Per Petterson - It's Fine By Me

I keep my barrow just behind the stairs at the bottom of the tower. Everybody knows it’s mine, I have put my foot down, so the kids don’t fool around with it. I pull it out on to the footpath and walk up Beverveien towards the shopping centre. This morning I am the first one there. The newspapers are piled outside the depot, and I load the two packages on to the barrow and cut the strings. I see Fru Johansen coming down the road, but I don’t hang around for a chat. I set off along Grevlingveien and at the same time keep an eye peeled for the Vilden family, who are usually the first to arrive, sleepy and dutiful, but today I cannot see them. That makes me feel uneasy, and I know why. It is stupid, but all the same I look back over my shoulder towards the shopping centre as I move down Veitvetsvingen. After the first house where Pål, who used to be in my class, lives I walk on down the hill, and at the end of the road she is standing by the garage, as if she has been waiting for me. Her hair is untidy, she has been crying, and her face is wet and strained.

‘It’s Tommy,’ she says, ‘he didn’t come home last night. We’ve been looking for him everywhere.’

I can hear her words, but I am so captivated by her voice, that at first I don’t get what she is really saying. She suddenly looks completely resigned, her shoulders sinking, and she wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

‘It’s Tommy. We can’t find him. He’s been gone since yesterday.’ She’s in despair and bursts into tears, and I just look at her. Her hair is dark and curly, flowing everywhere, I want to run my fingers through it, and I raise my hand and stop by the sleeve of her grey duffle coat, and then I suddenly remember that red spot under Tommy’s nose. How come I never thought about that before.

‘Perhaps he hasn’t got such a bad cold after all,’ I mumble.

‘What did you say?’ Her words come out too loud. She senses it herself and scans the deserted street.

‘Come on,’ I say, ‘I don’t think you know where to look.’

I leave the barrow and take her with me up the hill I just came down. Halfway up, I look back down the road to the house where Arvid lives. He is leaning out of the window; it gives me a start, but I keep on going and do not call to him. It’s as if everyone is waiting for me. I hurry up the hill with the girl in tow, and I still don’t know her name.

We walk past the shopping centre. Konrad comes chugging by with his cap pulled down on his ears, and he waves, and I don’t wave back, just march towards the Metro station and round it and into Hubroveien and along the wire fence by the rails towards the next station at Rødtvet.

‘Hey, not so fast,’ she says behind me, ‘where are we going?’ But I do not answer, just keep up the same speed along the fence until the path narrows where the slope comes down from Trondhjemsveien towards the Metro line. There is a little dip at the path’s end. On the other side of the rails is Fru Karlsen’s house. There is no one standing on the step waiting, but I know she is there behind the curtains, and right in front of me in the grassy dip is Tommy, his head resting against the fence. This is where they hang out. I used to look here for Egil. I stop short, and the girl bumps into me from behind, I can feel her against my back.

‘Tommy!’ she shouts. I bend down and smell the fumes of Lynol: sweet and strong and nauseous, and I almost throw up the way I always did when we had woodwork at Veitvet School and I had to go into the paint room.

‘You little shit,’ I say. ‘You little swine, what the hell are you doing?’ I feel the anger inside me, but when she thumps me in the back with her fists, I stop. I grab him under his arms and legs, the yellow-striped jacket is covered in muck. I hold him tight and walk as fast as I can on the path alongside the rails. He is so small, he is as light as anything and thin and cold as ice, and I start to worry and put my ear to his face to listen for his breathing and then he turns his head with eyes closed and rests his cheek against my chest.

‘Papa,’ he whispers.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ I say, and she hits me again.

They live in Rådyrveien at the lower part of Veitvet. The long apartment block is identical to the one that I live in, and it stands at an angle to the road below where Låke used to have his grocery store. It’s closed now, the windows are lined with cardboard and you can see your reflection as you pass. The fields rise up to the left, towards Bredtvet farm and the prison, where the rebel Hans Nielsen Hauge’s statue is standing. The Sunday school is there in the hollow by Condom Creek, and a few years ago there was a ski jump behind a hill near Østre Aker vei. I jumped eighteen metres there once and landed face first. Five stitches.

The father stands waiting by the door to the tower, tall and thin, searching the street, and when he sees us coming, he breaks into a run. His eyes are red from lack of sleep, and I pass Tommy to him, and he lifts the boy and holds him in his arms, and says, ‘Oh, Jesus.’ And he doesn’t even look at me, just hurries back down. He staggers on, his long legs teeter, he looks like a stork with a giant baby in his beak and Tommy’s feet are dangling down by his hips.

‘Maybe you should call an ambulance,’ I say to his sister, ‘he’s not in great shape.’ She nods, and suddenly I feel naked without Tommy in my arms. I turn and look up the street.

‘I guess I have to be off. The people waiting for their papers will be pissed off.’

‘I know,’ she says with a little smile and puts her arms around me and gives me a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she says. My hands hang down by my side, there is no room for them anywhere, and then she lets go and runs down the road after her father.

When I am almost up to my barrow, old Abrahamsen is standing there, shifting his weight from foot to foot, peering left to right, and then he spots me hurrying up the hill by the Veitvet waterfall and calls from a distance:

‘Can I have one?!’

‘Sure!’ I shout back, even though I am quite close now, and there is no other sound.

‘Damn,’ he says, ‘I won’t make it to the bus.’ He is really pissed off, but still he doesn’t move. I don’t know what he wants, and all of a sudden I feel weary.

‘Well, run off then, or read Arbeiderbladet instead, hell, I don’t know, but I just can’t stay here.’ I take the barrow and set off and then, damn me, if he doesn’t go all friendly.

‘Look, Audun,’ he says, and I turn and he says: ‘Well Audun, I’ve watched you walking this round for several years, and I was wondering. How are you really doing?’ He blushes, the old man, and I blush, too, I don’t know how to answer a question like that, so I shrug and wait. He scratches his chin, and there is a rasping sound.

‘Well, if there is ever anything, you know where I live.’ He is relieved; he has said what he wanted to say. He opens the newspaper, and now suddenly he has all the time in the world, and he strolls up the hill past the red telephone booth, and I think to myself, I really don’t get this man. He reads while he is walking, he must have radar or sonar navigation, like a bat at night, because he moves between the posts and the bushes by the kerb without once looking up.

I finish off Veitvetsvingen as quickly as I can, and only Grevlingveien is left. People are standing on their steps, waiting, and they are not happy. But I don’t look at them or apologise or anything, just push the paper into their hands and hurry on. At the end of the route, by the last house, Fru Karlsen is standing by her door. The dress she is wearing is really something, her shoulders still tanned after the summer have a faint glow, warm, as though she is just out of bed, and I have pictured it white and white, and myself in it, and my own skin close to the skin I can see now, her hands everywhere, and my hands everywhere, where she is soft and different, and the dizzying fragrance of Fru Karlsen, but straight away I can see that there is something amiss, for her arm is rigid as she runs her hand through her hair, and I just want to turn and get the hell out of there. But I can’t, I have to give her the newspaper, it’s my job, and I walk slowly towards her on the flagstone footpath.