It's Fine By Me by Per Petterson Read Free Book Online Page B

Granada drives in, and a man in a hat and coat jumps out, and his face is flushed. He yanks the nozzle from the pump, bangs the cap open and stuffs the nozzle in and then he gawps at the pump, his lips moving, mumbling words I can’t make out, and then I see that what he is gawping at is the kroner counter, and what he is mumbling is the numbers as they tick by. He is at it for a long time, and we pretend we are discussing our route, and at the same time we are studying every move he makes. When he goes in to pay I hurry to the Opel and back it into position and do what he did before I forget, and hope it’s the right kind of petrol. I put in twenty-five kroners’ worth. Then I enter the kiosk with an unlit cigarette in my mouth trying to look as if it’s something I do every day.
    After a few more kilometres heading north, I turn off the main road on to a bumpy gravel track. It rounds a sharp bend, and stones and ruts on the road pound the wheels and make everything shake. Then the road plunges down, and at the bottom of the hill there is a bridge over the river Leira where the rapids start. In the woods on the other side I glance in between the trees to see if my shack is still standing. It is not.
    ‘Fancy going for a visit?’
    ‘A farmer?’
    ‘A kind of farmer, yes. He lives right over there. Leif is his name. If he isn’t dead.’
    ‘OK, but if he’s dead I don’t want to see him.’
    ‘You were funnier with a hangover.’
    I stop and change down to first and climb the hills on the other side of the river. We pass a few model farms, painted red and white the way they’re supposed to be, rose beds and everything neat and tidy, and Arvid looks around, his eyes full of expectation. He hasn’t a clue where we’re going. A few minutes later I see Tommy’s barn at the top of a steep slope. There is not a level square metre of land on his property. Some goats are grazing on the slope. At one time the barn was yellow, and he was so proud that this was the only yellow barn in the district, but now the paint is peeling and it is more grey than yellow. The odd board has gone missing, and we can see straight into the hayloft. There isn’t much hay. Behind the barn, you can see the farmhouse with its sway-backed roof, and once it was white, but now it is as grey as the barn. It is only five years ago, it must have looked the same then, but it did not seem like it.
    We have to drive on a bit to find the driveway, and I keep looking for the blue letterbox that used to be a landmark before, but the box has fallen off and is lying on the ground, and I have to back up the car. I turn into the driveway and pick up speed, and as I remember it, there was a pothole in the road so muddy after rains that you had to have a tractor pull you out if you got stuck, and it probably isn’t any better now. And it isn’t. I put my foot down and shoot across, the mud flying everywhere. The rear of the Opel bounces into the air and Arvid jumps around in his seat and shouts:
    ‘Hey, take it easy, for fuck’s sake. This is my dad’s car! He’ll kill me!’ But I am driving fast now, because I have second thoughts and wonder how I got myself into this. But it’s too late to turn back, and I want this over and done with.
    There are three cars in the yard. Not one of them has four wheels. They have stood there for a good while and one of them I remember very well. It’s an old Volvo station wagon that was used for everything from transporting piglets to delivering the dead on commission, and these were the only times the car was washed. The other two are what Egil called ‘crash cars’. You buy them as wrecks, get the engine running and drive them until they fall apart and leave them wherever they break down. A chicken cackles and sticks its head out of a smashed window. From where I am standing, I see nothing that can move under its own steam: even the wheelchair by the farmhouse door is missing a wheel and is lying on its back,