Per Petterson - I Refuse

At last she looked up from the computer.

‘Name and National Insurance number, please,’ she said, ‘and a little more too would be nice,’ she said with her eyes fixed on mine, though slightly out of focus, almost successfully hiding her lack of interest, and she was only doing her job, and in that rather uninterested way she let her gaze fall down along the buttons on my jacket, one, two, three, four, all the way back to the screen, where her fingertips hovered exactly two centimetres above the keyboard, waiting for me to give her the information. I had seen her before, the last time I was here, when she was new and a bit awkward, she wasn’t that now, and she didn’t recognise me. Why should she. I gave her my name and number, which I knew off by heart, not everyone did, and it felt like being in the army, I thought, when she turned to me the way she did, as they had done right after we had moved from the neighbourhood into Oslo, and I showed up for the military service health check at Akershus Fortress and was weighed and found too light. I wanted to join the army, to be sent to Helgelandsmoen, to Haslemoen or all the way up to Bardufoss in the north, in any case as far away as I could get from my mother and Grorud which was only a sad stopover between Mørk and what was perhaps the rest of my life, but I never went to any of those places because they didn’t want me. My hands probably trembled a little too much for their taste, and now I couldn’t help my back straightening as I stood there in the Social Security office. That was so typical me. I tried to loosen up, lower my shoulders, perhaps put my hands in my pockets, but then I was suddenly clenching my right hand, I opened it and clenched it and I opened it and clenched it again, I couldn’t stop myself, and I looked down, and my fist was so tightly knotted that the knuckles were sticking up like white mountain peaks, the Rockies, the Carpathians, and my nails were cutting into my palm, and I thought, did I forget to take my pills this morning. I couldn’t remember taking them, if I had taken them before or after I went fishing. But I never forgot to take them. That was why I couldn’t remember. You don’t remember what you never fail to do, that is common knowledge, and obviously I feared the consequences. I knew what could happen if I didn’t take the pills, and I thought, is that what is happening to me now, and I felt dizzy and leaned over and grabbed the edge of her desk with one hand, and she stared stiffly at my hand and said:

‘One year,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Then new rules apply. Do you understand. You can’t be off sick any longer.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know all that.’

‘Well, I sincerely hope you do,’ she said, and I thought, who is she to talk to me like that. If I had been Tommy I would have started swearing, I would have leaned forward with both hands on her desk, knuckles down, and said: What did you fucking say. But I wasn’t Tommy, I had barely used a swear word in my life, so instead I withdrew my hand and clenched it again. I closed my eyes and said:

‘I need to talk to someone in charge.’

‘You certainly do,’ she said.

I opened my eyes.

‘You can sit over there and wait,’ she said, pointing. ‘It’ll be a while.’

‘Do you think I’m an idiot,’ I said.

‘What.’

‘Do you think I’m an idiot.’

‘Oh, Christ,’ she said. ‘Just sit down,’ but I didn’t. I felt strangely giddy. My hearing’s gone, I thought. I cannot carry myself any more, I cannot raise myself. I cannot. It’s over. And that thought came as a great relief, like a gentle breeze, an open window, and I opened my hand, and my fingernails stopped digging into my palms, and I just let go.

Then finally I did as I was told. I walked over and sat down on one of the chairs by the wall, and already I felt different, lighter somehow, no, not lighter, airier maybe, something to do with space, room, receding walls. I was looser, yes, I felt looser. I had no idea what that meant, whether it was good for me or bad. But that wasn’t the point. Whether it was good or bad. The point was that it didn’t matter. That’s what was new.

I sat there for twenty minutes. Or more. It was probably not so unusual.

My caseworker was also young, not much more than thirty-five, maybe younger, but it was of no consequence to me inside his office in the corridor behind what you might call the sluice gate. I didn’t get upset, and he said what I knew he would say, that now, after a year, I was not entitled to any more sickness benefit, and I said I knew, and he said that now some decisions would have to be made and from now on they would be obliged to keep a closer eye on me, as he was sure I understood, and the task we had to resolve, the Social Security staff and me, and after that the Job Centre, was to get me back to work as quickly as possible, because of course now I wasn’t ill any longer, I was unemployed. But then I said that, strictly speaking, I could have any job I wanted, at least within the Norwegian library service, and probably other jobs in that field or in fields like it, and then he said, yes, that may be the case, but right now you are here, and you are not working in that area or any other, and then I said that was because I was on sick leave, that’s why, I said, and then he got irritated and said that he was fully aware of that, it was why I was here, he said, and I said, yes, precisely. Are you trying to be funny, he said, and he could sit there saying that and being twenty years younger than me, are you after benefits, he said. What, I said, what do you mean am I after benefits. Are you after a disability benefit, he said, disability benefit, I said, am I an invalid, I said, do I seem like an invalid to you. No, he said, not really, good, I said, because I’m not an invalid, and I don’t know what he was thinking as he sat there, twenty years younger than me, did he think I was quarrelsome, cantankerous, a troublemaker. He might well have done, but I was none of those things because what I said, I said calmly. I wasn’t nervous now, I wasn’t sitting ramrod straight with my knees together, on the contrary, my body felt relaxed, and free, and I was sitting quietly on the chair with my arms on the rests, without a twitch on my face, truthfully answering the questions he asked, and I wasn’t trying to be funny, or, well, perhaps a little funny, because that’s what it was now, in here, a little funny. I thought it was. What he didn’t get, I thought, was how relaxed I felt, how little tension I felt, and free and easy and not after anything at all. Absolutely nothing. It was a bit of a surprise to me too, in fact, because I hadn’t really seen it from that angle before, or if I had, it was long ago. I smiled, and he suddenly smiled back, and I thought, I don’t have to keep doing this. I don’t.

‘Here,’ he said, placing three forms one on top of the other and pushing them across the desk. ‘Would you mind filling in these and taking them with you to the Job Centre.’ He smiled. I smiled back. I took the forms and stood up, put them into my left hand and shook his hand with my right.

‘This will all be fine,’ he said, and I smiled.

I closed his office door behind me, and walked up the corridor feeling very calm, and around the desk where the young woman sat. She turned, looked at me and said:

‘That wasn’t so bad, was it.’

I smiled. She smiled back and she was very young and enthusiastic all of a sudden, and I walked past her between the tables where the men were still sitting hunched over their forms on every chair, and I dropped my own forms into a paper basket so conveniently placed beside one of the tables, and on to the door, which I opened, and I was out on the stairwell. I could feel how I was still smiling, so I stopped.