Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

She places her hand on her stomach, not because the baby bids her to, but because she’s frightened.

Rudi grinds his teeth. There’s just as much chance of him letting loose on her and the child as there is of him going for Tong. She hadn’t considered it before, but now it’s obvious.

‘Rudi, you mustn’t, you hear me,’ she gets to her feet, reaching for his hands, trying to make eye contact, ‘are you listening to me, you mustn’t. I can see what you’re thinking … you know I’m Chessi … listen … Rudi … please—’

There it is again, Tong’s laughter.

Rudi shuts his eyes, like he does at times when he looks truly beautiful, then turns his head to the left, stretching it around until the muscles make a cracking sound. He opens his eyes again, places his palm on the left side of his chest while keeping his gaze fixed on Cecilie. He thumps his hand resolutely over his own heart and says: ‘Sometimes, Chessi, I wonder if you know who I am.’

‘Huh?’ Her mouth trembles. ‘What do you mean, sweetheart?’

Rudi’s eyes spin. He’s really high and really scary.

‘If you know who I am, Chessi. I wonder about it sometimes. If even after having lived with me for all these years you know who I am.’

‘I kn—’

He bends down, his face right up in hers, his warm breath on her skin and she doesn’t know whether she’s going to live or die.

‘I’m a man of love,’ he whispers.

She feels the touch of his finger, stroking her across the cheek.

‘Meandyou, baby, from here to heaven,’ he whispers.

She nods.

‘I don’t give a shit who you’ve screwed,’ he says, and turns to Tong. ‘You know what Gran used to say: I can trust you, Rune. ’

Then he bounds at Tong. He shoots through the air like a vengeful dog, sending Pål and the chair tumbling to the ground, the back of his head seeming almost to rattle, but nobody has time to attend to him as he lies moaning.

Tong protects himself as he’s knocked to the floor, bringing a knee up into Rudi’s stomach, who in turn tenses his abdominal muscles, the way he learned in the eighties fighting the Ullandhaug Gang, thwarting the worst of the intent. Tong gets hold of his face with his fingers, tightening and squeezing as hard as he can, searching for Rudi’s eyes with his thumb and middle finger, but Rudi has the upper hand, has the advantage of his bodyweight on Tong and he’s in possession of the strongest weapon a person can have, raging love. He quickly raises his right arm, angles it and plants an elbow in Tong’s mouth, filling the room with a crunching sound, while he employs his legs to try and gain control over the wriggling body beneath.

‘What the fuck have you been playing at!’ Rudi pounds his elbow repeatedly into Tong’s mouth. ‘What the fuck have you been playing at!’

‘I haven’t been playing at anything,’ Tong screams, his mouth bleeding as he spits out a tooth. ‘She’s a slag! She’s the one who came on to me.

‘Like I’d fucking believe you,’ Rudi yells. ‘She loves me, you twisted fuck!’

Jan Inge stands looking immobile, flummoxed and tiny next to where the fight is taking place. He has given up. His eyes have always been small, it’s one of the few things Cecilie can remember her mother saying, That boy’s eyes are so small they scare the life out of me ; now they resemble minute little pebbles.

Tong exerts himself and manages to tip Rudi off him. Rudi is sent rolling across the floor, crashing into the kitchen table, both feet smashing into Pål’s head, which is still resting on the ground. The table is knocked on its side and Tong is nimbly back on his feet and within seconds is astride Rudi, pinning him to the floor, the knife in his hand.

‘Jan Inge!’ Cecilie screams.

Her brother turns his head slowly towards her. He’s broken out in a rash, the same purple blotches he had so often on his cheeks when he was young, which vanished when Rudi started coming to the house. He has those red streaks in the whites of his eyes, which she hasn’t seen in years either. He looks like a little boy who’s going to walk out a door alone, into darkness, never to return.

‘Jani! You have to do something!’

Tong straddles Rudi, immobilising him with his thigh muscles. He pauses to bring the knife to his own mouth and pick at his incisors with the blade, just like he always did in the eighties when they sat in the living room watching video after video, when boys were in and out of the house, boys with cartons of cigarettes and VCRs, boys that Jan Inge paid with her.

‘Aren’t you going to fucking do something!’

Jan Inge strokes Cecilie across the cheek.

What a useless pile of shit to have for a brother.

Is he thinking it would be best if he could rent her out again, like before? How could she have been so stupid, why has she never just left?

Then Jan Inge goes down on his knees, reaches his hands to the bag by his feet, unzips it and takes out the pump-action shotgun. He nods to Cecilie, lifts up the shotgun and holds it at stomach height.

‘Tong,’ Jan Inge says, ‘you’ve gone too far. This is precisely what all good horror deals with. And you haven’t understood anything I’ve taught you.’

Jan Inge puts the muzzle of the gun to Tong’s temple.

‘Get up.’

Tong smirks and gets to his feet. ‘What are you planning to do? Shoot me? Like you fucking have it in you.’

‘Move,’ Jan Inge says, poking Tong. ‘Move.’

Rudi gets up stiffly, Cecilie wobbles on her skinny knees and watches her brother push Tong into the hall, prodding him in the back with the shotgun, towards the door that leads to the garage.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Tong says, ‘what the hell are you going do?’

Pål lies writhing on the kitchen floor. Cecilie gives him an apologetic look before she and Rudi follow Jan Inge.

At the end of the hall, Jan Inge puts his elbow on the door handle, presses down and pushes the door open, still holding his hands on the shotgun. Then he orders Tong to step through on to the cement floor inside.

‘Rudi?’

‘Yeah?’

Jan Inge motions with the shotgun in the direction of the van. ‘Will you open the back doors?’

Rudi scurries past his best friend and opens the doors. Jan Inge places the muzzle to the back of Tong’s neck and compels him to walk towards the open doors. When they reach them, Tong resists slightly, but Jan Inge presses the barrel harder against the nape of his neck. Tong gives in after a couple of seconds, squats down and climbs into the van.

‘Jan Inge,’ he says, sneering, ‘you’re such a fucking idiot.’

‘Sit down,’ Jan Inge says.

‘Jesus,’ says Tong, shaking his head. Then he sits down.

Jan Inge shoots Tong in the face.

Rudi looks at his best friend with a mixture of admiration and horror.

Tong lies stretched out on the floor of the van, his face torn asunder. The roof and sides splattered in blood, skin and flesh.

Jan Inge lowers the shotgun, the rash on his face beginning to wane.

In the kitchen, Pål’s thighs shudder when he hears the powerful, resounding bang from the garage. He swings his head from side to side, making the mucus and stringy blood swing under his chin. ‘Wha? Hello? What’s happened?’

Cecilie takes a step forward. She looks at her brother.

‘I couldn’t very well spray-paint the kitchen with his DNA,’ Jan Inge says calmly.

What a fantastic brother.

See, little one, see what a fantastic uncle you’ve got?

Then Cecilie hears a click in her ear as a switch from the past is flicked on. She pictures the man who’s lost his dog, the man who’s lying in there on the kitchen floor and she remembers him, Pål Fagerland, from an afternoon in 1985, an afternoon smelling strongly of vanilla. She can picture the room as it was back then, the poster of the ochre cat hanging to the right of the window, the pink hairbrush on the desk, the hair elastics beside it, the red desk lamp and the globe, a crack going from north to south, the Aerosmith poster, the Foreigner poster, the Lois jeans sticker on the door, she can hear the muffled sounds from the living room, a horror movie on the TV, and she can see Pål’s young body, so thin and hairless, and she can see his gentle, frightened face, and she can hear her own voice saying: ‘Come on, I don’t bite.’