by Tore Renberg
Rudi´s brown eyes warm up and soften as he drives into his old stomping ground. He feels likes a fag, but if you’ve quit, then it’s all about standing firm. Stay clean, Lemmy. Metal, Motörhead and the old haunts forever.
This landscape, Granny.
You couldn’t describe it.
It’s true what they say at travel agents, you’ve got to experience it, you’ve got to see it with your own two eyes.
Rudi speeds up. He feels his head fizz and shuts his eyes for a few seconds, takes a deep breath, opens them again and goes for it: ‘Hey Chessi. You there?’ He tries to infuse his voice with as much lightness as possible. ‘Eh? You looking? Nicest place on earth, eh?’
‘Fucking shithole,’ says the voice from the back seat.
Rudi sighs. It’s the end of September. You’re at work. You’re on the road in the Volvo. After weeks of rain, along come a few days of glorious weather, as though a bonus summer had dropped by. You live in the richest country in the world. There’s food on the table, and money in the bank, maybe not piles of it, maybe a little less than Jani would like, but enough, and Granny is floating round your head like a crochet angel and life is actually pretty bloody good, and you decide to say something pleasant after a bad morning. Pleasant. Not asking much, is it? And that’s what you get. It’s enough to reduce your whole happy house to rubble.
‘Christ, you are a right bitch,’ says Rudi, pounding on the steering wheel with his fist.
‘Yeah, and when were you planning on treating me any different!’
He sees her shouting, smoke billowing from her mouth.
‘Well? What if I want a normal life, and not this bollocks, eh? Fuck’s sake, Rudi, you’re not a man, you’re a dishcloth.’
‘A dishcloth?!’ Rudi tries to keep his cool so he doesn’t explode. ‘A dishcloth? Whatthe … fu … a … fu … dish … what do you say that for?’
He glances in the rear-view mirror. Now she’s crying as well. Brilliant. Dishcloth? The tears run down one pallid cheek, trickle along her narrow nose, taking the make-up with them, it’s drama time again. Dramadramadrama. Weird how she only ever cries from one eye. Dishcloth? It’s exhausting, that’s what it is. They’ve been together for twenty-seven years now. They know one another. They’re like one person! It’s like Jani says: she’s so dramatic she should start a theatre.
It’s not your fault, Rudi. It’s congenital. She inherited it from Mum.
‘I don’t know,’ Cecilie says in a low voice. And sniffles. ‘I just made it up. Dishcloth.’ She looks up, meets his gaze for the first time in a long while. ‘I do love you though, Snatchpuss.’
The Volvo trundles by the Iron Age Farm. Cecilie sits pale and freckly with her big hair and shelf hips, and the make-up running down her left cheek spreads out like a river delta from her wet lashes. Her thin, slightly crooked lips, her Easter-yellow teeth and her small mussel ears.
Rudi feels his throat tighten, his stomach swell.
Shit, how he loves that girl.
And shit, how he loves this landscape.
Here’s to you, Granny. They were good, those Swiss rolls.
He feels a draught on his neck and rolls up the window. He turns on the radio. Pop music. He’s about to switch it off, he knows how anti-pop they are, but he can’t. He’s heard this song before. Violins. Du-du-du du-du-du du-du-du. Something about a king who used to rule the world. Coldplay? He pretends not to notice the song and hopes Chessi won’t notice him listening to it.
Rudi leans forward in the seat, juts out his chin and squints. Now let’s see, he thinks, and reduces speed. Down the hill towards the forest. That was what he said. Down towards the shop there. Yeah. Park someplace behind there.
Weird set-up, this. Feels a tiny bit risky.
Keep your wits about you, Jani said. I’m not sure about this.
Rudi turns his head and looks at her.
‘Hey, Chessi, come on, we’ll knock this on the head. What was it we were arguing about, what was it that stirred up this lousy atmosphere, eh?’
‘Don’t remember,’ says the low voice from the back seat.
