I Curse the River of Time

by Per Petterson

  ‘You will want to see her,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’ And as he was still holding his arm out in the same frozen gesture, I walked a few steps and opened the next door. She was lying on a table of brightly polished metal. It looked cold, and she lay keeled over with all four legs stretched out to the same side in a way she would never have done had she been alive and I had never ever seen her so quiet. A dead dog is quieter than a house on a plain, a chair in an empty room.

  ‘There was no problem,’ the man in the white coat said.

  I said nothing. I wondered if I was supposed to take her back to the car. I could see myself with the dog, heavy in my arms, walking through the room from one end to the other, her fur against my palms, head lolling, ears dangling, on my way past the people waiting on their chairs, but there was nothing to suggest that, so, empty-handed, I turned to leave.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You forgot this,’ he said.

  I turned back, startled, and then he gave me the leash with the open collar. I took it and went to pay for services rendered, and back in the car I placed the leash with the collar on the seat next to me, on top of the map that was lying there, the area of Adamstuen still circled with a ballpoint pen, and I forgot where it was the moment I left, and I hit the steering wheel with my fist and said to myself, you idiot, why did you agree to see her, why do you always say yes, just because you think you have to, and I punched the steering wheel with my fist, I kept hitting it, and inside the tram I hammered my fist just as hard against the window ledge and we were past the Veterinary College now and I realised that these fifteen minutes I had thought I could inhabit so safely were far from being an expanding space, on the contrary, it was like it always is with time, that it can slip through your fingers when you are not looking.

  Shortly afterwards I came to the junction with Kirkeveien, which is where you get off if you want to go to Ullevål Hospital.

  On the twelfth floor I got out of the lift and took a few steps to the right. I did not feel ready. I stopped and stood very still. Something was stuck in my throat and I could not get it out. Right in front of me there were large windows with a view to the north. I went right up to one of them and leaned my forehead against the glass and looked down, and I felt such an unexpected blow to my stomach that I thought perhaps I was going to fall right through the window all the way to the ground. A flush of heat washed through my body, and it was as if a wind came through my head with a deafening blast and all sorts of trash I had long forgotten crashed against the walls of my brain. I spread my legs like sailors do and pressed both palms against the window, and with my forehead still hard against the glass, I held my eyes open and forced myself to remain there, and if a helicopter, maybe with several injured patients on board, had come sweeping past at that moment, the pilot would have seen a man with his eyes and mouth wide open, like a mask pressed against the window a dozen floors up. Then I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and sucked the air into my lungs and held it there for as long as I could, and when I finally opened my eyes, the world stood still.

  On the ground, at the foot of the building, a man, or perhaps a boy, came running at full speed past the entrance and around the corner, and shortly afterward reappeared from the other corner and began a new round. There was something vaguely familiar about that figure, but at the same time he looked weird, distorted somehow, seen from the twelfth floor.

  Down the corridor I found the office of the duty nurse and said my brother’s name out loud through the open door and received a clear answer and a long look in return, and even further down the corridor I found the room where my brother was, opened the door and went right in.

  It was not what I had expected. He was the only patient there, and he was on a ventilator. He was lost, I could see that right away, it was not him breathing, it was this machine that pushed air into his lungs in a way no human being had ever breathed, and there were sounds coming from the machine, scary mechanical, hissing noises. The machine looked evil, it was hurting him, it was beating his body, and he could not defend himself, could not stop the hammering, for he was lost. But my mother sat by his side holding his one hand in both of hers, and she was not crying, she only said: ‘my boy,’ she said, ‘my boy,’ she said, and she was completely absorbed by what was happening, or had already happened, so overwhelmingly blind to everything else she was, and her boy was this brother of mine who was younger than me, but not the youngest, and who was tall and heavy-set and did not look like me at all, but without a doubt had been important to me in the time that was behind us. And I too must have played some part in his life, in the twenty-seven years we had known each other and had surely exchanged thoughts and done many things together in spite of the years which divided us, but I had forgotten what they were. Big chunks of life had been lost when I entered the room in Ullevål Hospital and saw him lying in the ventilator, fettered and chained like a naked cosmonaut all alone in his cockpit, launched and alone on his way to some small maybe warmer place in the cold universe, if such a place existed, which sadly I did not believe, but I could not recall a single thing we had shared. No confidences exchanged between us, not in recent years certainly, and not when we were children either. And that could not be right. It was all there if only I could concentrate hard enough, but inside my brain there was something inattentive, some slippery patch of Teflon, where things that came swirling in and struck it bounced off again and were gone, a fickleness of the mind. I was not paying attention, things happened and were lost. Important things.

  In a chair by the window my father was sitting with something like a smile on his lips, an inappropriate smile, in that case, and he stared out of the window and across the buildings which made up Ullevål Hospital and further on to Ullevål Hageby where the houses looked impeccably English and a tiny bit snobbish, and perhaps he could see all the way to Ullevål Stadium from where he was sitting.

  When he turned from the window and looked across the room, he could see me where I stood two paces into the room, and I suddenly realised that he was embarrassed, that the expression I could see on his face, in his eyes, his faint smile, was embarrassment, and this while his third son was lying there dying just a few metres from him, or perhaps was already dead. And I was like my father was, we looked like each other, we were made from the same mould, I had always heard, and just like him, I too was embarrassed. I did not know death so close up, death was a stranger, and it made me embarrassed. I did not want to stay. I had just come in, but now I wanted out. I had no idea what to say and neither did my father, and our eyes met across the room, and we looked away at once and it made me feel so resigned and bitter, almost. The wild flush of heat from the window in the corridor had left my body, and my joints grew stiff and my face rigid like a mask, and I looked at the chair where my mother was sitting, leaning over my brother’s bed, and I thought if I were the one lying in the ventilator here on the twelfth floor in a block of Ullevål Hospital dying, or perhaps already dead, would she then be so unconditionally absorbed by what was happening to me? Would she immerse herself so completely in my destiny, or was the shadow I cast not long enough, not substantial enough, for her?

  I took two steps back towards the door and caught my father’s eye before I pulled my tobacco pouch out of my pocket and pointed to it, opened the door behind me, turned and went out into the corridor. My mother had not once looked in my direction to share with me what was happening.

  There were windows on this side too, and a blinding light hit my face. I half turned and searched my pockets for my sunglasses, and I found them and pushed them into place and rolled myself a cigarette with my back against the wall, licked the paper and sealed the cigarette and went to look for a room where I could smoke it, and I found one, further down the corridor, a small lounge behind a glass wall with chairs and a table. But it was impossible to sit down in the state I was in, so I stayed close to the glass with the cigarette between my fingers and drew the smoke i
nto my lungs and forced myself to think about absolutely nothing, which in fact was not that difficult.

  When the cigarette was smoked to a stub, and I was about to squash it in the tin ashtray on the table, my little brother rushed past on the other side of the glass wall. He was out of breath, his mouth hung open as he hurried from the lift, and his handsome face looked washed out and swollen and his eyes were puffy. He raced blindly ahead without looking left or right, but he knew where he was going, and I realised that he had already been to the room with the ventilator and had left only to return after running in circles around the hospital block.

  11

  I met her just a week after I had last seen her come from behind the shelter on Økern Station. She came on her bicycle on the pavement along Trondhjemsveien, or the E6. I had left a high rise at Årvoll and was walking down a footpath towards the road, past the new library. It was dark, I had been to a meeting on the seventh floor where my strong and weak points as a Communist were discussed in a two-bedroom flat next to the lift. And not only as a political being, but as a person as well, for you could not separate the personal from the political. Six party members were present at the meeting and two of them were younger than me, they were still at sixth form college and severe, they had revolutionary zeal. So did I, but it was not easy to keep them at bay, and I came out worse than expected. Now I was walking downhill from Årvoll to Carl Berners Plass.

  Right before the traffic lights she came from the opposite direction, going up the valley, and I knew her at once. She was wearing the same blue coat and the same badge on her collar as I did, it was red and blue with a yellow star in the middle, it said Victory for the NLF, in the white circle around it, and her throat was bare, it looked cold, and she knew me too. I could not see her blush, the light was too dim, but I knew she did, and as she cycled past, I said hi, and she braked and stopped a few metres ahead of me. She turned and pulled her coat tightly around her neck, and I said nothing, and then I said:

  ‘I’ve seen you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  I went right up to her, stopped by her bicycle and placed my hand on the saddle.

  ‘I like your coat,’ I said, ‘I do,’ and it was true. I liked it even though it was a bit too short for her. It suggested someone musical, a vocalist in a band, that kind of thing, and then she laughed and said:

  ‘It was my brother’s confirmation coat. He only wore it that day, and later he would not even look at it. I think it’s great, but it was terrible on him.’

  ‘It is great,’ I said, and close up she looked very young, she was younger than I had realised.

  ‘You have been confirmed yourself, then, have you?’ I said, and smiled so she would not be offended if my question was totally hopeless.

  ‘Oh, yes, I have,’ she said, and laughed again, but I thought, she did not say when, and now it was my turn to blush. I blushed often and there was nothing I could do about it, and it must have been easy for her to see. I let go of the saddle. I pointed to the NLF badge and said:

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I support them,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ I said to test her. I guess it was not very nice of me.

  ‘Those who are fighting the American invasion of Vietnam, NLF, the National Liberation Front.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is, isn’t it.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, and did not know what to say next. ‘I guess we’ll see each other again,’ I said, and what I had in mind was the platform on Økern Station.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said, and meant something different, and then I told her where I lived. Just like that, address and all. She did not smile, merely nodded, and we went our separate ways.

