Per Petterson - In The Wake

She said: “One Christmas before you were born your mother came up to me and asked: ‘How would you have liked it if the man you had been married to for two years kept a photograph of another woman in his wallet?’ She used the Danish name for wallet, she was Danish, you know.”

“I know she was Danish,” I said, “Christ! But what did you say?”

“I answered: ‘I wouldn’t have liked that.’ ”

“Was that all?”

“What was I to say? After all, it was true. I wouldn’t have liked it at all. Luckily, Trond has never done anything like that, you know.”

I didn’t say what I thought, that how could she know, not everyone is as clumsy as my father and drops pictures out of his wallet.

“Well,” I said, “that’s great for the two of you.”

“I don’t know what more I can say,” she said, but of course she did, and we talked for quite a while.

I think of this as I drive along the gravel road from Lake Lysern and back on to the main road and over Tangen Bridge, and the road makes a bend past a shopping centre with a completely new housing area on the right, big groups of dreary houses slung up over the hillside with a view of a small lake where wooden bathing jetties are stuck in the ice along the shore.

I have had my fill now, I ate half the loaf and drank milk out of the blue cup, and I did that sitting in the car in the courtyard of my former trade union’s holiday camp where I drove in just after I left the shop. I had not planned to go there, I had not planned anything, but that is where I went. From the car I could see the Lysern stretching in a narrow neck of water behind the main building, and I saw the suspension bridge crossing to the chalets on the other side. I don’t know how many times I have crossed that bridge. There was ice on the water now, but the last time I was there people stood along the shore with their fishing rods and pails with perch in them, and there were rowing boats on the water and it was summer and laughter all over the place. I was going to be divorced, and I knew it. I had been waiting there a week for the woman I had seen behind me in the mirror almost every morning for fifteen years, and now I was trying to forget what she looked like. It was so hot I felt paralysed, the sun was baking, and all I wanted to do was to sit on a chair with a strong drink, but I could not do that, I had my daughters with me and had to fill the days with all kinds of things that belonged to summer so the girls would think it was a perfectly ordinary holiday. My brother had been there with his son and we had talked and talked until there was nothing more to say, until what we said grew into something that made us embarrassed, and then he had left and I was alone not knowing what to do with my days other than fill them. But on the last evening before she arrived, when the girls were in bed and I knew they were asleep, I put on the new boots I had bought because I was certain it would rain the whole week. I walked across the grass where dew had fallen and over the bridge with a wire fence along the sides which had been almost flattened by youngsters who loved to dive and jump from the edge and several metres down into the water, and on up the path I went, to the nearest chalet on the other side. The man who was staying there with his family had invited me for a drink several times, but I had refused, I could not drink, and the only thing we had in common was that we had once been members of the same union.

I knocked, someone shouted, and the boy who opened the door was in his pyjamas. He looked scared. I thought it was the sight of my face, I had not shaved or looked in a mirror for over a week and had no idea what I looked like, but over the boy’s shoulder I saw his father sitting in the only easy chair the place boasted, with a glass in his hand. He called out:

“Talk of the devil, come in, come in,” and it was all so stupid, I didn’t even like him, and he shouted again: “Another glass, pronto.”

His wife came from the kitchen and put a glass in my hand, and I went up to the chair, and he filled it to the brim with vodka. I can’t take gin or vodka, but it was too late to refuse, I didn’t know what to say, so I half emptied the glass in one big gulp, and it burned my throat and spread through my stomach like glowing lava, and I could not help coughing.

“Christ, you’re not that young, you should be able to take a dram,” he said, and I replied:

“Forty,” when the coughing fit subsided.

“Hell, you’re older than me, then. Look here,” he said and filled my glass again, “try once more, and let’s have a toast,” and I took another swallow, and this time my stomach was prepared. But it tasted nauseous, like drinking aftershave.

“Well, sit yourself down, then,” he said, but I stayed on my feet, and then he said: “Well, yes, we’ve seen you going to and fro, you and your chum, and we talked about it and thought for a while maybe you were gays, but then the wife said gays don’t have kids, so there you are. I’m only joking, you know, so don’t get mad.”

“Well, we’re not gay,” I said, looking at his wife who was standing in the kitchen doorway, she did not want to sit down either, although there was plenty of room on the sofa and several stools. “It was my brother.”

“Well, there you go. And then I had a word with one of your girls, and she said your wife is coming tomorrow, and we got the idea of the whole gang of you coming along Friday evening, and then we could have a real party, two regular families on holiday, right?”

“Ye-es, well, I don’t know,” I said, still standing in the middle of the floor, and he sat in the easy chair, and I knew I would never sit down in that chalet.

“I think I’d better get going again,” I said, “the kids are alone.”

“Shit, you can’t just go off at once like that, for Christ’s sake,” he said, and I saw his eyes turn black and frightened like two mirrors, and he grabbed my arm and said: “Hey, don’t go.”

“But I really must,” I said, emptying the glass. That was a mistake, for now I had downed two glasses of vodka without any water in a quarter of an hour, and there was only a scrap of chocolate and potato crisps in my stomach from an improvised feast with the girls on the last evening when everything was as it used to be, and I felt sick. I pulled my arm away and quickly made for the door.

“Just march in and drink people’s booze and then bunk off again,” I heard behind me, and the door slammed. I tried not to stagger, but it was not easy, it was dark now and the path was rough down to the bridge. I couldn’t take vodka, and I swallowed hard to avoid throwing up. What if the girls had woken up, I couldn’t go to the bathroom without hearing them call me. I walked faster and got to the bridge. Now I had to throw up, and I leaned on the rail, but there wasn’t any rail. Jesus, I thought as I fell, this is too ridiculous. I must have made a great splash, but I did not hear a splash. I just fell and felt how cool the water was when I hit the surface, and the stillness when it closed over me, and how my boots filled up and pulled me right down as soon as I went under, and I clearly saw the newspaper headlines as I squeezed my mouth shut and tried to pull off my boots: NEWLY DIVORCED MAN DROWNS IN LAKE AT ENEBAKK, FOUR METRES FROM DRY LAND.

But someone saw me fall, and they yelled and screamed and woke the whole area and I did not drown. When I rose to the surface at last and could breathe again, I saw lights everywhere, and out of the chalets people came crowding on to the bridge, and some had torches, and two men, eager for action, played the hero, and stripped off and jumped into the water. I wanted to manage by myself and put up a fight, but they didn’t back off and they pulled me ashore by my jacket collar, and there was an awful fuss, and the girls had woken up and were running in their nightdresses among the chalets searching for me, and they all thought I was pissed although I was not. Some old hags even started to mumble about child neglect, and that was how I lost my right of access to the girls when I was divorced in double-quick time a few weeks later. At first it made me furious, and then I was relieved, because I realised that if I added one thing to the other until it was all way out of control, and at the same time made myself numb and just looked straight ahead, that was a way of living that I could manage.