‘There you have it. It’s gone. Vanished! Hey, baby, it’s you and me and your ass! You know I’ll kill anyone who comes near you. You know you can count on it, count on Rudi whipping out his monster cock and flogging them to death? If anyone other than Rudi screws you, yeah, so much as fucking looks at you, then I’ll break every bone in their body? Oh yeah. Rudi’s a real man! Like Granny used to say: I can trust you, Rudi.’
‘Oh Jesus…’ comes the voice from the back seat. ‘Here we go again…’
‘Eh?’ says Rudi and acts as if he didn’t hear what she said.
‘Nothing.’
He glances in the mirror. The tears have dried. She sticks the small, pink tip of her tongue out between her thin lips and moistens them.
‘Exactly,’ he says, fired up at the sight of her, and takes a deep breath: ‘Nothing and kein Problem, Mädchen. Now we’re going to go to work, and there’s no telling what we might run into in this forest, but Pål is this guy’s name and he’s got ein problem.’ Rudi frowns suddenly, as if he’s just thought of something. ‘Pål, you don’t know anyone called Pål, do you?’
‘Pål, eh, no, don’t think so.’
‘What’s going on, Pål shmål,’ laughs Rudi, repressing the thought. ‘There’s only one way out of here: piece by piece! like Slayer say. What’s gonna happen, Pålly Bålly? No one knows, baby! Like Foo Fighters say.’
‘Queens of the Stone Age.’
‘Eh?’
‘Queens of the Stone Age. No One Knows.’
‘Jesus. Are you gonna nitpick about that now? Who’s the dishcloth here?’
Rudi suppresses his irritation and says no more. They draw closer to the woods and the radio is playing Coldplay. It’s pop music. And he hates pop music. But those violins and that melody, they get into your brain, and the lyrics, they force their way through your body, and everything reminds you of that troll sitting in the back seat: He’s got to have it.
Because he loves it. And he’s a man of love.
‘Rudi, can you turn off that homo music? It makes me want to puke.’
Rudi pretends not to hear what she said, and raising his voice, making it sound like an engine straining at full pelt, says: ‘Yeah, yeah, dishcloth or not, there’s one thing Rudi knows for sure, and that’s that tonight, Chessi, tonight I’m going to screw you seven ways to fuckin’ Sunday.’
4. THEY’RE SO BLOODY GORGEOUS (Daniel William)
A little girl, really.
Fifteen years of age. Her mum works at the church, her dad’s a lawyer and she oozes naivety. She’ll be sixteen in January. If she’s telling the truth, that is. She might be adding a few months on to her age. Girls lie all the time, especially about things like that. That’s the thing about them. The way they view the truth, it’s not the same way we do. The truth is always changing with girls. Runs from their mouths like dribble from old people.
But they’re so bloody gorgeous.
So, so bloody gorgeous.
It would be a lot easier living with a man, as his last foster father used to say, before he added: ‘Not that I’m a fucking homo.’
Homos. That’s just sick. It’s one thing to like boys, but not to like girls, that’s even worse.
They’re so bloody gorgeous.
When there are girls in the room, the rest of the world disappears. It just fucking explodes. There’s nothing else in the room other than them. And it’s a good feeling, like sniffing glue. Helicopter. Daniel has felt it a thousand times, and he wants to feel it again, because that’s the point of this life: if it’s good, get more of it.
More, more, more.
If you want to strip this scrap heap of a life down to its essence, then it’s girls you’re talking about. Daniel can sit behind the drum kit and play, he’s a good drummer, a dynamic player, he’s as tight as a sphincter, but in his head, while the sticks are hitting the skins,
it’s girls he’s thinking about. They tumble around in his head while he plays. Big ones and small ones; fat ones and thin ones, all kinds of girls. Tits, twats, asses, thighs, lipstick, tights, stockings, blouses, bras, dresses, kerchiefs, make-up, those straps between stockings and panties and everything that goes with a girl. It’s been like that ever since he was a little boy. Ever since he was in kindergarten on the other side of the city. There were just as many girls going round in his head when he was playing then as when he was bigger, on the football pitch, practising penalty after penalty, and as there are now when he’s banging on the drums.
And what is wrong with that?
Sometimes he gets the feeling people think there’s something wrong with it, about life being about girls. But Daniel doesn’t care about that. What he wants to do is get his own flat, whenever Child bloody Welfare will let him, work out a couple of times a week, get drunk at the weekends, play in a good band, get some gigs, release some records and get some stuff out on iTunes, YouTube and Spotify, maybe play a few festivals, maybe make a living playing music like Kvelertak, Purified in Blood and Kaizers Orchestra. Dejan’s brother – crazy all that stuff Dejan and his family went through in Serbia – Dejan’s brother knows a guy who knows one of the guitarists in Purified. Daniel and Dejan saw them at the Rått og Råde festival, seriously kickass: The sky is falling, death is calling, to the grave. It’s not just people in Rogaland who like them, people from Oslo like them too. He just needs to keep at it. If it doesn’t work out he’ll have to get a job, and he’s no wuss, even though his grades aren’t great, pass candidate in every subject except PE. He’s never shied away from work. If someone tells him to do something, he’ll grit his teeth until his jaw aches and do the job, no matter how bloody dirty it is.
Then he’ll spend the rest of his time, and money, on girls.
That’s what he feels is meaningful, as his foster mother and child protection officer say. And if anyone believes that’s the wrong way to live your life, then they can just go on believing it. If they feel it’s wrong that he thinks girls are so fucking sexy, soft and gorgeous, and he wants to buy them stuff, like houses and make-up and whatever they want, then they can go on feeling it’s wrong.
Daniel’s rock-hard fuckplan is to find a girl who’s not a handful. She has to have her head screwed on and she can’t have a face on her in the morning like she’s sucking a lemon, and she can’t spend three hours deciding what kind of jeans to buy. She has to think the jeans he wants her to wear are the best. He’ll be the one looking at her after all. That’s the kind of girl he wants for himself. A girl who likes the fact he thinks she’s well gorgeous and well sexy, a girl who doesn’t look at other boys and isn’t running around flirting.
Who knows, maybe he’s already found that girl.
Because she is sexy, Sandra.
And she doesn’t look at other boys. And she doesn’t moan.
The test will be how often she wants to do it with him.
It’ll be a shambles if he’s together with a woman who only wants to do it a little while he wants to do it a lot. On average once a day, he reckons. So he can’t be with someone who only wants it every four days. And there’s one other thing that’s just as important, and that’s that she doesn’t poke and pry. He’s had enough of that already, from Child Welfare, foster parents, social workers and psychologists, so he doesn’t want to be with a girl who pokes and pesters. Respect to Sandra, because she’s twigged that. When something comes up in conversation that he can’t face talking about, she looks at him with those well gorgeous eyes that make Daniel think of some kind of exotic bird, her lips glisten and it’s just like there’s light in those three freckles on her nose, and that little mousy mouth of hers drives him nuts, the pursed lips with the slightly protruding teeth, and she gets it, gets that there’s certain things you don’t want to get into. She’s understood what all those childcare losers haven’t: if you talk and talk and talk about things, pull them out of the ground like rabbits, then everything goes to shit.
Daniel glances up at the football pitch by the school. He takes his mobile from his leather jacket. 20:52. She’s usually on time.
It’s shite digging up things best left buried thousands of miles underground.
But the fact that they named him William.
What the fuck were they thinking? Were they at the hospital watching him pop out of his mother and did they think, ah, we’ll have to call him William. Daniel William. What kind of gay name was that?
Daniel spits.
You get the life you’re given, it’s your job to live it.
It’s shite with things that are best left buried thousands of miles underground.
Sometimes he thinks about it. About killing. Just going out and killing somebody. Making a person disappear just because he can. What a release it must be. Clench your fists until they’re as hard as wrecking balls, pummel a face until you can’t tell it’s a face.
Maybe tonight’s the night.
Screw.
Screw.
Screw.
5. AMY LEE (Tiril)
‘Tiril, please, can you help me here?’
She sees the honey jars roll across the lino, hears them rattling like the peel of sick bells, sees the sweaty, Christian girl crawling on all fours, and she turns up the volume on the iPhone, wipes the ice cream freezer with the cloth and looks the other way.
