Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

Jan Inge looks at him in admiration. ‘Lyrical, brother. If you weren’t working for me, you’d probably be a poet.’

‘A poet?’ Rudi says, slowing his pace, nodding to himself. ‘Yeah. Yeah. Maybe so. I am sensitive, you know. Getting more and more sensitive the older I get.’ He stops, grabs Jan Inge by the lapels and looks at him gravely. ‘Where’s the eleven-year-old who smashed the windows of Hafrsfjord School in 1981 and made off with his first stereo, a Philips with double cassette decks? Where’s the twelve-year-old who took 1,450 kroner from Mathiessen’s banana wholesalers on Løkkeveien in 1982? Where’s the Rudi who beat the shit out of a thirty-year-old at Tjensvoll Shopping Centre in 1983?’

‘You know,’ says Jan Inge, ‘back then you were a diamond in the rough. Now you’re mature and rich with experience.’

The friends continue walking. The night envelops them, the woods seem warm.

‘Yeah, I feel more mature and all,’ Rudi sighs. ‘They were great times. Out at the weekends. Gathering in the light beneath the lampposts. Hanging around and messing about, waiting to see what would come our way. Took my first car when I was twelve, have I told you that?’

‘Yeah.’

Rudi’s cheeks take on a hearty glow. ‘Out in Bryne. At Rieber-Thorsen Auto Dealership. An Opel. Could just about see over the windscreen wiper. Frax and me parked it out near the airport. Sniffed lighter fuel and listened to late-night radio. Fell asleep in the back seat. Great times. Free and easy.

‘To your grandmother’s great disappointment. And your brother—’

Rudi exhales heavily. ‘Jani. Please. It’s still painful for me to think about that there.’

‘Right, I didn’t mean to…’

Rudi nods and waves his hand as if to brush it away. ‘Not like I’m proud of everything either. Fucked if I know what went on in our heads half the time … Did I ever tell you about that one night we knocked over twenty-nine gravestones in Tjensvoll cemetery? Ungodly. If somebody tipped over Granny’s headstone. I’d fucking brain them.’

‘That’s just how boys are,’ Jan Inge says. ‘You shouldn’t take it so seriously.’

‘You’re right. I’ve become so soft. Tip over a gravestone. So what. Put it back up again, Mr Grave Minder! Get over it. Let boys be boys. You’re right. Where will it end? Do you think I’ll be floating beneath the ceiling someday, crying twentyfourseven?’

Jan Inge laughs. ‘Who knows?’ He stops and looks at Rudi. ‘Okay. Quiz. Blood! Blood!’

‘Ha ha. Easy. Not only blood! Fulci, 1981. House by the Cemetery .’

‘Correct. And what does Fulci teach us? That one day it’ll all be too late. Before you even know it. And what lesson should we take from that? That we…’

‘…must always nurture love,’ they say in unison.

‘Justaboutright, brother of wisdom!’

‘Heh heh.’

And in this buoyant mood, filled with memories and musings, they trudge on uphill towards the substation, where they are to meet Pål in just under half an hour.

The Volvo drives slowly through the small centre of Nærbø village. Street light after street light, not many people. Two cars, an old Kadett and a rusty Carina, are parked beside each other outside Statoil, their windows rolled down. Two boys sit behind the wheel of both, chatting to one another. A girl sits in the passenger seat of the Opel, twiddling her boyfriend’s long hair between her fingers while blowing a chewing-gum bubble. A tattoo on her forearm: Salve I love you you nutcase . There’s a man in a boiler suit from the farmers’ co-op in front of one of the houses; he’s smoking and teasing a dog with a stick. Two motorcyclists tear past her car, the harsh engine sounds piercing the darkness. What do people do in such a small place? Work at a plant nursery? At a newsagents? Maybe it’s a good place to bring up a child?

The headlights stream ahead, dissecting the night as Cecilie drives out on to the flat expanse of Opstadsletta. It’s deserted here. A deep darkness extending towards endless open country.

They did a job out here once. It was while they were working together with The Shabby Ones. That was a mistake. Some loan-shark shit that took place in a barn, something to do with a kid and drugs. Rudi nearly killed the guy, kicked him in the head and beat him with big logs of wood.

Cecilie can’t be bothered listening to music right now. She just wants quiet. She told them she’s going to Åna to arrange things with Tong, fill him in on the job tomorrow. But what is it she actually wants to do?

She closes her eyes. Drives blindly for a few seconds.

Say it like it is?

Tong, I have something to tell you.

And what’s he going to say then?

She opens her eyes again.

Jesus. I’d do anything for you.

Did he mean it?

Or is he like all the other boys, who only love you before they come? Because that’s what they want, frigging boys, their eruptions. That’s when they’re weak, that’s when they’re strong, that’s when they’ll wait on you hand and foot, the world over, when they’re tensed, when you have them inside you, when you have them in your mouth, when you have them in your hands. Then they’ll do anything for you, then everything they own is yours. She once screwed a biker with a tic from Hommersåk — the guy that carried out all the motorcycle robberies in the early nineties, held up places all over Rogaland, made off with millions. What was his name, Bjørn Roger Kydland? While she was riding him, he said: I’ll give you two hundred thousand if you promise to fuck me every week for the rest of my life. And the Fokkt Brothers? Cecilie remembers them well, Poster and Sorry, Pål Stephen Vogt and Stein Eskil Vogt. Poster and Sorry were from Eiganes and they always came together — like, they always came together. There was no end to their prattle before they did either, Cecilie, fuck you’re gorgeous. But afterwards? Neither of them would wait on her hand and foot. She’d just lie there, fourteen years old, jizz in her hair from one and jizz in her face from the other. They were sick in the head. They first worked as bouncers at New York. Then they were fitness instructors at S.A.T.S Training. After that they started a hairdressers in Kvadrat Shopping Centre. Then they disappeared. But hey, they still exist. Just google them. Put in Brothers of Porn and you’ll find a webpage. Sorry and Porno have done well in the brother porn business. Brothers in Arms, O Brother Where Art Thou, He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother, Big Brother, The Grimm Brothers, Brother Oh Brother. Did the mother not kill herself when she heard what her boys were actually up to in Hungary; thought they were running an IT company, and later she saw a scene from Brother Beyond with Poster dressed in a tennis outfit, ramming a racket up Sorry’s ass? Yeah, that’s right, she did.

Both Cecilie and the Fokkt Brothers’ mum have learnt by experience. You can’t rely on boys.

Apart from Rudi. Cecilie can depend on him.

He’s an awful idiot, she thinks. But he’ll never leave me.

He’d die before he’d leave me.

Cecilie sees the silhouette of Åna rise up in the darkness. She slows down and indicates, sees the long, impressive driveway come into view. If you didn’t know what this place was and you happened to drive up in a dim light you could easily believe it was the avenue to a castle

Wendy, darling, light of my life, I’m not going to hurt you…

The telephone rings.

…you didn’t let me finish my sentence, I said, I’m not gonna hurt you…