Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

Pål passes the kindergarten. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a moped parked over by the old substation. He speeds up, continues down towards Madlamarkveien, crosses over it and enters the wood on the other side. He doesn’t take the tarmac path through the wood, he goes into the pitch darkness. He walks carefully through the ferns, the overgrown scrub, the twisted roots, letting Zitha sniff and lead the way.

He stops for a few seconds and turns his face towards the black tops of the trees. A clear, starry sky hangs above them.

There were other people too. Back in his younger days. People who lived in the darkness. People who dared do things he never would. People who crossed lines. People with wild eyes and clenched fists. The Tjensvoll Gang.

Malene mustn’t ever find out about this, he thinks. She must never know what her father was up to.

He’s arranged to meet him at nine o’clock.

I came down here to fuck these girls

O Lord

I came down here to fuck all of these girls

O Lord

Cause I’m a bad man

Yes I’m a bad man

But I’m a real man

I came down here to kill these girls

O Lord

I came down here to kill all of these girls

O Lord

Cause I’m a bad man

Yes I’m a bad man

But I’m a real man

He’s not exactly a songsmith. But then neither are Dejan, Simon or Vegard. So he’s been responsible for the lyrics. They’re not particularly good, but that’s one of the ones he’s happy with, one of the ones that feels real.

Daniel remembers one time in third year when they had a writer visit the class, wow, like, oh, so interesting, Mr Writer Dude, wow, did you really begin writing poetry when you were in second year? You read a thick book by a Russian writer, you say? Oh wow, Mr Writer Dude, I’m so impressed.

Makes no difference. No one hears what Simon is singing anyway.

But real.

The lyrics of that one song. At least they’re real.

Oh Lord.

Daniel checks the time again. 20:59

He often wakes up in the middle of the night, ready to burst he’s so aroused. He’ll wake up in the dark feeling like he’s lying in a cold cave far up in the mountains, where ancient water drips down around his naked feral form, where diseased bats sail above his ringing head, where long curtains of stone hang down through the darkness, where blood boils within those black lungs of his, lungs that look like stone furnaces, where indiscernible spears cut through the foul air now and then, spears glistening with silver and grease, where screams are to be heard, long-drawn-out screams, that begin with a faint, barely audible tinnitus in the distance, before growing and gushing towards him like heavy trains, like jets of pain, banging like bolts against his hearing. Then he knows who’s woken, the caveman, the stoneman, the ironman: He just knows.

20:59

O Lord

A thousand million kilometres beneath the earth.

Sandra. Now.

Adidas Superstar.

It just felt kind of weird.

Malene places her dad’s shoes beside one another. The pair he likes best. She knits her brow. They’re worn out, those trainers. He ought to get himself a new pair. She’s told him. You ought to get a new pair of trainers, Dad. No, no, he said. The more worn in they are, the better.

Dad probably isn’t aware she does it. Every night. Places his shoes neatly beside one another. Tiril certainly doesn’t spot it. Her head is full of her own stuff. She probably hasn’t noticed that he has a pair he wears every day. White with black stripes.

There’s no other trainers I feel so comfy in, Dad says.

She gets to her feet.

Felt weird, that hug.

Malene has always been Dad’s girl. He has driven her to gymnastics six days a week and she’s always felt that he’s been hers. She’s always crept into his lap and felt it a safe place to be. It’s not the kind of thing you think about when you’re little, then it’s just children’s TV, pizza and Saturday treats, but one day you realise that you’ve always gone to Dad, without really knowing why. She’s heard it before: a Daddy’s girl. Tiril has said it often enough, that’s for sure: go on, run to Daddy.

That hug.

It might not be anything.

But. It was weird.

Something about the way he held her. Something about his breathing. He has been acting pretty strangely of late. She never used to think about what he did when they went to bed. It was sort of obvious. He watched TV. He tidied up. He loaded the dishwasher. He hung up clothes to dry. But now? When she says goodnight to him it’s like he has an aura of fear about him. How long does he stay up, actually? Maybe he’s sad and can’t sleep. Maybe he misses having a girlfriend. She has never had a boyfriend herself. She hasn’t been quite ready for it. But she’s not an idiot, she understands if Dad misses having one. But still. This feels like it’s about something else. That hug, for instance. She came out of her room and caught sight of Dad. He was standing in the hall with Zitha. On his way out. And then he just started acting really weird. His bashful eyes grew moist and he suddenly pulled her close, quite roughly, it was totally spooky. Not in a nice way, not in the warm, cosy way he usually does. It was rough.

Malene fixes her eyes on the door, as if it will open merely by her doing so.

Jesus, Tiril’s become a real pain in the ass. Fourteen, behaving like an idiot. Fine, they’ve never been very close, but she is her sister. They’ve slept in the same room, she’s borrowed toys and jewellery, they’ve taken Zitha out for walks thousands of times and Malene has looked after her since she was small. But now it’s as if she’s disappeared into some idiotic land of her own, going around scowling at everyone, smearing thick layers of emo make-up on, and thinking Evanescence is the answer to everything in the world. It’s fine that she’s got her mind on singing next Thursday. It’s great that she was picked to perform at the final performance of the International Cultural Workshop, and it’s obvious that the director has seen she has talent, it’s all good, but it’s utterly impossible to get an intelligent word out of her, and she can’t be bothered to do her homework, she just lies in bed listening to her iPhone.

Malene puts her forefinger in her mouth, bites right down to the quick.

That hug.

It’s just like Sandra at school, she’s out of it at the moment. Maybe it’s something that happens to everyone, one day you’re just out of it? One day you just have to explode? It happened to Mum. Her head was blown open, and she left. Is it going to happen to Malene too? One day, she’ll be completely out of it?

She takes a few steps forward. She feels her ankle, it’s still sore, how long will it take before she can start training again? She misses it a lot. The smell of the gym hall, the girls in the locker room, that feeling of floating through the air, the kick she gets from it.

She opens the front door, as though to check if he’s standing there, right outside. As if she almost believes he is. Dad.

But there’s nobody out there. Only the yellow glow of the street lights. Only a row of wheelie bins stretching all the way down to the main road. Only the stars in the night sky. Only this autumnal chill after a bright, warm day.

Dad is forgetting things, and his eyes aren’t just dry, they’re vacant. As though at times they’re far away. He smiles all the time, he smiles when they are eating dinner, he smiles in the mornings, he smiles when he gets in from work, he smiles when he sits with the laptop in the evening and he smiles when they have visitors.