Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

  Now more than fifty years later he sits directly opposite me at the table and knows who I am, and I have nothing to say to that. It is not an accusation, though it rather feels like one, nor is it a question, so I do not need to answer. But if I do not say anything it will all get terribly silent and difficult.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, looking straight at him. ‘I know who you are, too.’

  He nods. ‘I thought so.’ He nods again and picks up his knife and fork and goes on eating, and I can see that he is pleased. That was what he wanted to say. Nothing more, nothing in addition. That, and a confirmation he has now received.

  For the rest of the meal I feel slightly ill at ease, trapped in a situation I have not brought about myself. We eat without exchanging many words, just lean forward and glance out the window at the yard where darkness is falling quickly and silently, and we nod to each other and agree that the season with us is in fact the one it is; it gets dark quickly now, doesn’t it, and so on, as if that were something new. But Lars seems content and finishes up everything on his plate, and he says almost merrily:

  ‘Thanks very much. It was good to have a proper dinner,’ and looks ready to go, and then when he does it is with a light step down the road without the torch, while myself I just feel heavier, and Poker trots along after him towards the bridge and their little cabin and is slowly swallowed up by the night.

  I stand by the door a while, listening to the footsteps on the gravel until they too fade out, and a little longer even, and then I hear the faint slam through the dark as Lars shuts his door and see the light come on in the window down there in the cabin by the river. I turn and look around to all sides, but Lars’ light is the only light I see. There is a wind starting up, but I stay where I am gazing into the darkness, and the wind rises, it comes rushing from the forest, and I feel cold in nothing but my shirt, I shiver and my teeth start to chatter, and finally I have to give up and go in and shut the door.

  I clear the table in the kitchen, two plates on the cloth for the first time in this house. I feel invaded, that’s what it is, and not by just anyone.

  That’s what it is. I fetch Lyra’s bowl from the larder and fill it with dry shop-food and carry it back and put it on the floor in front of the wood stove. She looks at me, this is not what she had expected, she sniffs at the food and only slowly starts to eat, swallows each mouthful with demonstrative gloom, and then turns to look at me again, a long look, with those eyes, sighs and goes on, as if she were emptying the poisoned chalice. Spoiled dog.

  While Lyra eats I go into the bedroom and take the white shirt off, hang it up on a hanger and pull the working shirt over my head and a sweater and go into the corridor and take the warm pea jacket off its peg and put that on too. Find the torch and whistle for Lyra and go out on the doorstep in my slippers and change into boots. It’s blowing hard now. We walk down the road. Lyra first, with me a few metres behind. I can just make out her pale coat, but as long as I can see it, it’s like a direction indicator, and I do not switch on the torch, merely let my eyes grow used to the darkness until I stop straining them to catch a light that went out long ago.

  When we get to the bridge I stop for a moment where the rails begin and look over at Lars’ cabin. The windows are lighted, and I can see his shoulders in the yellow frame and the back of his head without a grey hair yet and the television on at the far end of the room. He is watching the news. I don’t know when I last watched the news. I did not bring a television set out here with me, and I regret it sometimes when the evenings get long, but my idea was that living alone you can soon get stuck to those flickering images and to the chair you will sit on far into the night, and then time merely passes as you let others do the moving. I do not want that. I will keep myself company.

  We leave the road and go down beside the narrow river on the path I usually take, but I do not hear the water running, the wind soughs and rustles in the trees and bushes about me, and I light the torch so as not to trip on the path and fall into the river because I cannot hear where it is.

  When I get to the lake I follow the edge of the reeds until I come to the spot with the bench I have put together and dragged down here, so there is somewhere to sit and watch life at the mouth, see if the fish are jumping and the ducks and the swans that nest here in the bay. They don’t do that at this time of year, of course, but they are still here in the morning with the brood they produced in the spring; the young swans as big as their parents now, but still grey and it looks peculiar, like two different species swimming in a line, alike in all their movements, and no doubt they think they are the same, while everyone can see that they are not. Or I can just sit here letting my thoughts fumble vaguely around while Lyra goes through her usual routine.

  I find the bench and sit down, but naturally there is nothing to be noticed or to look at right now, so I switch off the light and stay there sitting in the dark, listening to the wind rustling in the reeds with a shrill brittle sound. I can feel how worn out I am after this day, I have kept going for much longer than I usually do, and I close my eyes and tell myself I must not fall asleep now, just sit here for a bit. And then I do go to sleep and wake up all frozen through with the deafening wind around me, and the first thought I have is that I wish Lars had not said what he said, it ties me to a past I thought was well behind me and pulls aside the fifty years with a lightness that seems almost indecent.

  I get up from the bench, my body stiff, whistle to Lyra, which is not so easy with numb lips, and then she sits there already close to the bench whimpering softly as she presses her snout against my knee. I switch on the torch. It is blowing massively, there is chaos in the light from the torch when I swing it round, the reeds lie flat on the lake, white foam on the water, and there is a howling sound from the bare treetops bending over and whipping to the south. I crouch down to Lyra and stroke her head.

