by Tore Renberg
Compared to his mates he’s lagging behind when it comes to women. He’s the only one in the band who hasn’t gone all the way. Dejan has so many women on the go it’s nuts, probably because he’s a Serb, looks dangerous and has scars across his back and his face. Should see Dejan rolling dice, he looks seriously Mafioso.
Still though, it’s strange, because Daniel is popular. He’s good-looking, he knows that. But it’s just never quite worked out; does he scare the women away?
Daniel takes a drag of the cigarette and leans his head back against the corner of the substation wall while he fiddles with the strap on the helmet. He’s getting closer to it with Sandra. Maybe because he’s able to behave in a different way with her than with other girls. Maybe he’s learnt a little from living with Veronika? It’s different when you live with them, you pick up on things, see what girls like and what they don’t like. She’s okay, Veronika. Bit weird, maybe. All right, so she’s deaf, so what? He knows exactly what he’d do to anyone who said a bad word about her, they can just go ahead and try it, if they want their eyes cut out of their heads.
A lot of things have been different with Sandra. He feels he can be more of a man. He can tell her stuff like how sexy she looks in those jeans, and she lights up and beams like a funfair. Same with that facial expression she gets. When her dimples show and the wings of her nose expand and her mouth kind of begins to twitch. Jesus, she’s cute when she does that.
Girls.
That’s what life’s all about.
Bollocks to all that other shit and bollocks to the past, that’s for sure.
Play the drums. Work out. Drink beer. But above all, girls.
20:56. She’ll be here soon.
It was mental yesterday.
It was as though a glowing light came rolling over the gravel. She came running across the football pitch, her forehead sweaty, small, sexy, shy and sure of herself all at the same time, scared someone might see her. So they went into the woods and got up to a bit of the usual stuff. Hugging and kissing, he put his hand on her ass, both inside and outside her jeans, felt her thighs, placed his hand on her crotch, but only through the jeans, and he pressed himself against her, he always does that, because he gets such a hard-on he doesn’t know what to do with it. And then he said the things that make her light up, how sexy she is in those jeans, how cute she looks when she makes that face and that he likes how her lips glitter. And he felt her tits, obviously. You can’t be with girls without getting the tit, that’d just be weird. He pulled down her top a little, so he could kiss her nipples. And then.
It was fucking mental.
She stopped and looked at him. When they were tonguing, or maybe when he was trying to work his hand further down her ass. No, it was when he was feeling her tits. They’re amazing, he doesn’t like big tits, they’re too much, big jugs screw up the whole mood, and he doesn’t know what to do with really small ones, even though they’re sexy in a dirty sort of way. But Sandra’s tits, they’re amazing. They just sit there looking dead good. So there he was, busying himself with her tits, and then, out of nowhere, she stops and almost pushes him away. She practically had tears in her eyes, they were moist and glistening anyway, and he didn’t understand a thing, shit, is she crying? But then, all of a sudden, she puts her hands behind her back, while Daniel just stands there thinking okay, okay, what’s going on, keep cool, and then: Holy fuck.
She starts taking off her bra. In the middle of the woods.
She has her hands round her back and she unhooks the bra, and then, quick as a flash, performs some sleight of hand where she jiggles the strap and pulls the bra out her sleeve, so that her tits are actually just dangling there behind that grey cotton top, and Daniel just breathes, gulps and says Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus, and he has no idea what the fuck he’s going to do, but he doesn’t need to do anything, because this is happening by itself, this well fit girl is standing in front of him taking off her top. Is he in heaven? Are there angels in the air? He’s got such a hard-on he thinks he’s going to croak, but he just remains standing there, because he needs to take this in, needs to take a photograph and glue it to his brain, if there’s one scene from life that he wants to remember every pissy little worthless day, then it’s this: Sandra taking off her top in the woods.
Then she stands there.
Just her and her tits.
Some girls. They can look like buttercups. But then. Then they get warmed up. Then something else emerges. Then the floodgates open. They can be some randy little hornbags, so they can.
