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

He wasn’t frightened, his body was just so suddenly tired that he had to concentrate on every step he took, and the tiredness grew and grew until it lay like lumps beneath his skin, he could almost feel them with his fingers, and his boots were heavy, as if filled with blue clay. He didn’t cry because he and his dad had agreed he would not do that so often now, but his face felt as dry as old cardboard and just blinking was an effort of will.

When he got home so early, his mother gave him a puzzled look but said nothing, and he thought that was fine, for when you’re about to die there’s really nothing to discuss. Even so, it was odd that she was cooking, but then again there was no need to go hungry while you were waiting, so he sat down at the kitchen table, and she gave him two slices of bread with peanut butter and a glass of milk. He said:

‘Thanks,’ and then he didn’t say another word for four days. His body was frozen, he couldn’t understand why nothing happened, why no one was concerned, and it took him a long time to thaw, it was as though his body had to be cracked open before things could be as before.

He didn’t pray to God, because he didn’t believe in God, but he thought that maybe there were others in his class who did. He lay in bed staring at the wall listening to the morning service downstairs in the living room, he heard his dad go to work in the morning and come home in the afternoon, he heard them argue in the kitchen in the evening.

He just lay there and would not get up, and in the end his mother became worried and took him to the doctor although Dad said it was a waste of time. He was a strange doctor, for he didn’t look down his throat or listen to his chest or anything, he just talked. But Arvid felt better afterwards even though he was often very tired and could fall asleep in the middle of the day.

Above the big radio in the living room hung a photograph of two men in a boxing ring, one of them had just landed a blow on the other, and the one doing the punching was Dad. Arvid stood looking at the picture, the sun was shining at an angle through the blinds making strange patterns on the carpet. It was Saturday morning, and he felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘They used to call me Sledge. That was before the war.’

Arvid had heard this so many times, he was fed up with it, but he was not fed up with the photograph. Dad looked so good there above the radio, his body one blur of movement, powerful yet slim, his feet dancing as if they didn’t know how to stumble.

Dad held Arvid’s shoulder as he studied the picture and said once again:

‘That was before the war.’

He spoke a lot about what happened before the war, and once Gry asked kind of casually: ‘When was it that you two met, you and Mum?’

‘In 1947,’ Dad answered trustingly, and Gry went and looked it up in a book and found out what she’d been almost certain about, that 1947 was after the war.

‘I’m not that fast now,’ Dad said.

Maybe not, Arvid thought, but despite being forty-nine he had the body of a fit thirty-year-old. He looked how Arvid would never look, Arvid was certain about that.

Arvid was slight, he didn’t look like the others in his family, for he was the only one with dark hair, and he was smaller. He was the smallest in his class and was often roughed up, which was why he would learn to box, his dad had decided, and training had already started. They used the living room as a gym, they moved the table to the side and rolled out a large rug as a boxing ring. They had woollen mittens instead of boxing gloves and they circled round on the rug and his dad punched holes in the air round Arvid’s head and lectured:

‘Never let them push you around, always give as good as you get, don’t put up with anything, it will come back to bite you. And if you have to, hit first, just to set an example.’

And then he shouted insults at Arvid to make him angry. But Arvid didn’t get angry, he just felt sad, and one time when he wouldn’t hit his dad on the chin although he stuck it out as far as he could, his dad was so annoyed he pushed Arvid in the chest and sent him flying under the sofa. When he refused to come out, his dad got even more annoyed and went into the kitchen cursing and slamming the door and stayed there for a whole hour.

‘You’re quick on your feet, it’s not that,’ Dad said, ‘but you’re too light. You don’t have the weight behind your fists. But it will come. Perhaps. Shall we have one more round?’

Dad swung Arvid round, raised his fists and began to dance round the floor. Arvid raised his hands mechanically, without enthusiasm, and they were heavy as lead and he felt empty inside.

‘Stop that nonsense, Frank. Leave the boy in peace!’ Mum dropped Dad’s huge rucksack onto the floor and snapped, ‘Here’s your stuff. It’s time you left. Are you ready, Arvid?’

He was: warm clothes, boots, the Huckleberry Finn book, fishing tackle. He had packed it all before he went to bed.

Uncle Rolf and Dad were going to the cabin by the Bunne Fjord and Arvid was going with them. At first Dad wasn’t too pleased about it, but Mum’s voice was frosty and clear:

‘Arvid is going with you, he needs to get away for a bit and it won’t kill you, Frank!’ And Dad had to agree that Arvid could use some wind in his hair and a mackerel or two on the hook. The boy was getting slack.

It was still early, the sun was up, the sky blue, and he liked to walk behind Dad and see his broad back carrying the rucksack as far up the hill as Trondhjemsveien to catch the bus to town. The air was cold and fresh and Mum ruffled his hair as they said goodbye at the door and pulled his blue woolly cap down over his ears.

It would be good to go fishing, it would be good to see Dad and Uncle Rolf do their work, it would be good to sit on the bus, for he liked riding on the bus, and it arrived almost immediately and was yellow with green stripes, and the sun gleamed on its shiny windows, and behind it was a long trail of white exhaust fumes.

There was standing room only, and Arvid was allowed to sit on the engine casing and talk to the driver, whom he knew from before, and the driver spoke to him as though he were a grown-up and also asked him about all kinds of things and laughed and joked, and his voice circled round Arvid’s head like a gentle cloud. The shuddering of the engine shook his body in a pleasant way, and he felt light and good.

They passed Linderud Manor and Bjerke Trotting Stadium and Aker Hospital, where he was born, and crossed the Sinsen intersection on their way downhill towards Carl Berners Square, where the trolley buses ran. At Carl Berners a lot of passengers got off to change to the tram or another bus and then Arvid had to sit on one of the free seats, but it didn’t matter now, and he sat down beside his dad.

‘I’m sure the fish will bite today. Perhaps at long last we should give the canoe a run-out? That would be great, wouldn’t it?’

Every time they went to the cabin Dad said the same thing, and Arvid knew that nothing would come of it. It never did. But that didn’t matter, they could fish from one of the rocks by the shore.

Uncle Rolf had a rowing boat, but Dad didn’t want to use it, he didn’t need it because in his opinion the canoe belonged to him. Uncle Rolf did not agree. It had been handed down to both of them, he said, and then Dad got angry and would not use the canoe either, so it just lay there.

Sometimes Arvid went in the rowing boat, and Uncle Rolf liked that, for then he could teach Arvid how to talk to the fish to make them bite. Come on then, Jakob, he said, come on, but more often than not Arvid fished from the shore so his dad would not give him that Judas look.