past Mao and all the way in to the sofa. At the junction the traffic lights changed from green to amber to a painful red and back again. We sat warm and our skin was gleaming, and I always imagined that if anyone saw us sitting like this, they would see something they could never have, something absent from their lives, and then that would be like a thorn in their side.

  I passed her the cigarette, but she did not take it. I turned. She was staring down at the duvet.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘You were different this time,’ she said.

  ‘Different how?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know. Just different.’

  ‘Wasn’t it good, didn’t you feel good?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘I guess so,’ she said and bit her lip and stared down at the duvet and she was crying. Perhaps she had been crying all the time we were lying next to each other, and I had not noticed. I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her to me.

  ‘But it’s just you and me,’ I said, ‘just you and me, and we do things that no one else could know about, and they ache to know and then they feel sad, because they long to feel the way we feel, but they cannot. They know nothing. Only you and I can feel this way,’ and her arms hung limply as I squeezed her tight. She did not put them around my shoulders, nor did she lay her hands where she always laid them. She cried and said:

  ‘But it didn’t feel like that. It felt as though everyone could see what we were doing. That it wasn’t only us.’

  I did not know what to say. I let go of her and took the last drag from the cigarette and leaned forwards and stubbed it out in the ashtray between the piles of books on the table. I stroked her back.

  ‘Did you go home last night?’ I said. I knew she had.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Was it bad?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re just tired,’ I said, ‘why don’t you sleep a little, it doesn’t matter if it’s still early, wouldn’t that be all right? Do you have homework?’

  ‘I did it when I got here. There’s just a little bit left and I can do it behind the library tomorrow morning. It’s not very cold either.’

  ‘There you go. So why don’t you sleep then?’

  ‘I am a bit tired.’

  ‘I will lie down here beside you. I don’t have to go to a meeting or anything.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good,’ she said, and we lay down, and I pulled the duvet over her and held her tight until she was asleep, and then I stood up and went naked out into the kitchen and sat down at the table and rolled another cigarette. I was cold next to the window and I lit my cigarette with a match my fingers could barely hold. I did not understand how she could feel that I had been thinking of someone else.

  22

  The sound of a car woke me up. I did not know where I was, if it was day or night. I had no name, no home in time. I could have been twelve, I could have been sixty-eight. I opened my eyes and stared straight up at the bunk above me and I remembered that bunk from all the years and my own life and the night before in every detail, and then I was back in the summer house with a bang. But it didn’t feel right, and it was as though something different, more appropriate, more flattering for my person was gone with sleep.

  I heard the car stop with its engine still running and then someone turned the key and it fell silent. When I raised my head from the pillow and with great effort leaned towards the window and looked outside, I could see that it was a taxi. Grey dawn was in the air, like powder, like pepper, black and grey, and the paintwork of the car was black with its doors facing the summer house, so it could have been any car, but it was still an Audi, definitely an Audi, and the light on the roof was off. A young taxi driver climbed out and walked around the car and up towards the summer house. He stepped over two pine branches keeled over and my bicycle slumped against the trunk. He headed for the terrace, and then I could not see him. I had no idea what he was doing here. I swung out of the bottom bunk in some haste, and Jesus, how my head ached, oh Christ how my head ached, too many pints, no doubt about it. I touched my cheek, and it was throbbing in there, the gristle and bone, and I took my trousers from the back of the chair at the end of the bed, and my vest I took, and the charcoal jumper with the red trimming that once had belonged to my father and still did, I mean, he was not dead or anything, and I bundled the clothes under my arm and stormed out into the hall, and one of my brother’s paintings hung on a nail to the right of the toilet door, and in that painting was a beach bathed in orange morning light and a bit of the island of Læsø to the east if you looked closely, and there was Hirsholmen on the horizon, its lighthouse pointing to the sky. I hobbled past the kitchen and into the living room. There I found my mother standing, fully dressed before the mirror, in a blue jacket with white flowers and navy blue trousers, her freshly washed hair and her curls rippling on her head. With one hand she was applying red lipstick, in the other she held a blue handbag; over her arm was her coat. It was pale, cream, almost white. On the floor was a blue canvas bag. Short boots with a zip. But her eyes were strangely narrow, as if that was the only way she could face the mirror.

  The taxi driver was waiting outside on the terrace. Hansen stood there with the light from the living room window falling against his thigh, his elbow, the one side of his face lit up as if by a campfire, that kind of glow, and the other side so differently; the grey, peppery light from the sky. The driver must have been in his early twenties. They smiled to each other, laughed and talked with both hands in their pockets. Perhaps they knew each other, Hansen and the taxi driver. It was a small town. Hansen was dressed up too, in a dark jacket and pale trousers, an unfamiliar sight, as though he was going somewhere smart, a wedding or birthday party. I had never seen him looking so well dressed. What little hair he had left was combed across his head, there were curls at the back of his neck, and the jacket held his stomach in place.

