I Curse the River of Time (22 page)

Ingrid was still smiling. ‘Is it serious?’ she said.

‘It is,’ my mother said. ‘At least
they
seem to think so.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Ingrid said. ‘Shall we go for a walk? After the coffee? Are you up to it?’

‘Yes, I am.’

They drank the coffee. They smiled at each other, my mother dried her eyes. It was good to sit there, it was warm, and then for a moment she thought, I am really not up to it.

‘Was that him in the car? It would be interesting to see how he turned out, now that he’s a grown-up.’

‘No, the one out there is his brother. He’s younger.’

‘And he’s not coming inside?’

‘He’s not coming inside. He’s thirty-seven years old, but I wouldn’t call him a grown-up. That would be an
exaggeration. He’s getting a divorce. I don’t know what to do with him. And my friend, Hansen, too, is in the taxi. He came, well, as a friend. He doesn’t mind waiting.’

‘Won’t the taxi be expensive?’

‘We’ve agreed on a price, it’s all right.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ Ingrid said and stood up and went out into the hall and put on her coat, and my mother followed and her body felt heavy, unwilling.

‘Talking comes easier when you walk,’ Ingrid said, and my mother said she was probably right.

Ingrid tied a scarf around her head. ‘It’s vile outside,’ she said, ‘you need something to cover your head.’ She pulled a scarf down from a shelf, a white one with pink flowers, like the scarves my mother had seen old Russian women wear, and I suppose that is what I am, she thought. An old woman.

The door opened and they stepped outside, their scarves tight around their heads, and the old woman pulled the door behind her, turned and looked towards the car where we were sitting, and for some reason she locked the door, but I don’t think it had anything to do with us. They came down with their hands in their coat pockets and started to walk, away from the taxi across the plain, and it was not easy for me to imagine what they said to each other.

When they were about twenty metres away, Hansen opened the door on his side of the car, got out and walked in the opposite direction. I followed him.

‘Are your legs stiff?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Mine too.’

We walked a while, I turned up the collar of my jacket and the sky was grey above us, weighing our heads down and the air was moist and sticky against our faces and pressed at my temples. After some time I pulled the tobacco pouch from my pocket and rolled a cigarette, then I rolled another and offered it to Hansen.

‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ and I lit them both and we smoked and damnit, it tasted good.

‘What do you think they’re talking about?’ I said.

‘That’s not hard to guess,’ said Hansen. ‘They’re talking about her time here when your brother was born. The one who came before you. This is where it happened, you know.’

‘I know. You just told me. In a way I have always known it,’ I said, ‘but I just couldn’t picture it, no one told me anything.’

‘No, I don’t suppose they did. Maybe they should have.’

‘Yes,’ I said. And then I said: ‘Do you think they’re talking about me too?’

‘Probably not.’

‘No, I don’t suppose they are,’ I said.

Hansen did not really want to talk, so we walked on in silence, and the plain was flat as only Danish plains can be. Once, a long time ago, someone must have run amok with an iron round here.

Across the plain was a cluster of houses. A couple of them had roofs covered in dried seaweed. There were trees planted in a circle around the houses; they were still small, the trees, pine and spruce, and around the circle we walked
and then back the way we had come. As we did not walk fast time barely touched us. Tick tick, it softly said. Like a taxi meter. When we reached the car, we quickly climbed in and the taxi driver had kept the engine running to keep it warm. I looked at the petrol gauge, but the needle showed half full and maybe more.

And then they came walking back along the road, arm in arm, scarf to scarf, slightly bent against the damp wind. They stopped in front of the house, still arm in arm, or rather, hand in hand, and still there were things to be said, for they walked up to the house together and were gone behind the door, and we sat in the car waiting, each huddled against our corner, and fifteen minutes later she came down from the house, alone, with a small parcel in her hand.

After dinner at the hotel, I went up to my room to fetch the bottle of Calvados from the bedside table and three plastic cups and came back down again. My mother and Hansen were still sitting at the table, I placed the bottle and the cups in front of them. They were both smoking. It was dark outside. They looked at each other, and then my mother looked at me and smiled faintly, without enthusiasm, but she didn’t look sceptical either. I poured Calvados into the plastic cups, and Hansen raised his and said:

‘Arch of Triumph
then, isn’t it,’ and my mother raised hers and said:

‘Arch of Triumph
, a toast to Boris and Ravic, God bless them both,’ and they laughed, and I raised my cup too, and I took a sip. The taste was strong and good and much better
than the taste of whisky. I could feel the alcohol glowing in my stomach, and Hansen’s bass made everything vibrate.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘that was good booze.’

‘One more,’ I said and raised the bottle, but Hansen shook his head, and my mother said:

‘That’ll do for today. I’m going upstairs. See you in the morning.’

‘Ditto,’ Hansen said, and I knew that word and I knew what it meant, so then he too would go upstairs, and he did, and together they climbed to the first floor and left me at the table. I poured another shot and drank the yellow liquid in small sips as I looked down to the harbour through the window and saw the lights along the quays, and in some boats the lights were burning and there were lamps along the walkway. I stood up, took my reefer jacket from the chair, stuck the bottle in my inside pocket, and brought the cup with me and went down to the harbour and on to one of the quays where the fishing boats lay one after another. I did not stop until I was all the way out and I stood there listening to the soft and jingly sound of the waves against the concrete in the dark. I filled my cup almost to the brim and walked slowly back while I drank. I felt good, almost happy. It was the alcohol, I knew that, but it did not matter.

25

H
ansen was not yet awake, so just the two of us were standing on the beach facing west, towards the mainland. The weather had changed, and it was glitteringly cold, and the morning light was well on its way. It was well below zero and the air was bright as it sometimes is in the autumn; transparent, as if a magnifying glass had been lowered from the sky. Through the glass we could see the town on the mainland come into focus with its faint, rust-coloured skyline to the north and the south, and in the midst of it the church tower rose high. On days with no mist you could stand on the ridge behind the town and see across the water to the beach where we were standing now.

