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Per Petterson

Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes

A Man Without Shoes

Dad had a face that Arvid loved to watch, and at the same time made him nervous as it wasn’t just a face but also a rock in the forest with its furrows and hollows, at least if he squinted when he looked. Of course you can be a bit unsettled if you look at your dad and suddenly there is a large rock where his head used to be.

Those who liked to comment on this kind of thing said that the two of them looked a lot like each other and that was perhaps what made Arvid most nervous, but when he glanced in the mirror he didn’t understand what they meant for Dad was blond, and all Arvid saw in the mirror was two round cheeks and plainly Dad did not have them.

But most of the time Dad was just Dad, someone that Arvid liked and dared to touch. Uncle Rolf said that Dad’s face had a determination that couldn’t determine where to go, but Uncle Rolf had always been a big mouth.

Dad worked in a shoe factory and had gone up through the ranks at Salomon Shoes at Kiellands Square. He was a skilled worker now and had just become a foreman when the Norwegian shoe industry capsized and sank like the Titanic. After that he moved from factory to factory, as if they were ice floes in the Bunne Fjord in spring, further and further away, and in the end he found a job on the island of Fyn in Denmark. It was a responsible post for a worker, in the office for half the week, recognition, Mum said, let’s be clear about that, and she seemed to like the thought of returning to the old country.

He was away for six months, and Arvid and Gry and Mum tiptoed around waiting for the signal to follow. Arvid had slowly begun to say goodbye to the things around him: his room with the model planes hanging from the ceiling, the bullfinch tree down by the dustbin and the secret path beneath the bushes on the Slope. But then one evening Dad was standing in the hall with a crumpled smile and a large suitcase in his hand and he said:

‘Sorry, folks, but I’ve never been much of a paper pusher.

He’d had a pint or two, and Arvid could see that straight away.

They were all so bewildered they never got round to asking about anything except what was in the suitcase. When it turned out it was full of marzipan and whisky and Toblerone and Elephant beer from the duty-free shop on the Danish ferry, they crowded into the kitchen like a pack of hungry pups. It was a small kitchen, so the children had to stand while the adults sat around the table with a dram to consider the situation in an adult way. And of course Uncle Rolf had to have his say. It was a mystery to Arvid why he came round so often, didn’t he have his own place to live?

‘The thing is, Frank, you don’t have any social aspirations, and you know it!’ said Uncle Rolf, and the kitchen went so quiet you could hear the rain on the windowpanes. It was such a quiet, sneaky pitter-patter that no one had heard it until then. Outside, it was November and dark, the night was full of nasty naked trees scraping against the walls just like in Captain Miki and the Man with the Evil Eye. Arvid stood with his backside against the sink in the kitchen, where just now it had been so cosy. He had a half-eaten Tom’s marzipan log in his hand and hardly dared sniffle, even though he had a bad cold.