Echoland

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Per Petterson

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  The Coast Rose, But Not By Much

  Don’t You Touch Me

  Toro! Toro!

  By His Own Hand

  Tango, in a Flat, Broad-brimmed Hat

  You Know I Don’t Drink

  Forget It, Arvid Said

  As Though They Didn’t Exist

  A Skinny Boy in Short Trousers

  There Was a Reek of Dead Bodies

  Hard as Flint

  A Storm round Cape Horn

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Twelve-year-old Arvid and his family are on holiday, staying with his grandparents in Denmark. Confused by the underlying tension between his mother and grandmother, Arvid is grappling with his own sense of self. He’s on the cusp of becoming a teenager, feeling awkward in his own skin.

  As Arvid cycles around town, down to the beach with its view of the lighthouse, his new-found freedom fuels his desire to experience life.

  Echoland is a subtle and truthful snapshot of growing up, with an emotional depth that lingers long after its final pages.

  About the Author

  Per Petterson was born in Oslo in 1952 and worked for several years as an unskilled labourer and a bookseller. He made his literary breakthrough in 2003 with the prizewinning novel Out Stealing Horses, which has been published in fifty languages and won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

  Don Bartlett lives in Norfolk and works as a freelance translator of Scandinavian literature. He has translated, or co-translated, Norwegian novels by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Jo Nesbo, Lars Saabye Christensen, Roy Jacobsen, Ingvar Ambjørnsen, Kjell Ola Dahl, Gunnar Staalesen and Pernille Rygg.

  Also by Per Petterson

  To Siberia

  In the Wake

  Out Stealing Horses

  I Curse the River of Time

  It’s Fine By Me

  Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes

  I Refuse

  Echoland

  Per Petterson

  TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN BY

  Don Bartlett

  Jutland, Jutland

  oh, land of earth and air, of boundless space

  with splendour in your light,

  age imprinted on your lips,

  the sea’s broad panoply

  above your beaches

  at a distance, solitude.

  Oh, Echoland, where the air

  has hidden traces, has answers,

  rye-white land, my childhood’s hapless abode

  giddy with air and earth.

  Paul la Cour

  THE COAST ROSE, BUT NOT BY MUCH

  THEY SAILED ACROSS the sea to Denmark. Along the fjord the bonfires lit up the summer evening and Arvid stood by the railing gazing towards land, pretending they were stars. The lights rose and fell and they shone on the water and he heard laughter and singing from the shore, but the ship was quiet.

  The ship was called the Vistula and had been named after a river in Poland. Arvid had never been to Poland, but before they were past Nesodden his father had told the story about the man who was going to America on board the Stavanger Fjord. The engine packed up almost at once and they had to sail round Hovedøya island back to the harbour and then the man was standing on deck shouting in an American accent to those who hadn’t yet left the quay: ‘Is my old mother still alive?’ But Arvid had heard the story so many times before and only his father laughed.

  The white houses sank and withdrew into the countryside and slowly the fjord grew wider. The Vistula passed Drøbak and sailed on through the sound where the wreck of the battleship Blücher lay on the seabed by Oscarsborg fortress. They had sailed over it and perhaps the dead bodies were still there. The skies turned dark, but not by much, for it was Midsummer Night, and then it happened, what he was waiting for. The little boat from the town of Horten appeared from behind an island and chugged across the fjord in a wide arc. The noise from the Vistula’s engine went quiet until he could barely hear its thrumming, and the spray from the bows ceased. The Vistula glided through the water, waiting, and Arvid waited too. The little boat approached and turned until it was in line with the ship. Arvid could see the skipper at the helm and his white cap, and a couple were standing on the deck with a suitcase between them. The man was holding his hat and the woman was looking straight down.

  There was a clang from the side of the ship and a gangway was extended from the hull. Arvid leaned further over and saw a hand stretched out below, and suddenly he felt a grip around his thigh. His whole body went cold and he turned quickly. He saw a man smiling.

