Per Petterson Quotes

You decide for yourself when it will hurt.

But that's life. That's what you learn from; when things happen. Especially at your age. You just have to take it in and remember to think afterwards and not forget and never grow bitter.

People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know _about_ you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to.

...and we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt.

I remember a lot of dreams. Sometimes they are hard to distinguish from what has really happened. That is not so terrible. It is the same with books.

Time is important to me now, I tell myself.Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but only be time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by. so that it grows distict to me and does not vanish when I am not looking.

If I just concentrate I can walk into memory's store and find the right shelf with the right film and disappear into it....

I was perfectly calm, I was the anchor of the world.

...you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember.

A dead dog is more quiet than a house on the steppes, a chair in a empty room.

...when it came to dying, I was scared. Not of being dead, that I could not comprehend, to be nothing was impossible to grasp and therefore really nothing to be scared of, but the dying itself I could comprehend, the very instant when you know that now comes what you have always feared, and you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember.

One of my many horrors is to become the man with the frayed jacket and unfastened flies standing at the Co-op counter with egg on his shirt and more too because the mirror in the hall has given up the ghost. A shipwrecked man without an anchor in the world except in his own liquid thoughts where time has lost its sequence.

I'm sorry I laughed...I know it isn't funny for you. It was incredibly stupid of me to laugh. Does it hurt a lot anywhere? 'Not really,' I said. 'Only a bit in your soul?' 'Maybe a bit.' 'Let it sink,' he said. 'Just leave it. You can't use it for anything.

...I see the shape of the wind on the water...

All my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this. Even when everything was going well, as it often did. I can say that much. That it often did. I have been lucky. But even then, for instance in the middle of an embrace and someone whispering words in my ear I wanted to hear, I could suddenly get a longing to be in a place where there was only silence. Years might go by and I did not think about it, but that does not mean that I did not long to be there. And now I am here, and it is almost exactly as I had imagined it.

There is nothing I need from the shop, and this is not the day for social profligacy.

It was as if gravity was suspended. It was like dancing, I thought, although I had never danced in my whole life. We were never to walk like that again.

Да си призная, нямам нищо против лицето в огледалото. Честно, разпознавам се. Няма какво повече да искам.

Then she turns to me. 'Tell me. How are you really?' she says, as if there were two versions of my life, and now she is not on the verge of tears at all, but sharp-voiced as an interrogator.

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.

Time is important to me now, I tell myself. Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but be only time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by, so that it grows distinct to me and does not vanish when I am not looking.

But what I found out that summer . . . was that I could swallow whatever hit me and let it sink as if nothing had happened. So I mimicked a game that meant nothing to me now, I was going through the motions, and then it looked as if what I was doing had a purpose, but it did not.

Oh, well, we did have a good day out together, you and I, that doesn't happen every day, does it?

...everything felt fine at that moment; the suit was fine, and the twon was fine to walk in, along the cobblestone street, and we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt.

It may be all very well in Dickens, but when you read Dickens you're reading a long ballad from a vanished world, where everything has to come together in the end like an equation, where the balance of what was once disturbed must be restored so that the gods can smile again. A consolation, maybe, or a protest against a world gone off the rails, but it is not like that any more, my world is not like that, and I have never gone along with those who believe our lives are governed by fate. They whine, they wash their hands and crave pity. I believe we shape our lives ourselves, at any rate I have shaped mine, for what it's worth, and I take complete responsibility. But of all the places I might have moved to, I had to land up precisely here.

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.

But I was not quite with him in my thoughts, and I wonder whether that is how we got to be after living alone for a long time, that in the middle of a train of thought we start talking outloud, that the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversations we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few people we still see, and when you live alone for too long the line which divides the one form the other becomes vague, and you do not notice when you cross that line. Is this how my future looks?

...that if I let myself go, did not always slow me down by thinking so much beforehand I could achieve many things I would never have dreamt possible!!

There are some things with alcohol you must never do. You must never drink alone, never drink on Sundays, never drink before seven o'clock and if you do, it has to be on a Saturday.

She turns her head and looks at me, and there is a trustfuless in that look I probably do not deserve. But maybe that is not the point, to deserve it or not, perhaps it just exists, that trust, disconnected from who you are and what you have done, and is not to be measured in any way.

