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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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Out Stealing
Horses by Per Petterson |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Remembering In Per Petterson’s latest novel, Out
Stealing Horses, 70-year-old protagonist Trond
Sander has retired to a small cabin in We were going out stealing
horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was
spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the
first days of July. Three years earlier the Germans had left, but I can’t
remember that we talked about them any longer. At least my father did not. He
never said anything about the war. Jon came often to our door,
at all hours, wanting me to go out with him: shooting hares, walking through
the forest in the pale moonlight right up to the top of the ridge when it was
perfectly quiet, fishing for trout in the river, balancing on the shining
yellow logs that still sailed the current close to our cabin long after the
clearing of the river was done. It was risky, but I never said no and never
said anything to my father about what we were up to. We could see a stretch
of the river from the kitchen window, but it was not there that we did our
balancing acts. We always started further down, nearly a kilometre,
and sometimes we went so far and so fast on the logs that it took us an hour
to walk back through the forest when at last we had scrambled onto the bank,
soaking wet and shivering. Jon wanted no company but
mine. He had two younger brothers, the twins Lars and Odd, but he and I were
the same age. I do not know who he was with for the rest of the year, when I
was in He never knocked, just came
quietly up the path from the river where his little boat was tied up, and
waited at the door until I became aware that he was there. It never took
long. Even in the morning early when I was still asleep, I might feel a
restlessness far into my dream, as if I needed to pee and struggled to wake
up before it was too late, and then when I opened my eyes and knew it wasn’t that, I went directly to the door and
opened it, and there he was. He smiled his little smile and squinted as he
always did. ‘Are you coming?’ he said.
‘We’re going out stealing horses.’ It turned out that we meant only him and me as usual, and
if I had not gone with him he would have gone alone, and that would have been
no fun. Besides, it was hard to steal horses alone. Impossible, in fact. ‘Have you been waiting
long?’ I said. ‘I just got here.’ That’s what he always said,
and I never knew if it was true. I stood on the doorstep in only my underpants
and looked over his shoulder. It was already light. There were wisps of mist
on the river, and it was a little cold. It would soon warm up, but now I felt
goose pimples spread over my thighs and stomach. Yet I stood there looking
down to the river, watching it coming from round the bend a little further
up, shining and soft from under the mist, and flow past. I knew it by heart.
I had dreamt about it all winter. ‘Which horses?’ I said. ‘Barkald’s
horses. He keeps them in the paddock in the forest, behind the farm.’ ‘I know. Come inside while
I get dressed.’ ‘I’ll wait here,’ he said. He never would come inside,
maybe because of my father. He never spoke to my father. Never said hello to
him. Just looked down when they passed each other on the way to the shop.
Then my father would stop and turn round to look at him and say: ‘Wasn’t that Jon?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
said my father every time, as if embarrassed, and each time I said: ‘I don’t know.’ And in fact I did not, and
I never thought to ask. Now Jon stood on the doorstep that was only a flagstone,
gazing down at the river while I fetched my clothes from the back of one of
the tree-trunk chairs, and pulled them on as quickly as I could. I did not
like him having to stand there waiting, even though the door was open so he
could see me the whole time. Clearly I ought to have
understood there was something special about that July morning, something to
do with the fog on the river and the mist over the ridge perhaps, something
about the white light in the sky, something in the way Jon said what he had
to say or the way he moved or stood there stock still at the door. But I was
only fifteen, and the only thing I noticed was that he did not carry the gun
he always had with him in case a hare should cross our path, and that was not
so strange, it would only have been in the way rustling horses. We weren’t
going to shoot the horses, after all. As far as I could see, he was the same
as he always was: calm and intense at one and the same time with his eyes
squinting, concentrating on what we were going to do, with no sign of impatience.
That suited me well, for it was no secret that compared with him I was a
slowcoach in most of our exploits. He had years of training behind him. The
only thing I was good at was riding logs down the river,
I had a built-in balance, a natural talent, Jon thought, though that was not
how he would have put it. What he had taught me was
to be reckless, taught me that if I let myself go, did not slow myself down
by thinking so much beforehand I could achieve many things I would never have
dreamt possible. ‘OK. Ready, steady, go,’ I
said. We set off together down the
path to the river. It was very early. The sun came
gliding over the ridge with its fan of light and gave to everything a
brand-new colour, and what was left of the fog
above the water melted and disappeared. I felt the instant warmth through my
sweater and closed my eyes and walked on without once missing my footing
until I knew we had got to the bank. Then I opened my eyes and clambered down
the stream-washed boulders and into the stern of the little boat. Jon pushed
off and jumped in, picked up the oars and rowed with short, hard strokes
straight into the stream, let the boat drift a stretch and rowed again until
we reached the opposite shore about fifty metres
further down. Far enough for the boat not to be seen from the cottage. Then we climbed up the
slope, Jon first with me at his heels, and walked along the barbed wire fence
by the meadow where the grass stood tall under a light veil of mist, and
would soon be mowed and hung on racks to dry in the sun. It was like walking
up to your hips in water, with no resistance, as in a dream. I often dreamt
about water then, I was friends with water. It was Barkald’s
field, and we had come this way many times, up between the fields to the road
that led to the shop, to buy magazines or sweets or other things we had the
money for; one ore, two ore and sometimes five ore coins jingling in our
pockets every step we took, or we went to Jon’s house in the other direction
where his mother greeted us so enthusiastically when we walked in you would
have thought I was the Crown Prince or something, and his father dived into
the local paper or vanished out to the barn on some errand that just could
not wait. There was something there I did not understand. But it did not
worry me. He could stay in the barn as far as I was concerned. I didn’t give
a damn. Whatever happened, I was going home at summer’s end. I wondered as
I read this English translation about how powerful the language must be in
Norwegian. Even as translated, the images are powerful, and the strong and
skilled writing are evident. Out
Stealing Horses is a finely written novel that most readers will enjoy. Steve Hopkins,
July 25, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the August 2007
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Out
Stealing Horses.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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