Authors: Tore Renberg
Locked. Daniel feels his breath being forced up his throat. Veronika. Don’t be messing about now, okay? He presses down on the handle again, shouts, and bangs on the door, even though he knows it’s pointless.
He jiggles the door handle. The only way to get her attention is if she sees it going up and down.
Nothing happens.
Daniel puts his ear to the door. He holds his breath and listens. Nothing. He would have heard if the shower was on, if the tap was running, if somebody was moving around or someone flushed the toilet. Nothing.
The lock clicks.
He gives a start, takes a step back and stands looking at the door. Nothing happens. It doesn’t open. Fuck, he thinks. Am I supposed to go in? Is this a signal that I’m welcome in after all? Eh? And what does she mean by it? Am I supposed to go in all puppy-eyed, with my tail between my legs? Am I supposed to get down on my knees in front of her and apologise?
I can’t be bothered with this, he thinks. I can’t be assed playing along. Daniel curses himself for having landed in this situation, curses himself for not having said yes to an institution instead of a new foster home. This was bound to happen when he was left living with women.
He opens the door.
Oh Jesus.
He’s unable to move.
‘Veronika! What have you
done?
’
The girl is sitting on the toilet lid. She’s wearing a T-shirt, the metal one, the white
Kvelertak
one he gave her for her fifteenth
birthday. Her hair is dishevelled and her legs are bare.
Veronika turns her face towards him. It looks like a grid, a
fine-lined
mesh. There are vertical lines from her forehead down to her chin and jaws and horizontal lines going straight across her face. She’s also cut her arms, streaks running down each forearm. Most of the blood has congealed and assumed the same colour as her hair. The long parallel incisions are nasty-looking and rust-coloured.
‘Veronika…’
He tries to hold the tears back but can’t manage, and begins to cry. He sniffles, dries his eyes and takes a step forward. She just sits there looking at him. She shrugs, gives him a lopsided grin. There are bloodstains in the bath. A razor blade lying beside the drain.
Why do I always have to see things like this, he thinks, feeling anger rise. Why can’t I be left alone? Why can’t I leave without things catching up with me again?
Daniel reaches out, puts his arms around Veronika and pulls her close. She’s stiff at first but her body begins to warm up the longer she remains in his embrace. She places her arms on his back.
What will I do, thinks Daniel. What the hell will I do. He tenses the muscles in his jaw, squeezes his eyes shut, wanting more than anything to leave, get to the Suzuki and ride, but he can’t do that now.
After a while he relaxes his embrace and pulls his head back a little to look at her. The lines on her face are straight, she’s carried it out with precision, cut herself up carefully and thoroughly, from top to bottom and side to side, with her eyes open, in front of the mirror.
Daniel opens his mouth.
‘How deep are they?’
No reply.
‘How deep?’
He brings his hand to her face, traces the incisions with two fingertips. The cuts are superficial, not extending far below the surface. ‘You have to promise me never to do that again,’ he says.
She turns her head when he speaks. That’s what she does when she doesn’t want to listen to people. He takes hold of her chin,
feeling the cuts against his fingers again, turns her to face him and says: ‘Veronika. Look at me. You have to promise never to do that again.’
She closes her mouth, tightens her lips.
‘Well? Say something.’
She shakes her head.
‘What is it I’ve done to you?’
She’s crying. Fuck, that’s almost worse.
‘Don’t cry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know about this. How could I have known?’
Veronika raises her right hand, sniffles, the tears cease. She extends her index finger and pokes him on the chest with it. ‘Your heart,’ she says, ‘it’s raining blood in there.’
She does this sometimes, says zombielike things – they just fall out of that sky she has inside her head.
‘Jesus, you’re one unusual girl, Veronika,’ he says.
She taps her fingers on his chest. ‘Say it once more.’ Veronika moves a little closer to him. ‘Say it once more.’
You’re not the one I want.
‘Say it again. Say that I’m one unusual girl.’
