Per Petterson - It's Fine By Me

‘Don’t forget the bin bag on your way out,’ I say.

We take Trondhjemsveien out of town to Gjelleråsen Ridge. The car is a black Opel Kadett, not exactly the latest model, but well looked after, and I feel good sitting behind the wheel. I have had my licence for two months; Arvid and I took our tests at the same time. Before that, I had only driven a tractor out in the countryside. The cars were Egil’s thing, he was obsessed and pestered his way into most of those around our place from the time he was ten, but I do like the movement and freedom and always stretch the speed limit. Arvid rolls his window down all the way, and his head is almost out of the car, the wind blows in and it gets cold, but he shuts his eyes and opens his mouth and refuses to roll the window back up.

‘You’ll get your head chopped off or a sparrow down your throat,’ I say.

‘Aw, shut up,’ he answers and I swerve the car wheel to give him a scare, but he doesn’t care.

‘Leaving Oslo,’ I say as we pass the sign by Skillebekk. ‘Akershus County next. Nittedal or Skedsmo?’

‘Skedsmo,’ he says from outside the car, and I turn at the crossroads at the top of the ridge and drive down the long, winding hill behind Mortens Kro, the restaurant there, and on to the Hellerud plain.

‘Please, not Lillestrøm.’

‘OK.’ I turn into the road for Nittedal church and Solberg, down a steep incline and cross the narrow bridge over the Nitelva river. Along the banks there are boys with fishing rods casting their lines and having a good time in the warming sun. One of them has just landed a perch, its scales glinting, and I stop the car and watch. Arvid opens the door, gets out and goes over to a bush where he throws up and then slides down the embankment to the river and washes his face in the ice cold water.

‘We should have brought fishing tackle,’ he says, coming back up behind the car and is in a cheery mood all of a sudden.

‘Well it’s too late now, you have soiled the water.’

He gets back in, and I do a perfect hill start without the handbrake. The fields rise steeply on both sides of the river and yellow and grey they arch in a pattern of shapes and lines against the blue sky, and I don’t know why, but it does something to me.

‘Left or right?’ I ask at the first junction.

‘Right, or else we’ll be back in Nittedal.’ I turn right, up a gravel road and wonder what’s with him and Nittedal.

The road winds between sloping fields and slowly climbs, and then we are at the top. Down to the left, the valley opens beneath a lattice of shadows and light on the meadow, and moving north it narrows into a funnel and only the gleaming road heads on to Harestua. We can barely make out Glitre Sanatorium, its solid yellow shape in the foothills. There is a strong wind here: a gust catches the car and almost blows us into the ditch, and I wrench the wheel against the wind and the car lurches forward like a drunk man’s car, and I give Arvid a glance and wonder how his gut feels. But he laughs, he’s having a good time.

‘Step on it,’ he says, leaning back and putting his feet on the dashboard. ‘Shit, I feel so much better now.’

We enter Skedsmo by Nittedal church through a grove of spruce trees. There are a few houses, and there is a bus shelter, and Arvid points at the trees.

‘Do you remember when we trudged through those trees to the Krakoseter cabins with our rucksacks down round our knees? We had to sing the Scout song the whole way. Do you remember when you got your pants filled with Coke? Being a Scout was such great fun.’

I do remember, and I remember exactly how much fun the Scouts were. We had joined the Scouts for a year because of the trips they went on, and I remember that one time I didn’t finish a cross-country run because I’d been lying in the heather watching a fox attack a pigeon. The Scout leaders came crashing and yelling through the forest and scared the fox out of its wits and dragged me down to the cabins. And when we were there, I had to stand on my hands out in the yard surrounded by Girl Guides while two leaders held me up by the feet and a third poured a bottle of Coke down each trouser leg. Then they forced me to walk around for two hours without changing my clothes while the Coke dried into sticky patches all over my body. When at last they allowed me to wash and I had borrowed some clean clothes from Arvid, I went into the leaders’ room and punched the scoutmaster. He was even a member of the goddamn Rotary Club.

I remember the burnt bread over the fire and the burnt sausages and the assistant Scout leader who was thirty-five and still lived with his mother and always wanted to ask the new boys back to his room at home. We’re going to a jamboree in America in the autumn and have to discuss it, he kept saying, and who didn’t want to go to America? But he was the only person who had ever heard about that trip to America, and I remember how relieved I was when I walked alone down the path through the forest to the bus stop on my last day after being expelled from the Scouts, and I promised myself I would never join anything organised again.

‘You still remember it, don’t you?’ Arvid asks and starts singing, and I chime in and soon we bawl at the top of our voices:

Dear father in heaven so high, hear my heart’s silent prayer, toiling on earth beneath the sky, give me the strength and wit to care, help me to live by thine own son’s creed, to honour my parents, the land and laws, and help all others in word and deed, obeying Scout vows and aiding our cause!

And we remember every word and every note of the song, and know we will never forget them for as long as we live.

At the Skedsmo junction the road goes north to Gjerdrum. There are fields on both sides the whole way, and behind them is the dense forest. The road twists and turns, goes up hill and down dale, and the driving is never boring. I keep the speed up as much as I dare, go even faster on the straights and change down before the bends and try to stay as close as possible to the point when the Opel just might lose traction and skid off the road, but not quite, because the car is not mine. The telephone poles flash past, and I feel a rush in my body that is new and makes my head spin, and now would be a good time to hear Jimi Hendrix play ‘Crosstown Traffic’ or ‘Purple Haze’. Arvid sits quietly with his hair blown back, just watching, then he picks up his tobacco and rolls two cigarettes, lights them both with the dashboard lighter and pokes one in my mouth.

‘God, it’s wonderful,’ he says. ‘I’ve never been here before. Is this where you come from?’

‘Not quite.’

Not quite, but not far off either. I thought I had forgotten how everything looked, but I haven’t forgotten a thing.

I have not forgotten the cornfields in autumn, or Lake Aurtjern in July or the apple tree outside my window, and all I had to do was reach out and pick an apple, or the long gravel road where Siri Skirt used to walk and show her bottom for two ten øre coins, and she wasn’t wearing anything underneath, and once I was allowed to walk round twice while she held her skirt up under her chin; or the rafting holiday on Lake Hurdal. My father forced me to come with him, and made me pull up a pike that scared me witless, and when I refused, he hit me in the face, and then I hammered a nail into my foot, and we were forced to go home.

‘Hey, look at the petrol gauge,’ Arvid suddenly shouts, ‘we’re out of petrol. Have you got any money? I think I’m skint.’ He puts his hand in his pocket and we pull into the Shell station in Ask and empty our pockets. We have twenty-five kroner between us. I let the car roll to the first petrol pump and sit waiting for Arvid to get out and fill up. But he doesn’t move. We stare straight ahead, and we don’t speak, and then he says: