I Refuse - Hardcover

Petterson, Per

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555976999 ISBN 13: 9781555976996

Verlag: GRAY WOLF PR, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

A masterful new novel from Per Petterson, who "provides one of literature's greatest gifts . . . a welcome refuge from our cacophonous world" (NPR)

Per Petterson's hotly anticipated new novel, I Refuse, is the work of an internationally acclaimed novelist at the height of his powers. In Norway the book has been a huge bestseller, and rights have already been sold into sixteen countries. In his signature spare style, Petterson weaves a tale of two men whose accidental meeting one morning recalls their boyhood thirty-five years ago. Back then, Tommy was separated from his sisters after he stood up to their abusive father. Jim was by Tommy's side through it all. But one winter night, a chance event on a frozen lake forever changed the balance of their friendship. Now Jim fishes alone on a bridge as Tommy drives by in a new Mercedes, and it's clear their fortunes have reversed. Over the course of the day, the life of each man will be irrevocably altered. I Refuse is a powerful, unforgettable novel, and its publication is an event to be celebrated.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Per Petterson won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his novelOut Stealing Horses, which has been translated into forty-nine languages and was named a Best Book of 2007 byThe New York Times.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

I Refuse

By Per Petterson, Don Bartlett

GRAYWOLF PRESS

Copyright © 2012 Forlaget Oktober, Oslo
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-55597-699-6

CHAPTER 1

Dark. It was half past four in the morning. I was driving towards Herregardsveien from Hauketo. Just before Ljan station I turned off to the left over the railway bridge, the lights were red, but there was no one else around, so I turned anyway. When I was over the crossing and further down the road, past the shop there, they called it Karusellen, a man plunged out of the darkness into the headlights of my car. He was about to fall when I saw him. I hit the brakes, the wheels locked and the car skidded sideways for a few metres with a sickening squeal and stopped right by him. The engine died. I was certain I had hit him with the bumper.

And then he didn't fall. He leaned against the bonnet, took three steps back and swayed. I saw the light flooding in through his eyes. He stared at the windscreen, but he couldn't see me, he couldn't see anything. His hair was long, and his beard was long, and he had a grey bag tucked tightly up under his arm. For a moment I thought it was my father. But it wasn't my father. I had never seen my father.

Then he was lost in the darkness on the other side of the road, where the path led steeply down into Ljansdalen. I sat with my arms straight out in front of me, my hands pressed hard against the wheel and the rear of the car halfway into the opposite lane. It was still dark. Darker, even. Two headlights approached from down the hill. I twisted the key, but the car wouldn't start, and I tried again and then it burst into life. I felt my breath at the top of my throat, I was panting, the way a dog does. I backed into the right-hand lane before the other car could reach me, and I turned and drove slowly down to Mosseveien and turned right at the bottom, towards Oslo.

Back then, during Jens Stoltenberg's first red-green coalition government, I lived to the north-east of Oslo, in Romerike, and yet less and less I drove the easy way into Oslo – along the E6, but instead made a long detour around our capital in the east, from Lillestram via Enebakk to Hauketo, because it brought back sweet memories.

Of course it was a lot further that way and took more time, but it was not so important, I had been off work for a whole year and had no idea what would happen next. A letter from Social Security came in the post telling me to show up at their office, but I guessed I wouldn't have to go back to work straight away. As long as I remembered to take my pills, one day slid nicely into another.

I drove at just under the speed limit along Mosseveien to the suspension bridge connecting the island of Ulvøya to the mainland. There was still no traffic. I moved slowly across the bridge as it swayed beneath me, a nice feeling, as if on the deck of a boat, I liked that feeling.

I parked in the lay-by to the right, on the bend there, and leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes and waited. Breathing from my stomach. Then I opened the door and swung my legs out and walked around the car and took out the old, black bag with the fishing equipment in it. Nothing fancy, a bait rig with a line and twenty hooks and a weight at the end.

The regulars were already there, standing alongside the railings, where they had stood for ten years or more. I was the only newcomer for perhaps just as many years, but no one asked me why I had suddenly appeared. I had been coming here at least twice a week for three months now.

The man closest to me turned when I stepped on to the bridge, the bag in my hand. He saluted with three fingers to his cap, like a Boy Scout. He had two sweaters on, one over the other, the top one blue, the one underneath white, well, off-white, and they were both in rags, they called him Container Jon. On his hands he had fingerless mittens, or maybe they were normal gloves he had cut the fingers off. I had seen newspaper boys do the same. These ones were an unexpected reddish colour, pink, almost.

'Any bites,' I said. He didn't answer, but smiled and pointed to the newspaper he had spread out on the ground by his feet. On it were a medium-sized cod and two mackerel, one still wriggling. He winked with his left eye and raised his right hand and flashed five fingers three times.

'In fifteen minutes,' I said with a low whistle.

A plastic bag had been tossed up against the railings, ICA, Co-op, whatever, it wasn't his, that's for sure, and two scrunched-up paper cups likewise tossed, and a light-coloured paper napkin smeared with ketchup and mustard, and further up a tangled mass of lousy fishing line. Container Jon coughed a few times with a mitten covering his mouth, it was an ominously hollow sound, and he turned and said into the darkness:

'Damn foreigners. Fishing during daytime.'

I walked past him and stopped between two suspension cables. Each stretch between two cables had been given a number, this was the niner. Then I loosened the last hook from the rig and pulled out half a metre of line and leaned over the railings. With a few clumsy twists of my wrist I let the line with the weight on the end slowly unwind from the bait rig and into the water. Around the top of each hook I had wound a bit of shiny, red tape. When my uncle did some serious fishing a little further south from here, in the Bunnefjord not far from Roald Amundsen's house, in a rowing boat he had hired free and for nothing, he always used mussels as bait. He wanted salt water to fish in, this was right at the beginning of the 1960s, and he drove for miles and miles in the grey Volvo PV to walk in his high waders in the shallows out by Bekkensten quay with the shiny surface of the water only just below the tops of his boots and his shirtsleeves rolled up in a vain attempt to keep them dry each time he bent over to catch the mussels and put them in a bucket cut in half that was floating in front him.

But all this was too much trouble for me, and I certainly didn't go anywhere near the distance he did to get his bait, and the fish didn't bite any different for me than they did for my uncle back in those days. You don't need bait, the others on the bridge said, they'll go for anything shiny.

I fixed a wheel hub I got off a bike to the railings, using mudguard struts to secure it firmly around the top handrail, it was called a windlass, that kind of device, and was usually attached to the gunwale of fishing boats and you could probably buy it in a shop if you wanted, but this was my personal patent. I placed the fishing line in the groove and in that way I could gently raise or lower it without the line wearing thin on the railings until eventually, it snapped with a loud crack. Which of course had happened to general amusement.

Day was slowly breaking. I had been standing there for more than two hours and hadn't had a single bite. It annoyed me, but frankly, fish wasn't my favourite dish any more. Not like it was in the past. The fish I did catch, I always gave away.

As a rule I drove home before the first cars came down the hill towards the bridge, but today I had frittered my time away. I hadn't even started to pack my bag, and the cars that were coming were classy cars, expensive cars. I turned my back to the road, my frayed navy blue reefer jacket wrapped tightly round me. I'd had that jacket ever since I was a boy in Mork, and only one of the old brass buttons was still intact, and I had a woollen cap on as blue as the jacket, pulled down over my ears, so from behind I could have been anyone.

I tied the bait rig to the railing, turned round and crouched down to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: GRAY WOLF PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1555976999
• ISBN 13: 9781555976996
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar