Per Petterson - I Refuse

Slowly Tommy got up on to his skates, brushed down his elbows, brushed his knees and called:

‘Jesus Christ, Jim, it was only the ice settling, It won’t break, it’s too thick. It was just settling,’ he called, ‘that’s what it does when it’s so goddamn cold, it’s just expanding, Jim, and settling.’

Jim was kneeling now, on the shore, his knees sunk into the snow, he had taken his cap off and didn’t answer and didn’t turn, and then he called in a strangely muffled voice, as if from the inside of a sack or something else you could lose yourself in, with his back to Tommy and Lake Aurtjern:

‘I know that, it’s just settling, that’s what it’s doing, I know, and I didn’t get scared, that’s not what happened, I didn’t mean to stop you. I just tripped and had to grab something, I lost my balance, you got that, didn’t you.’

Tommy was on his feet again and was slowly gliding towards the bank on his skates, and the knees of his trousers were white in a smooth, polished way.

‘Sure I did,’ he said, and he said it gently, and when he caught up with Jim he put his hand on his shoulder and said: ‘Hell, I lost my balance too, it almost knocked me over, it was such a goddamn loud crack,’ he said, and bent down and put his mouth to Jim’s ear and said:

‘Put your cap on. You’ll freeze your ears off. They’re already white, they will fall off.’ And it was true that Jim’s ears were freezing, the cold cut right through them, they hurt, and Jim felt such an uncontrollable urge to cover them, to hide them, both of them, cup his hands over them, put his cap back on, but he had to freeze just a little more, it felt right, that was what he had to do, he had to hold out for just a few more minutes, there was no way round it.

‘Hey, Jim. Put your cap on,’ Tommy said. ‘You’re going to get earache,’ but Jim refused, and Tommy sank in the snow and grabbed the cap, but Jim just held on to it and wouldn’t let go, and Tommy said, for Christ’s sake, and ripped it out of Jim’s hands and pulled it down over his head and over his ears. It was a red woolly cap, a socialist cap, last autumn Jim’s mother had sat in her chair in front of the TV set, with her knitting needles clicking away, you could hear them working all over the house, click, click, click, they went, click, click, click, and they were probably those round needles, they must have been, Jim thought, and he liked that cap, it was red as a flag, but that wasn’t easy to see in the shadows on the banks of Lake Aurtjern where they both were kneeling in the snow beside each other, and their boots were there, and across the lake you could see the moon still shining an almost unreal warm yellow on the ice, but it didn’t look as inviting now as it had done an hour earlier. Tommy didn’t want to go out on the ice again at any price, he felt unwell.

‘I didn’t mean to push you back,’ Jim said, and Tommy said:

‘I know that. Just forget it, it was nothing.’

‘But it’s true, I didn’t mean to.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Jim, just stop thinking about it.’

IT WAS LATE in the evening. He pulled on his cap and went out on to the doorstep and stood for a moment looking up at the sky before he closed the door behind him and walked from his house down the road to the Berggrens’ house. It was cold, the snow lay hip-high on both sides. Most of it had fallen in the last few days, and the air had been confusingly dense and white on both sides of the house, No exit, a sign above the door to the front path might have said, just forget it, it might have said, and when the blizzard had waned, it was everyone out to clear the footpath from the doorsteps to the bins by the road, and they all came, every single one of them. In front of every little house stood a man bent over, shovelling snow, groaning to the rhythm, as though there were someone standing there hitting his stomach with a solid object to keep the beat. In the end just the blue cap could be seen bobbing up and down, and for every shovelful he took, the snow came flying spray-like over the bank, and now and then you could get a glimpse of a glowing face and the knitted mittens clutching the shovel, but the road too was covered in snow, the whole neighbourhood was under siege. No cars could get out, no cars could get in, and for the many who did not own a car, but instead got a lift on the school bus when they needed one, then even the bus couldn’t get through the snow, and nor could the dustcart. And that was not good.

It wasn’t snowing now, but moving around was difficult. It was dark, only Jonsen was outside. The snowplough wouldn’t come all the way out here until the next morning to make a corridor wide enough so at least the school bus with the children on board could reach the main road, but right now Jonsen couldn’t see how that would be possible. From years back he could remember the six sturdy horses spread out in a fan before the snowplough pulling it along the road through the deep snow with five men standing on the plough to keep it down. After the plough came all the neighbours in two lines, one either side of the road, the shovels in their hands, and every winter they did the the same, the heavy work, the heavy horses, no boss required, everyone just came, everyone knew what to do. They looked out of the window in the early morning and realised the neighbourhood was so deep under snow that it had to be dealt with, and they all turned out. One time the snow banks were so high the men shovelling on top could hold a hand around the electricity cables between the tall posts without stretching an arm. Jonsen was only a boy then, he saw the men high above him in their open jackets, and there was something about the material they were made of, the inside, the outside and the snow so white, and it was what he remembered best, the coarseness of it, the greyness, he remembered the buttons, every single one of them gleaming with their shiny surface and the swirling wind blocking his vision with icy sugar, and him closing his eyes against the cold vortex. A stranger took a photograph. He was kneeling in the slush with his camera pointing up the steep overhang, and when the picture appeared in the newspaper the snow banks looked even higher than they were in real life. We’re not waiting for the council’s snowplough. We’re not waiting for anyone , it said under the photo, we are the council .

Eleven o’clock was the time they had agreed, as soon as Tommy was in bed and sound asleep. She had prepared the packed lunches for the following day, four in a line on the kitchen table, one each for Tommy and Siri, who had to go to school, and one each for the twins, who wanted their own ones although they didn’t go, and she had written their names in nicely looped letters on all of them and then nothing else, for there was nothing else she could do, and there was no reason to be sentimental.

But all the snow confused Jonsen. He had no plan B. What plan would that be. The car was in the garage with its nose sticking out, ready to go tonight. That was all he had, as soon as it was dark and Tommy in bed, he would pick her up and drive her away. The day after, her husband, Berggren the dustman, would be coming home at the crack of dawn, and then it would be too late.

Like everyone else, Berggren had cleared the snow up the footpath to his door, but that was already twenty-four hours ago, he hadn’t been home since, and fresh snow had gusted in and lay in deep drifts on the path. That was not so bad, maybe, but the prints of two pairs of boots, one large and one smaller, would be there for all to see in the snow when day broke. Or there might be more snow. Jonsen had no idea. He hadn’t been listening to the radio, he had been standing by his black Opel Captain, which was not a Captain, it was a Kapitän, and it always annoyed him when people said Opel Captain, because it wasn’t a Captain, it was a Kapitän. Hell, people couldn’t even read. He had stooped over the car’s engine in the tiny garage, where the walls were made of tin and were freezing cold, and covered with frost on the inside, and he thought, for God’s sake, don’t panic. A hose was leaking, even he could see that, and he searched around until he found a short piece of pipe he could use to replace it, and he jammed it on hard with a jubilee clip on each end. And he had to tighten the fan belt, and he was pretty sure he knew where it was and what to do with it, but he felt overwhelmed. He should have gone to Lysbu to get the help he needed, but he couldn’t, and just the thought of the loud, whining sound the fan belt would make now, tonight, set his nerves on edge. People would jump to their windows and see his headlights shining up the road and where they were coming from, and for those who could put two and two together, it would be obvious. Of course, they would think, that’s it. I’ve known it all along.