  ‘Good dog,’ I say in English, and it sounds pretty silly, like something from a film I once saw, maybe Lassie from the cinema-going of my past, it would not surprise me, or I was dreaming something I have forgotten now, and these words lingered on. It was not from Dickens, though, I can not recall any ‘good dog’ in his books, and in any case it is silly. I straighten up again and pull the zip of my jacket up to my chin.

  ‘Come on,’ I say to Lyra, ‘we’re going home,’ and she bounds off in sheer relief and storms up the path with her tail in the air, and I follow, not quite that nimbly, my head sunk in my collar and the torch in a tight grip.

  8

  I can clearly remember that night in the cabin when my father was not in bed as he had said he would be. I went out of the bedroom and into the main room and dressed quickly in front of the stove. As I bent over it, it was still warm from the evening before and I listened to the night all around, but there were no sounds that I could hear other than my own breathing, which was much too quick and strangely hoarse and heavy in a room that seemed too large to take stock of although I knew precisely how many paces there were from wall to wall. I forced myself to slow my breathing down, drew the air all the way in and let it carefully out again while I thought: I have had a good life up to this night, I have never been alone, not really, and even if my father had been away for long spells, that was something I had accepted with a confidence that had been blown away in the course of a single day in July.

  It was a long way off, the blazing hot day, when I opened the door and went out to the yard in my long boots. No-one there and almost cool, but not dark now, it was a summer’s night, and above me the clouds split and opened up as they swept at great speed across the sky, and the pale light came flickering down so I could easily make out the path to the river. The water flowed more swiftly now after the drenching rain, running higher up the boulders along the banks, and it swelled and rocked with a faint shine of silver, I could see it from some way off, and the sound of the river running was the only sound I heard.

  The boat was not in its place. I waded a few paces out into the stream and sto
od there listening for the sound of oars, but there was only the water sweeping round my legs, and I could see nothing either up river or down. The timber piles were there, of course, and their scent was strong in the humid air, and the crooked pine with the cross nailed to its trunk was there, and the fields were there on the other side from the river bank up to the road, but only the clouds in the sky were on the move, and the flickering light. It was a weird sensation to be standing in the night alone, almost the feeling of light or sound through my body; a soft moon or a peal of bells, with the water surging against my boots, and everything else was so big and so quiet around me, but I did not feel abandoned, I felt singled out. I was perfectly calm, I was the anchor of the world. It was the river that did that to me, I could immerse myself in water up to my chin and sit not moving, with the current pounding away and pulling at my body, and remain the person I was, still be the anchor. I turned to look up at the cabin. The windows were dark. I did not want to go back inside again, there was no glow there; the two rooms deserted and empty and the duvets damp and the stove gone out and certainly chillier now than it was out here, I had no business in the cabin now. So I waded ashore and started walking.

  First I walked up among the fresh tree stumps to the narrow gravel track behind our land and walked down between the trees to the south instead of north the way we usually did, to where the bridge was and the shop, and it was not hard to find the route now as there were no clouds and the night was light again, like white flour everywhere, a filter I could see quite clearly and maybe touch if I wanted to, and then of course I couldn’t. But I tried. I spread my fingers out as I walked between the dark tree trunks, like down a corridor of pillars, and let my hands slide through the air, slowly up and then down again in the powdery light, but I could not feel anything, and everything was as it always was, like any night at all. But life had shifted its weight from one point to another, from one leg to the other, like a silent giant in the vast shadows against the ridge, and I did not feel like the person I had been when this day began, and I did not even know if that was something to be sorry for.

  I did not know, and I was too young to look back, so I went on down the gravel path. I heard the river down there beyond the trees, and soon I heard the sounds of the dairy closest to our cabin to the south. It was the cows in the stalls behind the timber walls chewing the cud or lying in the straw, moving from one side to the other in the dark, and they were suddenly quiet, and then they were at it again. Out on the road I could hear the muffled clang of their bells, and I wondered how late it was in the night, whether morning would arrive soon, or whether I could walk down the path to the cow byre and creep inside and sit for a while to feel if it was really warm before I went on. And that is what I did. I just had to go down the path the cows would come up, past the cabin where everything was silent and no-one looked out the windows that I could see, and open the door to the dim cowshed and go in. There was a strong smell in there which was good too, and it was as warm as I had imagined it would be. I found a milking stool in the gangway between the gutters and sat down on it by the door I had shut behind me, and I closed my eyes and heard the cows’ peaceful breathing behind each stall and their jaws working just as peacefully and the clanking sound of the bells and the creaking of the timbers and the soughing of the night over the roof which was not the wind but the combined hum of all that the night contained. And then I fell asleep.