Oh sweetfuckingjesus, so nice. Almost make you believe in God. It’s precisely those kinds of things, like what he experienced there, that happiness is made off. Of course it is.
But a steady relationship?
Daniel’s fingers are cold. He feels the urge to scratch them against the rough surface of the substation wall.
Watch yourself, Daniel.
That kind of thing brings about ashes and devil’s treasure. Eventually the ground opens up beneath your happiness, and fangs start snapping at you from below.
He puts the chaos out of his mind and flicks the cigarette into the gathering darkness.
20:58.
9. MY SNATCHPUSS 4 EVER (Cecilie)
‘Hey, baby? You not going to say anything? Eh? Come on, screw napping, darling, youandme? Youandmeandyourbody? Europe, eh?’
The Volvo is approaching Gosen Forest, and the darkness around them is deepening. Rudi’s voice fills the car and it’s so intense it reeks like a compact stench. Cecilie catches her breath. She rests her neck against the back of the seat, puts her hand in her pocket, takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights up a new one. Europe? She loves Europe, but this isn’t about Europe.
His eyes. She sees them in the rear-view mirror. His pupils are zipping round like rubber balls.
Cecilie closes her eyes, inhales the smoke and feels her body relax. I could have had a life, she thinks, I could have had something that was mine, but I don’t.
‘Eh? Ride on the joycock? Metal up your ass?’
Sometimes she’s so tired of that rasping voice, of him going on, that she feels like throwing up just being in the same room. But she loves him as well. In a screwed-up way. It’s been like that for as long as she can remember. She loves his blabbermouth, loves his stupid lips that look constantly swollen, and she loves his flapping hands, but she doesn’t understand why any more.
Cecilie doesn’t have the energy to reply. She misses Dad. That Houston doofus, why did he have to leave? He ruined everything and she’s furious with him, but still misses him. You hear me, Dad? You just left, and here I am with Jani and Rudi. What if I want a life as well? Did anybody think of that?
Kids? A house? Some normal stuff?
‘Hey? You know, as far as I’m concerned it isn’t Rihanna or Michelle Williams that’s the hottest chick of 2012! It’s you!’
That’s what life served her up: sitting at Jani’s watching horror movies. Living in the same house for the fortieth year in a row. With a basement smelling of rot, paint peeling off the walls and mouldy old carpets. That’s what she’s been dished up: being the girlfriend of a guy, two metres tall, with ADHD and bomb-crater skin, who drives around in a stupid Volvo, does break-ins on speed, talks the face off people and has an insane relationship with his family. That’s her life: not to have a life of her own.
Cecilie swallows phlegm and exhales.
‘Hey, baby, remember the first time? Eh? Twenty-seven years ago, and it’s still as good! Eh, why so quiet, Missy Cissy! Heh heh! Do you get it? Cissy?’
Poor Jan Inge. 120 kilos now. That’s way too much. Poor, fat boy. He is keeping the house and the business together, but he has little, frightened pinhead eyes, and he is my brother, she thinks. He’s never been quite right in the head. People don’t know him. They think he’s an asthmatic loon with a twisted childhood, and they hear rumours about all the things Videoboy has done, and then they think he’s a psycho who just sits there watching ho
rror movies.
But that’s not the whole truth.
They don’t know what a big heart he has.
It’s big enough to beat for the whole world.
‘By all means, Chessi. It’s up to you! As long as you can suck cock, I won’t complain about the lack of words coming out of your mouth. Heh heh, you can say what you want, but we can hold our own, youandmeagainsttheshit! Just take a look around, and I mean right outside the window here, you’ve got the internet and divorces all day and all night.’
Cecilie looks at Rudi’s bobbing head, his hands tapping on the wheel. She knows every inch of that scarred body. Now and then she thinks Rudi is a country and she’s a settler there. Sometimes it’s a pleasant thought, sometimes it’s terrifying.
To think it’s possible to loathe a man like I loathe him, and love a man as much as I love him. It doesn’t make sense.
