I Refuse (24 page)

‘Just drive,’ she said.

I turned and looked at her. She was staring straight ahead through the windscreen. Her eyes may have been shiny. It looked like that to me. She had an attractive profile. Everything about her was attractive.

‘Here we go then,’ I said.

I put the car into first gear and was about to start, and then it was the wrong way. I had parked bumper to bumper with a black BMW, a flash car, a young person’s car, if ever there was one, and so I put the car into reverse and backed carefully in a gentle curve and turned and drove slowly out of the car park, past the restaurant, and I thought, Christ, am I sick of that restaurant.

I didn’t want to go to Oslo, I didn’t want to take the same route I had already taken twice that day and twice back, on the E6, and I didn’t want to go towards Skjetten, up the hills there, that was already decided, so there wasn’t much to choose from.

I drove through Lillestrøm and down under the bridge with the shiny rails overhead as a goods train came thundering over the rail joints on its way to Oslo, and wagon after wagon loaded with timber from the big forests in the north, and I drove past the airy railway station, at the back, and on down Jernbanegata, a very short street, to the bridge, where the Nitelva river was running high after several days of rain. But now there was brilliant sunshine and it was still a bit cold, and I crossed the bridge, and just before the tunnel I turned left at the roundabout and then drove west through Fjerdingby, Flateby, places I had never been, but their names were on the signs by the road. I said:

‘You must have a ring. Why don’t you wear it.’

‘I do have a ring. I don’t wear it because I don’t want to wear it.’

‘But doesn’t
he
want you to wear it.’

‘Yes, of course, he does.
I insist that you wear it
, he says. But I refuse to. That’s what I do. I refuse. And now I don’t want to go on any more. Not for one hour more.’

‘When did you decide.’

‘Today.’

‘Today. When I came to the café.’

‘A little before.’

‘When the other man was there. The one who was so sad.’

‘Yes. To be honest.’

I didn’t want to hear about that man. He annoyed me. Just the fact of his existence annoyed me. But he hadn’t done anything to me. He had minded his own business and hadn’t bothered anyone with any of it and hadn’t laid his life in the hands of people he didn’t know. I could have done as he had. I could have kept my mouth shut. But then I wouldn’t have been here now. With her. I said:

‘But why did you come to me.’

‘It was you who came to me,’ she said, and it was true of course. I had already forgotten. It was me who came to her. I had gone back into the shopping centre, I had taken the escalator up to the café and stood there for her to see, only ten minutes after I had left. It was I who came to her. Where did I find the courage. I couldn’t believe I had it in me. But there was no choice. That was why.

‘Yes, but why did you come with me. Now. Why me.’

‘Because you asked me what my name was.’

I knew that already. I wasn’t stupid. And now I was driving up the hillsides from Lillestrøm and the Nitelva river along the big lake and past the petrol station before the long plain and then across the plain and down again on the other side. It was wonderful to drive on a road not knowing where it would lead me, and down through the many bends it was just as good, doing 50 past Nordby, another place I hadn’t been, but its name was on a sign, and from the road you could see a flat-roofed, freshly painted, silent school building, its windows dark and empty, not a child in sight, and it wasn’t Saturday and it wasn’t Sunday, and it was a mystery why it was empty, but it was not our mystery.

‘Don’t think about that ring,’ she said. ‘It is not important.’

And so I stopped thinking about it, I let go and it fell to the ground with a clink and was gone. It was silent in the car, and to the right the rugged hillside rose steeply from the road, there must have been many landslides here over the years, you could see the large rocks in among the scree that were covered in moss while others looked sharp, menacing, and out to the left of the road the fields unfolded before us, golden yellow after threshing, and down to the shores of the lake we couldn’t see from the road, but we knew was there, and I would have been happy just to sit like this and drive for ever. She didn’t have to say anything, and I didn’t have to, and then she said gently:

‘In the café I asked you what was so sad, and you said you would have to think it through first, do you remember,’ and of course I remembered, I remembered every detail, I remembered not only her words but also how she walked, her back on her way to the counter, and her face when she didn’t smile, I remembered everything, I remembered Jim, the one I’d been thinking about at the table. ‘Was that why you cried,’ she said. ‘Because of what you were thinking.’

