Per Petterson: It's Fine By Me

I know, of course, but I’m not telling her.

‘Don’t ask. I’ll find him. Bye.’

I get dressed and go out and along the Sing-Sing balcony that runs along the third floor. What I really should have been doing is the afternoon round with Aftenposten , but I said I couldn’t do it any more. It was too much, I didn’t get my homework done. And, to tell the truth, I was fed up with it. At school I’m exhausted because I get up well before dawn, and so I sit there at my desk knowing I have to go out again as soon as I get home. It’s one thing delivering papers before people get up in the morning, another being on display when everybody’s outside doing whatever or sitting by the window, watching me with some hilarious remark up their sleeve.

I walk past the Metro station, up along Veitvetveien to Trondhjemsveien and through the underpass and then zigzag up between the blocks in Slettaløkka. At the top, before the forest, is the fenced-off area of the Nike missile battalion with the tall lookout tower and the big iron gate and the sentry box. Today, the gate is open, but there is no guard. That’s fine with me, I didn’t plan to sneak in anyway.

The path into the forest starts just beyond the football pitch that the soldiers and local people share, and to the right are the cracked-up foundations of an old smallholding owned by the Linderud estate. The house was still standing when I moved here. I remember grey smoke from the chimney, snowflakes melting on the roof and a face in the shadows behind the window. She must be dead now. Below is the horse field. It slopes sharply down and rises again to the edge of the forest. Inside it is a clearing, and inside the clearing is a huge rock. It’s twenty metres long and ten metres wide and shaped like a fortress it’s easy to defend against enemy attacks, and then there are hollows where you can hide if there’s an invasion and several secret passages out if you need to escape. I just caught the last wars before I got too old for that kind of thing, but Arvid grew up among these rocks, and this is where he goes when he wants to be alone. I walk across the meadow, there is only one horse, it’s brown with white socks, it’s just a horse, nothing special. On my way up I see him on the top of the rock with a book in his hand and a cigarette between his lips. Even from a distance, I can see it clearly in the corner of his mouth, and he takes it out and blows smoke above the book, and the smoke curls in the autumn air, and it seems odd, like something I have seen in a film, and he stands up and watches me as I walk across the field.

For a moment there, it’s difficult to be the one who is approaching. I almost turn and go back. He stands quite still watching me. Someone is watching me, and I don’t know what he expects. I feel like going back. This has never happened before. Not with Arvid. He is my friend, we have been friends for five years, since the first break on the first day at school in the autumn of 1965, and hardly a day has passed when we haven’t talked, and now here he is, watching me approach, and I do not know who it is that he sees.

But it’s only a moment, and then things fall back into place, he raises the hand holding the book and I wave back, and what I’m thinking is, I will always get by on my own.

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘Hi.’ He climbs down from the rock.

‘It’s damn cold.’

‘Hell, yes,’ he says, a bit uncertain, because, in fact, it isn’t cold any more, but it was this morning, and nothing else occurs to me just then, and the only sound is the sound of the horse snorting in the field. It’s restless and tosses its head and backs away. We can’t see what it is it’s afraid of, but now it is prancing on stiff legs and suddenly rears round and gallops towards where we are standing. It all happens so fast, it is sudden and violent and now the horse does look remarkable, for it is a thing of beauty, and even though there are many beautiful things in this world, it is always a strange feeling when you actually see them. And what we see is this animal with ears pinned back, its brown skin steaming and legs like shadows beneath its belly, and the hooves hammering the ground like a train over jointed tracks. I feel Arvid go stiff. I grab his shoulder and go stiff myself, although I have grown up among horses, and the instant before it hits us, I can see everything around me with brilliant clarity: the brilliant blue autumn sky, the yellow ridges, yes, every leaf up close and binocular-sharp in the limpid air. I suck the air down and howl WAAAHH! The horse turns in a flash and veers to the right and comes to a halt another twenty metres down the field, its flanks quivering, and then lowers its neck and snatches a mouthful of grass as though nothing has happened.

‘Goddamnit,’ Arvid says, ‘that was something. Do you think it would have knocked us down?’

‘What? No, I’ve never heard of anything like that. I don’t know what spooked it, but I knew it would stop.’

‘You screamed.’

‘Because it was so damn beautiful.’

Arvid throws himself down on to the grass with his arms stretched wide and bursts into laughter, and I too have to laugh, because what was awkward between us has evaporated in the wake of the horse. I sit down on a boulder and roll myself a cigarette.

‘How are you? Your mother said you got a week.’

‘I don’t know, really. It was lousy being expelled, but now I have time to read more.’ He waves his book. ‘Strong stuff. Do you know it?’

It’s Jan Myrdal’s Confessions of a Disloyal European, that has just been published by Pax. I know Jan Myrdal. Arvid has been taking the Metro to Oslo East every weekend to buy the Swedish paper Aftonbladet where Myrdal has a column, but this book I haven’t seen.

‘You can have it when I’ve finished.’

‘I can buy it myself. I guess I have more money than you have. How’s Henrik?’

‘We planned it together, but of course I was the one who hoisted the flag, and that’s what I told them, so it was me who got expelled. But listen to this,’ he says, and reads:

‘“In Ceylon I talk to a nice European tea planter.

‘“‘So how many people live in this district?’ I ask.

‘“‘We are only four families,’ he says.

‘“‘That’s not very many,’ I say.

‘“‘And twenty-five thousand Tamils, of course,’ he says.”’

‘Shit, let me see.’ He hands me the book, and I read the page, and the next; it’s pure, concise writing about things that you walk around turning over in your mind. I have to have this book, there is something different here, open, bold. I give it back.

‘Come along,’ I say, climbing the rock to the highest point and Arvid comes with me. From where we stand, we can see past the fields to Rødtvet and Kaldbakken and a tiny slice of Trondhjemsveien where the footpath descends to the houses in Veitvet. I point.

‘Do you know who I saw there yesterday morning?’

‘How would I know?’

‘My father.’

‘Your father? Hell, isn’t he dead?’

‘Did I ever say that?’

He thought for a moment. ‘No, I guess you haven’t. As far as I remember, you haven’t said a thing about him, ever. That’s why I thought he was dead.’

‘No. He isn’t dead.’

‘I see,’ Arvid says. He looks bewildered, and looks down at Trondhjemsveien as if there was something he could find there.

So now I’ve said it. I shouldn’t have, because then I may have to tell him more. Arvid is my friend, and now he looks at me, and my mind goes dim, and all around me it’s getting dark, the forest is dark, it’s late in the day and no longer possible to see in between the trees. It’s all shadows. I turn my back, but that doesn’t make it any better, a chill runs up my spine, and I can’t stand still. I start to move down the rock, jumping from boulder to boulder as fast as I can, and Arvid is behind me.