The Circus

by Jonas Karlsson

  Janne nodded as if he understood. Even if he couldn’t possibly have heard what I’d said. Then he frowned and pulled a face.

  “Shit, I heard about that guy, your friend Magnus!” he yelled.

  “What about him?” I yelled back.

  “That guy, Magnus. He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Awful business.”

  “What?”

  “Him committing suicide,” he said.

  I choked on my beer and started to cough. Janne leaned forward to slap me on the back, but I held up my hand to stop him.

  “What?” I yelled when I’d stopped coughing.

  “Not that I really knew him or anything, but it’s terrible, isn’t it? Hadn’t you heard?” Janne yelled back.

  I stared at him.

  “How?” I said. He leaned forward.

  “At the circus.”

  I grabbed hold of the table, took a swig of beer, and shook my head.

  Janne went on shouting in my ear.

  “Cut himself on some glass.”

  “Glass?”

  “Yeah. From a mirror.”

  “Where?”

  “At the circus. Apparently he walked out into the middle of a magic trick and did it there and then. Can you imagine? The magician was distraught.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Well…from what I heard, it was supposed to be some sort of political statement.”

  I couldn’t stay after that. I was too upset to sit in the pub, so after another few minutes of Janne shouting about former classmates right next to my ear I said I had to go to the toilet. I took my jacket and walked out. Dansson still hadn’t turned up. Why didn’t I have any normal friends?

  * * *

  —

  I wandered along the pavement in the darkness, in and out of patches of light of varying brightness as they reflected off the puddles, and felt my skin tighten. Janne was clearly a bit of a gossip, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who he’d got his information from, but Magnus Gabrielsson was missing. That was a fact. So where was he, if he hadn’t killed himself?

  I could feel I was a bit drunk and wondered if I was going to start crying. Poor Magnus, I thought. Where have you got to? My heart was pounding. I realized I was almost running. I slowed down and took a couple of deep breaths. Tried to think about my record collection, but not even that could improve my mood. Was this how it had started for Magnus as well? I wondered.

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t notice how odd Magnus was until Year 7 or 8. I knew he was a bit unusual, but up until then we had our own world, where nothing ever needed to be compared to anything outside it. Where everything seemed normal, no matter how peculiar it was. But somewhere around the start of secondary school it finally dawned on me that Magnus was different. More different than even I was.

  To start with, he was genuinely frightened of other people. Almost reclusive. I started to wonder if he ever went to school at all. His old rucksack usually hung slack, as if it was empty. I never saw any schoolbooks, and he was never in a rush to get home and do his homework. If I ever suggested we meet up with anyone else he would glance at his digital watch and say he had to be somewhere else. If we ever had anyone else with us he never said much and would always come up with some excuse and hurry away.

  His personal hygiene wasn’t great, and sometimes he smelled. The carefree, undemanding, fun existence we shared slowly changed into a sort of mutual boredom. He never wanted to try anything new, just carry on doing the same childish things we’d always done, even though we were getting older and older. In the end it felt embarrassing. We started to annoy each other. Started arguing about stupid things. What groups it was OK to like, that sort of thing. His firm views about what was synth music and what wasn’t began to feel more and more stifling.

  “But we listen to lots of different things,” he said in an accusing tone.

  “We listen to things that are good,” I said.

  “That means you can listen to all sorts of things,” he said.

  “Not any old thing, only things that are good,” I said.

  “So how do you know what’s good, then?”

  It usually ended with me getting my way, but even that never felt great. Magnus didn’t seem to have any will of his own. It was like he was happy doing nothing and just letting me decide. In the end we would just sit at either end of the bed in my room listening to records, neither of us saying anything. There wasn’t much to say. It was nice and non-threatening, but got kind of boring after a while. Even if Magnus didn’t seem to think so.

  “Can we listen to the whole of Tubular Bells again?” he said.

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  So we did.

  * * *

  —

  It felt a bit like being married. Or what people say being married is like. That you always have to stay at home, sit at the kitchen table talking about the same old things you’ve already talked about a thousand times before. Never going out with friends, and if you did feeling guilty for spending time with other people. And I thought I was too young to be married. To someone like Magnus, anyway. It annoyed me that he always had to be so antisocial. So timid.

  As time went by I started to wish he was a bit tougher. Or at least a bit more extroverted. It was hard to meet girls, for instance. If I had Magnus with me, anyway. He had very firm views on the women he wanted to meet and how this should happen, and who should say what and in what order. But if an opportunity ever arose he always walked away. And most of the time he wanted me to go with him.

  * * *

  —

  He didn’t have any choice, of course. He didn’t know any better. He didn’t have anyone else but me. Even so, I ended up seeing less and less of him. Sometimes I took my headphones off and talked to someone at school instead. Discussing homework, or telling them what was on the lunch menu that day. Stuff like that. There was another life outside the claustrophobic little world Magnus and I had constructed. Even if it wasn’t always easy. In my case it tended to involve a lot of recurring practical jokes. Nothing too terrible. It was more like a form of shorthand. I was the one everyone made fun of. And with time I learned to deal with that a bit better. I started to play along, basically.

  There were times when I felt accepted, if not exactly popular. Sometimes it was even quite fun. Not that I ever made jokes or anything like that, but I could get others to laugh. I came up with silly stuff like letting them pull my suspenders until they snapped back and hit me. Or running into a wall. I did that a lot, and it would get a laugh from someone. I would simply run as fast as I could straight into a wall.

  Once when we were standing by our lockers I punched my clenched fist into the door of my locker as hard as I could. People began to stare. Dennis and Sören cheered each time the door buckled, and I was so buoyed up by the response that I kept doing it until the blood from my knuckles began to smear across the door.

  * * *

  —

  Magnus never understood any of that. He couldn’t understand that you sometimes had to give away a little bit of yourself. He thought that was selling out. Whenever I told him about something like that he would give me a derisive glare. As if he had some sort of right to judge me. As if he had the right to look down on me just because I was adapting and making a bit of an effort. Unlike certain other people. Even though he never said anything, I could hear what he was thinking. I didn’t share his attitude. Sometimes I ended up shouting at him because of it. And then I’d feel guilty. As if I’d done something wrong. As if I’d let someone down.

  Either way, it did seem to work.

  * * *

  —

  One morning I got a chance to talk to Dennis. We arrived at one of the school entrances at the
same time; the doors were supposed to be open but for some reason they were still locked. Dennis banged on the glass. He asked what sort of music I listened to. I mentioned a few names. He probably didn’t know any of them. We stood there together for a while. A couple of minutes at least. In the end he asked if he could listen to my headphones.

  I quickly checked which tape was in the Walkman and decided that it would probably be OK. I passed him the headphones. Ideally it would have been one of the hardcore compilations, but it was the Blue Mix. Propaganda, Yazoo, Bronski Beat, and Soft Cell. Well, it would just have to do. Dennis nodded. He took hold of the Walkman and put the headphones on his big head. He swayed a little in time to the music. Seemed happy.

  “Decent sound,” he said, slightly too loudly. “Can I borrow this?”

  * * *

  —

  No, absolutely not. Under no circumstances. No one was allowed to borrow it. My Walkman was my refuge at school. My own space. My sanctuary. I’d rather have lent someone my mother or Magnus or all my savings if I had any. But not my Walkman. My Walkman was an extension of me. That music and those songs formed the whole structure of my existence.

  But this was Dennis asking, and obviously that changed everything.

  Others were bound to be impressed that Dennis was borrowing things from me. He looked so happy as he stood there with the headphones on. Almost expectant. It was as if the music—my music—had got through to him. Had changed his attitude to synth music. To me. It was impossible to turn him down. Maybe this was the start of…well, if not friendship, then at least a form of admittance into the gang.

  Because of course I could see a parallel. This was exactly how my friendship with Magnus had started. Now things weren’t so great with Magnus, maybe this was the natural next step? Maybe it was going to be me and Dennis from now on? The thought of him walking around with my Walkman and mentioning my name in relation to the tracks he was listening to made me ecstatic. And it would mean we had a reason to meet up again soon.

  On the other side of the glass the caretaker was hurrying to unlock the doors with his big bunch of keys. This was my chance, and I had to decide quickly. The doors would soon be open and the encounter would be over.

  “OK,” I said. “But I need it back after school.”

  “Sweet,” Dennis said and slipped in through the doors before we had arranged where and when I was going to get it back.

  * * *

  —

  I spent the rest of the day on a peculiar high. I felt naked without music in my ears. All sounds seemed unnaturally loud and intrusive. It made it hard to think. I was having to feel my way through a whole new world, but I still felt oddly carefree. Because I had a secret understanding with Dennis now, even if we didn’t actually talk at all—of course we didn’t; everything was more or less the same as usual, you can’t change things that quickly—but it still made me see him in a different light. In a lot of ways Dennis was a far more rounded person than Magnus. Sociable. Talented. A natural leader. Top grades in math and science. All the subjects I was worst at. I was best at the humanities. He and I could be a really good combination.

  I felt like I’d been given an invitation. To a tougher world, sure, but one that was also more complicated and interesting. Wild and unpredictable. Maybe I needed to make my way out into this noisy, messy, stormy world in order to take my place in…real life?

