Free It's Fine By Me by Per Petterson

the first time since the accident. In the dream we are standing on a log by the bank of the river Glomma, fishing with our new spinning rods. We got them for Christmas and haven’t tried them out yet. It’s Easter, perhaps. The silver reels glisten in the sun, and Egil looks the way he did last year. I know he is dead, but it doesn’t matter. It is absolutely still by the river. Straight ahead the water’s swirling and further up are the rapids, and yet we do not hear a sound. It is wonderful. Egil smiles and casts a long line, he is happy, and I smile back at him. I can’t remember ever seeing him so calm, his face so soft and smooth. He’s relaxed because he knows he is no longer alive, and there will be no more trouble. That calms me, too.
    The rods are a joy to cast. The spinner flies out towards the middle of the river. I have never cast so far, it just glides of its own accord. I close my eyes and let the sun warm my skin. Suddenly Egil is shouting, his voice is thin. There is something on his hook, and there is fear in his eyes. The old scowl is back. I run over to help him: his rod is bent to breaking point, and I hold him from behind. But when I touch him his body is not the body of a fifteen-year-old boy. He is plump and warm: how strange, I think, and he is winding the reel like a madman. I grab the rod and windwith him. Then he shrivels and fades away, and winding alone is hard work. Suddenly it’s as if the river is boiling, and I see the bumper of the Volvo Amazon break the surface, and then the bonnet, and the car pitches like a huge fish with its belly in the air and then I see the windscreen and start to cry.
    When I wake up it’s dark, and I am still crying. I feel a little sick, and heavy as I roll over and have look at the alarm clock. In half an hour I have to be up and on my newspaper round. I roll back, I want to sleep longer, but when I close my eyes, the car is back, it’s in my pillow, it’s on the wall, and I can’t escape it.
    I get out of bed and dress and go down to the kitchen. It’s dark down the stairs, and the kitchen is dark and cold, and my body too is cold. My mother is asleep. I leave the light off and go to the stove and lift the lid of the hotplate. We still have it. The plate is set to three, and in the dark the element has a faint glow, you can light your cigarette on it. I turn and lean against the edge and let the heat drift all the way up to my neck. I turn back and give my stomach the same treatment. When we were just kids in the country, Egil always raced to be first down the stairs to the kitchen in the morning. He would pull over a stool and get up on it with his back to the stove and his bum out, and he had such a greedy look on his face. I remember how I didn’t like that face, it made me feel embarrassed, and I never tried to fight him for the stool, even though I too was cold in the morning. Now it’s only me, and I can stand here for as long as I like.
    I fill the kettle and put it on and stand waiting. Outside it’s dark, but I can just make out the low-rises in Linderud.Some windows are lit. It used to be just fields out that way. Arvid flew kites there in the autumn, and horses from the Linderud estate were grazing as far down as Østre Aker vei. Now the Siemens building towers above the road. At the top, close by the large white manor house, is the EPA shopping centre. It looks like shit. There is not a farm worth the name in the valley now. I can’t see the forest from the window, our house is too far down in the dip, but I can sense that it’s there.
    The water is boiling. I take a handful of coffee from the brown tin and drop it in, wait for it to sink, cut two slices of bread and see from the clock above the stove that I have plenty of time. I grab the handle of the kettle and lift it and let the kettle fall a few times to get it going. I try a cup, but it’s not there yet. I fetch milk from the fridge, pour a glass and sit down and eat, and by the