In The Wake (2 page)

“It’s important to sweat all the shit out,” he said, “turn your insides out and really cleanse yourself,” but I could not sweat. I stood in the steam, dry and thin, and saw the naked men along the benches, heads in hands, glistening, panting, with their big stomachs on their thighs and their big cocks, and none
of them could speak because the creature had swallowed the air and pushed against the walls, and there was no space left for anything else. And I could not sweat. I was eight years old, my skin burned, and I did not know it was important to be cleansed, that the inside of my body was not clean, where my thoughts lived, and the soul.

I walked unsteadily across the floor to the trickle of water
running from a tap on the wall and into a porcelain sink, and I drank and drank, and when I had finished he came over, filled his hands with water and let it run over the stones so the stove spat loudly and fresh steam poured forth, and the men on the benches grumbled. He laughed and bent down, put his hands flat on the floor and swung himself up into a handstand, stretched his legs up together and
with his heels lightly touching the burning wall he smiled upside down and started to do push-ups with his head tapping the floor and his legs straight up. His cock bounced against his flat stomach with a sound I could have done without, his muscles swelled under his shiny skin, and sweat poured down his chest. He could breathe where no-one else could, and I counted to myself half aloud: ten, eleven,
twelve and on as I always did when he did that kind of thing. I kept my eyes on his body, up and down, up and down, and knew I would never look like that if I lived to be a hundred, not
that
graceful, not
that
solid, and I remember the hospital chapel where we had to fetch the coffins many years later. They were ranged in a line along the wall, and outside, the long black cars waited in line on
the drive. We could see them through the windows, the cars stood quite still with their back doors open, and one driver had his back turned and his elbow against the bonnet, smoking and looking down at Holberggate, and the
man
from the undertakers cleared his throat and said: “First, I ought perhaps to say that the coffins probably are not as heavy as might be expected.” He ran a hand through
his hair, looking desperate, and we glanced at each other, my brother and I, and then we bent down, took hold of the handles and lifted, and we just stared straight ahead when we realised he was right.

I am so tired. I lean my whole weight against the door. I could fall asleep now, and maybe I
am
asleep, and dreaming, or maybe remembering a dream. I am in the apartment at Veitvet. My mother and
father are there, and my two younger brothers. I know they are dead, and I know that they know, but we do not talk about it. I try to figure out how they could have come back. Suddenly I cannot remember where their graves are, but it can’t be far away, maybe on the lawn by the hedge beside the road. The apartment looks as it did then, in May of that year; half-empty bookshelves, a pile of pictures
on the coffee table, cardboard boxes on the floor. The clock on the wall has stopped. They go around helping me, giving me things they think I should have, and I find books I imagine my daughters would like. I take a few small things for myself and sneak them away, put them in the pocket of my jacket, and then I feel bad because I am cheating my brother, so I take them out again. All the while
I can hear them talking softly in the living room. I go up to the next floor and into the room that once was mine. I open the
window
and put my head out. On the balcony below me, my father is standing in the sun. He stands quite calmly, his eyes closed and arms crossed. He fills his shirt completely. It is quiet, he is fine, but I don’t like the neighbours to see a dead man standing on the balcony
sunning himself. I close the window and go down again. At the bottom of the stairs is the old wooden bookcase with carvings along the top and the sides. I sit on the floor and lean my head against the middle shelf as I have done so many times before. I press against the books and then everything broadens out and I can look in. There are rows of books in many layers, it is a whole room with yellow
light streaming in from a window I have never seen before, and it fills me with wonder, and yet everything is familiar. I take hold of Tolstoy with one hand and Nansen with the other and pull myself right in. It closes behind me and the whole time I hear them talking softly in the living room.