He smooths away a wisp of hair from her cheek, it was stuck in the moisture from her tears.
‘You have to promise me never to do that again. I won’t stand for it. Once more, and I leave.’
‘Don’t speak so fast.’
‘I’ll leave,’ he repeats. ‘And I’ll be gone for good. And when I go for good, I never look back. Do you understand?’
She nods.
‘Say it. Say it once more.’
‘You’re one unusual girl, Veronika,’ he says, conscious of meaning it. She nods.
‘Doesn’t it hurt?’ He strokes her gently across the face.
‘No,’ she says, ‘it doesn’t hurt now.’
‘Christ.’ Daniel exhales heavily.
‘I like this T-shirt,’ she says, pulling at it a little, making the cotton taut against her tits.
‘Mhm,’ he says, nodding. ‘It’s the bollocks.’
‘The bollocks?’
He nods. ‘The dog’s bollocks. A deaf girl going round wearing it.’
‘Yeah,’ she says, and moistens her lips. ‘The dog’s bollocks.’
Daniel runs his hands through his hair. ‘But what are you going to say to Inger? Are you just going to … what are you planning to say?’
Veronika shrugs. She sits down on the edge of the bathtub. ‘I don’t know. She’ll just have to deal with it. I’m not dead. I’m just deaf.’
She giggles, the atonal laughter resounding more than usual. He laughs too, he can’t help it. Stuff she comes out with, sometimes she really hits the mark.
‘God, you’re weird.’ Daniel shakes his head, looks at her sternly. ‘You do know that I have … that there’s another girl that I’m … going out with. Yeah? You do know that?
She nods.
‘Yeah?’ he shrugs. ‘And so? Don’t you respect that?’
‘We’re competitors.’ Veronika looks him straight in the eye. ‘Does she have a
Kvelertak
T-shirt?’ Veronika shakes her head. ‘No, she’s slavers after Jesus. She wears a cross round her neck. I know you think you love her. I know you think that she’s the one you want. But I know that it’s raining blood in your heart, Daniel. I know who you are. Does she know who you are?’
He swallows.
‘Hm? Does she?’
Caught up in something.
That’s what it feels like.
Strange sitting here now. The teacher talking, the pupils sitting with their books open in front of them. But none of them are listening. They’re all thinking about her. The teacher too. She can feel it. Nobody in the room is thinking about anything else.
From one second to the next, Sandra has gone from being the most well-behaved, conscientious girl in 10D to becoming the object of everyone’s open-mouthed attention. She’d cracked a few hours ago, lost herself, snogged Daniel and cried when he rode off, while everyone stood at the windows watching. Then the rumour began racing through the school like a fierce wind, the teachers tried to hush it up but it was just as though she’d unleashed a force of nature. When she went into the yard during the break it was like she was a magnet. Malene had walked alongside her as if they were blood sisters; comments had been shouted in their direction, as though both of them had done something crazy and within a few hours it had got completely out of control.
The rumour was that he’d hit her, it was also going around that she’d hit him, that she was pregnant, that she was on something…
She was just caught up in it.
Then at lunchtime, right out of the blue, Tiril had hit that little guy in second year, Shaun, and she had done it for her. Everything has been turned on its head.
Tiril?
If there’s one person Sandra feels has never liked her, if there’s one person she’s almost been afraid of, it’s Malene’s sister, her co-worker at Spar.
She just let him have it, Shaun the smurf.
So, what, now it’s like, her and the sisters? Her and Malene and Tiril? And where’s Daniel? His replies were so curt.
Okay. Okay,
fine.
Where is he? She realises she’s done something he’s not able to take, but why is he so angry? He said he’d be there tonight although she’s not sure she quite believes it.
Sandra sits with her maths book open in front of her, hardly daring to breathe.
Not to mention Mum and Dad. If they don’t already know everything by the time she gets home, then it won’t take long before they hear about it and that won’t be good. They’ll tell her off, issue more warnings and deliver another lecture, but the worst of it is they won’t allow her to see him.
