I Refuse Read online

  He didn’t turn when he heard me come, for surely he heard me come. I stopped behind him and said:

  ‘What the hell. Have you been fired.’

  I shouldn’t have said that, and a hammer struck a bolt, and the bolt was was jammed and could not move either way, there was no turning back. Slowly he got up. I stood firm. I was breathing though my mouth, quickly in and out, I had been running for two years, ever since my mother disappeared. I stood there. He turned, and a surprisingly blind expression crossed his white face, which in any other situation, with any other face would have moved me. It is true, there was a confusion there that I had never seen on my father before.

  Gently, almost, he held my arm and led me into the living room. Then he closed the door carefully behind us, turned and suddenly he started to shove me around the room among the little furniture we had, and each time I was sent flying, he came after me and punched me hard in the shoulder and the throat and hurled me against the wall, where my head smacked against the panel, and it was shocking that he didn’t use his boots. I wasn’t prepared, and I thought, think, think, think, and then it came to me that I could get through this if I feigned it didn’t hurt, that what was happening to me was happening to someone else. I had heard it might work, and he yelled at me:

  ‘I’ll shut that goddamn mouth of yours,’ and he turned on me with a fury I hadn’t witnessed before. There was nothing that could hold him back, and he sent me smack against the wall again, and the air flew out of my mouth in a groan drawn from the farthest reaches of my body, but I didn’t want to feel anything, and I didn’t want to hear anything, and I filled my head with a dream that my father could not see, and it worked, it truly did. I rushed into the dream, and he thought we were in the same room, in the same house, but I was somewhere else entirely, and I feigned there was no pain, in my face, in my arms and chest, and I sailed away and dreamt I wasn’t there, and in the dream a wind came through the room, it blew across the field, it blew through the woods and the sound of it was so loud there was nothing you could hear but the wind, and Jim came flying in the wind. And he was singing to me in the wind, and wind and song were the same, and I am not kidding, he sang:

  The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want;

  He makes me down to lie,

  In pastures green,

  and other songs his mother had taught him, Christian hymns about angels singing, and the wind left my skin both numb and lukewarm, not cold, not hot, as you might have expected, and I couldn’t have told one from the other. And he who always used his boots when he punished us, he was punching me now, but inside my strange intoxication I was not afraid of him any more. It was time for celebration. He could hit me and hit me, and what I feared would soon be over, and then there was nothing else he could do except to kill me.

  And then I rushed out of the dream as quickly as I’d rushed into it and felt his fist hit me in the eye with a sickening sound, and it closed up, and through the other I saw Siri entering the living room from the hall. She stood in the doorway staring at us, her mouth open, and with my left arm covering my face I pointed to the stairs with the right, and he hit me with such a blow to the chest that it sent me flying over the chair that was standing there, and my elbow hit the edge of the coffee table, and the table fell over, and the chair fell over, and Siri ran upstairs. I quickly rolled over on the floor in case it was the boot again, but then he put the chair back and sat down breathing heavily, his elbows on his knees. He stared straight at the wall. Slowly, I rose on to my knees. He kept staring at the wall. I felt such such a pain in my side that the air wouldn’t go all the way down into my lungs, so maybe a rib had been broken. And I was a one-eyed boy, and it was hard to find my way, the hot blood flowing from my brow over the eye that was completely shut now and down over my cheek. From the other eye something salt and shiny was coming, and with my tongue I could taste I was crying.

  On all fours I found my way to the stairs and then up, step by step, and I swear there were more of them now than there used to be.

  Siri was standing in the doorway to our room. She said:

  ‘Tommy, what are we going to do now.’

  I wasn’t able to answer, I stood up to my full height, my neck hurt, and my throat, where his fingers had squeezed and held me against the wall while he beat me.

  ‘Under my bed,’ I said.

  She went into the room, across the floor and knelt down to look under my bed. There was only one thing there. She backed out with her behind in the air and got up with the bat in her hand. I had been the best in the school at rounders, I hit the ball hardest, I hit it in the meat every time on its way down and it flew out of the school grounds and all the goddamn way into eternity where no one could find it.

  ‘Is that such a good idea, Tommy,’ Siri said. She was twelve years old, I was thirteen and a half, fourteen soon. We were older than that.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  I walked towards the door, and then she said:

  ‘Can I stay here meanwhile.’

