I Refuse

  I was across the road. I felt very seen, and he stood where he stood, and when I walked over, the tarmac felt like air beneath the soles of my feet, and there was a physical pull I had forgotten he had, but I didn’t touch him, I stopped a few metres away. I was out of breath. I tried to hide it by closing my mouth, but that made it worse.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Have you been waiting long.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at all.’ But it wasn’t true, he had been here for quite some time, I could see it from the way he was resting his body, first on one leg, then the other, as you do when you have been standing for too long. Like behind the counter in a shop.

  ‘Are you in a hurry,’ he said. It was so strange, his voice was so formal, every word was given its full pronunciation, even the ‘are’ was long, and it didn’t bring us any closer.

  ‘A little,’ I said, and he didn’t ask why, and I was glad he didn’t. I had nothing to hide, he just didn’t ask, and that was fine. But I stood there shifting from one foot to the other.

  ‘Is it very important, Tommy,’ I said. ‘It’s true, I’m in a hurry, honestly,’ and I was listening for the sound of my neighbour’s car, and I thought I heard footsteps across the flagstones and someone knocking at a door, maybe our door, well, Lydersen’s door, but that wouldn’t be possible from this distance.

  ‘I think it’s important,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘What is it then, Tommy.’

  He cleared his throat twice. Is he going to give a speech, I wondered, like you do at confirmations, he was that formal, he didn’t even swear, as he nearly always did, but I didn’t invite him to my confirmation. Lydersen had said no, point blank, he didn’t even want to talk about it, but later I realised I had given in too easily.

  ‘This is just between you and me,’ Tommy said.

  ‘But, Tommy, that’s no good. It’s not just the two of us any more. It’s not like it used to be.’

  ‘So I have gathered,’ he said, in a very formal tone. He hadn’t said ‘gathered’ once in the whole of his life, we always said: did you ‘get’ me or did you ‘get’ that, and it wasn’t easy for me to see what his feelings were, whether it was all right for him that it wasn’t us two any more, or whether he was still upset.

  ‘I just wanted you to know,’ he said, ‘that I’m going to burn our house down. Very soon.’

  ‘Which house,’ I said. We weren’t on the same wavelength at all. He just looked at me. The sun was shining. There was a smell of petrol. It was so quiet around us, the air wasn’t moving, no cars were on their way in or out of the petrol station, not a sound. Just outside the silence a man was standing on the church steps, in jeans, Wranglers probably, you couldn’t get anything else around here. A distant tractor drove into a field, and a cock crowed.

  ‘Oh, yes. Our house,’ I said, ‘the house that was our house, I mean, before’, and I listened again for the neighbour’s car, and now I was certain it had started. I was desperate. Tommy, Tommy, I thought, and was standing there shifting my feet as if I had to go to the toilet, why did you have to come now.

  ‘Burn it down. What are you saying.’

  ‘Yes, I’m going to burn our house down,’ he said, and then he said: ‘Because it’s standing there, just like it was.’

  ‘Is it,’ I said. I hadn’t been there once since I moved out, and I hadn’t given it a thought in a long time. But it was probably just as we had left it. I hadn’t heard anything else. ‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is. We’ve been there and looked inside. I pulled off all the boards over one window. It was easy. They were rotten through.’

  ‘Who’s we,’ I said. ‘Jim and you.’

  ‘Yes, Jim and me,’ he said. ‘What other we would that be.’ And then he said: ‘Inside the house it looks exactly as it did when we lived there. Only us, not when Dad was there.’

  That was probably true, but it was a strange thought. I hadn’t heard about any new people moving in, a new family, but it felt odd that everything was as it had been then, in the living room, the other rooms, on the stairs, for nothing felt now as it felt then. Everything had changed. But inside the house everything had stood still. It made me uncomfortable thinking about it.

  ‘Does it,’ I said. I repeated myself. It was embarrassing. But I couldn’t concentrate, I had to go.

