Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes: Stories Read online

  Ashes in My Mouth,

  Sand in My Shoes

  Also by Per Petterson

  To Siberia

  In the Wake

  Out Stealing Horses

  I Curse the River of Time

  It’s Fine By Me

  I Refuse

  Ashes in My Mouth,

  Sand in My Shoes

  Per Petterson

  Translated from the Norwegian

  by Don Bartlett

  Graywolf Press

  Copyright © 1987 by Forlaget Oktober, Oslo

  English translation copyright © 2013 by Don Bartlett

  First published with the title Aske i munnen, sand i skoa in 1987 by Forlaget Oktober, Oslo. First published in English in 2013 by Harvill Secker, Random House, London.

  “Before the War” and “The King Is Dead” appeared in Little Star.

  “Like a Tiger in a Cage” appeared in McSweeney’s.

  “A Man Without Shoes” appeared in A Public Space.

  This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and through a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, Amazon.com, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

  A Lannan Translation Selection

  Funding the translation and publication of exceptional literary works

  This book was published with the financial assistance of NORLA.

  Published by Graywolf Press

  250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

  Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

  All rights reserved.

  www.graywolfpress.org

  Published in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-55597-700-9

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-334-6

  2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

  First Graywolf Printing, 2015

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014950985

  Cover design: Kyle G. Hunter

  Cover art: istockphoto.com

  Contents

  A Man Without Shoes

  Ashes in His Mouth

  The Black Car

  The King Is Dead

  Like a Tiger in a Cage

  Fatso

  People Are Not Animals

  Call Me Ali Baba

  Today You Must Pray to God

  Before the War

  To my father, Arthur Petterson, 1911–1990

  A Man Without Shoes

  Dad had a face that Arvid loved to watch, and at the same time made him nervous as it wasn’t just a face but also a rock in the forest with its furrows and hollows, at least if he squinted when he looked. Of course you can be a bit unsettled if you look at your dad and suddenly there is a large rock where his head used to be.

  Those who liked to comment on this kind of thing said that the two of them looked a lot like each other and that was perhaps what made Arvid most nervous, but when he glanced in the mirror he didn’t understand what they meant for Dad was blond, and all Arvid saw in the mirror was two round cheeks and plainly Dad did not have them.

  But most of the time Dad was just Dad, someone that Arvid liked and dared to touch. Uncle Rolf said that Dad’s face had a determination that couldn’t determine where to go, but Uncle Rolf had always been a big mouth.

  Dad worked in a shoe factory and had gone up through the ranks at Salomon Shoes at Kiellands Square. He was a skilled worker now and had just become a foreman when the Norwegian shoe industry capsized and sank like the Titanic. After that he moved from factory to factory, as if they were ice floes in the Bunne Fjord in spring, further and further away, and in the end he found a job on the island of Fyn in Denmark. It was a responsible post for a worker, in the office for half the week, recognition, Mum said, let’s be clear about that, and she seemed to like the thought of returning to the old country.

  He was away for six months, and Arvid and Gry and Mum tiptoed around waiting for the signal to follow. Arvid had slowly begun to say goodbye to the things around him: his room with the model planes hanging from the ceiling, the bullfinch tree down by the dustbin and the secret path beneath the bushes on the Slope. But then one evening Dad was standing in the hall with a crumpled smile and a large suitcase in his hand and he said:

  ‘Sorry, folks, but I’ve never been much of a paper pusher.’

  He’d had a pint or two, and Arvid could see that straight away.

  They were all so bewildered they never got round to asking about anything except what was in the suitcase. When it turned out it was full of marzipan and whisky and Toblerone and Elephant beer from the duty-free shop on the Danish ferry, they crowded into the kitchen like a pack of hungry pups. It was a small kitchen, so the children had to stand while the adults sat around the table with a dram to consider the situation in an adult way. And of course Uncle Rolf had to have his say. It was a mystery to Arvid why he came round so often, didn’t he have his own place to live?

