See You Tomorrow (38 page)

She has a talent for that there. A delicate touch, rhythmic, not too rough, not too hard but firm and sensitive. Dynamic.

Tong comes as the Volvo passes the IKEA in Forus.

When you’re inside it’s not a good idea to think too much about women. But after Tong started having it off with Cecilie in the visiting room it grew impossible to shut out that part of his life. If you have no access to women, you manage to pacify the need after a time. In the beginning it’s hell, you can’t imagine how you’re going to manage a week without a woman. But after a while it calms down. Something happens to your body. At least that’s how Tong’s experienced it. The opposite to how it is when women are plentiful – then your body wants more. And everybody knows how much space women can occupy. At worst they can fill you right up. They can make it impossible to think straight. And the thing is you just get hornier and hornier the more women you get. She doesn’t need to be pretty, doesn’t have to be smart, doesn’t have to be kind. Say what you like about Cecilie, but screw, that she can.

Tong lights up a cigarette. He rolls down the window and looks across at Cecilie, who’s steering with her left hand. He takes a dirty T-shirt from his bag and holds it out to her.

‘Thanks,’ she says and wipes her right hand.

He turns and looks out the window. The mountains in the distance. She did it on purpose. Got all dolled up before she picked him up. She knew well he’d turn into a hyena once he saw her. She knew well he’d be wound up when he walked out of the prison gates. People think sitting inside is stress, but it’s not. It’s monotonous, but it’s a simple life. You soon get used to it. Being outside, on the other hand, that’s stress. The first days of freedom are hard
ones. Where are you going to stay, who are you going to talk to – paranoid is what you are, you think everyone’s going around talking about you.

‘Laurel and Hardy,’ says Tong. ‘They home?’

Cecilie tosses the T-shirt on the floor. She indicates a turnoff on the motorway after the Ullandhaug tunnel. Down towards Hillevåg. ‘They’re at Stegas’ place, I think, scoring speed.’

Tong nods. He’ll give speed a wide berth.

‘Cool that you’re going to come,’ Cecilie says, smiling. ‘Along on the job, I mean. The old gang, together again, and all that.’

He continues looking out the window. The mere thought of seeing Jan Inge and Rudi again makes his insides churn. He’s been weak. He had promised himself a new life when he got out. He was to ditch this gang of idiots from Hillevåg. He was going to work with better people. HA maybe. Now he’s sitting here. In this fucking car. With this slut. On his way to those losers.

‘Do you remember anything from your childhood, as a matter of interest?’

Cecilie gives him a quick glance. They’re driving through Åsen down towards Kilden Shopping Centre.

‘I mean,’ she goes on, ‘weren’t you four when you came to Norway? No, you’d be doing well if you remembered that.’

The Volvo trundles down to the junction by the shopping centre and Rema 1000 supermarket. Cecilie stops and puts on the indicator.

‘I just mean, it must be like, strange to think about. That you had a life there. In Korea, like. Parents and, yeah, maybe brothers and sisters and that. But no. You probably don’t remember anything. I mean, I only remember tiny bits myself and after all, I had a mother, a father too, until I was…’

The indicator ticks loudly. The sun hits the windscreen.

‘You haven’t started giving any thought to finding yourself a woman, then?’ asks Cecilie and smiles archly. ‘A woman, a house, even,’ she laughs, ‘a kid, maybe?’

Tong reaches out his left hand and seizes Cecilie’s throat with his fingers. He squeezes as hard as he can. He sees her head bow under the pressure of his hold, sees her grip tighten on the steering wheel.

‘Shut your cunthole,’ he says. ‘Sit up. You’ve got a green light. Drive.’

‘I bruise easily, Tong,’ Cecilie says meekly, as she changes gear and puts her foot on the accelerator.

One of the hardest things, people often say, is to be the father of teenage girls. Bjørn Ingvar Totland goes on about it constantly. How he's going to get his rifle out the day his girl turns thirteen, how he's going to be prepared for the ring of the doorbell and a boy outside asking after his daughter. That's sure to scare the little prick out of his wits. What do you say, Pål? We know all too well what we were like when we were sixteen, eh? Get the rifle out, Pål, eh?

Pål likes practically every person he meets, something Christine always found annoying, but he doesn't like Bjørn Ingvar Totland. He doesn't like his car salesman's grin, doesn't like the way he winks, and he doesn't like the way he slaps people on the back. Pål really wants to tell him to quit comparing them. They're not at all alike. Because it's never been that way for Pål. Neither when he was sixteen nor now. The fire within Pål has always smouldered rather than raged, burned slow and long. Now that Tiril has a boyfriend all of a sudden, he feels no sense of alarm, on the contrary, he feels relieved, as if the fact a boy has come on the scene will serve to protect her. Is that cowardice? Maybe it is. Now the job passes on to someone else, the job of looking after my daughter.

Shaun, his name is. Tiril's boyfriend.

American? Irish? Only just happened apparently.

He's expecting visitors in a few hours. The Hillevåg Gang are going to come through the door. They're going to beat him. Tie him up? Where exactly? He looks around. Maybe they'll tie him to one of the kitchen chairs. Will they blindfold him? How far are they going to take it?

What was it he said? That he was going to tidy the house. Get something nice for dinner. That this was such a big day for Tiril that he wanted to make it a little bit special. And then the girls dashed out the door, something about some friend and her boyfriend.

PÃ¥l sits languidly in the armchair, the one beneath the
living-room
window. He has Zitha's dozing snout under the sole of his foot. He brought her out for a quick walk after the girls left; since then he hasn't done anything at all. The cheese on the table is soft and warm and the cold cuts of ham are glistening. His jaw is sore.

He's been grinding his teeth for several hours without being aware of it. He leans over towards the little table beside the armchair and Zitha trots off across the carpet. The remote controls for the TV, the one they'll probably steal tonight, lie on the table, along with his mobile phone. He scrolls down to a name, rings.

‘Yes, Christine speaking?'

‘Hi, it's Pål.'

‘Yes, I can see that – listen, I'm in the middle of something here. Was it important?'

This is just a completely normal phone call.

‘No, just that I forgot to let you know that Tiril is performing at school tonight. Kind of a big deal for her, this here, she isn't expecting you to come or anything and she hasn't asked me to call you, it's—'

‘Pål?'

‘Yeah?'

‘This is a bit strange.'

‘Is it?'

It's just like we're still married.

‘Yes, Pål. It is.'

We speak to one another the same way we did as when we were married.

‘Well, that might be so.'

‘Well, it is. What are you trying to say? That you've just remembered that Tiril is going to perform and that I should be there? And then you call me at – what time is it, half eleven in the
morning – and expect me to rush out to Flesland Airport, jump on a plane and make it to her school in, what is it, six hours it begins?

The tone of her voice. Just like it's always been.

‘Yeah. No. I don't know. I'm just…'

Then the line goes quiet. It takes him by surprise, to the extent of making him nervous, as though something unpleasant is going to happen. It only remains quiet for a short time, Pål feels his heart pounding in his chest, and then he hears her say: ‘Is anything wrong, Pål?'

‘No, good gracious, wrong? With the kids? No, no, God.'

‘No, Pål. With you,' she says. ‘With you, Pål.'

He lived with her so long, knew her so well. She lived with him so long and knew him so vexingly well. PÃ¥l's eyes fall on the spruce tree in the garden.

‘You remember that spruce tree?'

‘Huh?'

‘I'm standing looking at the old spruce tree in the garden. The one the girls hung milk cartons from, you know, with food for the birds.'

‘Pål, sorry, have you been drinking?'

He smiles. Holds the phone out, as though it were a torch, before he brings it back to his face and says: ‘No, listen, sorry about this, stupid of me to call. A whim, really.'

She laughs, exactly the same old laughter. ‘Are you becoming impulsive, Pål?'

He laughs in response. ‘Yeah, that'd be a turn up for the books, wouldn't it?'

‘So, have you everything you need? The girls I mean, everything they need?'

‘Yes,' he answers, quick as a flash, and thinks: what if I just say it? Tell her everything. How little money I've got. What I've done. Household and contents. Personal injury. What's going to happen.

‘Good,' Christine says. ‘So when is it Tiril's on stage again?'

‘Oh, I'm not sure, I think it's seven it starts, isn't it?' he replies, realising he doesn't actually know when it begins. He walks over
to the board in the kitchen, sees the note pinned there, reads: 7 p.m. ‘Yeah, seven.'

Oh Jesus, he thinks, as he hears her breathe into the receiver.

‘Well,' he hears her say.

Oh no.

‘Why not?'

No no.

‘I mean, I would actually manage to make it.'

‘Wow,' he says, closing his eyes. He should have anticipated it. That she would consider doing it. Actually come.

‘Okay, listen, Pål, I'll check it out, all right? I have a meeting now, but I'll get Ragnfrid to look at the flight times, and then I'll let you know, okay? Keep it to yourself, in case I don't make it. What's she's singing, by the way? Will you have time to pick me up at Sola airport?'

‘Eh?'

‘Will you have time to pi—no, forget it. The kids will notice. I'll get a taxi. What's she going to sing?'

‘Evanescence,' Pål says, in a meek voice.

‘Oh Christ, that's awful. Does she still like that?'

‘She loves it. “My Immortal”.'

‘For fuck's sake. What about Malene, is she okay?'

‘Malene, yeah she—'

‘Okay, I'll be in touch.'

Click.

Zitha's snout brushes the back of his hand. PÃ¥l stands with the telephone in his hand staring vacantly ahead without looking at anything at all. Is she going to come? Here? Today? It feels as though his feet are leaving the ground and there's nothing he can do about it.

Frida Riska’s meticulously applied red-varnished toenails gleam like a row of pearls protruding from under the vamp of her shoe. Her navy skirt sits tightly on her hips and narrow waistline, around which hangs a thin, coquettish belt, which lends her an air of youthful ease. The same air she has exuded in the classrooms and corridors of Gosen School since she began there thirty years ago, and had the reputation of being the prettiest teacher at the entire school, maybe even in the whole area, if not in all of Stavanger.

