Read Online I Refuse by Per Petterson - Free Book Online Page B

drunk, just drunk. As they walked, the drunkenness wore slowly off, evaporated and dissolved and drifted in between the trees like damp rags, and then it was easier to walk in a straight line, and it was May and not difficult to see the road in front of them, but you couldn’t say that it was light. If you were outdoors at night, standing by the corner of a house waiting for someone to come through the forest, someone you knew well, someone you had loved for years, it was hard to catch sight of her until she was quite close. But now there wasn’t far to go, a kilometre only, maybe less, and they would pass Sletten’s house, which was the first in the row as you came into the neighbourhood. You could make out the light from his outside lamp, and then there was a bend, and the light disappeared, and then the light returned.
    At Willy’s there was beer and bickering about which records to play, and a couple of the boys who came down from Valmo had spirits with them in shiny hip flasks their fathers had given them in the hall on their way to the front door, or more likely, on the steps so their mothers wouldn’t see, and that was a pretty normal thing at least for Valmo. Just cut loose, the fathers said, that’s what youth is for, but for Christ’s sake don’t bring the knives with you. They would never have brought the knives with them, that time was over, hell, if there were knives, there would be old-time dancing and tango too, but there was trouble anyway, and a vase was smashed, a very pretty old vase decorated with Chinese symbols that was a favourite of Willy’s mother, and Willy, who was drunk, burst into tears. I will never be like you, he cried, I will never be like you, and that was true, of course, but Jim said it didn’t matter, Willy, he said, it doesn’t matter, it’s nothing to strive for, Jim said. And then a couple of the boys were spoiling for a fight, and Tommy stepped between them and almost lifted them apart, and anyway it wasn’t a real party if there were no girls. Why were there no girls there, why wasn’t Unni from the Co-op there, she always came, and Tommy was moving her way, everyone knew that, and why wasn’t Tone from school there, and why wasn’t Reidun there, what the hell had Willy been thinking. And it turned midnight, and Jim and Tommy looked at each other and put down whatever they were holding and left.
    Outside on the steps, they stopped for a minute in the wonderful air, it was night, it was early May, and Christ, how wonderful the air was, it hadn’t rained for a week. Jim tried to roll a cigarette, but he couldn’t do it. Shreds of tobacco dropped from his fingers and the paper fluttered in the yellow light from the lamp above the door.
    ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I can’t do it,’ and then he laughed. ‘I can’t do it,’ he laughed, and tried again, but he couldn’t do it. ‘Oh, shit and double shit,’ he laughed.
    ‘Give me the pouch,’ Tommy said. But he couldn’t do it, either. He didn’t smoke, but he was a master roller of cigarettes, he often rolled perfect ones for Jim, but now he couldn’t do it.
    ‘Goddamnit,’ he said, ‘I can’t do it’, and started to laugh. ‘Why the hell can’t I do it,’ he said, and then he gave up and said: ‘Let’s get out of here. You can smoke tomorrow.’ And then they left, not too steady on their feet, down the front steps of Willy’s house, and on to the road, and now they were almost there, they were almost home, they could just make out Sletten’s lamp shining between the trees.
    Along one side of the road, the northern side, they saw the trenches the telephone company were digging for the new cables that would provide every single house in the neighbourhood with a possible telephone, and an excavator, proudly displaying the Brøyt marque from Bryne, stood lonely and forlorn under the birch trees and was unmanned now and quiet and stiff in all its joints, with the bucket resting on its knees in the grass.