That bright mouth. Daniel
William Moi.
And if they do that, she’ll just die. She can’t go home. Sandra knows that. She can’t go home today.
There’s a sound of laughter in the classroom.
‘Mira? Something you wanted to say?’
The teacher.
‘No, Miss. Nothing,’ Mira says.
Sandra can hear her sniggering. She can hear it spreading. Other girls laughing. Other boys. Joachim, he’s laughing too.
She glances up furtively, trying to make eye contact with Malene.
Malene nods to her.
Her chest rises and falls. Sandra gets quickly to her feet. She packs her things together as fast as she’s able. The entire class is looking at her. Mira’s cheeky face. Joachim’s smirk.
‘I don’t feel too well—’
A ripple of laughter.
‘I think I need to—’
‘Ooh, I need it! Daniel, I need it!’ Joachim.
‘That’s all right, Sandra,’ she hears the teacher say.
She walks towards the door. She stops at Malene’s desk on the way, her friend smiles at her and takes hold of her hand a moment. Sandra’s seen that smile before. She’s seen it on a grown man’s face. Malene’s father. She feels like a fraud, she isn’t sure if it’s right, what Daniel said, about not telling her anything about her father, but she has to trust the one she loves.
‘See you,’ Malene whispers. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Text me, okay?’
Sandra nods.
‘Say hello to Tiril,’ she whispers.
Malene smiles. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry. Okay?’
‘No,’ Sandra whispers, hearing her voice beginning to crack.
She runs. One hand under her breasts, the other waving in the air, slightly knock-kneed, through the corridors, out the front entrance, into the mild September day.
It looks like a wading bird and a duck out for a walk.
The sun is low in the sky, its light casting long shadows along the streets as Jan Inge and Rudi make their way uphill from the house by the rail tracks. It’s not that far to Hansi’s place; he lives on the far side of Hillevågsveien.
Jan Inge is conscious that he’s developed a somewhat rolling gait of late. He tries to avoid doing it, but he just sort of swings, from side to side, no matter how he tries to adjust it.
There’s been something agitated and unfocused about Rudi ever since he got back from town. He hurried into the house, went straight to his room, rummaged around a bit, then came out and stood in the middle of the living room looking at his mobile. When Jan Inge asked if anything was wrong, he’d replied: ‘No, what the hell would be?’
But there is something wrong.
After they’ve passed Sun City tanning salon and started up the hill towards Hansi’s, Jan Inge asks again: ‘Rudi, what is it, you’re not even talking?’
‘Man, people don’t need to talk all the time, do they?’
No, but when people who do talk all the time suddenly stop, that’s when you get nervous. So Jan Inge tries once more: ‘We’re here for one another, you know that, right?’
Rudi halts. His long form swaying to and fro in front of a wheelie bin. His eyes are restive.
‘I don’t know, Jani. I just got it into my head.’
‘What?’ Jan Inge wheezes, taking out his inhaler and sucking in air.
‘Chessi,’ Rudi says.
Jan Inge raises his eyebrows. ‘Chessi? What about Chessi?’
‘What the hell do I know.’ Rudi leans his hands on the bin behind him for support. ‘Probably just some bullshit. The puking. That skincare shit. And … well, some private stuff.’
‘Private stuff?’ Jan Inge cocks his head to the side. ‘Is it your brother?’
‘You don’t bloody well have to mention him! No,’ Rudi says. ‘Very private stuff. Shit, I need a fag.’
‘What kind of very private stuff?’
‘No,’ says Rudi shrugging, ‘we are amigos, my friend, but there’re things even brothers don’t discuss. Woman things, Jani. Anyway. She’s heading over to see Tong and she needs the Volvo. So we really have to get hold of Hansi’s Transporter.’
Rudi is seldom like this. Calm, almost. Normal, almost. Talking in short sentences. Chiselling them out of himself as though he were of stone. Even though Jan Inge does often want Rudi to calm that electric head of his and stop talking holes in peoples’ heads, it is disturbing when he’s not acting like himself.
