Truls returns after half an hour. He’s carrying two plastic cartons in a bag. Lasagne, and meatballs in sauce.
– Mother and Father will be back shortly, he announces.
Jo snorts. – And you believe that?
– They’re just finishing eating.
Truls is eight and doesn’t understand a thing about the world yet. Jo laughs his head off. Is about to tell him what
he
thinks. Checks himself. Let him go on believing in Santa Claus a while longer, he thinks, and it makes him feel like a good big brother. Again that thought of taking Truls and Nini somewhere else. Him and Ylva, because she might well come along, after they’ve been to that cave she’s going to show him. Suddenly he’s filled with a furious rage towards Mother and Arne, mostly towards Mother. No one asked him if he would mind sitting the whole evening in the apartment. And he’s no intention of doing that either. Get Nini to sleep, maybe wait for Truls to drop off too, because that never takes long. He intends to go out, no matter how bad Nini is. If she stops breathing and they find her early next morning, lifeless and blue in the face, then it’s their own fault.
He undresses in the bathroom. Stands a moment in front of the mirror, bends forward and looks down his body, down to the navel. If he closes his eyes, he can see Ylva. She’s wearing her bikini, and her bare shoulders are warm. If he wants, he can get her to put her hand on the front of his shorts.
I know a place
, she says very quietly, because no one else is to hear her. They come to the end of the beach and climb over the jagged rock. No, they walk round it, wade out into the warm water and in towards a bay on the other side.
I know a cave
, says Ylva, and she feels what has happened down in his shorts and stops and turns towards him, and then they kiss.
He hears the front door open. He freezes, slips in behind the shower curtain, turns it on. The boiling-hot water makes him groan in pain.
– Jo?
– I’m in the shower, he explains, and twists the tap over down to blue.
– Don’t you think it’s a
liddle
bit late? Mother snuffles. – I thought you’d gone to bed.
He can hear her sitting down on the toilet seat. Can see her outline through the thin curtain.
– Aren’t you going out again? he asks.
– Not while Nini isn’t well, of course not.
She finishes and flushes. He can tell from her voice that soon she’ll be asleep. He turns towards the wall, lets the cold water cascade down. Hears the curtain being pulled aside.
– I am showering, he repeats, quite angry now.
– I can see that, Jo. It certainly doesn’t bother
me
at all. We always used to shower together before. She steps in and stands behind him. He realises she’s taken off all her clothes.
– Hey, this is ice cold. Are you trying to
fweeze
to death?
She turns the water back up. It takes a while for it to get warmer.
– There’s no need to be shy with me, Jo. I’m your mother after all, aren’t I? I’ve always given you a good soaping and then
rinsened
you off and dried you, haven’t I?
She fills her palm with shower oil and begins to rub his shoulders.
– Don’t be shy, Jo. Being naked together is quite natural.
She’s still standing behind him; she puts her arms around his chest and rubs down towards his stomach. Suddenly she bends forward and kisses his neck.
– Jo, she says, as she goes on rubbing with that slippery oil that smells of lilac. He can’t stand lilac. There’s someone else standing somewhere in the shadows, beating away with a hammer, someone who appears whenever this happens, who makes him feel like it isn’t Jo who’s there, but this other boy, who goes along with everything.
– You’re a nice boy, Jo. You’re so nice … so nice.
– I’m not Jo, he murmurs as he lifts his face to the stream of water.
It’s approaching 10.30 when he puts on his shoes. Mother’s in the bedroom and lies there whimpering in her sleep, naked and still wet, because she wasn’t able to dry herself properly. Jo creeps back into the bathroom. Wipes himself clean with a towel yet again. Takes the bottle of aftershave from the shelf. It smells of Arne, and he wrinkles his nose but fills his fist and rubs it over both sides of his neck. He feels it burning, ice cold. He takes a swig of the pale blue liquid. Tastes of soap and flowers. It wants to come back up again. He forces it to stay down. On his way towards the front door, he remembers something, opens the kitchen drawer and finds what he borrowed from Ylva. The combination corkscrew, tin opener and bottle opener. Take it along and give it to her now. Because it’s still not too late to find her. She’s in a café somewhere up near the main road. Good way to get a conversation going. Joke about the opener. That it was beer he was going to open yesterday morning, or a bottle of wine. At any rate, not tuna. And she’ll laugh about the can of tuna, laugh at how he forgot to give it back to her, laugh while she pinches his arm, and then he can wrap himself around her. Pretty much the way Jacket said it would happen.
