The Kindness, page 12
Eventually he thought he’d worked it out. He used half of his meagre savings to employ a company who cleared and cleaned the apartment, more or less restoring it to its original state. The work took three days, and when Johan slowly walked through the empty rooms that smelled only of cleaning products, he knew he’d done the right thing.
He wanted to start again. He wanted to be in the space where he’d lived through his childhood so that he could erase it by living a new life in the same place. He sat cross-legged on the floor of the empty living room for a long time, gazing out of the freshly cleaned windows as twilight fell over the silos in the harbour.
I’m home now.
Over the next day or two he occasionally felt a pang of regret – why hadn’t he kept the kitchen table and a couple of chairs, for example? He had rented his sublet apartment in Stockholm fully furnished, so he had no choice but to use a bedding roll and his sleeping bag on the floor of his old room for a while.
With the help of second-hand shops, online auction sites and a certain amount of skip diving, he managed to make the apartment habitable. The only thing missing was a television, and when he received his first month’s salary from the bowling hall he went straight to the biggest electrical store in town on Knutby Torg and ploughed the last of his savings into a forty-seven-inch Samsung. The sound when he mounted the TV on the wall was the ‘click’ that told him he was done. Now life could start over.
2
‘You’re out of your mind,’ Johan says as he inserts the key in the lock. ‘They were just so . . . fat, both of them.’
‘I think fat is overstating things,’ Max replies, following him into the apartment. ‘Okay, so they were a bit chubby, but fat . . .’
‘They were fat, for fuck’s sake.’ Johan closes the door and locks it behind him. ‘And did you see the way that other one looked at me?’
‘No, I can’t say I did.’
‘She hated me. The first time I met her eyes, I just felt . . . this girl hates me. Not that I care, but that’s how it was.’
Max takes off his Ecco loafers and places them neatly on Johan’s virtually empty shoe rack. ‘It’s just that she’s not familiar with your wonderful, tolerant personality.’
‘I know you think I’m a cynic, but that’s because I tell it like it is – I say fat , I say hates .’
‘You can say what you like, but there was something about Siw. Something I . . . recognised.’
‘I’m sure she’s okay, even if Siw is a weird name, but that other one . . . What’s that word you use? Becoming. It’s not becoming to look down your nose at someone else when you’re so fat.’
Max senses that Johan is about to spiral into a lengthy diatribe on whether fat people have the right to exist, and with the aim of cutting him off before he can get going, he says: ‘ Mario Kart ?’
Over the years Max and Johan have gone through a hundred or more titles on various PlayStation, X-box and Nintendo consoles, but these days when they play against each other it has to be either Mario Kart or Smash Bros , and only the fifteen-year-old GameCube versions will do.
Johan’s G ameCube let out its last sigh and spun its last mini-disc back in 2010, but his reverse compatible Wii is alive and well, and fortunately Nintendo has been kind enough to equip the Wii with ports for GameCube controllers. Because that’s the point: the controllers.
Like many other gamers, Max and Johan are in agreement that the development of the hand controllers peaked with the GameCube. Neither Sony nor Microsoft have got anywhere near, and it’s best not to mention the Wii controller when Johan is around. According to him, the slim, sensitive joystick might come in handy as a dildo in desperate situations. At least it’s capable of vibrating. Sometimes.
But the GameCube controller – that’s something else! It’s nice to look at with its many colours, it fits perfectly in the hand, and both buttons and levers are in exactly the right place so that playing becomes instinctive, and the controller an extension of the body. The GameCube controller is simply the best, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fucking idiot, according to Johan.
Max cleans a fingerprint from the Mario Kart disc by breathing on it and rubbing it gently with the hem of his T-shirt, then he inserts the disc in the console, which receives it with a contented hum and a click.
‘Beer?’ Johan asks, heading for the kitchen.
‘No thanks.’ Max uses the despised Wii controller to start up the game. He hears Johan open the refrigerator door and take a couple of swigs of something that will dull his reflexes and make him incapable of winning. Max considers accepting a beer to put them on the same level, but decides against it. He’s had enough of long-drawn-out evenings with too much drinking, talking crap and moaning. A couple of games, then home to bed – that’s the plan.
