In The Wake by Per Petterson Read Free Book Online Page A

the current towards Oslo, and some of them ran inshore and hit the rocks with heavy thuds we could feel in our bones before the current turned them around and sent them on. There was a light wind. We stood on the smoothly polished rock that sloped down into the water, looking out over the fjord with the sun on our backs and our backs to Roald Amundsen’s house.It was cold and warm both. We waited. The first floe was too small. We helped it on its way with two long poles we had found in a pile beside the fence. The next one looked fine. Rough and massive, but it was too far out, it would drift past and hit the shoreline much closer to town, and then we pushed the poles out to bring it to a halt, and it slowed down and turned towards the shore, and my brotheryelled: “Jump.” And then he jumped, and I jumped after him. We landed on the floe which kept swinging and crashed into the rock with a boom, slid up the bare rock some way and then began to turn over.
    “Fucking hell,” my brother yelled.
    “Fucking hell,” I yelled and dropped to my knees so I wouldn’t slide off the floe and into the icy cold water, and my brother did what I did. We shoved our polesagainst the rock and pushed as hard as we could. And we did it. The floe slid off with a scraping noise and was flat on the water again, and then we were safe.
    “Ho,” said my brother, smiling.
    “Hoho,” I said.
    Clutching the poles, we cautiously stood up. The floe turned gently and now we could see Roald Amundsen’s house from a fresh angle and on towards the end of the fjord, we saw the wholeof the Nesoddland up to the tip, and the islands nearest town, we saw Holmenkollen ski jump on the ridge, and then we saw it all a second time. After circling around three times, we had been taken by the current so far along we could see the shoreline to the plot that was ours and the path from the jetty up the hill to the cottage where my father came running down in his T-shirt as if it was summertime.He was a fast runner for someone over fifty, and he shouted something we could not hear, for each time he opened his mouth the crows lifted from the trees, and the sound they made filled the air around us. I did not care. It was great to be standing on the floe. I had a clear view to all sides, and everything I saw was familiar and at the same time completely new, and it gave me such a weightlessfeeling that my stomach seemed to dissolve, and I would not mind standing on that floe for ever, rushing along with the current and seeing the places I knew as if for the first time.
    When we passed the jetty my father had come right down to the shore. We could hear what he was shouting now, it was our names, but I did not recognise mine. It sounded like it, but it was not mine. We were far fromland, and if he wanted to get hold of us he would have to swim, and that was his idea. He threw himself out, the water splashing from his body on both sides, but it was icy cold, I heard him gasp, and he had not come far when I saw his face go white and he had to turn back. Back on land he started to run back and forth along the shore, calling, water pouring from his hair, from his clothes, andI heard the crows and his cries at the same time, and it was the name that was not mine and goddamnit, goddamnit, and then he caught sight of the rowing boat lying upside down in the shelter of a rock. It had been there since the previous autumn, covered with a tarpaulin, and he tugged and pulled it to turn it over and push it down to the water, but I knew the oars were not there. They were in thestoreroom under the veranda on two benches, so he would have to run the whole way up to the cabin and then down again, and it’s hard to carry two long oars and at the same time run. By the time everything was in its place and he was out on the water, we would be off. I turned and stood there looking straight across the fjord to Oslo while the ice floe gently rocked, and my brother was staringstiffly back at