I straighten up, my face lets go of the door and I stand without a foothold in the world, listening.
I hear no steps from either side and then I undo my jeans and push my shirt down as well as I can as fast as I can, and try to do up my flies. It’s not easy, my empty hands are stiff and have hardly any feeling, and the buttons are obstinate. One of them gets into the wrong buttonhole, but I get it done eventually. I try to do my jacket up, but the zip is ruined, it’s hanging loose, several teeth
are
missing
at the bottom so I can’t fit the ends together. Maybe someone has tried to tear it off. I think about the dream and remember I had it several years ago, that I wrote it down, that I put it away somewhere. So I have not been asleep. I look around me on both sides. It is all quiet on the street. I take a few steps along the big display window, the glass glitters, it is spring sweeping
in from the fjord and brushing my neck as it passes, and the latest books are behind the glass. Rick Bass has brought out another collection. I have been waiting for it. I like his stories, they are full of landscape and air and you can smell the pine needles and the heather a long way off.

I must get out of this town. I clench my fists and then I get it. My briefcase has gone. I turn and look
back, but there’s only a bundle of newspapers by the door. I look all the way down the street, past the business school to the city workers’ offices on the corner, but there’s nothing there, not a shadow, nothing but fag ends students have dropped on the pavement and an “open” sign outside the little sixties café.

It was only an old leather briefcase of the kind working people used a long time
ago, they had them on their laps in the bus on the way to work, and in them the
Arbeiderbladet
and sandwich box and betting slip. We found three of them left in the bedroom cupboard when we cleared out the apartment. None of them had been used, so he must have been thinking ahead to the
days
of his pension and bought them cheap out of surplus stock, and they had lasted longer than he had expected.
He had written his name in marking ink on the inside of the flap in letters he learned at school some time in the twenties, and as my brother used a yuppie briefcase I took all three. I use them constantly, there have been shots of me in the paper carrying one of those cases, and when people come up behind me calling and I turn round, they say: “Hi, Arvid, I recognised you by the briefcase.”

There was a fat notebook in that case almost filled with writing, and my glasses which cost 2000 kroner and a book by Alice Munro,
Friend of My Youth
. I am reading it for the third time, I have all her books, because there is a substance there, and a coherence that does not embellish, but conveys that nothing is in vain no matter what we have done, if we only look back, before it’s too late.

I don’t know. I don’t know if that is true. I am a bit dizzy because I dare not breathe deeply, it hurts so much every time I try that I hold back, and then there is not enough oxygen for the brain. I wipe my hands on my trousers, clear my throat and walk into the kiosk. There is room for three inside if you keep your elbows tucked in. She is squeezed between the counter and the shelves of cigarettes.
I take the
Dagblad
from the stand and say: “
Dagbla
’ and a Coke.”

She says nothing and her eyes grow round with
surprise
behind her glasses, and they do not look at me but at something just by my ear. I raise my hand, but there is only my ear. I try again and she gives a little cough again and a cautious smile, standing very still. She does not understand what I say. The sound of the words is
perfectly clear in my head, but they are not the ones that she is hearing. I don’t know what she hears. Then I see the fridge full of bottles on the outside of the counter. Of course, it is self-service. I turn and take hold of the handle, and because I feel so weak I pull it rather hard so I will not be embarrassed if it wont open at the first try. The door flies open, the fridge shakes and two bottles
come sailing out, crash to the floor and roll away, but they do not break, they are half-litre plastic ones. One is a Fanta, the other a Coke. I bend down and wince as the pain in my side stabs at me, and I pick them up like a very old man and put the Fanta back in the fridge and the Coke on the counter. She doesn’t say a word, just looks straight past me with her round eyes. I feel in my jacket
pocket and mercifully find my wallet there. It is a miracle, I realise that. I open it cautiously. The Visa card is in its place and the bonus cards for Shell and Fina and Texaco and the library cards for Lørenskog and Rælingen. But no sign of notes and coins. She looks at my wallet and I take out the Visa card instead and then she stares at it as if it were a completely new invention. I look
at the till. It might date from the early sixties, and anyway it does not have
a
card facility. I don’t know what to do. I am so thirsty I can think of nothing else. She clears her throat and says distinctly and very slowly with generous movements of her mouth so I can read her lips: “You need not pay. It’s on the house.” She looks straight at me for the first time and gives me a big smile. It
is an offer I cannot refuse. I ought to say something. I lick my lips, but my mouth is totally dry, my tongue swollen, and then I just pick up the Visa card and the newspaper and the Coke and back out of the kiosk. The light is blinding, so I walk diagonally across the street to avoid the sun and over the car park where there used to be a Texaco station and between the museums towards the University
Hall and the railway station. Halfway there I can hold out no longer. I stop and open the bottle. The brown Coke spurts out of the nozzle all over my trousers, my shoes and the newspaper. I start to weep. I have been on my way down for a long time, and now I am there. At rock bottom. I hold the bottle away from my body until it stops running and then, weeping, drink what little is left, and I
throw the empty bottle into the nearest litter bin. I chuck the wet paper after it. Without glasses I couldn’t read it anyway. And then I walk on.

