‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not afraid of dying. But damnit, I don’t want to die now.’ She turned back and took a deep drag of her cigarette, and she stared at the coast across the waves and furiously blew smoke towards the waterline.
It was true, she was not afraid of anything that I could think of, but I knew there were a few things she wanted to see before she died, wanted to experience, of course everybody felt that way, but she really wanted to see the Soviet Union collapse, now that the Wall had come down. To be a part of that and what would follow, to see Gorbachev triumph or step down and say the whole thing had gone too far, which was not improbable; but in any case it would be bitter if she did not get to live through it and I, too, wanted to see it all, and probably I would, but when it came to dying, I was scared. Not of being dead, that I could not comprehend, to be nothing was impossible to grasp and therefore really nothing to be scared of, but the dying itself I could comprehend, the very instant when you know that now comes what you have always feared, and you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember. Then that must feel like someone’s strong hands slowly tightening their grip around your neck until you can breathe no more, and not at all as when a door is slowly pushed open and bright light comes streaming out from the inside and a woman or a man you have always known and always liked, maybe always loved, leans out and gently takes your hand and leads you in to a place of rest, so mild and so fine, from eternity to eternity.
‘Why don’t we go back up?’ I said.
‘I want to stay here for a bit. You go back,’ she said, ‘I will come later.’
‘Are you sure?’ I said.
‘Yes, of course I’m sure,’ she said, but I felt it would be wrong of me to leave, so I stayed, and she said:
‘Be off with you then.’ So I had to go.
‘All right,’ I said.
I turned and walked up towards the harbour and the hotel with the wind in my back. A little further along the path through the sand I stopped, turned and saw her still standing there facing the town across the water, and then I left the path and walked in between the dunes, which could hardly be called dunes, but that was what I called them when I was little. They were more like mounds of sand and marram grass that held the sand together in an intricate net, and there was shelter at the back of the biggest mound, and the wind did not blow as hard as it did on the beach, and it did not feel as cold. I raised my hands to my ears and rubbed them.
I sat down with my back against the mound. I let my head sink into my jacket before I pulled my sleeves over my hands and folded my arms and leaned my head against my knees.
After some time I rolled over and crawled on my knees and elbows to the edge of the mound and from there I looked down towards the beach. She still stood facing the water. The wind blew harder now and whipped the foam from the crest of one wave to another. It was really something. I shuttled back and sat down as before. I stared down at the sand. There was not much to look at. I am thirty-seven years old, I thought. The Wall has fallen. And here I sit.
After what I hoped was fifteen minutes or more, I did the same thing again, rolled over and crawled on my elbows and knees to the edge of the mound and looked towards the beach. She was on her knees now. It looked strange.
I lay like this for a few moments to see if she would stand up, but she didn’t. I crawled back and leaned against the mound, squeezed my eyes shut and tried to concentrate. I was searching for something very important, a very special thing, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not find it. I pulled some straws from a cluster of marram grass and put them in my mouth and started chewing. They were hard and sharp and cut my tongue, and I took more, a fistful, and stuffed them in my mouth and chewed them while I sat there, waiting for my mother to stand up and come to me.
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA
Copyright © 2010 Per Petterson
Published by arrangement with Harvill Secker, one of the publishers of
the Random House Group Ltd.
English translation copyright © Charlotte Barslund
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in 2010 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited and in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, a division of The Random House Group, Limited and in the United States by Graywolf Press. First published in 2008 by Forlaget Oktober, Oslo. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Knopf Canada and colophon are trademarks.
www.randomhouse.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Petterson, Per, 1952-
I curse the river of time / Per Petterson ; translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund.
Translation of: Jeg forbanner tidens elv.
eISBN: 978-0-307-39940-3
I. Barslund, Charlotte II. Title.
PT8951.26.E88J4413 2010 839.82′374 C2009-906700-5
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