Daniel and the others aren’t at the pool any more. No grown-ups either, but from the terrace comes the sound of shouting and laughter. Jo thinks he can hear Arne’s voice, Arne telling jokes, and the skinny old bird laughing. He withdraws into the shadow, over to the steps, runs towards the miniature golf. The course is lit up. He sees the Swedish boy – Pontus – who was on their team when they played football. His hair is almost white and he has a ring in one ear. Pontius Pilate, thinks Jo …
She
isn’t there. Not her friend either, nor Daniel. He ambles over. Two other boys, both Swedes, watch as Pontus concentrates on the ninth hole. They give Jo a quick glance. Doesn’t seem like they want to talk to him, and that’s not why he’s there anyway.
– Where are the others?
Pontus Pilate thinks about it. – A café somewhere.
He nods in the direction of the world outside the hotel area.
Jo hurries along the main road. Suddenly furious with Arne, who made him look after the kids when he should have been out with Ylva. With Mother, who had to come home before he could leave. Two mopeds buzz by. Music from a bar. That kind of strumming on a Greek guitar that gets faster and faster, like a carousel. He curses again, this time because he didn’t ask Daniel the name of the café they were going to. Turns and heads back again. Decides to wait at the entrance to the hotel area. Sooner or later they’ll have to come this way. Passes a park on the other side of the street. Catches a glimpse of movement between the bushes.
It’s them
. Is about to call to them, but the shout never comes out. Daniel is holding her by the hand. There are no others with them. They disappear into the darkness.
He staggers on, round the next corner. He stops behind the building, supports himself against a container. He has to check to see if he’s made a mistake. Climbs over a fence, approaches the park from the lower side. Creeps bent double along the hedge.
They’re sitting between two bushes. Light from the café on the other side draws the shape of their bodies. They’re making out. He creeps even closer, so close he can hear them whispering to each other. Daniel has his hand up under her top. He can’t see her hands; they must be out of sight, down his shorts.
It wasn’t them he saw. Not Ylva. Not Daniel. It was too dark to see who it was. They weren’t whispering together. Go down to her apartment. Knock. If she’s home, it must be someone else sitting up there in the bushes, in the darkness. If she isn’t home, he can tell her father where she is. Then sneak back up there. Find them lying in the grass, her with the tiny little skirt bunched like a sausage round her stomach and her knickers flopping on one ankle, Daniel on top of her, because not one single sonofabitch in hell could be in any doubt about who that is carrying on up there in that park.
– Ylva, he says aloud. Repeats the name several times, knowing that he’ll never, ever say it again.
There’s something in his pocket. The tin opener. He digs it out, flips up the corkscrew. It’s sharp and makes his fingers prickle when he jabs it around on his underarm. In the kids’ playground he finds a tree. Carve on it with that stiletto of a corkscrew. A couple of words he has to get one last time, not
Ylva
but
Fucking Ylva.
Ylva doesn’t give a fuck. Not Daniel. Daniel doesn’t know anything about Ylva and Jo. Cut around the whole trunk of the tree, peel off the bark in strips so it can’t live.
Something soft rubbing against his leg. He jumps. The one-eyed kitten. He bends down and gets hold of it by the skin of its neck. Yes, now you can fucking wail, you moaning bastard, always coming over here and rubbing your arse up against me, you hear me, fucking cat? It wriggles about and tries to scratch him, and that’s what makes him really angry. It’s small, not much bigger than one of Arne’s shoes, and the thought enrages him. With one hand he squashes it hard again the tree; he pulls his belt off with the other, passes a loop around the cat’s neck and pulls it as tight as he can. It hangs there, wriggling and squirming about. He fastens the belt around a branch and stares at it. Stares everything evil into that sick little cat face. It’s only got one eye, but that’s one too fucking many, it seems to him; not him, but the other one, he’s the one that’s there now, the one who stands in the dark and pounds away with a sledgehammer shouting
Don’t let it see me, no one must see me.
