To Siberia by Per Petterson Page B

visit friends. They were dressed in their best and in their hands they carried cardboard boxes tied with string which might have had eggs in them or home-baked cakes for relatives, but no one had turned up to meet the boat except Jesper and me, and that had been a near thing.
    We stopped beside the gangway and the people standing there turned to stare at us. Water ran from hair and clothes and formed puddles around our boots. I ran my hand over my hair, which was plastered to my head and had lost its curls, and the farmers exchanged looks and started to walk up into town.
    My father came ashore last as he usually did. I didn’t know why, but thought it had something to do with his back, that he wanted people to see him face first and not walk behind him speculating over the reasons for his being as he was.
    Not until he was in the middle of the gangway did he raise his eyes and look at us. He had been on Læsø for several days to see whether we should move over there, if there was any market for a joiner. He still had the money he had borrowed from the bank and could start up with that. I saw in his face that things had not gone well, and the sight of us didn’t improve matters. He stopped with his hands gripping the rope so hard that the knuckles turned white and his face grew white with anger. Jesper stood tensely beside me, he did not realize what our father saw, and I quickly took two steps forward and asked:
    “How did it go, Father?” but he did not look at me and did not reply, just pushed me aside, grabbed Jesper by the collar and said, low and hard:
    “Have you seen yourself! Is this the way to come and meet your father?” although I did not look any better, wet from the waist up, with grazes on my knees and my hair hanging in sticky tangles down my back. I loved my father and his crooked back, my father loved Jesper and all his quirky ideas, but his arms were hard and strong as twisted hawsers, and with those he started to shake Jesper, who was fifteen years old and newly confirmed, who was going to help him in the workshop before he began his printer’s apprenticeship. It wouldn’t do, and I knew it and Jesper knew it, only my father didn’t know it. Jesper stood with his legs apart and would not be budged. He was strong and brown too, and his dark mop flopped up and down each time my father pulled at his collar, but from his belt down he stood still. Slowly he let his body stiffen and with bowed head he said:
    “Stop doing that,” and my father replied furiously:
    “What was that?”
    “I said damn well stop doing that!” Jesper raised his head. I could see he was on the verge of tears, and with one hard tug he was free.
    “You will never do that again,” he said, and it was so embarrassing that he looked neither at my father nor me, but past us at the boat from Læsø where a crane was lifting live animals out of the hold and swinging them ashore, pigs and oxen for the slaughterhouse in our town. They made undignified running movements in thin air and I heard their cries and the ripping noise from Jesper’s boot as he turned and walked away.
    “You’re not going anywhere!” my father called after him, but he did not even look back, just walked on at the same speed until he disappeared behind the corn silo on the way up to the church square and Danmarksgate. His thin jacket stuck to his back and I thought, there goes my brother, Jesper the socialist.
    Later on I heard that one of the pigs had committed suicide on the quay. It escaped after they had hoisted it from the boat and ran straight for the edge and jumped into the water and there it was crushed between the boat and the wharf until it drowned. It did not even scream.

 
     

    I n one room of Lone’s house there are books from floor to ceiling. Another is the dining room. They have lunch and dinner there although the kitchen is big and airy and has wide wooden floorboards. Lone has to change for dinner. She has a room she doesn’t