Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

ME AND PIA SYSE SIGNED a contract of employment that said that after two years in Sørlandet I was free to return to my job as station boss in Os.

The service station was outside Kristiansand, on the other side of the Europa highway that passes the zoo and amusement park. Naturally it was much bigger than the one in Os, with more employees, more pumps, a bigger shop stocking a bigger range and with a higher turnover. But the biggest difference was that because the previous boss had treated the staff like a brain-dead financial drain on the firm what I got there was a bunch of demoralised and moaning boss-haters who never did more than exactly what they were employed to do and sometimes not even that.

‘All service stations are different,’ said Gus Myre, the sales director at head office, in his lectures to us. ‘The sign is the same, the petrol’s the same, the logistics are the same, but in the final analysis our stations aren’t about petrol, Peugeots and Pepsi, they’re about people . The ones standing behind the counter, the ones in front of it, and the meeting between the two.’

He sang his message as though it was a tune he was growing a bit more tired of playing with each passing year, and yet was, in spite of everything, his hit. From the exaggeratedly playful alliteration of what must have been that self-composed petrol, Peugeots and Pepsi , to the equally exaggerated and – over time – ever more forced sincerity of people , which always put me in mind of those revivalist meetings at Årtun. Because, just like a preacher, it was Myre’s job to get the gathering to believe in something that, deep down, everyone knew was just bollocks, but which they badly wanted to believe was true. Because belief makes life – and in the preacher’s case: death – that much easier to deal with. If you really believe yourself to be unique, and every encounter therefore unique, you can maybe trick yourself into believing in a kind of purity, an everlasting and virgin innocence which stops you spitting in the customers’ face and puking with boredom.

But I didn’t feel myself to be unique. And the station was – the previously mentioned differences notwithstanding – not unique either. The chain observes strict franchise principles, meaning that you can move from a small station in one part of the country to a larger one in another part, and it’s like changing sheets on the same bed. It took me two days from the moment I arrived to learn the technical details that distinguished this one from the one at Os, four days to talk to all members of staff, find out what their ambitions were, what changes they thought might turn the station into a better place for them to work, and a better place for the customer to be. Three weeks to have introduced ninety per cent of these changes.

I gave an envelope to the safety deputy and told her not to open it for eight weeks but to wait until the day of a staff meeting to evaluate the changes. We had hired a local cafe for the meeting. I welcomed everyone and then handed over to a staff member who gave the figures for sales and profits; another gave us the statistics for absence due to sickness; and a third announced the results of a simple customer satisfaction survey, along with a more informal assessment of the atmosphere among the employees. I just listened as the employees, after much arguing, then voted to drop eighty per cent of their own suggested changes. Afterwards I summarised which changes everyone thought had worked and which we would be continuing with, and announced that we would be eating now and the bar was open. One member of the staff, a real old sourpuss, raised his hand and asked if that was all I was in charge of, the bar.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m in charge of the fact that for the last eight weeks you’ve been allowed to be your own bosses. Lotte, will you open the envelope I gave you before we introduced the changes?’

She did so and read out my list of which changes I thought would work, and which wouldn’t. There was a lot of murmuring as it gradually became apparent that my advance projections – with just two exceptions – agreed with what they had decided themselves after the results were known.

‘The point here is not to convince you that I’m Mr Know-it-all,’ I said. ‘Look, I was wrong on two counts, the coffee cards, which I thought would work, and the offer of five day-old buns for the price of one, which I thought wouldn’t. But since I was right about the other twelve it might look as though I know something about running a service station, right?’

I saw a few heads nodding in agreement. They nod in a different way here in the south. Even slower, in fact. As the nodding spread there were sounds of a low murmuring. Finally even the old sourpuss was nodding.

‘We’re second bottom of the list of the best stations in the county,’ I said. ‘I’ve spoken to head office and worked out a deal. If we’re among the ten best at the next grading, they’ll pay for a trip on the Danish ferry for the whole gang. If we’re among the five best, a trip to London. And if we’re best, you’ll be given a budget and allowed to decide for yourselves what the prize should be.’

They just stared at me. Then the cheering began.

‘This evening…’ I shouted, and the racket immediately died down. ‘This evening we’re the second worst in the county, so the bar is only going to be open for one hour. After that everyone will go home and charge their batteries ready for tomorrow, because it’s tomorrow – and not the day after – that we start climbing up that list.’

I lived in Søm, a quiet residential area on the east side before you cross the bridges over to the town side. I rented a spacious three-roomed apartment, of which I only had furniture enough for two. I figured that by now the rumours about Carl having been abused by Dad were spreading like wildfire through Os. That the only one who hadn’t heard them was Carl. And me. Though she had waited fifteen years, when Grete made up her mind to tell people what Carl had confided in her I was the first one she told, and by now she must be having one field day after another in her hair salon. If Carl found out, he would probably be able to handle it. And if he never heard anything that was probably OK too. In any event, the responsibility and the shame were above all mine. I couldn’t take it. I was weak. But that wasn’t the main reason I’d had to leave Os. It was her.

By night I dreamed of Shannon.

By day I dreamed of Shannon.

Eating, driving between work and home, serving customers, working out, washing clothes, sitting on the toilet, masturbating, listening to an audio book or watching TV, I dreamed of Shannon.

About that sleepy, sensual eye. An eye that expressed more feelings, more warmth and cold than other people’s two eyes put together. Or about a voice that was almost as deep as Rita’s, and yet completely different, so soft you felt you wanted to lie down in it like a warm bed. About kissing her, fucking her, washing her, holding her tight, setting her free. About the red hair that glowed in the sunlight, about the tense bow of her spine, laughter that contained an almost imperceptible predatory snarl, as well as a promise.

I tried to tell myself it was the same old story all over again, about Mari, about falling in love with my brother’s girl. That it was some kind of fucking sickness or short circuit in my brain. Driving yourself crazy over what you can’t have or shouldn’t have. And that if by some miracle Shannon wanted me too, that would just be a repeat of what happened with Mari. That love would dissolve, the way the rainbow you see stretched above the mountain top disappears when you drive. Not because the love was delusory, but because rainbows need to be seen from a particular angle – from outside – and from a certain distance – not too close up. And if the rainbow should happen to be still there when you reach the top of the mountain, you’ll discover there’s no pot of gold at the end, just tragedy and shattered lives.