Per Petterson - It's Fine By Me

‘A fox is a fox,’ Leif said, ‘and now that he knows his way around, it’s no good to have him running loose.’

We walked around, and Leif showed me the place. The stable, the sheep shed, the tractor that wouldn’t start just now, and the two baby goats he kept for entertainment.

‘We’ve got no TV here, Audun, and we have to have something to amuse ourselves with.’ And he pointed to the yellow barn and said: ‘Isn’t it fine,’ and I said it was, and then we crossed the yard, and Leif got in behind the wheel of the Volvo, and I got in on the other side.

‘I’ve a job for you,’ he said. ‘Let’s drive off now, and if you see something on the road I should brake for, anything living or breathing or whatever, you tell me in good time.’

‘Right,’ I said. I didn’t understand why, but we drove off, and for a minute there I was afraid we were going back the way I had come, but we didn’t. We were going to the shop and that was in the opposite direction. At one point I saw a tractor ahead of us on the road, and I told Leif in good time, and then he put his right hand under his right leg and lifted it off the accelerator and on to the brake, and we stopped just a metre from it.

‘Leg’s not what it used to be,’ Leif said.

I was there for a whole week. At night I slept in the room beneath the skylight, and in the morning I got up, and Signe served me her home-made bread in the kitchen. And then I worked most of the day on the jobs that Leif decided I could manage. There were more and more, and I could not get enough, and in the evening I swam in the river at a far better spot than the first one I found. At ten o’clock I was sent upstairs with a hug from Signe, and I was so greedy for it that I blushed. I tried to think as little as possible, I just drank it all in. On Wednesday one of their sons came up and fixed the tractor. They let me join him for a test drive, and then I drove it alone across the farmyard with everyone watching and cheering. The engine roared, and I sat up high, and I could steer it wherever I wanted to go.

On Saturday it was raining, and Leif said ‘Thank God, that’s not a day too soon’, and for the first time, I went out into the yard without my sunglasses on.

When I got up on the eighth day and went downstairs, my father was standing in the kitchen. He was smiling, and he was clean-shaven, but in his eyes I could see what was in store for me. Leif was sitting at the table looking down as I came in.

‘Sorry, Audun, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. We had to let them know. Anything else would be illegal.’

I REIN MYSELF in. On the first day I take the Metro from Veitvet, get off just a few stations closer to Oslo and cross under a railway bridge where I can see the sky between the sleepers above my head, and I walk up a road with factory buildings and warehouses lined up on each side, until I am at the top. Behind a warehouse storing washing powder and down another road to the left, I see the tall, grey Alles Hjem office block across the way, with a car park on the opposite side. The production plant is behind the office block. You cannot see it from the road. I try the main door I entered last week, but it is locked and dark inside. I rattle the brass handle until I realise the people up above don’t start until half-past eight. Now it’s only half-past six, and I walk around the building and find a small gate and enter the yard where there is a loading ramp the entire length of the wall. Pallets are stacked up in rows with waste paper compressed into bales, and I walk along the ramp and in through the plastic flap doors where the forklifts come and go.

The large room I walk into is the finishing shop. Just inside the door there are pallets of shrink-wrapped magazines shoulder to shoulder, twenty-five in each rack, and twelve racks high, ready for the distribution centre, and right in front the conveyors, long and low, and one so new you can still see the blue paint. Last week when I was here with the foreman, waiting to be shown round, a little man came down from his platform. His forearms were as big as Popeye’s, and he grabbed my shoulders in an iron grip.

‘Are you going to work here?’ he said.

‘I think so.’

‘Don’t,’ he said, pulling me away to his station on the conveyor. ‘Look. Do you know how long I’ve been working here? I’ve been working here for fifteen years, and in all those years I’ve been standing in front of this box, stuffing printed matter into that hole, and do you know what?’

‘No.’

‘It never gets full.’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘Do you understand what I’m saying? It never gets full!’ He held me round the shoulders so tight, it was hard to say anything but:

‘Let go for fuck’s sake.’ Luckily the foreman came up, and the man let go of me, and we moved on.

‘You won’t be working here,’ he said. ‘You’ll be working on the rotary press.’

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘Don’t mind him. He’s a philosopher.’

‘Right.’

The rotary press is at the other end of the hall and down the stairs. I walk slowly down the two landings to the clocking-in machine. I find my card and stick it in the slot and the sound makes me jump. The ink is black — one minute past seven it is red — and then I enter the cloakroom.

All the mirrors, all the basins with the No washing feet or clothes signs, the ugly yellow walls just like they were at Rosenhoff School, the grey metal cabinets one after the other, old men and young bikers, suddenly like big birds with their shirt tails flapping over bare thighs and white calves and then all in their blue work gear. Confident, seasoned.

I hate the thought of flapping my wings among them and try to delay it, but in the end I have to, and when I have finished, the new work clothes with their sharp creases are stiff and dark blue compared to the lighter, faded blue of the others. Behind me someone is whistling a wedding march, and I itch all over. I head for the door.

The concourse is strange and quiet and not as I remember it from my guided tour. The printing presses just stand there, three floors high, not a grain of dust stirring, and the air is cold against my face. I walk past the Number Three and on through a large door to the next concourse where only one press is standing, but this one is even bigger. Here is where I am going to work. At this machine. Seven men sit in two separate groups: printers and assistants. I am the one they’re waiting for, and when I enter, they all look towards the door, and a frighteningly tall, powerful man stands up and goes towards the console. I haven’t said hello to any of them, and I think maybe I should, but nobody seems to expect anything of the kind and I stand out on the floor between the two groups like an idiot with my arms hanging down like a pair of wooden planks. The tall man turns and yells:

‘TROND!’

‘Yes!’ someone tries to yell back, but his voice cracks at the top.

‘You tell this new. what’s your name?’ he shouts to me.

‘Audun Sletten,’ I say. My voice sounds reedy.

‘You explain to this Letten what his job is!’ Goliath shouts to the one called Trond. ‘He’s on C press.’

‘Sletten!’ I shout. Everyone looks at me and grins.

‘What?’

‘My name is Sletten, not LETTEN!’ I yell and feel my face itching. There is an echo in the room, and Letten bounces around like a ping-pong ball up under the ceiling.

‘Oh my God, did I get it wrong?’ Goliath says with a smirk. ‘It’s these ear protectors. They’re no good. My hearing’s damaged.’

Blood’s pounding in my ears, sweat running down my back. I clench my fists and raise them slowly, but no one even looks at me. I can hear their mocking laughter, and then they all get up and walk towards the press, and they are all bigger than me, and they laugh and shake their heads.