In the Wake

by Per Petterson

  He is thinner. He used to look like a bear, while I have been more like a fox, and now he is pretty close to an elk, and I glimpse the brother I once went to see in Hull when everything in life was still before us and nothing was settled yet. We may be closer to that point than we have ever been during the years in between. I could wish for that. But I am not sure. I feel nervous, there is something about that slim back, and then he turns quite calmly and is not surprised to see me standing there. He must have realised the whole time and just gone on with what he was doing, and that certainty does not reassure me. His face is thinner too, and he smiles crookedly with a new glint in his eye. He knows something I do not know. He takes off the headphones and I can hear it is Steve Earle he is playing: “I’ve been to hell, and now I’m back again. I feel all right.”

  “What do you think?” he asks and gestures at the easel. I look at the picture. It is good. It is very good. It is exactly as I imagine it; glimmering, floating, for ever shut.

  “You have always been a good painter,” I say.

  “It is a long time since I did anything. I have been at it for several days. You know where it is?”

  I nod. “Oh, yes,” I say.

  “What do you think when you look at it?” he asks. His face is crushingly calm. His eyes have dark shadows. I am not sure if I like him like this. Why does he suddenly have to ask me about that now?”

  “I think all that has gone to hell,” I say.

  “I don’t.”

  “Good for you,” I say.

  I have often talked tough to him, felt free to do so as his little brother, but never like this, sharp, bitter. Something in his expression provokes me, the serenity he shows, and his new appearance, as if he has seen the Light. A quarter of an hour ago I felt quite good myself, but now my heart is in my mouth. In a few minutes only our roles have reversed. There is an itch at my back and he smiles just as calmly and looks at me with that look, puts his brush in a jar and wipes his hands on a rag. Out of the window behind him I see a boat on the river, it pounds against the current and barely moves forward until it gives up and turns in a big arc towards the opposite shore and suddenly puts on speed and disappears.

  “Well, it is,” he says, peering at me.

  “Shall we go?” I ask.

  “I just have to go up for a shower and a change. Get cleaned up.”

  “Undoubtedly,” I say.

  “It’s the seventh of April, Arvid. Cut it out,” he says without raising his voice.

  I take a deep breath. “OK,” I say.

  We both glance at the picture, and then walk up the stairs to the ground floor. He goes first and I follow, and his steps are not as heavy as they used to be, and he walks on up to the first floor while I go into the kitchen and sit down by the specially designed table. Here almost everything is unchanged. Solid and simple with few colours and a lot of polished metal, like a ship’s galley or a communal kitchen, only much more expensive. The floor is composed of unusually wide planks, brought here from a sawmill in Høland. Even the door handles are masculine, Randi used to say. It was not really her style, but he had it all planned in beforehand. Now she can do as she likes, and I am certain she will. I roll a cigarette and get up to find an ashtray. That’s not easy, neither of them smokes, and neither of them liked me to when I came to visit. But then I have not been to see them much since they moved to this place. I get a saucer from the cupboard and sit down at the table to wait and smoke and look at the river. There are no boats on it now. Only the sun on the flowing green water and the booms on the other side.

  When he comes downstairs he has showered and changed his clothes. They hang on him a bit, and his belt has more holes than it has had for twenty years. With his damp hair combed back the thinness of his face is even more obvious. He looks many years younger or perhaps just different. It is not easy to say. He stops and looks at my cigarette and says: “Haven’t you given those up yet?”

  “They’re probably no worse than Sarotex,” I say, “or what do you think?” And the next moment I repent my words because his face goes blank, its calmness gone, and he takes one step forward and then one back, he moves his mouth and is about to say something, and then he says nothing. I lower my eyes and look at the cigarette I hold between my fingers, stub it long and thoroughly on the saucer and look at the floor while I slowly get up from my chair. Then I look up again, and we stand staring at each other. His body grows heavier, his back bends, and his brow sinks, as if filled with the most terrible thoughts in the world and he alone had to carry them on his shoulders as the only man with a painful past, and I suddenly do not feel repentant any more. It was well said, I think, goddamnit, it was well said, and that he can read in my eyes, for he clenches his hands and red spots appear on his pale face, and then he comes quickly towards me and with full conviction hits me on the chest with a clenched fist so hard I have to take one step back.

  “You stupid ass,” he says, “you damned halfwit, you selfish little shit,” he says, hitting me again and still harder now, and I stand with my back against the table and can go no further and have to make a decision pretty quickly. I hit him back. Right on the chin. Maybe not that hard, but just hard enough. It feels good. He jumps back, and I hit him once more. In his stomach this time. I do not know what he had expected, but he did not expect this. He bends over with his hand round his chin, and I slip away from the table to the middle of the room with my hands clenched and raised in front of my chest before lunging out again like my father did in the photograph above the radio at home when the world was young and he was still younger; his crazy body naked to the belt with its shining shoulders and dancing feet and dancing curls and his left arm straight out in a punch like a battering ram. Or as in the picture cards I found in a bundle in a box in the attic; one card for each position with arrows for foot movements and arrows for the angle and direction of the arms, like a dancer’s beginner’s course, really, foxtrot, waltz and cha-cha-cha, but here on small cards with descriptions underneath in tiny writing: straight left, left hook, right hook, uppercut, and so on, there were at least ten of those cards in all, and I can see them clearly before me now, and once or twice some years ago I tried them out for myself, step by step, blow by blow, behind a closed door and felt like an idiot. Maybe that’s what I am now, but I do not feel like it. I dance round my brother who straightens up with a confused look in his eyes. He coughs after the blow in the stomach and tries to catch my eye and twists round as I keep on dancing, and I hit out a few times into the air.

  “Selfish. Am I selfish? What about you trying to get out of everything and leave me alone. What about David? You fucking prick,” I shout, and he lets out a roar and throws himself at me, and neither right hook nor straight left or any other blow I know is of any use, for he lands on my chest and I go down with him, and we fall on his elegant floor and roll around. I go on hitting out while he wraps his arms round my chest so hard I can scarcely breathe. My side really hurts and I am close to howling. I twist as much as I can and roll us on until we meet one table leg and push the table along the floor right over to the bench where it stops and starts to crack, and then the leg breaks, and the table tips down over our heads. My brother lets go, air comes squealing into my lungs, and he screws himself into a sitting position holding on to the edge of the table and shouts: “Have you any fucking idea how much that table cost me?”

  I sit up with a hand to my side and push myself out from under the table. Carefully I breathe as deep as I can, but it is not easy, for my heart is beating wildly, and with each lungful of breath I feel a stab to my side.

  “How much did it cost?” I weakly ask.

  He looks at me, and then at the table, he is breathing as hard as I am, and then he says: “Fuck the table,” and gives it a kick, and it tilts up and stops on its edge, and the broken leg comes right off and falls to the floor with a sound like a bamboo bell in the forest, one early morning, in China or someplace. “I’ve never really liked it. It is too posh. I
t is just that I can’t afford anything new right now. It is starting to look empty in here.”

  “I have the old kitchen table from Veitvet in the cellar,” I say. “You can have that.”

  “The one with the stylish chairs from the forties?”

  “Yes.”

  “God. That would have been great. I thought we had sold that.”

  “That was the idea. But I took it. I thought you had enough.”

  He looks round him at the walls of his house. “I probably had,” he says, and rubs his chin, shakes his head and says: “Fuck me. Where did you learn that boxing stuff?”

  “From the old picture of Dad that used to hang above the radio. I’ve got it in my bedroom. I always look at it before putting out the light.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I don’t remember that picture. Are you sure it hung above the radio?”

  “Of course I am.”

  He shakes his head again and stays sitting on the floor brushing dust from his shirt front and smoothing his tousled hair back with his fingers. He does not look like he has seen the Light any more, but neither does he look like Jesus on the Cross just before crying: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

  He says:

  “Are we done with all this now?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Good. I am too old for this sort of thing. But you always had a big mouth.”

  “Yes,” I say, feeling oddly pleased. It is easier to breathe, I can take in air without trouble now, only the knuckles on my right hand feel sore.

  “Look,” he says, “I don’t feel like going out any more. If we are going to drink we can do it here. I have a bottle I’ve kept.”

  “Under the bed.”

  “No, not exactly.” He smiles slightly.

  “That’s fine by me,” I say. “Can I smoke?”

  “Of course you can.”

  He gets stiffly to his feet. His legs are trembling. He brushes dust from his trousers. Then he rubs his face.

  “You just stay there,” he says. And then he turns and walks out of the kitchen and downstairs to the basement room. His steps are not so light, but not so heavy either. I lie down on my back and stretch my body until it creaks and look up at the ceiling. I suck my knuckles. I could join a boxing club. They just might have a class for old boys. I could cut down on the smoking. Let’s say, with five cigarettes a day. There’s a lot of health to be gained right there. I sit up again and bump along on my behind and lean back against the cupboard smoking a cigarette and listening for my brother’s steps. Here he comes.

  He has a three-quarters-full bottle of Famous Grouse in his hand. He opens the cupboard above my head and takes out two kitchen glasses and gives me one. He sits down with a groan and leans his back against the fridge and unscrews the bottle. He fills my glass and then he fills his own.

  “I’m selling out my share in the firm,” he says. “It’s a long time since I did my bit anyway. It’s no fun any more. Besides, I’m broke.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “I don’t know. Actually, I like it like this; cleaned out, rock bottom.”

  “Welcome to the club,” I say. He smiles, but his eyes are shining. He raises his glass.

  “Rock bottom,” he says.

  I look down. I see my hand round the glass, the glass is full, but at least it is not gin. I raise my glass.

  “Rock bottom,” I say. I lean forward and let my glass touch his, and then we take the first mouthful, and I do not say anything about Mrs Grinde, or Naim Hajo for that matter. That would have been selfish.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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  Published by Vintage 2007

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  Copyright © Per Petterson, 2002

  English translation copyright © Anne Born, 2002

  Per Petterson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain in 2002 by

  The Harvill Press

  Vintage

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780099520740