Not me. All that was over now. Even at the age of twelve I had known that the other place existed, and I had lived ever since with the sense that something was missing, insufficient, within normal reality. The world of the field lacked almost everything on which our ordinary lives are based, but in spite of that, or because of it, I felt more alive, more present when I was there.
Being able to do magic was part of my character. In our world I couldn’t do it—no one could—so instead I had spent my time simulating magic, like a person born to circumnavigate the globe who settles for whittling bark boats, sailing them in the washbasin and dreaming of the sea. In the field I didn’t need to pretend. In the field I could do magic, and that made me true.
Many people can go through life without needing what lies beyond this world, but I wasn’t one of them. Am not one of them. What I am is linked to things outside what can be seen. Now a path had revealed itself to me. I intended to follow it and document what I saw.
The story of the child filled just over a third of my notepad. I left a blank page after the words not to anyone, then described the experience of feeling the magic in my hands, the upright shadows of my neighbours, how the place had become more solid since I was last there.
When I had finished writing I heard a rustling sound behind me. I spun my chair around and saw that a leaf from the rosebush had fallen to the floor. The bush was wilting, and had lost its lustre. I filled a jug with water and poured it evenly over the surface of the soil, then let it sink in before carrying the bucket over to the window and opening the blind. Pointless. It was already dark. I closed the blind, but left the bush where it was. The next day I would make sure it got some light.
I looked around the room, my little fortress with its thick walls. The desk lamp shining on my notepad, the television, the mattress on the floor. This was mine and I didn’t want to leave it—couldn’t leave it since I had become a part of what was in the shower room. Somehow I had to make money so that I could stay here.
In a feverish desire to sort it out now I went through the pockets of every item of clothing that had pockets, and searched the desk drawers. The final result was thirty-two kronor and fifty öre. Together with the money I had, plus the fee from the Boilermakers’ Association gig, that was almost enough for a month’s rent. But that left nothing for food or anything else. That wasn’t going to work.
The phone rang. I assumed it was Sofia, and got ready to explain the inexplicable. But it wasn’t Sofia. The voice on the other end started speaking before I had even said my name.
‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve called over and over again!’
‘I didn’t realise I was obliged to answer the phone.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about? Obliged? What kind of a word is that?’
‘Sorry. I’ve been away.’
I heard a snort, then the caller lowered his voice: ‘Sigge’s there, isn’t he?’
‘Okay, so this Sigge—is he a person?’
‘A person?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
If we were really talking about the thing in the bathtub, it seemed absurd to call it ‘Sigge’, but I asked anyway: ‘How do you know Sigge?’
I expected another evasive response, but the man on the other end said, ‘I’ve chatted to him. Loads of times.’
‘I thought you said you’d never met him?’
‘Well, I’ve never met you either, have I—but we’re sitting here chatting. Listen, I haven’t got all day. Has he arrived or not?’
All the questions swirling around my head suddenly made me feel weary of language, and I just said, ‘Yes. He’s arrived.’
‘Good! That wasn’t so difficult, was it? Okay, so now I need to—’
‘Just a minute. Can I ask…where have you spoken to him?’
‘In the tunnel. The Brunkeberg Tunnel. I busk in there sometimes.’
Ever since the man had called the second time I’d had the feeling that I’d heard his voice before, but a voice on the phone isn’t the same as a voice in real life. It was the busker I was speaking to. Before I had the chance to ask him anything else, he hung up.
*
The rosebush wasn’t happy in its new home. When I woke up the next morning, the day before Christmas Eve, another dozen or so leaves had fallen off. I opened the blind, bathing the bush in the dirty grey light. I wanted it to survive, but didn’t know what I could do to make that happen. As so often I found myself helpless in the face of powers beyond my control.
My right palm stung a little as I got dressed to go out and make a copy of Elsa’s key. I wondered whether to put a bandaid on the cut, but there appeared to be no need. A thin scab had already formed, knitting the edges together. I decided to leave it alone.
