Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

‘They can stick their public transport up their hole as far as I’m concerned, Rudi says. ‘I hate buses, I’ve always hated buses.’

Jan Inge tries to make eye contact with him. ‘ Hei, mein Freund, ’ he says, trying to lighten the atmosphere with a little German, ‘ ein Pfennig für deine Gedanken .’

‘I’m not thinking about anything,’ Rudi sighs, ‘It’s … Scheisse. It’s just feelings. Feelings feelings feelings! You just can’t always bloody well describe feelings.’

Well said, Jan Inge thinks, and they continue on their way up the incline. The mystical sun warms their faces. I’ll leave it alone, he thinks; right now it’s all about solid leadership.

‘It’s like I’m always telling you,’ he says, in as mild a tone as he can muster. ‘You’re an emotional person, Rudi, you do your best, day in, day out, and then a whole army of feelings invades your body, and that’s just how life is. Come on, let’s wake up Hansi.’

Hansi is a thin guy, whose slightly mangy appearance tends to put people in mind of a dog. He’s been in and out of prison since he was nineteen, and on opening the door to his two old friends, he scarcely raises his eyebrows, before motioning with a wan hand for them to come in while he shuffles back into the house.

‘Hi, man, feeling a bit rough today?’

Jan Inge and Rudi exchange a look and follow him. They enter the living room, where Hansi plonks himself down in an old sofa centred behind a coffee table covered with liquor bottles.

‘I’m drinking a bit at the moment,’ he mutters. ‘Working a lot. Been over and back to Sweden loads, to Gothenburg. Not right in the head, those Albanians. How are things in Toyland? What’s going on in the lives of Sly and Gobbo? Any break-ins lately?’

Hansi grins, brings a liquor bottle to his lips and takes a large swig. Jan Inge bunches the muscles in his jaw tightly. You look like my mother, he thinks.

‘What do you g—’

‘We need a loan of the van,’ interrupts Jan Inge. ‘And the trailer.’

Hansi looks at them askance. ‘And so the two of you turn up here and think everything is going to be sitting waiting for you?’

Rudi keeps his mouth shut. Jan Inge doesn’t move a muscle.

‘Okay, okay,’ Hansi says, ‘fine. And what if I say I need them myself? If I tell you that you can’t have a loan of them?’

‘Then we’ll say—’

‘Then we’ll know where we stand with you,’ says Jan Inge curtly. ‘You owe us, Hansi.’

He gives Rudi a brief nod.

Hansi looks from one of them to the other. ‘And how long am I to go on owing you?’

‘Listen.’ Jan Inge’s eyes narrow. ‘We’ve been fair to you. We could have smashed your kneecaps. After what you did. We could have let people know the kinds of things you like to get up to. We haven’t done either.’

Hansi gets to his feet, takes another quaff of the bottle and picks up a pair of trousers hanging over the back of a chair. He rummages through the pockets, pulls out a key ring.

‘You’re a loser, Jani, and you know it. You’ve been at it for thirty fucking years or something, and you haven’t … yeah, fuck it, whatever. Here.’

He chucks the keys to Jan Inge. Rudi inhales quickly, takes a few steps, grabs hold of Hansi’s head, glares in his eyes and headbutts him.

‘You never fucking talk that way to Jani, you hear me!’

‘Shit, I’m bleeding!’

‘Fucking right you’re bleeding, motherbleedfucker! You want to bleed some more? Eh? You want to bleed out your ears? You want to bleed out your ass?’

Jan Inge smiles. He loves this. He fucking loves this.

Rudi. Rudi. Rudi.

‘You want to bleed inside your head?’

‘No! No! Rudi! Jesus!’

It’s just like Jan Inge is at a football stadium and thousands upon thousands of people are standing with their arms in the air and their mouths open, shouting: Ru-di! Ru-di! Ru-di!

Rudi’s body tenses, almost to the extent that Jan Inge can see the adrenalin surge through his arms and legs as he kicks Hansi repeatedly in the back, as he crouches down, lifts Hansi up by the hair and plants his fist in his face.

‘Now,’ Rudi says, straightening up. He grasps his knuckles, then shakes off the pain and spits on Hansi: ‘You keep your mouth shut, cockbreath. Loser? Who the hell’s the loser here?’

Hansi lies on the floor writhing in pain.

‘Rudi can’t hear you,’ Rudi grabs hold of the bottle Hansi was drinking from. He stands over him. ‘Open your gob, daisy-picker.’

‘W-wha?’

Peeping at him in terror, blood all over his face, Hansi opens his mouth.

‘Wider!’

‘Wwwider?’

‘Wider!’

Hansi opens wide and Rudi empties the remaining contents of the bottle down his throat. ‘Hey, cockaholic! You drinking a bit at the moment? Drink some more! Hey, buttaholic, I didn’t hear you? Who’s the loser?’

Hansi coughs and spits, blood and booze. ‘Me,’ comes the meek voice from the floor.

‘Toofuckingright,’ Rudi snorts. ‘And the next time you say anything out of order about the Master, I’ll skin your dick, and the next time you put your cock into one of the schoolboys round here, I’ll be fifteen metres away, and fifteen seconds after you’re finished I’ll jam fifteen cactuses up your ass.’

Jan Inge clenches his fist tighter around the key ring.

This here, this is what makes life worth living.

‘Hansi,’ he says, ‘you’re a really good … what is it they say in Sweden … a jättegod … friend. You’ll get the Transporter and the trailer back over the weekend. No problem. Really appreciate it.’

They walk back out the front door, to the front of the house.

‘About fucking time, that there,’ Rudi says, glowing.

‘Felt right, no doubt about it,’ Jan Inge says, lumbering towards Hansi’s grey Transporter.

‘Tong would have enjoyed that,’ says Rudi, opening the driver’s door.

‘Cecilie would have enjoyed that,’ replies Jan Inge.

‘That’s my woman,’ Rudi says, getting inside. ‘What are we having for dinner?’

‘Fishcakes,’ says Jan Inge, landing in the seat, the van listing with his weight.

Rudi sticks the key in and starts the engine. ‘Fishcakes,’ he says, reversing out the drive, ‘remind me of Granny. The good, old days.’

‘I know,’ says Jan Inge. ‘And listen, what you were brooding over earlier, the private stuff and all that, you need to just shelve that.’

‘Hell yeah,’ Rudi says, as the sun, low in the sky, hits the windscreen and dazzles him momentarily, making the whole world gleaming and white, ‘it’s just I’m so fucking sensitive sometimes.’

The van glides down the street.

‘Ah.’ Rudi lets out a deep breath. ‘Jumping Jiminy, that felt good. Jesus, it’s been a long time since I’ve used my fists. Right, I’m going to make a call here!’

Rudi takes out his mobile, turns to Jan Inge and gives him a nod and a wink. He chortles to himself as he leans over to the glove compartment, roots around in it a little, fetches out a pen and paper, tosses it into Jan Inge’s large lap and says, in a low, rasping tone: ‘Now, pay attention, busfuck.’

That the days should be so filled with lies. He doesn’t understand how he has managed to sink so deeply into it. One lie. Okay. It’s no big deal. It feels uncomfortable, like sticking your hand into a compost heap on a warm day, but the discomfort soon passes. Two lies. Fair enough. You shake them off. And then a third lie to cover up the preceding ones. Not quite so pleasant, what that entails. The stories need to correspond, need to fit together. Your face, it needs to fit too; it needs to match who you are. But who are you? What world are you living in? A fourth lie to correlate all the stories. It starts getting heavier, starts to whiten. It starts snowing inside you.