...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.

What I liked was the train ride. It took an hour and that was enough for me to be able to lean backwards against the seat with closed eyes, feel the joints in the rails come up and thump through my body and sometimes peer out of the windows and see windswept heathland and imagine I was on the Trans-Siberian Railway. I had read about it, seen pictures in a book and decided that no matter when and how life would turn out, one day I would travel from Moscow to Vladivostok on that train, and I practised saying the names: Omsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, they were difficult to pronounce with all their hard consonants, but ever since the trip to Skagen, every journey I made by train was a potential departure on my own great journey.

...I opened my eyes as if to a new beginning; nothing I saw was familiar to me, my head was empty, no thoughts, everything quite clean and the sky transparently blue, and I didn't know what I was called or even recognize my own body. Unnamed, I floated around looking at the world for the first time and felt it strangely illuminated and glassily beautiful...

Light in every lamp, light in every mind.

You don’t remember what you never fail to do, that is common knowledge,

Du bestemmer sjøl når det skal gjøre vondt.

...I thought about how it must feel to lose your life so early. Lose your life, as if you held an egg in your hand, and then dropped it, and it fell to the ground and broke, and I knew it could not feel like anything at all. If you were dead, you were dead, but in the fraction of a second just before; whether you realized then it was the end, and what that felt like. There was a narrow opening there, like a door barely ajar, that I pushed towards, because I wanted to get in, and there was a golden light in that crack that came from the sunlight on my eyelids, and then suddenly I slipped inside, and I was certainly there for a little flash, and it did not frighten me at all, just made me sad and astonished at how quiet everything was.

[H]alf blinded you embraced your own body, and with the warmth still under your jacket, you walked up the pavement along the square, moving through the grey light, and let your thoughts seep softly in, undisturbed, on the way up to the station, but also walking as one of many in the chill of December. I liked the feeling being a we, being more than myself, being larger than myself, being surrounded by others in a way I had never experienced before, of belonging, and it made no difference if those who walked to the left or the right of me, in front or behind me on this street, did not share the same feeling.

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.

All my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this. Even when everything was going well, as it often did. I can say that much. That it often did. I have been lucky. But even then, for instance in the middle of an embrace and someone whispering words in my ear I wanted to hear, I could suddenly get a longing to be in a place where there was only silence.

Soon only the street lamps rose clear and shone down on a mass that devoured everything, people and houses, we could not see more than three meters in front of us. The lights around us were hard to make out and Jesper stayed where he was; stretching out his arms like a blind man he said: 'This is what it must have been like when the Man from Danzig was shipwrecked. He must have been frightened. He thought he knew where everything was, and then it was all sheer chaos. Put your hand in front of your eyes, Sistermine, and spin around three times, then tell me which is the way home.' I did as he said, I spun around so I almost fell down, I opened my eyes and peered in all directions. 'I don't know.' 'Then anything can happen.

I went up above the quay past the steps to the hotel. I saw a man through the window with a beer in his hand, and another man with a basket full of eggs. I was feeling heavy now, and tired, and I stood there leaning backwards with my hands crossed behind my back at the end of the breakwater before I walked on to the beach on the other side and some way along on the hard-frozen white sand. It had started to blow a bit, and it was still cold with no snow, so I took off my scarf and tied it round my head and ears and sat down in the shelter of a dune and blew into my hands to warm them before I lit a cigarette. Poker ran along the edge of the water with a seagull’s wing in his mouth, and I was so young then, and I remember thinking: I’m twenty-three years old, there is nothing left in life. Only the rest.

But I enjoyed the feeling of wind in my hair, and I knew my father liked to see it blow straight out when we stood on the quay and watched the boats come in. And after all it was my only pride. The train waited behind us, puffing and hissing through its valves, and even though it was only an hour's journey to Skagen, I had never been there. 'Can't we go to Skagen one day?' I asked. Being with Jesper and his friends had made me realize the world was far bigger than the town I lived in, and the fields around it, and I wanted to go travelling and see it. 'There's nothing but sand at Skagen,' my father said, 'you don't want to go there my lass." And because it was Sunday and he seldom said my lass, he took a cigar from his waistcoat pocket with a pleased expression, lit it, and blew out smoke into the wind. The smoke flew back in our faces and scorched them, but I pretended not to notice and so did he.

I distinctly heard the blackbird from the top of a spruce tree, and clear as glass I heard the lark high up and several other birds whose song I did not know, and it was so weird, it was like a film without sound with another sound added, I was in two places at once, and nothing hurt. 'Yahoo!' I screamed, and could hear my own voice, but it seemed to be coming from a different place, from the great space where the birds sang, a bird's cry from inside that silence, and for a moment I was completely happy.

I have putt the change in the till, I have cleaned and made room for new bottles in the cooling sink, for butter and cheese in the icebox. Now I am standing in the shop waiting by the open door without switching the light on. I like this early half-light, the mild air from the sea, standing inside looking out without being seen, and there are almost no sounds from the street, and I can think and remember who I am before anything new comes along. Everything happens so fast it's easy to forget, everything is exploding and burning. But now it is quiet.

Sometimes when I think of Jesper all I can see is his dark back on the way across the white sea to Hirsholmene. It gets smaller and smaller and I stand at the edge of the ice feeling empty. Why didn't he ask me to go with him? I have a will of my own but if he had asked, I wouldn't have hesitated. I always went with him. After all, I had to look after him and he had to look after me, and my father would be furious with us both. Staying there alone was meaningless. Sometimes I imagine he tells me everything, but I know that's not true. He never told me if he went all the way to Hirsholmene. I don't tell him everything either, but I feel he knows what I am thinking, and I know what HE thinks. I have taught myself to do that. And yet all the same I am not sure.

We ran back, he first and I following him, between the beds and downstairs, and we picked up an armful of wood from the pile by the wall and the knife for whittling and ran up again, we couldn’t be quick enough. He knelt down in front of the stove, and it wasn’t long before he had done the trick again. Outside the window it was night now, and the wind blew vaporous white milk against the panes, milk over the forest and the fjord, but in here there were just the two of us and the stoves and the sound of wood burning behind the black iron and sending waves of heat out into the rooms and into the walls and timbers that sucked it in. I smelt the scent of wood growing warm, and it made me as white in my head as the whirling night outside, and hungry. We stood in the kitchen with our coats on eating the contents of two tins with one spoon we took it in turns to use, and we laughed, I didn’t even notice what I was eating. Soon it was warm enough for us to take off some clothes, his overcoat and my coat, and while he hung his on a hook, I let mine fall to the floor. I took off the sweater I wore underneath and dropped that on the floor too, I unbuttoned my blouse and still felt the cold against my neck. But the heat rose to the ceiling and up to the first floor and there was another stove there. Then I calmly walked across the room and upstairs with his eyes on my back, and at first he stood still, and then he followed, and when he got to the top my blouse was off and my stockings on the floor. I slowly turned round and stood there, me inside my skin, while he was fully clothed, and I cleared my head of every thought I had ever had and let them sink out into my skin till it was painfully taut and shinning all over my body, and he saw it and did not know what it was he saw. I put my arms round my back and unfastened my bra and slid the straps over my shoulders, and I thought he might be going to weep, but his voice sounded hoarse as he whispered: “You’re lovely,” and I answered “Yes”, and didn’t know if that was true. But it did not matter, for I knew what I wanted and what to say, and his hands were as I’d thought they would be, his skins as soft and his body as hard, and it was so warm around us, and the whole time I smelt the dampness of the bedclothes like the ones at Vrangbæk, and then I just shut my eyes and floated away.

On that island was a lighthouse I had seen every single summer of my entire life and my mother, too, had seen it her entire life, and I wondered how it might affect your way of thinking, if you always had a lighthouse in the corner of your eye.

I should have said the right thing just then, but I did not know what that would be, if such a thing existed, I did not think so, and those who said it did, knew nothing. So I said the first thing that came into my head. "Are you afraid?". I said.

Ухаеше на прясна дървесина. Миризмата се носеше откъм пътеката при реката, изпълваше въздуха, рееше се над водата, отпускаше ме и замайваше главата ми. И аз участвах! Миришех на смола, дрехите ми, косата, кожата ми – дори и нощем, когато спях в колибата. Заспивах и се събуждах с този аромат, усещах го през целия ден. Аз бях гора.

