You

by Zoran Drvenkar

  If your mother were here, she would understand you and your loneliness. You believe in that, you cling to it. Your mother would have understood you wanting to bring her back to life for a few days. For a few days you were really on the way to her.

  Behind you, leaning against the wall of the house, are six deck chairs which are as weathered as the façade and have assumed the same gray color. When you were in your delirious state and traveled here in your mind, the deck chairs were green and yielded slightly under your weight. You unfold one of them, it comes to pieces in your hands. You pick up the chair behind it. It creaks and trembles when you sit down and stretch your legs out. The linen fabric holds, you lean all the way back, it’s the most relaxing feeling you’ve had for ages. Better than any drug, better than any hand touching you. You look down at the fjord. It’s like coming home.

  Water below me, sky above me.

  You look down the corridor, you call her name, Taja doesn’t reply. You look at the man as if he might know what’s going on here. And it slowly dawns on you how crazy all this is. Meeting someone in this dilapidated house. Someone who speaks German.

  Someone who knows us.

  “How do you know about Taja?”

  “Sit down, then we can talk.”

  You don’t move.

  “We’d rather stand,” you say, “because we have no time to chat, there are two lunatics out there who want to kill us.”

  None of this affects the man, he is tranquillity personified, he repeats that you’re safe here. Nessi stands beside you and she is as nervous as if she needs to go to the bathroom, she whispers to you that the guy’s weird. That’s not really news to me, you want to tell her. All of a sudden Schnappi can’t keep it in any longer: “Excuse me, why are we safe here? And who are you anyway?”

  The man puts a key on the table.

  “You’ve been traveling in my car.”

  So there is the key! you think and know right away that it must be nonsense, because you stole the car from Marten and not from a man in his late forties, wearing an idiotic T-shirt. That’s never his car. Then it clicks, then all of a sudden you know who you’ve got sitting in front of you. Schnappi works it out at the same moment.

  “No way,” she says.

  Nessi is missing it again.

  “What?”

  “This is Marten’s father,” you say.

  “What?”

  Nessi looks at you with big eyes and then she looks at Marten’s father and then she starts stammering.

  “We … we never wanted this to happen. You see … We needed the car because …”

  “It’s okay,” says the man, and for one brief moment you see a cloud drifting across his eyes, then the cloud has disappeared again, leaving behind a coldness that you hadn’t noticed before.

  He’s here, and at the same time he’s very far away.

  “We didn’t do anything to him,” you say.

  “I think you did. Without you, Marten would be in Kristiansand right now.”

  You don’t know what to say to that. His calm voice makes you nervous, you almost wish he’d get angry. But good luck with that, he sits and touches the key with his fingertips. If it came to it, you could outpace this guy in ten seconds flat. But where would you go? Marten’s father in the hotel and Taja’s uncle out there, and to crown it all you’ve got Darian, shooting away like an idiot all over the place. Life isn’t exactly showing you its sweetest side, but as it hasn’t been doing that for a few days now, it hardly matters.

  The man looks over to the window, then he asks you who the two people out there are. You tell him, you tell him exactly what kind of a mess you’ve got yourselves into. First you speak, then Nessi, but in the end Schnappi does most of the talking. When she mentions the drugs, Marten’s father interrupts her.

  “That’s not the issue.”

  Of course not, you want to say, it’s not about pride and revenge, and it’s not about a few million euros that our Nessi scattered on the tarmac, because I couldn’t help taking the fucking drugs with me, because Taja couldn’t help fucking her father and then suffocating him under a cushion.

  “Here’s the key to my car,” the man goes on, “I’d give you back the Range Rover, but Marten’s lying on the backseat and I don’t yet feel like moving him off it. And anyway, it’s an Autobiography.”

  He smiles wearily. You haven’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about.

  “You can keep my car as long as you want. Drive away and don’t look back.”

  “You want us to do what?” you ask as if he’d been speaking Greek the whole time.

