I stopped by the railings at Sergels torg, watching some kids practising their skateboarding skills. The city looked brand-new to me, a gift to enjoy. I assumed that the feeling would soon subside, and I wanted to hang on to it for as long as possible.
I bought a coffee and a croissant at a cafe overlooking the glass obelisk in the fountain. As I sat there gazing at it I realised I’d never actually seen it, and what an amazing creation it was. How many meetings must there have been before they decided to put up that particular monstrosity? The things people came up with!
I let my eyes wander over all the people on their way somewhere, still half-asleep or not, carrying bags or not, and I experienced an unusual surge of tenderness—as if I were watching a film, and all those passing by were the minor characters we identify with just a little bit more.
It was only when I got up from the table that I realised how tired I was. I hadn’t slept at all during the night, and there was a rushing sound inside my head. The feeling of happiness did indeed begin to fade as I walked along Sveavägen towards Luntmakargatan. I was dreading getting back to my house, to the courtyard and the pressure. No doubt the disappointment at missing the Nordic Championships would also hit me when I returned to my normal abnormal life. The journey from Kronoberg to home had been nothing more than a breathing space, and my movements were heavy as I keyed in the code and pushed open the main door.
As soon as I entered the stairwell I noticed that something was different, and this was confirmed when I stepped out into the yard. The pressure was gone. The blue sky that had covered the rooftops like a tightly sealed lid was now open and distant.
Something crunched beneath my feet as I crossed the courtyard. Fragments of something resembling gravel were scattered across the tarmac. I crouched down and picked up a few pieces to examine them more closely.
There were a couple of small chunks of cement, I could see that, but the others were trickier. I turned them over and squeezed them for a little while before I eventually realised they were lumps of putty from the windows.
*
I slept right through my day of freedom. I must have been mentally exhausted, because when I woke at dusk I got up to go to the toilet, then curled up on my mattress and went straight back to sleep. I didn’t wake up properly until eight o’clock in the evening, and that was because something was banging above my head.
I lay there listening with the covers pulled right up to my chin. I heard something sliding across the roof, then a faint thud as it hit the ground. It sounded soft, like a piece of rotten fruit. The thought of fruit made me realise I was starving, so I shuffled over to the fridge, opened the door and squinted into the bright light.
I found a chunk of Falun sausage, half a jar of lingonberry jam and a tube of fish roe, with just about enough left to make one sandwich. A shrivelled carrot lay all alone in the vegetable drawer. I picked up the sausage, dipped it in the jam and ate it raw. This increased rather than diminished my hunger, so I got dressed. Potatoes. I would go and buy some potatoes. I had never cooked potatoes, but it was time to cross the borderline into the adult world. Potatoes. The very word encapsulated maturity, responsibility.
It was gloomy when I got outside; maybe the light had been broken by the same movement that had loosened the putty. I had only the glow from my neighbours’ windows to guide me as I made my way down, and I almost stood on something that was lying on the bottom step.
At first I thought it was a stone, but when I crouched down and took a closer look I saw that it was a bird. A small bird. I’ve never been much good at that kind of thing, and as I said, it was getting dark, but maybe…a bullfinch? I nudged it with my foot, but it didn’t move.
Apart from the fact that it was obviously dead it looked unharmed, which suggested that a cat wasn’t to blame. Not that I’d ever seen a cat around. It crossed my mind that birds must die of old age at some point, and maybe this bird had done just that. In fact it was pretty strange that you didn’t see more dead animals in general.
I edged the little bird off the step with the toe of my shoe and carried on across the courtyard. I hadn’t gone more than a couple of paces when I saw a dark lump in front of my feet. Another bird. Only now did I connect the phenomenon with the thudding sound I had heard, and I walked around the house to where it had come from.
I was right. A gull lay flat out on the black tarmac. Its white wings glowed in the darkness, and a sour taste filled my mouth when I realised it wasn’t dead. The tips of its wings were twitching spasmodically, and its beak opened and closed as it gasped for air. When I sat down beside it, it moved its head a fraction and made a faint hissing noise. A star was reflected in its black eye, and I looked up at the night sky hoping to find some clue to what had happened.
The sky looked perfectly normal, a dark blue blanket studded with stars—nothing that might explain why a number of birds had plummeted to the ground. The gull kept on hissing and cheeping as its wings flexed.
Can I?
No, I couldn’t bring myself to grab hold of the bird and wring its neck, though it was clearly suffering. I stood up, feeling dizzy as I made my way to the door leading to the street. I stopped, turned around. The gull looked horribly lonely as it lay there in agony in the dark courtyard. I knew that white shape would remain seared into my retina like an open sore if I didn’t do something.
I was irresistibly drawn towards the laundry block. It was easy, as if a moving walkway was helping me along. I unlocked the door, switched on the light and went inside. My eyes immediately went to the shower room door. There was something stuck on it. A note.
Closed for maintenance until further notice, it said in the same neat letters I recognised from the TV ad; the woman from the Dead Couple must have written it. I took a deep breath and pushed down the handle. Locked. I put my ear to the door and listened. Nothing—but when I covered my other ear I thought I could hear a rhythmic rushing sound, like waves retreating from the shoreline.
I knew what I had seen a few days earlier: the crack in the ceiling and something emerging from it. And yet I was seized by a compulsion to get into that room, a pull that I experienced on a purely physical level, as if something had taken hold of my arteries and tried to reel me in. The image of the gull flashed before my eyes, and I remembered why I had come into the laundry block in the first place.
The only thing I could find that might be of any use was a floor-scraper, a rubber blade attached to a long handle, used to sweep water towards the drain. I picked it up and went back outside, hoping the gull had died while I was gone.
No such luck. The wings were still moving pointlessly across the tarmac with a dry, lifeless sound. I went over, trying to swallow the lump in my throat without success. Then I placed the rubber blade on its neck. The gull’s feet paddled, and it gave a sad, strangled cry. I gritted my teeth and pressed down. I heard a brittle crunch. The feet twitched a couple of times, then the bird lay still.
I propped the scraper against the wall; I didn’t want to go back to the laundry block. Then I stood there with my head down, contemplating the dead bird. I held a minute’s vigil as I sent up a silent, pathetic prayer: May you soar across an endless sky, or something like that.
*
During the days that followed I began to sort out my life, bit by bit. I did a big shop and filled up the fridge, I went through the phone book making a note of restaurants that might be suitable for table magic, and I put together a folder of photographs and testimonial letters. I also started practising a close-up routine focused on entertainment rather than pure technical skill, something more like the magic I often performed on the street.
Birds kept falling from the sky. From time to time I heard a thud as yet another feathered body landed on the tarmac. When I went out in the mornings there were usually several corpses littering the courtyard. At about two o’clock a man came along and cleared them away.
One day I sat by the window and watched him. He was around sixty years old, w
ith puffy cheeks and a beer belly. A circlet of grey hair framed an otherwise bald pate. With a sorrowful expression and slow movements he shuffled from one dead bird to the next, placing them gently in a supermarket carrier bag. There was something of the fairytale or everyday mythology about the scene, which the man concluded by tying together the handles of the bag and dropping it in the garbage chute.
Gradually the number of dead birds diminished, and after a week the phenomenon had more or less come to an end. Maybe the birds had worked it out, just as eider ducks learn to avoid islands where there are hunters. The thuds grew more and more infrequent.
Once, and only once, I witnessed the actual event. I was on my way home from my daily visit to Kungstornet, and when I opened the door to the courtyard I glanced up at the sky just as a crow appeared between the roofs. I stood there open-mouthed as I saw it lose its ability to fly.
The best comparison I can come up with is that of a fish in an aquarium when the water suddenly drains away and the fish falls to the bottom. It doesn’t matter how much it thrashes around—it has lost a medium against which to brace itself.
That’s exactly what happened to the crow. Suddenly and for no apparent reason, it dropped like a stone. It flapped its wings frenetically, trying to gain height, but it was if it couldn’t get a grip on the air. Nothing slowed its acceleration towards the ground, and after a couple of seconds it landed headfirst a couple of metres in front of me, then lay mercifully still.
As I believe this narrative has already shown, the extent to which people are prepared to close their eyes to anything unusual or downright abnormal is astonishing—as long as it doesn’t directly affect them. Admittedly the dead birds in the courtyard were unpleasant, but not so unpleasant or weird that I considered giving up my house. I kept on going.
*
I had visited most restaurants in the Norrmalm area of the city, produced my folder and given a few examples of how I could entertain their clients, but no one was interested. The general view was that people wanted to eat in peace, rather than having—as one unpleasant owner put it—some buffoon spoiling their enjoyment over coffee.
It was depressing, but I hadn’t given up. A couple of places had shown a vague interest and had liked my tricks, but they didn’t have the nerve to go for something so different, even though I was asking for little more than a token sum as payment, in the hope that there would be tips. But no. Not just at the moment. Not quite like that.
I still intended to do the same in Östermalm before I abandoned the project. One evening in early October I was sitting at my desk going through the phone book when I heard raised voices. I went over to the window and opened the blind a fraction.
The door to the laundry block was ajar, and a strip of light sliced across the yard. That was where the voices were coming from. I couldn’t make out who was talking or what was being said, but from the tone it sounded like an argument.
The evening air was chilly when I stepped outside, crept down the stairs and towards the strip of light. By now I could hear disjointed phrases: ‘Not some kind of exclusive deal just to…have to work out a plan…no idea how much it costs…don’t know what the consequences might be…’
I was only a couple of metres from the door when it flew open. The woman who had sold the TV to me came out, but stopped dead when she caught sight of me. I couldn’t read her expression because the light was behind her, but her stance suggested that anger outweighed surprise.
‘Are you eavesdropping?’
I could have stood up for myself, pointed out that this was a communal area and that I was perfectly entitled to be there, but the sharpness in her voice made me shrink.
‘I was just…going to book a slot,’ I said.
‘Right. So where’s your key?’
I desperately needed to do some washing. I had more or less run out of clean underwear, but I could hardly use that as proof of my intentions. A key in my hand would have been better.
Behind the woman I could see that the door to the shower room was ajar. I also saw that there were at least three other people in the laundry room: the woman’s husband, Elsa, and the man who had cleared away the dead birds. They had all turned to face the door.
In spite of the raised voices, there was something blissful about their faces, and Elsa appeared several years younger. The harsh light from the fluorescent tube on the ceiling was transformed when it caught her skin, making her look as if she was lit from the inside.
And then there was that pull. The pull from inside the shower room that made me take a step towards the woman in the doorway, even though her body language made it clear that I needed to keep away.
‘What are you doing?’ she said, also taking a step forward so that we were face to face.
‘I need…a shower,’ I said, pointing to the laundry block. The woman shook her head. ‘The shower room is closed. For an indefinite period.’
With those words she turned on her heel, went back inside and slammed the door behind her, as if she had forgotten that she was on her way out. I remained standing there for a few seconds; I could feel the pull, but I didn’t dare move any closer to the door.
*
That was the evening when I gathered what strength I had and wrote down what I had formulated in my mind during my night in the cell. After I had written the concluding sentences—He never said a word about what had happened. Not to anyone—I read through the whole thing from beginning to end.
Loneliness has a tendency to make us into interpreters of signs. We see connections and symmetries; we attribute significance to meaningless coincidences. I’m convinced that the first astrologers were hermits with only the stars for company, and that their observations were elevated to the status of a national religion at a much later stage.
We seek meaning in whatever is in front of us. That’s how it was for me, anyway, as I sat there with that terrible story on the desk before me. I became more and more certain that it was somehow linked to what was happening in the laundry block, that the two phenomena were branches of the same tree.
It would eventually transpire that I was right, but on that night in October it was no more than a feeling, filling me with a presentiment of evil as I sat there leafing back and forth through my notepad.
I had heard my neighbours leaving the laundry block, and when I peered out through the slats of the blind, I could see that it was in darkness. I was on my way out in defiance of the warnings to find out what was going on when the phone rang. I picked up the receiver and said, ‘Hello, John here.’
‘He’s turned up, hasn’t he?’
‘Who?’
‘You know who.’
‘Sigge?’
‘M-hmm.’
‘Not as far as I know. So what does he look like, this Sigge?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
‘You haven’t met him either?’
‘How could I possibly have met him? I mean, he hasn’t arrived yet. I’ve asked you over and over again: Is Sigge there? Has Sigge arrived yet? No, you’ve said. Every time. Have you been lying to me?’
‘No, I…’
‘No. So how the hell could I have met him?’
‘I just assumed…’
‘Well, don’t. Don’t assume anything. That makes life simpler in every possible way.’
He hung up. Even if I was still convinced he was really looking for someone else, there was something familiar about his voice. I lay awake for a long time, going through everyone in my past and trying to work out who that voice could possibly belong to. When that didn’t help I moved on to voices on the radio and TV, but I had no luck there either. He remained a stranger who had chosen to contact me, for some reason.
*
The following morning, before I went over to Östermalm, I gathered up enough underwear, trousers and shirts to make up a load and crossed the courtyard with a full IKEA bag over my shoulder.
The laundry block looked just the same as always, except for
one thing. The flimsy lock on the shower room door had been reinforced with a new bar from which a heavy padlock dangled. The notice was still there: Closed for maintenance until further notice.
The current laundry slot was free, so I booked it. Before I loaded my washing into the machine, I went over to the shower room door, put my ear against it and closed my eyes. I could just make out the distant surge of waves, an enormous machine, or the breathing of the rock. The darkness behind my eyelids deepened, and gradually my breathing started to match the rhythm of the sound.
As the perception of my own body—its weight and reality—diminished, another began to grow, and yet I was still able to think and to define the fragile sense that crept up on me, like the scent of a flower far away in a dark forest.
It was similar to the feeling that had come over me on election day when I cast my vote. Belonging. The realisation that I was a part of something much bigger, that I was connected to all the people on earth, and that my life was neither lonely nor meaningless, because I was a part of the greater community within the darkness that surrounds us all.
It was a pleasant sensation and I wanted to hang on to it, but it faded away inexorably and my breathing rose to the surface, until I was breathing only for myself and my body’s need for oxygen. When I pulled back from the door my ear was hurting; it had been sucked hard against the silent surface.
I felt dizzy, and swayed where I stood. I slumped down onto the IKEA bag to stop myself from falling over, and sat there for a while on top of my dirty clothes before I pulled myself together sufficiently to load the machine, add detergent and close the door. As the drum began to rotate, the water inside making a noise not unlike the one I had heard from inside the shower room, I left the laundry block and went home to sluice myself down.
As I stood naked in my tub in front of the bathroom mirror, squeezing the sponge over my skin, I tried to make sense of what I had just experienced. Given the circumstances I never ruled out autosuggestion—the idea that the rushing sound came from the water pipes, for example. But if that was the case, why were my neighbours behaving so strangely?