  ‘The thing is, Frank, you don’t have any social aspirations, and you know it!’ said Uncle Rolf, and the kitchen went so quiet you could hear the rain on the windowpanes. It was such a quiet, sneaky pitter-patter that no one had heard it until then. Outside, it was November and dark, the night was full of nasty naked trees scraping against the walls just like in Captain Miki and the Man with the Evil Eye. Arvid stood with his backside against the sink in the kitchen, where just now it had been so cosy. He had a half-eaten Tom’s marzipan log in his hand and hardly dared sniffle, even though he had a bad cold.

  No one in the kitchen really knew what ‘social aspirations’ meant, it had to be a new expression, but Uncle Rolf had read a few books and thought he was damn clever. Anyway, it was not a compliment, Arvid could see the irritation crawling around his dad’s face, and it was contagious for he could feel himself getting upset.

  ‘Skål, Rolf, and let’s hope the social aspirations don’t swell your head as you’ve got so many of them,’ Dad said, and his eyes were narrow and tired too, when he knocked back what was left in his glass. And then he got up and went to bed.

  Uncle Rolf sat twirling his glass between his fingers, but no one talked to him any more, and Mum began to wipe the table, so he drank up and went home to his flat in Vålerenga. The flat was full of clutter and dust balls everywhere, and Allers and Reader’s Digest and Norsk Ukeblad strewn across the coffee table, and whenever Arvid came to visit him he had to help with the dishes even though he never did that at home. Uncle Rolf didn’t have a wife, and who would want his sort, Arvid said to himself.

  Uncle Rolf worked at the Jordan brush factory in Økern. There he stood at a machine all day making sure the bristles were properly inserted into the holes of the red, green and blue toothbrushes. Such a waste of time, Arvid thought, making toothbrushes, day in, day out.

  But two weeks after Dad returned home from Denmark, he was standing at his own machine, next to Uncle Rolf’s. Uncle Rolf had got him the job. It was unbearable.

  And on top of that Uncle Rolf liked his job, even though he was always reading the Reader’s Digest and that sort of magazine and telling them how he was going to start up his own business: patents, imports and rubbish like that. He liked talking, there was nothing he loved more than the sound of his own voice when he was speaking about all the things he was going to do. And though Arvid was so small that no one thought he understood a thing, he did understand that Uncle Rolf would be making toothbrushes for the rest of his life. Not that he
talked that much about toothbrushes, everyone must have known that there were limits to how much you could say about something as stupid as toothbrushes.

  Shoes, on the other hand, there was a lot to say about them. Gym shoes, smart shoes, ladies’ shoes, children’s shoes, ski boots, riding boots. Dad talked a lot about shoes, and he knew what he was talking about. But now it was over. Now you couldn’t even say the word ‘sole’ aloud. If you did Dad would lose his temper.

  ‘In this house we wear shoes, we don’t talk about them, is that clear!’ he said, and then there was silence, although Arvid could easily see that his mother was annoyed by all the detours they had to take.

  Downstairs in his cellar room the piles of toothbrushes were mounting up. They were the seconds that Dad had been given at work, with handles that were too short or bristles missing. Soon they would have enough toothbrushes to last them into the next life, if such a thing existed, but Dad didn’t believe that and neither did Mum. Arvid was not so sure, because Gran in Denmark said something different and she ought to know. She went to church every Sunday, and she composed hymns.

  Arvid hated those toothbrushes inside their plastic bags, sorted by colour. They took up space and were pushing the shoe samples out of the closet, and the rolls of leather and the lasts and the shoemaking tools Dad used to repair their shoes with when the toes were yawning or a heel fell off. Arvid used to sit on a stool watching, and there was the good smell of leather and his dad’s back, that was fine to look at when he was working.

  ‘What are you doing now, Dad?’

