“We’ve got to hide,” you say quickly. “The hotel’s huge; if they come in search of us, we’ll definitely find a way of creeping past them.”
It’s not exactly a foolproof plan, but it’s better than nothing. You do the same thing as Taja did when she decided to run up the road to the cliff—you run ahead, your girls follow you, even Taja. Thank God, even Taja, you think and run down the corridor on the left, run through rooms full of rubbish and detritus. The fir trunk finally blocks your path, the wall around it has collapsed and you can’t get past the rubble.
You turn round and come back to the entrance hall. You don’t really know what you’re looking for. A door leading to the emergency exit? A cellar you could hide in? You know you’d never hide in a cellar.
I’d rather die.
There’s a room that must once have been the library. Warped shelves, stained books everywhere, a fireplace with a broken chair in it, the graffito of a huge pirate runs like a painting across one of the walls. The room overlooks the fjord. You step onto the terrace and stand by the railing. There’s a steep drop. Nope, not an emergency exit.
You run on.
A toilet, a tiny room, a ballroom, a big room, more rubble. Everything’s been cleared away. Cables hanging from the ceiling, tattered curtains, more graffiti. At the end of the corridor you see a locked door. The first one. All the other doors are missing, or else they hang into the room at an angle. You push the door open. It’s the back room, it doesn’t go any further. A huge kitchen opens up in front of you, and it’s completely intact. There are cracks in the ceiling, mildew has formed in one corner, and the windows are all broken, but otherwise the kitchen looks untouched—two stoves, a ceramic sink the size of a bathtub, lamps, pots and pans on the walls, and in the middle of the kitchen a massive table with twelve chairs. At the end of the table sits a man with his hands flat on the tabletop as if to keep the table from floating away. You’re not sure if this isn’t another of your blanks. Maybe your father’s about to come in and ask which of you wants some pizza.
“Just come in,” says the man.
He looks as if he’s been waiting for you. It’s weird. He doesn’t smile, he doesn’t do anything, he just watches you, hands flat on the tabletop, no tricks behind it. You feel you can’t breathe anymore. The man’s eyes look as if a light’s been turned off. Cold, you think, so damned cold. You all cram together in the doorway and stare and stare back. Then Stink says what you’re all thinking.
“Deselected?!”
The girls have disappeared into the house, and you didn’t hit any of them. Three shots, and you seriously didn’t hit them. You switch the gun from one hand to another and shake out your cramped fingers. Your body was too stiff. You wished you had the agility of a cat, but you were just a clumsy piece of wood without elegance.
You walk over to your father, who is lying motionless on the ground. You can’t tell if he’s breathing. The blood gleams dully where the pipe hit him on the head. You kick the pipe away and crouch down. You want to ask your father if he can hear you, where it hurts, and what you should do. The three questions produce one simple statement. It startles you just as much as the truth that you’ve heard from Taja’s mouth.
“You shot my best friend!”
Your voice sounds shrill. It’s the adrenaline, the echo of the gunshots, and of course the sobering feeling of failure. It’s out now. You’re wired up and you switch the gun back to your firing hand. Your father is lying in front of you and he might be dead and he might be alive, but whichever he is, your thoughts left your mouth unfiltered, and now you’re seriously waiting for the reality around you to blow apart with a bang. Nothing happens, of course, so you go on, “You lied to me because you wanted to train me. I know that. Tanner told me, he told me everything.”
It’s a new feeling, you squat down beside your father, you say what you’re thinking and nothing happens. Fuck the ice beneath you, let it break, fuck your father, let him be dead. Dead, you think, and it’s a sense of relief the like of which you’ve never felt before. Like you feel after an orgasm, like a swig of water after being thirsty for a week. Your father has failed, he let one of the girls knock him down. And he lied to you. That carries some weight. You wanted to keep it to yourself and now it’s out. You pussy.
“He was my best friend.”
You look at the gun in your hand and move the safety catch up and down, up and down. How easy it would be to shoot your father right now. That really would be the end. No more you, no more him.
When he’s dead, I’ll live.
Then you would throw the gun into the fjord, put your father over your shoulder, and go back to the cemetery. Then you’d lay him in the open grave and add Tanner and Leo to it. It would give you a great sense of relief to fill the grave yourself, put the spades back in the shed, and then go to the car. Maybe you’d drive back to Berlin, maybe you’d disappear into the Norwegian wilderness and become a legend.
Anything is possible.
You take your eyes away from the gun and look at your father. His eyes are open, his voice is hoarse.
“What … what happened?”
“You shot Mirko.”
“Shit, Darian, what just happened?”
“Stink knocked you down.”
He doesn’t move, only his eyes, his mouth.
“What?”
“She clobbered you. With that pipe there. You didn’t see it coming.”
He blinks, licks his lips, rolls his eyes, tries to look round, but he can’t move his head, his right hand is trembling, he tries to clench his fist, gives up.
“And you shot Mirko. Tanner told me. You shot my best friend.”
Your father coughs, takes a deep breath, he looks pained, he doesn’t want to hear that, but he has no choice, he’s helpless.
