You (46 page)

What you really wanted to do was take the ferry from Kiel to Oslo, but just before Kiel Schnappi told one of the cashiers at the filling station about your plan, and he said you would never get a seat on the ferry because it was booked weeks in advance. He advised you to go on to Hirtshals and take the ferry from there to Kristiansand. There’s hardly any business out of Hirtshals, he said.

“And where is Hirtshals?” Schnappi wanted to know.

You looked at it on the map. Hirtshals is at the northern tip of Denmark, and directly opposite is the Norwegian port of Kristiansand. It’s a short-cut, because on the ferry from Kiel it would have taken you nineteen hours to get to Oslo, while the journey from Hirtshals across Skagerrak to Kristiansand takes just four hours. And Kristiansand is closer to your destination, and that settled it.

After three hours you’d crossed Denmark and reached the completely congested port of Hirtshals. The cashier had neglected to tell you that there’s always a big pop festival in Kristiansand this time of year, attracting two hundred thousand visitors. Stink cursed the guy at some length, while Taja said it was the best thing that could have happened to you.

“Take a look. At least no one will notice us.”

And that was how it was. No one wanted to check your papers, you were just another four girls in a pretentious Range Rover, who listened to pop music. After only an hour’s wait you were able to get onto the ferry.

As soon as you’ve crossed to Kristiansand, according to your navigation system it’s eight and a half hours to Ulvtannen. The plan is very simple. You want to surprise Taja’s mother and then move into the beach hotel. Two stories, a room with a view of the fjord, a life in freedom. Even though Taja only knows the hotel from photographs, she’s described it so vividly that you can see it in front of you.

Stink pats your belly.

“You’re going to have your baby exactly where Taja was born. That would be great.”

“I’d rather not imagine it.”

“Fresh air and everything.”

“Stink, shut up.”

You spit on the water and wait for Norway to come closer. You still don’t know if you want to keep the child. You see yourself sitting down to breakfast one morning, and looking at your girls and telling them what you’ve decided. One morning.

An excitable Italian woman joins you and says in English how great it is that you’re there too, she comes to the festival every year, only last year was a flop because not enough tickets were sold, but
that was last year, this time it’s going to be on fire, right? Then a group of guys from Belgium buzz around you, wanting to know what you think of Volbeat, and because you have no idea who Volbeat are they write you off as lesbians. Stink laughs and wants to show off and asks you if you’d like to kiss, tongues and everything. You blush and say:
Rather not
. The Belgians move on. Stink calls you a nun. You kiss her quickly on the lips and tell her to be careful what she wishes for. After that an incredibly thin woman with a basket full of fish sandwiches comes round. When she hears you talking German she reveals herself as born and bred in Leipzig. She’s doing odd jobs for her studies and she’s on her way to the Quart Festival to sell T-shirts.

“First fish sandwiches, then T-shirts. I’ll give you a good price if you’re interested. My uncle prints the shirts at home in the basement. That’s his car over there. I’ve got everything, from Manson to the Peas. And if you like I can get you two tickets for next Friday, if you want to see Chris Cornell, and who doesn’t? Hahaha.”

A quarter of an hour later you buy two fish sandwiches from the woman, and at last she leaves you alone.

“Who’s Chris Cornell?” you ask.

“Never mind that, who’s going to eat these fish sandwiches?”

The sandwiches are soaking, mayonnaise spills out from the sides of them as if they have had a panic attack and were sweating their souls out.

“No wonder this girl is so thin,” you say. You’d really like to throw the sandwiches overboard. But you’ve never been able to do things like that, so you give them to a woman with four children, who looks at you as if you were handing her a full diaper. But she takes them and puts them in her stroller. Stink has had enough of people talking to you just because you’re standing at the railing. So you push your way through the crowd and get back to the car deck. Taja is asleep on the backseat. Schnappi is sitting in the passenger seat, playing with Neil’s phone. Her foot is braced against the glove compartment, her black painted toenails are as tiny as raisins, and dart back and forth to the music. Some summer hit is blaring from the radio.

“You haven’t called someone, have you,” says Stink.

Schnappi rolls her eyes.