I knew she would ask. It came as no surprise. She wanted to attract me to her. And I had to answer. I had to lay my life in her hands. Or else I was done for. We didn’t have time to rise through the ranks.

‘Because of Jim,’ I said.

‘Jim.’

‘Yes. Jim.’

HE WOKE WITH
the woman called Berit beside him in the warmth of his bed in his house with the fjord as the nearest neighbour and the other islands. He sat up with a start. The alarm clock next to her said just before five on the bedside table that was her bedside table now, if she wanted, for as long as she wanted, for ever if she wanted, and she was asleep, and it was dark in his house, and quiet, she was sleeping quietly, he couldn’t hear her breathing. He leaned over and almost touched her mouth with his cheek, and on his face he felt her sensational, warm, living breath.

He swung his legs out of bed and sat on the edge, and through the window he could see the light of a few lanterns reflected on the sheet-metal water at the other side of the fjord. Otherwise it was all black.

The island wasn’t big. The distance between his house and the bridge was a mere trifle, he could drive there in a couple of minutes, and he thought, I mustn’t be late, if I’m late, I’m done for, if he’s gone when I get there, and then he thought, I can’t drive the damn Mercedes to the bridge. He looked at the alarm clock again. It will take me only five minutes to walk, he thought, at least he guessed it would, perhaps a little more, or not much more, not more than ten, although I don’t really know, he thought, I have lived on this island for six years, and I have never once walked the distance from the house to the bridge, and it might take a little longer, but I have to get out walking more often now, walking further and faster, I have a girlfriend now, I have to get into shape, and I’m not going to town today, those days are over, life is different now. From now on. I’ll leave the car.

He got up slowly from the bed and walked over to the wardrobe. The room was pitch black.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hi,’ he said. He turned and smiled. A voice in the house that wasn’t his.

‘I can’t see you,’ she said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Are you smiling,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Good.’

He opened the wardrobe. It was a big wardrobe, there was a light inside that he switched on, and it glowed softly. The entire rear wall was a mirror, and luckily he could barely see himself between the clothes hanging in a line. ‘What is it
she’s
seeing,’ he thought.

Most of the clothes he had never worn. He had bought them on a whim, like so many other things in the house. He looked at all the shirts. I don’t know which one to wear, he thought.

Behind him in the dark, she said:

‘You’re well equipped.’ And then she laughed her dark laugh, and he smiled and said:

‘That’s not what counts, is it.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ she said, and he said:

‘But if you mean the shirts, I’ve got plenty of them.’ He gazed at all the shirts in front of him, several of them still with pins in the cuffs fixed Napoleon-style to the chest, and he thought, I don’t know which one to wear. And then he panicked and said aloud:

‘I don’t know which shirt to put on, whether I should take one of the standard white ones, but then I might have to wear a suit as well,’ he said, and he thought, hell, I can’t go to the bridge in a suit, I’m not going to work, I’m not going up those ten floors again, and he wasn’t used to being like this, being indecisive. Being decisive had always been a strong point of his, maybe a little too strong at times, in some situations he should have waited, but now it was making him so confused he was close to giving up, I give up, he thought. It’s no good. I don’t know what to wear.

He said:

‘But I’m not going any further than the bridge, and I’m going there on foot. Jesus, I can’t walk up the road between all the houses across the island in a suit and coat, I can’t walk there with that coat on, what would he say if he saw me coming on foot in that damned expensive purple coat. But I have to dress up, don’t I,’ he said, ‘so he can see I am serious when I come. I have to dress up for Jim.’

‘Do you,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I should dress up. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s too much. I don’t know. I don’t know what to wear,’ he said.

He heard the silky sound of the sheets as she got out of bed, and he turned, and she came across the floor with the duvet wrapped around her in the dim light from the wardrobe, and she stood where he stood, and then she was in the mirror behind the clothes in the wardrobe, as he was, or parts of him, and parts of her.