  ‘You just stay here,’ I said.

  He was still in the chair. I am sure he knew I was coming, but he didn’t move at all, and then I was behind him, and I just lifted the bat over my shoulder so my knuckles touched my ear and with all the strength I had left, I struck out in a fierce blow and hit his leg, the kicking leg, and it broke with a sound I can still remember. And even though he was sitting well back in the chair, he fell forward, over his knees and down on to the floor, and he rolled around and lay straight out on his back. He didn’t reach for his leg although his ankle was bent at an unheard-of angle, an angle never seen, and he did not make a sound, not a sigh, not a groan, and I fell to my knees and held his head and said:

  ‘Does it hurt, Dad’, and then I said: ‘Daddy, Daddy, does it hurt a lot,’ I said, and I didn’t even know why he was at home that day, when he should have been at work. Perhaps he had been fired, what did I know, for something that was not his fault, or perhaps he finally had kicked one of the drivers out of his seat, one who had deserved it. One who had always looked down on him because he couldn’t rise to the place behind the wheel, as the drivers had, and ride the shiny dustcart, but instead toiled his guts out on the roads with one bin on each shoulder and was the strongest man in the district. And he had been alone with us for almost two years, and now we were celebrating Whit as we always did, and although it wasn’t much to brag about, still the lilacs were in bloom and their fragrance was drifting from house to house, and perhaps he had kept it a secret from us what had really happened that day while we were at school, or the day before. It could have been many things. I didn’t know, and I hadn’t asked.

  I sat on his bulging chest with the broad shoulders between my legs and my numb, red and grazed hands against the ears either side of his square head. He lay quite still and looked quite small where he lay, quite short, shorter than me, even, I hadn’t noticed until then, and his eyes were squeezed shut, and I had smashed his ankle with the bat, and he smelt faintly of garbage, and I thought, it’s an honest job, someone has to do it, or else it will pile up and stink in the heat, but I couldn’t take the smell any more. It made me feel sick and confused, it lay swathed mummy-like around his body, the filthy bandages from top to toe, around his boots in layer on layer, for ever and always.

  I stood up, put the bat down on the floor beside his smashed leg for everyone to see. And then I called Siri.

  She came down the stairs. She was crying and smiling and was in the same state that I was in behind my one eye. She hooked her arm under mine, around my back, and I said nothing about the pain her arm inflicted as she tried to lift me the way we had seen in films when they helped the wounded soldiers from the trenches, and the war was won, but the battle lost, and she was too light, of course, and I was too heavy, yet we walked through the hall in that fashion, through the door and into the light, and the sun slapped me gently on my face and was still shining from the same blinding white sky as it had early this morn
ing and had stopped in its course on this very special day when something was going to happen that everyone had been waiting for, and now it had.

  In this way, Siri and I walked to the house further up the road, where Jim lived with his mother, there was nowhere else to go, and several neighbours came out on to their doorsteps to watch us limp by, but no one came down to give a helping hand, and if someone had, I would have struck that hand. Right off.

  BEHIND THE MILL ⋅ 1966

  ‘DO YOU THINK it’s true what they say about the cogwheel and your conscience.’

  ‘No, what.’

  ‘Well, that your conscience is like a cogwheel, or even like a circular saw, whirring round, and its sharp teeth are biting into your soul, hurting like hell and each time you do something really bad your blood is spurting, but then you do more and more bad things and the teeth are ground down and your soul becomes all calloused and then you don’t feel anything when the wheel goes round and then that’s who you are.’

  ‘Who.’

  The one who does terrible things and doesn’t even notice.’

  ‘Are you talking about what you did to your dad.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you must notice when you do something that’s really bad.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I noticed a little when it happenend, but I don’t now. I don’t feel what I did was terrible. It doesn’t hurt anywhere, except in my eye and rib and he did that to me.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll feel it in time.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Maybe I don’t have a soul.’

  ‘Sure you do. But then what you did wasn’t terrible. It was something you had to do. I know you.’

  ‘Do you think so.’

  ‘Sure I do. I am the most Christian of us, so I must know.’

