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

A man came into EBENEZER, with his eyes downcast, not looking at anyone, but still he found Uncle Rolf and whispered something in his ear. Uncle Rolf got to his feet and made a gesture and then everyone stood up and they were on their way to the cemetery.

At the cemetery there was a chapel and they all went inside and sat down and they saw the priest on his knees mumbling in front of the altar. Then suddenly he got up, made the sign of the cross and turned to the assembly, his cassock swirling round his legs like a ball gown, and everyone could see his green-checked socks. Arvid laughed, but a glare from Uncle Rolf made him shut up. The priest’s voice soared around the room and rose to the ceiling, and Arvid leaned back in the pew and looked up, but he couldn’t make out what the priest was saying, and he fell asleep and didn’t wake up until everyone was on their feet and ready to follow the coffin to the grave.

Outside it was pouring down, and Aunt Kari had to take one handle of the coffin even though she was a woman, for Uncle Rolf had been so upset after the service that he wasn’t up to being a pall-bearer, and then the rain took a turn for the worse. Almost everyone in the small procession produced an umbrella, and those who didn’t have one held newspapers over their heads, but the ones who carried the coffin couldn’t cover themselves and the water was running from their hair, down their faces and dripping from their ears and noses. Arvid walked beside his dad and held on to his coat, the water splashing round his shoes, and you couldn’t see the stains on them for everything was equally wet. Looking up, he saw his dad’s face was soaking, and it now seemed so sad that Arvid felt he was going to cry, but he didn’t want to because he didn’t like Granddad and his plan was to hold back, but then he cried a little after all.

He closed his eyes as he walked and imagined his dad lying in the coffin, and Mum and Gry and he carrying it and after thinking about it for a while he felt his chest tightening. He could hear himself sobbing and making little howls, and one of the ladies in the procession came over and stroked his hair and said:

‘Poor little boy, and you loved your grandfather so much. You shouldn’t have been here at all.’

‘No,’ Arvid said, and meant the part about loving his Granddad, but the woman didn’t get it and she scowled at Mum, and Mum blushed, rolled her eyes and sent Arvid a look as if he were Judas from the Bible. Arvid tightened his grip on Dad’s coat.

They reached the hole in the ground where the coffin was to be lowered, and everywhere it was muddy and slippery, and water was trickling over the edges and into the grave and mud flowing from the nearby mounds of earth. The six pall-bearers walked cautiously over the last stretch and slowly set the coffin on two bars laid across the grave. As it was almost in place Dad slipped and fell onto one knee, the coffin tipped and banged down onto one bar, and Arvid gave a start and he heard Mum gasp behind him. Dad stood up again with a dazed smile and Arvid could see the huge muddy stain on his knee.

The priest came and started to speak, but Arvid could not hear what he was saying because of the rain and the wind blowing straight into his face, and the priest was gazing at Strømsveien and the cars droning past instead of looking at the coffin as he should have done, and his voice was lost. He dug out some slimy mud with his little spade and tried to toss it onto the coffin, but his eyes were elsewhere, so it missed and hit the edge of the grave and started a small landslide. Arvid shivered when he heard the mud splash at the bottom.

There were six ropes on the ground which the bearers were supposed to use to lower the coffin, and they each grabbed one and threaded it through a handle so they could hold both ends of their rope, but Dad didn’t do what the others did. He tied it to the handle, and that was a mistake, Arvid could easily see that, everyone could, but no one said a word, just stared into the rain, pretending they hadn’t noticed. When the coffin was on its way down, Dad’s rope was too short and the further it was lowered the more Dad had to bend until he was balancing on the very brink.

‘Dad! Let go!’ Arvid yelled, and Dad let go and his rope went down with the coffin while the others got back theirs and placed them in a tidy heap.

Arvid could hear some strange noises behind him, and when he turned he saw Mum holding her hand in front of her mouth, her shoulders shaking and tears in her eyes, but behind her hand she was laughing, giggling even, and Arvid felt a trembling in his chest: what if Dad had not let go! He would have been down in the grave with Granddad, but Granddad was dead, the king was dead, the bullfinch was dead, but it didn’t matter because Dad was alive and Arvid was alive and he started to jump up and down, he was smiling all over his face, and he ran over to his dad and buried his face in his wet coat. Dad stumbled a bit, but then he lifted Arvid up high and carried him back, and Arvid was almost certain that the sound from his dad’s chest was laughter.

When Arvid was outside playing, he would sometimes sit down in silence and think about his mother. Then he would try to draw her with a stick in the sand the way he was used to seeing her, in front of the kitchen counter with one of her striped aprons on. She would lean against the sink with the one hand, holding a cigarette with the other, and when without thinking she would run her hand through her hair there would be a hiss and then the smell of burning. Arvid often sat waiting for that. She’d looked the way she always had for as far back as he could remember, and she still did right up until the day he happened to see a photograph of her from before he was born, and the difference floored him. He tried to work out what could have happened to her, and then he realised it was time that had happened and it was happening to him too, every second of the day. He held his hands to his face as if to keep his skin in place and for many nights he lay clutching his body, feeling time sweeping through it like little explosions. The palms of his hands were quivering and he tried to resist time and hold it back. But nothing helped, and with every pop he felt himself getting older.

He cried, and said to his mother:

‘I don’t want to get older. I want to stay like I am now! Six and a half, that’s enough, isn’t it?’ But she smiled sadly and said, to every age its charm. And time withdrew to the large clock on the wall in the living room and went round alone in there, like a tiger in a cage, he thought, just waiting, and Mum became Mum again, almost like before.

She used to work at the Freia chocolate factory, and those were the good days, for no one could deny that chocolate found its way from Grünerløkka to where they lived in Veitvet. But all good things must come to an end, and now she had a cleaning job at the music school in the evenings and that was not the same. One time when Arvid was allowed to come with her even though it was late, he looked for things they could take home, but sheet music was no good, and the pianos were too heavy.

Now Dad was the one to sing Arvid to sleep in the evening, and that was not the same at all. Every night he sang the one about the cat stuck in the spruce tree or something. Arvid never understood what it was really about, and anyway he couldn’t care less. He soon realised that the only way he could escape the song was to fall asleep as quickly as possible, and Dad boasted and said it was his talent as a singer that made him succeed. There was only one song that was worse, and that was ‘When the Fjords Turn Blue’, but that one Dad only sang when there were guests and they’d had a drink or two. Then Mum went into the kitchen and waited there until he had finished.