  ‘Are you going somewhere?’ I said, ‘now? What time is it? Are you going with Hansen?’

  ‘We didn’t want to wake you,’ my mother said. ‘You were so fast asleep.’

  ‘We? What do you mean, we?’
I said. ‘Of course you should have woken me,’ I said. ‘You can’t leave like this. Shouldn’t we talk about it first?’

  ‘There are things I have to do,’ she said, ‘and there isn’t really that much to talk about. It is nothing very complicated. What happened to your cheek?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t even hurt,’ but it did, it hurt like hell. ‘With Hansen,’ I said. ‘Have you talked with Hansen about it? And what about me?’

  ‘What about you,’ my mother said.

  I took a deep breath. I looked at her.

  ‘But you can’t leave me here alone,’ I said.

  I could hear my own voice. It was embarrassing, as if it was coming from a different place entirely, from some other time, it sounded so childish, so whiny, it was thinner and more shrill than before. I happen to have a rich voice, I know that for a fact, but there was nothing I could do about it. It just kept going. It was like a jolt to my stomach. An electrical current. If I touched my skin, above my navel, it was ouch, ouch, that would hurt.

  ‘We’ll be away for a couple of days only.’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ I said.

  ‘You’re thirty-seven years old, Arvid.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ I said, and I stood there, practically naked, cradling the bundle of clothes in my arms and my knees knocking against each another.

  ‘Just give me a minute,’ I said, ‘and I’ll be there.’ And I ran back and saw her note in the middle of the table, and I ran to the tiny bathroom with my father’s clothes in my arms and threw them in a pile on the toilet seat and splashed water on my face, splashed water in my armpits and water in my hair and pulled my hair back as hard as I could and tried not to look at my face in the mirror. I found a deodorant which my father had left behind when he was here last, Old Spice, it was, swirling white letters on the red surface, and the scent of it matched the clothes, no doubt about it, and two painkillers I took from a box I found, and with my mouth to the tap I swallowed them both, and the tap had a sharp metallic taste, and it was a bit too much, to tell the truth. My stomach churned and I brushed my teeth while I tried to think about something else.

  I got dressed and went back to the living room. I saw my mother on the terrace, she shook the taxi driver’s hand, and he smiled, happy as a puppy, and then she raised her arms in a gesture of resignation. And Hansen smiled a wry smile too, but I did not care. I did not want to be left alone.

  I took my reefer jacket from the peg by the door, pulled it on over my father’s worn clothes, and the jacket was not that clean any more, so I brushed it at the front and rubbed my hand across the creases and did up the double row of brass buttons, each with an anchor moulded into the metal, and then the boots with their laces. It went well, all things considered, and in a sudden flash of inspiration I ran to the kitchen counter where the bottle of Calvados still stood. It looked full, almost untouched, which was strange, but I opened my jacket and slipped the slim bottle into the inside spacious pocket. Then at last I could walk to the door and join the others.

  ‘Let’s be off then,’ I said.

  They put me in the front seat, next to the driver, and the driver was not too happy about that, he would rather have had my mother beside him. But there was nothing he could do about it. I didn’t care where I sat. I did not even look at him. I leaned back in my seat and felt overcome by fatigue. We pulled out and drove down the road, and there was Mrs Kaspersen coming in the opposite direction on her black contraption on the way to her summer house. She turned and stared into the car and she must have seen who we were but she didn’t greet us. It looked like she was crying.

  Inside the car it was dark and quiet. No one said anything. I closed my eyes. Woolly grey sounds came seeping in from the air around us and damp sounds from the beach. A mute humming sound came from the tarmac, quivering up through my legs, through my stomach, and surrounded by it all I fell asleep, and when I opened my eyes, the car was standing still. My head no longer hurt. To my left the lamps at the shipyard were lit and floodlights hit the hull of a ship with the DFDS logo on the funnel, and the last remaining shadows were cut through by shafts of light from the welding torches working down the seams of the rust-coloured sheets of steel. At the far end of the harbour a boat was coming in from the sea through the gap in the breakwater, her blue bow high, the stern low, her lanterns still lit, and she looked like a fishing boat, one of the few then, out of this harbour. It was dawn, almost day. To my right a ferry was docked at the quay. Not as big as the ferries that sailed from this town to Oslo, Gothenberg. It said F/L in blue on the yellow funnel, so then it was the ferry to the island of Læsø. I opened the car door and got out on to the quay and said:

  ‘So we’re going to Læsø, are we?’ But there was no reply, and I turned and looked through the window to the back where my mother sat sideways leaning against the seat with her eyes closed, her body straight as an arrow and her lips in a tight line. Hansen was holding her arm and said loud enough for me to hear it:

  ‘Do you feel bad? Shall we turn and go back? We can do this another day,’ said Hansen. ‘We can do it any time. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ my mother said, ‘I just felt a bit tired, and then there was a pain, but it will pass in a moment,’ and I could hear how woollen, how restrained her voice was, as though it came from the bottom of a well, and then it struck me that I had forgotten why I was here, that the Teflon in my brain had displayed its slippery quality once more, and that made me feel so resigned and tired of myself that I stepped back to the car and spoke through the open door:

  ‘Mother, I’m not coming. It’s quite all right. Jesus. I can walk back to the summer house, I have done it before. Hell, I did so yesterday.’ But she leaned forward in her seat with a groan, and opened the car door, clutched the sill and said:

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t be so incredibly stupid. You’re coming with us.’ And I offered her my arm and she gripped my jacket firmly and slowly pulled herself up from the seat and came out, feet first, on to the quay and I would not let go, not for anything in the whole world, and she said:

  ‘Arvid, that’s enough, I’m on my feet now, it’s fine,’ and I said:

  ‘Mother.’ And then I started to cry, and I could not stop, and I did not care if Hansen could see it, and then I let go of her arm and ran around the car, pressed my forehead against the bonnet, and cried as I had never cried before, and hammered my hands ruthlessly against the hood of the Audi, then ran back, and just as ruthlessly slammed my hands against the shiny paintwork on the boot, and they could damned well stare if they wanted to, and I ran towards the ferry and leaned against the hull with the black water right down below me along the quay, and the water looked so icy cold, and I cried and turned from the ship and there was the young taxi driver knee deep in his embarrassed self, and he did not know where to look, because he was a young man still and had no idea what lay in store for him.

  ‘All right, Arvid, that’s enough. That will do,’ said my mother, and I cried and she patted me clumsily on the shoulder, and then she patted me again, but harder this time, and said:

  ‘That’s enough, do you hear,’ and then I finally stopped. Hansen came over and was clearly embarrassed on my behalf and we went on board. I did not have a ticket, but it was no problem, the ferry was never full this early in the morning. We crossed the gangway and my mother took out the worn brown purse she always kept in her handbag and paid the sum I cost.

  23

  We were standing hand in hand on the doorstep. It was a holiday camp. I had been there once before, but it was summer then, and the shadows did not stretch as far as they did now. We had come here to be alone. The cold was biting. The manager was a woman. She appeared from behind the main house, coming up the slope from the water in a blue quilted jacket, a bucket in one hand, there were fish in the bucket, perch I guessed, but I had not been fishing since I was a boy and remembered nothing about fish. The manager looked
at my face and then at the girl standing next to me and saw that she was very young, looked back at me and said:

  ‘You’ve booked a cabin?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t expect you until tomorrow.’

  ‘It was today,’ I said.

  ‘Was it?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I believe it was,’ I said.

  ‘Well then, I guess it was,’ she said. ‘Not that it makes any difference, you are the only ones here, so you can have any cabin you like.’

  I knew exactly which cabin I wanted. I told her the number. She opened the door, put down the bucket in the hall and I saw her take a key from the board on the wall that had several rows of small hooks, one number for each hook with the same number on a plastic chip attached to the key ring.

  ‘There’s firewood in the pile behind the cabin. Help yourself, and if there is anything else you need, just let me know.’

  ‘We will,’ I said, ‘but I think we’ll manage.’

  ‘I’m driving to the shop tomorrow morning if there is anything you want me to get for you,’ she said, and we both said thank you and if there was, we would come up.

  We left the doorstep and crossed the yard in front of the house where the kiosk to the left was closed and the Dagbladet banner on either side of the hatch had been taken down, and walked past a tractor covered by a tarpaulin and on past several cabins scattered randomly among the trees and at last we reached the red timber cabin by the lake. Its foundation was raised on the bare rock and it stood tall on the side facing the water and low on the other side with a terrace and a door to the path. From the windows there was a view across the bay to the ridge on the opposite shore where spruce trees stood like columns right down to the waterline. At the far end of the bay there was a grocery store in the summer when the holiday guests were numerous. They could row there from all over the lake, and then the boats would lie gunnel to gunnel in a long line, a festive sight, a lady told me when I was here last, but of course the store was shut now.