Per Petterson - I Refuse

‘Just drive,’ she said.

But I had seen her hands. In the café she placed them on the counter in front of me, as if displayng them, and looking back that was exactly what I thought she was doing. Displaying them. I hadn’t seen a ring.

‘Just drive,’ she said.

I didn’t know what to say. I looked at my hands, one of them on the wheel, the other on the gear lever, and I didn’t have a ring on any finger. Not on my right hand. Not on my left hand. I could have had, but the one time it was an issue, I drew back at the last minute, and later I wondered whether it had been the right decision. It probably was.

‘Just drive,’ she said.

I turned and looked at her. She was staring straight ahead through the windscreen. Her eyes may have been shiny. It looked like that to me. She had an attractive profile. Everything about her was attractive.

‘Here we go then,’ I said.

I put the car into first gear and was about to start, and then it was the wrong way. I had parked bumper to bumper with a black BMW, a flash car, a young person’s car, if ever there was one, and so I put the car into reverse and backed carefully in a gentle curve and turned and drove slowly out of the car park, past the restaurant, and I thought, Christ, am I sick of that restaurant.

I didn’t want to go to Oslo, I didn’t want to take the same route I had already taken twice that day and twice back, on the E6, and I didn’t want to go towards Skjetten, up the hills there, that was already decided, so there wasn’t much to choose from.

I drove through Lillestrøm and down under the bridge with the shiny rails overhead as a goods train came thundering over the rail joints on its way to Oslo, and wagon after wagon loaded with timber from the big forests in the north, and I drove past the airy railway station, at the back, and on down Jernbanegata, a very short street, to the bridge, where the Nitelva river was running high after several days of rain. But now there was brilliant sunshine and it was still a bit cold, and I crossed the bridge, and just before the tunnel I turned left at the roundabout and then drove west through Fjerdingby, Flateby, places I had never been, but their names were on the signs by the road. I said:

‘You must have a ring. Why don’t you wear it.’

‘I do have a ring. I don’t wear it because I don’t want to wear it.’

‘But doesn’t he want you to wear it.’

‘Yes, of course, he does. I insist that you wear it , he says. But I refuse to. That’s what I do. I refuse. And now I don’t want to go on any more. Not for one hour more.’

‘When did you decide.’

‘Today.’

‘Today. When I came to the café.’

‘A little before.’

‘When the other man was there. The one who was so sad.’

‘Yes. To be honest.’

I didn’t want to hear about that man. He annoyed me. Just the fact of his existence annoyed me. But he hadn’t done anything to me. He had minded his own business and hadn’t bothered anyone with any of it and hadn’t laid his life in the hands of people he didn’t know. I could have done as he had. I could have kept my mouth shut. But then I wouldn’t have been here now. With her. I said:

‘But why did you come to me.’

‘It was you who came to me,’ she said, and it was true of course. I had already forgotten. It was me who came to her. I had gone back into the shopping centre, I had taken the escalator up to the café and stood there for her to see, only ten minutes after I had left. It was I who came to her. Where did I find the courage. I couldn’t believe I had it in me. But there was no choice. That was why.

‘Yes, but why did you come with me. Now. Why me.’

‘Because you asked me what my name was.’

I knew that already. I wasn’t stupid. And now I was driving up the hillsides from Lillestrøm and the Nitelva river along the big lake and past the petrol station before the long plain and then across the plain and down again on the other side. It was wonderful to drive on a road not knowing where it would lead me, and down through the many bends it was just as good, doing 50 past Nordby, another place I hadn’t been, but its name was on a sign, and from the road you could see a flat-roofed, freshly painted, silent school building, its windows dark and empty, not a child in sight, and it wasn’t Saturday and it wasn’t Sunday, and it was a mystery why it was empty, but it was not our mystery.

‘Don’t think about that ring,’ she said. ‘It is not important.’

And so I stopped thinking about it, I let go and it fell to the ground with a clink and was gone. It was silent in the car, and to the right the rugged hillside rose steeply from the road, there must have been many landslides here over the years, you could see the large rocks in among the scree that were covered in moss while others looked sharp, menacing, and out to the left of the road the fields unfolded before us, golden yellow after threshing, and down to the shores of the lake we couldn’t see from the road, but we knew was there, and I would have been happy just to sit like this and drive for ever. She didn’t have to say anything, and I didn’t have to, and then she said gently:

‘In the café I asked you what was so sad, and you said you would have to think it through first, do you remember,’ and of course I remembered, I remembered every detail, I remembered not only her words but also how she walked, her back on her way to the counter, and her face when she didn’t smile, I remembered everything, I remembered Jim, the one I’d been thinking about at the table. ‘Was that why you cried,’ she said. ‘Because of what you were thinking.’

I knew she would ask. It came as no surprise. She wanted to attract me to her. And I had to answer. I had to lay my life in her hands. Or else I was done for. We didn’t have time to rise through the ranks.

‘Because of Jim,’ I said.

‘Jim.’

‘Yes. Jim.’

HE WOKE WITH the woman called Berit beside him in the warmth of his bed in his house with the fjord as the nearest neighbour and the other islands. He sat up with a start. The alarm clock next to her said just before five on the bedside table that was her bedside table now, if she wanted, for as long as she wanted, for ever if she wanted, and she was asleep, and it was dark in his house, and quiet, she was sleeping quietly, he couldn’t hear her breathing. He leaned over and almost touched her mouth with his cheek, and on his face he felt her sensational, warm, living breath.

He swung his legs out of bed and sat on the edge, and through the window he could see the light of a few lanterns reflected on the sheet-metal water at the other side of the fjord. Otherwise it was all black.

The island wasn’t big. The distance between his house and the bridge was a mere trifle, he could drive there in a couple of minutes, and he thought, I mustn’t be late, if I’m late, I’m done for, if he’s gone when I get there, and then he thought, I can’t drive the damn Mercedes to the bridge. He looked at the alarm clock again. It will take me only five minutes to walk, he thought, at least he guessed it would, perhaps a little more, or not much more, not more than ten, although I don’t really know, he thought, I have lived on this island for six years, and I have never once walked the distance from the house to the bridge, and it might take a little longer, but I have to get out walking more often now, walking further and faster, I have a girlfriend now, I have to get into shape, and I’m not going to town today, those days are over, life is different now. From now on. I’ll leave the car.

He got up slowly from the bed and walked over to the wardrobe. The room was pitch black.