Free I Refuse by Per Petterson Page B

edge, and it worked and the rhythm was perfect if you didn’t sing too fast, and Tommy said:
    ‘No, no, we can’t sing a national anthem, it’s embarrassing, what if someone heard us.’
    ‘No one will hear us,’ Jim said. ‘We’ll be singing inside the trench,’ and they did. Down in the trench they sang ‘Norway in red, white and blue’ in very low voices, but still loud enough, and eventually it did help them with the rhythm, as soon as they had lost their embarrassment.
    And then they were exhausted. They couldn’t lift another spadeful, they couldn’t lift a pickaxe. Their knees trembled so much it was hard to stand upright without leaning against something. They clambered out of the trench and sat on the edge with their legs dangling, inspecting the work they had done. Their breath came in quick, stuttering bursts, and all around them it was light, but no one was outside on the doorstep yet, no one had heard them singing. The light was on in Sletten’s kitchen. Jim picked up his pouch and rolled a cigarette. His hands shook, but for some reason this time he could do it, and he lit up and inhaled the smoke as deep as he could and then exhaled and smiled. They looked at each other, and Tommy said:
    ‘If I were a smoker, I would have smoked right now. You seem so damn pleased.’
    Jim laughed.
    ‘So, how far did we get,’ he said.
    ‘Let’s see now.’ Tommy got up stiffly. ‘Oh, shit, am I stiff, or what,’ he said, almost struggling to the place where the telephone company men had stopped working the day before, where Jim and Tommy had taken over, and he paced the distance between that point and the point where the two of them had finished digging only minutes before.
    ‘About five metres,’ he said. ‘Not less than that,’ and it may not sound a lot, but it was, and Tommy was proud and said: ‘Not bad. We’re working heroes. We should be given medals.’ And Jim said:
    ‘In the Soviet Union the workers were given medals if they had worked really hard. In the 1930s at least, they got their medals. The best were given prizes. The Stakhanov Prize, it was called. It was a big deal.’
    ‘How do you know that.’
    ‘I know a lot of stuff.’
    ‘That’s true. You do. But we’re against the Soviet Union, aren’t we. After what happened two years ago.’
    ‘Definitely,’ Jim said.
    ‘Well, then we don’t give a shit about those medals,’ Tommy said. ‘We can do without them.’
    Suddenly they heard the drone of a diesel engine down the road. Jim looked at his watch and got up and threw the cigarette butt into the trench and said:
    ‘Tommy, we’re off,’ and Tommy got to his feet and they were out of there before the the truck with the workers came round the bend. They walked in behind Sletten’s house and down along the row of houses at the back, where the living rooms were, and the woodsheds, and a greenhouse was there with every third pane of glass smashed in its frame, and no one was in their living room on this side of the house, at this time of day, now all those who were up were in the kitchen at the front. So the two of them walked with the houses and the kitchen gardens on their left and the dip on the right, and across the field they saw Birkelunden and the pond where Lobo had almost drowned. He was dead now. The vet came out from Mørk to give him an injection. Jesus, he said, we’ll have to let him go, this has gone too far, this, too long, I should have come out before, and he did have a point, for Lobo couldn’t walk any more, he could barely stand upright when he ate. So there was no way round it. But this was several years ago now.
    ‘Do you remember Lobo,’ Jim said.
    ‘Of course I do,’ Tommy said.
    ‘I remember you saved him from drowning in the Bjørkerud Pond. Everyone talked about it afterwards. Your mother was there, wasn’t she. People wondered why she didn’t save him. Why you had to.’
    ‘My mother couldn’t swim.’
    ‘But grown-ups can touch the