“How would I do that? I don’t know a single number by heart. Why did we have to give that guy
all
the phones? And my gun, too. I’d earned it. I mean, really.”

“Schnappi, that gun was bigger than your head and you could hardly hold it.”

“Of course I could hold it. Have I got a child’s hands or something?”

She holds out her children hands.

“You know how many idiots have asked me over the last two hours if I play in a band? One thought I was Björk. How dumb is that? Am I really that small? It’s really sad. A girl without a gun is completely lost in this world.”

You’re glad that Schnappi handed over the weapon. You urged her to, Taja was in favor of it as well. You couldn’t be armed. And that business with the cell phones made sense, because Taja’s uncle must have traced you somehow or other. And Neil didn’t exactly look like the sort of guy to pull a fast one on you. He gave you his own phone in return, with instructions—you were to use the phone only in an emergency, he’d call as soon as everything was sorted out. But in the event of an emergency, he’d also given you the number of his new prepaid phone and stressed that it had to be really urgent for you to call him.

Something about Neil felt right to you. You couldn’t explain it otherwise. As if he knew what he was doing, without really understanding it.

Like us?

Yes, like you.

“Don’t break that phone,” you say.

Schnappi ignores you and goes on studying the screen.

“This is expensive crap. There’s as much storage space on it as there is on my fingernail. Let’s take a look in his address book. Aha, nothing but slags. We’ve got Gabi and Uschi and Franka and Klara. I mean, who’s called Franka?”

“Franka Potente,” you say.

“Never heard of her,” Schnappi lies and goes on reading. “We’ve got two Clarissas, one Debo, a Mascha, and three Nicoles. There’s hardly a single guy. Either he has no male friends or he never calls them.”

“Any music?” Stink asks.

“Not a single song.”

You have to ask.

“Do you know Chris Cornell?”

“Never heard of him,” says Schnappi.

You yawn and look at the water and see the coast of Norway getting bigger and bigger. Schnappi sets the phone aside and asks how long it’s going to take.

“I’m so incredibly hungry.”

“There’s a girl over there selling fish sandwiches,” you say.

“Just because I have slitty eyes, it doesn’t mean I have to eat fish every day.”

You look at Schnappi in surprise. You have to say it.

“I thought you had slitty eyes
because
you ate fish every day.”

Stink explodes with laughter, Taja says wearily from the backseat that she’d always thought so too. It’s your first joke since Ruth died. It’s like coming home. All the furniture’s in the right place and there’s food waiting in the kitchen, but it still hurts because the walls are missing and the floor is full of holes.
How can I make jokes if Ruth isn’t here with us anymore? I should grieve for a year and wear black and not say another word
. And while you’re thinking that, you become aware that it’s the last thing Ruth would have wanted. Grief.

Schnappi gives you the finger and fiddles around with the radio until she’s found the right station. She turns the volume up full.

“Who’s laughing now?” she yells at you as a string orchestra fills the car with easy listening, and a few guys from the next car boo you.

You’re all standing at a stall eating fries with weird burgers that taste of fish and meat at the same time. It’s crowded, it’s noisy. The ferry landed half an hour ago, and you still can’t believe that you’ve gotten to Norway just like that.

Clouds tower and dusk already covers half the sky as if the day were exhausted and pulling a blanket over its head. That’s exactly what you feel like. Last night still fills your bones, and the memory of the morning in Hamburg is like a razor blade wandering about
under your skin. You don’t think about the unborn child inside you. There’s plenty of time for that later on.
There are worse things than having your baby in Norway
, you think, and wonder if abortion is even legal here. You never wanted to have a child out of stupidity. It was supposed to be a child born of love. Whatever’s growing in your belly, there was no love during those five minutes.

The girls are waiting for you to decide whether you want to drive on right away or take a break. A break would be good, but you don’t want to stand somewhere on the roadside and invite the police to pick you up. They’d just have to ask for your driver’s license, and that would be that. You want to keep moving. It’s still exactly eight hours and forty-two minutes to Ulvtannen, you’re going to manage that, and then you can sleep for three whole days. Promise.

“Let’s go,” you say.

