Everything I Don't Remember (24 page)

*

A few hours later. Last call. We were fine sitting down, but had a harder time standing up.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“My phone,” Samuel said.

“Fuck your phone. Fuck Laide, fuck Sting.” (I only said that because a Sting song happened to be playing on the bar speakers—I don’t have anything in particular against
Sting.)

I returned to the table with two to four drinks. Four Samuels looked up and smiled, I sat on one of five chairs and thought, the battle to help him find his way back to being himself starts
now.

“Shouldn’t I call her?”

“No, you shouldn’t call her.”

“Just to see how things are?”

“Give me your phone.”

“You already took it.”

“Oh right. I have your phone and you are not going to call her.”

Even though last call had come and gone they let us stay there and soon it was last last call and it was Samuel’s turn to buy. He walked a crooked line to the bar, he grabbed it like a
lifebuoy, the bartender smiled as he placed his order. Then he came back with just one beer.

“I felt like I had enough,” said Samuel.

I sat there with my single beer. I asked if Samuel wanted a taste.

“No, I’m good.”

I tossed back half the beer, put down the glass, and went to the bathroom. When I came back, Samuel was by the door with his coat on. We walked out onto the square, the night wind was icy cold,
a very fit couple was working out side by side on the Stairmasters in the gym, they were staring at their reflections and looking pleased. On the way out I noticed that the half-full beer I’d
left on the table had been drunk. And I don’t know why I noticed that or what it changed, but I remember thinking that Laide was still there inside Samuel, even though they had broken up and
would never be together again, she would be a part of him forever. I hoped I was wrong.

*

I was convinced he would call. I waited for the phone to ring. If only he had called I would have taken it all back. But he never called.

*

Samuel was back. He was himself, and yet not. One night I heard him talking to someone in his room. The same song had been playing on repeat for several hours, I recognized it
but couldn’t place it, when the song ended I could hear a few seconds of the next song and then a few seconds’ pause and then the song started over again. Every time it happened I
thought that he should either turn on the repeat function so the same song would play over and over again automatically, or else he should let the disc or the playlist play. But instead, the same
song and two seconds of the next one, for one hour, two hours, three hours. At last I knocked on his door and asked how he was feeling. He didn’t respond, but I heard him mumbling.

“Come on now. You can fix this, you will fix it, come on now, come on.”

My first thought was that he was talking to someone on the phone. Or that he was playing some sort of game.

“Samuel?” I called. “Is everything okay?”

For a few seconds, there was silence. From inside his room I heard the song end and the next song begin.

“Definitely. Sorry. Everything’s fine.”

His voice sounded like it was coming from a pressure cooker, as if he had to use all of his abdominal muscles just to say those words. I stood by the door, I rested my hand on it, I thought that
I ought to help him, but I didn’t know how.

*

I couldn’t work, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t see friends, I couldn’t read the paper, I couldn’t watch TV, I
couldn’t listen to music, I couldn’t check my email, I couldn’t shower, I couldn’t look out the window, I couldn’t hide under my blankets, I couldn’t think, I
couldn’t dream, I couldn’t do laundry, I couldn’t do dishes, I couldn’t live, I couldn’t answer the phone and I couldn’t call him, no matter how much I wanted
to. At last my sister came over and when I opened the door she looked at me and said:

“Smart choice. Looks like you feel terrific.”

She shook her head and took a big step across the pile of newspapers on the hall floor.

*

Samuel took off work sick for a week or so. He sat at home in sweatpants, in the kitchen, surrounded by notebooks full of scribbles. Unshaven, he read through the notes from
their year together, he mumbled to himself and when I asked what he was up to he claimed he was “on the trail of something.”

“Of what?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But it’s here somewhere.”

He picked up another notebook and read through the tiny letters.

