I Refuse

  This was a new kind of autumn.

  Sometimes it’s not possible to remember exactly what happened during a certain phase of your life, a certain season, to remember what you did or said at the time, who you said it to, remember the weekdays, the schooldays and birthdays, who was invited and how many years they carried with them, but you do remember what colours the days were, and your palms remember the soft, the smooth and the rough, remember every surface, remember stones and the bark of trees, remember water, and you remember a piece of clothing, that it was important, but not why it was important, and you suddenly remember a telephone number, but you don’t remember who it was that you were calling, 25 00 45, who could that have been, and a sentence comes to mind, but you can’t remember if it was him or you who said it, but it didn’t matter, for no one could tell your voices apart. But you can remember what the weather was like, and the sky above, all the skies, and all the days had the same sign, it was plus, plus, plus, and they came towards you and passed by in slow motion, and the piece of clothing was a dress, and wearing that dress you swirled round on one foot only, and you lifted one hand and looked at it, and it was a new hand, it was your hand, but you hadn’t seen it before, and you laughed and said: I’ve got a new hand, look at my hand, Jim, it’s waving, it will never go home again.

  Shortly before Christmas he started to change. I didn’t know why, we stood in the snow in the playground, and I asked him if anything had happened that he wanted to tell me about, but nothing had happened, he said. Everything is just as it always was, he said, but of course it wasn’t, and that was what I said, I said Jim, something must have happened because you’re so different, don’t you like me any more, is that what’s happened, I said, that you are tired of me, but then all you have to do is say so, that would be much better, I said, and it was true, that was my thinking, and then he said, why do you say I’ve changed, I haven’t changed. But you have, I said, you don’t laugh any more, you’re always so serious, it makes me sad, you don’t even touch me. Why don’t you touch me. I don’t have to touch you all the time, he said, do I, and I said, I have to go now. We’ve got physics, and I don’t understand a thing. About physics.

  The following day he didn’t come, and the day after that it was the end-of-term exams for the whole school, and then he came just as we were going in, and later someone in his class said that Jim didn’t spend more than an hour on the whole thing while the others sat there for two or more, but we didn’t meet that day, for he finished early and went home long before I did. And then he was back at school for a few days, and we were so awkward with each other in the playground that I thought, it’s over then, we don’t say a kind word to each other any more, but maybe it wasn’t over, I didn’t know what love was meant to be like, I hadn’t seen it anywhere but in films, and maybe felt it with Tommy. I would just have to wait and see. I wanted to be with Jim. I didn’t want to go back.

  After New Year he didn’t come back at all. It wasn’t easy for me. I couldn’t just go out to the neighbourhood and knock on his door, I couldn’t just turn up there, that would have been an event, and what would they say, all the old people when they saw me on the road, with our house burnt down and everything, where would I go. I found it difficult to ask anyone, even Tommy I couldn’t bring myself to ask. Finally I went to Mathiesen at school. Jim and he were friends despite the difference in age, and status, if you like, and they often met after school too, to discuss history and politics, and Mathiesen told me that Jim had become ill, and I asked him if it was serious. It probably is, Mathiesen said, but is he in hospital, I said, is it that serious, I said, because I could visit him there, on neutral ground, if there were such a thing, but no, I don’t think so, Mathiesen said, I think he’s at home in the house. At home in the house. Why didn’t he just say at home. As though at home were a hospital too.

  And then he really was in hospital. It was already spring, it was March and something had happened, he had been lucky to pull through, someone said, I don’t remember who, and when two weeks had passed, I went in to see Mathiesen again and asked if he knew what had happened, and he said this was something he could not talk about, and I asked, did he think it would be all right if I went to the hospital to see Jim, but he didn’t think that was such a good idea. Mathiesen had spoken to Jim’s mother on the phone, and she had said it was best for Jim to get all the rest he could and that no one should upset him, which was what the doctors were afraid of apparently, that he would get upset and anxious and end up even worse. But I caught the train to Lillestrøm anyway and the blue bus up to the hospital and got off there and walked across the square and past a red-and-white ambulance parked at a skewed angle, the rear doors open and a stretcher on its way out, and then on to the main entrance.

  Across the large square I could see him standing outside by the doors in a white hospital smock. He was smoking and it was cold, I had a cap on and a duffel coat, and I thought, how is it possible for him to stand out there in the cold just to smoke, and at home in Mørk, or anywhere else I might be when Jim came walking towards me or came on his bicycle, he would see me from a distance and wave and afterwards he would say, Siri, I would know you from any distance, it could be pitch black and I would still see it was you, he said. But now I was walking straight towards him, and what he did was to look at the ground and look up at the sky and look to both sides, and when he finally looked straight ahead, he didn’t see me, even at such a short distance he couldn’t see who was coming, he didn’t wave or give me a sign or a greeting, he was standing there shuffling his feet in that strange way, smoking intensely, staring into the empty blue.

