Per Petterson - I Refuse

‘Jonsen says hello,’ I said.

‘What,’ Jim said.

‘Jonsen says hello. He told me to tell you.’

‘Oh, right.’

I had been to the hospital before he was moved to the psychiatric ward. That first night I drove in when he was still in intensive care. His mother had rung me and said, I guess you want to know that your friend has tried to take his own life. There was something about the way she said it. I had always assumed that she liked me, even if she must have thought I took God’s name in vain too easily, and the Devil’s too, but there was an edge to her voice now that hadn’t been there before, and I was not only sorry and frightened for Jim, I felt ill at ease. He’s at the Central Hospital, she said, and rang off, and I stood there with the receiver in my hand, and then I too put the phone down and went to Jonsen and asked him if I could borrow his car. My old Mercedes was in Lysbu’s garage with faulty brakes.

‘Of course you can borrow the car,’ he said. ‘Has something happened.’

He lay in bed in intensive care with his eyes wide open staring at the ceiling, but he did not see me. He probably didn’t see anything, and if he was thinking anything at all, as he was lying there, almost strapped to the bed, I had no idea what it would be. He had bandages around his neck, and his breath was wheezing in and out and not like he used to breathe all those times I listened to him at night after my father had gone wild and I had to stay over at Jim’s house and lie beside him in bed, and his breathing was so quiet you’d have thought he was dead and you had to lean over to make sure he wasn’t, and sometimes nudge his shoulder a little. Then he woke up at once and opened his eyes and smiled an invisible smile and said, just five minutes more, Mum, and went back to sleep. As quietly as before. Or the time we slept on the ridge by the fire lookout tower. We had set off straight after school and up through the woods. It was early autumn, and crisp, and there was hoar frost in the morning, frost in the evening, and we were going to put up a bivouac and make the roof as weatherproof as we could and sleep inside if there was rain. Or snow. But then darkness fell much quicker in the forest than we had expected, and we couldn’t put anything up.

‘Forget it then,’ Jim said. ‘We’ll just take the sleeping bags and lie in the heather. It’s not going to rain. Inshallah.’

‘What,’ I said.

‘As God wills. that’s what they say. The Arabs.’

‘How the hell do you know that.’

‘I know a lot of stuff.’

‘That’s right, you do,’ I said. ‘OK. Inshallah. That’s fine by me. We’ll sleep in the heather.’

And we did. And in the night I awoke several times and watched the grey, drifting sky up between the treetops. The wind came high through branches and made a sound so powerful, so peaceful, and the cold air gently stroked my face, and it never rained that night, and it didn’t snow, and Jim lay beside me, sleeping soundlessly with heather in his hair, and when I leaned over, he wasn’t dead, and each time I went back to sleep, we were fifteen years old, and life and sleep were the same floating thing, and there was nothing wrong in this world.

Jim took the final drag of his cigarette and dropped the butt on to the ground and crushed it with his foot and turned and looked at me, and hell, I don’t know, he had always shown me respect, as I had shown him respect, but now he had been somewhere that I hadn’t, just him alone and not the two of us together, and he had seen things there I could not have imagined, and there was a look of superiority in his eyes that unsettled me.

‘Well, how is it going down in the Bunker,’ I said.

‘Just fine, there are lots of crazies there, but they don’t bother me. I’m busy with my own stuff.’

‘And what is it that you do, then,’ I said.

‘Things,’ he said. ‘I think up things.’

‘Like what.’

‘I can’t tell you now. I can maybe try and explain it later some time, well, try anyway, if it’s even possible.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘That could be interesting.’

‘Maybe not to you,’ Jim said.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘And why not,’ but he shrugged and took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and counted how many he had left. Just two.

‘Maybe you could buy me a pack of cigarettes,’ he said, and I thought, he is probably skint, and I’m the one earning money, and I had always thought that whatever money I had, we could share, if it came to that, so I said:

‘Sure I can,’ and we walked back into the foyer and over to the shop they had there in one corner, where they sold flowers and Kong Haakon chocolate boxes and novels with soft covers and bright colours on the jacket you could bring with you up to all those who were ill and feeling bad on every floor and needed something extra in their lives, something brightly coloured and soft they could lose themselves in, and at that shop, in early March, I bought for Jim a pack of twenty Marlboro filter tips with a red flip-top lid and put it into his left breast pocket, next to his beating heart beneath the thin shirt, and I could feel it against my fingertips, boom, boom, it went, boom, boom, it went, a little too hard, a little too fast if you asked me, and I thought maybe he would say thank you, I’ll pay you back later, and I had never doubted that he would, that I would get back what he owed me, I always did, although it wasn’t necessary. He could have whatever he wanted that was mine, and keep it. But he didn’t say thank you and he didn’t look at me, and I thought, right, what the hell, and so we left the shop and walked towards the stairs and the lifts, and halfway across the floor we stopped, and he said:

‘You think it was on purpose, what happened on Lake Aurtjern, on the ice, don’t you, that I held you back to save myself, that’s what you think, isn’t it, that I wanted to save myself, sure, that’s what you think. But you’ll never understand any of that, you’ll never understand the truth of it,’ he said, and he was tapping his forehead with his index finger, and of course I knew what he was referring to, I remembered it well, it was only two or three months earlier, and it was cold then, and December and in the middle of the night, but cross my heart, I’d had so much work to do I hadn’t had time to give it a thought. I didn’t want to, either. And yet, when he brought it up, it didn’t surprise me, it was rather like something that fell into place. But that wasn’t what I said, I said:

‘Have you really been thinking about that. It was nothing. Damnit, Jim. You shouldn’t think about it, it won’t do you any good, it was nothing. I just fell over. That’s all.’

‘You don’t know anything about this, Tommy. Things are not as you think they are, I know something about that and you don’t. I know you think I did it on purpose, out there on Lake Aurtjern, that I wanted to save myself and held you back on purpose, so that you would drown and I wouldn’t. But you have no idea what was going on,’ he said, and he tapped his forehead again, and he said: ‘Only I know,’ and his skin lay taut across his forehead and his cheekbones, his face was completely white, and he really looked like a junkie now, but suddenly I got irritated, I was tired of this, I couldn’t listen to this rubbish any more. I said:

‘Jim, I understand that you’re ill. I didn’t know it was this bad. Honestly. I’m really sorry about it, and I am really sorry about what has happened. And if it has something to do with me, Jesus, but Jim, you can’t stand here and be ill. You can be ill down in the Bunker with all the other crazies, that’s fine by me, but goddamnit, you can’t stand in front of me and be ill. You’re my friend, not my patient. So save that crap for when I’ve gone. I can’t listen to it,’ I said. ‘I’m going,’ I said. ‘If you need me, you can ring. If you ring, it will make me very happy,’ I said, and I turned and headed for the entrance, past the shop, and I thought, I need some chocolate, a Melkesjokolade, a Kvikk Lunsj, anything, a Firkløver, but I can’t stop and buy one while Jim’s watching me. I am sure his eyes are on my back, I thought, and now I felt unwell, dizzy.