Tor Ulven - Replacement

Though most of it has come off, the price tag on the windowpane doesn’t completely peel off this time either. The paper is still stuck to the glue in grungy, whitish strips resembling fuzzy mold, and it doesn’t help that the letters and numbers have become unreadable, that only one corner of the original surface, once a perfect rectangle printed with text, is all that remains (though there’s less of it now, since this time you’re able to scratch some of it away); graffiti and price tags, which can both be removed, and which both always spring up in another place, are like parasites, unconscious urban parasites, and they really bug you. You give it up. You unlock the door. The sight of your apartment makes you remember. You lost weight, you only slept three or four hours a night, that is, if you slept at all, you trembled uncontrollably, suffered through crying jags, you barely had enough energy to go to the store, your apartment was filthy, showering was a true Herculean task, your toothbrush felt as heavy as a hammer; it was like the combined weight of her disappearance and the high probability of her death rested on a piece of sandpaper that was in the process of whittling you down to nothing.

Since the bouillon is scalding hot, you drink it in small sips, though you clutch the bowl to warm yourself while you rest your elbows on the table. You shove the package of cassettes aside. You don’t know why you went and bought the damn things after all this time. It’s not like you’ve got anything left worth recording, you think; you’d originally planned to record moments of your life, but you’re not living life anymore, it’s like you’ve been shelved, placed in storage, stuck in a meat locker, and the only sound in a meat locker is the hum of the motor, the same hum day after day, never growing louder, never growing softer, just the sound of that motor, like a hum, almost a buzz, and the persistent cold wouldn’t register on tape anyway. It’s ironic, you think, that in order to keep food fresh, you make it inedible by freezing it. You’re not hungry. The water’s boiling. The two sausages in the pot have split their skin. You’re glad about that. It’s cathartic to watch something split apart. You lift your head and look out the window. It’s not snowing yet.

Sparklers. A ring of them around a bottle of champagne left to cool in the snow. Each small stick had sputtered, sparkled, and glowed with a pulsating white light, she’s the one who brought them, your hands were freezing back then, too, but it didn’t matter, you warmed them in her coat pockets while you watched the fireworks display in the snow. She had no head for the big picture, no, she had absolutely no head for the big picture, sometimes she didn’t know what year it was, or what country she lived in, but she was amazing with the little things, she was a wellspring of surprises, small gifts, which, you think, is exactly what you shouldn’t be thinking about right now, because you know where it’ll end, but you can’t stop yourself, the little hill leading down to the flat, snow-covered ground was slippery, so you’d held onto each other as you slid down it, and she was the one who patted down the snow around the open champagne bottle, stuck the sparklers in a ring and lit them, all but two, which you held in your hands. Two sparkling fountains, two miniature comets in the process of burning out, and there were brief flashes of light cast back from countless mirrors, from a different place each time; under the empty, cloudless, uneventful, intensely blue midsummer sky, you can see how the water on the horizon looks like a shimmering, rippling expanse of tin, which appears almost black in places, before it grows lighter (a long, narrow streak), then darker again, then greenish as it nears land, then yellowish, until, finally, it’s clear where water meets sand, when the waves, which a few minutes ago looked like a glittering streak on the water’s surface way out toward the small islands, are blown shoreward to break on the beach in smooth, foamy tendrils, constantly renewed, which are bowed and paper-thin, translucent membranes with even tinier ripples or wrinkles on their surface, an endless supply of waves rolling in, each casting thin films of water over the fine-grained sand, which is mixed with small pebbles that the sea has worn thin and satiny smooth, not to mention the last remains of creeping, crawling beach life (black and bone-dry above the high-water mark), namely, shell fragments belonging to mussels, lobsters, crabs, snails, barnacles, sundry tiny creatures, all these hard objects the sea eventually crushes and grinds to pieces after the life has left them, the same way the sea slowly turns stones to sand with a patience that only something completely insentient (and no animal driven by instinct) possesses. Aside from the small boats and the eternally restless sea birds, and despite the shimmering ripples and lapping waves, the whole thing gives you an impression of immutable tranquility.

Shred it, you’ve got to shred the newspapers and roll the sides up, otherwise it’ll be packed too tight and won’t burn well, or won’t burn at all, even with the wind blowing, which it does pretty much around the clock here at the seaside, constantly blowing your hair into your eyes, which irritates you, and you keep one foot on the paper so it won’t blow away while you toss the broken mahogany chair and the mangle, or whatever the damn thing’s called, onto the pile, followed by the cracked cupboard which has rosemaling and is stamped with a date, or at least it was, though after losing a battle with your axe it’s just a nice bit of dry kindling, you know your way around an axe, though you’re not quite sober, but then you’re not quite drunk either, your soul’s just a little empty (that’s how you like to express it), and you’re not afraid to use your fists, they’ve had calluses in their day is what it’ll say in your unwritten biography. You follow the flagstone path up the beach toward the open cabin door once more.

Bingo, Advent stars, pulse-rate and blood-pressure monitors, video tapes in cases, lace panties (black or white), video games played with joystick or light gun, a quartz clock, radios you can mount on your handlebars, a mountain tent, inflatable islands with palm trees, a pirate flag, a set of socket wrenches, a cuckoo clock, sun glasses, dildos (18 or 25 cm in length), leather slippers, a baseball cap topped with a bell, lady’s razors, musical Christmas elves, tennis rackets, a model airplane, rubber boats, and movies, the movies went up the best, the whole thing was a roaring success, you remember, but the movies definitely went up the best, each and every one of them, and in answer to the question of what exactly you were doing, you could confidently say Bissniss, immportn, and you remember exactly what you said next (for some reason or other, you have a much easier time remembering what you say to others than what others say to you) Yep, there’s some differences for sure for example people in the East can work their hands to the bone without demanding huge bonuses or silk pillows for their precious asses but you gotta get something out of the deal you know.

Nothing happened until the third day on the job, you remember, inside the warehouse, behind two boxes of dildos you never did manage to get rid of (the problem was they were too big, so customers kept returning them and demanding their money back); she pretended to resist, and you liked that, you’ve always gone for nice girls, you think, and you laugh as you take down a picture showing him dressed in a sailor’s outfit and sitting at the helm, one hand on the wheel and the other holding a champagne glass. Next to where the smiling captain was on the wall are a few “artistic” drawings; to you, they just look like the random doodles of some macrocephalic kid, they’re nothing but thick, coarse, black streaks and colorful dabs of red, yellow, and blue, sometimes following, sometimes crossing the lines, there’s a name in the lower right-hand corner, someone got taken for a ride on these, you think, but not you, no sir, not today, you tear the drawings off the wall, and for good measure you smash their frames along with the photo’s on the corner of a pine table; there are some pictures still left on the wall, and at least you can tell what these represent, but you don’t like them either, so you smash them, tear them up, kick at the last few shards of glass that hang like transparent fangs around the edges of their frames, though you’re not afraid of them, because they can’t bite. Next, you smash the brandy bottle and the two carafes against the opposite wall. Then you start hacking up the remaining bar stools, though you’re not in any hurry. Splinters already litter the rag rugs and the broad, sanded white floorboards, as if the furniture had fur and has been shedding.