  ‘Yes it does,’ he said. ‘And I can’t help thinking about it. I can’t sleep at nights. I’m fed up. So now I’m going to burn the crap down. You can come with me if you like. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘What. No, no, Tommy, I can’t do that, are you out of your mind. It’s a crime. We would be arsonists. We could be arrested and put in prison. You could, Tommy, please don’t even think about it.’

  ‘Who does the house really belong to,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it our house,’ he said. ‘Did you get any money for it. Did I get any money for it. No, we didn’t. So I can do what I like with the house. If you don’t want to be part of it, that’s fine by me. We could have done it together. That would be the right thing. But if you don’t want to, I’ll do it on my own.’

  ‘But, Tommy, why do you have to burn it down. You don’t need to burn it down, do you.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Now that nothing’s like it was before, the damn house shouldn’t be like it was, either. It’s not right. I didn’t get it until I looked through the window. Goddamnit, Siri, I can’t sleep at night,’ he said, and now he wasn’t formal at all.

  ‘But, Tommy, I’ve got to go to handball training.’

  ‘Handball training.’ He looked down at my bag. He hadn’t noticed it until now. ‘Do you have to go to handball training,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Past Tommy’s shoulder I could see the über-Christian neighbour’s car turning in to the crossroads, and I didn’t know if he had given up on me or was looking for me. He might well have been, because he slowed down and for a moment the car stopped altogether, and then I started to run with the bag in my hand, I waved to the neighbour, and he saw me and waved back. A huge vehicle passed me on its way into the petrol station, a removal van it was, and it stopped with a hiss of brakes, and I glanced back as I ran, but by then Tommy was lost behind the van.

  TOMMY ⋅ JONSEN ⋅ AUGUST 2006

  I WALKED INTO the Central Hospital through the door facing the car park, past the reception and the kiosk and past the café towards the staircase. One floor lower was the Bunker, where Jim was admitted in 1971, that was more than thirty years ago, and we were so young then, it’s easy to forget that everything looks different when you are young, it looks better, there is so much time, and then suddenly everything is worse, much worse, the whole world blown sky high from one day to the next. This time I was going up to the third floor, and before I always ran up the stairs, but now I took the lift. I drank too much.That was why.

  On the third floor I passed the duty room, and then I walked three doors down the corridor and into the room where Jonsen was. I had known him all my life. The doctor was standing at his bedside, they were talking, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then Jonsen turned his head on the pillow and saw me come in. He smiled, and the doctor turned and saw me and took one step back, one to the side, he had seen me before, the day we arrived at the hospital in a helicopter, when Jonsen had collapsed in front of me in his living room, but I hadn’t been there since, I had been away, in Haugesund, it wasn’t good, but that’s the way it was. I said hello, and the doctor said hello.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘How’s it going.’

  ‘Not so good, my friend,’ Jonsen said.

  ‘I had to go to Haugesund,’ I said. ‘It was quite important. I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. He was still smiling, but the skin under his eyes was blue, almost black. I had a book with me, by John Steinbeck, I thought maybe he hadn’t read. Jim gave it to me one time when we were boys, it said to me from him on the title page. I found it in a box at home when I was going thro
ugh the basement. I put it on the bedside table. Jonsen stretched his hand over and he slowly turned the book round with his index finger and said:

  ‘I haven’t read this one.’ He looked surprised, he was sure he had read all of Steinbeck’s books, but he hadn’t.

  ‘The plot takes place in Norway,’ I said. ‘During the war.’

  He looked up at me. ‘You’re having me on.’

  ‘I’m not having you on,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said, and the doctor coughed quietly behind my back, or maybe he was laughing. There are all kinds of doctors.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ I said, but I had no idea whether it was good or bad. I had simply read it. It was a long time ago. I couldn’t remember the last time I read a novel.

  ‘I hope there is time to read it,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll have plenty,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not so sure, my friend.’