Храната е изненадващо вкусна, налага се да стана и да проверя в кутията за хляб дали този е различен от онзи, който купувам обикновено, но си е същият стар хляб.

Само по чорапи изглежда млад, както и всички, седнали по този начин без краката им да докосват пода.

Пролетта и лятото на годината, когато навърших тринайсет, бяха изпълнени с жълта топлина и жълта мараня. Седмица след седмица цялото ми тяло беше плувнало в пот и едва виждах. Вървях по чакълената пътека към къщата като пиян, въздухът около мен беше гъст и трепкаше от светлина, която можеше да се взриви всеки миг, и понякога не успявах да улуча вратата. Седях над учебниците и търках очи, но жълтата мъгла не се разсейваше и трябваше да тичам в кухнята да пия вода. Гърлото ми беше толкова сухо, че непрекъснато ме мъчеше жажда и накрая зарязах учебниците. Извадих ги от чантата, като се прибрах от училище, и пак ги прибрах на другата сутрин, но така и не ги отворих. И друго не четях. Книгите за индианци си стояха на рафта, но около тях имаше празнота, която ме изнервяше, празнота навсякъде, заради която се задъхвах и ми се повдигаше. Една седмица лежах в леглото и запях пердетата. Те бяха също толкова жълти от слънцето, колкото и всичко, за което си мислех, а навън лепливата тишина се разстилаше гъста и гореща, и температурата ми се покачи до трийсет и девет градуса. - Имам жълтеница – казах на майка ми. - На тези с жълтеницата им пожълтява лицето – отвърна майка ми. – Знам, че не си добре, но мен ако питаш, по-скоро си блед. - Имам жълта треска – продължих. - Възможно е – съгласи се тя и отиде да провери „жълта треска“ в „Семейната книга“ и откри съвсем други симптоми, но съществуваше ли нещо, наречено жълта треска, точно от това страдах и някой нямаше да ме убеди в противното. След осем дни ми писна да лежа. Станах и започнах да се разхождам с шапка с козирка и слънчеви очила.

„- От какво се отказваш? - От гимназията. - По-голяма глупост не бях чувал. Остава ти по-малко от година. Нали искаше да ставаш писател? - Гимназията не те прави писател. Джек Лондон ходил ли е в гимназията? Горки ходил ли е в гимназията? Или Лу-Юхансон, или Нексьо, или Сандемусе, или който и да било, който си струва да се чете? - Да му се не види, Аудюн, те са отпреди сто години! Тогава никой не е ходил в гимназията! Сега всички ходят!

Сигне с големите гърди, с голямата усмивка, Сигне с меките ръце, изкачваше се по стълбите към втория етаж, където в онова последно лято лежах няколко нощи, изтощен от жълтата треска, и не можех да спя, децата им отдавна се бяха изнесли, цялата стая беше на мое разположение. Бялата фуста на фона на сивата светлина от процепа, бялата Сигне с милите думи, добрата Сигне.

Останах там седмица. По цяла нощ спях в стаята под процепа, а на сутринта ставах и получавах от Сигне в кухнята домашно изпечен хляб. А после работех почти целия ден по задачите, с които според Томерн бях в състояние да се справя. Те ставаха все повече и повече, никога не ми стигаха, а вечер се къпех в реката на по-подходящо място от онова, което си избрах първия път. В десет часа Сигне ме изпращаше горе с прегръдка, която аз посрещах толкова жадно, че поруменявах от само себе си. Мислех възможно най-малко, само се изпълвах с всичко около мен.

Сигне“, мисля си, „Благословена,“ Благословена да е храната, благословен да е денят, благословен да е пътят, по който вървиш, и светлината на челото ти.“ - Поспи. Сега е нощ. Спи колкото искаш. Тук никой не го е грижа. - Добре. Главата ѝ се скри. Пак стана съвсем тихо и когато погледнах през прозореца над пода, жълтата плевня беше сива. Усещах, че мога да спя още. Можех да спя постоянно. Просто да си лежа тук и да спя под процепа в тавана.

I was scared. Not of being dead, that I could not comprehend, to be nothing was impossible to grasp and therefore nothing really to be scared of, but the dying itself I could comprehend, the very instant when you know that now comes what you have always feared, and you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember.

