Free In The Wake by Per Petterson Page A

turns and the door slowly opens. Out sticks a mop of brown hair and a frightened face I have only seen in the shop and sometimes behind her window, but then she’s had her glasses on. Her eyes are nothing like as severe as I remember them. She ought perhaps to change glasses or get herself some contact lenses. I can see the collar of a dressing gown, dark blue withred stripes, it is quite shabby, and I can see the skin of her neck in soft shadow. She stares at me blankly. Through the crack in the door I can glimpse the room that looks out on to the grounds and on to my block. There is a bed in there. It is not the kitchen. I do not know why I thought it was the kitchen. There is a light on by the window, and a coat-stand at the end of the bed. There are nobinoculars that I can see.
    “Did I wake you?” I say. And I suddenly realise I have done just that, but she makes no reply. She does not understand anything.
    “I hope you were awake,” I say, “I saw the light was on. It was the only light in the whole block, so I came here. I didn’t know where else to go,” I say, and as I speak I try to get up from where I am sitting without shaking. It’s not sodamned easy, and she swallows quite visibly, and then she says in a surprisingly deep voice: “I always sleep with the light on.”
    “Oh,” I say, and her eyes slowly focus. Now she is really staring at me, she recognises me, and I am on my feet now, I am standing straight, if not steadfast. But my teeth are chattering.
    “Hell, you’ll have to forgive me,” I say. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I sawthe light was on, and I just came up here. That’s all. I’m sorry to have woken you up. I’ll go away now.” And I start to walk, but I can’t stop shaking, and there is a clattering in my mouth, that step I sat on was far from warm, and I must look pretty weird.
    “Are you ill?” she asks.
    “I don’t know. I’m freezing, I can tell you that. I’m as cold as hell,” I say, and laugh, “ho, ho, ho.”
    Sheis awake now, and my laughter confuses her. She bites her lip.
    “So why are you so terribly cold?”
    “I fell asleep down on the hillside. Luckily something woke me up.”
    “An angel, maybe,” she says, and suddenly smiles such a sweet smile that I could have fallen to my knees and kissed her dressing gown, but that would have been way too much for me in the state that I am in, and certainly for her.She is younger than I had imagined, or rather, certainly younger than
me
, which is not saying much at present, for everyone I see these days who is definitely a grown-up is younger than I am, and it doesn’t help no matter how long I look at myself in the mirror. I see the same person I have always seen, whereas everyone else keeps changing, and I have a shock each time I realise that this is nothow it is.
    There is a vein in her neck that pulses almost unnoticeably . She doesn’t know that herself, but
I
can see it and that is where I keep my eyes fixed.
    “It was a helicopter,” I say.
    “A modern angel then,” she says and laughs softly in her deep voice, and then I know I don’t want to leave.
    “Maybe it was,” I say. I shiver and hang in there, she might laugh once more, she might ask mein, anything might happen on a night like this when no-one else is awake except perhaps a nurse who at certain intervals walks down a corridor to check a curve on a screen. I wish she would ask me in. I cannot just stand here indefinitely.
    She bites her lip again and says: “Maybe you had better come in for a while. You don’t look too well.” She opens the door wider and steps aside. I can seeinto the hall and straight into the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. If that is me in the mirror by God I don’t look well, my face white and unfamiliar, my hair sticking out in all directions and there are big stains on my jacket and the knees of my trousers. How does she dare, I wonder.
    She keeps it nice and warm in her place. I feel it on my face