Months and years have gone by without anything happening. Days have come, days have gone, and she’ll be forty in December. She can’t remember the last time she felt something was happening. But now something is. Something is going on inside of her, and something is going on out there: Tong is getting out on Friday. Cecilie is the one picking him up outside the gates of Åna. Half past eight. Tong. Not the way it was supposed to turn out now, was it?
‘Ooh arr, like the farmer said, looks barren ’ere. You’ll have to make your own fun.’
She pushes the image of Tong aside and runs her hand under her eye. It feels wet, she sits up, looks at her face in the rear-view mirror to the right of Rudi’s head. That vole face of mine. What am I crying for? Look at my make-up. She takes another drag of the cigarette.
Her skin is going to look like ash soon. She is going to be ash soon. She smokes too much. One day she’s just going to lie there. What’s that? A pile of ash. What was it though, before it turned to ash? Dunno, no one remembers.
‘Baby? Have I ever told you that if the sun went down, and I mean burned out and died, then I wouldn’t give a damn, as long as I’ve got you to light up the house? Eh?’
Cecilie sniffles. He is my snatchpuss, she thinks, no matter how things are. It’s Rudi and me. It really is. He is snatchpuss 4 ever.
Coldplay. She saw him. He was sitting there getting into Coldplay.
I hate Coldplay, she thinks.
I want a life, I want a real house, I want a proper man, one who doesn’t talk a blue streak and keep spinning like a wheel, I want to hear heavy ballads round the clock, I want my days to feel golden.
Cecilie sighs. ‘Rudi boy,’ she says, ‘we’re almost there. You need to get to work.’
I don’t know anyone but me who cries from just one eye.
10. HE WALKS INTO THE PITCH DARKNESS (Pål)
Zitha tugs at the leash once they’re outside the house. He can feel how primed the dog is, and he lets her strain forward with her snout to the ground. She needs to be driven by her instincts, needs to live and breathe by them.
The day has been unusually warm, but now night has come and the autumn cold is here again. It’s in the air all around him, crackling almost delicately; in a couple of months it will have transformed into winter.
Pål walks over to the rubbish bins. His feet feel heavy, his head feels fried. Is it the green one today? Black? Brown? He looks down the street at the rows of brown bins lined up on either side outside each house, like podgy soldiers. He wheels the bin out in front of the hedge and starts walking down the road with Zitha hurrying ahead of him.
He’s been at this so long he’s not afraid any more. The most surprising thing is how proficient you become. Living with all the lies isn’t difficult. Neither is living with all the covering-up. It’s the wide-open world that’s difficult to live in.
He comes to Norvald Frafjords Gate and sees the blocks of flats rise up into the sky. The sight of the high-rises has had a hold on him ever since he was little. All the people inhabiting them, all the people living their secret lives, all the people trying to get on. When he was a child and passed them on his way to school – to think it’s over thirty years since he did that for the first time – he imagined that everyone living there would one day be pressed out, like meat from a mincer, their eyes, their ears, mouths and hands.
Yeah. That’s how it is.
The wide-open world, where nothing is hidden, hard to live in it.
What is with my eyes?
Imagine. These eyes will be forty in a little under a month.
Pål checks his mobile. Soon be nine o’clock. He feels Zitha tug at the leash.
The gap between who he is and what people see has grown so big. It’s a strange feeling. Everyone can see him but no one has a clue who they’re looking at. They see that guy who’s always lived here. Some of the elderly people in the area probably remember him from when he was a kid. They probably recall a normal enough boy, quiet type. The carpenter’s son. Yeah, they’d say. Pål Fagerland? He grew up here, nice kid. People his own age might remember the woman living here a few years back. The wife, they’d say, Christine, left him and the kids. Career woman, they’d say. Statoil, made good money, she was a real go-getter. Must have got tired of him. He was a bit humdrum for her, they’d say, strange the pair of them got together in the first place. But what is it they say – opposites attract? She was the one with the money. But imagine leaving the kids, eh? What kind of woman does that? Yeah, times have changed. Mind you, she was generous enough, went to Bergen but let him hang on to the house and that. Poor guy. Works for the local authority, doesn’t he? Caseworker or something.
