The water below you, the sky above you and you’re sitting in the grass, your feet dangling over the edge, and nothing is as it was in your dream—the day isn’t gray, no snow is falling, and the valley walls shimmer in the morning sun like liquid silver and don’t look in the slightest like Japanese ink-wash drawings.
It’s nine in the morning, and your girls are still asleep in the car. You woke up half an hour ago and looked outside. And there it was, there was everything. The earth and the sky, the cliff and the fjord.
Home.
In front of you the cliff climbs higher, twenty yards to your left you see a narrow, overgrown path leading down to the pebble beach. On the beach there’s a boathouse, the boards are painted green, the paint has faded on the lower edge. The shadow of a flagpole draws a sharp line across the façade. You sit very still, you look at the line and wait for it to wander on. The sunbeams are tireless, they tear holes in the pale gray carpet of mist, letting the surface of the water shine through. A high-pitched cry makes you start. It echoes for several seconds over the fjord, then silence falls again. You look into the clouds. Perhaps a bird of prey, perhaps a seagull.
Or my father, calling to me.
You sniff hard. Since you’ve been sitting here, the tears won’t stop flowing. Tears for your father, tears for Ruth, and most particularly tears for yourself. Melodramatic and so pathetic that you get a pain in the back of your head. But the tears help and release the pressure that weighs down on you like a great hand, trying to make you smaller.
“Brilliant!”
You hastily wipe your face dry. Schnappi comes and stands next to you and looks at the fjord.
“This isn’t a place, this is a fairy tale!”
The passenger door opens. Stink blinks around suspiciously, then braces her feet against the dashboard and puts on her boots. She’s the only one you’re really afraid of. Nessi and Schnappi are the ideal listeners, full of sympathy and love. Stink’s always critical, she only ever sees the dark side, but she’s fair, you particularly like that about her. If she sees a lie, she gets her teeth into it and tears it to pieces. Which doesn’t stop her lying like a loon herself. You love and hate it in her. There’s always a bit of distance between you two. As if you mustn’t get too close to each other. Even the way she jumps out of the car and runs both hands furiously through her mane, as if she were washing her hair. She reminds you of a warrior who’s escaped from a Viking movie. After she’s stretched she says, “I’m in urgent need of coffee. Coffee and a roll.”
“First take a look at this,” says Schnappi, “it’s fantastic.”
“Yeah, yeah, in a minute.”
Stink pulls her pants down and squats beside a bush. She yawns, winks at you, and says, “So, are you a voyeur or something?”
“You look awful.”
“Take a look in the mirror, bitch.”
“You’re really pale,” says Schnappi and points at her hairdo. “How do I look?”
You wave her over, Schnappi leans forward and you comb her sticking-out hair behind her ears, and after that she looks tolerable again.
Stink snaps her fingers.
“Hey, I don’t suppose one of you could …?”
You rummage in your jacket and hand Schnappi a pack of tissues. She throws them to Stink. Stink joins you a minute later and says, “Funny lake.”
Schnappi rolls her eyes.
“Girl, that’s not a lake, that’s a fjord.”
Stink gives her a shove with her backside.
“Oh, is that right?”
“Where do you think we are?”
“In the country where you can mess with little Vietnamese girls?”
Schnappi shoves back.
“Ever fallen in a fjord?”
“Ever had the worst hairdo of all time?”
“Sit down and shut up,” you interrupt them, and your girls listen to you and sit down, let their legs dangle and say nothing. A whole two minutes.
“And the coffee?”
You sigh. A seagull lands on the flagpole. Stink yawns and asks who wants a cigarette. Schnappi throws her head back and spits into the fjord in a high arc.
“That hit the spot!”
“Yeah, and I got half of it in my face.”
Stink makes a show of wiping her face on her sweatshirt. You look down between your feet.
“Do you think if we jumped we’d die?”
Your girls take a look too, Stink stretches her hand out and drops the used tissue. You watch it curving, sweeping down and landing on the water like a clumsy bird.
“No, that wouldn’t kill anybody,” says Stink. “You’d just make a big splash and go swimming around. Where are we, by the way?”
In my dream, you want to answer, but you know how stupid it would sound. And your friends don’t know anything about your dream. Your sense of longing is as alien to them as you yourself have been to them for quite some time.
“Nessi will know where we are,” you say and get to your feet.
Of course you can’t wait until Nessi wakes up of her own accord. While you stand beside the car, talking about who’s going to wake her, Nessi sits up.
“You’re talking so loud I’d wake up if I’d been in a coma.”
“So, had enough sleep?” asks Stink.
“Not really. How is it?”
“We’re here.”
“Where’s here, Nessi?”
She frowns.
“Well, the address. Ulvtannen.”
Nessi leans out of the window and looks around; you look around too. There isn’t much to see, a knoll looming out into the fjord, and beside it rocks and a cliff.
“So where’s this village?” asks Stink.
“You’d be better off asking where the hotel is,” says Schnappi.
They look at you. You have no answer. Being here feels as if you’d found something and lost it again right away. From euphoria to depression in two seconds. Wherever you look, there’s definitely never been a hotel here, and the boathouse down at the beach doesn’t count.
“Maybe the navigation system is acting up,” says Schnappi.
“Why would it act up?” asks Nessi and gets out. Schnappi climbs into the car, Nessi takes a deep breath and says the air’s amazing. She stretches the way Stink did before. Nessi is the only one who’s never had trouble with her hair. She looks like a fresh-baked angel. Schnappi’s hand comes out of the window. She wiggles her fingers.
“I can’t start the navigation system without the keys.”
“They’re in there,” says Nessi.
“Nope.”
Schnappi looks around the floor, checks under the seats. Nothing. Nessi rummages in her jeans.
“I don’t understand it. I definitely didn’t take the key out. And it can’t have come flying out on the drive, either.”
“I think that’s impossible,” says Schnappi.
“Oh, is it really?”
“Guys, the key can’t just disappear,” says Stink, and drags Schnappi out of the car to do a bit of looking herself.
“Is this like a horror movie or something?” says Schnappi. “One of you is about to go crazy and you’re just waiting for night to fall?”
You look at each other helplessly. You look at the road leading down. Then you look at the road winding its way back around the bend between the rocks and up to the cliff.
“What’s up there?”
“No idea. I listened to the navigation system, that’s why we’re here.”
“Let’s take a look,” you decide, and go on ahead.
The euphoria is still there, and it sweeps the bad mood away. You know you’re in the right place. You can feel it. And you have to prove it to your girls so that everything’s all right again.
“And what about the key?” Stink calls after you.
You turn round and hold out your hand for her.
“We’ll find it, come on.”
After the first bend the road leads into a second bend. Fifty yards further on you see the summit in front of you; the sky all around it looks as if it’s been cut with a blunt knife. You’re glad to be moving. Over the past few days you’ve either been lying in bed or sitting in the car. Stink is cursing constantly, she’s out of breath after less than a minute. She says she’s absolutely had it, and she’s going to spit her lungs up if the rest of you don’t slow down.
“I need coffee, I’ve got to fill up my batteries.”
Schnappi links arms with her, Nessi does the same on the other side. They support Stink like a grandma who’s lost her walking stick. You go and stand behind Stink, grab her ass with both hands, and start pushing. Stink screeches and runs off. You all go after her and could be four girls who’ve run away from summer camp. And so you reach the peak and stop as if you’d walked into a glass wall. The cliff is in front of you, and Stink says, “That’s impossible …”
“But …”
You don’t get another word out.
Nessi throws her hand over her mouth as if to keep her words in.
Schnappi has no words left.
You stand there and don’t believe what you see.