‘ Mario Kart! Yo-hoo! ’ Mario shouts from the TV screen as Max hears a click and a hiss from the kitchen. Johan comes back into the living room with a can of Carlsberg Sort Guld in his hand. He sits down on the floor next to Max and picks up his controller. The wires won’t reach the sofa. They sit cross-legged side by side, so close that their shoulders are touching. Max choos es Koopa / Paratroopa because he likes the red shells, while Johan goes for Waluigi / Wario simply because he likes Waluigi, in spite of the difficult-to-handle bombs that are his special weapon. They start Mushroom Cup .
As soon as the countdown to Luigi Circuit begins, that strange sense of calm comes over Max. In the real world everything is on the move, and it’s impossible to return to the landscapes of your childhood. If they haven’t changed, you have, and nothing is quite the way you remember it. But in gaming it is possible. Luigi Circuit looks exactly the same as it did when Max was thirteen years old; he knows every single turn and shortcut, and the feeling when he sets off with a well-timed dash is identical. It’s as if no time at all has passed, and it soothes his restless soul in a way that few other things can do.
Max and J ohan race around the bends, sparks flying from their tyres. Johan has a slight lead because his car is faster, but that will change as soon as he is hit by a shell, because its acceleration is crap.
‘What was that feeling you were talking about?’ Johan asks as he fends off a red shell by tossing a green one behind him. ‘Down by the harbour – about the container?’
‘I don’t know. That’s all it is – a feeling. Like in the reptile house at Skansen. You stand there staring into a glass tank, and you can’t see it, but you know that there’s a snake somewhere in there.’
‘I’ve never been to Skansen.’ Johan throws a fake item box behind him, which Max easily avoids. ‘But you don’t literally mean that there might be a snake in that container?’
‘No, but there’s something in there. Something that shouldn’t be let out.’
‘I don’t really understand,’ Johan says, then swears as he is hit by the chain chomper, allowing Max to overtake him. He uses a mushroom to accelerate fast, and comes up alongside Max before going on: ‘I mean, you usually just have a feeling about the timing – that something is happening now . Not where it’s happening, or going to happen.’
Johan uses the heavier car to his advantage and forces Max’s little buggy onto the grass verge so that he loses speed. Whatever Johan was knocking back in the kitchen, it hasn’t kicked in yet, and Max has to take the bends as tightly as possible in order to keep up.
‘No,’ Max says. ‘It’s weird. Maybe it’s to do with Siw – after all, she had—’
‘A hell of a rack,’ Johan chips in, and Max sighs. He doesn’t share his friend’s fondness for vulgarity and categorical judgements, which Johan refers to as ‘telling the truth’. Quite the reverse; it makes him feel as if the world is falling apart, just a little.
Johan glances at Max. ‘Sorry. Tourette’s. What were you going to say?’
The apology makes the crack in the world shrink . They’re on the last lap, and Johan is still well ahead. The item box rewards Max with a green shell, which he throws after Johan. He misses by a hair’s breadth.
‘Clean up!’ Johan shouts. ‘Come on – what were you going to say?’
He often blames Tourette’s when he realises that an unacceptable frog has leapt out of his mouth, even though he doesn’t actually suffer from an uncontrollable compulsion to say horrible things – just good old-fashioned bitterness . Max misses an acceleration plate at the finish line and it’s all over. He finishes second.
The next course, Peach Beach, is Max’s favourite. It puts him in a better mood, and he decides to ignore Johan’s unnecessary remark. When they have passed the first bend and are cruising along among the giant mutant ducks on the shore, he says: ‘It’s hard to describe. It’s as if I recognise her.’
‘Maybe you do. Norrtälje isn’t that big. Maybe the two of you have met before. Shit!’
J ohan is hit by a red shell and his car flips into the air, leaving Wario and Waluigi waving their arms. It takes him valuable seconds to regain his speed, and he is overtaken by a couple of characters.
‘It’s not that,’ Max explains. ‘I know I’ve never seen her before. And I’ve never felt like this before.’
‘Listen to you – I’ve never felt like this before. Now why does that sound familiar?’
‘You’re not taking me seriously. It’s like . . . like bumping into someone you haven’t seen for many years. In spite of the fact that I’ve never met her before.’
‘Chaplin’s Girl.’
‘Yes.’
Johan glances at Max and grins. ‘But she did have a hell of a rack – you have to agree with me there.’
‘Yes, Johan. She did.’
‘Plenty to get hold of. Apart from the rack, I mean.’
Max has no desire to think or talk about Siw in those terms. When he examines his emotions as he wobbles his way past the ducks’ pecking beaks, he finds a different word, one he would never say to Johan. When he was standing next to Siw, that short, overweight – he’s prepared to go that far – woman with her messy cloud of hair and her ill-fitting clothes, he had the sense that he was in the presence of something holy . He doesn’t really understand what he means, but that was how he felt.
H e has lost concentration and fallen behind in the race. He pulls himself together and moves forward with the help of some mushrooms. On the last stretch Johan is hit by a blue shell, and Max is able to overtake him just before the finish line. Johan tosses aside the controller and gives full rein to his Tourette’s.
3
It is almost midnight by the time Siw manages to get rid of Anna. The fact that the wine box is empty helps. Siw has drunk maybe three glasses, while Anna’s consumption is best measured in litres. Towards the end she was slurring badly when she said: ‘Listen, that . . . Roslagsloser or whateverhisnamewas . . . haven’t you . . . can’t you . . . isn’t there . . . you know?’
‘No, Anna. I don’t know.’
‘But . . . ah! Ah!’ Anna had thumped her forehead with a clenched fist in order to loosen a thought that had got stuck in some corner of her skull. ‘You know, what’s it called . . . contact! Can’t you contact whatshisname through . . . Fashebook?’
‘That’s not how it works.’
‘Not how it works? Fashebook? But that is Fashebook! That’s what it’s for! Contact!’
‘Listen, it’s late and I’ve got an early start in the morning.’
‘Oh, you’re sooo boooring!’
This was a constant refrain on the evenings Siw and Anna spent together. At some point, often quite early, Anna would pull away from Siw in terms of the level of intoxication, and then Siw was boooring , letting Anna get drunk all by herself.
Siw brushes flakes of ash off the sofa and sighs when she sees a fresh burn mark. Anna is a ‘party’ smoker, and whenever alcohol is involved, it’s a party. When Siw turns the seat cushion over she finds an old burn that is even bigger, so she turns it back again.
Anna is her oldest and best friend, the only person she can really call a friend, but she wishes Anna would cut back on the booze. Anna herself insists that she doesn’t have a problem. Her main argument is that she’s never fucked up at work, therefore she has the situation under control. Siw doesn’t agree. There are things that can be fucked up apart from work; it’s a slippery slope. Regardless of what Anna says, Siw has noticed that her consumption has increased over the years. At some point you reach the edge, and there’s nothing to stop you from falling.
Siw places the glasses on the draining board before dismantling the wine box and squashing it. She doesn’t want to risk Alva finding it in the morning and asking questions. Alva once found an empty vodka bottle, and cross-examined her mother at length on the possibility of her becoming an alcoholic.
Siw goes into the living room, opens her laptop and clicks on the Facebook icon. When the page comes up she closes it down and rubs her temples. She turns to Spotify instead and starts Håkan Hellström’s album Confessions of a Colic Child on shuffle, keeping the volume low.
Tears prick her eyes when she hears the strings at the beginning of ‘Brännö Serenade’, and when Håkan starts to sing she suddenly has a lump in her throat; he asks what a person knows about the moonlight until they’ve been broken beneath it.
She lowers the volume a little more and gets to her feet. She goes to Alva’s room and peeps in. The rocket-shaped night light on the bedside table illuminates the child, curled up on her side with one hand grasping Poffe, a small cuddly fox.
The lump in Siw’s throat grows. When Alva was four years old she found the fox tossed in a bush outside the main door of the apartment block, and with a logic that Siw has never managed to counter, Alva had decided that it was a present from her daddy in heaven. He had thrown it down to her, but had missed her window, so it landed in the bush instead. Ever since that day, Poffe – who is also an angel – has been her constant night-time companion, and Alva refuses to go to bed without him.
One day, sweetheart. One day I’ll tell you. Siw closes the door and angrily rubs her eyes to stop the tears from coming.
She sits down at her laptop again –
‘ You will see your youth rot before you . . .’
– opens up Facebook, but scrolls through only one page without finding anything before closing it down once more.
What am I doing?
‘ And what do you know about love . . . ’
Siw stands up and goes out onto the balcony. She sits down with her hands resting on her thighs and stares at the football pitch, which is now in darkness. This is exactly where she was sitting when she told Anna her secret.
She had been feeling low all afternoon, and had drunk a little too much wine during the evening. According to Anna’s viewpoint, it was one of those rare occasions when Siw wasn’t being boooring . It was quite late when Siw suddenly said: ‘I’m going to tell you. About me.’
Anna topped up her glass. ‘Go on. I’ve always wondered.’
Siw took a big gulp, gathered her courage. ‘The thing is, I walk around waiting , but I don’t know what I’m waiting for. No, don’t say anything. It’s not a man, it’s not a quick shag, it’s . . . something else. Something completely . . . essential. Different .’
‘So, what is it?’
‘That’s what I’m saying – I don’t know! When I say “something different”, that’s exactly what I mean. Something I can’t even imagine, precisely because it’s something different from anything I think I might want. Do you understand what I mean?’
‘Not really – is it like, some kind of religious experience?’
‘Kind of, but I definitely don’t believe it’s anything to do with God. It comes to me as . . . I don’t know . . . a vision, or a . . . calling from . . . I don’t know.’
‘Like the owls in Harry Potter, when they bring the letters?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ Siw had got so excited that she’d spilled wine on her nice cushions without noticing. ‘That’s it exactly! Harry doesn’t even know that Hogwarts exists until he gets the letters! He doesn’t know it’s right there waiting for him, and that’s where he’s meant to go.’
‘And for the moment you’re living in the cupboard under the stairs?’
Tears had sprung to Siw’s eyes on that occasion too. She wasn’t sure if it was down to self-pity over the difficulty of her situation, or joy at being understood.
‘Yes. For the moment I’m living in the cupboard under the stairs.’
‘You’re crazy. Cheers to that.’
Siw squints at the football pitch. She thinks someone is walking across it towards her, and she catches herself fantasising that it’s RoslagsBowser, coming to get her. She blushes, even though no one can see her or her fantasies.
Go on, do it.
Before she can change her mind, she gets up and marches back to her laptop. She opens up Facebook and scrolls down through the Pokémon Go Roslagen group entries until she finds a post from RoslagsBowser. She clicks on his name.
Of course . . .
What had she expected? That she’d have access to all his secrets, photos of him making a V-sign against the perfect sunset? RoslagsBowser’s profile has been created purely for Pokémon Go , and contains nothing but his posts on that page. Not even a profile picture. She glares at the uninformative screen as Håkan continues to warble.
‘ I dreamed I could sing, but I can’t . . .’
So that’s the end of that.
Siw gets up from the sofa and rubs her hands together as if she’s trying to get rid of something sticky. Then she sits back down and reads through all of RoslagsBowser’s posts on Pokémon Go Roslagen.
A woman is standing outside the entrance to Norrtälje Hospital. She is crying. A nurse who has just finished her shift doesn’t know why the woman is crying. There are a thousand reasons to cry outside a hospital, and that isn’t important here. The important thing is that the nurse goes up to the woman and takes her hand. They stand there for perhaps thirty seconds as the woman’s tears abate just a little. She looks at the nurse and nods. The nurse nods back. Then she gently lets go of the woman’s hand and goes home to do the housework.
