I Refuse (12 page)

I looked around. My legs felt suddenly tired. On the other side of the bed, by the window, there was a chair. I walked round alongside the window, picked up the chair and placed it next to the bed on the opposite side to where I had come in. I sat down, but then the doctor wasn’t behind me any more, but in front of me. I should have carried the chair all the way round, I thought, but it was too late now, and it would look rude if I moved the chair a second time and sat with my back to him. It would be rude, too. But he could go, couldn’t he, the doctor, and leave me alone with Jonsen.

‘So what’s in your thoughts now,’ I said.

He didn’t answer, what would he be thinking. What would I have been thinking if it was me.

‘I hold life dearly,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel like it’s over.’ He was seventy-five. I was fifty-four. Almost. ‘You could refuse, of course,’ he said, trying to laugh, but it turned into a cough. ‘But this is it,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.’ He turned his head on the pillow, towards the window, away from me.

I didn’t agree. It wasn’t all right. It did matter.

‘Of course you can refuse,’ I said.

He looked at me again. ‘You can’t refuse to die, my friend.’

‘Goddamnit, of course you can refuse,’ I said.

Two Sundays later he was laid to rest behind the old church in Mørk. It was a simple and pretty church, painted white outside and inside. Only the altar and the seats had any colour, they were farmhouse red and blue. There weren’t many people there. The priest was a woman. He wouldn’t have minded. He had always liked women, most men did, of course, but he really liked women, he liked being with them, talking to them, he thought they were more intelligent by far than men. At least the men he knew. He’d had a good relationship with my mother as well, in the time before she left us one evening just before Christmas, when the snowdrifts by the road stood as tall as a man and just getting in and out of the house was a grind. They often talked.

‘It wasn’t her fault,’ he had said three Sundays before. We were standing in his living room, I still had the purple coat on with a suit underneath, it was his birthday. I had driven all the way out for the occasion and had put on my leather gloves and a scarf around my neck, but he had only a flannel shirt on. He had forgotten his own birthday, he looked surprised when I wished him many happy returns, and it was still morning and as long as I stayed on my feet he did too, even though he looked in a bad way.

‘Heavens above,’ he said, ‘it certainly was not. What was she supposed to do.’

‘Sit down,’ I said, and he sat down at once while I stayed on my feet. ‘She could have taken us with her,’ I said.

‘Four kids. On her own. Not bloody likely.’

He had been to sea for a few years when he was young, as so many others had around here, and had learned plenty of English expressions, but he rarely used them, he thought they sounded stupid, and he didn’t say ‘all hands on deck’or ‘shiver my timbers’ or any of that rubbish, either.

‘It wouldn’t have worked, you understand that, don’t you,’ Jonsen said.

‘I don’t understand a thing,’ I said.

‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘It’s not your job to understand. It
isn’t
easy to understand. It became hell for all of you. I know. But you shouldn’t be bitter. You should put it behind you and forgive. Jesus, you’re over fifty now, how long are you going to keep it up,’ and on the tip of my tongue I had something ugly to say, something furry and nasty, and I must have looked that way, but I didn’t say it, and he grabbed the arm of the chair and hoisted himself up, and he did that because I was still standing. He said:

‘Have you started drinking, Tommy.’

‘Oh, hell, Jonsen,’ I said. ‘Why do you have to say something like that now.’ But he was right, I drank every night without exception, and then he fell to the floor, straight down, as if he didn’t have a bone in his body. I panicked, there was no one else around and I couldn’t remember what to do in a situation like this. I lifted him up by the shoulders and dragged him over to the sofa, but he was limp and heavy, and I carefully laid him down again and ran around opening drawers and cupboards, with no clue what I was looking for, a box of Paracet, perhaps, Paralgin forte or something for asthma, an inhaler, if he had one lying around, and then I realised how addled my brain was, I said, for Christ’s sake, Tommy, pull yourself together, and finally I got around to ringing the hospital.

They came in a helicopter shortly afterwards. I went up into the sky with them, I had never been in a helicopter before, and I held his hand as we flew through the air, and the sky wasn’t as blue up there as it was when you were down on the ground looking up, it was greyer, more indeterminate, more undefined, and his hand was clammy and lifeless and hadn’t held a hammer for a long time, nor a saw, not even something as small as a folding rule. I stroked his head and it felt so strange, for my palms didn’t know his head. The noise of the rotor blades was without mercy and to me it seemed that the helicopter was moving very slowly, slower than I had imagined, flying across the big lake, but then it finally landed on the helipad by the hospital, and they got him on to a stretcher in casualty, and standing there was a doctor I would meet a week later when I went to visit him straight from Gardemoen Airport, and two nurses came running down the long corridor at full speed with his bed between them, and one of them shouted to me, you can’t see him today, do you understand, come back tomorrow, and to be honest, that was fine with me, I had to go to Haugesund on a job.

The job took me a week or so, and when I was back, I caught the airport express to Lillestrøm and a taxi from the station, through the tunnel, right up to the big hospital, and now he was dead and his coffin lowered into the ground behind the white church in Mørk, and if he did refuse, he hadn’t refused hard enough.

JONSEN AND I
sat by the kitchen window facing the road. It was dinnertime. From the window I could see the road right up from the bend and down into the neighbourhood and on past Jim and his mother’s house and even further, but I couldn’t see as far as the house where I used to live before. Not that it mattered. The house wasn’t there any more, it had burned down a week before this very day, at the end of May, and just knowing it made me feel light and airy in my stomach, a giddiness, helium, maybe, there was still the smell of smoke and ash all around.

We didn’t say much to each other. Often we didn’t. We didn’t have to, we knew each other well, we knew about each other. But what we talked about when we did talk, in the morning before leaving the house, was the work we were going to do at the sawmill that day. He was my boss. He had taken out a loan from Mørk Sparekasse and bought the whole business off the chronic drunkard Kallum, as a rescue operation, really, before it capsized and sank, and in fact it wasn’t that expensive, the bank turned out to be generous, and Jonsen gave me a full-time job at the mill, and I was happy about that. I was finished with school, I couldn’t stand another day of it, after secondary school it was over and out.

I was not yet eighteen but all the same we were two adults discussing orders and timber prices over the table every morning before leaving the house, and it was the two of us who worked out the runs to the bigger building sites or the runs to the smaller, maybe less accessible ones, like private houses, detached buildings, barns or garages, all sorts of places off the beaten track. And he was no different when he spoke to me about these matters than when he spoke with any other employee at the mill. There were three of them and much older than me. Jonsen had never had any children himself, and I think the way he talked to people and the language that he used was the same whether the person he spoke to was a child or a teenager or somebody well into his years. The difference didn’t even interest him. When he grew up there was no such thing as a teenager. You were a child, you were confirmed and then you were an adult and had to do your share and that was that.

Now we were both tired after a hard day’s work. Two men were off with the flu, and the following day we had a big delivery, so we didn’t say much over dinner and probably would have to go back for a few hours after Jonsen had had a nap.

I was chewing my food slowly and looking out through the window at the bend.

‘Here comes the police chief,’ I said. The familiar Volvo moved slowly down the road. Whoever was inside it was in no hurry. ‘Or the sergeant,’ I said.

Jonsen turned. ‘Yes, here he comes,’ Jonsen said. ‘What have you been up to now.’ He laughed.

‘Absolutely nothing,’ I said, and I laughed, too. ‘At least nothing I can remember. I’ve been on the straight and narrow, haven’t I,’ I said, and then I said: ‘Do we have to go back to the mill tonight.’

‘I think we do,’ Jonsen said. ‘Work’s piling up. And then we have to go to Eidsvoll with a full load tomorrow.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘You take the sofa. I’ll take the floor.’

I liked lying on the floor. I always had. With my arms down by my sides and the hard floorboards against my shoulders and the back of my head, I was out for the count every single time. But I didn’t sleep for long. You couldn’t, of course.

Now I got up from the table with the empty plate in my hand and the cutlery and cast a glance through the window. I was about to turn and pile the washing-up on the worktop, and then I saw the car had stopped by our postbox. It was the sergeant. He opened the car door and lifted himself out with one hand on the door frame. He had put on weight. The skull belt hung beneath his belly now, where once it had been fastened tight across it, back when he had looked more like a sheriff. I hadn’t seen him in a while. Why would I.

‘He’s coming here,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Jonsen said. He stood up, placed his hands on the table, leaned forward and peered through the window, towards the postbox where the police car was parked, and the sergeant was already well on his way up to the house.

‘Wow, he’s got fat,’ Jonsen said. ‘When did that happen,’ and then he said: ‘No, no, we haven’t got the time for this.’

