It's Fine By Me Read Free Page B

stand firm.
    I walk up the flagstone path and round the back of Arvid’shouse. There are four subscribers here. His father is not among them, but as I pass I stop at the kitchen window and peer in. It’s dark inside, so he is not home from the night shift yet. I turn at the end of the house and on to the road again, and look up at Arvid’s window on the first floor, pick up a pebble and throw it against the pane. I hear it hit the glass and Arvid is there at once. I don’t know anyone who’s such a light sleeper, and he is often tired at school. He sticks out his dark head, I roll up a newspaper tight and skim it at an angle like a boomerang, and it makes a perfect arc, and Arvid snatches it out of the air before it hits the window frame. We have done this before.
    ‘Latest news from Vietnam,’ I say.
    ‘I guess they’re bombing Hanoi again.’ He yawns and runs his hand through his hair which is curly and very thick.
    ‘You bet,’ I say. Arvid is in the National Liberation Front group at school. He can go on for hours about it. I am a passive member, I have too many other things on my mind.
    ‘I’ll read it later,’ he says, ‘I have stuff to do. I’ve got to go.’
    ‘What sort of stuff?’
    ‘You’ll see it when you see it.’
    ‘See you at school,’ I say and he salutes me with a clenched fist behind the window. I walk towards the barrow and then turn on my heel, but he is gone and I grab the handle and trudge round the bend back towards Grevlingveien.
    Morning is coming, but there is not much light yet, it’s October, after all, and the early risers are coming down the road towards the Metro. I say hello and one of them looks at my hair and another one at my trousers and is annoyedbecause I am late, but I splay my hands and say it’s not my fault, and then a few papers tumble to the ground. The man looks up, rolls his eyes, and I mutter a silent curse.
    Old Abrahamsen comes out on to the step and angrily slams the door behind him. Every day he does this and has done so for as long as I can remember. He works at the harbour and is carrying his rucksack. He used to live in Vika, not far from where he worked, straight out of the door, past Oslo West station and there he was, but they demolished Vika and now he has to travel into town every morning, and even though it’s fifteen years since he had to move, he is still fuming. The Metro is too newfangled, so he walks up Trondhjemsveien and takes the number 30 bus as he has been doing for almost two decades.
    ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Just in time for the paper – read it on the bus,’ and he smiles and says:
    ‘Well, you know, Aftenposten is really not my thing, but you have to keep up to date.’
    I know, he is a socialist, but he is so stingy he has literally weighed the Aftenposten and the left-wing Arbeiderbladet and found that with Aftenposten he gets more kilos for his money. He puts the paper under his arm and all of a sudden is a much happier man and is off down the road, the rucksack bumping on his back.
    I am seriously late now and pick up the pace and stop greeting people. The road narrows, the last houses are at the edge of Dumpa, where Condom Creek flows through, and on the other side, the ground rises in a steep arch up to the women’s prison at the top. Heavy and sombre, it faces Groruddalen valley and the ribbon of morning light that’sstealing in over Furuset, and only a solitary lamp burns in the prison courtyard. It seems cold, the light, and I go cold myself, for the mere thought of so many women locked in behind those thick walls is painful, and I wonder what they recall when they wake up in the morning, what they speak about over dinner, what they think about when they go to bed at night. I picture people in chains, and know it’s not like that, but what do they see when they look out the windows?
    Fru Karlsen is standing on the steps as I come round the corner to the very last house. She is smiling and I know she has been waiting