U bent hier blijkbaar al een poosje niet meer geweest,' zei hij in steenkolenzweeds. 'Dat cafe is al twee jaar dicht', en ik dacht, waarom denken Denen altijd dat alle Noren Zweden zijn en waarom spreken ze dan zo ongelooflijk slecht Zweeds. Er zijn verdomme toch drie landen in Scandinavie.

- Ако трябва да съм честен, Арвид, ми се струва, че за нищо не ти е все едно. Между другото, можеш да престанеш да тръшкаш бебето, отдавна спря да плаче. Прав е. Около нас е тихо, в кожената чанта е тихо, надничам между одеялата и виждам, че детето спи, малкото личице е напълно гладко. - Май спи – продумвам. - Да я подържа ли малко? Да си поотдъхнеш. - Не, няма нужда. Той пак кимва, избърсва носа си с ръкавицата и въздъхва толкова дълбоко, че го чувам, и се зазяпва в празното пространство. - Идва ми да запея – казва, – но май по-добре да мълча, да не събудя бебето. - По-добре – съгласявам се.

... er tida en sekk du kan stappe inn i hvor mye som helst, går den aldri bare herfra til dit, men i stedet i sirkel etter sirkel, og så kommer du tilbake hver eneste gang til stedet hvor du begynte. Men det var ikke sånn heller. Før var jeg ung, nå var jeg ikke ung. Jeg ble aldri ung igjen.

time like an empty sack you can stuff any number of things into, does it never go just from here to there, but instead in circles, round and round, so that every single time the wheel has turned, you are back where you started.

Three years earlier her father had been buried (irritable and impatient as he always had been) in the Fladstrand Church cemetery that bordered the lovely park, Plantagen, which shared with the cemetery its trees, shared its beech and ash and maple, in the same plot where her mother, wide eyed and confused, had lain down almost willingly two years before, where her brother had lain for thirty-five years, dazed and unwillingly after too short a life. A dove was looking down from atop the family gravestone. It was made from metal so it could not fly away, but sometimes it went missing all the same and only a spike would remain. Someone had taken that dove, someone out there maybe had an entire collection of doves and angels and other small, Christian bronze sculptures in a cupboard at home and on long evenings would close the curtains and take them out and run his fingers gently over the smooth, cold bodies.

I wondered how it might affect your way of thinking, if you always had a lighthouse in the corner of your eye.

You’re probably right,’ I said, but to be honest, I had forgotten to be a Communist that night.

There was always a woman with TB in Remarque’s books. Frankly I was a little fed up with it.

Isn’t it fun,’ she said and she smiled. I let the oars rest in the rowlocks. The water around the boat fell silent, and silently the cabin was floating up above the rocks and the smoke rose softly from the chimney, and how impossible it was to grasp that in the end something as fine as this could be ground into dust.

I can understand that,’ Jim said. And Tommy

It's a lousy Napoleon cake. The cream should be a pale yellowish white and light, but this one is feverish yellow and sticky. I eat just the top and leave the rest on the plate. I ought to complain, hold the cake up in front of the lady at the counter and say: "This is a cheap imitation, I want my money back." But I have never done that. I have never complained about anything except badly written books and the world situation, and you don't get your money back when little Nepalese girls are sold by their families to brothels in Bangkok, or because the World Bank refuses to waive cruel loans to Uganda. On the contrary. And lousy books; they just look at you and say: "Why don't you write one yourself, then?

The paper was folded twice without a speck on it and bore a note in his handwriting: I cannot go on any longer. I was sure that was something we understood, both Jesper and I, that he could not go on any longer, but what it was he could not go on with we had no idea, because he was as strong as an ox and could work harder and longer than anyone else I have ever known.

Later on I heard that one of the pigs had committed suicide on the quay. It escaped after they had hoisted it from the boat and ran straight for the edge and jumped into the water and there it was crushed between the boat and the wharf until it drowned. It did not even scream.

Over the sea in the east the weather that has passed lies in a dark line at the far end of the world and it is warm now and a big sky rises like a film of blue over the whole of Denmark and behind it no one knows what there is. Sometimes at night I lie gazing out of the window and up at the sky and force my thoughts through the firmament to see what they meet on the other side, but in spite of what I learn at school, everything dissolves into small pieces and I have to go to sleep or my head starts to ache.