Yeah.
That’s probably what they’d say.
Poor guy.
And what is it they see?
A man of average height, dressed in regular clothes. Greying at the temples, round cheeks, childlike skin, hardly any beard and a bashful look in his eyes. His wife was forever saying it, Pål, can you try looking at people when you’re talking to them, it makes them uneasy when your eyes are flitting all over the place.
Pål isn’t the one who pipes up a lot at parents’ meetings. He isn’t the one who talks loudest in work. He isn’t the one who comes out with fresh ideas. He’s never been called intense, never been called conspicuous and never been called dangerous. But he has been called kind, been called good and been called reliable. That was what his wife used to say, I need you, Pål, you bring balance to my life. Right. Well, suddenly one day you didn’t need that any more, did you, Christine?
Pål has always thought that he sees the world as it is.
Seems like that was a bit too boring for her though, doesn’t it?
Eh, Christine? Everything you said you needed, everything you said I represented, all that you needed in your life in order for it to make sense. A husband who arrived home at the same time every day, who kept the household in order and took care of all the day-to-day stuff. You started looking in another direction. And then you just left.
Pål, I can’t do this any more.
You’ve been so, so very kind.
You’ve been so, so very dependable.
But I have to go.
You’re just going to leave me here?
You’ll manage, Pål.
You’re just going to leave the girls?
They’ll understand someday, Pål.
Have you lost your bloody mind?
You’re strong, Pål, remember that.
Pål scratches Zitha behind the ears. Strong? His eyes are dry, like there’s a white light against them. Malene is right: he needs to see the doctor. Strong? He’s never felt strong. We’ve just lived, Pål thinks, from one day to the next, we’ve tried to do as well as we could. Often, when he hears people discussing their lives, it seems like they’re talking about a series of choices they’ve made. It doesn’t feel like that to Pål. It feels, for the most part, as though life were a river and he’s been a boat. The girls have gotten bigger. Malene has had her gymnastics. She’s practically grown up in that hall – palm guards, chalk, glittering leotards,
ice packs and perseverance. Tiril has been a tornado, ferocious intensity, with a restlessness to match. They’ve travelled backwards and forwards to Bergen a couple of times a month and come home with expensive clothes and make-up: love from Mum. Malene has gone along with being driven to the airport, gone along with being picked up again, and Tiril has hated it from day one. Everything to do with her mother is just fuel to an ever raging fire within her.
He knew Christine could be cynical, but that she could actually go ahead and leave the kids, that was cold. Withdraw from their childhood and stake everything on Statoil and that guy from Bergen. Albeit that was Pål’s only consolation: he was left with the kids. The girls had kept things afloat. The drive to gymnastics. The sight of Malene doing backflips, the shouts of the trainer in the hall: Good, Malene! Come on, now straighten up! You need to jump sooner. Wrists straight. Such a shame about that injury; she landed badly on her ankle in the spring, never screamed like that before. She hasn’t trained properly since.
Tiril?
Trying to catch her eye, get beyond that wild gaze, never succeeding.
The girls are all he’s got. He can’t take them over the brink with him. He has to do something, otherwise he may as well put a bullet through his head. Whether or not what he’s about to do is a good idea, he doesn’t know. But it’s the only idea he’s got.
Pål halts at the bus stop on Folkeviseveien. He reaches for his inside pocket. ‘There, there, Zitha,’ he whispers as he takes out the envelope, ‘Daddy’s just going to get rid of this.’ He feels the relief as the envelope lands in the bus shelter bin. Together with all the others. It feels like it’s taking all the mould along with it, as if his problems were actually over, and he smacks his lips at Zitha, walks out from under the shelter, back up the hill and doesn’t cross over until he’s reached the back of the high-rises.
They walk along the footpath, the fields enlarging the landscape around them. Zitha is frisky and happy.
‘There, Zitha, there. Go on!’