*

I imagined that Samuel was sad for a few days. Then he moved on. By the weekend after we broke up he was back out on the town. He and Vandad were standing at the bar at East,
they were shaking their skulls in time with basslines, they were nodding at mixed beats, they were flirting with yoga instructors and organizing druggy after-parties. It only took a few weeks for
Samuel to meet someone new, she was like me, only prettier, smarter, richer, simpler. Samuel suggested coffee at Petite France and when she arrived he was already in his usual spot, they hugged and
when he returned with the coffee he used the newspaper clippings on the walls as a pretext to start talking about memories and nostalgia. He told her about the chips getting stuck in his teeth.
Then he reached for the glass and poured water on himself, slowly and deliberately, secure in the knowledge that she would never be able to forget him.

*

One time Samuel asked if I thought he was fake.

“What do you mean by fake?” I asked.

“Well, I mean, Laide insinuated that I was. Several times. That there is something wrong with the way I act around other people. She thought I conformed so much that I erased
myself.”

“I’ve never thought about it,” I said, being almost completely honest.

“I think she has a point. Before her I never thought about the way I acted. I just was. Blissfully unaware, somehow. But now—the more I do it—the more fake I feel.”

He drank cup after cup of tea. He walked around at home like a pale, smelly ghost. I tried to tell him that the only way to get over an old love was with a new love. But he just looked at me and
said he felt tired, terribly tired. I let him sleep for ages, I hoped he would find his way back to himself soon. After a few weeks had passed I suggested that I go over and have a talk with Laide.
I thought I could mediate, get them back together. Better a Samuel who’s himself for short periods than a Samuel who has completely lost himself.

“Talk as in talk or talk as in ‘talk’?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we can always ask Valentin how he felt after your ‘conversation.’”

“Aw, that was forever ago. I meant that I would talk talk with her.”

“What would you say?”

“That she should apologize to you and reconsider.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t contact her.”

“Are you sure?”

“A thousand percent.”

*

A few weeks went by. I tried to find my way back to my daily routine. My sister moved in with me and I went back to work. Since I didn’t hear from anyone at the house, I
thought everything had worked out. I hoped that Samuel’s family had decided not to sell it right away. Maybe they had even opted to keep it once they saw the good it did as a place of refuge.
I thought, if that was the case, then Samuel’s and my relationship had been worth something. Or. That sounds weird. Of course it was worth something, no matter what happened to the house. But
if the house were to live on as a refuge, then maybe the value of our relationship was more permanent. Ugh. That sounded wrong too. Get rid of that.

*

Since it’s a sign of good health when you start doing things you actually hate, I was happy when I noticed that Samuel started going back to the Migration Board. But he
was still coming straight home after work. He didn’t want to find fun things to do on the weekends. He was moving strangely, he walked as if all his body parts were heavier than normal. I saw
him stop abruptly in front of the mirror in the hall several times. He smiled, he looked angry, he scrutinized his face like it contained the answer to a riddle he had forgotten.

When several months had passed and Samuel was still acting odd, I took the bus to Bagarmossen. The same bus Samuel always took when he was with Laide. I crossed the square we had passed that New
Year’s Eve that felt like a hundred years ago. I found the street and the front door. I pressed the light button and stood in the stairwell for a moment to gather my thoughts. Laide’s
last name was on the list of occupants. I mostly wanted to get her to understand that she couldn’t treat people any way she pleased. I wanted to talk some sense into her. I wanted to explain
to her that if Samuel shared her secrets with me it didn’t mean that Samuel didn’t love her, it meant that he loved her so much that he couldn’t stop talking about her. That
everything that happened to him could be linked back to her and that it was impossible for him not to pass it on to me or write it down in one of his notebooks. I readied the words, I didn’t
want to stumble over them, I was breathing calmly, I pressed the light button again. I was just about to walk up the stairs and ring her bell when Laide came through the door. She was carrying two
grocery bags and the sight of me startled her.

*

My sister was going to go grocery shopping. I said I could take care of it. My sister refused, she insisted on going. I wanted to make sure to pay for it, at least. I found some
bills and stuffed them in her jacket pocket. She took them out and put them on the bureau in the hall. They would stay there for several weeks, every time I saw them I shuddered and yet I
couldn’t move them. Blood money, I thought when I saw them.

