Per Petterson - Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes

‘So he gave all his magazines to the paper collection, and I was thinking you might do me a favour. Get my drift?’

‘No,’ Arvid said.

‘You don’t wanna do me a favour?’

‘Yes, I do. I mean what favour?’

Trond rolled his eyes. ‘Bandini’s mags, they’re in the Barn, right?! And you’re the only one small enough to get in and big enough, intelligence-wise, to know what to look for! You can have my steam engine for ten mags. Get my drift now?’

The steam engine! Arvid had seen it many times in Jon’s house. It was on a shelf just inside the door to Trond’s room and was so shiny and beautiful to look at it almost hurt to think about it. And it worked. Arvid was allowed to have a go one time when Jon and he had been alone, and he had wanted one since he first saw it.

‘I haven’t used it for years,’ Trond said. ‘You can have it for ten mags.’

‘But which mags do you mean?’

‘For Chrissake, of course you know. The ones he uses to paint from. They’re in the Barn. Ten of them, you can manage that.’

Arvid knew what Trond meant because he had been to Bandini’s once for a glass of water and had seen what was hanging on the walls in there, but he didn’t say a word about it to anyone at home.

‘All right, I’ll see what I can find.’

‘Great, come on.’

‘No! Not now!’ Arvid remembered the dark inside, the place stuffed with darkness, no light from the timber cladding now, no light from the crack in the wall.

‘I have to get back in, Dad will be furious. I’ll do it after school tomorrow.’

Trond looked at him as he blew smoke from the corner of his mouth and said:

‘OK, Death Diver, it’s a deal. But don’t you mess me about!’

‘I won’t,’ Arvid said.

The day after, he almost ran home from school. On the way he passed the Barn, but he didn’t even give it a glance, for he had to hurry home with his bag first and didn’t want to think about anything until he had to.

He slung his bag in the hall and shouted to his mother, who was in the kitchen frying meatballs:

‘Be right back. Have to go to Jon’s to fetch something!’ And then he slammed the door before his mother had a chance to answer.

Fatso was sitting on the stoop reading Arbeiderbladet as he always did at this time of day. He had his woollen jacket on, it was mid-October and cold, but Fatso didn’t take his newspaper inside until the first snow had fallen.

‘Hello,’ Fatso said. ‘How’s it going, Arvid?’

Arvid didn’t answer, just walked straight by, and as he rounded the corner by Thomassen’s Fatso called after him, ‘You’re as damn polite as your father!’

Arvid walked up the hill to Grevlingveien and sneaked between two houses and down to the Barn from the top. That way not many could see him, for the crack in the wall was on that side, and he was lucky, for no one saw him at all.

He had the knack now, and it was easy to get in through the hole. Instead of wearing a jacket with buttons he had on a thick jumper and he slid in with ease and knelt groping his way forward to find the hole in the floor. And then he found it and pushed himself up with his shoulders hunched, and he was up looking around.

The place was stripped. Not a magazine, not a newspaper, not a comic, not so much as a lousy Popeye. Just loads of mess and rubbish and dust, dust and more dust. But beneath the roof sat two men with ropes around their waists and they were up to something, they had hammers and monkey wrenches and they were banging and unscrewing some huge bolts. Arvid stood up fully to see better and then he saw a strip of light widen and then he knew. It was the wall, they were tearing down the wall! Arvid threw himself into the hole like a frightened badger, but he didn’t look and halfway down got stuck. He heaved and pulled, but it was no use, his belt was snagged at the back, and he began to take it off as fast as he could. But his fingers were as stiff as dry twigs, and the men were pounding away at the wall making the whole Barn shake, and one shouted to the other:

‘All right, Joakim, let it go.’ And he gave the wall a savage blow with his hammer. Arvid gasped. Joakim! The wall swayed, he was going to die, he was going to be squashed, and then he screamed:

‘Joakim!’

‘What?’ The man turned. ‘Oh, shit me! Olav! There’s a kid in here!’

‘I was told to say hello!’ Arvid yelled.

‘What?’ The man was desperately banging the wall, striking it again and again, both of them were smashing at it for all they were worth.

‘I want to sleep,’ Arvid whimpered and buried his head in his armpit. ‘I want to sleep.’ And then the wall fell, as if in slow motion. Outwards.

‘Lord Jesus,’ the one called Joakim said as he climbed down. Once he was on the floor he ran over to Arvid, lifted his head off his arm and looked into his face.

‘Are you all right, boy?’

Arvid turned round and he could see daylight, and there was his house just across from the Barn. He looked up at Joakim and smiled.

‘I thought she was under the floor, but she wasn’t. She must have run off somewhere else.’

He struggled to his feet and set off towards the light streaming in where the wall had been, he could see the bright, blue autumn sky and the sun, and then he turned.

‘If I wish for a steam engine this Christmas, do you think I’ll get one, even if it’s expensive?’

‘Definitely,’ the men said, looking at each other. ‘No doubt about it.’

‘Great,’ Arvid said. ‘Bye.’ And he ran out of the Barn, his heels banging on the barn wall, that was lying there like a bridge out into the world.

‘Jesus,’ Joakim said. ‘What’s the matter with kids nowadays?’

One morning the form teacher came in for the first lesson, dropped down heavily on the chair behind his desk, surveyed the class and said:

‘Today you must pray to God, for today there may be a nuclear war.’ He cleared his throat, took a deep breath and said:

‘Nuclear war,’ one more time, his double chins shaking, and silence fell on the classroom.

Nuclear war.

Arvid had heard them talking about it at home, and of course he knew what it was. It was the end, for everyone, no joke.

Uncle Rolf had dropped by, and his voice was excited and out of control downstairs in the living room that evening. Uncle Rolf hated the Russians almost as much as he hated farmers, and Arvid had crouched at the top of the stairs, where he would sit when he wanted to listen without being seen, and Dad didn’t think the Russians were such bastards, not the way Uncle Rolf did, but he wasn’t too cocky either, you could tell from his voice. It didn’t cut through the room like Uncle Rolf’s did.

Arvid didn’t know where Cuba was, it hadn’t come up in geography yet, and he didn’t know what went on there, but it didn’t matter, it was the end anyway, no joke.

After the lesson was over he went home. He unhooked his satchel from the desk, held it under his arm when they walked out for break and slipped quietly and unnoticed through the school gates.

There were four lessons left that day, but he saw no reason to stay at school if there was going to be a nuclear war. If it was all over he would rather wait at home with his mother.

He trudged homewards. He had his high rubber boots on and they were turned down and had Elvis written on the lining, even though it was his mother who liked Elvis, the blue jumper with the zigzag pattern and the cap he always wore, in the summer too sometimes. It was a blue cap with a white stripe along the edge and a white bobble on top, like the ski jumper Toralf Engan wore, and everyone else for that matter, and he used to pull it down over his forehead because it looked tough.