In the Wake: A Novel - Hardcover

Per Petterson was a librarian and bookseller before publishing his first work, a volume of short stories, in 1987. Since then, his novels have established him as one of Norway's outstanding novelists. This is his first novel to be published in the United States.

Chapter One
It was something to do with a face. I had never seen it
before, yet I did recognise it, but as it comes to me now,
the thought of it is unpleasant. Someone gave me a gin.
I had had enough already. I see my hand around the
glass, the glass is full to the brim, and then I do not
remember anything more except that face, and now I
stand with my forehead against the glass of this
bookshop door, and I kick at the door. They have to let
me in. I do not know how long I have been standing
here. I have been out of this world and now I am back,
and I don't feel well. Why doesn't someone come and
let me in? I kick the door. People are passing on the
pavement behind me, but I don't turn round, just
squeeze my face to the glass and my nose is flattened
and I stare at the rows of books. It is dark in there, but
light outside. It is morning, the sun feels hot on my
neck, but I dare not turn round. That glass of gin was
yesterday and miles and miles from this street in
central Oslo.
Someone gives a little cough and says: "I don't think
there's anyone there yet. It's probably too early."
I know that voice, it's the lady from the kiosk next
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door. I have known it for years. She is right behind me.
I could pick her out with my eyes shut in the middle of
Aker Brugge on a crowded Saturday afternoon in June.
I've been buying Petterøe 3 tobacco and Dagbladet and
a Kvikk Lunsj chocolate bar from her since 1981. And
then I remember. I do not work here any more. I
haven't worked here for three years. I stand perfectly
still holding my breath and wait for her to go away. It
is a good idea not to breathe, my side hurts every time
I suck the air in. But then I have to breathe, and there
is a squeak from my throat or further down, and the
pain in my side is there at once. It is lung cancer, I'm
convinced it is, and I feel so sad because I have lung
cancer and will certainly not be here for long.
It is quiet behind me now so she must have gone,
and then I start to cry, with my nose pressed to the
glass door, and I look in at the rows of books, see that
the shop has grown since I stopped working there,
more floor space with more shelves for many more
books I shall never read because I am going to die of
lung cancer.
I am forty-three. When my father was this age I had
just been born, and he never touched a cigarette in his
whole life. He only had a drink with Sunday dinner;
one pint because he deserved it. The body should be a
temple of life, he said, not a whited sepulchre. He was
a skier and a boxer, and when he breathed, the air went
straight into his lungs, and did no harm at all for the
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air was much cleaner then. If he ever coughed, it was
because he had a cold, and he rarely did. Now he is
dead, but through no fault of his own. If I die now it
will definitely be my fault. That is the difference
between us, and it is a big difference.
I cough and look down; I see my hands. They have
an emptiness I cannot account for and they are dirty,
there are grazes on both palms, but I feel no pain. They
just hang there. Then I remember a high grey wall and
its rough surface, I am falling and holding on at the
same time, and I remember utterly still water in a pool,
chlorine blue water with black lines on the bottom. It is
a public swimming pool, and it is not yet open, it is
quite silent, only a man all in white walking by the side
of the pool, and I try to work out just where it is that I
am standing watching this from, but I can't. I am all
over the place, I am like God, I am omnipresent. I can
see the clock on the wall quite clearly, but I cannot
make out what the time is. There is a palm tree in one
corner. It is Bislett baths, I think. Then the grey wall is
Bislett stadium. But I have not been to Bislett stadium
since I was ten and with my father and saw Raufoss
beat Vålerenga FC two-nil. He was shattered. Didn't
say a word all the way home.
I feel the sun on my neck, it is burning or something
is burning, and maybe it is Sunday. I don't remember.
I see only my eyes in the glass and the books beyond,
and I don't know what day it is.
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"Go and see what the weather is like," my brother
would say every time it was Sunday morning and
winter, and I would have to get out of the bottom bunk
and go to the window and pull the heavy curtain aside
and look out through the frost flowers.
"It's sunny," I say, "sunshine and fine weather."
"Sunshine," he says, "fucking shit."
