To Siberia Quotes

“What I liked was the train ride. It took an hour and that was enough for me to be able to lean backwards against the seat with closed eyes, feel the joints in the rails come up and thump through my body and sometimes peer out of the windows and see windswept heathland and imagine I was on the Trans-Siberian Railway. I had read about it, seen pictures in a book and decided that no matter when and how life would turn out, one day I would travel from Moscow to Vladivostok on that train, and I practised saying the names: Omsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, they were difficult to pronounce with all their hard consonants, but ever since the trip to Skagen, every journey I made by train was a potential departure on my own great journey.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia

“But I enjoyed the feeling of wind in my hair, and I knew my father liked to see it blow straight out when we stood on the quay and watched the boats come in. And after all it was my only pride.

The train waited behind us, puffing and hissing through its valves, and even though it was only an hour's journey to Skagen, I had never been there.

'Can't we go to Skagen one day?' I asked. Being with Jesper and his friends had made me realize the world was far bigger than the town I lived in, and the fields around it, and I wanted to go travelling and see it.

'There's nothing but sand at Skagen,' my father said, 'you don't want to go there my lass." And because it was Sunday and he seldom said my lass, he took a cigar from his waistcoat pocket with a pleased expression, lit it, and blew out smoke into the wind. The smoke flew back in our faces and scorched them, but I pretended not to notice and so did he.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia

“Soon only the street lamps rose clear and shone down on a mass that devoured everything, people and houses, we could not see more than three meters in front of us. The lights around us were hard to make out and Jesper stayed where he was; stretching out his arms like a blind man he said:

'This is what it must have been like when the Man from Danzig was shipwrecked. He must have been frightened. He thought he knew where everything was, and then it was all sheer chaos. Put your hand in front of your eyes, Sistermine, and spin around three times, then tell me which is the way home.'

I did as he said, I spun around so I almost fell down, I opened my eyes and peered in all directions.

'I don't know.'

'Then anything can happen.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia

“I went up above the quay past the steps to the hotel. I saw a man through the window with a beer in his hand, and another man with a basket full of eggs. I was feeling heavy now, and tired, and I stood there leaning backwards with my hands crossed behind my back at the end of the breakwater before I walked on to the beach on the other side and some way along on the hard-frozen white sand. It had started to blow a bit, and it was still cold with no snow, so I took off my scarf and tied it round my head and ears and sat down in the shelter of a dune and blew into my hands to warm them before I lit a cigarette. Poker ran along the edge of the water with a seagull’s wing in his mouth, and I was so young then, and I remember thinking: I’m twenty-three years old, there is nothing left in life. Only the rest.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia

“I have putt the change in the till, I have cleaned and made room for new bottles in the cooling sink, for butter and cheese in the icebox. Now I am standing in the shop waiting by the open door without switching the light on. I like this early half-light, the mild air from the sea, standing inside looking out without being seen, and there are almost no sounds from the street, and I can think and remember who I am before anything new comes along. Everything happens so fast it's easy to forget, everything is exploding and burning. But now it is quiet.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia

“Sometimes when I think of Jesper all I can see is his dark back on the way across the white sea to Hirsholmene. It gets smaller and smaller and I stand at the edge of the ice feeling empty. Why didn't he ask me to go with him? I have a will of my own but if he had asked, I wouldn't have hesitated. I always went with him. After all, I had to look after him and he had to look after me, and my father would be furious with us both. Staying there alone was meaningless.

Sometimes I imagine he tells me everything, but I know that's not true. He never told me if he went all the way to Hirsholmene. I don't tell him everything either, but I feel he knows what I am thinking, and I know what HE thinks. I have taught myself to do that.

And yet all the same I am not sure.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia

“We ran back, he first and I following him, between the beds and downstairs, and we picked up an armful of wood from the pile by the wall and the knife for whittling and ran up again, we couldn’t be quick enough. He knelt down in front of the stove, and it wasn’t long before he had done the trick again. Outside the window it was night now, and the wind blew vaporous white milk against the panes, milk over the forest and the fjord, but in here there were just the two of us and the stoves and the sound of wood burning behind the black iron and sending waves of heat out into the rooms and into the walls and timbers that sucked it in. I smelt the scent of wood growing warm, and it made me as white in my head as the whirling night outside, and hungry. We stood in the kitchen with our coats on eating the contents of two tins with one spoon we took it in turns to use, and we laughed, I didn’t even notice what I was eating. Soon it was warm enough for us to take off some clothes, his overcoat and my coat, and while he hung his on a hook, I let mine fall to the floor. I took off the sweater I wore underneath and dropped that on the floor too, I unbuttoned my blouse and still felt the cold against my neck. But the heat rose to the ceiling and up to the first floor and there was another stove there. Then I calmly walked across the room and upstairs with his eyes on my back, and at first he stood still, and then he followed, and when he got to the top my blouse was off and my stockings on the floor. I slowly turned round and stood there, me inside my skin, while he was fully clothed, and I cleared my head of every thought I had ever had and let them sink out into my skin till it was painfully taut and shinning all over my body, and he saw it and did not know what it was he saw. I put my arms round my back and unfastened my bra and slid the straps over my shoulders, and I thought he might be going to weep, but his voice sounded hoarse as he whispered:

“You’re lovely,” and I answered “Yes”, and didn’t know if that was true. But it did not matter, for I knew what I wanted and what to say, and his hands were as I’d thought they would be, his skins as soft and his body as hard, and it was so warm around us, and the whole time I smelt the dampness of the bedclothes like the ones at Vrangbæk, and then I just shut my eyes and floated away.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia

“Hvis Lone kom fra et hjem med klaver og jeg fra et hjem med kinopiano, er Marianne fra et hjem med munnharpe.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia

“Over the sea in the east the weather that has passed lies in a dark line at the far end of the world and it is warm now and a big sky rises like a film of blue over the whole of Denmark and behind it no one knows what there is. Sometimes at night I lie gazing out of the window and up at the sky and force my thoughts through the firmament to see what they meet on the other side, but in spite of what I learn at school, everything dissolves into small pieces and I have to go to sleep or my head starts to ache.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia

“Later on I heard that one of the pigs had committed suicide on the quay. It escaped after they had hoisted it from the boat and ran straight for the edge and jumped into the water and there it was crushed between the boat and the wharf until it drowned. It did not even scream.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia

“The paper was folded twice without a speck on it and bore a note in his handwriting: I cannot go on any longer. I was sure that was something we understood, both Jesper and I, that he could not go on any longer, but what it was he could not go on with we had no idea, because he was as strong as an ox and could work harder and longer than anyone else I have ever known.”
― Per Petterson, To Siberia