It's Fine By Me (13 page)

‘Shit!’ I yelled and maybe it did some good, for soon I had solid ground under my feet and I could stagger on to dry land. Rotting branches and jagged stones dug into my feet, but I didn’t feel any pain.

Slowly I climbed the bank up to where my clothes were piled. My body was still cold, and my legs were heavy, I didn’t have the strength to run. There was a large cowpat, and I stopped right in front of it and stood there for a good while before deciding to walk around it on the right-hand side. When I got to my things, I lay face down on the grass. I can dry off in the sun, I thought, I will just lie here and rest a little, and then I’ll go on.

When I awoke I was lying in a room with a skylight in the ceiling. The air was grey, like smoke, and a narrow beam
of light came down from above. The ceiling was grey and the walls grey. There was no door to the room, but I saw the railings of a staircase coming up in a corner. I ran my hand over my body, and I was naked under the duvet. It too seemed grey, and the faint light was a delicate light and as soft as the duvet, and everything seemed soft in here.

Slowly I rolled over, and my body felt very heavy, and through a window right down by the floor I could see a small part of the yellow barn. Beside the bed was a bucket. I had thrown up in it. I could not remember when. I checked to see if I felt sick, but I didn’t. Only very heavy. I closed my eyes.

The next time I awoke, I heard footsteps on the stairs. I opened my eyes and it was darker now, and I could barely make out a woman coming up behind the railing. She was a large woman and light footed, and her hair was dark in the darkness, and she was coming towards me. She stopped beside my bed and took the bucket and carried it to the stairs. She moved without a sound. I watched her through half-open eyes, pretending to be asleep. Then she came back, dipped her hand in her apron pocket and put something on a shelf by the bed.

‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘It’s your sunglasses. You were shouting and making such a terrible fuss about them that Leif went back to the river and found them where your clothes were.’

‘Did I shout?’

‘It can’t be denied.’

‘I don’t need them now. It’s so dark in here.’

‘That’s good. How are you?’

‘I feel heavy.’

She smiled. ‘I guess you do. Look here now,’ she said and bent over me and pulled the pillow out and shook it and put it back behind my head. Her breast brushed against my cheek. It was large and soft. She straightened up. I closed my eyes.

‘Go back to sleep,’ she said.

‘Right.’

She walked without a sound towards the staircase, took the bucket and started down the steps. I could see her face. It wasn’t that round, and soon she would be all gone.

‘Who’s Leif?’ I said. She turned and smiled. Only her head could be seen above the floor.

‘That’s my husband. Signe is my name.’

Signe white, Signe soft, blessed Signe, I thought. Bless the day, bless your feet on the path and the light on your brow.

‘Get some more sleep. It’s night now. You can sleep for as long as you want. It’s nobody’s business.’

‘Right.’

And then she was gone. Everything went quiet again, and when I looked out the window by the floor, the yellow barn had turned grey. I could sleep some more. I could sleep for ever. Just lie here under this skylight and sleep.

The sun shone through the skylight and woke me. Now the whole room was white. I felt listless, but the heaviness was gone. My clothes lay on a spindle-back chair by the bed, and carefully I swung myself out and started to put them
on. They were clean and dry. How could anyone have had the time? I thought. The column of light from the ceiling made the duvet and the sheet shine; it looked like something from the Bible we used to read at school. It was fine to look at, but I couldn’t stay around, I was famished.

I went to the stairs and tried not to make those creaking sounds on my way down, but it couldn’t be done. I came out into a hall with working clothes on hooks in a row, and there was an open door, leading to a room that was filled with light. Inside there was someone humming. I sneaked up to have a look and saw Signe by the worktop holding three large jars. She did not turn, and yet she said:

‘Is that the young lad? Don’t stand outside freezing!’ She laughed with a surprisingly soft, dark chuckle. ‘Come in and get yourself something to eat. You must be hungry as a bear. I’ve just been to the pantry to fetch some jam.’ I entered the room and sat down at the long table. I looked at the jars. That was a
lot
of jam.

From the kitchen I looked out to the yard. A Volvo station wagon was parked close to the house. Dried mud came up to the windows. Behind it, there was another car. It had no wheels and was propped up on four piles of bricks.