Dad laughs every time Malene mentions Frida Riska, he can’t help it: is she still there? Everyone was head over heels in love with her, we weren’t able to follow what she was saying in class she was so pretty, but she was edgy too, heh heh, is she still there? You know, one day she came in, those high cheekbones of hers almost glowing from the moment she stepped into the classroom, and she was wearing these really sexy tights and she stood in front of the blackboard and said, without any preamble: ‘You know what, I woke up this morning and I thought, Jesus, I’m going to have to face those hopeless pupils again, and I just about managed to drag myself to school – well, now you know, so you can get down to proving me wrong.’ Is she still like that?

Yes, Malene thinks, as they enter the schoolyard and see Frida Riska hurrying across it with two ring binders pressed to her chest; she’s still like that. The prettiest and most unconventional, but also the best teacher they have, she’s always on the fringes of what is acceptable; like she has no respect at all for the Norwegian school system. Malene said to Dad once: I think she really wants to run everything herself and doesn’t care a jot about what she’s been tasked to teach us. Yeah, he said, laughing, you can be sure
she does. She might look very middle class, Frida, but in reality she’s an anarchist.’

‘An anarchist, what’s that?’

Dad laughed. ‘Ask Tiril,’ he said. ‘Or better yet, just look at Tiril and Frida, then you’ll know.’

Frida stops up as she catches sight of the quartet walking past the bike racks. Typically, she remains unruffled, merely tilts her head slightly to the side and drums her fingers on the ring binders she’s clutching to her chest, before approaching them with that characteristic sway of her hips on her high heels. Malene casts a quick glance at Sandra, who is attempting to stand unaided, but being supported by Tiril. Shaun looks somewhat better than previously, but his pupils are still swimming like tiny fish in his glassy eyes.

Frida’s hips come to a halt. She stands in front of them, her back straight. Her eyes move in measured fashion from one of them to the other, her gaze resting just long enough on each of them to let them know they’ve been seen, singled out and exposed.

‘Yes?’ she says.

None of them manage to respond. Malene expects Tiril to pipe up, but for once – perhaps because of Frida – she doesn’t seize the chance.

The middle finger of Frida’s left hand taps a steady rhythm on the ring binders. ‘Yes,’ she repeats, ‘what do I have before me?’ She raises her right arm gracefully and checks the slim silver watch on her wrist. ‘A quarter to twelve. It’s a long time since I’ve worked as a babysitter, but it goes without saying that when four such distinguished students – distinguished and talented each in their own way – when four such students arrive in school so late in the day, it is not atypical for it to warrant surprise, or what do you think yourselves? Particularly when two of you look like you’ve been involved in a fracas. Shaun? Sandra? And perhaps even more so when one of these two – you, Sandra – is the last person I could imagine being in a fight. You, Shaun, on the other hand, I can easily envisage being embroiled in all manner of conflicts. What do you have to say for yourselves?’

Tiril comes to life and takes a step forward. ‘Sandra took a
tumble on her bike. She crashed into Shaun on the way to school. Me and Malene saw it—’

‘Malene and I,’ Frida interrupts, ‘go on…’

‘Malene and I – yeah, it happened by the tower blocks, not far from where we live, and we saw them, on the way to school, they crashed. Really badly.’

Frida Riska checks her watch again. ‘A quarter to twelve. Almost ten to twelve. And so you’ve used several hours then, to reflect upon this bicycle accident?’

Sandra shifts her weight on to her other foot and wheezes audibly. Malene sees they’ve now aroused other people’s interest, the faces of more and more pupils are appearing in the windows of the classrooms. Sandra looks pale. Frida – Dad once termed her a hawk – takes a step towards Sandra.

‘Are you feeling all right, Sandra?’

Sandra smiles. Her eyes look blurry.

‘She bore the brunt of it,’ says Tiril, placing an arm around her friend. ‘That’s why it took such a long time. We sat down. Took it easy. Went back home to get water and that.’

Sandra smiles again and nods. ‘Yeah, fine,’ she says, ‘my head’s a bit sore, that’s all, feel a little tired. I’m okay though.’

Frida looks at them. Once again letting her gaze wander from one to the next, fixing each of them momentarily with her eyes, and once again they feel both examined and exposed.

‘Listen to me,’ she says. ‘I don’t believe what you’re telling me, not for one second. You all know that. Judging by the body language on display, coming to expression through your beautiful, young physiques, and judging by what I’m seeing in your eyes, those beautiful, young pairs of eyes, there was no bicycle accident. But that’s just how it is. The lot of you are up to something. It may well be something completely innocuous, which a grown-up ought to disregard. It may not. Perhaps it’s something none of you realise the gravity of, perhaps something you should entrust to somebody who’s lived longer than you. But here’s what do I know. You are the ones responsible for making that decision. I’m going to take my leave of you in a moment and then you’ll either end up making a good decision or a bad one. One of you, most likely you,
Tiril, will take control of the situation, and the rest of you, Shaun and Malene, will follow the course Tiril marks out for you. And well, what can I say? I wish you luck, you fine young people.’