In the Wake

by Per Petterson

  “It’s really a shame to have to sell this cottage,” I said as we carried the last things out to the van we had borrowed from a neighbour in Veitvet who was a driver for a toy factory, and had his basement filled up with things he had filched from work. But he had no children.

  “Do you think so?” my father said.

  I said it because I knew he felt it was a shame and much more. To me that cottage was full of memories of uncles and aunts and bladderwrack and glass jellyfish and physical defeats I could well live without. I had no room for it. My life was filled to bursting point, and it had been like that the year before and the year before that, and as long as I had been thinking with the better part of my brain; each year bombarded me with choices I did not understand at all and which left no room for anything more; my throat was dry from running to catch up, always too late, and the last thing on my mind was fishing for mackerel and cod in the Bunnefjord. I had sweated digging trenches and laying cables for the telephone company the whole summer to make enough money to get away to visit my brother in England, and I had enough for the ticket but not for accommodation yet. I had planned to stay for four weeks, at least.

  “Of course it is, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Sure,” he said.

  That was the end of that conversation. The previous day I had bawled him out and told him he belonged to the most backward part of the working class because he subscribed to Aftenposten, so it was not that odd that so little was said.

  When we pulled the doors shut and drove down the hill towards Bekkensten Bridge I did not look back, maybe because it was I who was driving.

  But my father did.

  Most of the trees have vanished from the steep slope between the cottage and the water. They were felled quite recently, and still some trunks are lying in the very spot where they fell. There’s a smell of fresh timber, and where the light and the view of the fjord used to be filtered through the trunks, it is open now, and bleak and miserable and drained of magic. Where before there was a little wood that held everything in place, now there is not a stone’s throw to the water. Just a small quiver and it would all slide into the waves. I walk back down the hill to the car.

  *

  It is almost silly. I drive out to buy some food from a place about ten kilometres north-east of Oslo, and a few hours later I drive into town from the south, over Hauketo and up the hills near Ljan towards Nordstrand, where the East End merges into a posher West district, and though I do not have a plan it looks like a plan, for I turn into a side road among big detached houses and down past Ljan station and along yet another side road, and stop a hundred metres from the school sitting there brick-grey and massive. I glance at my watch. In ten minutes the bell will go at the end of the last lesson. I open the window and roll a cigarette, and sit and smoke while I wait. I can do it now, luckily, for this is not a good place to stand at the roadside throwing up.

  I switch on the ignition and listen to the radio while I smoke and look over at the school, and when my cigarette burns down to a fag end I switch off. And then the bell goes. For just a second the sound hangs in the air, then the doors burst open and children stream out into the playground. At the gate the crowd splits up along the various roads, some go up, some down, while others stand about chatting for a bit, and a little group crosses the road towards my car. I spot the red cap at once and hear her voice through the open window. Suddenly I lose courage and sink down in the seat and stare at the dashboard. I don’t even know if I am allowed to be here. But it is too late. She has seen the car and opens the door to the passenger seat, and gets in and sits looking through the windscreen. She is twelve years old.

  “Hi, Dad,” she says.

  “Hi,” I say. I pull myself up in my seat, still looking ahead. We both stare out of the window at the school.

  “How are you?” she says.

  “Not so bad,” I say. “And you?”

  “Doing fine, apart from maths.”

  “And your sister. Is she getting on OK?”

  “She thinks everything’s boring.”

  “That’s nothing new.”

  She laughs. “No,” she says, “but I don’t know if she really means boring, even if that is what she says.”

  “You’re probably right there.”

  She falls silent, then turns to look at me, I can feel it, and I can hear she is smiling.

  “Are you going to kidnap me now, or what?”

  I look at her. Her mouth is not smiling. Maybe I was wrong.

  “No, well, that’s not what I planned, actually,” I say. As if I had been planning anything. “Would you like to be kidnapped, then?”

  “That’d be fine, but not like in the movies, please, I have to be home by five, Mum will be back then. And I’ve got a lot of homework.”

