Per Petterson - I Refuse

This was a new kind of autumn.

Sometimes it’s not possible to remember exactly what happened during a certain phase of your life, a certain season, to remember what you did or said at the time, who you said it to, remember the weekdays, the schooldays and birthdays, who was invited and how many years they carried with them, but you do remember what colours the days were, and your palms remember the soft, the smooth and the rough, remember every surface, remember stones and the bark of trees, remember water, and you remember a piece of clothing, that it was important, but not why it was important, and you suddenly remember a telephone number, but you don’t remember who it was that you were calling, 25 00 45, who could that have been, and a sentence comes to mind, but you can’t remember if it was him or you who said it, but it didn’t matter, for no one could tell your voices apart. But you can remember what the weather was like, and the sky above, all the skies, and all the days had the same sign, it was plus, plus, plus, and they came towards you and passed by in slow motion, and the piece of clothing was a dress, and wearing that dress you swirled round on one foot only, and you lifted one hand and looked at it, and it was a new hand, it was your hand, but you hadn’t seen it before, and you laughed and said: I’ve got a new hand, look at my hand, Jim, it’s waving, it will never go home again.

Shortly before Christmas he started to change. I didn’t know why, we stood in the snow in the playground, and I asked him if anything had happened that he wanted to tell me about, but nothing had happened, he said. Everything is just as it always was, he said, but of course it wasn’t, and that was what I said, I said Jim, something must have happened because you’re so different, don’t you like me any more, is that what’s happened, I said, that you are tired of me, but then all you have to do is say so, that would be much better, I said, and it was true, that was my thinking, and then he said, why do you say I’ve changed, I haven’t changed. But you have, I said, you don’t laugh any more, you’re always so serious, it makes me sad, you don’t even touch me. Why don’t you touch me. I don’t have to touch you all the time, he said, do I, and I said, I have to go now. We’ve got physics, and I don’t understand a thing. About physics.

The following day he didn’t come, and the day after that it was the end-of-term exams for the whole school, and then he came just as we were going in, and later someone in his class said that Jim didn’t spend more than an hour on the whole thing while the others sat there for two or more, but we didn’t meet that day, for he finished early and went home long before I did. And then he was back at school for a few days, and we were so awkward with each other in the playground that I thought, it’s over then, we don’t say a kind word to each other any more, but maybe it wasn’t over, I didn’t know what love was meant to be like, I hadn’t seen it anywhere but in films, and maybe felt it with Tommy. I would just have to wait and see. I wanted to be with Jim. I didn’t want to go back.

After New Year he didn’t come back at all. It wasn’t easy for me. I couldn’t just go out to the neighbourhood and knock on his door, I couldn’t just turn up there, that would have been an event, and what would they say, all the old people when they saw me on the road, with our house burnt down and everything, where would I go. I found it difficult to ask anyone, even Tommy I couldn’t bring myself to ask. Finally I went to Mathiesen at school. Jim and he were friends despite the difference in age, and status, if you like, and they often met after school too, to discuss history and politics, and Mathiesen told me that Jim had become ill, and I asked him if it was serious. It probably is, Mathiesen said, but is he in hospital, I said, is it that serious, I said, because I could visit him there, on neutral ground, if there were such a thing, but no, I don’t think so, Mathiesen said, I think he’s at home in the house. At home in the house. Why didn’t he just say at home . As though at home were a hospital too.

And then he really was in hospital. It was already spring, it was March and something had happened, he had been lucky to pull through, someone said, I don’t remember who, and when two weeks had passed, I went in to see Mathiesen again and asked if he knew what had happened, and he said this was something he could not talk about, and I asked, did he think it would be all right if I went to the hospital to see Jim, but he didn’t think that was such a good idea. Mathiesen had spoken to Jim’s mother on the phone, and she had said it was best for Jim to get all the rest he could and that no one should upset him, which was what the doctors were afraid of apparently, that he would get upset and anxious and end up even worse. But I caught the train to Lillestrøm anyway and the blue bus up to the hospital and got off there and walked across the square and past a red-and-white ambulance parked at a skewed angle, the rear doors open and a stretcher on its way out, and then on to the main entrance.

Across the large square I could see him standing outside by the doors in a white hospital smock. He was smoking and it was cold, I had a cap on and a duffel coat, and I thought, how is it possible for him to stand out there in the cold just to smoke, and at home in Mørk, or anywhere else I might be when Jim came walking towards me or came on his bicycle, he would see me from a distance and wave and afterwards he would say, Siri, I would know you from any distance, it could be pitch black and I would still see it was you, he said. But now I was walking straight towards him, and what he did was to look at the ground and look up at the sky and look to both sides, and when he finally looked straight ahead, he didn’t see me, even at such a short distance he couldn’t see who was coming, he didn’t wave or give me a sign or a greeting, he was standing there shuffling his feet in that strange way, smoking intensely, staring into the empty blue.

And then I stopped in the middle of the square. It was so stupid, I felt a hot blush rise in the blue cold and the blood was throbbing so loudly in my ears I was sure it could be heard over the whole square, and I felt ashamed and thought, what are you doing here, who do you think you are, and I was so ashamed I could hardly breathe, and I turned and went back towards the bus stop past the same red-and-white ambulance, with its rear doors closed now, and it was a longer walk that way, from the hospital, than it was to it.

When I reached the bus stop, I studied the sign to find out if there was a bus back to Lillestrøm station and when that bus might leave, but I couldn’t make sense of the timetable, because the times of departure were all over the place and cascaded number by number from the columns on both sides in a double landslide, so I gave up and stood stock still, waiting for a bus I didn’t know would come. I glanced across at the hospital and the double glass doors at the entrance, and Jim’s white figure was still outside. Above his head I saw the grey smoke spiral upwards and then lie flat in the cold air, but I couldn’t make out his face, nor he mine, no matter the distance between us. And then suddenly he was gone, and turning to the right to look up the hill, I saw the bus sweep down the polished, icy tarmac and skid sideways down to the bus stop and come to a halt right in front of me. Through the window at the front I could see the driver’s mouth say something like Goddamnit to hell .

JIM AND TOMMY came down the path between the trees towards Lake Aurtjern. The ice shone in the moonlight. They were up to their ankles in snow. Their ice hockey skates dangled on their chests with the laces tied around their necks. They were both wearing caps, Jim’s long hair was tucked under the edge, and they looked unfamiliar, different, even to each other, but although Tommy was taller than Jim they looked more like each other with their caps on than they did without, although they weren’t aware of it themselves.