  * * *

  —

  At the same time the music would start to work from the other direction. The tracks that Dennis was listening to now, they were a potential bridge between us. They would slowly bring us closer together. He couldn’t help but be swept along by the percussion intro to “Sorry for Laughing.” Or the grinding bass of “p:Machinery,” which just kept going until it eventually gave you goosebumps. If he listened to the recurring brass riff at the end of the track he’d never be able to forget it. Or when Dave Gahan sings “It’s just a question of time” on the Black Celebration album. I could offer to make him some mix tapes of his own, I thought. I could do that for him. I saw myself explaining the greatness of one track after the other. The unlikely combination of the two of us could be positive for him too. Maybe that was what he’d had in mind when he approached me that morning. Even if he might not have been aware of it himself. Maybe it was a subconscious desire on his part to expand his taste in music. After all, he’d taken the first step…Was this the start of us becoming civilized adults who socialized properly and learned from each other? Who saw the differences between us as something positive, as opportunities to expand our horizons?

  We could share the Walkman, I thought. Have it every other day. Obviously the days without it would be tough, but it would be fun to make mix tapes if I knew he was going to go around listening to them. And he could make tapes too. Was this the moment when synth and hard rock met? The first step to a musical dialogue? After all, I had already started listening to a bit of Rush and Van Halen, in spite of Magnus’s protests, and to my ears they sounded like rock. So I’d begun to sound out the terrain, so to speak. I’d have to remember to mention that to Dennis. And of course I’d have to identify some synth tracks that could build a bridge to hard rock. I started to think out a suitable playlist for the first mix tape.

  * * *

  —

  During break I saw him demonstrating the Walkman to some girls in the class and realized that it would be easier to gain access to them now as well.

  It was a delicate situation, one that needed to be handled correctly. I had to do my bit to make it easy for him. Not push myself forward too soon. Not try to snatch victory too early. He had his reputation to think about, after all. Obviously he couldn’t be seen with someone like me. He stood to lose everything from a change of that sort. In the short term, anyway. The transition needed to happen gradually, almost imperceptibly. That wasn’t the sort of thing you can change overnight, so the best thing for the time being was to lie low for a while and let the friendship between us develop so slowly that no one would notice how the two of us came to be in each other’s proximity. Swapping mix tapes and discussing different tracks.

  I kept my distance all day. As did Dennis. Even if he made it look like he wasn’t trying.

  * * *

  —

  At the end of the day I went down to the lockers at the same time as everyone else for a change. I hung back slightly, looking for Dennis. When he showed up with the headphones around his neck and the Walkman on his belt I went toward him. I wasn’t planning on hanging around. I just wanted to see if it was time for him to give the Walkman back. It could have happened almost unnoticed. Almost without words. Then obviously I’d have walked away. But before I got that far Sören Ranebo was standing in front of me.

  “What do you want?” he said, pushing me back. Not hard, but enough for me to sway and lose my balance slightly.

  “I’m just going to collect something,” I said.

  “What sort of something?” he said.

  “Something that…belongs to me,” I said.

  “No you’re not,” Sören said and pushed me again.

  Not hard, but enough to let me know that my path was blocked.

  I could see Dennis up ahead, and waited for him to turn toward us and say that it was all OK. That the rules had changed. As soon as he saw who it was he’d come and sort it all out. Give me back my Walkman, and the whole thing would be something of a triumph. (Eventually even Sören Ranebo would come to terms with the fact that synth and rock were on the point of a rapprochement.) But people kept going up to Dennis and talking to him. He was surrounded by admirers. I saw them fiddling with the Walkman and headphones.

  “Get lost!” Sören said.

  “But…,” I said.

  “Something wrong with your hearing? Get lost, I said!” Sören said, pushing me again. Harder this time, making me stumble and fall on my backside. H
e probably didn’t intend it, but I landed on my coccyx and jarred my spine.

  * * *

  —

  I sat there as the others moved on, thinking to myself that it was probably best to hold off a bit longer and try to make contact with Dennis when there weren’t so many people around him.

  * * *

  —

  I followed them at a discreet distance. Saw them go in and out of shops. Maybe they did a bit of shoplifting in Åhlén’s? The headphones kept getting passed around the gang, but Dennis kept hold of the Walkman, which I thought he seemed to be handling carefully.

  In the end there were only three of them left, and when they were sitting on a bench in the shopping center I ventured closer. I saw Dennis look in my direction, and before I realized how stupid it was I’d already raised my arm in a far too enthusiastic greeting. I lowered it at once and walked toward them.

  Sören had gone, but one of the boys in the parallel class, I think his name was Johan—his dad had a Commodore 64—stood up as I approached.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “Er…I thought I’d pick up my Walkman,” I said.

  “What did you say?” Johan said, raising his eyebrows.

  He turned his ear toward me as if he couldn’t hear properly.

  “I’d just like my Walkman back,” I mumbled.

  “Who’s got it?” he said with a grin.

  I glanced at Dennis and the other boy, who were sitting on the bench looking at us. I thought that maybe this was Dennis’s style, keeping you on tenterhooks. Sending one of his minions to test you, like a sort of initiation rite. You just had to make sure you passed it. Stayed cool in front of his friends. Even so, I was unable to keep as cool as I would have liked. I tried to smile, but it felt more like a nervous twitch.