  That was the second time he had said that, my friend. He never said that before. He just said Tommy. He looked me in the eye a little too firmly. I turned. The doctor was chewing his bottom lip, holding his hands tightly behind his back and studying the floor. He slowly shook his head. I turned back.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean.’

  ‘I haven’t got long left, my friend.’

  Goddamnit, stop saying my friend, I thought. I can’t take it.

  ‘Hell, surely you’ve got time to read a book,’ I said, and that was a pathetic thing to say, for what has a book got to do with anything when someone is dying. When Jonsen is dying.

  ‘Are you going to die,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and I said:

  ‘Yes, but I mean now, are you going to die now,’ I said.

  ‘He’s given me two or three weeks,’ Jonsen said, nodding to the doctor who was still standing there, half behind me. I had already forgotten him, he was certainly a discreet doctor. ‘There’s nothing they can do, he says,’ Jonsen said.

  ‘Of course there is something they can do,’ I said. ‘This is 2006 not 1706.’

  ‘It’s too late now,’ Jonsen said. He was exhausted, his voice had no energy, no air in it.

  I looked around. My legs felt suddenly tired. On the other side of the bed, by the window, there was a chair. I walked round alongside the window, picked up the chair and placed it next to the bed on the opposite side to where I had come in. I sat down, but then the doctor wasn’t behind me any more, but in front of me. I should have carried the chair all the way round, I thought, but it was too late now, and it would look rude if I moved the chair a second time and sat with my back to him. It would be rude, too. But he could go, couldn’t he, the doctor, and leave me alone with Jonsen.

  ‘So what’s in your thoughts now,’ I said.

  He didn’t answer, what would he be thinking. What would I have been thinking if it was me.

  ‘I hold life dearly,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel like it’s over.’ He was seventy-five. I was fifty-four. Almost. ‘You could refuse, of course,’ he said, trying to laugh, but it turned into a cough. ‘But this is it,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.’ He turned his head on the pillow, towards the window, away from me.

  I didn’t agree. It wasn’t all right. It did matter.

  ‘Of course you can refuse,’ I said.

  He looked at me again. ‘You can’t refuse to die, my friend.’

  ‘Goddamnit, of course you can refuse,’ I said.

  Two Sundays later he was laid to rest behind the old church in Mørk. It was a simple and pretty church, painted white outside and inside. Only the altar and the seats had any colour, they were farmhouse red and blue. There weren’t many people there. The priest was a woman. He wouldn’t have minded. He had always liked women, most men did, of course, but he really liked women, he liked being with them, talking to them, he thought they were more intelligent by far than men. At least the men he knew. He’d had a good relationship with my mother as well, in the time before she left us one evening just before Christmas, when the snowdrifts by the road stood as tall as a man and just getting in and out of the house was a grind. They often talked.

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ he had said three Sundays before. We were standing in his living room, I still had the purple coat on with a suit underneath, it was his birthday. I had driven all the way out for the occasion and had put on my leather gloves and a scarf around my neck, but he had only a flannel shirt on. He had forgotten his own birthday, he looked surprised when I wished him many happy returns, and it was still morning and as long as I stayed on my feet he did too, even though he looked in a bad way.

  ‘Heavens above,’ he said, ‘it certainly was not. What was she supposed to do.’

  ‘Sit down,’ I said, and he sat down at once while I stayed on my feet. ‘She could have taken us with her,’ I said.

  ‘Four kids. On her own. Not bloody likely.’

  He had been to sea for a few years when he was young, as so many others had around here, and had learned plenty of English expressions, but he rarely used them, he thought they sounded stupid, and he didn’t say ‘all hands on deck’or ‘shiver my timbers’ or any of that rubbish, either.

  ‘It wouldn’t have worked, you understand that, don’t you,’ Jonsen said.

  ‘I don’t understand a thing,’ I said.