People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to.

Пътешествието ни отне почти целия ден и най-странното е, че не ми досади изобщо. Харесваше ми да гледам през прозореца, докато клепачите натежат от топлината, да заспивам и пак да се будя, да поглеждам навън за поне хиляден път, или пък да се извърна към баща ми, който през цялото време бе забил нос в някаква техническа книга, нещо за строене на къщи или машини и мотори — направо беше луд по тях. Той вдигаше глава, поглеждаше ме, кимваше и се усмихваше, отвръщах му и той отново потъваше в четивото си. Пак заспивах и сънувах топли и меки неща, а последния път, когато се събудих, баща ми ме бе разтърсил за рамото. — Здрасти, шефе — каза, аз ококорих очи и се огледах

Цял живот съм мечтал да остана сам на такова място. Дори и в най-хубавите си мигове, а те не бяха малко. Само това мога да кажа. Не бяха малко. Късметлия излязох. Но дори и тогава, например посред някоя прегръдка, когато някой шепнеше в ухото ми думите, които копнеех да чуя, аз внезапно се отнасях към такова съвършено тихо местенце. Случвало се е да минат години, без да си мисля за него, но това не означава, че не ме влечеше натам. И ето ме тук, почти същото е, както си го представях.

En av mine mange redsler er å bli mannen med den frynsete jakka og den uknepte buksesmekken foran kassa på Samvirkelaget, med egg på skjorta og mer til fordi speilet i gangen har slutta å virke. En havarert mann uten anker noe annet sted enn i sine egne flytende tanker der tida har mista sin rekkefølge.

I could suddenly get a longing to be in a place where there was only silence. Years might go by and I did not think about it, but that does not mean that I did not long to be there. And now I am here, and it is almost exactly as I had imagined it.

Hvis Lone kom fra et hjem med klaver og jeg fra et hjem med kinopiano, er Marianne fra et hjem med munnharpe.

the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversation we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few people we still see, and when you live alone for too long the line which divides the one from the other becomes vague, and you do not notice when you cross that line. Is

Todos los días, salvo el domingo, mi padre salía del edificio alargado y bajaba por la calle hasta la estación de tren de Nyland, a unos cientos de metros del colegio de Veitvet por la calle Østre Aker. Ese recorrido llevaba media hora, tal vez cuarenta y cinco minutos, mi padre lo hacía todos los días ida y vuelta, cada día salvo el domingo, durante los años en que trabajó fuera de la ciudad, en dirección a Strømmen, al este, donde había una fábrica de zapatos en una explanada, en realidad se trataba de un gran barracón dejado allí por los alemanes, que todavía no había quebrado, pero lo haría pronto, como lo habían hecho ya casi todas las demás, un ejército de fábricas de calzado cayendo como fichas de dominó tras los muros derribados por los aranceles. Y precisamente ahora, en el Mazda, más de dos años después de su muerte, me di cuenta de cuánta parte de su vida había dedicado a bajar por aquí tan temprano, descendiendo por las cuestas a primera hora y de vuelta nueve horas después, subiendo las cuestas hiciera el tiempo que hiciera. Siempre ascendía una corriente helada del fiordo, desde el fondo del valle, y no se rendía hasta pasar Stovner y Vestli, mi padre debía conocer bien ese viento, ese frío en la espalda por la mañana, como dardos de hielo sobre las mejillas por las tardes, y puede que se sintiera abatido, con los ojos achinados, entrecerrados contra la ventisca, seguro que se sintió indefenso y solo, pero entonces yo no pensaba en eso, era demasiado pequeño, y para ser sincero tampoco lo pensé después.

It is important not to be careless about supper when you are alone. It is easily done, boring as it is to cook for one person only. There must be potatoes, sauce and green vegetables, a napkin and a clean glass and the candles lit on the table, and no sitting down in your working clothes. So while the potatoes are boiling I go into the bedroom and change my trousers, put on a clean white shirt and go back to the kitchen and lay a cloth on the table before putting butter in the frying pan to fry the fish I have caught in the lake myself.

I wonder whether that is how we get to be after living alone for a long time, that in the middle of a train of thought we start talking out loud, that the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversation we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few people we still see.