I could just make out the top of the old grain silo, which was concrete grey and massive with the red
dlg
logo floating high above the harbour, but of course we could not see the letters from here. The silo was empty now, nothing but hollow echoes and multitudes of cubic metres black as coal from top to bottom. Everything was changing, the whole town was. There were car-free zones and more shops than before, there were more pubs, more ferries packed with drunken Norwegians and drunken Swedes.

I half turned and looked at her. The air was clear and the wind cut our faces. With her left hand she held her coat tight at her throat, with the right she held her cigarette in
a hollow between gloved fingers to shield it from the wind, and the wind whipped her hair in curly circles, and it was still dark, but the grey streaks were easier to see than even yesterday.

I had my reefer jacket on and was holding my cigarette between naked fingers. My ears were probably white as chalk now and my fingers were slowly turning blue. They felt so cold I thought they might crack, and my nails ached, and then I could not take it any more and threw my half-smoked cigarette on the hard, frozen sand. I stuck my hands in my pockets and clenched them hard in there and opened them several times. My right hand felt much better now. Perhaps because it was numb. My swollen cheek burned in the cold.

‘Didn’t you bring any gloves or mittens?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You’re a bit scatterbrained,’ she said and touched my shoulder gently with hers and it made me so happy. ‘You always have been,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been like that since I was little.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have an extra pair. I brought just the one pair with me.’

‘That’s all right. I’ll keep them warm in my pockets.’

‘But then you won’t be able to smoke that cigarette.’

‘Mother, I don’t have to smoke all the time.’

‘No, of course not. One ought to give it up, really. I ought to.’ And she fell silent and simply stared into the distance and then she said: ‘Christ, there’s no point in quitting now.’

I should have said the right thing just then, but I did not know what that would be, if such a thing existed, I did not
think so, and those who said it did, knew nothing. So I said the first thing that came into my head.

‘Are you afraid?’ I said.

‘What of?’ she said and turned sharply and looked me in the face for the first time since we came down here. I could feel my face turn red, and I stared at the ground.

‘Do you think I’m afraid of dying?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Are you?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not afraid of dying. But damnit, I don’t want to die now.’ She turned back and took a deep drag of her cigarette, and she stared at the coast across the waves and furiously blew smoke towards the waterline.

It was true, she was not afraid of anything that I could think of, but I knew there were a few things she wanted to see before she died, wanted to experience, of course everybody felt that way, but she really wanted to see the Soviet Union collapse, now that the Wall had come down. To be a part of that and what would follow, to see Gorbachev triumph or step down and say the whole thing had gone too far, which was not improbable; but in any case it would be bitter if she did not get to live through it and I, too, wanted to see it all, and probably I would, but when it came to dying, I was scared. Not of
being
dead, that I could not comprehend, to be nothing was impossible to grasp and therefore really nothing to be scared of, but the dying
itself
I could comprehend, the very instant when you know that now comes what you have always feared, and you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember. Then that must feel
like someone’s strong hands slowly tightening their grip around your neck until you can breathe no more, and not at all as when a door is slowly pushed open and bright light comes streaming out from the inside and a woman or a man you have always known and always liked, maybe always loved, leans out and gently takes your hand and leads you in to a place of rest, so mild and so fine, from eternity to eternity.

‘Why don’t we go back up?’ I said.

‘I want to stay here for a bit. You go back,’ she said, ‘I will come later.’

‘Are you sure?’ I said.

‘Yes, of course I’m sure,’ she said, but I felt it would be wrong of me to leave, so I stayed, and she said:

‘Be off with you then.’ So I had to go.

‘All right,’ I said.

I turned and walked up towards the harbour and the hotel with the wind in my back. A little further along the path through the sand I stopped, turned and saw her still standing there facing the town across the water, and then I left the path and walked in between the dunes, which could hardly be called dunes, but that was what
I
called them when I was little. They were more like mounds of sand and marram grass that held the sand together in an intricate net, and there was shelter at the back of the biggest mound, and the wind did not blow as hard as it did on the beach, and it did not feel as cold. I raised my hands to my ears and rubbed them.

I sat down with my back against the mound. I let my head sink into my jacket before I pulled my sleeves over my
hands and folded my arms and leaned my head against my knees.

After some time I rolled over and crawled on my knees and elbows to the edge of the mound and from there I looked down towards the beach. She still stood facing the water. The wind blew harder now and whipped the foam from the crest of one wave to another. It was really something. I shuttled back and sat down as before. I stared down at the sand. There was not much to look at. I am thirty-seven years old, I thought. The Wall has fallen. And here I sit.

After what I hoped was fifteen minutes or more, I did the same thing again, rolled over and crawled on my elbows and knees to the edge of the mound and looked towards the beach. She was on her knees now. It looked strange.

I lay like this for a few moments to see if she would stand up, but she didn’t. I crawled back and leaned against the mound, squeezed my eyes shut and tried to concentrate. I was searching for something very important, a very special thing, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not find it. I pulled some straws from a cluster of marram grass and put them in my mouth and started chewing. They were hard and sharp and cut my tongue, and I took more, a fistful, and stuffed them in my mouth and chewed them while I sat there, waiting for my mother to stand up and come to me.

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Copyright © 2010 Per Petterson
Published by arrangement with Harvill Secker, one of the publishers of
the Random House Group Ltd.
English translation copyright © Charlotte Barslund

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in 2010 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited and in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, a division of The Random House Group, Limited and in the United States by Graywolf Press. First published in 2008 by Forlaget Oktober, Oslo. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.