Per Petterson - It's Fine By Me

‘Oetry?’

‘Yes, for sure, poetry, and if you ask me, that was the best time of my life. You know, Audun, there are so many things in this world. It’s not just here and now.’ I nod, and we pass through the Sinsen intersection and up the hills past Aker Hospital to Bjerke trotting stadium at the top, and I really wished we would never get to Veitvet.

I AM OFF sick for the rest of the week and the whole of the next. My mother’s got a cleaning job at the Park Hotel, so she is away for most of the day, and I drift around the flat on my own, curtains drawn, drinking soup through a straw and lying in bed, reading and taking painkillers whenever I have to. At six she comes home and tells me the latest news about celebrities and pop groups staying at the hotel, about their drinking and the state of the rooms and toilets after they’ve left. She is ruthless. I miss talking with Arvid, but he doesn’t ring me, so I don’t ring him.

The Sunday before I return to work, I go for a walk in Østmarka. I take the Metro from Veitvet to Tøyen and change there and go to Bogerud and walk into the woods from Rustadsaga. It’s cold, the air is crisp and clear and dead leaves lie in golden heaps along the hiking trail. My body still feels sore, but it’s working again, and I push the pace until the muscles tell me it’s enough. It is good to breathe after many days indoors. I have changed the large plaster for a smaller one, so I don’t have a snub nose any more. The swelling has gone down, and apart from a few yellowish-blue marks and the plaster, my face looks almost normal. I have a cigarette in my pocket. I am going to smoke it when I’m halfway. I don’t meet anyone that I know. People from Veitvet trek in Lillomarka.

And I don’t see any animals, but long Lake Elvåga is glittering in the sunshine. About halfway, I stop and slide down and sit on the slope by the bank. It is fine and open here, and the trees are naked. I take out the roll-up and a little notebook I like to think is similar to the one that Hemingway used in the Twenties in his Paris book A Moveable Feast. I light the cigarette and try to do what he did: write one true sentence. I try several, but they don’t amount to any more than what Arvid calls purple prose. I give it another go, and try to get down on paper the expression on Dole’s face when I dragged him by the leg across the floor of Geir’s bar. It’s better, but not very good. I leave it for the day and put the notebook back in my jacket pocket and clamber up to the path. I go north along the lake to Elvågaseter restaurant. I order a coffee and sit by the window. I let the coffee cool for a few minutes. I speak to no one. Then it’s the last stretch, up past Vallerud to Gamleveien. There is a bus stop there. I have to wait for half an hour, but that’s fine with me.

The bus is nearly empty, just an elderly man with a rucksack sitting at the very front talking to the driver. I sit at the back as I always do, thinking that for one and a half weeks I haven’t spoken to anyone except my mother.

The next day, I’m back on late shift. I sleep in for as long as I can, and when I catch the Metro, I am wearing Abrahamsen’s grey suit. It attracts attention. People stare in the Underground, and in the cloakroom at work there is whistling and polite bowing between the cabinets. Trond waves his arm and says I look like something straight out of a black and white film from the 1930s, and others say, hand on heart, that the tapered trousers are what make the greatest impact. The suit causes so much of a stir that no one mentions my face. Which was pretty much the idea.

Jan is off sick again. He has been sent to hospital. No one talks about what may be wrong with him. He is the paper roll man, and I have been trained as his substitute. Trond winks and says promotion is just round the corner. Trond is supposed to step in on the paper-folder, but the man there is never ill. A change is welcome, and I must work alone, which I like, but it’s a lot more hectic.

The rolls of paper are stored on a large platform, row upon row in the next room. Each of them weighs a ton, and they are transported on a little trolley that runs on rails from the platform to the middle of the press where the roll star is. There is room for three rolls in the star. My job is to keep it filled and not ever lag behind, and the art of it is to make the splice. The paper is spliced when the press is going full blast, and so I need a length that matches the speed. I calculate the angle and make a V-shaped tear along a steel ruler and fix the tip back against the roll and cover it with a precise pattern of strong double-sided tape. When the old roll is almost finished, I swing the star 120 degrees round until the new roll is straight under the web and start up the motor until it’s running at the same speed as the rest of the press. And so I stand waiting, waiting, my finger on the button, and then I have to push it, and a brush pastes the join to the paper web and a knife cuts off the old roll with a bang. The sport is to get as close to the cardboard core as possible. If all goes well the splice is removed at the folder, and if it doesn’t , there is a howl and the paper comes streaming out of its web, or it concertinas, and we have to stop the press and re-thread the whole web. That takes an hour at worst, with test runs and washing down, and I am no one’s favourite. It doesn’t always go well, but I am not stupid, and Jan has been a good teacher.

Today all goes well. I toil and sweat and enjoy my work, I kick-start the trolley and stand on it as I shoot along the rails into the next hall, cut off the wrapping, and manoeuvre the paper rolls to the edge of the platform and rock them gently on to the trolley. There’s a trick to it: if I push too hard the roll topples over, and that’s why I wear my steel-toed shoes. They are supposed to take a ton’s weight, but I don’t feel like testing the claim. I keep the star full and two rolls in reserve, and by lunchtime not one splice has gone awry.

In the canteen we play cards, printers and assistants at their separate tables; this is lunchtime apartheid, but I couldn’t care less. Everything’s gone better than expected. When Trond suddenly looks at my face and asks what I was really up to last week, I just answer with a shrug.

Goliath and the other printers are sitting at the next table. Midway through lunch, Jonny goes to their table from his corner and takes a seat. They deal him in, but he makes so much noise and laughs so hysterically that they send him off with a flea in his ear, and he has to go and sit down on his own again. I keep a watchful eye on him.

‘How’s Jonny doing?’ I say. Trond peers over his cards towards the corner.

‘Much worse. Every day he picks a quarrel with the foreman and turns up late every other. He’s on the edge. I’ve got a tenner on him to blow his stack this week. I don’t think I’ll lose.’

Neither do I. Jonny sits chewing on his sandwich and stares out the window, but outside there is nothing to see, it’s pitch black. I have an urge to go up and talk to him, but then I don’t. He is not in my league.

After the break, he runs around Number Three yelling at everybody and getting more and more desperate, and then he is off to the cloakroom. This keeps happening, and each time he returns with his body in a knot and throws himself at the ink regulators, but now he is the one making mistakes. His team is at their wits’ end, they have to stop the press every half an hour to re-set.

There’s a web break on ours. It’s not my fault, but Harald, who is Elk’s deputy, is running around giving orders and has fingered me as the sinner. He is sweating. I’m not afraid of him, I know what I am doing, and I do it my way, so I just turn my back on him. Goliath stands watching with a wry grin. I have no idea whose side he is on. We never talk. We prise out all the fragments that got stuck, and Goliath starts the machine on slow, and we thread a new web and wash down the blankets. It’s no problem, we are ahead of schedule. Harald can do his job, and I can do mine. When the press is running, I stock up with rolls, make the splices on the two already in the star and take out my pack of Petterøe and roll a cigarette. If all goes as it should do, I have twenty minutes.