I Curse the River of Time

by Per Petterson

  We drove south towards Byrum, one of three major villages on the island, and on both sides of the road were flat meadows framed by electric fences and stone walls and rows of low trees, shrub almost, and then by some taller trees depending on which farm the field belonged to, and now in November they looked cold and scrubbed clean.

  We were approaching Byrum at speed. We saw the tower they had in that village come closer, and it was not a very tall tower, but easy to see in the flat landscape, like the tower of a knight’s castle with its gun slits, and I do not know what the tower was used for in the past or what use they made of it now. Maybe they just liked to have something to look at. A strange thing in a Christian town, a thing of vanity pointing where only the church should point, and the church, I knew, was the oldest in the country, but we drove right past it and then south out of the village.

  And we suddenly turned east almost heading back towards the coast, or so it seemed, but I guess the taxi driver knew something that I did not, and it was really not my problem, he could drive wherever he liked. It was a gravel road, the ground was dry, and in spite of the humid air, we could see a tail of dust whirling behind the car. Some kilometres further out on the plain we stopped. Of course, there was nothing but plains here. Off the road was a medium sized house built of yellow bricks with a narrow pointed roof and an attic room. It was not a very old house, nor was it new, not like they built them after the war. It was older than me. There were sheep behind the house. They had plenty of room to move about, but the whole flock stayed close to an outbuilding, a small barn I could barely see behind the yellow house, where no doubt the hay was laid out, now that the pastures were bare.

  My mother climbed out of the car. Hansen stayed in his seat, so I stayed too. She walked a few steps towards the house, stopped and then came back, leaned into the car and picked up her bag from the back seat and took out an envelope before she slammed the door shut. She opened the envelope and shook out some black and white photographs, there were four of them. She leaned against the car door and spread the photos in her hand like cards in a poker game.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ I said.

  ‘This is where your brother was born,’ Hansen said. ‘In this house.’

  I bent forward and could clearly see the photographs through the window, and it was that house. It was her in two of them. She was sitting in the grass with a dog by her feet, a sheepdog, an ace of diamonds on its forehead, not that I knew much about dogs, but it was looking up at her, they were friends, the slightest hint and the dog would do whatever came into her head.

  She was young, she had an apron wrapped losely around her waist. She was very pretty. In the other photo she was sitting on the doorstep in front of the house next to a woman who was older than her. Not older like a mother is older, but maybe ten years older. The last two photos showed only the house, from two different angles. Someone had taken those photographs to remember exactly how the house looked.

  She put the photographs back in the envelope, opened the door and placed the envelope on the seat in the back and looked over at Hansen. Hansen nodded and smiled. She took a deep breath, closed the car door and started to walk towards the house, a little shaky on her feet, I thought.

  Once she was there, she stood for at least one minute before she knocked on the door, and then she waited, and no one came. She turned and looked at us, and with her palms up she shook her head, and Hansen just nodded and smiled. So again she knocked, much harder now, and she waited, and someone came to open the door, an elderly woman, she was older than my mother, maybe seventy. They stood facing each other. They started to talk, but I could not hear what they were saying, they were too far away.

  ‘Are we supposed to just sit here in the car?’ I said.

  ‘I guess we’ll sit here for as long as it takes,’ Hansen said.

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  They stood on the doorstep and the sun hit the car in a flash through the windscreen and was gone, and the taxi driver sat smoking with the window ajar, a Prince cigarette it was, and I turned away from the stinging smoke.

  ‘I remember you,’ my mother said. ‘You’re Ingrid. Do you remember me?’

  The woman stood with her right elbow leaning stiffly against the door frame and her fist slightly clenched in the air in a way I would bet she had done her whole life long. She looked closely at my mother’s face, left the door frame to support itself, took two steps back and pulled a pair of glasses from her apron pocket.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I remember you. I remember your name. You were here, not long after the war. Only a few years. We didn’t look then like we do now,’ she smiled. ‘But maybe we’re still the same.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ my mother said.

  ‘You’re probably right, but please, won’t you come in?’

  ‘I would like that,’ my mother said.

  She walked behind the old woman into the hall and bent down to undo the shiny zip on her ankle boots, and it took some effort, and the woman called Ingrid said: ‘That’s how you used to do it back then, you were pregnant, just keep them on, it’s a dry day, it doesn’t matter, I’ll just sweep the floor.’

  She smiled. ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she said and went out into the kitchen. There were two gas rings on the counter, and she lit the one and placed on it a shiny kettle with a whistle on the spout. My mother entered the living room. It was not like before. It looked like an old woman’s living room. No matter who you were when you were young, the day would come when everything was in its place, the knick-knacks and lace tablecloths, the little china dogs and the china shepherd boy by the mill wheel somewhere in the Alps, and on the wall in their frames, the guardian angel watching over the little girl with blonde plaits leaning too far out over the water to catch a fish, or whatever it was in the brook. On the windowsill there were pots of geraniums and they had been there for a long time already and were white and red.