“Why did you lie to me? Why did you say it was the girls?”
“It made sense.”
“It made sense? What does that mean?”
“You’ve got to learn to direct your anger. I gave you a direction to go in. And Mirko was a coward. He insulted me. Apparently Tanner didn’t tell you that. Your friend was giving us all the runaround. You’d have done the same thing if—”
“You can’t just shoot my best friend!” you interrupt the man nobody interrupts, and add softly, “It’s not cool.”
“Of course it’s cool. I’m your father. I can do anything. Have you forgotten who I am? Are you starting to cry? Where’s your cock? Are you a eunuch? You killed a boy and you couldn’t even look him in the eye. Think about that. Think about it, damn it, and open your eyes and look at me. What’s up? Is your hand twitching? Are you going to take your revenge on me and put a bullet in my head?”
You just look at him, your hand won’t stop twitching, you pull the safety catch up and down, up and down. And think about Leo. And think about Tanner. How the gun went off in your hand because the boy went nuts. Three shots and two corpses.
Because I fucked up.
“Help me up, I can’t feel my legs.”
“I want an apology.”
“What?”
“I want you to apologize to me.”
“Darian, stop all this nonsense, my head’s about to explode and I can’t move my fucking arms and legs. Help me up!”
“Apologize.”
Your father stares at you, his right hand claws in the earth, he isn’t capable of doing anything else. His voice is a hiss.
“You little shit, just so you know, I have no reason to apologize, I …”
He breaks off, his eyes bulge, he turns pale, then he turns his head to the side and throws up. It’s pitiful. Nothing about your father is working anymore. Stink really whacked him, he can’t even wipe his own puke off his chin. His head whips around, spit goes flying through the air.
“Help me up, Darian! I’m not going to say it again, help me up, you muscle-bound jerk. HELP ME UP, I’M YOUR FATHER!”
You know if he could he’d grab you now. He can’t. Yo
u crouch down in front of him, unmoved, there’s no reason to move back even an inch. So weak. You grab your chest, put your hand over your heart, you really want to cry now, because you’ve just understood something, and that understanding is full of emotion and it makes you sad. You think you’ve understood your father for the first time.
“I don’t think you have a heart,” you say. “That’s why you don’t feel anything, that’s why you can be the way you are. They forgot to give you a heart.”
Your father laughs.
“Stop talking such bullshit. Everybody has a heart. Nothing’s possible without a heart. Perhaps I should send you back to school, you idiot.”
It’s a bad laugh, it doesn’t even reach his eyes. The fingers of his right hand move a few inches toward you, the dead arm holds them back. You can’t take your eyes off your father.
“Darian, help me up, I’m lying in my own vomit, can’t you see that? Help me up and let’s get out of here.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What?”
“I said, I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean, I don’t think so? No one wants you to think.”
He’s right; it hurts, but he’s right. So keep it short and snappy. Spit it out.
“I don’t think you’re my father anymore.”
After you’ve left the sleeping girls on their own, you look up the cliff, all you can see is rocks, occasional bushes, but no hotel. You follow the road, reach the summit, and don’t believe your eyes. Where the girls will see decay and chaos two hours later, you see something completely different.
What is that?
It reminds you of a beach hotel that you saw in Montenegro years ago. The house could be from colonial times, it doesn’t fit here at all. Now you can understand why the man with the greyhound laughed a little while ago. Who would take the trouble of climbing up this cliff to see a wreck like this?
The rooms are dilapidated, cracks in the ceiling, holes in the walls, the floors covered with rubbish. But you can see that they’re good floors. Floorboards that have defied the elements and not warped. The entrance hall is tiled and supported by four pillars; a wide staircase leads upward, the banisters are missing in several places, and it looks as if the steps would give way under the slightest weight. You’re careful and climb up to the first floor. Empty rooms, in the bathroom even the toilets and fittings have been torn out. You run your hand over the wallpaper as if looking for a pulse. On the second floor you throw back your head and look up into the sky. The roof has been torn away completely, the rafters revealed, the withered branches of a fir dangle in and remind you of the Christmas trees that lie sadly by the edge of the road at the beginning of January.
On the way down you imagine how many guests have walked up and down the stairs here. What they felt, what they thought. Every house has its own soul. The hotel’s soul hasn’t fled. It is still breathing, and lives hidden in the walls. Even though you haven’t yet found the pulse, you know it’s there.
Back on the first floor, you find a closed door at the end of the corridor. It’s jammed, the wood must have warped. You slam your shoulder against it and the door swings open.
The kitchen is massive and almost undamaged. A table with chairs, broken glass and stones on the floor, a kitten calendar from 1997. In the sink there’s the skeleton of a dead pigeon that must have flown in through the window and been too stupid to find its way out again. An old station clock hangs on the wall, the minute hand missing. Who would steal a minute hand? you wonder and open the cupboards. Plates. Cups. Glasses. You find cans whose use-by date ran out ten years ago. The kitchen is a time capsule. You go to the door and close it again, the capsule is sealed, the present only comes in through the broken windows and breathes in your face. You sit down and lay your hands flat on the tabletop. Dust and dirt don’t bother you. You’re quite still and listen to the house and wait for the pulse.