He headed straight for the hall with a napkin in his hand, and I followed him, close behind, like a trailer, and Jonsen almost threw the door open before the sergeant had a chance to knock. He was about to go up the steps, but then he stopped when the door opened. He looked tired and foul-tempered. There were lines round his mouth I hadn’t noticed the last time I saw him, down past his nose to his chin, they really caught your eye. It was summer now, June and warm, but he was wearing a thick denim jacket, open at the front and lined with fur around the neck on both sides, and in the middle, his stomach was bulging over the skull and the red eyes of glass. They didn’t shine as they had before.

‘Hello there,’ Jonsen said. ‘There is food on the table. It’s good, I can tell you that much,’ he said, ‘Tommy made it.’ Which was true. ‘There’s plenty left, if you’re hungry,’ Jonsen said.

‘I don’t want any food,’ the sergeant said.

‘Right,’ Jonsen said. ‘If you’re not here to eat, why are you here, then.’

I joined Jonsen at the top of the steps, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, and we looked down on the sergeant and then he had to look up at us, and he didn’t like that. He was already seriously annoyed. You didn’t have to ring a psychologist to know that. We had a telephone now. They had finished digging. And we had a phone at the sawmill. You had to have one.

‘I’ve come about the fire,’ he said.

‘What fire,’ Jonsen said.

The policeman sighed. ‘What fire,’ he said. ‘Are you stupid or what,’ he said. ‘The Berggrens’ house burned down a week ago, only two hundred metres down the road. The house where Tommy used to live.’ He pointed to me.

‘I know where I used to live,’ I said.

‘I know you know where you used to live. Do you think I’m completely stupid,’ he said. ‘The point is, the fire people say someone started it.’

‘So,’ Jonsen said.

‘So,’ the sergeant said. ‘Jesus. Everyone knows that if someone set fire to the house it was Tommy. Do you think we’re stupid,’ he said. ‘So Tommy is coming with me. The police chief wants to talk to him.’

‘Tommy didn’t set fire to the house. Is that clear,’ Jonsen said, and he closed the door hard, and turned to go back to the kitchen, but the policeman banged on the door just as hard, and Jonsen opened up and said:

‘What is it now.’

‘Don’t try to be funny. Tommy has to come along with me.’

Jonsen turned and looked at me. I was standing right behind him now. ‘Are you going with him to see the police chief,’ he said.

‘I haven’t got the time,’ I said. ‘We have to get back to work soon. We have to have everything ready for the delivery tomorrow. We have to do the paperwork and load up. We’re going to Eidsvoll with a full van, and there are two men off sick. I haven’t got the time.’

‘You heard,’ Jonsen said to the policeman. ‘He hasn’t got the time.’

‘I don’t give a shit where you’re going tomorrow. Tommy’s coming with me right now. The police chief wants to talk to him. I’ll bring him back afterwards. Jesus.’ The sergeant was so tired he was barely able to stand. He sighed. ‘Come on,’ he said.

‘You’d best go with him,’ Jonsen said. ‘Or else we’ll have to ring for a doctor.’

‘Fine, then. I’ll go with him. I’ll be back before you know it,’ I said.

The sergeant shook his head. ‘Jesus,’ he said.

I was there for an hour. The police chief was all right. He said I had set fire to the house. I said I hadn’t set fire to the house. I said it was my house, and Siri’s house, and the twins’ house, and the police chief said it wasn’t, it wasn’t my house, and I said, who owns the house then, but he didn’t know. It’s my house, I said, and I can do with it what I like. So it was you who started the fire then, he said. No, I said, it wasn’t me who started the fire. And so it went on. In the end, we both got tired of it. Then we talked about my father for a while, about what a bastard he had been, but I had to defend him a little. He’d had a tough life, I said, and then he was alone with us, I mean, my mother just vanished, and it wasn’t easy for him, being on his own, and the police chief said I might have a point, but anyway, he said, and shook his head. And then he said, do you have any idea what happened to your mother, and I said I didn’t have a clue. Six years she’d been gone and no one knew where. And then he asked me if I had set fire to the house, and I said I hadn’t. All right, he said, that’s it for now. The sergeant will drive you back. You’ll be hearing from me. Do you understand, Tommy. Yes, I said, that’s fine, and then he said, damn you, Tommy, if it was you who started the fire. It wasn’t me, I said.