You (62 page)

It feels as if you’re moving under water, with those tenacious strokes that you always hated because they hardly got you anywhere. Swimming is not your passion, it’s something for retirees with back pains, or people who like secretly peeing in the water. Yesterday you were a rocket, today a butterfly with a suitcase could overtake you. Even though it feels as if you aren’t getting anywhere, surprisingly you aren’t bringing up the rear, which certainly isn’t due to your fabulously long legs. Nessi pushes you onwards. Her hand is on the small of your back, but it isn’t getting you any closer to the hotel.

“Run, Schnappi! Shit, keep running!”

She pushes, you stumble and nearly fall, and then time takes pity on you and your legs are your legs again and everything goes incredibly quickly from then on. Stink disappears into the house, and when Taja tries to get through the rickety double door, you hear the first shot ring out. All of a sudden your back is hot and wet and you stop abruptly, you nearly fall headlong.

Then the second, then the third shot.

You turn around.

Nessi isn’t behind you now, there’s no one behind you. You look at the ground. And there lies Nessi, her left shoulder is nothing but shredded flesh, you see the shimmer of bone, the blood pumps and pumps and forms a pool around Nessi. You can’t take your eyes off that white shimmer, and feel the warmth on your back and something running down your arm. You don’t want to look, but you
look and there’s a scrap of skin on your upper arm, right where the sleeve of your T-shirt stops.

You look up. Darian is still aiming the gun at you, and you know that’s it.
The fucker’s going to blow my head off now, and I’m just standing there and there’s nothing I can do, and what sort of a stupid ending is that?
Darian pulls the trigger, the shot crashes through your stomach with searing heat, and Nessi says, “Everything okay?”

You blink, you’re standing in the hotel lobby and it’s hazy, the air around you glitters with the dust particles that you’ve swirled up with your feet. You look down at her, a sunbeam has pierced your stomach and is warming it up. Stink shuts the other half of the double door with a bang, the sun is closed out, she comes over to you and wants to know if you’ve seen a ghost or what. You grab Nessi by the shoulders and turn her around.

“What’s up with you?” asks Nessi.

You hug her, press her to you.

“Honey, what’s up?”

“Stop chatting, you two,” says Stink. “The bastard almost got us. We can’t stand around here waiting for the next bus. Perhaps there’s a rear exit.”

“No.”

You turn round. Taja is sitting at the foot of a sweeping staircase that leads to the second floor and looks as if someone’s been working at it with a jackhammer. Taja has put her arms around herself as if it’s incredibly cold in here, she’s rocking gently back and forth.

“The house is built right on the cliff,” she says. “There’s no rear exit.”

You stare at her, your blank is forgotten, now you can just see Taja, pale and miserable, rocking back and forth, and for that moment even Darian and his father are forgotten. You want to ask her to stop rocking like that. It’s weird, as if Taja’s inner balance is broken. Nessi asks the question that’s troubling all of you.

“But why, Taja?”

And she doesn’t mean Taja’s father and what happened between you. You don’t care about that, if you’re honest; it’s Taja’s business.

“I thought we’d start over,” she replies. “I thought it would be okay.”

You could give her encouragement now, and say that everything is forgiven and you’ll be able to have a new start. You could, but you don’t, because it would be a lie. The wounds are too fresh. You feel the tension rising. Stink might tear into Taja again at any moment. Do something.

“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
. You 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.”