It’s just after nine when you finally get going. You’ve bought drinks and snacks, you went to the bathroom quickly, and now you’re on course. The navigation system guided you out of Kristiansand and you turned off the E18 to Route 41 northbound. The sky is completely starless, the air oppressively close. You’ve been on the road for a whole twenty minutes, and you’ve just driven over a bridge when the rain catches you. Rain is the wrong word in this case. It rains in Germany, in Norway it pours. The wind rises, the clouds open without warning, and the road disappears behind a curtain of water. You keep driving for a minute after the first squall before turning off to the right. The windshield wipers fail completely. The rain hammers down on the car and it sounds as if each drop is leaving a dent. You feel as if you’re trapped in a tin can. Stink thumps the roof from inside as if to defy the rain.

“Shit, that’s noisy!”

“Look, there’s light up ahead.”

Taja leans past you and points, as if you didn’t know front from back. There really is light. You start the engine again. The car advances like a listing snail. The light gets brighter and bigger and reveals itself as a gas station with a restaurant next to it.

Of course all the covered parking spots are full, so you drive past and squeeze yourself in beside a trailer opposite the restaurant.
Through the rain you can just make out the outlines of people at the tables. The place is crowded. What you wouldn’t do to be one of them.

“Turn on your hazard lights,” says Schnappi, “otherwise someone is going to back into us.”

You look in the rearview mirror. The road is awash, the rain is everywhere, and the gas station reminds you of a pale light flickering through seaweed under water. Schnappi’s right. You’re a few feet away from the driveway. It would be a nasty surprise if a car rammed you in passing. You turn on the hazard lights.

“What’s that?” Stink says crossly.

The ticking of the hazard lights is immediately irritating. There is the pouring rain, there is the ticking, and there you are in this tin box called a car. Stink wants you to turn the hazard lights off again. Taja says better safe than sorry. A few people walk past you. They move like sleepwalkers toward the entrance of the restaurant. The women wear bikinis and dance in the rain. Summer in Norway. One man has opened a pink umbrella, and gives you a stupid peace sign. Now you’re very glad you’re still sitting in the car.

“And how long are we going to be waiting around here?” Schnappi asks.

Nobody answers, you stare into the rain, the hazard lights tick away, and you don’t know what’s worse—the rattling of the rain or this ticking—when a new noise is suddenly added from the backseat and it startles all four of you and makes you screech like mad.

“GIRLS, SHUT THE FUCK UP, IT’S JUST THE PHONE!” yells Stink, and takes Neil’s cell phone out of her jeans. Neil has set the volume extra loud so that you wouldn’t miss his call. Stink presses receive and holds the phone to her ear.

“What? Hello? Speak louder, it’s pissing down here.”

Stink listens, then she puts the phone away again and looks at Schnappi.

“Two hours ago Neil tried to get through to us, but some fish-eating slut must have been playing around with the phone.”

“I was just on the internet for a minute,” Schnappi says, defending herself.

You don’t believe it.

“What were you looking for on the internet?”

“Just checking my mail.”

“Schnappi, we’re on the run and you’re checking your mail?”

“One of us has to keep her feet on the ground.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Taja wants to know what Neil said. Stink replies, “We’ve got to get rid of the car.”

“What?”

You all say it at the same time, you’re like one of those Greek choruses announcing the decline of the west. Stink tells you Neil met Taja’s uncle and gave him the key to the safe-deposit box. Taja thinks she’s misheard.

“What did he do
that
for?”

“Because he’s crazy,” Schnappi says contentedly. “I’ve said so the whole time. First he takes our phones away, then my gun, and now he gives Taja’s uncle the key to the safe-deposit box. The guy’s definitely crazy.”

“He isn’t crazy,” you say. “I bet he was trying to protect us.”

“Whatever Neil wanted,” says Stink, “he thinks one of those tracking devices is built into our car.”

“This isn’t a James Bond movie,” says Schnappi.

“It’s not a toy car either,” says Stink. “If it was my ride I’d have put in an alarm
and
a tracking device.”

You look around the car.

“If the car has a tracking device, we’ll find it,” says Taja and opens the glove compartment. There’s a pair of sunglasses, a bag of candies, and a few crumpled pieces of paper.