The kitchen was spacious and light and full of stuff that didn’t work any more and was going to be repaired or maybe had just been forgotten. There was a new stove next to the worktop, and in a corner stood a black wood burner, and the kitchen was warm and outside it was sunny, and light was everywhere. It was all very fine, but I had put my sunglasses on, just in case, and Signe didn’t mention them when she served me four thick slices of home-made bread
on a board and added butter and jam. I ate as if it were the last food in the world, and Signe said:

‘There’s more where that came from, so you just take it easy. Enjoy the food.’ So I took it easy, and when I was almost finished, I heard heavy, shuffling footsteps in the hall. I stopped eating and looked up at the door. A big man was leaning against the door frame. He grinned at me. He had a stick in one hand and the other he was running through his close-cropped hair, and his hands were as big as boulders, and his bulging chest looked rock-hard.

‘Well, there’s the boy with the white bum,’ he said. Slowly I stood up from the table, there was no other door into the room, and the window looked as if it hadn’t been opened for years, and then I edged round the table and started to run towards him. It was like running into a brick wall. He
was
rock-hard. He let go of the stick and grabbed me round one shoulder, held my hair and looked me straight in the eye. He didn’t blink, and his eyes were the brilliant blue of a child.

‘Hello there, you young billy goat,’ he smiled. ‘What I meant to say was that if it hadn’t been for your bum I would never have seen you. I was in the Volvo, and suddenly I saw something white by the river that wasn’t there before, so of course I had to stop. You didn’t look too clever, I can tell you.’ He let go of my hair and stroked my cheek, and his hand was huge and dry and rough as the rock it resembled, and I stood quite still, and then I couldn’t hold back, and I started to cry. The tears came from everywhere in floods, and he gently pushed me back into the kitchen.

‘Eat up,’ he said, ‘and then come out to the cowshed and
we can have a chat. I could do with a hand. My legs are not what they used to be.’

I sat back down at the table and ate the last slice and cried into the jam and Signe stood humming with her back to me and bent down to put more wood into the black stove. The fire was rumbling, and finally I was both full and empty and bursting at the seams.

‘When you’ve finished, you go out and find Leif, if you feel like it,’ Signe said.

I walked out into the sunshine with my dark glasses on. I couldn’t see Leif anywhere, but there was an old man in overalls standing in the yard. He was thin as a rake and tall, the overalls hung off his shoulders like a flabby tent, and he was holding his hands against the small of his back, gazing up into the air, so I too looked up, but there was nothing there, just air. Then he was aware of me, and he turned on his heel, and we stood up straight staring at each other, and he shook his head and stroked his chin and made a friendly gesture. I did the same, and when he smiled his face split in two, and he was off across the yard and behind the barn.

‘That’s Bjørn, the farm boy,’ Signe said behind me. I turned and there she was, standing in the doorway with a swill bucket in her hand. ‘He helps round here, looks after the horse and mucks out the cowshed. It’s the last door on the right,’ she said, pointing. I walked that way. The hook was off and the door was ajar, and through the crack I could hear Leif swearing like a trooper.

‘Goddamnit, you’re tryin’ to teach your father to fuck?’ he yelled, and then I heard a bang. When I entered, it was half dark, but past the empty stalls I could make him out among a few calves. In each hand he had a shiny pail. The biggest calf had small horns already and was banging against the nearest pail, pulling and tugging at the tether and making a hell of a row. Leif leaned over to put the pail in the trough, and the calf jerked its head and hit him on the temple.

‘You bastard!’ he shouted and dropped the pail on the floor and smacked the calf between the eyes. It gave a jolt. It’s going to keel over, I thought, I was certain of it, for his hands were like sledgehammers. But it shook its head and beat a retreat. Leif turned, holding his forehead and grinned.

‘Rearing the young is a tricky business.’

‘Is that what you do to children?’ I said slowly, sensing the open door behind me, and I already knew his legs were bad. The place stank of cow muck and cow feed, and calf bodies were crashing about in the murk, and he looked at me with round eyes. Then he shook his head and said:

‘People are not animals, Audun.’ He bent over the calf and patted its flank. I had no idea how he knew my name. He pushed the pail over to the calf.