When I stepped outside it was snowing silently, and the streets were beautifully made up for Christmas with a fine layer of powder. I cocked an ear towards the Brunkeberg Tunnel, but couldn’t hear any music. As I walked along Tunnelgatan, I thought about the busker.
I’ve chatted to him. Loads of times.
There was something in the rock. Something that had been disturbed or had come to life when the tunnel was dug out. You didn’t need to have read Lord of the Rings to have a bad feeling about whatever slumbers inside the mountains. But it was a form of prejudice, quite literally. There is no evidence that whatever lies beyond means us any harm. It is far more likely that it’s indifferent. Not good or evil, simply a movement and a chaotic possibility. What I didn’t understand was how the busker could communicate and chat to it. I would so love to do that!
Santa was still standing by his easel in the window of Dekorima. One of the staff must have been particularly conscientious, because the still life on the canvas was nearer completion than it had been the previous day. Almost done, in fact. Snowflakes drifted down between me and the painting. A rosy-cheeked lady clutching a big parcel was standing in the exact spot where Olof Palme would fall two months later. The Christmas atmosphere was intense.
I went down into the underground mall at Hötorget and found the shoe repairer and key cutter I knew would be there. It took him three minutes to make a copy of the key to the shower room, and he wished me Merry Christmas as he handed it over.
By the time I reached Kungsgatan, I had decided. To make some money quickly, I would do the only thing I was good at. It felt like a retrograde step, going back to street magic, but I couldn’t see any other option. As I walked home I thought about suitable locations and finally settled on Galleria, a public place frequented by plenty of people, with the further advantage that it was heated.
It was just over six months since I had practised my street magic skills, and I felt a little rusty. I began to yawn as I got closer to home, as if to let the butterflies out of my stomach.
*
There were a couple of steps a few metres inside the main door from the street. I was so preoccupied with my thoughts that I didn’t notice Thomas sitting there until he said ‘Merry Christmas!’ so loudly that I jumped and stopped dead.
He was wearing a woolly hat and a padded jacket, and only the turned-up jeans and the Doc Martens boots gave away his ideological homeland. His Christmas greeting had been barked at me in a tone that would just as easily have suited ‘Achtung!’, and I risked clicking my heels and giving a hint of a bow before answering unnecessarily loudly, ‘Merry Christmas to you too!’
Thomas grinned and patted the step beside him. ‘Come and sit down.’
The keys were burning in my pocket and I really didn’t want to talk about the shower room, but snubbing Thomas didn’t seem like a very good idea, so I went and joined him. He looked me up and down and asked, ‘How’s things?’
‘Good. Well…okay. What about you?’
Once again Thomas looked me up and down. I became conscious of my bobbled jumper, my cheap jacket and my shabby boots, and his next question seemed entirely understandable: ‘Do you need money?’
r /> Maybe it wasn’t just my clothes, but something that radiated from me when I was desperately short of cash. I shrugged. ‘Yes. Kind of. Why?’
‘Do you want to be in on something?’
‘What kind of something?’
Thomas’s expression clearly said Come on, man, you know what I’m talking about. To a certain extent I did, so I said, ‘Specifically, I mean.’
‘Picking up a few bits and pieces. From a house.’
‘And the person who lives in the house doesn’t know that these bits and pieces are going to be picked up?’
‘You could say that. Should be worth around fifty thousand. You get twenty per cent.’
‘For doing what?’
‘Keeping watch. Outside.’
‘Why me? You don’t even know me.’
‘I think I do. And you use what you have, as Kajsa Warg said. Have you got a pen?’
Taking out a pen and handing it to Thomas made me start to feel like a fellow criminal, something I definitely didn’t intend to become. Thomas jotted down a phone number on the back of a subway ticket and gave it to me. ‘Think about it. Call me by tomorrow evening at the latest.’
‘Or?’