  And then I stopped in the middle of the square. It was so stupid, I felt a hot blush rise in the blue cold and the blood was throbbing so loudly in my ears I was sure it could be heard over the whole square, and I felt ashamed and thought, what are you doing here, who do you think you are, and I was so ashamed I could hardly breathe, and I turned and went back towards the bus stop past the same red-and-white ambulance, with its rear doors closed now, and it was a longer walk that way, from the hospital, than it was to it.

  When I reached the bus stop, I studied the sign to find out if there was a bus back to Lillestrøm station and when that bus might leave, but I couldn’t make sense of the timetable, because the times of departure were all over the place and cascaded number by number from the columns on both sides in a double landslide, so I gave up and stood stock still, waiting for a bus I didn’t know would come. I glanced across at the hospital and the double glass doors at the entrance, and Jim’s white figure was still outside. Above his head I saw the grey smoke spiral upwards and then lie flat in the cold air, but I couldn’t make out his face, nor he mine, no matter the distance between us. And then suddenly he was gone, and turning to the right to look up the hill, I saw the bus sweep down the polished, icy tarmac and skid sideways down to the bus stop and come to a halt right in front of me. Through the window at the front I could see the driver’s mouth say something like Goddamnit to hell.

  JIM ⋅ TOMMY ⋅ 1970

  JIM AND TOMMY came down the path between the trees towards Lake Aurtjern. The ice shone in the moonlight. They were up to their ankles in snow. Their ice hockey skates dangled on their chests with the laces tied around their necks. They were both wearing caps, Jim’s long hair was tucked under the edge, and they looked unfamiliar, different, even to each other, but although Tommy was taller than Jim they looked more like each other with their caps on than they did without, although they weren’t aware of it themselves.

  The moon was mirrored on the ice, and the ice looked as solid as it was. It was a night of blue ice, minus ten degrees, and the moon lit up parts of the rocky hill behind the lake and drew dark lines down where the ravines ran from the top to the far bank. A fir tree leaned over the lake casting crooked shadows across the ice. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Everything was still. They stopped for a moment in the snow by the bank and gazed at what lay in front of them. Jim turn
ed to Tommy and said:

  ‘You could get religious for less.’

  ‘You’re already religious,’ Tommy said.

  ‘Not so much any longer, in fact. I’m a socialist. I’m for a classless society.’

  Tommy didn’t answer, but stood with his back straight, staring across the lake to the far bank and the shadow of the hill and the moonlight leaking in between the trees and the perfect, shiny ice.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ he said. Then they walked down to the ice.

  It was winter, it was 1970, December, they had both turned eighteen, one after the other, Jim in October and Tommy in November. Only two days later Tommy took his driving test and bought himself an old white Mercedes he had been saving up for. The Beatles had split up, they would never come back as they had been. It was Yoko Ono’s fault, but it made no difference, there was nothing left to say, it wasn’t even sad. The Sixties were gone anyway. It was over.

  Now they lifted the laces over their heads and dropped the skates on the ice and took off their woollen mittens and knelt down to loosen the knots and extend the leather on both sides of the tongue so a foot could slip in. They tightened the laces carefully all the way up to the ankle and ran them twice round it and tied them in a simple knot and then crossed them on the way down again and wound them tightly round the foot between the leather and the blade and tied the flat brown laces in a final double loop and got up and took a few cautious steps on the ice. It was a long time since they had been on the ice, skating, but it went better than expected, their ankles didn’t buckle. They set off slowly, side by side, along the bank and had to hold each other’s shoulder, arm over arm, hand over hand, most of the way until they turned into the first cove and came out again in much better style a bit further up. Then they moved faster and skated around the edge of Lake Aurtjern in a circle, more confident now, it was like figure skating, floating, swinging through the air, and Tommy laughed, Jesus, he shouted, here we come, and they both laughed, and their voices had a very special sound, not like in a forest at all, but more like inside a room, on an indoor stage, but without an audience, then, which of course was the point, that there should not be an audience, and with a few hefty thrusts of their skates they raced across the lake in a straight line and braked sideways-on in the middle of it all with a shower of ice spraying up from the blades like you could see in an ice hockey match on TV and stopped and stood still and only slowly looked from side to side, and there was nothing but forest, and no one else was out tonight.

  Jim was out of breath, the air came from from his mouth in icy fumes, and it was him who said:

  ‘Tommy. How long have we been friends.’

  ‘All of our lives,’ Tommy said.

  ‘I can’t remember us ever not being friends. When would that have been.’ Jim said. ‘I think it could last the rest of our lives,’ he said carefully, in a low voice. ‘Don’t you think.’

  ‘We will change. We were more like each other before than we are now.’

  ‘We’ve never been like each other. Think of your parents. Of the time you had.’

  ‘That’s true, I guess. And you’ve been a Christian. I’ve never been a Christian. Or maybe a little. A little Christian.’

  ‘I’m not a Christian any more. I’m a socialist.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, you are,’ Tommy said. ‘But it will last if we want it to. It depends on us. We can be friends for as long as we want to.’

  ‘And we want to, don’t we,’ Jim said.

  ‘Sure,’ Tommy said. ‘I will, at least. Won’t you.’

  ‘Sure I will,’ Jim said, and he felt so happy, for what would the future have been without Tommy, what would life have been, and they could talk in this way only because it was night and the light was different and they had their caps on, which made them different from who they were during daytime in the real world and at the same time made them more similar to each other, even though Tommy was taller than Jim. But they couldn’t see that, and the moon shone over Lake Aurtjern and it was as cold as hell and no one could see them with their caps on anyway, and nothing was as it used to be, and they could say anything they liked, and Jim said:

  ‘Is it because you think I’m an OK person that you’re friends with me. Is there something special about me that you think is good.’

  ‘We’re friends because we’re friends. We’ve always been friends. You’re Jim. You’ve always been Jim.’

  ‘Is that a good thing.’

  ‘Sure, it’s good.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Jim said, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure if it was enough. It didn’t feel like it was, not quite, because maybe it was more like you had to be worthy. He had thought that a few times, that he ought to make himself worthy, that was how it felt. But he swallowed those feelings, he let them go, and so instead he said:

  ‘Do you ever hear from your mother or father.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s sad.’

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s sad. I don’t give a damn.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Jim said. And Tommy thought, does he, and maybe he did, for they were so close to each other that there might be some current between them, an electric arc that made one feel what the other felt. That could be it, because right now Tommy had been thinking about his mother, that she could see him gliding around on this lake in the night and from the heaven above she said in the voice that he didn’t remember, is that there my son, she said, with that cap on, no it isn’t, I don’t know that boy, he doesn’t look like my Tommy, which of course he didn’t any more. It was already six years since she had gone missing, and that’s why he had no one else but Jim, apart from Jonsen, and Jonsen was more like an uncle, and he was his boss at the sawmill where he now worked full-time for the second year. He had Siri, but Siri had changed, she went to the gymnas in Valmo and lived with the Lydersens in Mørk. He saw her a few times, when they met at the petrol station and went down behind the Co-op to the lake, as they used to do before, but they often came up again frustrated and embarrassed, and they didn’t meet that much any more. The twins had become like all the other children in the neighbourhood, they said hi Tommy, hi Jonsen, in one voice, and walked past them, arm in arm on the road, and Tommy stopped and watched them until they were out of sight behind the Liens’ door, and not once did they turn round to look back at him, who had taken care of them, who had been their brother.

  ‘I don’t talk about them,’ Tommy said.

  ‘I know,’ Jim said. ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I know,’ Tommy said, ‘and I don’t mind you asking. It’s just that I don’t feel like talking about them. There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘That’s fine by me.’

  ‘I know. It’s fine. Do we make another round.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  That was when it happened. Suddenly there was the loud sound of ice cracking beneath them and just as loud it came back off the hill behind the lake and almost knocked them over, and they got scared and thought, now the goddamn ice is breaking under our feet and it will open up and we’ll fall into the freezing black water and in no time we’ll be paralysed and drown, no question about it. And you could forget about swimming with your skates on. So they leapt forward as though a starting gun had been fired and it was the speed skating championships in Bislett Stadium, with its inside and outside lanes and the stands and all that belonged to it, but this was no skating race, and no one could see them, there was only Jim and Tommy under the moon above Lake Aurtjern, and then there was another crack and it cut through the soft, gentle night with a dry, sharp sound and they threw themselves forward and pushed off with the blades, and still they moved so unbelievably slowly, in slow motion, as if in thick treacle. And it was going to go wrong, they could both feel it, or at least Jim did, so whether he meant to or not, he struck out with his right arm, and his hand in its mitten hit Tommy in the chest and knocked him backwards while Jim shot forwards, and Tommy was sent flying on to the
frozen lake and landed on his knees and slid for a few metres more and sat there finally with his elbows on the ice and his hands in the air watching Jim and his back, as he reached the shore.

  Slowly Tommy got up on to his skates, brushed down his elbows, brushed his knees and called:

  ‘Jesus Christ, Jim, it was only the ice settling, It won’t break, it’s too thick. It was just settling,’ he called, ‘that’s what it does when it’s so goddamn cold, it’s just expanding, Jim, and settling.’

  Jim was kneeling now, on the shore, his knees sunk into the snow, he had taken his cap off and didn’t answer and didn’t turn, and then he called in a strangely muffled voice, as if from the inside of a sack or something else you could lose yourself in, with his back to Tommy and Lake Aurtjern:

  ‘I know that, it’s just settling, that’s what it’s doing, I know, and I didn’t get scared, that’s not what happened, I didn’t mean to stop you. I just tripped and had to grab something, I lost my balance, you got that, didn’t you.’