  ‘Fancy a late evening swim, do you? Be careful,’ he said, with an even bigger smile. He had a hat on, and a coat, and he looked ordinary. ‘You just watch, I will hold you.’

  Arvid stared at him. In the end he said: ‘You will not,’ and turned away again. Now the little boat was up close, and they rocked towards each other and away again with the waves they themselves had made, and the man with the suitcase said, ‘Now,’ and stepped across. The outstretched hand helped him in and then it waved to the woman. She stared at the open water between the boats, which was no more than a thin strip, where the tyres the length of the Horten boat kept them apart.

  ‘No,’ she said in a loud voice, but the hand only waved more eagerly.

  ‘No, you idiot!’ she shouted. ‘I don’t want to!’ And then Arvid could see who owned the hand for he leaned right over and grabbed the woman’s shoulder and pulled her across.

  ‘Idiot!’ she screamed.

  The man behind Arvid laughed and said: ‘That was a bad start to the holiday. There must be easier ways of getting to Denmark.’ He stood right by Arvid, and Arvid straightened up and moved away from the railing.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Arvid Jansen.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twelve. Almost.’

  ‘You’re a fine figure of a lad,’ the man said, stroking Arvid’s hair, and Arvid took a step back.

  ‘No I am not. I’m Italian.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said the man, raising an eyebrow, for he knew nothing at all about Bruno Angelini, the baker’s son from Naples who thought the city’s streets were hot enough without having to stand in his father’s bakery as well. It was as hot as hell there and Bruno longed to get out to where the air didn’t stand still and the eye could see further than the nearest stack of loaves. He could have become a fisherman or a labourer and chose the latter, at seventeen. He worked on roads for several years and then he worked on railways, when railways were stretching across Italy to hold the new state together. For this job strong men were required who would graft. Bruno was small, but he was strong and he could graft. He was going further and further away from Naples, and sometimes all he longed for was the glittering bay with Capri in the distance.

  To the north there were more rivers and valleys and ravines, and bridges had to be built. Bruno built bridges. Soon there was no type of bridge he hadn’t worked on, and when a call went out for experienced labourers to build a railway bridge across the Limfjord in Denmark, in the far north, Bruno was among those who signed up. Arvid’s history book told of a Europe emerging from several wars, and travelling north was not without dangers. But Bruno set off, and in the spring of 1874 he found accommodation in Ålborg on the Limfjord.

  It took almost five years. When the bridge was finished four Italians had died, five Frenchmen and many others had life-changing injuries. Bruno was the foreman of a five-man team and most of the time they worked underwater, in pressure chambers where three of them
dug the mud and two sent it up a shaft. Above them the huge pillars were built with hard-baked bricks and they felt heavy on Bruno’s shoulders and neck.

  In 1879 all the guest workers went back home, except Bruno. He wanted to see the Danish king open the bridge, and he had grown fond of the country with the low coastline, although his respect for Danish engineers had diminished.

  King Christian took the train from Ålborg to Nørresundby on the northern side of the Limfjord. He was supposed to walk back and open the bridge, but the rain came down and the wind picked up, so he took the train back again, and from Ålborg station he crossed in a coach which brought him dry-shod to the opening ceremony.

  ‘Useless monarch!’ Bruno said, standing among the Danish workers.

  Now he was finished with bridges. But he didn’t return home, he went even further north. In the fishing village of Bangsbostrand he met a girl who was blonde and her name was Lotte, and so he became a fisherman after all. But that was all fine for it wasn’t so hot here and even a short man could see a long distance in Northern Jutland and the air was never still. In each generation after him there was one Italian, and when Arvid thought about him he saw an open, tanned face with dark curls above it, and that’s how Arvid himself looked, and what he didn’t know about Bruno, he made up. And he thought, you don’t have to be Norwegian, you can be something else, somewhere else other than Oslo. You can be an Italian in Denmark. You can leave your own skin and be whoever you like and no one can get near you. Not everyone was brave enough to do this, but Arvid was, and the man in the hat and coat could understand nothing of this. Arvid took another step back and then Gry called to him from the deck above, where she was standing with his mother. The man looked up at them and back down at Arvid and touched his hat as if to another adult and went into the cafeteria.