Thea is going to sit at the piano and Tiril will stand in front. I’m so tired of being here, suppressed by all my childish fears. Thea will be dressed in white: white top, white dress, white tights and white shoes. Whereas she’ll be in black: black top, black dress, black tights and black shoes. And if you have to leave I wish that you would just leave, ’cause your presence still lingers here, and it won’t leave me alone. They’re going to blow the roof off the gym hall. These wounds won’t seem to heal, this pain is just too real, there’s just too much that time cannot erase. Tiril feels it on her arms, the hairs standing on end, same as when she heard the song for the first time on YouTube: When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears.
On Thursday. The International Culture Workshop. Kinda daft, but, whatever.
‘Tiril! Can you please come and help me here?’
She ignores Christian Girl’s desperate pleas and crouches down. Evanescence fills her head as she gives the large surfaces of the freezer a thorough wipe.
Thea’s amazing on the piano, she’s been playing for years and her parents reckon she could go far. Beethoven and Brahms and all kinds of stuff just flies from her fingers, and she only needs to hear a song and she can play it. It’s mad. Her fingers just run across the keys. It’s not that easy either, ‘My Immortal’. Maybe it’s not that hard, like technically, but getting the feeling right, only Thea can do that. And Amy Lee.
And Tiril Fagerland.
They’ve tried getting hold of a black piano, or a grand, but the school doesn’t have anything like that, only an electronic one. But nobody will have a bad word to say about the stage show. They’re going to cover the windows in the gym hall with black sheets, drape a black felt cloth over the piano, and Tiril found a five-branched candelabra in Oxfam. The candlesticks in it will shine bright.
You used to captivate me by your resonating light, now I’m bound by the life you left behind.
After the second verse, Tiril’s going to let a black, see-through shawl fall down over her face. She’ll stand upright, motionless, her gaze fixed on the floor, her body rigid, like a statue, her fingers splayed like a leaf. Then she’ll raise her head, slowly, slowly, as she sings the most powerful lines in the song:
I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone.
But though you’re still with me I’ve been alone all along.
The plan is for it to be dark when she sings those lines, and then on the final chorus the lights will come up, preferably ones with green and red filters. That’s when she needs to give it her all. She needs to sing like Amy Lee, needs to think t
hat she is Amy Lee, that she’s the one who grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Tiril is going to go there someday. She’s going to see the place Evanescence are from. She’s going to walk the streets, breathe the air. What would be really amazing would be to see them live in their hometown, like Dad did with Maiden. Dad says he had metal on the brain when he was young, Maiden mainly, and even though he doesn’t listen to metal any more he’ll never forget that time he saw them in London. He’s talked about it loads, about what a fantastic feeling it is, seeing your favourite band in the city they come from. And she’ll be the one to do it, not Malene. Tiril will be the one who’ll fly to the US, she’s the one who’ll visit Little Rock, Arkansas.
If there had been eight letters in Evanescence, she would have written it in felt pen on her fingers. But it doesn’t fit. Neither does My Immortal, or Little Rock. Tiril has come up with something else. Something more her style. Eight letters, two hands, two words. The atmosphere in the gym hall is going to be electric, she’s going to raise her hands and hold them like a shield in front of her face: LOVE HATE. These wounds won’t seem to heal, this pain is just too real, there’s just too much that time cannot erase.
Burn in hell, Mum.
Tiril gets to her feet. Slinging the washcloth over her shoulder, she presses pause on the iPhone and looks over at Sandra. She’s crouched down gathering honey jars, her stupid fingers working away in panic. Tiril takes a few steps towards her.
‘Did you say something, by the way?’
Sandra glowers at her while she stacks the last of the jars. She shakes her head.
‘I don’t get you, Tiril,’ she says. ‘What exactly have I done to you?’
Tiril stops and leans against the spices.
‘It’s late,’ she says.
‘Eh?’ Sandra says, blushing.
‘You can just go. YOLO.’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ says Sandra. She places the last jar on top of the display stand. ‘See you later.’