  ‘I’m experimenting,’ they might say to each other, and Dad did that a lot, spent time pondering all sorts of problems that there must have been with shoes.

  Now that too was over. And one day Arvid saw his dad carrying out the rolls of leather and the shoe samples and stuffing them into the dustbin by the bullfinch tree. Then he was back down in the cellar, and there was a terrible pounding on the stairs, and after a while he came up, panting, with a huge basket of shoe lasts, lasts of all sizes, elegant and shiny with their varnish, and they had been such a wonderful sight on the shelf in the lumber room, where they used to be, and they seemed to be dancing.

  Dad put down the basket in the middle of the living-room floor and then he threw the lasts, one after the other, into the old black Jøtul stove with its lion feet, and they burned well with an intense red flame.

  ‘That’s it, Arvid,’ Dad said with an ugly laugh and his face looked just like a rock. ‘Now I’m a man without shoes!’

  ‘I know,’ Arvid said. ‘Now you’re a man with toothbrushes!’

  And even though he was only one metre fifteen tall and pretty slight, his voice was so heavy with scorn that at first his dad stared at him and then went into the kitchen, and he slammed the door after him.

  Ashes in His Mouth

  The floor is cold to his bare feet. He can feel the cracks between the boards, and he tries to avoid even touching the floor. He takes his bearings from the dim light he knows must come from the half-open toilet door. Once there, he pulls down his underpants and pees, he’s asleep, he dreams of a red bike racing across the shiny tarmac in Veitvetsvingen and the world around him explodes into green and blue and yellow. Then he walks back to his room like a little ghost in white pants, and his mother, who is watching him, does not know if she should wake him, or if she should laugh or cry. She does neither and, resigned, she fetches a wet cloth from the bathroom and wipes the floor for the fourth time this week, thinking it was a bad idea to leave the lamp on in the hall at night. The varnish cannot take much more.

  Arvid is sleeping. Arvid is dreaming. He dreams he is falling through endless pipes, pipes that get darker and darker and resound with hollow echoes when he shouts all he can, but the echo fades and dies, and when he wakes he is screaming stifled screams into his duvet.

  He dreams about animals with sharp teeth and long tails holding his body in a fierce grip, and when he wakes the duvet is wrapped tightly round his chest and he is staring into the dark with wide-open eyes. And then the duvet comes alive in his hands as he tries to untangle it from his body, and it coils and twists and he shouts:

  ‘Mum! Dad! There are snakes in my bed!’

  ‘No – there are – not.’ His mother’s drowsy voice hauls itself up from sleep in the next room.

  ‘But there are!’

  ‘Well, come in here then.’

  Cautiously he draws his hands to his chest. He barely moves them. It must be done that way so the snakes don’t notice, or else they might get angry and bite him. They have done it before.

  A few minutes later he is on the floor. Ahead of him is the pool of light, the open door with its freedom from the darkness. Then there is a sound and he freezes, the grinding of sharp teeth and a rhythmic rustling sound. It is the tail, he can see it, swinging across the rug and it’s rustling, rustling. He can see its eyes too, like two balls of fire burning his face.

  ‘Mum! Dad! You’ve got to help me. There’s a crocodile on the floor. I can’t get past!’

  ‘Nonsense. Come on now!’

  ‘I can’t! It will eat me up!’

  A bed is creaking and then he hears the heavy footsteps across the floor. For a moment Dad fills the doorway and the world goes black. Arvid screams, everything whirls around him, he is dizzy, and he sinks to the floor, and then his dad enters, steps right through the crocodile and it’s gone at once, and Dad grabs Arvid underneath the arms and lifts him up. Arvid falls asleep at once. Dad carries the limp body into the next room and shakes his head at the woman sitting up in the double bed like a question mark.

  The following day his body is sluggish, his neck stiff, and it hurts when he moves his head.

  He dreams he is flying high up, with a strong wind under his arms. It is wonderful, in his stomach there is a quiver. But when he wants to go down, he cannot, he is too light and then he rises and rises until he is all giddy and sick, and when he wakes he has a stomach virus and has to eat Marie biscuits and drink boiled water for several days.

  He dreams that his dad’s blue T-shirt with all the muscles inside it is suddenly empty and flabby and hanging there on a nail in a large empty attic room.

  He dreams the house is full of ashes, there are ashes in his mouth and ashes in his pockets, and when he looks at himself in the mirror he has black lines all over his face from his fingers.

  When he wakes, it is morning, but he doesn’t feel like getting up even though it is Sunday.

  The door opens and Mum enters the room.

  ‘Hi, Arvid. You have to get up now. It’s ten o’clock and we’re going for a hike, remember?’

  He turns to the wall.

  ‘But Arvid, aren’t you feeling well?’

  He tries to see if he is ill, but he is not, he just doesn’t want to get up. He wants to lie there gazing at the wall. There are two holes in the soft wall that his fingers have dug out when he’s been in bed unable to sleep. He looks at the holes and thinks, there are two holes in the wall. I made them.

  Mum goes to the window and pulls the curtains open. Light floods the room, for it is ten o’clock and summer.

  ‘No!’ he yells. Mum closes them and then she goes down the stairs.

  ‘Frank!’ she calls.

  There are two holes in the wall. I made them, Arvid thinks. He raises a hand and runs his fingers around the edges, but he doesn’t have the will to dig. He puts his hands under the pillow.

  Dad comes in, the floorboards creak beneath his weight and he sits down on the edge of the bed and touches Arvid’s shoulder.

  ‘Hi there, chief, turn round so I can see you.’ Arvid turns stiffly, his hands covering his face. Dad lifts him off the bed and holds him tight to his body as he carries him out of the room. Arvid can feel the solid muscles and the cloth of the blue T-shirt.

  In the bathroom Dad puts Arvid down on the toilet seat and wraps a large towel around his shoulders. Then he undresses and turns on the shower. When the water is warm enou
gh he lifts Arvid, takes off his underpants and carries him into the shower, holding him close to his chest while Arvid curls up and covers his face. The hot water cascades over their heads and Dad holds Arvid with one hand, washing him with the other, his face, chest, back, between his legs, feet. Arvid starts crying. It doesn’t show because of the falling water, but his dad notices a faint trembling. Then he turns off the shower and places Arvid on a stool in front of the basin, dries him gently and takes his hands away from his face. Arvid looks in the mirror and sees a very clean boy’s face with wet hair and it is his. Dad dries himself and puts on the blue T-shirt, tousles Arvid’s hair and Arvid smiles.

  ‘Come on, let’s eat,’ Dad says, and all of a sudden there is the wonderful strong aroma of fried bacon.

  The Black Car

  The day Arvid’s granddad died was a Sunday, and most of the family had gone out to the cabin at the end of the Bunne Fjord. It was a red log cabin at the top of a slope that started gently by the road but then plunged down to the rocks on the shore. If you went up the stone steps and the door was not locked, you came into a narrow hall with three large windows looking out over the fjord. And then there was a sitting room and kitchen in one, but no one ever sat there because it was so dark. Upstairs was only one room with the beds down both sides, or in fact under the angle of the sloping roof, for its ends almost reached the floor. The floor was cold, there was a draught up between the boards, and the whole place reeked of damp wool carpets. If you didn’t walk right in the middle of the floor, you were sure to bang your head and that was precisely what the grown-ups often did, especially at night when they went downstairs and outside for a pee. Even Granddad, who among many things was a Sunday-school teacher, swore blue murder when he hit his forehead on the beams.

  Uncle Rolf solved this problem by going to the little window at the gable end, the one that wasn’t above the front door, and he peed from there. This was not popular. Right beneath the window was Gran’s rose bed and, although she had been dead for some years, Dad felt her memory should be treasured, and for him this rose bed had taken on such significance.