Per Petterson - In The Wake

I lie perfectly still. I know I am freezing, that the cold is just about to grab me, but if I do not move I can keep it at bay, let it stay out in my body and away from that which is me. I could lie here like a Zen Buddhist bundle in a blue pea jacket and be pure spirit. That would have been something. But it won’t work. Once I have thought of movement there is no way back. I have to raise my arm. And then I can’t do it, the link is broken, I must concentrate and use all my will, and the moment I see my arm go up, I start to shudder. First in the hand, it vibrates, and then the arm vibrates, and it spreads to my hips and on to my legs and back again at full strength so that my teeth start to chatter and my head beats against the ground, there is epilepsy in all my muscles, and I let out a howl so horrible and cut up that I stop at once. Down there is the road, behind my head up the hill are the blocks of flats. Who heard me howl? There are wolves in the forest, bar all your doors.

I struggle to my knees, my body shuddering as if it knew no shame, there is ice in my spine and it is dark between the trees now the helicopter has gone, and the hill rises vertically before me. Then I get to my feet and start to climb. I do not know how long it takes me. But anyway it does not matter, for time is the same in both directions, and all is the same on my way up the hill, I could go on like this for ever. I take up lot of space and lose the path and bump into trees and stumble over stones, and I imagine someone standing there, looking at all this and laughing, for I am good entertainment. I would have liked to have seen me myself and I laugh too, between my chattering teeth. Ho, ho, ho, I laugh, ho, ho, ho, and suddenly I am standing close to the nearest block. Where did that come from? But it is not my one. They look alike, but it isn’t mine. I have to go round this one and on past two more blocks, and then I am home. I can do that. I move on again, and finally get round the last corner. There is light in one window in the block up to the right. That is my window, and I stop and lean on my knees and I puff and I shake and I stare up at the window thinking: that is where I live. And I consider what I think of that, and then it all turns empty. In the block to the left there is light in a window right opposite mine, and Mrs Grinde is probably standing there looking across at me. But I am not home, I’m standing right here. And I shall stand here as long as I have the strength.

A lamp is alight above the door to my entrance. I take the last steps over there and suddenly it seems a nice light to me, a wonderful light, and with frozen fingers I fumble in my trouser pockets, searching for my keys, and then they are not there. But I always keep my keys in my right-hand pocket. I have travelled all over the country and in England and the USA and always kept my keys in the same pocket, for no matter how ingenious a place I find I always manage to forget where it is. But they are not in my trouser pockets, nor my jacket pockets, there are no keys in any pocket. I lean against the door. I am freezing. I look at my watch. It says half past three. I look at the doorbells and name plates by each bell push. His name has been written with a ball-pen on a scrap of cardboard. Naim Hajo. One favour is worth another, is what I think, about to press the bell push. But then I remember the brass bowl. We are quits, he does not owe me anything. Besides, he has children, it would wake the whole family. I can’t do that, and I realise that even if I freeze until I can no longer think I shall not ring that bell. So I go to the only place that comes to mind.

The door to her block’s entrance is not locked, and the stairwell is painted the same as mine is, a cheerful blue in two shades in accordance with strict rules, with stencils of flowers on every third step to make it cosy, and it is so cosy that goose pimples spread on my skin as the cold strikes out from the walls, and it should have been spring now, but it is all a mess. I walk upstairs to the second floor of this stairwell that looks like mine but is not mine at all, and I push the bell where it says G. GRINDE on a small green plate above the bell, and I figure she must be called Gudrun Grinde, like an auntie on children’s television, or Grete, or Guri, or Gunilla Grinde, maybe she’s actually Swedish.

There is a long silence. I know she is there, but she does not come to the door. My legs are shaking, I can’t stand up much longer, so I sit down on the lowest step of the stairs going up to the top floor facing G. Grinde’s door and listen. Finally, I hear footsteps on linoleum, the door handle turns and the door slowly opens. Out sticks a mop of brown hair and a frightened face I have only seen in the shop and sometimes behind her window, but then she’s had her glasses on. Her eyes are nothing like as severe as I remember them. She ought perhaps to change glasses or get herself some contact lenses. I can see the collar of a dressing gown, dark blue with red stripes, it is quite shabby, and I can see the skin of her neck in soft shadow. She stares at me blankly. Through the crack in the door I can glimpse the room that looks out on to the grounds and on to my block. There is a bed in there. It is not the kitchen. I do not know why I thought it was the kitchen. There is a light on by the window, and a coat-stand at the end of the bed. There are no binoculars that I can see.

“Did I wake you?” I say. And I suddenly realise I have done just that, but she makes no reply. She does not understand anything.

“I hope you were awake,” I say, “I saw the light was on. It was the only light in the whole block, so I came here. I didn’t know where else to go,” I say, and as I speak I try to get up from where I am sitting without shaking. It’s not so damned easy, and she swallows quite visibly, and then she says in a surprisingly deep voice: “I always sleep with the light on.”

“Oh,” I say, and her eyes slowly focus. Now she is really staring at me, she recognises me, and I am on my feet now, I am standing straight, if not steadfast. But my teeth are chattering.

“Hell, you’ll have to forgive me,” I say. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I saw the light was on, and I just came up here. That’s all. I’m sorry to have woken you up. I’ll go away now.” And I start to walk, but I can’t stop shaking, and there is a clattering in my mouth, that step I sat on was far from warm, and I must look pretty weird.

“Are you ill?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I’m freezing, I can tell you that. I’m as cold as hell,” I say, and laugh, “ho, ho, ho.”

She is awake now, and my laughter confuses her. She bites her lip.

“So why are you so terribly cold?”

“I fell asleep down on the hillside. Luckily something woke me up.”

“An angel, maybe,” she says, and suddenly smiles such a sweet smile that I could have fallen to my knees and kissed her dressing gown, but that would have been way too much for me in the state that I am in, and certainly for her. She is younger than I had imagined, or rather, certainly younger than me , which is not saying much at present, for everyone I see these days who is definitely a grown-up is younger than I am, and it doesn’t help no matter how long I look at myself in the mirror. I see the same person I have always seen, whereas everyone else keeps changing, and I have a shock each time I realise that this is not how it is.

There is a vein in her neck that pulses almost unnoticeably. She doesn’t know that herself, but I can see it and that is where I keep my eyes fixed.

“It was a helicopter,” I say.

“A modern angel then,” she says and laughs softly in her deep voice, and then I know I don’t want to leave.

“Maybe it was,” I say. I shiver and hang in there, she might laugh once more, she might ask me in, anything might happen on a night like this when no-one else is awake except perhaps a nurse who at certain intervals walks down a corridor to check a curve on a screen. I wish she would ask me in. I cannot just stand here indefinitely.