  “An hour’s kidnapping, maybe.”

  “That’d be great, Dad.”

  I haven’t seen her or her sister for two months and before that only sporadically for two years. I start the car and turn by the school entrance, then drive back some distance the way I came, and out on to Gamle Mossevei beside Gjer Lake to the Villa Sandvigen, a café with a view of the water. So I have driven in a circle, for a little further on there is a signpost reading Svartskog 3 km. I park in the space facing the entrance on the opposite side of the road. When my daughter gets out and walks round the car without her rucksack on, I push my index finger into her neck, tense my thumb like the hammer on a revolver and say: “OK, hands up.”

  And then we march across the road. I with my finger at her neck and she with her hands in the air and a really serious face, and by the steps she says aloud: “Please, I am just a little girl. I want to go home.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say, just as loudly, and then I open the door. Out of the corner of my eye I can just glimpse a gaping face behind the curtain of the nearest window.

  “Keep your hands up and get inside,” I say.

  We almost tumble over the threshold, laughing the whole way through the place and sit down at a table looking over the water. We are the only people in the café. When a man eventually comes up to the table I notice he is moving in a stiff and cautious way. I order waffles and cocoa for us both.

  “Do you think he’s called the police?” my daughter whispers before he is out in the kitchen again.

  “I hope not,” I say.

  After a little while the man comes back with our order on a big tray he carries high above his head as if the place was crammed with people, but we are still the only ones there, and he lowers the tray in a sweeping circle and with a flourish sets white cups and plates of waffles on the table and a bowl with a silver spoon and jam. He pours the cocoa from a big white jug and when the cups are full he puts the jug down on the white cloth. He does not spill a drop. We just sit quietly watching. Everything is so white and sumptuous that half would be sufficient, and the waffles are lightly toasted and make the jam glow in the light from the window, and he makes an elegant bow and says: “Enjoy your meal,” and goes off again, not stiff at all now. He can’t possibly have called the police.

  “Kidnapping’s not half bad when you get waffles,” says my daughter, impressed with the service. So am I, but I have an annoying feeling that what I have just seen is an exaggeration, a masquerade in my honour. And besides, I am chock-full of brown bread. I settle for the cocoa, take a mouthful and look out across the water.

  “So you thought I was going to kidnap you,” I say.

  “Isn’t that what divorced dads do?” she says, and it sounds like a declaration of trust I have not earned, for I have never had a thought like that, and it’s suddenly hard to sit still, hard to breathe, my legs tingle, and I get up, saying: “I just have to go to the bathroom, you eat your waffle,” and then I walk between the empty tables out to the corridor and on through another room with tables as empty to the toilet at the other end. I stand in front of the basin for a bit and look at myself in the mirror. Then I turn on the cold tap and let the water run into my ha
nds and I rinse my face and neck several times until water runs from my hair, from my nose and ears. I look round for a towel, but there isn’t one, and then I have to go into a cubicle, where I pull off about ten metres of paper and use that to dry myself. Not all that successfully, and then I go back.

  “Did you have a shower,” my daughter says, “with your clothes on?”

  “There wasn’t a shower there,” I say, “but it splashed out really well from the tap, so when I stood on my hands I could shower. It was a bit difficult with my jacket on, but I managed. It’s important to be able to do handstands in a tight spot.” She smiles, she does not believe a word I say.

  “Grandfather could do handstands,” she says.

  She has never seen that, but I have told them about everything he did, all the things he made his body do that no-one else we knew could do.

  “You eat my waffle too, I’m not really hungry.”

  “Then I won’t have room for supper.”

  “Say you have a tummy ache. That will do it.”

  She takes the waffle from my plate and starts to eat without putting jam on, and then she quietly cries while I look out of the window and finish the cocoa, which is not that warm any longer and not quite as good as the kind I had at the hospital. On the other side of the lake a man goes down on to the ice to test it and see if it carries. He takes a few steps out and then back again. He is just a black pin figure. I turn to my daughter.

  “Hi, there,” I say, and she chews and chews and looks down at the table until she has finished crying, and then she wipes her face with the backs of both hands as children do and says: “Why do we hardly ever see you any more?”

  I have been waiting for that question, almost looked forward to it, and still it makes me jump.

  “That’s not easy to explain,” I say, hearing how feeble those words are, for at this moment it is suddenly impossible to explain. “But that’s going to change,” I say, and that was what I had intended to say, and I mean it, I do. She doesn’t reply, just nods and goes on chewing, and I look at my watch and say: “You’d better finish your cocoa, I think the kidnapping is over for today.” She gets up quickly, nearly knocking her chair over, and looks nervously at her own watch and starts to walk towards the exit. I follow her. The man who served us is in the corridor, is stiff again, and he barely nods and does not say “Come again”. I feel his eyes on my back across the road to the car park where my car stands all by itself looking vulnerable in a way I cannot explain, and it makes me annoyed. I force myself to stop and take a long look around before I unlock the car door. I look back at the café as firmly as I can, and then I look over Gjer Lake. It has been quite a day. There has been snow, there has been rain, and after some time there was sunshine, and now the fog comes stealing over the ice like milky-white soup, it oozes up the shores and rises to roll across the road and hides the signpost with directions to Svartskog. Before we have settled into the car the fog has reached us, and it swells past the windows and wraps us up. We close the doors and I start the engine and drive carefully the whole way alongside the lake and cross back to the fjord again, then up among the houses in Herregårdsveien and past the school. I stop beside the little skating rink on the bend just before the house where she lives; around it the big properties are studded on the slope behind the shining ice, greyish white with the fog that welds them together, some of them old and dignified, some new-rich and ugly-looking. We sit in the car watching the world disappear.

  “Do you still have to sleep with the light shining in your face?” I ask.

  “No, I’ve grown out of that.”

  “That’s good,” I say, but I do not mean it, because even though it may sound silly I do not want her to grow out of anything that I cannot see, I want her to wait for me. But I can’t very well tell her that.

  She opens the door quietly, picks up her rucksack and stands with a hand on the door for a moment before saying: “Do I have to tell Mum about this?”

  “I don’t really know, it’s probably best not to.”

  “Fine,” she says, “see you,” she says, looking as if she is about to lean into the car towards me, but she changes her mind, shuts the door and starts to walk with the pack on her back up the gravel road to the tall yellow Swiss chalet where they live on the first floor. Maybe with some other man. I do not know. I did not ask.

  8

  I DRIVE THROUGH the fog over Lambertseter and on to the ring road for E6 and head north. Everything moves in slow motion, the rear lights of the car in front are the only things I see, no sudden movements, no loud sounds, nothing but this milky-white soup in which everything flows silently as in a sleepwalker’s dream. I feel tired again, I want to go to sleep. I calculate distance with speed to find out how long it will take me to get home, and I realise I am in for trouble on the way. It’s rush hour, the car in front moves slower and slower until it almost stops, and I have to squeeze my eyes to focus enough not to drive into it from behind. I keep blinking and count the books I have read, take each author in turn and start with the ones I like best. A line of cars steals slowly past me on my left like the shadow of a ship, it is tall and mysterious, it is Pequod, it is the barque Zuidersee, it is the Flying Dutchman, hardly a light to be seen, but not like in Wagner, for everything is a quiet murmur and feels almost safe, and darkness sinks inside the car. I am nodding off, there is a rushing in the treetops, I am skiing through Lillomarka with my father, but I do not want to, my body is not like his body, I am only twelve and I am worn out, and he wants to go on and on, and he coaxes me, he tempts me on, and then insults me, and he does not stop. The snow is wet, grey and slushy, it slides from the trees around me and hits the ground with a sticky plop. Everywhere there is dampness in the air, as in the baths I hate, and I do not recognise the places we pass and I am afraid he will leave me. At the same time I want him to. Leave me. Everything is floating in this fog, and I do not notice my car veering across to the next lane before metal scrapes metal. The driver in the big van beside me sounds his horn and wakes me up with loud hooting and banging on his window. I jump in my seat and turn my car back into my lane and put on speed as I feel a banging at my rear bumper and then a second driver leans on his horn. I should have stopped now to see if there was any damage, but it’s not possible, there are thousands of us gliding the same way in a slow stream, and I open my eyes wide and look for a way out. I glimpse an opening to the right, signal and move across. I barely make it. There is hooting all around me. It is the grand finale. I cross again and get into the bus lane. Now I can go no further. The next lane is solid rock. I stare through the windscreen watching for the first turn-off. Yellow and black, yellow and black, it’s almost impossible to see, but then there is suddenly yellow and black. I am in the right position and sail up the slip road looking in the mirror to see if there is anyone on my tail. There isn’t.

  There is a roundabout at the top. If I cross straight over it is sure to lead down on to the motorway again, so I turn to the right past a bus stop and on beside some garages by a housing block, and stop in the shelter of the far wall. I don’t know where I am, but that does not matter. I have the garage wall on one side and a container on the other. It feels suitably safe. It is warm in the car. I switch off the ignition and close my eyes, and there is mist everywhere. Mist everywhere and my father’s broad back and big lumps under my skis. It is like walking on snowshoes. Helge Ingstad wore snowshoes in the forests of Canada, but he had a dog team, and a sledge and beaver skins and he smoked a pipe in the pictures from the book A Fur Trapper’s Life. I have Splitkein skis and Kandahar bindings. Kandahar is a town in Afghanistan. Where Splitkein is, I do not know. Maybe nowhere. I raise my ski pole and lay it against my cheek like a gun with the ring at the end as a sight and let it slide round me and I see it all: tree behind tree behind tree and the track like a ribbon of shadow into the grey. Suddenly the snow on the nearest spruce breaks loose, slides down through the branches and plops on to the ground. I whip round and take aim
, a squirrel in its greyish-brown fur streaks up the trunk and I fire before it reaches the top. A cone comes falling, yellow and heavy, and it sinks into the snow and vanishes, and I whisper: I could never kill anything.

  But I can think about it. I could go hunting in the deep forest all winter long, inspect the traps at regular intervals and make friends with the Indians, count the furs in the spring, load up the sleigh in late March and dash off with well-rested dogs down to the Hudson Bay Company and get money in the bank.

  He is far ahead on the track and he is calling me and wants to go on, but he is not really going anywhere. He gets up at five every morning, and sits alone in the kitchen having his breakfast while I lie upstairs awake and listening to the silence filling each cubic metre of air all the way upstairs, and he is not even listening to the radio. Then he fills his lunch box and leaves with a click of the door, and he is not going anywhere. He just goes on.

  But you could say no. You could just leave everything and choose a different road.

  “Come on,” he calls, “we’ll take a short cut.” He points with his pole in the direction of the track and makes two vigorous sweeps. “Watch out, it’s a steep slope here,” and he starts off downhill, knees bent low and his poles straight out from his armpits like two wings. I go over to the top where he stood before and watch him sail down the long hill like a great, blue-white bird, on his way going nowhere. I turn and see the main track we have left far away between two summits, it makes a bend into the forest, and there are people there, although I cannot hear their voices. When I look back my father has vanished. There are only the pine tree trunks and the long white hill and the misty air, and I do not know where I am and cannot turn back. I push off with my poles and almost sit right down on the heels of my boots and glide off. The track takes a long turn, and when I come round it a warm wind rises along the ridge. It’s a wicked wind, and the going is so slow that I stand up again and I see the white surface of a lake down below, and just by the lake behind a tree there’s a dark shadow. A dead animal, I think, a roe deer, but it is no animal. It is my father in the deep snow, his face resting against one shoulder and his poles straight out. I stop before reaching him. Something is wrong. His face is white and he moves his jaws as if chewing, there is gravel in his mouth and it crunches when he says: “Is that you, Arvid.”