  A week later she came to my door, and kept coming back and now she had been to my flat many times on her way home from school in the centre of Oslo and had drunk tea in my red kitchen, where I told her of things I knew something about, my books, Afghanistan; the crossroads of cultures, about Mao at his desk, about Edvard Munch and the Party, and she told me about her family, and why she hated going home from school. Once she came up from the city and did her homework at my kitchen table, and I sat down to help her and later we talked and smoked till late in the evening, and I think it was the way she held the cigarette between her fingers which touched me the most, how her palm unfolded in front of her chest with a slight bend of the wrist and the glowing tip pointing to the floor, and that night was the first night she did not go home.

  Some days later the doorbell rang. Not many people came to see me in this period apart from the girl in the blue coat. I had said goodbye to the friends with whom I had shared almost everything for two years, in the canteen, in the smoking room, in the evenings with pints of beer, and suddenly we had nothing in common. I had not made new friends, unless you count the comrades in the Party, and though most of them were people I liked well, I still did not feel close to any of them. So not many people rang my doorbell except Mrs Andersen who always complained about the way I washed the stairs, and this she did because I used Zalo, which was for washing dishes instead of the soft soap, Krystall.

  It was just past noon. I got up from the kitchen table where I sat reading a book by the American author, William Faulkner, or was trying to read and, to be honest, William Faulkner was not exactly on my Party’s reading list. Nevertheless, I did try, and then I placed a Chinese bookmark between the pages of Absalom, Absalom, which was the title of the book, and went to open the door. I looked through the spyhole first as I always did, and there was my mother.

  In the two months that had passed, I had not seen or spoken to her, nor had I taken the Underground the few stops eastbound to Veitvet in Groruddalen to see her, not even for a free dinner, like I used to.

  In the one hand, on the tips of her fingers, my mother balanced a white paper box, almost like waiters carrying plates between the tables in fine restaurants, and she simply looked straight at the door with this smile that was not a smile on her lips. I was certain she was not looking at the spyhole, so hopefully she was not aware that I was inside watching her. The white flat box was level with her ear; and it was autumn now, she wore her grey coat and the red scarf around her neck. She would soon celebrate her fiftieth birthday and was younger then than I am now, sitting here, writing this and that feels strange to me. I thought she looked great.

  But something important had changed. There was a before and an after in time, a border which I had crossed, or perhaps a river, like the Rio Grande, and so I suddenly found myself in Mexico where things were different and a little frightening, and the crossing had left its mark on my face, which my mother would instantly see and realise that now we were standing on opposite sides of that river, and the fact that I had left her would hurt her, and that’s why she didn’t like me any more, did not want me. Get thee behind me, she would say, you idiot.

  I could always pretend I was not at home, that I had gone to a matinee at the cinema or gone shopping or might still be at work, in that case on the morning shift, but this she would have checked in advance, and anyway, I had longed for her. So I opened the door.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, ‘so there you are,’ for I had kept her waiting a long time.

  ‘Come in,’ I said, and stepped aside. She crossed the threshold. She was neither calm nor irritable, but had that slightly impatient, let-us-put-an-end-to-this-nonsense expression she often wore. We went through the small hall and into the kitchen. It was the only room I kept tidy, the other room contained all the things I owned and they were piled high, I have to admit.

  ‘Are you broke?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not really.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you are,’ she said, and placed the white box carefully on the kitchen table. She threw a glance at Absalom, Absalom, which was still lying there.

  ‘It’s hard going, that book,’ she said.

  ‘I agree,’ I said, ‘but
it’s a fine book all the same.’

  ‘Of course it is, but I never got through it, I’m ashamed to say,’ she said, and to tell the truth, I would never get through it either, I was sure of that. Still it felt good to read, even though I would never finish it. This was the strange thing. It did not matter.

  With three fingers she opened one end of the white box and pulled out a small cardboard tray with two Napoleon cakes on it. I stared at them. I did not know what to say. I did not know if I should feel glad, or embarrassed.

  ‘From Bergersen’s,’ I said, and she replied:

  ‘No. They’re not.’ And then she said: ‘Don’t you have any coffee?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then put the kettle on, and let’s get started.’

  I did as she told me, and it was as if I were incapable of doing anything, unless she told me what to do. So I put the kettle on, and I saw that she was looking at my hands to see if they had already changed, and of course they had, they were raw and peeling and a bit black under the nails, and she noticed that, and my body was still aching from all the abrupt movements and the heavy lifting I was not used to for so many hours, every day around the clock, that’s how it felt, but it was not something I was going to talk about unless she asked me, and she did not.

  I looked at the clock above the door and saw that the evening shift did not start for another three hours. So there was plenty of time to sit here and eat cake and then go to work, to Økern, two stops to the east on the Underground, which was the same place my father worked for many years right from when I was little, where he no longer worked, for he could not cope with the noisy shifts, with the buzzing and the dust every hour of the day, week after week a new shift in the body, he felt jetlagged, he dropped cups on the floor, plates on the floor, his stomach couldn’t take it and the thirty kilometres of skiing he had done every single Sunday his entire adult life was suddenly too much, and not one single Sunday could he do it.