‘You halfwit, Ferdinand, now there’ll be less for you. It’s your own fault,’ and the calf slurped up what was left in the pail, and Leif gently rested his upper chest on Ferdinand’s back and stroked its flank, and the calf stood quite still and just slurped. Leif straightened up, holding on to the calf’s back, grabbed his stick and came over to me.

‘Ferdinand will be a good bull, but he’ll be big, and it’s just as well he learns who’s boss from the off. Soon it will be too late.’

We walked out into the sun. I felt fine now. Apart from one thing.

‘How did you know my name?’ I said.

He laughed. ‘It was written on the inside of your rucksack. Come on, let’s go and say hello to Toughie.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘The scourge of the chicken run.’

Toughie was a fox. He was tied up behind the barn and was almost tame, and wonderful to behold at close quarters. When Leif approached, Toughie jumped up on the leash and smiled as foxes do but he wasn’t that tame. Whenever he screamed there was chaos in the chicken run. But no one would let Toughie go. They had grown to love him, and they would either have to kill him or drive him miles away, and that was not an option.

‘A fox is a fox,’ Leif said, ‘and now that he knows his way around, it’s no good to have him running loose.’

We walked around, and Leif showed me the place. The stable, the sheep shed, the tractor that wouldn’t start just now, and the two baby goats he kept for entertainment.

‘We’ve got no TV here, Audun, and we have to have something to amuse ourselves with.’ And he pointed to the yellow barn and said: ‘Isn’t it fine,’ and I said it was, and then we crossed the yard, and Leif got in behind the wheel of the Volvo, and I got in on the other side.

‘I’ve a job for you,’ he said. ‘Let’s drive off now, and if you see something on the road I should brake for, anything living or breathing or whatever, you tell me in good time.’

‘Right,’ I said. I didn’t understand why, but we drove off, and for a minute there I was afraid we were going back the way I had come, but we didn’t. We were going to the shop and that was in the opposite direction. At one point I saw a tractor ahead of us on the road, and I told Leif in good time, and then he put his right hand under his right leg and lifted it off the accelerator and on to the brake, and we stopped just a metre from it.

‘Leg’s not what it used to be,’ Leif said.

I was there for a whole week. At night I slept in the room beneath the skylight, and in the morning I got up, and Signe served me her home-made bread in the kitchen. And then I worked most of the day on the jobs that Leif decided I could manage. There were more and more, and I could not get enough, and in the evening I swam in the river at a far better spot than the first one I found. At ten o’clock I was sent upstairs with a hug from Signe, and I was so greedy for it that I blushed. I tried to think as little as possible, I just drank it all in. On Wednesday one of their sons came up and fixed the tractor. They let me join him for a test drive, and then I drove it alone across the farmyard with everyone watching and cheering. The engine roared, and I sat up high, and I could steer it wherever I wanted to go.

On Saturday it was raining, and Leif said ‘Thank God,
that’s not a day too soon’, and for the first time, I went out into the yard without my sunglasses on.

When I got up on the eighth day and went downstairs, my father was standing in the kitchen. He was smiling, and he was clean-shaven, but in his eyes I could see what was in store for me. Leif was sitting at the table looking down as I came in.

‘Sorry, Audun, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. We had to let them know. Anything else would be illegal.’

IV

13

I REIN MYSELF
in. On the first day I take the Metro from Veitvet, get off just a few stations closer to Oslo and cross under a railway bridge where I can see the sky between the sleepers above my head, and I walk up a road with factory buildings and warehouses lined up on each side, until I am at the top. Behind a warehouse storing washing powder and down another road to the left, I see the tall, grey Alles Hjem office block across the way, with a car park on the opposite side. The production plant is behind the office block. You cannot see it from the road. I try the main door I entered last week, but it is locked and dark inside. I rattle the brass handle until I realise the people up above don’t start until half-past eight. Now it’s only half-past six, and I walk around the building and find a small gate and enter the yard where there is a loading ramp the entire length of the wall. Pallets are stacked up in rows with waste paper compressed into bales, and I walk along the ramp and in through the plastic flap doors where the forklifts come and go.