  My mother unbuttoned her coat and pulled it slightly off her shoulders before she sat down at the coffee table and looked out of the window towards the outbuilding where the sheep stood silent, looking heavy, with their heads against the wall like they did back then, in the autumn, in the winter, in the sun and in the snow. In the summer they moved out to the heather on the heath and grazed there. They could go wherever they pleased, but always came back in the evening, like goats do on the mountain pastures in Norway.

  Ingrid entered with coffee in a china pot and cups on a tray.

  ‘You still have sheep,’ my mother said.

  ‘It seems I can’t give it up. We’ve had sheep here for as long as I can remember. Or I have, but I manage fine. Haulier Karlsen died young, you know.’ She still referred to her husband as haulier Karlsen, as she did forty years ago.

  Ingrid sat down on the sofa with her back to the window.

  ‘A neighbour helps me at lambing time, and if I am in distress I do have the telephone,’ she said and smiled. ‘But of course, I have to stop soon.’ She placed a cup on the table in front of my mother. She waited. She was not impatient. She leaned forward and poured the double-roasted coffee into the cup and the aroma was overwhelming.

  ‘I wanted to see you one more time,’ my mother said. ‘I made up my mind only a few days ago. It felt like the right thing to do.’

  ‘Ah, but that suits me fine,’ Ingrid said, ‘I don’t have many visitors. Only my son every now and then. He lives in the town across the water. I thought about you a great deal in the first years. But then it went away.’ Her voice was calm and careful so the words would not come out wrong.

  ‘I thought a great deal about you, too. Sometimes you were all I had. We would meet again, I used to think, but nothing ever came of it, even though I was home so many times,’ my mother said and she pointed to what she thought was the mainland. It was not of course, but she said:

  ‘This house is where the rest of my life began. Or where the first part ended. Or both. You were. It felt safe here, no place could have bee
n better, and I would have loved to stay, but when he was a year old, I had to go to Norway. I thought I had no choice. But I did.’ And then my mother cried with her head on her knees. ‘It did not turn out as I had imagined,’ she said, ‘as I had hoped, no, it did not,’ she said harshly, ‘and now I am ill’.

  Ingrid was still smiling. ‘Is it serious?’ she said.

  ‘It is,’ my mother said. ‘At least they seem to think so.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Ingrid said. ‘Shall we go for a walk? After the coffee? Are you up to it?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  They drank the coffee. They smiled at each other, my mother dried her eyes. It was good to sit there, it was warm, and then for a moment she thought, I am really not up to it.

  ‘Was that him in the car? It would be interesting to see how he turned out, now that he’s a grown-up.’

  ‘No, the one out there is his brother. He’s younger.’

  ‘And he’s not coming inside?’

  ‘He’s not coming inside. He’s thirty-seven years old, but I wouldn’t call him a grown-up. That would be an exaggeration. He’s getting a divorce. I don’t know what to do with him. And my friend, Hansen, too, is in the taxi. He came, well, as a friend. He doesn’t mind waiting.’

  ‘Won’t the taxi be expensive?’

  ‘We’ve agreed on a price, it’s all right.’

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ Ingrid said and stood up and went out into the hall and put on her coat, and my mother followed and her body felt heavy, unwilling.

  ‘Talking comes easier when you walk,’ Ingrid said, and my mother said she was probably right.

  Ingrid tied a scarf around her head. ‘It’s vile outside,’ she said, ‘you need something to cover your head.’ She pulled a scarf down from a shelf, a white one with pink flowers, like the scarves my mother had seen old Russian women wear, and I suppose that is what I am, she thought. An old woman.

  The door opened and they stepped outside, their scarves tight around their heads, and the old woman pulled the door behind her, turned and looked towards the car where we were sitting, and for some reason she locked the door, but I don’t think it had anything to do with us. They came down with their hands in their coat pockets and started to walk, away from the taxi across the plain, and it was not easy for me to imagine what they said to each other.

  When they were about twenty metres away, Hansen opened the door on his side of the car, got out and walked in the opposite direction. I followed him.

  ‘Are your legs stiff?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Mine too.’

  We walked a while, I turned up the collar of my jacket and the sky was grey above us, weighing our heads down and the air was moist and sticky against our faces and pressed at my temples. After some time I pulled the tobacco pouch from my pocket and rolled a cigarette, then I rolled another and offered it to Hansen.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ and I lit them both and we smoked and damnit, it tasted good.

  ‘What do you think they’re talking about?’ I said.

  ‘That’s not hard to guess,’ said Hansen. ‘They’re talking about her time here when your brother was born. The one who came before you. This is where it happened, you know.’

  ‘I know. You just told me. In a way I have always known it,’ I said, ‘but I just couldn’t picture it, no one told me anything.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose they did. Maybe they should have.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. And then I said: ‘Do you think they’re talking about me too?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose they are,’ I said.

  Hansen did not really want to talk, so we walked on in silence, and the plain was flat as only Danish plains can be. Once, a long time ago, someone must have run amok with an iron round here.