*

She looked the way she usually did, maybe just a little older. She was wearing her owl brooch and when I tried to talk to her she walked straight past me like I was
invisible.

“Hey there, hold on a sec,” I said.

“What the fuck do you want?” she said in a voice that sounded harder than I remembered. She kept walking up the stairs briskly, and I walked behind her. I said that she ought to
learn that there’s a difference between empty air and people and that everyone is worth listening to and when she didn’t listen, and instead walked even faster up the stairs, I ran to
catch up with her and grabbed her wrist. Her grocery bags fell to the floor. Her self-confident smile vanished. Finally, she understood that I was serious. I never wanted to hurt her, I just wanted
her to listen, but she yanked herself free and started screaming, and to make her be quiet I put one hand over her mouth and told her to calm down. Then she bit me and I adjusted my grip and told
her that if she bit me one more time she would regret it.

“Just be quiet and listen, and everything will go fine, okay?”

But instead of listening she struggled and kicked me in the shin and I pushed her up against the wall to get a little distance. I wanted to say what I had come to say, that Samuel was unhappy
and that she ought to reconsider, but I didn’t have time because she bit me again and this time her sharp teeth punctured my skin and the lights on the ceiling went out and for a few short
seconds I lost control, I didn’t hit her but I shoved her, once against the wall and once against the railing. That was all. Two tiny shoves. Then I left the stairwell.

*

My sister didn’t come back from the store. After twenty minutes I was worried. I called her phone, and at first I thought she had forgotten it because I could hear it
ringing, it was ringing somewhere in the apartment. I went from room to room and finally I realized that it was coming from the stairwell. I opened the door and hit the light button. She was lying
on the second floor, the first thing I saw was her left arm lying at a strange angle from the rest of her body, the white shaft of bone was sticking out from the tear in her denim jacket, her face
was turned toward the floor, there was blood on the wall, blood on the railing, her mouth was a gaping hole of broken teeth and split lip, she woke up when I touched her, she started crying when
she saw me, she mewled, I held her, I said that everything would be fine, I screamed and kicked on doors until the neighbors came out into the stairwell.

*

I took the Metro so I wouldn’t be seen by any bus drivers. I hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. But she had gone on the attack and bitten up my hands and the lining of my
jacket was wet with blood and it stiffened in the cold as I walked home from the Metro. I washed my hands and used paper towels to dry off so the towels wouldn’t turn red. Samuel was in his
room. I went to my own room. I thought, if anything had gone wrong, it was Laide’s fault.

*

The police labeled it an attempted rape, but my sister said it felt more like a junkie looking for easy money. She put up a fight. He never got hold of her wallet.

*

Yes. Of course I regret it. But you have to understand, we’re talking about two shoves. Two tiny shoves. That was all.

*

After the attack I decided to leave the country. I couldn’t bear to stay. I couldn’t handle walking through that stairwell every day and thinking about my
sister’s motionless body. I had promised myself not to stay for too long, and I wanted to keep my promise. In March of two thousand twelve I left Stockholm and moved to Paris. It felt like a
weight was lifted from my body when I landed at Charles de Gaulle. Five days later I had picked up enough interpreting jobs to brave signing a lease on an apartment.

*

And it’s not like Laide was so innocent. Sure, I shoved her. But she had crushed Samuel. She got into his brain and rearranged the furniture until he started doubting
himself. Some things heal faster than others.

*

It took a few weeks before I heard what had happened. And yes, of course I was sad. I thought about his family. His mom and sister. His friends and acquaintances. But you want
to know something strange? I really didn’t feel guilty. That chapter of my life was over. We hadn’t spoken since we broke up. There were other people who were closer to him. And I
suppose part of me was grateful that we weren’t together when it happened. I don’t know how I would have survived that.