Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

A day and a half, then he’ll be out. Then a new life begins. A new style. A new Tong. Quit the drugs. Quit working with Jani and Rudi. He’s moving up a notch. Get the situation with Cecilie sorted out. In or out. All or nothing.

Third conviction. Åne prison is all right but he’s tired of it. The first time, in the mid-nineties, was okay. A good bunch on C2 back then, the older screws still say it. ‘Jesus, Tong,’ Hangelanden says, ‘what you lot had going on in C2 back then, best block we’ve ever had.’ Were good, those times. Almost everyone was someone you knew. Rune, Espen, Diddien and … anyway. All in the past. Only immigrants here now. Back then it was ninety per cent white and ten per cent black. Now it’s the other way around. Now it’s ninety per cent immigrants. The blacks sitting in for rape, the paedos and then the Lithuanians, the Polacks and the Romanians. Idiots who can’t pull off a real job, the ones who stand in your room at night rummaging through your handbag. The ones who smash your windscreen and take your stereo. The ones who are happy to get into a fight, who bump off one another all the time and who send the daily wage they get at Åne home to Poland and think life’s hunky-dory in here. Fifty-six kroner. Fantastic immigration policy. What are they doing here? Tong is adopted but no way does he see himself as a foreigner. He’s Norwegian, he just has the wrong complexion. Simple as that. Send the fuckers home. Close the floodgates. Full stop.

Doing time in Åne isn’t like it was. Things were slacker, there were more fights in the exercise yard and the screws weren’t as extreme about doing everything by the book as they are now.

Tong has stayed clean this time. He’s kept away from the others, been strict. Not that he’s become a Christian or anything, but simply because he couldn’t face it any more. And he’s tried to get that into that kid Bønna’s skull. But he doesn’t get it. He thinks prison is fucking great, you can relax here and it’s a lot less stress than outside. ‘Bønna,’ Tong says, ‘listen to an old dog, that’s what I used to think too. But when you land in here for the third time, then you start to see you’ve screwed up. You realise it’s a pile of shit, the whole thing. You’re fed up with it.’

Tong turns the tap on, lets the water run for a few seconds, bends down, opens his mouth and drinks. He’s got an okay bathroom at least. Was a relief coming here after the first few months in the old block. Rooms without ventilation, rooms without a bog.

Being in the nonce wing is different from doing time for assault or dope. First time he was sent down was for complicity in trafficking of grade A drugs. Four years, got probation after three. That was all right. The second time, aggravated assault, eighteen months, probation after a year. No problem for Tong to get out on probation once he’s inside. No difficulty adapting to the system. But this time it’s different. Being stuck on the nonce wing is very fucking different. Even though he’s not a paedo, even though every inmate in the prison knows who Tong is — he’s not even on the paedo wing — it’s different. The looks the other prisoners send him, they’re different. It’s as though they enjoy it, the fact that he’s not serving time for drugs or violence. As though they want to make him out to be a bit of a paedo all the same.

And if he runs into that girl, that little fucking whorebag, if he so much as catches sight of her again, then she’ll be sorry. No fucking way she looked like she was fourteen. No fucking way she behaved like she was either.

Everything had gone well. They were partying after the warehouse job in Orre. They’d made off with over sixty laptops and a load of other equipment. Then they headed over to that horny bastard Hansi’s place, and there’s always a young crowd there, girls and boys, and line after line on the glass table. She sat on his lap, wanted cocaine and speed and everything she could get, rubbed her crotch against him like he was a car and her pussy was the car wax. He took her into the bedroom and banged her in every hole a woman has. What’s wrong with that?

That’s what he said to the lawyer: ‘Listen, Hanne, no fucking way did she look fourteen, I was off my head, but I didn’t do anything wrong. She wanted me and I wanted her and what’s wrong with that?’

Hanne did her best. She was his prosecutor last time and like he told her: ‘I’ve had you as a prosecutor, Hanne, you were one vicious bitch, now I want you on my side.’ Ah well. Not her fault. It was that slut’s fault.

What he’s going to do about Cecilie, he really doesn’t know.

But he’s done working with those idiots. Rudi and Jani. All done.

Tong gets to his feet. He takes a chocolate chip cookie from the open packet and chews it slowly. His hair is jet black, his facial features are sharply carved as though someone had cut them with a knife. He swallows the biscuit, making sure there’s no crumbs left in his mouth. He straightens up, tenses his body, opens his eyes wide, doesn’t blink. Assumes the stance. Finds balance. Propels himself at the wall.

Up with the lark. Up with the light.

Yet another mystical day in the wealthiest city in the world.

Look at everything glowing.

Feel that heat.

I, a morning person.

Jan Inge can often feel an almost violent sense of joy when the early morning sun rises behind the hedge. When it’s just about to break through the morning mist, streaming towards him like a ball of celestial madness. Then he feels a shiver on the back of his neck and a pressure behind his eyes, and he hears an airy voice call. It’s the sun. It’s that brilliant white fog lamp calling, it’s voice an almost orbicular timbre, spinning like a merry-go-round of sound, and then he has no choice, he has to walk barefoot across the morning dew, across the cold lawn, whispering to the light:

Yes? Master? Yes? I’m here. What would you have of me?

It’s like being married to the earth.

But when you’ve hit 120 it’s not so easy to wish the morning welcome any more. There’s a lot to lug around. The fat has resulted in a depression of sorts, as well as having given rise to a not inconsiderable laziness at being this big. The wheelchair is handy but things have gone too far. He needs to get down to a 100. Maybe 90.

But he doesn’t have to put the wheelchair away of course. It’s not the wheelchair’s fault he’s fat. David Toska wasn’t exaxtly sylphlike either when he was operating in Stavanger. To draw a comparison. And not a bad comparison at that. Toska, our Charles Peace, our Dave Courtney, our Clyde Barrow, our Stanley Mark Rifkin. After all, what do these masterminds have in common? They thought big, they aimed big, and like Toska, they were caught.

He needs to start taking some exercise. Tong’s a demon for the training. Cecilie says he doesn’t do anything in Åna but train. Rudi is naturally thin. Like Cecilie, she’s naturally scrawny. They never need to exercise. While he, the leader, is predisposed to getting fat, really fat. The problem is that Jan Inge has no desire to start working out, besides, what kind of training would he suddenly start at age forty-three, when he hasn’t actively exercised since he dropped out of PE in third year.

Yoga?

He saw a programme about yoga on TV the other day.

Something about the idea of the individual self and the universal soul becoming one.

He saw people sitting on mats with their eyes closed listening to tranquil music from faraway places. A yoga master stated that even though you’re merely sedentary it has the same effect on the body as a half-hour jog.