In The Wake by Per Petterson Page A

just that apron and nothing else, and as I am thinking this she blushes. She is no mind reader so it must be the look on my face that makes her blush, and I look away, blushing myself,thinking: where on earth did that come from? But now it is there, and it may have something to do with Mrs Grinde, and then I think of her for the first time since I left her flat and how I could
feel
her and I blush again and look down at my hands as I get out my wallet and put the money on the counter. One hundred and twenty-seven kroner, ping. I would have liked to have stayed there to lookat her a bit longer, watch her do things and maybe talk about pottery, but it is impossible now, and the scent of fresh brown bread seeps up from the bag and right into my face and makes my stomach feel really hollow, and I cannot very well go and buy two cups.
    “Come again,” she says as I am on my way out the door, and I turn in surprise and say: “Thanks.”
    But it is not very likely – that Iwill be back, or that she will be here when I do. On my way to the car I glance through the window, and she is still standing there behind the counter not looking at me or at anything at all, just straight ahead.
    There is a slight breeze, but the rain has stopped. I am blinded by the low sun; it looks as if it is steaming, and the fields are steaming and the woods are, behind the shop. The gravelglitters, and when I start up there’s a lump in my throat, but before I’m round the curve I tear off the first bite of bread.

7
    WHILE MY FATHER was alive I knew nothing about the photograph he had in the breast pocket of his suit the day he got married. Not until several years after his death did I hear about it from Solgunn, my aunt, on the telephone. She and Uncle Trond live in Stavanger. That is where she comes from. We have a talk from time to time. Not often, but more often than before, and it is usually one of
them
who calls. I am not so good at that, I never was.
    She said: “One Christmas before you were born your mother came up to me and asked: ‘How would you have liked it if the man you had been married to for two years kept a photograph of another woman in his wallet?’ She used the Danish name for wallet, she was Danish, you know.”
    “I know she was Danish,” I said, “Christ! But what did you say?”
    “I answered: ‘I wouldn’t have liked that.’ ”
    “Was that all?”
    “What was I to say? After all, it was true. I wouldn’t have liked it at all. Luckily, Trond has never done anything like that, you know.”
    I didn’t say what I thought, that how could she know, not everyone is as clumsy as my father and drops pictures out of his wallet.
    “Well,” I said, “that’s great for the two of you.”
    “I don’t knowwhat more I can say,” she said, but of course she did, and we talked for quite a while.
    I think of this as I drive along the gravel road from Lake Lysern and back on to the main road and over Tangen Bridge, and the road makes a bend past a shopping centre with a completely new housing area on the right, big groups of dreary houses slung up over the hillside with a view of a small lake where woodenbathing jetties are stuck in the ice along the shore.
    I have had my fill now, I ate half the loaf and drank milk out of the blue cup, and I did that sitting in the car in the courtyard of my former trade union’s holiday camp where I drove in just after I left the shop. I had not planned to go there, I had not planned anything, but that is where I went. From the car I could see the Lysern stretchingin a narrow neck of water behind the main building, and I saw the suspension bridge crossing to the chalets on the other side. I don’t know how many times I have crossed that bridge. There was ice on the water now, but the last time I was there people stood along the shore with their fishing rods and pails with perch in them, and there were rowing boats on the water and it was summer and laughterall over the place . I was