  “Get out of here.”

  “We can’t go outside, they’ll shoot us down.”

  The man shakes his head.

  “They won’t do anything to you.”

  At that moment you hear voices from outside. Schnappi goes to one of the windows and jumps back immediately.

  “What is it?” you ask.

  “Darian’s crouching beside his father and they’re talking. You really messed him up, the bastard’s still lying on the ground.”

  “You knocked him down?” the man says to you.

  “He threatened us.”

  “You could have killed him.”

  “At that moment it didn’t matter.”

  “And if he was dead now?”

  “That wouldn’t matter either,” you admit, and know it’s true, because Taja’s uncle deserved more than being hit with a pipe. The man nods appreciatively. He respects your fury, and when has anyone ever respected your fury?

  He likes me.

  You’re not sure if that’s good or bad. Schnappi knows something’s happening between you, she tilts her head at an angle and says to Marten’s father, “My mother told me about you.”

  The man takes his eye off you, you’re free again. He sounds surprised when he asks, “Did she?”

  Schnappi nods.

  “My mother says if you see someone who’s missing a soul, you’ve got to run. Faster than the wind, faster than light. Because the ones who are missing a soul, they’ll steal your breath, they have nothing to lose and that’s why they aren’t scared of anything or anyone.”

  “Your mother must be a clever woman.”

  “My mother’s a witch, and I can’t stand her.”

  “No one likes witches.”

  “No, no one likes witches.”

  “So …”

  Schnappi takes a deep breath.

  “… are you one of the ones who are missing a soul?”

  “I’m one of those,” the man confirms, and however hard you try you have no idea what the two of them are talking about.

  The man pushes the car keys away from him, they slide across the table toward you. Nessi picks them up. You have to ask, “How did you find us?”

  The man smiled.

  “That’s a misunderstanding. You found me, I didn’t look for you.”

  “What? Is that supposed to be an answer?”

  “That’s an answer. Now go, and shut the door behind you.”

  Of course the answer isn’t enough for you, but Nessi pulls you by the arm on one side and Schnappi pushes you from the other. You leave the kitchen, Nessi shuts the door behind you.

  “What was that?” she asks quietly.

  “He’s nuts,” Schnappi says loudly.

  “Shh, he can still hear us,” says Nessi and pulls you down the corridor toward the hall.

  “What did you mean by he’s ‘missing a soul’?” you ask Schnappi.

  “He’s without a soul, haven’t you noticed?”

  “He’s what?”

  “Didn’t you see?”

  You can’t describe what you saw in Marten’s father, just that it was cold and distant, but what’s that going to sound like?

  Better than without a soul, anyway.

  Yeah, you’ve got a point.

  You reach the hall. No trace of Taja. You look at the entrance. The doors hang at a bit of an angle, so that the sun ca
n push its thin fingers through.

  “Are they coming to get us?”

  “If they come, let’s send them to see Marten’s father in the kitchen.”

  No one laughs. None of you can take your eyes off the door. You could stand there gaping all day. Like before school when there were exams and you kept your cigarette going till the filter charred.

  “No way am I going out there,” says Schnappi.

  “We can’t just hide like rabbits and wait till they come and get us,” you say.

  “We’ve got to find Taja first,” says Nessi.

  You knew she’d mention that one. Schnappi bites her lower lip, you try to ignore Nessi and think: I’d rather go outside and take a bullet. When Nessi adds, “Guys, this is our Taja we’re talking about.”

  “Our Taja lied to us,” you remind her. “We’re only here because she lied to us. Don’t you get that, Nessi? She’s fake.”

  Schnappi nods, she agrees with you. It’s the worst judgment you can make about any of the girls, but you have to be honest, because without honesty nothing keeps you together anymore.

  “I know she’s messed up,” says Nessi. “She messed up big-time, okay, but the way I see it she can mess up as much as you like, she’s still one of us. That’s how we are, that’s how we always wanted to be, have you forgotten that?”