It feels like minutes, but you’ve been sitting here for over two hours, and you’d probably hold out for even longer if you didn’t hear the voices.
They’ve found the house, you think and don’t move.
It’s like a radio play. You hear the girls arguing. Then it falls silent. A man speaks. Sharply, furiously. You like the sound. You can make out every word, and slowly, very slowly, you work out the connections.
My son’s murderer is standing outside.
You don’t move. The girl Taja confesses. And you hear and don’t move, both hands on the tabletop, eyes on the closed door. Patient.
You can imagine staying here forever. You would start on the first floor and breathe life into the hotel, one step at a time. Clear away the dirt, cover the roof, entice past glories from the ruin. When you were on the second floor, you stepped out onto the terrace. In front of you was the fjord, below you there were rocks.
Not even the end of civilization could be more beautiful.
A place to stay.
The shots make you flinch. No shouts, nothing. Just three sharp shots and then silence. You go on waiting. Hands on the tabletop, silent. You look at the door and the door flies open and the girls are standing in the doorway. The door bangs against the wall, swings back, the delicate Asian girl holds it open with one hand. They look at you in alarm. You say, “Just come in.”
They don’t move. They expected anything, but not you. The red-haired girl frowns and says, “Deselected?”
You look at your chest, look back at the girls.
“My son lent me the T-shirt. He thought I’d never wear it, he was wrong. Sit down.”
The Asian girl shakes her head. It’s the last thing she wants to do. You’re going to have to be a bit more persuasive. Tell them the truth, give them the feeling they’ve arrived.
“You’ll be safe here.”
No reaction; they probably don’t think much of the safety promised them by a stranger who’s sitting in a dilapidated house, wearing a stupid T-shirt.
“Which one of you is Taja?”
At last they react and look at each other and turn around. The girl with the golden hair says, “Where’s Taja?”
You stand in the middle of the corridor, while your girls go on running. They don’t notice, they look into the rooms and leave you behind. It’s the end of the sweet bitches. Your biggest fear has come true. You’re no longer part of them. You’re no longer part of anything. Even if you’ve been pretending over the past few days that everything would be as it always was, you were living only on the memory of a Taja who was once part of it.
Once upon a time there were five girls and I was one of them.
Shame floods over you, and you’d probably cry again if it wasn’t for this pain. The bullet hit you a couple of inches above the left of your pelvis. It got you just as you were running through the front door. At first there was just a dull stitch, you staggered and bumped your shoulder against one of the pillars, but then came the pain. You clutched your hip and blood stuck to your fingers. Your girls mustn’t find out anything about this, you don’t want their sympathy and concern. It’s just a scratch, you lie to yourself while the wound pulses like a strobe light, frantic and nervous.
And sometimes you’re there and sometimes you’re gone.
Your girls haven’t noticed anything, not even Nessi, who’s normally alert to everything. It must be the fear, the fear is too deep in their bones, Darian and your uncle could come charging in at any moment, and it doesn’t help that Stink has shut the double doors, because if your uncle comes, nothing in the world is going to help. So you went running through the hotel looking for a hiding place and you followed your girls for a while, as if a hiding place could save you. When they ended up in a blind alley, they turned around and you followed them to the entrance hall and that’s where you put on the brakes. You didn’t want to do this anymore, you let your girls go on.
Since you stepped inside the hotel you’ve only had one single destination.
The stairs groan under every step. You avoid the hol
es in the floor and hold on to the wall with your right hand, you don’t dare take your other hand away from your injury. Your lips move, you’re murmuring your very own mantra.
A house among rocks. Water below me, sky above me.
On the second floor you choose the first room you come to that looks out over the fjord. Here too the glass in the door onto the terrace has disappeared, only a single shard hangs in the frame like a comma. Your father told you the glass in the windows and the glass doors are from the days of art nouveau. You break the shard out of the frame and hold it against the light. It has a soft orange glow.
I was born here, you think and step outside.
The terrace is six feet wide and leads all the way around the building. You’d like to walk its full length, but in one direction the floor has broken away, in the other the wall has fallen outward, dragging the terrace and its railing away with it. When you were teething, your mother always pushed you around the house because you would only calm down in the moving stroller. Night after night. Her record is supposed to have been sixteen circuits of the terrace. You won’t be doing a single circuit, you’re trapped.
A house among rocks.
You shiver, even though there’s sweat on your forehead and the air is warm. The sunlight lies like a halo on the fjord. The mist has vanished, on the opposite shore you see the mountains and a road with two cars advancing slowly along it. You lean forward, the railing creaks and bends slightly outward. There’s the pebble beach with the boathouse. It’s all as your father described it to you. You look straight down. It’s high, really high. A drop of sweat falls from the tip of your nose. At this point Stink would say: This is definitely high enough. You wonder what it would be like to land down there. The glass slips from your hand and vanishes. No. You’re not planning on dying, but you’re not planning on living either. You want to stay in this intermediate stage. With pain, guilt, and suffering. You deserve to feel as miserable as this.
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