‘Well,’ Jan Inge says, ‘I’m sure it’ll sort itself out. But we probably shouldn’t drive the Transporter around Gosen two nights on the trot…’
Rudi’s eyes flash.
‘Oh yeah, great, what are we going to do? Take the fucking
bus?
Is that what you want to do, busfuck?
He’s cross, clearly angry. He’s never usually like that either.
‘Rudi, listen to me. You’ve got something in your system. I know you. Get it out or get shot of it. We’ve a sweet job on tomorrow, a classic in our line of business. So we can’t drive around in the work van in the same area two nights in a row. You know that. It’s not going to kill us to take the bus.’
‘They can stick their public transport up their hole as far as I’m concerned, Rudi says. ‘I hate buses, I’ve always hated buses.’
Jan Inge tries to make eye contact with him. ‘
Hei, mein Freund,
’ he says, trying to lighten the atmosphere with a little German, ‘
ein
Pfennig für deine Gedanken
.’
‘I’m not thinking about anything,’ Rudi sighs, ‘It’s … Scheisse. It’s just feelings. Feelings feelings feelings! You just can’t always bloody well describe feelings.’
Well said, Jan Inge thinks, and they continue on their way up the incline. The mystical sun warms their faces. I’ll leave it alone, he thinks; right now it’s all about solid leadership.
‘It’s like I’m always telling you,’ he says, in as mild a tone as he can muster. ‘You’re an emotional person, Rudi, you do your best, day in, day out, and then a whole army of feelings invades your body, and that’s just how life is. Come on, let’s wake up Hansi.’
Hansi is a thin guy, whose slightly mangy appearance tends to put people in mind of a dog. He’s been in and out of prison since he was nineteen, and on opening the door to his two old friends, he scarcely raises his eyebrows, before motioning with a wan hand for them to come in while he shuffles back into the house.
‘Hi, man, feeling a bit rough today?’
Jan Inge and Rudi exchange a look and follow him. They enter the living room, where Hansi plonks himself down in an old sofa centred behind a coffee table covered with liquor bottles.
‘I’m drinking a bit at the moment,’ he mutters. ‘Working a lot. Been over and back to Sweden loads, to Gothenburg. Not right in the head, those Albanians. How are things in Toyland? What’s going on in the lives of Sly and Gobbo? Any break-ins lately?’
Hansi grins, brings a liquor bottle to his lips and takes a large swig. Jan Inge bunches the muscles in his jaw tightly. You look like my mother, he thinks.
‘What do you g—’
‘We need a loan of the van,’ interrupts Jan Inge. ‘And the trailer.’
Hansi looks at them askance. ‘And so the two of you turn up here and think everything is going to be sitting waiting for you?’
Rudi keeps his mouth shut. Jan Inge doesn’t move a muscle.
‘Okay, okay,’ Hansi says, ‘fine. And what if I say I need them myself? If I tell you that you can’t have a loan of them?’
‘Then we’ll say—’
‘Then we’ll know where we stand with you,’ says Jan Inge curtly. ‘You owe us, Hansi.’
He gives Rudi a brief nod.
Hansi looks from one of them to the other. ‘And how long am I to go on owing you?’
‘Listen.’ Jan Inge’s eyes narrow. ‘We’ve been fair to you. We
could have smashed your kneecaps. After what you did. We could have let people know the kinds of things you like to get up to. We haven’t done either.’
Hansi gets to his feet, takes another quaff of the bottle and picks up a pair of trousers hanging over the back of a chair. He rummages through the pockets, pulls out a key ring.
‘You’re a loser, Jani, and you know it. You’ve been at it for thirty fucking years or something, and you haven’t … yeah, fuck it, whatever. Here.’
He chucks the keys to Jan Inge. Rudi inhales quickly, takes a few steps, grabs hold of Hansi’s head, glares in his eyes and headbutts him.
