Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

‘I—’ he stops himself, this has to come out right. ‘I’m not able to protect myself when I’m with you.’

Furrows appear on Sandra’s forehead, her hands begin to clench.

‘When I’m not with you I sometimes think I should break it off, that we shouldn’t be together.’ Daniel is conscious these words aren’t coming out right, he can hear how dangerous it is saying them out loud, yet he’s unable to stop: ‘But when I see you, then I just want to have you.’

Sandra weeps inaudibly. Her body is limp. He doesn’t like looking so he turns his head and continues: ‘I didn’t know she wanted to be with me. Not like that. Not in that way. But she did. I can get on fine without her, but at the same time it’s like she … fuck, you know? It’s as if she’s good for me somehow, while you’re not good for me, even though you’re the one I need. Do you understand?’

Sandra has closed her eyes. She looks like she’s going to keel over, as though her knees are going to give way any second.

‘Do you understand?’

She doesn’t say anything. She just stands there with her eyes shut, crying. Fucking hell, she looks so beautiful. Okay, he thinks. Not so strange she has to mull it over a bit. She’s just got a considerable dose of honesty right in the face. But if she managed to listen to what he was saying, then she’s understood who he needs. That was what she wanted to know, wasn’t it? Who it is you want. He’s said it as clearly as he could, without lying. He likes Veronika, he’s not planning on letting her down. If Sandra’s thinking of a life with him, then she’ll have to learn to deal with Veronika. Just like Veronika will have to face the fact that it’s Sandra he needs.

‘Sandra?’ he says in a soft voice. ‘Are you all right with this?’

‘Did she cut herself for you?’

She opens her eyes, they’re overflowing with tears.

He nods.

Sandra swallows. ‘Just one more thing, Daniel, then I’ll let everything be.’ She brings her hand to her throat, fiddles with her necklace. ‘I need to know who you are.’

‘Hm?’

‘I need to know who you are. What you’ve seen. What you’ve done.’

Ponderous beasts surround the football pitch, crippled mongrels. They’ve emerged from out of the woods. Groups of small boys stand just behind them, all dressed in beige wadmal, all barefoot, all with horses’ heads, all with bleeding eyes. One of the boys holds a lance in his right hand. He raises it and at the same moment the horse heads begin to scream, a piercing, depraved shrieking, and the sky overflows with a rapacious light, and there, in the heavens, the sun is on fire, burning with raging flames. The boy with the lance summons the muscles in his body, tenses his arm, brings it back and sends the lance up into the sky.

‘A wolf,’ whispers Daniel and sees the beasts withdraw, moving backwards into the woods, followed by the boys in horses’ heads.

‘Hm?’ Sandra juts her chin out. ‘I didn’t hear what you said.’

The sound of footsteps coming across the gravel behind them. Daniel and Sandra turn around. Malene. It’s Malene.

She should sit at the front of the stage playing piano. Sing. Just her, a piano and the audience. Like Amy Lee. But she can’t play the piano. It’s just as well Thea is taking care of the music so she can concentrate totally on vocals. There’s a video like that on YouTube, where Amy is sitting on a stool singing while the guitarist in the band is responsible for the music. But Amy is kind of fat there and doesn’t look too good, and the backdrop isn’t great either.

‘Candles?’

Tiril has pictured it. That they can cut out the spotlight and the coloured lights. It would be a lot more intense if they bought a load of candles — pillar candles, purple and white — and turned off the lights in the hall.

‘Yeah, good, eh?’

Tiril and Thea walk through the double doors into the gym hall. Lots of people are there, things are already underway and Svein Arne is busy helping with rehearsals. He’s the one responsible for organising things, Svein Arne Bendiksen. He’s in charge of the school revue and he’s a musician — good at everything. People say he held the county record in playing fast on the guitar when he was younger and he’s able to play the saxophone, the piano and the oboe, and one time a guitarist from a really huge band, Tyler Straits or something, heard Svein Arne play, and he said that Svein Arne was a mega talent.

‘I’m certain it would look good,’ Tiril continues, as they hurry into the hall. She unbuttons her jacket and waves to Svein Arne.

‘Tiril! Thea! Great!’ Svein Arne comes towards them smiling. ‘Good stuff, we can have you on soon.’

‘Listen, we were thinking,’ Tiril says, ‘about the lighting…’

‘You’ll have to talk to the lighting crew about it…’

‘Yeah, I know, but you’re the director,’ Tiril laughs, ‘or the manager. Anyway, what about if it’s all totally dark, right, when we’re introduced. Then we, like, come on stage, Thea in white, me in black, and I go and light up ten or twenty big candles while Thea plays the intro…’

Svein Arne nods, clearly impressed. His long curls bobbing about his enthusiastic face. ‘But if it’s going to be that dark, then maybe you should consider wearing something other than all black…’

‘Nah, I’ll have some candles right beside me…’

He laughs. ‘Right, just make sure you don’t catch fire then. Great. That sounds atmospheric. You’re on in about twenty minutes. We’re going through the programme in the same order as tomorrow. I’m just going to finish up with the dancers from Eksilstuna. You have to see them, they’re really good.’

He jogs back to the stage: ‘Right, okay, we’ll go again. Ingrid, Susanna, wasn’t it, yeah, Susanna, Kadi … Kadija, yes, Malin, Badra! Mina! Ulrik! Okay, let’s take it from … let me see … what is it Taylor Swift sings there … we are never, ever, ever, yeah two times on ever , no wait, actually it’s three times here…’

‘Taylor Swift,’ Tiril snorts. ‘Candles. Thea, you play the intro. I’ll go and light them. It’ll look cool, yeah?’

Tiril takes off her jacket. Then she gets a look in her eyes. Money. Twenty pillar candles. That’ll cost a bit. She can’t afford it. She’s not getting paid before next week.

‘Thea?’

‘Mhm?’

‘I was wondering … can you get the money for candles?’

‘Sure,’ Thea says, with a facial expression as if it were an odd question.

‘Cool. We’ll buy them tomorrow. He’s really good, Svein Arne, isn’t he?’

‘Mhm, yeah, he can play so many instruments.’

They survey the gym hall. Strange when it’s filled with people from other countries. They’re all being put up in pupils’ homes. There’s one in Tiril’s year who has a Finnish girl from Jyväsklä staying with her, another in Malene’s year who has a girl from Antsirabe in Madagascar living with her — she’s really cool, she’s going to give a speech, apparently, and recite a poem. And Ulrik, he’s going to play the guitar; cute, little Ulrik, so popular he makes all the girls melt.

‘They’re all from twin towns of Stavanger,’ says Thea. ‘Do you know anyone?’

‘Well…’ she wrinkles up her nose, ‘spoke a little with a girl from Denmark…’

‘They’re from, let me see,’ Thea counts on her fingers, ‘Fjardabyggd, that’s in Iceland somewhere, Esteli in Nicaragua, Houston, in Texas of course, and from Esbjerg in Denmark, Nablus, that’s in Palestine…’

‘Yeah, yeah, Brainy, I know, you’re so good at…’