"Fucking shit," I say, and the snow was so white it
hurt your eyes, and the smell of frying bacon floated up
from downstairs, and we knew that he had been awake
for several hours, preparing the skis and loading the
rucksacks. Now they were ready in the hall with the
thermos and sandwiches in the side pockets and extra
sweaters and socks and ski scrapers and three lots of
Swix varnish in case of a sudden thaw or if the mercury
dropped, and two oranges apiece and perhaps a Kvikk
Lunsj chocolate bar if we were lucky, and the rucksack
would be sure to weigh twenty kilos each.
But that is a lifetime ago, and he has been dead for
nearly six years. I remember an office on Drammensvei
with a red cross on the door, a fireman is showing a
video from the inside of the boat with a landscape of
half-naked, prone bodies: THE CORRIDOR OF DEATH, the
front page of Verdens Gang said, that video was on the
inside of my eyes; skin, I see skin, velvety dull in the
flickering light of a lamp moving onwards, restless
shadows between elbows and hips, shoulder blades and
necks, a sea of hushed softness where nothing moves
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but the light which brings life to what is not living. The
camera runs and pauses for a moment before what has
turned black, where the flames have devoured it all,
finished the job, and then it swings into a cabin where
a woolly penguin lies alone on a bunk, the door to the
bathroom ajar, the dark crack hiding the bath's
obvious secret. My feet are freezing as I stand here with
my nose to the door remembering the cold creeping
into my feet that time in that office, and my stomach
wildly burning. But my face was calm, and the woman
sitting next to me said:
"Rewind, for heaven's sake, I have to see that
penguin one more time." An air-raid shelter in
Baghdad was what I thought, for a year had passed, I
do not know where, and it was spring 1991 with
surgical bombing, electronic warfare, a war on the
screen, a video game.
"Rewind," she said again and again, and the fireman
did, goddamnit, and she turned to stone.
I really don't feel well. The cold crawls from my feet
to my hips and I start to tremble, my teeth chatter, my
forehead shudders against the glass as it does when
you sit on a bus with your head against the window,
gazing out, and the diesel engine makes everything
vibrate. I think I am going to be sick, but I mustn't be
sick here. People go by on the pavement, and it can't be
Sunday because I hear from their voices that they are
young, students from the business school next door,
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and as they pass me they stop talking, and I will not
turn and look at them looking at me. I look down at my
shoes. They are scuffed, my shirt is hanging out of my
trousers below the unzipped jacket, and I see my belt
dangling in front of my half-open flies. They were not
like that yesterday. When did those trousers come
undone? Perhaps I have been raped. Perhaps someone
dragged me into a doorway on my way past Bislett
stadium or into a changing room at Bislett baths and
grossly abused my butt while I was out of this world. I
close my eyes and concentrate, hunting for traces all
through my body; some remnant soreness, and what I
do discover is that I feel wretched. It isn't easy to say
what is what. I have to see a doctor. I may test positive.
There are people in this town who would not blink
twice at planting a seed in my blood, a virus that will
tick and go deep inside what is me and one day after
several years, when I least expect it, explode like a time
bomb, one day when my life does not look as it does
right now, a day when I have the sun on my face.
I take a deep breath. The pain in my side damn near
makes me jump. It's my lungs, I had forgotten. I groan.
Someone behind me stops and says something I do not
want to hear. I stand very still, waiting, and then I hum
a bit, and the someone walks off again. I raise my right
hand to feel whether my hair is wet. It is bone dry and
feels as stiff as a doormat and far from clean. I could do
with a shower, a shower and a steam bath. I like steam
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baths these days. I did not before. I always dreaded the
walk from the bus stop to Torggata baths and then up
the stone steps to the cloakroom and the showers, and
it was cold in the changing room and in the shower
room before the water was turned on, but when the
warm water ran through my hair and down my neck,
over shoulders and stomach, it felt good, and I closed
my eyes and wanted to go on standing there. It was
fine, for a moment everything was just fine.
"Open your eyes and come along," he said and
opened the door to the steam bath and I went in,
because nobody had told me that you could say no. I
went in and there was a blazing creature with a power
that sucked each breath from my throat much faster
than I could keep up with, and very soon I was empty,
and fighting for air.
"It's important to sweat all the shit out," he said, "turn
your insides out and really cleanse yourself," but I could
not sweat. I stood in the steam, dry and thin, and saw the
naked men along the benches, heads in hands,
glistening, panting, with their big stomachs on their
thighs and their big cocks, and none of them could speak
because the creature had swallowed the air and pushed
aga...