‘You never fucking talk that way to Jani, you hear me!’
‘Shit, I’m bleeding!’
‘Fucking right you’re bleeding, motherbleedfucker! You want to bleed some more? Eh? You want to bleed out your ears? You want to bleed out your ass?’
Jan Inge smiles. He loves this. He fucking loves this.
Rudi. Rudi. Rudi.
‘You want to bleed inside your head?’
‘No! No! Rudi! Jesus!’
It’s just like Jan Inge is at a football stadium and thousands upon thousands of people are standing with their arms in the air and their mouths open, shouting: Ru-di! Ru-di! Ru-di!
Rudi’s body tenses, almost to the extent that Jan Inge can see the adrenalin surge through his arms and legs as he kicks Hansi repeatedly in the back, as he crouches down, lifts Hansi up by the hair and plants his fist in his face.
‘Now,’ Rudi says, straightening up. He grasps his knuckles, then shakes off the pain and spits on Hansi: ‘You keep your mouth shut, cockbreath. Loser? Who the hell’s the loser here?’
Hansi lies on the floor writhing in pain.
‘Rudi can’t hear you,’ Rudi grabs hold of the bottle Hansi was drinking from. He stands over him. ‘Open your gob, daisy-picker.’
‘W-wha?’
Peeping at him in terror, blood all over his face, Hansi opens his mouth.
‘Wider!’
‘Wwwider?’
‘Wider!’
Hansi opens wide and Rudi empties the remaining contents of the bottle down his throat. ‘Hey, cockaholic! You drinking a bit at the moment? Drink some more! Hey, buttaholic, I didn’t hear you? Who’s the loser?’
Hansi coughs and spits, blood and booze. ‘Me,’ comes the meek voice from the floor.
‘Toofuckingright,’ Rudi snorts. ‘And the next time you say anything out of order about the Master, I’ll skin your dick, and the next time you put your cock into one of the schoolboys round here, I’ll be fifteen metres away, and fifteen seconds after you’re finished I’ll jam fifteen cactuses up your ass.’
Jan Inge clenches his fist tighter around the key ring.
This here, this is what makes life worth living.
‘Hansi,’ he says, ‘you’re a really good … what is it they say in Sweden … a
jättegod
… friend. You’ll get the Transporter and the trailer back over the weekend. No problem. Really appreciate it.’
They walk back out the front door, to the front of the house.
‘About fucking time, that there,’ Rudi says, glowing.
‘Felt right, no doubt about it,’ Jan Inge says, lumbering towards Hansi’s grey Transporter.
‘Tong would have enjoyed that,’ says Rudi, opening the driver’s door.
‘Cecilie would have enjoyed that,’ replies Jan Inge.
‘That’s my woman,’ Rudi says, getting inside. ‘What are we having for dinner?’
‘Fishcakes,’ says Jan Inge, landing in the seat, the van listing with his weight.
Rudi sticks the key in and starts the engine. ‘Fishcakes,’ he says, reversing out the drive, ‘remind me of Granny. The good, old days.’
‘I know,’ says Jan Inge. ‘And listen, what you were brooding over earlier, the private stuff and all that, you need to just shelve that.’
‘Hell yeah,’ Rudi says, as the sun, low in the sky, hits the windscreen and dazzles him momentarily, making the whole world gleaming and white, ‘it’s just I’m so fucking sensitive sometimes.’
The van glides down the street.
‘Ah.’ Rudi lets out a deep breath. ‘Jumping Jiminy, that felt good. Jesus, it’s been a long time since I’ve used my fists. Right, I’m going to make a call here!’
Rudi takes out his mobile, turns to Jan Inge and gives him a nod and a wink. He chortles to himself as he leans over to the glove compartment, roots around in it a little, fetches out a pen and paper, tosses it into Jan Inge’s large lap and says, in a low, rasping tone: ‘Now, pay attention, busfuck.’