Free In The Wake by Per Petterson

and my head beats against the ground, there is epilepsy in all my muscles, and I let out a howl so horrible and cut up that I stop at once. Down there is the road, behind my head up the hill are the blocks of flats. Who heard me howl? There are wolves in the forest, bar all your doors.
    I struggle to my knees, my body shuddering as if it knew no shame, there is ice inmy spine and it is dark between the trees now the helicopter has gone, and the hill rises vertically before me. Then I get to my feet and start to climb. I do not know how long it takes me. But anyway it does not matter, for time is the same in both directions, and all is the same on my way up the hill, I could go on like this for ever. I take up lot of space and lose the path and bump into treesand stumble over stones, and I imagine someone standing there, looking at all this and laughing, for I am good entertainment. I would have liked to have seen me myself and I laugh too, between my chattering teeth. Ho, ho, ho, I laugh, ho, ho, ho, and suddenly I am standing close to the nearest block. Where did that come from? But it is not my one. They look alike, but it isn’t mine. I have togo round this one and on past two more blocks, and then I am home. I can do that. I move on again, and finally get round the last corner. There is light in one window in the block up to the right. That is my window, and I stop and lean on my knees and I puff and I shake and I stare up at the window thinking: that is where I live. And I consider what I think of that, and then it all turns empty. Inthe block to the left there is light in a window right opposite mine, and Mrs Grinde is probably standing there looking across at me. But I am not home, I’m standing right here. And I shall stand here as long as I have the strength.
    A lamp is alight above the door to my entrance. I take the last steps over there and suddenly it seems a nice light to me, a wonderful light, and with frozen fingersI fumble in my trouser pockets, searching for my keys, and then they are not there. But I always keep my keys in my right-hand pocket. I have travelled all over the country and in England and the USA and always kept my keys in the same pocket, for no matter how ingenious a place I find I always manage to forget where it is. But they are not in my trouser pockets, nor my jacket pockets, there areno keys in any pocket. I lean against the door. I am freezing. I look at my watch. It says half past three. I look at the doorbells and name plates by each bell push. His name has been written with a ball-pen on a scrap of cardboard. Naim Hajo. One favour is worth another, is what I think, about to press the bell push. But then I remember the brass bowl. We are quits, he does not owe me anything.Besides, he has children, it would wake the whole family. I can’t do that, and I realise that even if I freeze until I can no longer think I shall not ring that bell. So I go to the only place that comes to mind.
    The door to her block’s entrance is not locked, and the stairwell is painted the same as mine is, a cheerful blue in two shades in accordance with strict rules, with stencils of flowerson every third step to make it cosy, and it is so cosy that goose pimples spread on my skin as the cold strikes out from the walls, and it should have been spring now, but it is all a mess. I walk upstairs to the second floor of this stairwell that looks like mine but is not mine at all, and I push the bell where it says G. GRINDE on a small green plate above the bell, and I figure she must becalled Gudrun Grinde, like an auntie on children’s television, or Grete, or Guri, or Gunilla Grinde, maybe she’s actually Swedish.
    There is a long silence. I know she is there, but she does not come to the door. My legs are shaking, I can’t stand up much longer, so I sit down on the lowest step of the stairs going up to the top floor facing G. Grinde’s door and listen. Finally, I hear footstepson linoleum, the door handle