Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

She sinks down into the mattress, sinks and sinks.

A half-hour later Cecilie is sitting at the dining table in the living room with Rudi and Jan Inge, the table that’s been there since she was a child. This is the nice time of the day, but not for her. She might have thought so before but not now. Motörhead fills the room, Iron Fist at full blast, and nobody speaks; they just relax, as well as they can, all of them. That’s how it is every day. Rudi and Jan Inge love this part of the day, peace and calm and heavy metal. Not everyone understands just how peaceful Motörhead can feel, Rudi maintains. Jan Inge says that even though he’s a country man in his heart of hearts, that it’s actually this time of the day that all his thoughts take shape.

This used to be really nice, I used to enjoy it too, thinks Cecilie. But I’m not able to feel that way any more.

Maybe I shouldn’t go on living, she thinks, feeling just as tired as before she slept. Maybe not, little baby. Maybe that would be for the best. That neither you, nor I, lived. That we were the ones to die. We, who don’t know who your father is. You, who have an ugly slut of a mother. Me, with a slut’s baby in my tummy. Maybe that would be best? My little baby? So people wouldn’t have to be bothered with us? So they wouldn’t have to beat each other to death? Wouldn’t have to hate each other?

Hm?

Baby?

Just a little?

Just die a little?

You and me?

Baby?

She walks by the clothes racks with her hand out, her fingers running along the material of garment after garment.

The light in Hennes & Mauritz is cold and glaring; she’s been there a half-hour without really looking at one single article of clothing. Other customers have come in, the clock has ticked, past five o’clock, getting on for six, work and school are finished, outside the sun is sinking on the horizon, the afternoon is slipping into evening.

She’s had to stop several times and draw breath, close her eyes and swallow so as not to burst out crying. If this is love, she doesn’t understand what it wants with her. She thought love would make her feel good. But what it’s doing is dishing out pain, rending and tearing at her and thrusting her into something unknown and dangerous.

We were supposed to be good to one another, Daniel.

Sandra holds an ocean-blue headscarf between her fingers. She can’t remember having picked it out to look at. Blue, her mother always says, blue suits you, Sandra, nice colour on you, brings out your eyes.

She pays. 69.50. She goes out of the shop and down the escalators, out into the fading light on Domkirkeplassen, the square in front of the cathedral. A normal day in Stavanger. Market traders selling fruit and vegetables, a thin man with a hot-dog stand at the entrance to the SR-Bank chatting with passers-by, a beggar wearing a shawl, a 7-Eleven cup in her hands, sitting cross-legged in Laugmannsgaten, and over by ‘Ting’, a junkie in light-coloured jeans and a tracksuit top selling Asfalt .

Sandra notices daily life around her, but doesn’t take it in. She feels small, she feels afraid. She keeps her eyes lowered, tightens her grip on her H&M bag, enters Arneageren Square, without looking at anyone and steering clear of the teenagers sitting outside Kulturhuset ; she opens the door to McDonald’s.

Sandra hopes Malene comes soon, because right now she needs a friend. She’s taken out her mobile a thousand times and begun writing a text to Daniel, a thousand times she’s pulled his number up on the screen to ring it.

Dear, precious, Daniel. Nothing matters, nothing apart from you and me.

Daniel, you’re everything to me. I love you.

She hasn’t sent either message. She doesn’t like what she has written. Is this how it is? Does love bring out all the pain inside people? Is that love’s secret, the one the Bible doesn’t dare talk about? Maybe this is what every grown-up knows, but avoids saying to their children. Maybe that’s why all grown-ups have something of an ash-grey look in their eyes. Because they know that love is the same as pain.

Sandra orders a cheeseburger and a coke. She sits down with her back against the wall, sets the tray on the table in front of her. She takes a sip of her drink, but can’t taste anything. She lifts up the cheeseburger, brings it to her mouth, takes a bite, not good. Pain in her stomach.

Suddenly something jolts in her mind.

She sits up straight.

Has it been like this the whole time, has she just been blind to it? Facial expressions and words spoken begin detonating in her head, bursting like soap bubbles; an ugly sneer playing on his mouth, his eyes turning steely all of a sudden, his hands going limp, the reticence that sometimes comes over him. Is he toying with me? She feels something spread across her chest, feels her mind begin to clear. The risk of weeping begins to subside. Is this the truth? That he caught sight of her that night in the shop, and what he saw was a stick of candy, something he wanted to taste, as long as it had some flavour? In her mind Sandra goes though the times she’s tried talking to him about something other than exactly what he wants to talk about. What does he do then? He just shuts off, closes down completely.

Sandra clears her throat, almost loudly.

The sick stuff he’s done. Beaten people up. Killed his parents. Whatever it may be. The way he just rides around on his moped. She knows he bunks school a few days a week.

He’s dangerous is what he is.

It’s strange how her heart settles when she has these thoughts. Gradually she begins to notice the people around her, the single father in the Smiths T-shirt sitting with his son over at the steps; he’s finished his food and he’s waiting for his son to do the same, they’re probably going to the cinema. Outside the window, four teenagers, sixth-formers, talking, laughing and waving their hands about, one boy constantly bumping up against a very pretty girl.

Malene opens the door. Her new friend walks with her back straight, with colour in her cheeks and red lipstick on. She’s very pretty, with a body a lot of girls at school envy; it says as much on her Facebook page — oh, such a nice bod, Malene.

‘Hi Sandra, I came as quick as I could…’ Malene sits down, bringing fresh air with her. ‘How are things with you?’

‘Okay.’ Sandra nods and takes a sip of coke to conceal her thoughts.

Malene looks surprised. ‘But you didn’t sound so—’

‘I bought a headscarf.’

Malene leans back into the seat. ‘Cool … let’s have a gander. Hennes?’

‘Mhm,’ Sandra nods, ‘it’s all right.’ She takes the headscarf out of the bag. Hands it to her friend. Malene examines it.

‘It’s nice … blue suits you.’

‘I think I’ll break up with him.’

Malene’s eyes open wide.

‘With Daniel, yeah, I—’

‘What?’

Don’t start crying now. Sandra takes another sip of coke, a bite of the cheeseburger.

‘Jesus, Sandra, what’s happened—’

Sandra looks at her friend. ‘I can’t handle it,’ she says, taking back the headscarf and beginning to tie it around her head, under her hairline. ‘I don’t know who he is. He … I just can’t handle it—’

‘But, I mean, you love him, he loves you, you—’

Sandra nods. Don’t say it, she thinks, don’t say it.

‘Don’t you? Do you not love him any more?’

Sandra ties the headscarf at the nape of her neck.

‘But if you love him, if he is the love of your life—’

‘Yeah, but what if all that love of your life, the one stuff, is just a…’ She can’t manage to finish the sentence. The tears are coming.