Per Petterson - I Refuse

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I can’t do it,’ and then he laughed. ‘I can’t do it,’ he laughed, and tried again, but he couldn’t do it. ‘Oh, shit and double shit,’ he laughed.

‘Give me the pouch,’ Tommy said. But he couldn’t do it, either. He didn’t smoke, but he was a master roller of cigarettes, he often rolled perfect ones for Jim, but now he couldn’t do it.

‘Goddamnit,’ he said, ‘I can’t do it’, and started to laugh. ‘Why the hell can’t I do it,’ he said, and then he gave up and said: ‘Let’s get out of here. You can smoke tomorrow.’ And then they left, not too steady on their feet, down the front steps of Willy’s house, and on to the road, and now they were almost there, they were almost home, they could just make out Sletten’s lamp shining between the trees.

Along one side of the road, the northern side, they saw the trenches the telephone company were digging for the new cables that would provide every single house in the neighbourhood with a possible telephone, and an excavator, proudly displaying the Brøyt marque from Bryne, stood lonely and forlorn under the birch trees and was unmanned now and quiet and stiff in all its joints, with the bucket resting on its knees in the grass. But the Brøyt couldn’t get into all the narrow corners, so there were pickaxes standing against the sides of the trenches in strangely abandoned poses, with their iron heads flat on one side and pointed on the other and were handy tools for soil like this, full of stones and gravel, as it was in the neighbourhood, and also there were spades left standing in the trenches, and claw tools, all equally quiet and abandoned, resting against the same walls waiting for the men to come in a few hours, the phone company workers. They were up with the lark every morning, and sometimes they were singing as they pulled the long cables along the trench from the huge reel on the back of the lorry, and it was nice to hear them sing when you stood by the postbox waiting for the bus to come, and everyone was amazed how people who couldn’t sing could do it anyway when they were singing with others, and one of them sang first and then the others chimed in.

They walked along the trenches all the way to the place where the workmen had stopped digging to go home at five in the afternoon and would resume their work at half-past six in the morning. It wasn’t far to the first house, to Sletten’s house, maybe thirty metres. His outside lamp was lit and cast its white glow over to the trench where they were standing, but otherwise the air was grey and grainy, peppery almost, and still it wasn’t light, it was nowhere near morning. It was a narrow place, no digger could make its way in here, so the same pickaxes, claws and spades were leaning against the walls of the trenches, as everything that needed to be done at this end had to be done by hand. Tommy and Jim went over and stood by the edge and looked down. The walls of the trench were glistening. Tommy turned to face Jim.

‘Are you still drunk.’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t feel very drunk.’

‘I’m not drunk,’ Tommy said. He looked down again. ‘What the hell,’ he said, and crouched and placed one hand on the ground, leaned over and swung himself down into the trench and stood at the bottom, and the glittering edges of the trench almost reached to his chest. He looked up at Jim, he laughed and said: ‘Well, maybe a little drunk,’ and Jim laughed and said:

‘Yes, maybe a little,’ and he too leaned forward and laid one hand flat on the ground and swung himself down into the trench and landed with a thud on his bent knees. It hadn’t been raining but the sides were moist with dew. If you ran your hand along the edges little stones and gravel stuck to your palms.

‘Well, let’s get going then,’ Tommy said.

‘Definitely,’ Jim said. And Tommy took the nearest pickaxe and with his legs apart he stood facing the end of the trench and from high in the air above his shoulder he struck out with the flat side of the pickaxe and Jim took a claw and stood at the ready, and Tommy swung the pickaxe into the side, as high as he could the first time, and at once the soil and stones tumbled into the bottom of the trench and piled up between his legs. And then he swung a second time, and a third, and the soil and stones kept falling, and he hacked at the side all the way down to the bottom, and there was a landslide of gravel and small stones and bigger, and they rolled between Tommy’s legs and piled up, and he just kept going. After ten or eleven swings of the pickaxe there was already a good pile between Tommy’s legs, and Jim stood a couple of steps behind him, so the pickaxe wouldn’t hit him in the head. But as soon as Tommy stopped to rest, Jim came with the claw and scraped the rubble towards him in long sweeps, away from Tommy so that Tommy had space for his legs, and Jim raked all of it away and scraped the ground clean and level along the sides so that nothing was left, and there was the same flat bottom here as in the rest of the trench, it looked so good. Then they both grabbed a spade, and from opposite ends they attacked the large heap they had collected and tossed the soil and the gravel and the stones up over the edge, each to their own side: Tommy to the north and Jim to the south, and as the trench was quite deep, they had to go at it hard, and soon they were exhausted. But still they kept going, and gradually as they were hacking and shovelling away the rhythm of it was easier to find, the sensible solution already existed, hidden in the work, in those specific movements, and was only waiting to reveal itself, and waiting for their hands and arms. And they felt it coming and moved towards it and fell into it and let their bodies swing for every stroke, first the tip of the spade into the pile and then a step back and a quarter-turn with their arms rising until the spade was over the edge where it stopped and sent the mass flying, and the spade did half the job with its own weight and speed, and their hips did their part of the job, and the knowledge of this came from the work itself and not from any particular place in the brain that stored these things from the day you were born, and every spadeful and every swivel of the hips balanced the load between each part of the body, and no one part did the job alone, and the body did not even want to stop.

‘Are you OK,’ Tommy said. ‘Can you do it,’ he said and Jim said:

‘Sure, I can, if you can,’ and Tommy laughed and said:

‘Hell, this is just such fun.’ And then he said: ‘Are there any lights on in the windows.’ Jim stood up and looked to both sides and then down the road, but all the windows were dark, only the line of outside lamps was lit.

‘All dark,’ he said. ‘The windows anyway.’

‘Perfect,’ Tommy said, and started hacking again, and there was another landslide of soil and gravel, and the stones slid down between his legs, and he kept on and on and swung his pickaxe and didn’t want to stop, and his hips yielded and straightened up again, they yielded and straightened up, as though he had ball bearings inside them, and they yielded and straightened up, and the gravel was streaming down between his legs after every swing and the stones came tumbling, and his hips yielded and straightened up, and Jim came behind him with the claw and scraped the pile towards him in long, greedy lunges until it was heaped up in a good mound, and he used his arms, and his shoulders too, and his back he used and raked the trench clean and flat to the walls, and with their spades they tossed the gravel high up over the edges, and the spades were down into the gravel before the last load had landed, yes, that’s how fast they were working, and suddenly Jim stood up and said:

‘We could sing like the phone company men do.’