  Of course you haven’t forgotten, and you’re about to let her have a few choice arguments, when Taja’s uncle suddenly yells outside.

  Schnappi wants to go and see what’s going on.

  “Schnappi, keep out of it,” you say.

  The yelling stops. Silence. Schnappi steps over to the door.

  “Schnappi, don’t!” says Nessi.

  “Don’t be pussies,” says Schnappi and peers through the crack. One second, two, and suddenly a piece of the door beside her head is pulverized and bits of wood fly in your faces.

  “Get down!”

  You throw yourselves on the floor, and after that it’s shot after shot, fist-sized holes open up in the front door and let the sun in, while the hotel quakes and quivers under the impact.

  The man who’s no longer your father lies on the floor and looks up at you. You defied him. You said no to him. You fucked up Judas. The satisfaction sets off little explosions in your body.

  The man who’s no longer your father turns red in the face, his chin trembles, a thin thread of blood runs from his nose, the blood is almost black, he yells at you,

  “THEN FUCK OFF! GET OUT OF HERE! AND IF I EVER GET BACK ON MY FEET, I’LL FINISH YOU OFF, YOU GET THAT? YOU CAN HIDE WHERE YOU LIKE, I’LL FINISH YOU OFF, DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I’M SAYING?”

  You nod, you understand, you’re a boy without muscles again, who sees his mother standing at the roadside with two suitcases, waiting for a taxi and promising she’ll call you soon. Again you’re a boy with no muscles, running in tears to his father because he hopes for a hug and instead he gets laughed at. You’ve been a boy with muscles for too long. You don’t want to be you anymore. You get up and look across at the hotel, and in that moment the hotel represents everything you once were. Your uncle and his stories about the wolves and the memory of a time that will never come again, because your uncle stopped existing. Only this hotel remains, and your despair has a target. You raise the gun with both hands, release the safety catch, and fire and fire and fill the front door with holes as if this pitiful door is to blame for everything. After fourteen shots the magazine’s empty, only the echo of your despair floats in the air.

  It’s over.

  You turn away and walk over to the slope that you climbed with your father. Your life in reverse. You hear the man who’s no longer your father yelling after you, but he no longer speaks your language.

  You go, because you’re no longer furious with anyone. Not with Taja and what she’s done, not with your father, who never wanted you. You forgive them. Your mother. Your first girlfriend, who dumped you without a word of explanation after two weeks. Those bastards, lying in wait for you and Mirko. Everybody. Even Mirko, who went and got shot. And particularly your father, who is no longer your father. You’ve changed, whatever that means, you’re no longer the person you were this morning. You forgive everybody, but you keep hold of your own guilt, because you still can’t forgive the murder of the boy, and even the fact that you’ve forgotten his name is inexcusable. His death will stay with you for ages yet. Eventually you’ll be standing at a crossroads in Berlin, watching after a bus that beeped at you. And at that moment the boy’s name will come to your mind. Twenty-one years will pass before that happens. Twenty-one years without forgiveness. Take time with your guilt, the wounds need to heal. And look around you every time you get to a crossroads.

  “Is he dead?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Christ, he scared the shit out of me.”

  “Imagine if he got up right now.”

  “Keep your mouth shut.”

  “Do you think he can hear you?”

  “Not if he’s dead.”

  You keep your distance, because you’ve seen enough horror movies. You keep glancing over at the slope that Darian’s disappeared behind, after firing at the hotel like a lunatic. You lay down flat on the floor in the hall, arms over your head, and you thought: This is exactly what war must be like. You’d have liked to have Marten’s father by your side, to ask him if he meant it when he said you were safe. Then everything outside fell silent. Nothing. No voices, no footsteps, the shooting was over. Somewhere a bird was singing, and when birds sing it usually means everything’s okay.

