Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

What happens is that you begin to get good at it. You loosen up, your gestures become uninhibited and plausible, and your face, which was nervous the first few times, takes on a similarly assured look. In a surprisingly short space of time none of the original distress is visible. Your face melts together with the lies. You start to see the world the way the lies explain it, and it doesn’t take long before you defend them, tend to them, and cuddle them, ugly children that they are.

He doesn’t think about anything else. He gets up, makes breakfast, and drives off in the car, doing 30 in the morning traffic, and the lies fill his whole head, his whole being. It has become a world of its own. Once they were necessary stories, sentences uttered to wriggle free from a situation. Then they became the narrative of a life. Then they became something to live. Something true. I just stayed up last night surfing the net. I’m just going to take Zitha out for a walk. Is that how it fits together? That the lies are now the truth? That without them he does not exist, because they are what he resorts to every day in order to keep it together? A little earlier he went into his boss, smiled, and said: ‘I need to take off for a couple of hours, one of my daughters is sick.’

It felt good to say it, as if there was a girl lying at home with a temperature, who needed her daddy. He saw the lie materialise in front of him. He saw it take effect, spring to life and become real.

‘Poor thing, by all means, you take off home, Pål.’

He turns off the motorway, drives uphill at Ullandhaugbakken.

To tear down an entire life. It’s so easy.

Three things have ruined everything. The wife. The money. And the lies.

Day one for the whole thing, was when Christine came home and said I need to talk to you, Pål . She spoke calmly, almost in a whisper, and told him that it wasn’t working. Wasn’t working. There’s no passion. No passion? I’ve met somebody. Hell opened up around them, kids dissolving in tears. Jesus, he’d never forget Malene’s face and the feeling of having smashed a child to pieces. But Christine managed to see it through. She had the strength to go ahead with it. She left, for Bergen and another bloody man. As though she wasn’t a mother at all. She managed to leave her kids. That took some doing. Everyone he has talked to agrees. Everyone — especially women — agree that it’s an action bordering on inhuman. Jesus! They exclaim. She just left? And you’re stuck here? Yeah. It was that situation, and everything it ushered in. A single dad, just like that. Who had prepared him for it?

But he coped. Touch wood.

Then came the next phase: money.

Never being able to buy the kids anything extra. Always having to search the papers for special offers on mince, on sausages, frozen pizza and fuck knows what else. That horrible feeling when he and the children were round at Mum’s for Sunday dinner, and all he could think was: free meal. That horrible feeling of gladness when the girls were invited round to school friends’ homes during the week: they’ll get something to eat there.

Before he started winning, and losing, there were no lies to be found in his life. Perhaps there was shame, perhaps an insidious desperation, a sense of relief when the kids got plenty of gifts at Christmas and on birthdays, but there were no lies. Or were there. The lies came with the money — or did they come when he started losing it?

Is he thinking clearly now? Has he always had them in him? The lies?

No, I haven’t, he says to himself as the tower blocks come into view.

I’m not thinking very clearly now.

He drives down Folkeviseveien. Past the bin at the bus shelter where he usually gets rid of everything he can’t face opening. Letters from debt collection agencies. Bills. His hands are sweating, sticking to the leather of the steering wheel. Someday they’ll be at the door. The police, the betting companies and the debt collectors. They’ll soon be there.

He brings the car to a halt, puts on the handbrake, releases the seat belt, grits his teeth, rubs his eye with the back of his hand, and then hurries into the house. Down to the basement. Over to the computer. His pulse is pounding like a fist. He needs to get a move on, get a move on before things catch up with him, he just needs to do it, one last time.

Username: Maiden.

His fingers stiffen, they are cold. He performs a quick wrist stretch and finger flex, blows on them, places them back on the keyboard: do it, one last try, there’s still time to get out of this, there’s still time to avoid meeting Rudi.

Password: Zitha

Blackjack.

‘Dad?’

Pål gives a start, moves the mouse to click on the little x in the top right corner of the screen, but the arrow veers here and there, and his fingers tremble.

Footsteps coming down the stairs.

Shit, shit, shit. This bloody machine, it’s so slow.

‘Dad?’

He hears her in the hall, just outside the door.

There. He manages to close the webpage. And there. He manages to open the one he always keeps minimised, just in case.

‘Dad? You home? I saw the car…’

Malene walks into the room.

‘Yeah, I…’ Pål sighs wearily, offers her a quick glance and taps his feet against the floor. ‘Well…’ He begins to laugh. ‘No, it’s kind of stupid, Malene, I…’ His laughter gets louder, gets dangerously close to seeming unnatural. ‘Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said about Tiril, about me not giving her enough attention … so I was sitting here trying to see if I could find an Evanescence T-shirt for her.’

He laughs. Loudly. She looks askance at him.

He types quickly: www.evanescence.com. Trying to make it look as practised as possible. Enter site. Merch.

‘There, eh? Nice T-shirts, eh?’

He points at the screen. Malene leans forward, squinting over his shoulder.

‘They look good, don’t they? What about that one?’

‘I think that band is stupid,’ she says. ‘But she’ll love you for it.’

She looks at him obliquely. He gets to his feet, pulls her close, hugging her so she won’t see his face, which right now is not able to keep the lies in place.

‘So, school?’ he says. ‘Everything going okay?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ says Malene. She frees herself from his embrace, avoids his eyes. ‘Nothing special happened. Had an all right day. Just doing my homework now. Tiril won’t be home for dinner, but you haven’t forgotten that. She’s rehearsing for tomorrow.’

Malene jogs up the stairs. ‘You do the shopping, yeah?’

‘Yes!’ He calls out, admiring the tone and high pitch of his own voice. ‘No problem!’

Pål sits back down in front of the computer.

There is no collection agency, no online gaming, no tears, nothing.

Women’s. Dark Angel Babydoll T. Front and Back Print. $20.00. Add to cart.

‘Yes, hello, this is Ludvig Nilsen speaking. Now, I wanted to get from Hillevåg to Gosen tonight, heh heh.’

‘By bus?’

‘Yes, by bus. Public transport. Knights of the environment. Nature’s best friend.’

‘Okay, then you must take a number 7.’

‘Must I?’

‘Yes, and you must hop on that either at Tjensvollkrysset — a number 3 will take you there from Hillevåg — or…’

‘Didn’t you just say a number 7?’

‘Yes, but in order to get the 7, the easiest thing for you to do would be to hop on at Tjensvollkrysset, and to get there you’ll need to take the 3 from Hillevåg, or take it into the city centre and then catch a number 1. From Hillevåg. To Stavanger Station.’