2

THERE IS A
ringing sound. I wake and I switch the alarm clock off. It goes on ringing. I fumble for the telephone in the dark, find it, and what I hear is the dialling tone. And then it rings again. It is the door. I switch on the lamp over the bed and look at the clock. It is not six, it is one. I pull my jeans on and a T-shirt, go out into the hall and open the front door. There is no-one
there so I walk barefoot across the hallway, past the letterboxes, and then I see the Kurdish family from the third floor standing beyond the outside glass door in the cold. Three children: two girls, and a little boy crying quietly. The mother stares at the ground with her headscarf right down over her forehead, and though it is dark outside between the blocks, the light from the stairway shines
red and blue and yellow in the flowers on her scarf, and the father with the big moustache smiles, he points at the lock and is bleeding from a cut on his cheek. He is my age, maybe slightly older. I go to the door and hold it open until they are all inside, and then I lock it again. He takes my hand and says thanks. I point at his cheek and look as enquiring as I can but he just shakes his head
and smiles. Nothing
to
worry about. Right. He wears a white shirt under his grey jacket, and there are spots of blood on the collar. It looks dramatic, as in a film. He puts his hand on my shoulder and I
feel
that hand, he says thanks again, and then he points at my bare feet. It is so cold on the floor I am curling up my toes. Smiling, he pushes me towards my door, and then he opens his arms
and puts them around his family and leads them gently and firmly upstairs, talking in a low, intense voice in a language I do not understand. The little boy is still crying. They have only been here for a few weeks, but he has learned to say “thanks”. That will come in handy, no question. They are from northern Iraq. That is all I know.

I stay at the bottom of the stairwell listening to his voice
fading and their steps fading on the way up. I could have invited him in, he could have come down when the children were in bed, and we could have had a drink or a cup of hot chocolate if that’s what he would prefer, being a Muslim, and we could talk about having a family, that it’s not that easy, or we could talk of Saddam Hussein, anything he likes. Maybe he can speak German, I know a bit of
German, more people than you’d think know German, and the last thing I hear before the door slams shut two floors up is the boy crying loudly. With no stranger watching he doesn’t hold back. Silence settles on the stairwell, and it is very cold. Beneath my thin T-shirt the elastic bandage is tight and uncomfortable, and I shiver uncontrollably.

It wasn’t lung cancer; I had two fractured ribs.
Not until I got home from town and walked, half bent over, past the mirror in the hall did I notice that I had a black eye as well. Everyone on the train and on the bus from the station had seen it, people I know and have said hello to for several years, only
I
didn’t know. All the pains had converged into one big one, and I could not distinguish one from the other. And then I lay in bed, for
days and nights, head spinning, before I called the doctor, dizzy from the want of air and thoughts of death, trying to unravel what had happened when I was far out of this world.

I go into my apartment and shut the door. Only the light over my bed is on. In the bedroom I ease one of my father’s old sweaters over my head, it is washed out and soft to the touch, and then I put socks on before
turning out the light, walking through the dark hall to the living room and turning on the lamp over the desk. The first thing I did when I found myself alone was to move the desk into the living room. There are two books on it and about a hundred pages of manuscript with a coating of dust on the top sheet.
NEW BOOK
is written under the dust. I find my cheap spare glasses, turn on my veteran Mac
and click my way to the program I use now, then open a new file. I write: