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

Uncle Rolf solved this problem by going to the little window at the gable end, the one that wasn’t above the front door, and he peed from there. This was not popular. Right beneath the window was Gran’s rose bed and, although she had been dead for some years, Dad felt her memory should be treasured, and for him this rose bed had taken on such significance.

One time when Dad had been out doing what he did at night, he had seen what certain persons were up to and he roared so loud everyone jumped up in their beds:

‘So you’re standing there pissing on your mother’s grave!’

Even though Arvid knew she was buried in the Eastern Cemetery.

Sitting by one of the large windows in the hall, Arvid could see the fjord twinkling like a vast piece of silver foil in a thousand small glints between the many spruce trees, far too many, Uncle Rolf said, half of them should be cut down so you could see what was happening on the water.

But that was how Arvid liked it, the spruce trees were like a strainer that only let the good light through so he couldn’t see the ridge on the other side, for it was so sinister he dreamed about it at night. Dad felt the same way, or at any rate whenever Uncle Rolf piped up he said:

‘Leave the spruces alone! If you want to study the boats you can go down to the jetty!’ But Uncle Rolf didn’t want to do that, if he could avoid it, for he was pretty fat, and when he had climbed up the steep path and all the steps that connected the cabin to the jetty his face was the same colour as the cabin, or even darker.

As far as the cabin was concerned, what Dad said usually went. Although they owned it together, it was Dad who had built it almost single-handedly. He had dragged the logs from the road, he had hammered and sawn and carried tons of sand and water enough for a medium-sized lake to mould the concrete steps and landings so the family wouldn’t tumble into the fjord. That was why he was so strong and that was why the others were a little cowed when he was in a temper.

But Arvid wasn’t cowed and Dad was not in a temper that often, and the only person who had done anything of any importance apart from Dad was Granddad, and he was going to die this Sunday, he was probably dead already, but they didn’t know that yet.

Dad had a strong back. He was always doing stuff, as often as not with his back to Arvid, and it lived its own life inside the blue T-shirt with its large patches of dark sweat in the sun and the heat. Arvid could watch it for ages and feel at ease. Right now Dad was putting up the new flagpole, he had almost finished, and he had been into the forest himself to take down the tree he wanted.

‘Pure theft,’ Dad said, and that was the truth, for he had done it by night and dragged the trimmed tree back home before sunrise, and the T-shirt bulged and rippled as he tightened the lowest screws and Mum supported the pole. Uncle Rolf sat talking in a deckchair nearby.

‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘A bit tall maybe, but I guess it’ll be all right.’ It was a long time since Dad had taken any notice of Uncle Rolf’s opinion. He knew how he wanted it, and that was the way he did it.

‘What do you think, Arvid?’ he said. Arvid was sitting on the stone steps with his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands, and he said:

‘It’s fine, Dad. Tall and fine!’

‘That’s good,’ Dad said, and then went to fetch the flag, and Mum snapped a picture with the old box camera held against her stomach.

A large print was hung on the wall at home above the bookcase. In the bottom left-hand corner Uncle Rolf had one arm in the air as if he were in charge.

The black car was not in the picture, and it could not have been, for it didn’t arrive until later, but Arvid often glanced to make sure it really wasn’t. In his memory, Dad standing by the flagpole and the black car had merged and he could not imagine one without the other.

He remembered the car as a Model T Ford and he knew well what a Model T looked like because they had a book with pictures at home, but it could not have been unless there was a veteran car rally that day, and there wasn’t.

Big sister Gry was pretty. She had long blonde hair that matched her name, which meant day-break, she was in the third class at school and could read Donald Duck comics much slower than Arvid.

‘You can have them all when you’ve learned to read,’ she had said, and Arvid often peered into the closet, where they were stacked in piles, calling to him with their speech bubbles, for that was where the secret was, but for now he let them drift past as clouds and covered his ears when Gry read aloud.

Gry waded along the shore with the water up to her knees, her blue dress tucked between her thighs, and Arvid could see her blonde hair bob up then disappear between the trees. Sometimes her head wasn’t even there and all he could see was a bundle of blue clothes. Then she was bending down to pick up a mussel. When she had enough she laid them next to each other on a flat rock to dry. Later she cleaned them, made a hole at each end, threading them onto a piece of string, and she hung them around her neck like a chain. She looked nice, like a Red Indian girl.

Arvid stood up from the step, walked down the path and he felt the pine needles on his bare soles. It hurt in a way he liked. Behind him he could hear Uncle Rolf.

‘Kari doesn’t know what she’s doing. Marrying a farmer! Christ!’

Uncle Rolf couldn’t stand farmers, they had mud under their boots and said ‘taters’ instead of ‘potatoes’. Uncle Rolf thought this was ridiculous.

‘Alf’s a great guy,’ Arvid heard his dad say. ‘Anyway, it’s useful having a farmer in the family.’ And their voices faded as Arvid clambered down the path.

Halfway down, on a ledge, Granddad’s canoe lay keel-up on two stands. It was old, but still good enough and it had a nice tarry smell. It was about the only thing Granddad did at the moment, clean and fix the canoe, but he couldn’t use it himself, he was too stiff and old to get into it. Dad said Arvid should come with him out on the water this summer, but Granddad said no.

‘I don’t want any kids in the canoe,’ he said, ‘it capsizes too easily, and I know kids can never sit still!’ Dad might have been the strongest, but Granddad was the oldest, and since he had in fact done his share of work on the cabin, he could say no. Besides, the canoe was his. He said that very often.

Arvid met Aunt Kari, who had been out swimming. She had a bathing suit on and a towel wrapped around her shoulders. Aunt Kari had the softest lap in the world, even though she was not fat, and he could just close his eyes and remember what it was like to sit on. It was like sinking, like floating, whichever way he turned it was soft, and she smelt good. But he never got to sit there any more, not because he didn’t want to, but because she thought he had grown too big.

Aunt Kari had curly black hair, she had the sun in her face and her body shone, and she said:

‘You can’t go down to the water on your own, Arvid!’

‘Gry’s there, and I can swim.’

‘That’s true, you can. You always knew how to swim.’

That was a fact. He had always been able to and didn’t know what it was like when you couldn’t. Many people thought that was odd.

But he never made it to the water that day. Before he got down to where Gry was he heard his mother’s voice cut through the trees:

‘Gry! Arvid! Come up here this minute!’

There was a sharp edge to her call, which meant they didn’t dawdle as much as they usually would. Gry waded quickly to the shore, took Arvid’s hand and together they hurried up the long steep hill. When they came to the top they were out of breath and there was a big black car in the little drive in front of the cabin. The engine was running and the car was humming and shaking, and the sun sparkled on the black paint. The man with the beret leaning on the car door they had seen before. It was Granddad’s neighbour from Vålerenga.