Per Petterson: In The Wake

I must get out of this town. I clench my fists and then I get it. My briefcase has gone. I turn and look back, but there’s only a bundle of newspapers by the door. I look all the way down the street, past the business school to the city workers’ offices on the corner, but there’s nothing there, not a shadow, nothing but fag ends students have dropped on the pavement and an “open” sign outside the little sixties café.

It was only an old leather briefcase of the kind working people used a long time ago, they had them on their laps in the bus on the way to work, and in them the Arbeiderbladet and sandwich box and betting slip. We found three of them left in the bedroom cupboard when we cleared out the apartment. None of them had been used, so he must have been thinking ahead to the days of his pension and bought them cheap out of surplus stock, and they had lasted longer than he had expected. He had written his name in marking ink on the inside of the flap in letters he learned at school some time in the twenties, and as my brother used a yuppie briefcase I took all three. I use them constantly, there have been shots of me in the paper carrying one of those cases, and when people come up behind me calling and I turn round, they say: “Hi, Arvid, I recognised you by the briefcase.”

There was a fat notebook in that case almost filled with writing, and my glasses which cost 2000 kroner and a book by Alice Munro, Friend of My Youth . I am reading it for the third time, I have all her books, because there is a substance there, and a coherence that does not embellish, but conveys that nothing is in vain no matter what we have done, if we only look back, before it’s too late.

I don’t know. I don’t know if that is true. I am a bit dizzy because I dare not breathe deeply, it hurts so much every time I try that I hold back, and then there is not enough oxygen for the brain. I wipe my hands on my trousers, clear my throat and walk into the kiosk. There is room for three inside if you keep your elbows tucked in. She is squeezed between the counter and the shelves of cigarettes. I take the Dagblad from the stand and say: “ Dagbla ’ and a Coke.”

She says nothing and her eyes grow round with surprise behind her glasses, and they do not look at me but at something just by my ear. I raise my hand, but there is only my ear. I try again and she gives a little cough again and a cautious smile, standing very still. She does not understand what I say. The sound of the words is perfectly clear in my head, but they are not the ones that she is hearing. I don’t know what she hears. Then I see the fridge full of bottles on the outside of the counter. Of course, it is self-service. I turn and take hold of the handle, and because I feel so weak I pull it rather hard so I will not be embarrassed if it wont open at the first try. The door flies open, the fridge shakes and two bottles come sailing out, crash to the floor and roll away, but they do not break, they are half-litre plastic ones. One is a Fanta, the other a Coke. I bend down and wince as the pain in my side stabs at me, and I pick them up like a very old man and put the Fanta back in the fridge and the Coke on the counter. She doesn’t say a word, just looks straight past me with her round eyes. I feel in my jacket pocket and mercifully find my wallet there. It is a miracle, I realise that. I open it cautiously. The Visa card is in its place and the bonus cards for Shell and Fina and Texaco and the library cards for Lørenskog and Rælingen. But no sign of notes and coins. She looks at my wallet and I take out the Visa card instead and then she stares at it as if it were a completely new invention. I look at the till. It might date from the early sixties, and anyway it does not have a card facility. I don’t know what to do. I am so thirsty I can think of nothing else. She clears her throat and says distinctly and very slowly with generous movements of her mouth so I can read her lips: “You need not pay. It’s on the house.” She looks straight at me for the first time and gives me a big smile. It is an offer I cannot refuse. I ought to say something. I lick my lips, but my mouth is totally dry, my tongue swollen, and then I just pick up the Visa card and the newspaper and the Coke and back out of the kiosk. The light is blinding, so I walk diagonally across the street to avoid the sun and over the car park where there used to be a Texaco station and between the museums towards the University Hall and the railway station. Halfway there I can hold out no longer. I stop and open the bottle. The brown Coke spurts out of the nozzle all over my trousers, my shoes and the newspaper. I start to weep. I have been on my way down for a long time, and now I am there. At rock bottom. I hold the bottle away from my body until it stops running and then, weeping, drink what little is left, and I throw the empty bottle into the nearest litter bin. I chuck the wet paper after it. Without glasses I couldn’t read it anyway. And then I walk on.

THERE IS A ringing sound. I wake and I switch the alarm clock off. It goes on ringing. I fumble for the telephone in the dark, find it, and what I hear is the dialling tone. And then it rings again. It is the door. I switch on the lamp over the bed and look at the clock. It is not six, it is one. I pull my jeans on and a T-shirt, go out into the hall and open the front door. There is no-one there so I walk barefoot across the hallway, past the letterboxes, and then I see the Kurdish family from the third floor standing beyond the outside glass door in the cold. Three children: two girls, and a little boy crying quietly. The mother stares at the ground with her headscarf right down over her forehead, and though it is dark outside between the blocks, the light from the stairway shines red and blue and yellow in the flowers on her scarf, and the father with the big moustache smiles, he points at the lock and is bleeding from a cut on his cheek. He is my age, maybe slightly older. I go to the door and hold it open until they are all inside, and then I lock it again. He takes my hand and says thanks. I point at his cheek and look as enquiring as I can but he just shakes his head and smiles. Nothing to worry about. Right. He wears a white shirt under his grey jacket, and there are spots of blood on the collar. It looks dramatic, as in a film. He puts his hand on my shoulder and I feel that hand, he says thanks again, and then he points at my bare feet. It is so cold on the floor I am curling up my toes. Smiling, he pushes me towards my door, and then he opens his arms and puts them around his family and leads them gently and firmly upstairs, talking in a low, intense voice in a language I do not understand. The little boy is still crying. They have only been here for a few weeks, but he has learned to say “thanks”. That will come in handy, no question. They are from northern Iraq. That is all I know.

I stay at the bottom of the stairwell listening to his voice fading and their steps fading on the way up. I could have invited him in, he could have come down when the children were in bed, and we could have had a drink or a cup of hot chocolate if that’s what he would prefer, being a Muslim, and we could talk about having a family, that it’s not that easy, or we could talk of Saddam Hussein, anything he likes. Maybe he can speak German, I know a bit of German, more people than you’d think know German, and the last thing I hear before the door slams shut two floors up is the boy crying loudly. With no stranger watching he doesn’t hold back. Silence settles on the stairwell, and it is very cold. Beneath my thin T-shirt the elastic bandage is tight and uncomfortable, and I shiver uncontrollably.

It wasn’t lung cancer; I had two fractured ribs. Not until I got home from town and walked, half bent over, past the mirror in the hall did I notice that I had a black eye as well. Everyone on the train and on the bus from the station had seen it, people I know and have said hello to for several years, only I didn’t know. All the pains had converged into one big one, and I could not distinguish one from the other. And then I lay in bed, for days and nights, head spinning, before I called the doctor, dizzy from the want of air and thoughts of death, trying to unravel what had happened when I was far out of this world.