  Across the plain was a cluster of houses. A couple of them had roofs covered in dried seaweed. There were trees planted in a circle around the houses; they were still small, the trees, pine and spruce, and around the circle we walked and then back the way we had come. As we did not walk fast time barely touched us. Tick tick, it softly said. Like a taxi meter. When we reached the car, we quickly climbed in and the taxi driver had kept the engine running to keep it warm. I looked at the petrol gauge, but the needle showed half full and maybe more.

  And then they came walking back along the road, arm in arm, scarf to scarf, slightly bent against the damp wind. They stopped in front of the house, still arm in arm, or rather, hand in hand, and still there were things to be said, for they walked up to the house together and were gone behind the door, and we sat in the car waiting, each huddled against our corner, and fifteen minutes later she came down from the house, alone, with a small parcel in her hand.

  After dinner at the hotel, I went up to my room to fetch the bottle of Calvados from the bedside table and three plastic cups and came back down again. My mother and Hansen were still sitting at the table, I placed the bottle and the cups in front of them. They were both smoking. It was dark outside. They looked at each other, and then my mother looked at me and smiled faintly, without enthusiasm, but she didn’t look sceptical either. I poured Calvados into the plastic cups, and Hansen raised his and said:

  ‘Arch of Triumph then, isn’t it,’ and my mother raised hers and said:

  ‘Arch of Triumph, a toast to Boris and Ravic, God bless them both,’ and they laughed, and I raised my cup too, and I took a sip. The taste was strong and good and much better than the taste of whisky. I could feel the alcohol glowing in my stomach, and Hansen’s bass made everything vibrate.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘that was good booze.’

  ‘One more,’ I said and raised the bottle, but Hansen shook his head, and my mother said:

  ‘That’ll do for today. I’m going upstairs. See you in the morning.’

  ‘Ditto,’ Hansen said, and I knew that word and I knew what it meant, so then he too would go upstairs, and he did, and together they climbed to the first floor and left me at the table. I poured another shot and drank the yellow liquid in small sips as I looked down to the harbour through the window and saw the lights along the quays, and in some boats the lights were burning and there were lamps along the walkway. I stood up, took my reefer jacket from the chair, stuck the bottle in my inside pocket, and brought the cup with me and went down to the harbour and on to one of the quays where the fishing boats lay one after another. I did not stop until I was all the way out and I stood there listening to the soft and jingly sound of the waves against the concrete in the dark. I filled my cup almost to the brim and walked slowly back while I drank. I felt good, almost happy. It was the alcohol, I knew that, but it did not matter.

  25

  Hansen was not yet awake, so just the two of us were standing on the beach facing west, towards the mainland. The weather had changed, and it was glitteringly cold, and the morning light was well on its way. It was well below zero and the air was bright as it sometimes is in the autumn; transparent, as if a magnifying glass had been lowered from the sky. Through the glass we could see the town on the mainland come into focus with its faint, rust-coloured skyline to the north and the south, and in the midst of it the church tower rose high. On days with no mist you could stand on the ridge behind the town and see across the water to the beach where we were standing now.

  I could just make out the top of the old grain silo, which was concrete grey and massive with the red dlg logo floating high above the harbour, but of course we could not see the letters from here. The silo was empty now, nothing but hollow echoes and multitudes of cubic metres black as coal from top to bottom. Everything was changing, the whole town was. There were car-free zones and more shops than before, there were more pubs, more ferries packed with drunken Norwegians and drunken Swedes.

  I half turned and looked at her. The air was clear and the wind cut our faces. With her left hand she held her coat tight at her throat, with the r
ight she held her cigarette in a hollow between gloved fingers to shield it from the wind, and the wind whipped her hair in curly circles, and it was still dark, but the grey streaks were easier to see than even yesterday.

  I had my reefer jacket on and was holding my cigarette between naked fingers. My ears were probably white as chalk now and my fingers were slowly turning blue. They felt so cold I thought they might crack, and my nails ached, and then I could not take it any more and threw my half-smoked cigarette on the hard, frozen sand. I stuck my hands in my pockets and clenched them hard in there and opened them several times. My right hand felt much better now. Perhaps because it was numb. My swollen cheek burned in the cold.

  ‘Didn’t you bring any gloves or mittens?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a bit scatterbrained,’ she said and touched my shoulder gently with hers and it made me so happy. ‘You always have been,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been like that since I was little.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have an extra pair. I brought just the one pair with me.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll keep them warm in my pockets.’

  ‘But then you won’t be able to smoke that cigarette.’

  ‘Mother, I don’t have to smoke all the time.’

  ‘No, of course not. One ought to give it up, really. I ought to.’ And she fell silent and simply stared into the distance and then she said: ‘Christ, there’s no point in quitting now.’

  I should have said the right thing just then, but I did not know what that would be, if such a thing existed, I did not think so, and those who said it did, knew nothing. So I said the first thing that came into my head.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ I said.

  ‘What of?’ she said and turned sharply and looked me in the face for the first time since we came down here. I could feel my face turn red, and I stared at the ground.

  ‘Do you think I’m afraid of dying?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Are you?’