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘It’s not your job to understand. It isn’t easy to understand. It became hell for all of you. I know. But you shouldn’t be bitter. You should put it behind you and forgive. Jesus, you’re over fifty now, how long are you going to keep it up,’ and on the tip of my tongue I had something ugly to say, something furry and nasty, and I must have looked that way, but I didn’t say it, and he grabbed the arm of the chair and hoisted himself up, and he did that because I was still standing. He said:

  ‘Have you started drinking, Tommy.’

  ‘Oh, hell, Jonsen,’ I said. ‘Why do you have to say something like that now.’ But he was right, I drank every night without exception, and then he fell to the floor, straight down, as if he didn’t have a bone in his body. I panicked, there was no one else around and I couldn’t remember what to do in a situation like this. I lifted him up by the shoulders and dragged him over to the sofa, but he was limp and heavy, and I carefully laid him down again and ran around opening drawers and cupboards, with no clue what I was looking for, a box of Paracet, perhaps, Paralgin forte or something for asthma, an inhaler, if he had one lying around, and then I realised how addled my brain was, I said, for Christ’s sake, Tommy, pull yourself together, and finally I got around to ringing the hospital.

  They came in a helicopter shortly afterwards. I went up into the sky with them, I had never been in a helicopter before, and I held his hand as we flew through the air, and the sky wasn’t as blue up there as it was when you were down on the ground looking up, it was greyer, more indeterminate, more undefined, and his hand was clammy and lifeless and hadn’t held a hammer for a long time, nor a saw, not even something as small as a folding rule. I stroked his head and it felt so strange, for my palms didn’t know his head. The noise of the rotor blades was without mercy and to me it seemed that the helicopter was moving very slowly, slower than I had imagined, flying across the big lake, but then it finally landed on the helipad by the hospital, and they got him on to a stretcher in casualty, and standing there was a doctor I would meet a week later when I went to visit him straight from Gardemoen Airport, and two nurses came running down the long corridor at full speed with his bed between them, and one of them shouted to me, you can’t see him today, do you understand, come back tomorrow, and to be honest, that was fine with me, I had to go to Haugesund on a job.

  The job took me a week or so, and when I was back, I caught the airport express to Lillestrøm and a taxi from the station, through the tunnel, right up to the big hospital, and now he was dead and his coffin lowered into the ground behind the white church in Mørk, and if he did refuse, he hadn’t refused hard enoug
h.

  TOMMY ⋅ 1970

  JONSEN AND I sat by the kitchen window facing the road. It was dinnertime. From the window I could see the road right up from the bend and down into the neighbourhood and on past Jim and his mother’s house and even further, but I couldn’t see as far as the house where I used to live before. Not that it mattered. The house wasn’t there any more, it had burned down a week before this very day, at the end of May, and just knowing it made me feel light and airy in my stomach, a giddiness, helium, maybe, there was still the smell of smoke and ash all around.

  We didn’t say much to each other. Often we didn’t. We didn’t have to, we knew each other well, we knew about each other. But what we talked about when we did talk, in the morning before leaving the house, was the work we were going to do at the sawmill that day. He was my boss. He had taken out a loan from Mørk Sparekasse and bought the whole business off the chronic drunkard Kallum, as a rescue operation, really, before it capsized and sank, and in fact it wasn’t that expensive, the bank turned out to be generous, and Jonsen gave me a full-time job at the mill, and I was happy about that. I was finished with school, I couldn’t stand another day of it, after secondary school it was over and out.

  I was not yet eighteen but all the same we were two adults discussing orders and timber prices over the table every morning before leaving the house, and it was the two of us who worked out the runs to the bigger building sites or the runs to the smaller, maybe less accessible ones, like private houses, detached buildings, barns or garages, all sorts of places off the beaten track. And he was no different when he spoke to me about these matters than when he spoke with any other employee at the mill. There were three of them and much older than me. Jonsen had never had any children himself, and I think the way he talked to people and the language that he used was the same whether the person he spoke to was a child or a teenager or somebody well into his years. The difference didn’t even interest him. When he grew up there was no such thing as a teenager. You were a child, you were confirmed and then you were an adult and had to do your share and that was that.