In The Wake by Per Petterson Page B

going to be divorced, and I knew it. I had been waiting there a week for the woman I had seen behind me in the mirror almost every morning for fifteen years, and now I was trying to forget what she looked like. It was so hot I felt paralysed, the sun was baking, and all I wanted to do was to sit on a chair with a strong drink, but I could not do that, I had my daughterswith me and had to fill the days with all kinds of things that belonged to summer so the girls would think it was a perfectly ordinary holiday. My brother had been there with his son and we had talked and talked until there was nothing more to say, until what we said grew into something that made us embarrassed, and then he had left and I was alone not knowing what to do with my days other thanfill them. But on the last evening before she arrived, when the girls were in bed and I knew they were asleep, I put on the new boots I had bought because I was certain it would rain the whole week. I walked across the grass where dew had fallen and over the bridge with a wire fence along the sides which had been almost flattened by youngsters who loved to dive and jump from the edge and severalmetres down into the water, and on up the path I went, to the nearest chalet on the other side. The man who was staying there with his family had invited me for a drink several times, but I had refused, I could not drink, and the only thing we had in common was that we had once been members of the same union.
    I knocked, someone shouted, and the boy who opened the door was in his pyjamas. He lookedscared. I thought it was the sight of my face, I had not shaved or looked in a mirror for over a week and had no idea what I looked like, but over the boy’s shoulder I saw his father sitting in the only easy chair the place boasted, with a glass in his hand. He called out:
    “Talk of the devil, come in, come in,” and it was all so stupid, I didn’t even like him, and he shouted again: “Another glass,pronto.”
    His wife came from the kitchen and put a glass in my hand, and I went up to the chair, and he filled it to the brim with vodka. I can’t take gin or vodka, but it was too late to refuse, I didn’t know
what
to say, so I half emptied the glass in one big gulp, and it burned my throat and spread through my stomach like glowing lava, and I could not help coughing.
    “Christ, you’re not thatyoung, you should be able to take a dram,” he said, and I replied:
    “Forty,” when the coughing fit subsided.
    “Hell, you’re older than me, then. Look here,” he said and filled my glass again, “try once more, and let’s have a toast,” and I took another swallow, and this time my stomach was prepared. But it tasted nauseous, like drinking aftershave.
    “Well, sit yourself down, then,” he said, butI stayed on my feet, and then he said: “Well, yes, we’ve seen you going to and fro, you and your chum, and we talked about it and thought for a while maybe you were gays, but then the wife said gays don’t have kids, so there you are. I’m only joking, you know, so don’t get mad.”
    “Well, we’re not gay,” I said, looking at his wife who was standing in the kitchen doorway, she did not want to sitdown either, although there was plenty of room on the sofa and several stools. “It was my brother.”
    “Well, there you go. And then I had a word with one of your girls, and she said your wife is coming tomorrow, and we got the idea of the whole gang of you coming along Friday evening, and then we could have a real party, two regular families on holiday, right?”
    “Ye-es, well, I don’t know,” I said,still standing in the middle of the floor, and he sat in the easy chair, and I knew I would never sit down in that chalet.
    “I think I’d better get going again,” I said, “the kids are alone.”
    “Shit, you can’t just go off at once like that, for Christ’s sake,” he said, and I saw his eyes turn black and frightened like two mirrors, and he grabbed my