‘You’re shivering,’ she said. ‘Are you cold.’

‘No,’ he said, and when she picked a shirt from the wardrobe, the duvet slipped down, and she laughed, and he thought, she is a grown woman. I’m glad she is. The shirt was a light blue one he’d had for many years and worn a few times. It wasn’t ironed, but looked decent anyway. She pulled the duvet up over her shoulder and gave him the shirt.

‘This one,’ she said.

He just did what she told him. He put on the shirt, and she said:

‘Jeans are no good. They’re not you. It will have to be these,’ she said, and took a pair of dark trousers from a hanger, in what he would call khaki material because his father had called the material khaki no matter which colour the trousers were, and she gave him a grey, cotton V-neck sweater, and in this way he was dressed by her, he, Tommy Berggren, being dressed as though he were a child, and he let it happen, he succumbed to it. This is not the way it should be, he thought. Only today.

He walked from the bedroom into the hall past the big mirror, in a jacket he had barely noticed before, it was blue, a kind of canvas material, that looked sporty, upper class and stiff. I have never looked like this in my life, he thought. But it’s fine. And she followed him and stood in the doorway with the duvet wrapped round her up to her chin. She smiled, and he said:

‘Shit, I’m so nervous. Suppose he isn’t there. Then what do I do. I’ve only got dress shoes,’ he said, ‘they’re all black and polished. They’re meant to go with a suit. They will look odd with this jacket.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘There isn’t a soul who can see them in the dark.’

He chose a pair that didn’t look so new, but in fact it didn’t make much difference. They still looked odd, they would shine in the dark.

‘Don’t think about it,’ she said.

And he knelt down to tie the shoes and laced them up slowly thinking, what shall I say, I don’t know what to say, he thought, when I get there. If he is there.

‘I don’t know what to say when I get there,’ he said, but she just smiled and said nothing, and he got up and said:

‘I’m off then.’ She smiled. She was so attractive. She raised her right hand with the palm towards him and moved it slowly from side to side and went back to the bedroom in the darkness, and in the last light from the hall the duvet fell from her shoulders, and she was naked all the way down to her heels.

He didn’t turn on the outside lamp as he normally would, he just opened the door and went out on to the stone steps. It was cold, he turned up his jacket collar and blew into his hands as he rubbed them, but it wasn’t that cold. It was only something he did. The blue jacket was fur-lined, warm and windproof. You could call it snug. He started to walk. It was a steep track from his house to the top of the island, and it took him longer than he had expected. He looked at his watch, which he could only just make out, and thought, damn, he thought, damn it, but when at long last he passed Zaman’s shop, it was downhill from there, and he walked along the road in a big bend, and soon he could see the oil-black water to the right down the slope and the street lamps on the other side of the sound and the shine of them in the water, and after he had walked round the bend, the bridge came into view. He stopped and stared. It was luminously white and hung there suspended from darkness to darkness. I have never seen it, he thought, and then he thought, but Jim has.

He walked down the last part of the last hill, and just before the bridge he thought, I’ll just go ahead, I won’t wait, and he walked out on to the bridge and the fishermen were standing there with their rods and gear, and they pulled the lines hard to their chests and let slip the line just before the railing in a rhythm he couldn’t catch, for each of them had his own, and all of them were on the same side of the bridge, because of the lines, he thought, so they won’t get entangled, that is why, he thought. He walked past them one after the other, and they all turned and looked at him briefly with little interest and then turned again, whereas he examined each of them with great care and walked on to the next and then the next in search of the dark blue cap and the reefer jacket he once knew so well. There were six of them. When he reached Mosseveien he turned and walked back. Jim was not among them. He stopped by the last fisherman, or the first, rather. He looked a bit shabby, wearing one sweater on top of the other, both of them ragged. You might call it off-white the one underneath and the top one a tentative blue. On his hands he had pink fingerless gloves. It looked odd.