  I woke up feeling someone stroking my cheek. I thought it was my mother. I thought I was a little boy. I have a mother I said to myself, I forgot. And then it came to me what she looked like, feature by feature, until she was almost completely put together and was the one I had always seen, but the face I looked up at was not her face, and for a moment there I was hovering between two worlds with a half-awake eye in each. It was the dairymaid of this farm standing there, which meant it was five o’clock in the morning. I had seen her lots of times and talked to her too. I liked her. She had a voice the sound of a silver flute when she walked up the path to sing the cows home, my father had said raising his hands and holding them slightly to the side of his mouth to demonstrate with fluttering fingers and pouting lips. I did not know what a silver flute sounded like, had never heard anyone play one as far as I knew, but she smiled and looked down at me and said:

  ‘Good morning, lambkin,’ and that sounded good to me.

  ‘I was asleep,’ I said. ‘it was so nice and warm in here.’ I sat up with my back straight and rubbed my face with my knuckles. ‘You’ll need the stool.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, no, you just stay where you are, I have another one, that’ll be fine.’ And she walked down the aisle with a shiny bucket in each hand, found the other stool and sat down beside the first cow, starting to wash the pink udder, her skilled hands moving gently. She had already mucked out and covered the whole floor with sawdust so it looked clean and pleasant, and now they were all standing, in two rows: four spotted cows on each side full of anticipation and milk. She pulled the pail towards her and took hold just as gently of the teats, and milk spurted white and jingling against metal, and it looked so easy, but I had tried several times and never produced a drop.

  I sat watching her with my back against the wall in the light of the lamp she had hung from a hook beside the stall; the knotted scarf holding back her hair, the golden light on her face, her inward-looking gaze and the half smile, her bare arms, and the bare knees glowing faintly below her skirts on each side of the pail, and I could not help it, but inside my trousers I grew tight so suddenly and with such force I had to gasp for breath, and I could not even remember thinking about her in that way before. I held fast to the stool with both hands and felt unfaithful towards the one I really had on my mind and knew that if I moved as much as one centimetre now, the least friction would ruin everything, and she would see it and maybe hear the helpless whimper in my chest that was already straining to get out, and then she would know how pathetic I was, and I could not bear that. So I had to think about other things to ease the pressure, and first I thought about horses as I had seen them running down the road through the village, many horses of many colours with pounding hooves raising the dust on the tinder-dry road, whirling it up and draping it like yellow curtains between the houses and the church, but that did not help me a lot, for there was something about the heat of those horses and their curved necks and rhythmic breathing as they galloped along, and all the things about horses that are hard to explain, but you knew were there, and then I thought about the Bunnefjord instead. The Bunnefjord at home and the very first swim in the grey-green water in spite of wind and weather on exactly May the first. How cold the water was then, and how the air was knocked out of your body with a gasp when you jumped off the sloping rocks at Katten beach and hit the glassy surface, and you could only jump one at a time because the other one had to stand at the water’s edge with a rope acting as lifeguard in case the one in the water got cramp. I was only seven when we decided to do this every single year, my sister and I, not because it was pleasurable but because we felt we had to do something that demanded an extra effort, something that would hurt enough, and this felt suitably painful at the time. Three weeks earlier the German soldiers had arrived in Oslo, and they marched down Karl Johan in an endless column, and it was cold that day and silent in the street, and only the unison crash of boots, like the crack of a whip, beat in among the columns in front of the university building, struck the walls there and bounced back across the cobblestone Universitetsplassen. And then the sudden roar of Messerschmitts sweeping low over the roofs of the city coming in from the fjord, from the open sea and from Germany, and everyone stood silently watching, and my father said nothing, and I said nothing, and no-one in the whole crowd said a word. I looked up at my father, and he looked down at me and slowly shook his head, and then I too shook mine. He took my hand and led me out of the crowd on the pavement and down the street past the parliament house to the Østbane Station to see if the bus on Mosseveien was runni
ng or if the south-bound train was on time or if everything had come to a halt that day except for the German troops who were all of a sudden everywhere. I could not remember how we had come into town, if it was by train or by bus or in someone’s car, but somehow we did manage to get home, and most probably we walked.

  Not long after this my father went away for the first time, and my sister and I started to swim in the cold fjord, our hearts pounding, the rope at the ready.

  It did help to cool me down, thinking about the spring of 1940, and about my father as he was during those cold days and the freezing water of the Bunnefjord, from Katten to Ingierstrand, which were the beaches we went to, and soon I could loosen my grip on the stool in the cow byre and stand up without anything going amiss. The dairymaid had moved on to the next stall and sat there humming to herself with her forehead against the cow’s flank thinking of nothing but that cow as far as I could tell, and then I put my stool neatly against the wall and was about to sneak out of the door and up the path to the road. But then I heard her voice behind me:

  ‘Would you like a drop?’ and I blushed and did not know why and turned round and said:

  ‘Yes, please, that would be nice,’ although I had tried to avoid fresh milk for a long time. It made my gorge rise just seeing it in a glass or a cup and thinking about how warm it was and how thick, but I had slept in her cow byre and thought about her in a way she did not know and certainly would not have liked, and I did not see how I could refuse. I took the brimming ladle she passed me and swallowed the whole of it in one gulp. I wiped my mouth hard and waited till I was sure it had all gone down, and then I said: