The Invisible Man from Salem (20 page)

‘Be careful,' Sam says.

‘I'm doing my best.'

‘No you're not.' She doesn't let go of my arm. ‘You have always been so careless.'

As though she realises what she's about to do, Sam lets go of my arm. And there it is; I can see it in her eyes because I know just how it feels: for a second, she sees a flash of Viktor in my face.

‘Unless there's something else, I have to go,' she says.

I follow her to the door. It's still raining outside. The black streets shine and sparkle, and above us the clouds race across the sky. She leaves without saying anything, but she looks back over her shoulder. I light a cigarette and stare after her until she disappears round the corner.

‘Absinthe, please,' I say when I get back in and stand by the counter.

‘What was that all about?'

‘What?'

Anna puts down a glass and pours my drink.

‘That. Her, you?'

‘We were together once.'

‘You said.'

‘We were expecting a son. We even had a name.'

‘What happened?'

I drink from the glass. The knots under the skin by my temples start to loosen.

‘A car accident.'

‘He died?'

‘Yes.'

Anna is standing with her elbows on the bar, holding her face in her hands. The edge of the bar pushes her breasts up, making her cleavage deeper than it is normally.

‘You're a psychologist,' I say.

‘Psychology student.'

‘What do your books say about me?'

‘No idea.' She looks at the clock. ‘I can close up if you like.'

‘Why?'

‘You look like you need … distracting.'

She smiles. I've drunk the absinthe too quickly. It has already reached my head, and is starting to make things murky.

‘I think you're absolutely right,' I mumble and glance at the door. ‘But it's not … sorry, but it's not you I w— '

‘I know,' she says. ‘I don't care.'

So I allow myself to go along with it, just this once.

Anna walks over to the door and locks it. On her way back, she calmly unbuttons her shirt and takes it off, lets her hair down. She sits down on the barstool next to me, and I take a step forward, between her legs, and she puts her hand on my chest, strokes carefully down my stomach, and starts unbuttoning my jeans. I need this, and when I close my eyes I notice to my surprise that the inside of my eyelids are in fact not black, but dark, dark red.

AT SOME POINT
— maybe during, maybe after — the memories seep in, unexpectedly, like when someone you haven't seen for ages comes up to you in the underground and you chat for a bit, and after the brief meeting the past sweeps by.

I am thirteen years old. I've had enough of getting hit by Vlad and Fred, and I start to pay it back, but to someone smaller than me. His name is Tim. Above us, the sky is heavy, like wet snow. I punch him in the guts.

I am five; I've just learnt to ride a bike. My dad's trying to film it, but every time he gets the camera going I fall off, and the only thing that ends up on film is my brother, cycling around in the background, carefree and self-assured, on a bicycle that is much bigger, with bigger wheels and more gears.

I am twenty-eight or twenty-nine; I've just met Sam. Something I say makes her laugh. We're on a boat. I recognise a face among the passengers — someone who looks like Grim, but it's not him. Sam asks if everything is all right. I say yes.

I am sixteen; Grim and I are standing at the foot of the water tower. He's been arguing with his parents. It's late spring, and Klas Grimberg has received a letter from his son's form tutor. She writes that she has tried to contact him and Diana by telephone, without success. Grim has hit a classmate, and if it happens again the tutor will have to involve the police. Klas gets angry and drinks while he's waiting for his son to get home. When he does, they row, and it ends with Klas shouting at Grim to behave himself at school and not end up like him; if he doesn't sort himself out, he'll knock some sense into him. At least that's what Grim claims he shouted at him. We go up the tower and shoot birds. Grim laughs when I say that one of the clouds is like someone we know, a fat boy who everyone calls ‘Ram'. Another cloud looks like Julia. I don't say this to Grim.

The same year: it is early spring, and Grim and I are out in Handen, waiting for someone to sell us some hash. Neither of us has tried it before. Grim's wearing a T-shirt with
MAYHEM
printed on it, and we prowl the streets. Four men with boots, studs, and long hair appear from out of the darkness. They come over and ask what we're doing, wearing T-shirts like that. They point to Grim's T-shirt, visible under his open coat. Then they kick the shit out of us, and my ribs hurt for weeks afterwards. We find out later that people connected to the band Mayhem have been burning down churches in Norway and Gothenburg, and we get scared. Grim gets rid of the T-shirt. We never mention it to anyone, not even Julia. It's something that just I and Grim share. On the local train home that night, someone plays The Prodigy on their ghetto-blaster, way too loud.

A day or so after the fiasco in Handen, we buy some hash from a guy who comes up from Södertälje. We do the handover in Rönninge and smoke it sitting on the water tower. I don't feel anything, and I suspect Grim doesn't either, but we giggle till our bellies hurt, because we've heard that's what people do when they're stoned. The second time I smoke, I get really sweaty and feel sick. Grim looks dozy. That time we're on the football pitch on the outskirts of Salem, lying on the grass. It's evening, and the air is cool.

Grim is interested in technology but he's no good at maths. When he gets maths homework, I have to help him, till one of us has had enough. He's always on time, never late. He has trouble respecting people who aren't punctual, just as he can't accept the police lurking around Salem at night. Every time Grim sees a police car, he gets down. It's the start of the summer, 1997, and Grim hardly ever talks about his dad, I realise. On the few occasions he does, he says nothing flattering, yet I sense something behind the words, something that doesn't come out. As though he identifies with him. Maybe that's why they clash the way they do. I plan to ask Julia about it, present my theory to her, but it never happens.

Two months later, I meet Klas Grimberg when we have to eat dinner with them. I'm struck by how like his father Grim is. I think about mentioning it to both Grim and Julia, but I don't, because I'm not sure what it implies.

‘What happens if the most important thing you have,' Grim says one afternoon, on a northbound local train, ‘was never even supposed to exist at all?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Imagine that there's some kind of fate, or whatever the hell you want to call it, and we were never meant to be a family? If somehow it wasn't supposed to happen? If it just ended up this way, by accident? I mean, look at us. Considering what life is like at our place, everything could be an accident.'

‘All families are fucked up.'

‘No. No, they're not.'

I AM SEVENTEEN
. It's been several months since Julia died. I smile for the camera. It's for the class photograph, and I don't recognise any of the people around me.

XVI

When Grim returned from Jumkil, he arrived in one of Social Services' anonymous white vans. The air was close, and a short while earlier I'd seen Vlad and Fred walk past, a street away. I wondered what they were doing in Salem, and struggled to breathe. I sat down on a bench between the blocks of the Triad and tried to make myself inconspicuous until they'd disappeared from view.

The van parked in front of the Triad, and one of the back doors opened. Grim climbed out with his bag, the same black hold-all that he'd had the air rifle in the day we met. It felt like a long time ago, but in fact we'd only known each other for less than six months. A man with an off-licence carrier bag, dirty cap, and wild white beard was sitting on a bench close by. He stared, alarmed, at the white van before gathering up his possessions, rising shakily to his feet, and walking off with forced dignity. Grim closed the door, and the driver — a man, I couldn't discern any more than that — turned his head, did a U-turn, and drove off, as though he had urgent duties to attend to somewhere else. I stood up, which gave Grim a fright. When he saw it was me, the confusion was replaced by a smile, and he raised his hand. I was smiling, but him coming back felt weird for me, as though the freedom I'd had access to had been temporary, and had once again been replaced by a sort of straightjacket.

LATER ON
, we went up to the water tower. The air was still, and the sun shone down on us. Most of the cars that passed us on the road below were full of camping gear and families. It was the end of July, and there was ages left of the summer holidays. Grim was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, yet still wiped the sweat from his forehead several times.

‘I'm going to Uppsala tomorrow,' he said.

‘What are you doing there?'

‘Seeing Jimmy. He's still on remand.'

‘Do you know how he's doing?'

‘No. But I think he's okay. He's doing better than the guy he stabbed, anyway.'

Grim was the one who wanted to go to the water tower. I would have preferred to do something else, ideally somewhere without any connection to Julia whatsoever. Instead, we went up the tower, and Grim sat down on the ledge, exactly where I'd been sitting a few days earlier as Julia climbed out of her knickers and straddled me. It felt absurd, unreal.

‘What are you laughing at?' he asked.

‘Eh?'

‘You laughed.'

‘Oh. No, nothing. Just had a funny thought.'

‘When we met at the camp,' Grim said as he pulled out a bottle of spirits and two glasses from the little rucksack he was carrying, ‘we never had time to talk about you.'

‘It felt like there was more important stuff going on,' I mumbled.

‘How's your summer been?'

‘Good, I suppose. Micke moved out. Me and Dad helped him move, and neither of us have seen him since.' I hesitated. It would have seemed strange for me not to mention it. ‘I had dinner at your place.'

Grim filled the glasses and pushed one towards me. I drank some, and after that so did he.

‘It's fucking strong,' said Grim. ‘I think it's absinthe or something.'

He drank from his glass. ‘You were at our place?'

‘I was going to borrow a CD from you.'

‘Which one?'

I shrugged.

‘I can't remember now.'

‘Oh. Other things got in the way?'

‘Yes.'

‘Dad made you stay for dinner.'

‘Exactly.'

In the distance there was a bang — a crashing noise — and a car alarm started wailing.

‘It is,' Grim started, ‘not Julia's fault, but Mum … have I told you she has problems?'

I already knew this, but I wasn't sure whether Grim knew that I knew. At that moment, I couldn't remember who had told me — whether it was he or Julia. Everything had gotten so complicated.

‘I can't remember. Maybe.'

‘Well, she does anyway. She has had as long as I can remember. It goes in waves, up and down. When I got sent to camp, it got a bit worse, if I understood right. And Dad has subconsciously — at least, I think it's subconscious — put the blame on Julia. Which makes everything about … I don't know, but I end up on the outside. And that doesn't bother me; it suits me fine. It's better to be outside when you see what it's like for Julia. But it makes it really hard to be at home.' He laughed. ‘Despite all the shit at the camp, it was nice to be away from home. Can you imagine? I guess I hadn't grasped how bad it was, until I realised that's how I felt.'

‘You can ask for help.'

‘From who?'

‘I don't know. Social Services?'

‘Social Services can fuck off. They've already been around and stuck their noses in.'

‘Well, someone else then.'

‘Who?' He looked genuinely tormented. ‘Who do you ask for help? Who are you supposed to turn to? And is it really my responsibility?'

‘I don't know,' I said.

‘Stop saying “I don't know.”' He tilted his head back, leant against the water tower, and closed his eyes. ‘When I went up to dump my stuff just now, it was chaos. I think Mum had forgotten her medication, and Dad had been drinking. He's just started back at work, and he always drinks more than usual then, presumably because his job is so fucking brain-dead.'

We said nothing for a while. I wanted to leave, go and see how Julia was. The frustration was getting to me, making my palms cold and clammy.

‘I saw Vlad and Fred.'