  ‘Who was that?’ Gry said afterwards.

  ‘It was just a man.’

  He was allowed to stay up until they passed Færder lighthouse at the mouth of the fjord, which was creepy and lonesome and seductive as it swung its arms round in the night, and then he had to go down to bed. But it was warm inside and the stairs were steep and had banisters of mahogany and brass, there was the smell of engine room and beef in the corridors and inside the cabin there were china pots in the cupboard under the sink. They were for pissing in at night, but after Færder they mostly came out when someone had to throw up.

  When his father turned off the light it was pitch black and Arvid didn’t know whether he was asleep or awake for when he opened his eyes he saw as little as he did when he had them closed. He lay there in the night that wrapped itself around him and became a world of its own and felt the boat lift him up, press against his stomach and let him fall, and he smiled in the darkness and heard his father groan on the lower bunk. There was a creak every time he turned to stop himself throwing up.

  ‘I know you’re grinning, Arvid! Pack it in!’ his father’s voice said, and Arvid couldn’t hold it back any longer and laughed out loud.

  In the morning he awoke and went up on deck with Gry. They leaned over the railing and let the wind tousle their hair until it felt soaked in Vaseline and thick to the touch, and they threw Marie biscuits to the gulls sailing like white crosses above the boat, and they dived to catch them, and only one biscuit fell into the sea.

  Then Arvid and Gry went in and had breakfast in the cafeteria and sat talking and thinking until they could see the island with the lighthouse through the windows. They went back out and watched the wake as the ship turned in towards land. The coast rose, but not by much, for it was Denmark and the ship glided quietly through the opening in the mole, past the fishing cutters with their masts stripped of their sails like a winter forest, and Grandfather stood on the quay in his brown beret and equally brown moustache. His blue moped was parked by the harbour shed, and when Grandfather spotted them he raised his arm very slowly and waved his hand. Arvid had never seen him make a sudden movement.

  They waved back and his father saw the moped and had that expression round his mouth and everyone knew what he was going to say.

  ‘Dad, you haven’t even got a moped,’ Gry said and so his father said nothing and Arvid thought the moped was great and the town was small, so what use was a car to Grandfather?

  They took their bikes and suitcases from the Vistula and Grandfather tied the biggest case to the luggage rack on his moped. Then they set off across the harbour square, past the Ferry Inn, which was a low dive, up Lodsgade a few blocks to the house where LODSGADE DAIRY was written above the shop windows on the ground floor. It was Grandmother’s shop, and there were white tiles on the walls and on the counter and in the window there were cheeses on display that Arvid would never have dreamed of eating, just the thought of it made him feel sick. But along one wall there was a line of jars with crystallised fruits in them and sweets called rusty frogs and it felt good to stand behind the counter when the Danish kids came in the door with their five-øre coins because he knew they thought he could help himself whenever he liked.

  When they arrived, Grandmother was standing in the arch leading to the courtyard with her eyes so blue they could see right through you and out to the mission fields in Africa, and she gave a limp smile when she hugged Arvid. That was because they had come so early she hadn’t put her false teeth in yet. Arvid could see that and he thought it was disgusting. He walked past her and up the steep spiral staircase to the first floor where the little kitchen was to the left, the living room straight ahead and the bedroom behind it, and that was all there was.

  ‘Welcome to Denmark, welcome my dears,’ Grandmother said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Mum, and her voice was as shiny and taut as a wire and Arvid stopped to listen, but she didn’t say anything more that he could hear.

  Every time they came here with the ship, Grandfather moved to the divan in the living room and Grandmother to the little room behind the dairy shop which was so small they called it the Aquarium. It was almost entirely white, there were white lace curtains and white roller blinds in the window, there was a white crocheted frilly cover on the divan and a frame on the wall proclaiming JESUS LIVES in white embroidered Gothic letters.