He holds the little head in an iron grip, pokes away at it with Ylva’s tin opener, holds the animal at arm’s length so it can’t reach him with its claws. It’s hissing and screeching; he squeezes harder, and something green spurts out of its tiny mouth. Spit on me would you, you little fucker. He gets a finger down in the good eye, holds it open, jabs at it with the corkscrew. The cat makes a sound like a baby, like Nini when she lies away screaming all night long. He pushes the coils inwards, twisting until the eye gives and something wet dribbles out on to the back of his hand. Twists a few more turns and pulls it out as hard as he can. The fur in his hand goes limp. He tensions the belt so much the thin neck closes up and is almost cut right through. And yet it still isn’t dead. He leaves it hanging there and walks over to the swing and finds a big, sharp stone. Throws the limp creature onto the ground, bends over and pounds the stone against the soft head until he hears it splinter like dry tinder and the tiny ear fills with blood.
Sometime later he loosens the belt and throws the clump of fur off into the bushes. Hears voices getting closer and hides in between the slide and the swings. No surprise if someone comes to see what all the noise was about. But they walk on by, disappear down the steps. He creeps over to the gate, opens it. There’s a cord hanging from it, probably from a sweatshirt. He reaches down into the bushes and pulls out the slimy fur body. Ties the cord around its neck and takes it with him. You know exactly what to do with this, the whisper in his ear says. Whose fucking door you’re going to hang this on.
Calmer now he’s done what he was told to do, he walks back up the steps and back into the playground. Sits on one of the swings. He’s too big and heavy, the whole structure sways, and this calm can’t be trusted, his stomach is still churning way down low and it won’t stop. The yellow flag was waving on the beach when he and Daniel went up in the afternoon. Bound to be still up. That’s the way it is now, he mutters. Not just medium danger any more.
Soundlessly he lets himself in. The light is on in the room. Truls must have woken up and turned it on. He’s sleeping up on the sofa beside Nini. The duvet has slipped off and is lying half on the floor. Jo stands there looking at the sleeping bodies. Truls will miss him.
Truls needs you, Jo
. Mother will be ashamed; she’ll start crying. She’ll feel so sorry for herself. Nini is too small to understand anything. Only Truls will miss him. He picks up the duvet and wraps it round his brother and sister.
He notices that the whole of his underarm is covered in green slime mixed with bloody goo. Slips into the bathroom and rinses it off. Silent in the bedroom. Mother needs to sleep. Arne isn’t back yet. Here’s something he can do. Go up to the bar. Find Arne slobbering over that skinny bitch who’s with the other bloke. Walk over, grab something from a table, a knife, a corkscrew. Shove it into the side of his neck so it goes all the way through whatever’s in there and the blood gushes up out of Dickhead Arne’s mouth like a garden hose. Rouse Mother. Shove her and Truls and Nini into the back of a taxi and drive to the airport.
We’re finished here, Mother, never come here again, understand?
With Arne lying on the floor of the bar, bleeding to death. On the plane, she doesn’t touch a drop, not when they get home either. She’ll make their packed lunches and drop off Truls and Nini and then she’ll go to work, because her head at the hospital called and said they want her back. She’ll never again spend half the day lying in bed, and she’ll be there when they come home, and there’ll be the smell of roasting meat and freshly baked bread, and she’ll stand on the steps and smile at Jo when he comes home from school.
This is how it’ll be from now on, Mother. Now Dick head Arne is gone for ever.
On top of the fridge he finds an envelope, tears off the back of it. Fetches one of Nini’s crayons, a light green one. Write something or other.
Hate you
is how he might begin, but that’s not what he writes. When he’s finished, there are just two words on the paper:
Forget me
.
From the top of the steps, the breakers look like huge kittens licking milk. He takes off his trainers on the bottom step and walks barefoot across the sand. It’s cool now. Passes a group of deckchairs at a distance. From the corner of his eye it looks as though someone’s sitting there, but he’s no intention of checking. He reaches the point at which the foaming water has to give up and go back again. Follows the tideline along. The sand here is firm and hardly sinks underfoot. Keeps going to a point midway along the beach, the place he picked out a few days earlier, without having planned it. Swim out. Past the buoys. Out through the warm black water. Headed for Africa. He’ll never get there. He’ll grow tired. Afraid, maybe, but mostly tired. Swim till he can’t do it any more. The dark warmth will close around him … He feels suddenly light. Hardly even angry any more. Just happy. His disappearance will wake Mother up. She’ll leave Dickhead Arne. Truls and Nini will have a better life. What is required is that he take this swim. Ylva will never know it has anything to do with her. Or perhaps she’ll understand when she comes home and sees what’s hanging on her door.