  ‘I did what it says you’re supposed to do in the Bible. I turned the other cheek. Ha ha. It’s true.’

  ‘You did. Turn your head. Ah, that looks bad.’

  ‘It’s started to heal. I can touch it now.’

  ‘That’s fine. It didn’t do you much good, then, turning the other cheek, and there wasn’t anything you could have done than what you did.’

  ‘I don’t think Jesus would have done what I did.’

  ‘Take it easy. You’re not Jesus.’

  ‘No, sure I’m not. I’m not Jesus. That would have been something, right. Jesus of Mørk. Ha ha.’

  JIM ⋅ TOMMY ⋅ 1966

  THEY STOOD UP, brushed the soil off the back of their trousers and set off walking around the mill, which smelt of fodder and dust and something else that only mills smell of, malt perhaps, something to do with beer, and they went along the river towards the waterfall which in the olden days drove the millstones against each other and ground the wheat to flour, but today the water fell metre upon metre without rhyme or reason, the boss of the mill said. He saw only the use in everything, saw what everything could be used for, what could earn money, and the moon shining on fresh snow and the blue anemones on the hillsides and the bluebells in the meadows and the wind over the seas and the wind through the rye and the red ridges in the autumn and the birds that travelled here and left again, yes, everything that came here and left, none of this held any meaning for him, it couldn’t be added up, it couldn’t be multiplied, and a waterfall that only fell, it fell into nothing and that was a view that was shared by many. But a child could feel all of this on the palms of its hands, on its hips and legs and could be a blind child and still see it.

  At the top, near the dam, the bikes were leaned against the railings and they stood by the bikes and leaned against the railing and looked down into the waterfall, and Tommy ran his fingers carefully over the eyebrow and the long gash along it, and over the scabs on his cheek and said, sometimes you feel like jumping, don’t you, just jumping over and sailing out like a bird. I know, Jim said, just climb up on to the railings and dive. My mother says it isn’t dangerous to jump off and fly, you can jump off a skyscraper if you like, and it isn’t dangerous. It’s the landing that’s a problem. I’ve heard that one before, Tommy said. I know, Jim said. Everyone’s heard it.

  They mounted their bikes and pedalled round the bends along the river, a very small river, but it was their river, Beaver Beck, it was called even though it was much bigger than a beck. There had been beavers in it before, there weren’t any now. Only the old people in the district could remember seeing beavers. It was bad, the old people said, you should have been here, we saw beavers felling birches as tall as tower blocks in the city, and they just ate a few shoots from the crown and then they started gnawing at a new one, and the trees were left to rot. It was a sorry sight, a great shame, the old people said, so much firewood down the drain, it’s good they’re gone, those damn beavers, I’ve shot a few myself, one old-timer said. But Jim and Tommy would have liked to see at least one beaver fell a tree, it would have been interesting to find out how long it took, and then they came in to Mørk from the south and not from their usual side, and turned into the BP station and parked their bikes between the pumps and went into the kiosk with the money they had in their pockets to buy a Krone ice cream. It was June and hot, and Tommy’s father had been swept off the face of the earth. No one had seen him since the day after Whit, and no one understood how he could have left with that leg of his, and without anyone seeing him. When the four children returned to the house the day after, he was gone, and everything was as they had left it, the toppled tables and chairs in the living room, a vase was on the floor cracked into sky blue pieces, pictures hanging crookedly on the walls, and the glass in one of them smashed. The rounders bat still on the floor. Everyone knew about Tommy and the bat. Everyone knew about his father’s leg.

  How’s the face, the man behind the counter said, does it still hurt. No, it’s fine, Tommy said. It wasn’t of course, it still hurt, but the man said, have this too, and as well as the ice cream, he gave Tommy a free bar of Kvikk Lunsj chocolate. Eat it now, the man, said, and to hell with dinner, it won’t hurt you this one time. Thanks, Tommy said, but maybe I’ll keep it for tonight, it’s crime-time on TV. That’s fine, too, the man said, his name was Lysbu, you’ll manage, he said. It will soon be sorted out and then you’ll be free of it all. You can eat with us, Jim said, we’re having perch, I caught it myself. Right, Tommy said, what will your mother say about me coming. She’s a Christian, Jim said, she can’t say no. That would have been great, but I can’t. Siri and I have to cook for the twins, we’ll be fine, I found a little money, we’ve been shopping, so we have food. You’ll soon be free of all this, Lysbu said. It makes no difference to me, Tommy said, we’ll manage. Thanks for the chocolate, that was decent of you, he said, and in fact he would rather have said no, thank you, he didn’t want anything from anybody, but Lysbu wasn’t like most grown-ups, he actually listened to what you were saying.

