Per Petterson - It's Fine By Me

Most people in the room I have seen before, but I don’t really know them, and many look up at me in surprise, and one calls out:

‘Hey, Audun, I thought you’d retired?’ His name is Willy, and he is one of those who hang around the Metro station. He is sixteen and was a friend of Egil’s. I always thought he was a slimy bastard. Whenever he came to our door to ask for Egil, I left him standing outside on the Sing-Sing gallery, even when it was pelting down.

I shrug and look past him and see Tommy’s sister sitting in a corner talking with two other girls. She looks back at me, and I blush, and Willy puts down his table tennis racket and carves his way through. He comes straight over to me and smiles. I can’t for the life of me think why: maybe because I am the oldest person in the room, and he wants to impress. He has shoulder-length blond hair, a little longer than mine, and he takes hold of my arm and says:

‘Shit, Audun, that was a bloody shame about your brother. Egil was a dead cool guy.’

I remove his hand. ‘Beat it,’ I say.

He doesn’t like that. He gets confused and looks round to see who has heard what I said, but the table tennis balls click to and fro, and sometimes they bounce on to the floor, and the players shout and laugh and are having a good time.

‘Come on, Audun, surely I have a right to say something. Shit, Egil was my best friend.’

‘Did you hear what I said? Scram!’ I push him away, he staggers backwards, and now it’s hard for him to pretend nothing is happening. The room goes quiet, and those inside it turn and look to the doorway where I am standing. It’s fine by me. I have no business with them. Willy crouches down and gets sly, he smiles, he wants to fight, one word from me, and he will fight. That’s fine, too, I don’t give a shit, and then Arvid comes down the hall, his face in a frenzy.

‘They’re not here,’ he says.

‘Who isn’t?’

‘Unless you’re one of them?’ he says and walks straight up to Willy and slams him against the wall.

‘Hey, give me a break,’ Willy says, ‘I had nothing to do with it!’

I am completely at sea. Arvid suddenly goes wild, his thin body tense like a wire, he can’t keep his feet down, and he grabs Willy around the neck and pins him to the wall.

‘One of who, Arvid?’

‘One of those who beat up my dad. Just two hours ago. He was on his way home from his shift, right, and when he came out of the Metro, this gang went for him. I guess he didn’t think their jokes were funny. How the hell would I know! And now he’s at home in bed, and he looks a mess.’ He starts shaking Willy like a rag doll, and I don’t understand why Willy is just standing there looking scared instead of fighting back. He must be stronger than skinny Arvid and much more used to a scrap, but he shouts:

‘I wasn’t with them. It was Dole and the others.’

‘Dole and the others? For fuck’s sake, Dole is your great pal, isn’t he? You knucklehead!’ Arvid yells, and now he is pounding Willy, and it looks so awkward, and no one is playing table tennis any more, they’re all on their feet roaring and cheering, and I grab Arvid’s shoulder and haul him off, and in the corridor I can hear the club leaders come running. We have to get out, pronto. I hold his shoulder in a rock-hard grip and hiss in his ear:

‘Calm down for Christ’s sake. We’re leaving.’ The man at the door rounds the corner and blocks the exit. I move in close, wrap my arms round his back, and before anyone can see what I am doing, I lift him and carry him into the next room. There he stands yelling in the middle of the floor.

‘You just wait! I’ll get you for this!’

‘Kiss my arse,’ I say and pull Arvid by the jacket and run down the hall and out through the door. It’s dark outside and suddenly cold, and we carry on up the spiral staircase, round and round, and into the square. There we stop, and I say: ‘What the hell has got into you? Why can’t you tell me what’s going on before you drag me out? And here I was, convinced it was a girl you were after, the way you’d dressed up!’

‘You have to show them who you are, don’t you get it?’ He snatches the beret from his pocket and smacks it on his head. He hasn’t calmed down at all, my friend is standing there shouting into my face.

‘He’s sixty years old, for Christ’s sake, and he doesn’t even admit it to himself. He was a boxer, right, he still believes he’s young, and now he’s been beaten up by a gang of snot-nosed kids. He doesn’t even dare to go to casualty although he needs stitches all over his face. He crawled up the stairs, goddamnit. Do you understand what shape he’s in?’

‘Hell, of course I do, just calm down a bit,’ I say, but I don’t understand what shape Arvid’s father is in, I only know that I am getting angry too. His father’s been beaten up, it’s a disgrace, but why does he have to shout at me? ‘No need to get hysterical. Calm down,’ I say again.

‘Why should I calm down? Tell me why I should calm down!’ He is close to tears, and suddenly he pokes me in the chest. ‘Tell me why I should calm down!’ he shouts.

‘Take that stupid beret off,’ I say. ‘It looks so goddamn pretentious!’ He stands in front of me, his mouth wide open, and I really feel like punching him. But of course I can’t, and I don’t know where to put my hands, but I will hit him unless I can think of something very quickly. I don’t want to beat it and leave him here alone, and so I do the only thing I can think of and put my arms around him, pull him close to me and hold him tight. Very tight. He goes as stiff as a fence post and gasps for air, and only then do I realise that Arvid loves his father. It has never occurred to me. They seem to argue most of the time, they slam doors and shout at each other up and down the stairs. I am still angry, and I squeeze him, and then Arvid starts crying. For fuck’s sake, he says to my shoulder, and he loves his father so much, and now that he’s been beaten up, Arvid wants to take on the whole of Veitvet on his own, beret and all. It makes me furious, and I squeeze him harder, and there’s a heat surging up from my legs into my stomach, and it’s not a nice feeling at all, so I keep it down there, and we stand in the middle of this market square hugging each other, and if anyone sees us now, they’re bound to think we are a couple of homos.

I don’t know if I dare let him go. If I do, I will feel naked and cold and lost in this world.

Somewhere a clock is ticking. I see the sign for the Skoglund grocery store, I have seen it a thousand times before, but never like this in the midst of a silence. Outside the silence a car comes to a halt and sets off again, and then I hear quick footsteps, someone is moving up behind me and says:

‘Hey, I followed you,’ and little by little I release him. I don’t know how long we have been standing like this, but my arms ache, and I realise that I have been squeezing him as hard as I can. In my chest there is a pain, and Arvid straightens up and takes a deep breath, there is a whistle in his throat, and I see what caused the pain: it’s the NLF badge on his lapel. I lean towards him and whisper:

‘Forget what I said about your beret, it’s just fine.’ But he looks at me as though he has never seen me before, I could have been Christopher Columbus and he my first Indian, his face is flushed and his eyes are shiny. I turn, and it’s Tommy’s sister standing there.

‘What’s your name?’ I say.

‘What?’

‘What’s your name, for Christ’s sake?’ I’m almost yelling, but she answers calmly:

‘Rita. Didn’t you know?’

‘No.’

‘Right. Well, anyway, I heard what you said at the club. It’s true that it was Dole and a few others. Willy just stood watching. Dole’s in there,’ she says and points. We are standing outside Geir’s bar. I look through the window. Dole is sitting at the nearest table with a beer in front of him, it has a golden gleam from the lamp above, and I can see the bubbles from here, and he has a crew cut, like an American marine. He was the first to have long hair at school, and now he has no hair at all. His head is large and round, and he is laughing and telling something funny to someone I cannot see. I turn to Arvid.