  Everyone was glad Arvid had stopped wetting the bed. More so as the whole family used to sleep in the double bed with the carved headboard, for Grandfather was a cabinetmaker, and it wasn’t funny to wake up in the morning and pretend you were still asleep and hear his father hiss in a low voice: ‘Goddamn it, will this never end!’ and then to feel his mother stroking his hair, because she always knew when he wasn’t sleeping, and hear her say: ‘Come on, Frank, you know he can’t help it. He’ll soon grow out of it. Besides, he has troubles of his own. You should think about that!’

  Arvid wondered about him having troubles of his own, but he didn’t know what she meant, and in the end he forgot to think about it.

  DON’T YOU TOUCH ME

  HE WOKE UP next morning and crawled down to the foot of the bed. From there he had to jump over Gry, who was sleeping on a mattress on the floor. This year she was too big to lie in the middle with Arvid, she said, and she was right, she would soon be fourteen, would be starting realskole in the autumn, and she had very long legs.

  He braced himself, jumped and flew into the living room, tripped over the high threshold and landed spreadeagled on one of Grandmother’s home-made rugs.

  ‘Hell!’ he shouted as his elbow hit the floor and he looked up and there was Grandfather with a smirk under his moustache.

  ‘Are you coming?’ he said, and Arvid nodded, because that was exactly what he wanted.

  They walked quietly down the stairs and into the shop. The sun angled through the windows and made everything in the room shockingly white. Arvid blinked and leaned over the edge of the cooler chest and began to take out bottles. They were in water up to their necks. His stomach contracted and froze, he shivered, and then he heard Grandmother crying behind the closed Aquarium door. He glanced at Grandfather, but Grandfather just shr
ugged in irritation and went out through the door carrying a box of shiny milk bottles.

  It was Arvid who delivered milk to the customers who lived higher than the ground floor. He ran up the stairs with a bottle under each arm, they were cold in his armpits, but it was fine because almost no houses in this town had more than four storeys, and the people who lived in them had names like Straarup and Olesen and Kærstrand and Maltesen, but never Pettersen.

  The round took him just half an hour. There weren’t that many customers now as the new supermarket was finished down at the harbour, and the round ended at Gammeltorv. Another shop’s territory started there and you had to respect boundaries, Grandfather said, although he stared longingly up at the hospital, which stood opposite and got through an ocean of milk every day.

  Grandfather took a small shiny box out of his pocket and removed something round and black, from which he cut a chunk with his penknife.

  ‘Want to try, Arvid?’ he said, holding out the black roll to Arvid after helping himself.

  ‘I’m only twelve, just about,’ Arvid said, ‘I’m not allowed to.’

  ‘But it’s just like liquorice,’ Grandfather said, and it did look like liquorice, so he said yes, and Grandfather cut him off a bit and put it in his mouth.

  At first it tasted vile, like horse muck, he thought, although he didn’t know what horse muck tasted like, and then it began to burn and sting his tongue, he could feel the heat rising in his face, he couldn’t breathe and he spat the clump out, but it ran in a thick stream down his chest, over the Hawaiian shirt he had been given by Aunt Kari, who said he looked like Elvis when he combed his wet hair and put it on.

  Grandfather stared at him and burst into laughter, he laughed so much he had to lean on the delivery bike, he stared at the sky, and then he closed his eyes, removed his glasses and wiped his face, he had laughed so much. Arvid had never heard laughter like it, it was funny and infectious, and he wished they could share what had made his grandfather laugh. That he too could lean against his bike and laugh and look up at the sky and wipe his face and tell his mother and father about it afterwards, so that they too could laugh, as they usually did when something was really funny. But this wasn’t funny, he ran the back of his hand across his mouth and it went a brownish-black and sticky and he felt like crying. But he didn’t want to cry in front of his grandfather, so he said: ‘Damn, damn, damn,’ as loud as he dared.