  When they were out by the pumps, Tommy took off the chocolate wrapper and split the bar into two equal parts, two fingers each with biscuit inside the chocolate and passed Jim one half, but Jim said, you can all have a finger each tonight at crime-time like you just said, there are four of you, right. Tommy looked at Jim, he looked down at the chocolate. It was soft to the touch. He smiled. It’s going to melt anyway, he said. Let’s eat it now. And Jim took his bit willingly, and then they ate the chocolate, and behind them Lysbu stood by the counter watching them through the window as they got on their bikes, the left hand holding the ice cream and the right hand on the handlebars, and turning out between the petrol pumps. He shook his head. It will all be sorted out, he said aloud. It has to be.

  Then he went into the workshop. There was Jonsen’s Opel Kapitän, the paintwork gleaming, not a scrap of rust, but Jonsen couldn’t fix anything on the car himself, he couldn’t tighten a nut, couldn’t change a spark plug, he could fix just about anything in this world, but not on a car. The few times Jonsen lifted the bonnet his mind went blank and he slammed it back down and then he delivered the car to Lysbu at the BP garage if there was som
ething wrong, and as a rule there was very little wrong, only some trivial thing that Jonsen could have fixed himself in a couple of minutes if for once in his life he had taken the time to look. And what would he do now that Lysbu was about to retire. It wasn’t far off, he was sick of the whole business, of loudmouthed women with weightlifters’ biceps and bandits like Tommy Berggren’s father, of shitty cars, of Wartburgs and Skodas, of threshing machines and Volvo lorries racing to the mill at a hell of a speed and back home again, sending the swirling dust up from the flatbeds of their open trailers and into his house and blocking the roads when they stopped for the drivers to talk with their window open, and they didn’t even bother to pull over. He was sick of wily farmers he wasn’t even able to talk to without getting confused and furious, he would never get used to how they made conversation, never going straight to the point, forever beating around the bush in evasive circles, always with a cunning grin on their faces, he was from Sarpsborg, he didn’t get it, there was always something funny and he never got the goddamn joke. So it was over now, he was going to retire and move to Oslo, to his sister’s, at Lakkegata 7, by the Akerselva river and Schous Brewery with its large, shiny copper vats inside, you could see them through the windows as you walked past on Trondheimsveien. Jesus, was he looking forward to that.

  They cycled off. It was a Friday, it was crime-time tonight, and the ride home was summer all the way, and holidays were only two weeks off and everything was green as the meadows were green, and the leaves of the birch trees were green as the spruce trees were green, and wherever you turned to look in this world everything was as green as every other thing was green, and the fields were green and not golden as they were in the early autumn. Tommy had started school again, he had been away since the day after Whit, and for the first week he saw the world through one eye only. The doctor in Mørk came out and did his stitches and left again, and no one but Jim was let in to help now that the girls and Tommy were alone in the house. The sergeant from the district police station came out and had to leave again, we will get this thing sorted out, he said, this is no good, you just wait, he said, but he couldn’t get past the threshold to see how they were doing inside the house, he couldn’t get past Tommy. Goddamn that boy, he said on his way to the car, how the hell are we going to deal with him. And Tommy didn’t budge and not one of the neighbours dared go anywhere near. So they walked up and down the road and went in and out of their houses and went to work in the morning and came back and had dinner and watched TV in the evening, watched The High Chaparral on the Swedish channel at half-past seven if it was a Saturday night, and Victoria had such pretty teeth, someone said, maybe Sletten said, and it was a strange thing to say, even though it was true, that she had beautiful teeth. You could see them when she smiled, it was really something, and no one in Mørk had teeth like hers, and whenever a neighbour passed on the road down by the stone path and the dustbins, he would look up at the windows in the house where the whole Berggren family had once lived, where only Tommy and his sisters lived now. It was a scandal.