Per Petterson - It's Fine By Me

Signe white, Signe soft, blessed Signe, I thought. Bless the day, bless your feet on the path and the light on your brow.

‘Get some more sleep. It’s night now. You can sleep for as long as you want. It’s nobody’s business.’

‘Right.’

And then she was gone. Everything went quiet again, and when I looked out the window by the floor, the yellow barn had turned grey. I could sleep some more. I could sleep for ever. Just lie here under this skylight and sleep.

The sun shone through the skylight and woke me. Now the whole room was white. I felt listless, but the heaviness was gone. My clothes lay on a spindle-back chair by the bed, and carefully I swung myself out and started to put them on. They were clean and dry. How could anyone have had the time? I thought. The column of light from the ceiling made the duvet and the sheet shine; it looked like something from the Bible we used to read at school. It was fine to look at, but I couldn’t stay around, I was famished.

I went to the stairs and tried not to make those creaking sounds on my way down, but it couldn’t be done. I came out into a hall with working clothes on hooks in a row, and there was an open door, leading to a room that was filled with light. Inside there was someone humming. I sneaked up to have a look and saw Signe by the worktop holding three large jars. She did not turn, and yet she said:

‘Is that the young lad? Don’t stand outside freezing!’ She laughed with a surprisingly soft, dark chuckle. ‘Come in and get yourself something to eat. You must be hungry as a bear. I’ve just been to the pantry to fetch some jam.’ I entered the room and sat down at the long table. I looked at the jars. That was a lot of jam.

From the kitchen I looked out to the yard. A Volvo station wagon was parked close to the house. Dried mud came up to the windows. Behind it, there was another car. It had no wheels and was propped up on four piles of bricks.

The kitchen was spacious and light and full of stuff that didn’t work any more and was going to be repaired or maybe had just been forgotten. There was a new stove next to the worktop, and in a corner stood a black wood burner, and the kitchen was warm and outside it was sunny, and light was everywhere. It was all very fine, but I had put my sunglasses on, just in case, and Signe didn’t mention them when she served me four thick slices of home-made bread on a board and added butter and jam. I ate as if it were the last food in the world, and Signe said:

‘There’s more where that came from, so you just take it easy. Enjoy the food.’ So I took it easy, and when I was almost finished, I heard heavy, shuffling footsteps in the hall. I stopped eating and looked up at the door. A big man was leaning against the door frame. He grinned at me. He had a stick in one hand and the other he was running through his close-cropped hair, and his hands were as big as boulders, and his bulging chest looked rock-hard.

‘Well, there’s the boy with the white bum,’ he said. Slowly I stood up from the table, there was no other door into the room, and the window looked as if it hadn’t been opened for years, and then I edged round the table and started to run towards him. It was like running into a brick wall. He was rock-hard. He let go of the stick and grabbed me round one shoulder, held my hair and looked me straight in the eye. He didn’t blink, and his eyes were the brilliant blue of a child.

‘Hello there, you young billy goat,’ he smiled. ‘What I meant to say was that if it hadn’t been for your bum I would never have seen you. I was in the Volvo, and suddenly I saw something white by the river that wasn’t there before, so of course I had to stop. You didn’t look too clever, I can tell you.’ He let go of my hair and stroked my cheek, and his hand was huge and dry and rough as the rock it resembled, and I stood quite still, and then I couldn’t hold back, and I started to cry. The tears came from everywhere in floods, and he gently pushed me back into the kitchen.

‘Eat up,’ he said, ‘and then come out to the cowshed and we can have a chat. I could do with a hand. My legs are not what they used to be.’

I sat back down at the table and ate the last slice and cried into the jam and Signe stood humming with her back to me and bent down to put more wood into the black stove. The fire was rumbling, and finally I was both full and empty and bursting at the seams.

‘When you’ve finished, you go out and find Leif, if you feel like it,’ Signe said.

I walked out into the sunshine with my dark glasses on. I couldn’t see Leif anywhere, but there was an old man in overalls standing in the yard. He was thin as a rake and tall, the overalls hung off his shoulders like a flabby tent, and he was holding his hands against the small of his back, gazing up into the air, so I too looked up, but there was nothing there, just air. Then he was aware of me, and he turned on his heel, and we stood up straight staring at each other, and he shook his head and stroked his chin and made a friendly gesture. I did the same, and when he smiled his face split in two, and he was off across the yard and behind the barn.

‘That’s Bjørn, the farm boy,’ Signe said behind me. I turned and there she was, standing in the doorway with a swill bucket in her hand. ‘He helps round here, looks after the horse and mucks out the cowshed. It’s the last door on the right,’ she said, pointing. I walked that way. The hook was off and the door was ajar, and through the crack I could hear Leif swearing like a trooper.

‘Goddamnit, you’re tryin’ to teach your father to fuck?’ he yelled, and then I heard a bang. When I entered, it was half dark, but past the empty stalls I could make him out among a few calves. In each hand he had a shiny pail. The biggest calf had small horns already and was banging against the nearest pail, pulling and tugging at the tether and making a hell of a row. Leif leaned over to put the pail in the trough, and the calf jerked its head and hit him on the temple.

‘You bastard!’ he shouted and dropped the pail on the floor and smacked the calf between the eyes. It gave a jolt. It’s going to keel over, I thought, I was certain of it, for his hands were like sledgehammers. But it shook its head and beat a retreat. Leif turned, holding his forehead and grinned.

‘Rearing the young is a tricky business.’

‘Is that what you do to children?’ I said slowly, sensing the open door behind me, and I already knew his legs were bad. The place stank of cow muck and cow feed, and calf bodies were crashing about in the murk, and he looked at me with round eyes. Then he shook his head and said:

‘People are not animals, Audun.’ He bent over the calf and patted its flank. I had no idea how he knew my name. He pushed the pail over to the calf.

‘You halfwit, Ferdinand, now there’ll be less for you. It’s your own fault,’ and the calf slurped up what was left in the pail, and Leif gently rested his upper chest on Ferdinand’s back and stroked its flank, and the calf stood quite still and just slurped. Leif straightened up, holding on to the calf’s back, grabbed his stick and came over to me.

‘Ferdinand will be a good bull, but he’ll be big, and it’s just as well he learns who’s boss from the off. Soon it will be too late.’

We walked out into the sun. I felt fine now. Apart from one thing.

‘How did you know my name?’ I said.

He laughed. ‘It was written on the inside of your rucksack. Come on, let’s go and say hello to Toughie.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘The scourge of the chicken run.’

Toughie was a fox. He was tied up behind the barn and was almost tame, and wonderful to behold at close quarters. When Leif approached, Toughie jumped up on the leash and smiled as foxes do but he wasn’t that tame. Whenever he screamed there was chaos in the chicken run. But no one would let Toughie go. They had grown to love him, and they would either have to kill him or drive him miles away, and that was not an option.