To Siberia by Per Petterson Page B

showing with a rubber band around my ponytail at the back, but it has never felt like it does now.
    “Up with your mouth and tighten your lips,” she says. She’s slightly taller than I am, she has green eyes and high cheekbones and small ears close to her head. I put my head back a little, afraid she will think I’m surrendering to her, open my mouth a little and tighten my lips against my teeth. I do not know why I let her go on, I’ve never seen her before, an unknown face is close to mine and I close my eyes as if she’s going to kiss me and I would like her to. Some women are like that, I am not, but when something touches my lips I start to tremble. I open my eyes and she smiles and says:
    “Stand quite still now,” while she carefully draws the red lipstick across my mouth,—“there.” I close my eyes again and do not tremble any longer. She is welcome to go on.
    “Rub your lips against each other, then you can look in the mirror.” I do as she says; with a strange soft feeling, wanting to keep my mouth slightly open. I turn around and look in the mirror. I look grown up and a little wistful, like someone with a secret, hidden years that cannot be talked about, fantastic events maybe, someone who has traveled far and seen things no one but she understands. I smile at the reflection and draw a breath. I think, my mother has never used lipstick.
    She is behind me in the mirror, she lifts my hair, lets her fingers slide through it and our eyes meet in the glass. Someone ought to clean that mirror, I think, but even so she sees who I am, and it does not matter.
    “Jesper was quite right,” she says, “it didn’t take much.”
    “Do you know Jesper?”
    “I certainly do.” She lets her eyes slide over me and smiles with the red mouth that is like mine now.
    “You’ve got a good body, you’re fine here,” she says and takes hold of both her breasts with hands that have red nails, laughs aloud and pushes them up in a way I would never have done, and then I blush.
    “That’s right, now you’ve got a bit of color in your cheeks. That’s how it should be.”
    “I had to!” says Jesper, “we wouldn’t have been served otherwise. You looked like a scared twelve-year-old. You don’t look like that now,” he grins. “You look just smashing.” I blush again and straighten my back, and we walk together in among the tables, people turn in their chairs and watch us on our way to the long wall where Uncle Nils sits. He waves to us.
    “At least she didn’t have net stockings.”
    “Net stockings? Jytte? What are you on about? Why the hell should Jytte wear net stockings?”
    Uncle Nils is moving into town. He has found work at the shipyard and a little attic flat on Søndergate. He pours beer from the bottle into his glass, raises the glass, and says:
    “Here’s to a new life. Raise your glasses!” Jesper and I do that and we drink together. I’m so thirsty I could drink anything. All the moisture has left my body, it vanished with the fog out in the streets and the beer is bitter and cold and refreshing.
    “Ah, it’ll be good to get away from that old witch, if you’ll pardon the expression. I’m never going out to Vrangbæk again, not even for Christmas. I’m never going to pick up a pitchfork again, never sit behind a horse as long as I live. I’m going to buy a scooter as soon as I’ve got enough money, and until then I’ll walk. Everywhere! A free proletarian who won’t take shit from anyone! Ho, ho.” He downs the rest of his beer in one gulp and Jesper follows suit and they slam down their glasses on the table and say in chorus:
    “Well, that didn’t hurt, did it?” And my beer doesn’t hurt either, even though I drink slower and don’t slam down my glass. I catch myself sitting smiling at the woman called Jytte a few tables away, she winks at me and I smile more broadly and it does not matter that Uncle Nils calls my grandmother a witch. If I had known it was all right I