‘Or I’ll have to speak to some idiot instead.’
I couldn’t help it. As I left Thomas sitting on the step, I felt flattered. We had only met a couple of times, but he had formed the impression that I wasn’t an idiot. I suspected he thought most people fell into that category.
In spite of my extensive shoplifting career, I had never considered moving on to more serious crimes, such as break-ins, because they harmed individuals. I had no intention of getting involved in Thomas’s enterprise, but I felt paradoxically buoyed up by the fact that he had even asked me, and my heart was a little lighter as I checked over my magic paraphernalia.
I put new batteries in the laser pistol and prepared a rope for the Jumping Knot, took the least crumpled white silk cloth and fed it into the gimmick, placed the foam rubber balls in their places and finished by testing the rubber band on my stool. I placed it on the floor, pushed it down with my foot, then let go. It obediently leapt into my hand as it was supposed to.
That left the problem of the hat. I had thrown away my old hat, because it had been so scruffy that it made me look like some kind of derelict. Street magic was shabby enough as it was. Now I regretted my vanity. A hat was a well-established marker indicating a desire for voluntary contributions, and a cap didn’t carry the same weight at all. A cap suggested begging. Small signals, but these things are important.
I got a glass bowl out of the kitchen cupboard and tried tossing a few coins into it. A couple of them bounced out, so I spent ten minutes covering the bowl in aluminium foil. I sensed that what I was really doing was coming up with delaying tactics. The effect of Thomas’s words had passed, and my heart was heavy once more. I was worried about standing in the middle of a crowd making a fool of myself. Look at me, see what I can do, give me some money!
Twenty per cent. Ten thousand. Where had Thomas got the sum of fifty thousand from? I cut off the thoughts that had crept in—no!—and tried out the bowl. This time the coins stayed in. I packed everything into my doctor’s bag and put on my shirt, waistcoat and bow tie.
Thomas was gone when I went out. Oh, well, I had his number. Not that I was going to call him, but still. I buttoned my jacket right up to the top and set off through the falling snow for Galleria on Hamngatan.
*
It went okay, but that’s all. Inside Galleria, the Christmas atmosphere from the snow-covered streets turned into stress. People didn’t have time to stop and watch a diversion from the consumer model. Those who did linger were generous, though, perhaps because they were already in the mood to spend money. The proportion of notes was greater than usual.
In fact I could have made a decent amount if it hadn’t been for the shopkeepers. In two places they came out and told me to move, because I was causing a disturbance. One of them even called over a security guard, who stared at me and made it impossible for me to continue, so I ended up with 208 kronor. I took my revenge on the lot of them by stealing a pair of expensive sheepskin slippers as a Christmas present for my mother.
I made my way through the bustling crowds, longing for the field, but I still had two days to wait for my slot. For the time being I was stuck in this earthly crush, and in my jellyfish-like way I went with the flow, allowing it to carry me around Stockholm until evening came and the shops closed.
When I got home I felt restless and anxious. Sitting up late all alone in my little house could plunge me into a well of despair so deep that it would be difficult to climb out again. I had a quick wash standing in the plastic tub, put on clean clothes and took myself off to Monte Carlo.
They had made a token attempt to put up Christmas decorations. A few strands of tinsel dangled from the ceiling, and in one corner stood a plastic Christmas tree adorned with multicoloured flashing lights. Their effort didn’t succeed in creating a festive atmosphere any more than one swallow makes a summer, and the place was just as dark and ominous as ever. I sat down at the bar and had a beer, then another. The wide-screen TV was showing Swedish Television’s evening entertainment with the sound turned down. Famous people were sitting in a cosy-looking room with soft lighting, chatting and laughing. Occasionally one of them burst into song.
I was halfway through the third beer I really couldn’t afford when I spotted a familiar face at a table near the back of the room. The smartly dressed man, Thomas’s father, was sitting there with his fingers entwined around a glass containing at least a treble whisky, gazing listlessly up at the screen. I picked up my beer and went over to him.
‘Anyone sitting here?’
He looked up. It was obvious that he had to make an effort to find me in the fog obscuring his vision, and he hesitantly waved a hand in the direction of the other chair. His clothes were well cared for but slightly old-fashioned, a dark blue three-piece suit with a matching tie in a small checked pattern. I sat down, raised my glass and said, ‘Merry Christmas!’
The man raised his glass, the melting ice cubes clinking, and returned my festive greeting. His hand bore the marks of healed wounds. We sat for a while watching TV as one of Santa’s Little Helpers joined the party and performed a Cossack dance, his beard bobbing up and down.
‘My name is Lars,’ the man said.
‘John.’ We raised our glasses once more.
‘Do you come here often?’ Lars asked.
‘Now and again. When I feel a certain way.’
Which is?’
‘Empty. Emptier than usual.’
I turned away from the screen and faced Lars as I asked, ‘Why did you tell me to get out? That day in the shower room?’
I wasn’t sure if he would remember what had happened several months earlier, but he shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know. I might have overreacted. You’re young. I assume you haven’t lost very much.’
‘Has that got something to do with it?’
‘For me it has.’
‘In what way?’
Lars sighed and finished off his whisky. He stood up, using the table for support, and pointed to my almost empty beer glass. ‘Can I get you another?’ I nodded, and he made his way to the bar, his movements stilted and awkward. Santa’s Little Helper had now sat down to join the others on screen. I looked out onto Sveavägen where cars were silently forging their way through the snowfall, and a feeling of cosiness came over me. I was sitting indoors in the warmth, and I had someone to talk to. I was about to get a free drink, and possibly a story.
Lars came back with my beer and another large whisky for himself. As I thanked him, he took a deep breath, searching for the right words to begin.
‘I was happy,’ he said eventually. ‘I had a wife and a son whom I loved. I was a university lecturer in history, which I enjoyed very much. Life was as perfect as it could be. Then it ended. All at once, it ended.’
‘What happened?
’
‘My wife died. Meningitis. It only took a couple of weeks, then she was gone. Just like that. As if it were…normal. The kind of thing that happens.’
Lars took a sip of his whisky and blinked hard a couple of times, as if he were trying to remove unwanted images from his retina before he went on.
‘It is normal. It is the kind of thing that happens. But that doesn’t mean we accept it. I didn’t. I started to hate this life that had hurt me so badly. Everything we’d had, everything we’d done. It could all be taken away by tiny fucking bacteria.’
‘And Thomas?’
Lars was about to take another sip, but lowered his glass. ‘Do you know him?’
‘I’ve spoken to him a couple of times.’
‘So you know. What he’s become. And it’s my fault. He was eleven when Marianne died, and I began to hate life. We’d been close until then. I loved him. He was such a wonderful boy. He was interested in history even before he started school. He was reading Grimberg by second grade. We used to have long discussions—he wanted to know everything. Everything. Then it stopped. I stopped. Because there was no point any more.’
During his account Lars had slumped towards the table, little by little. He straightened up then, as if to bring himself back from the past, and said, ‘He despises me. He stole from me. And I can’t complain. I deserve it. I betrayed his trust. As if everything he and I had was just a sham, worth nothing when his mother was no longer around. That is my great sin, and I will never be free of it. It’s too late.’
The scene I had experienced in the tunnel, with Thomas sitting on my knee, made more sense now. I didn’t want to reveal that I had stolen a peek at Lars’s secret, so I simply said, ‘And the thing in the bath? In the shower room?’
Lars took a swig so deep that he half-emptied his glass. He turned his face towards Sveavägen, his eyes flickering as they followed the movements out in the street. I discreetly moved his glass a few inches to the side so that he wouldn’t catch sight of it and be tempted to carry on drinking. I wanted to hold on to him for a while. When he answered, he was still facing the window, as if he were addressing the passers-by.