  You got up and looked carefully through one of the bullet holes. The wood was rotten and smelled of burnt paper. You saw Darian heading toward the slope.

  “Darian’s leaving.”

  “And what about his father?” Stink asked.

  “He’s still there.”

  You wanted to clear out before Darian came back. Nessi wouldn’t think of it, and handed you the key to the car.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You two can go where you like, but I’m not going anywhere without Taja.”

  Stink turned pale.

  “Come on, Nessi, she’s fucking left, or can you see her anywhere?”

  Nessi looked up the stairs.

  “Where could she have got to? She must be in the hotel. You two can leave. I’m not abandoning Taja.”

  “Shit, I hate it when you’re like this,” Stink said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means we’ll wait outside for you,” you said quickly, because if anyone can interpret Stink’s words, it’s you.

  “Thanks,” said Nessi and was about to turn around, but Stink held her back.

  “Just in case there’s any misunderstanding, I’m not going to forgive Taja. She’s still one of us, and that will never change, but I’ll never forgive her.”

  “And you don’t have to,” Nessi replied. “I think the only person who can forgive Taja is Taja herself.”

  With those words Nessi went upstairs, and Stink looked at you quizzically and you shrugged and then you all left the hotel. Since then you’ve been standing in the sun, ten feet away from Ragnar Desche, waiting for Nessi and Taja and hoping with all your heart that Darian’s not going to come back. You walk to the edge of the slope. No sign of Darian. You look around the place. No sign of anyone. No cars on the road, no one walking a dog, not even an elk standing by the water and drinking. Probably all the Norwegians have emigrated and you’re the last people left in the country. You look over at the hotel and wonder if Marten’s father is still sitting at the kitchen table.

  When you return to Stink, she’s standing bent over, hands on her knees. She’s taking a closer look at Ragnar Desche.

  “He’s not breathing. He’s not bleeding anymore, either.”

  “Did you really have to use a pipe?”

  “What are you thinking of? Should I have tried to find something softer, or what?”

  “Nah, it’
s fine.”

  “I didn’t plan him to break down like this.”

  “You saved our lives, and now shut up.”

  “What about Taja?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, do you think we can save her?”

  You nearly said there was nothing to save, but even a Schnappi sometimes manages to keep her mouth shut. You stand there and don’t know what to do next. You look at Ragnar Desche for another minute, then you turn away and look over at the hotel. Nothing. No Nessi, no Taja. You imagine Marten’s father suddenly deciding he’s been sitting here for long enough.

  “What happens if Marten’s father goes berserk?”

  “Schnappi, I hate it when you say stuff like that.”

  “I’m just thinking out loud.”

  “Then think quietly.”

  You purse your lips, draw a cross on the ground with your heel, and spit on it.

  “What the hell was that? Voodoo?”

  “Nope, just bored. Where have they got to?”

  “Perhaps Nessi can’t find her.”

  “Perhaps Taja doesn’t want to be found.”

  Both of you look over at the beach hotel.

  I hope so, you think and immediately regret the thought.

  And then it’s over, the shots from the first floor fall silent, and you’re still lying stretched out on the deck chair. The sun has wandered around the corner and covers your legs like a blanket of light. It feels as if your batteries are being charged. From a distance you think you can hear your father. He talks to you, and although you don’t understand a word, it’s a good feeling that he’s there. You listen, drift off, and feel through the woodwork of the terrace the vibration of footsteps coming toward you.

  If it is my father, I’ll ask him if he forgives me.

  “Taja?”

  You can’t answer, you lie there and can’t even open your eyes. You can’t sleep now, look up.

  You look up.

  Nessi is standing in the doorway, a hand over her mouth in fright, the other a fist that doesn’t know what to do.

  Typical Nessi, you think and attempt a smile. It doesn’t work, your mouth is too tired for a smile. Nessi steps outside, she’s so quick, a moment ago she was still standing in the door and now she’s crouching down beside you. You sigh and make a sound like a baby waking up.