Now it was him. And he was gone.
* * *
—
I’d just made up my mind to call Magnus again, even though it was after three o’clock in the morning. I caught sight of myself in the black screen of the television. It almost felt like it was him in the television, about to call me. It looked like he was waiting for something. He’ll call any moment now, I thought.
Sure enough, the phone rang a short while later. I was raising my hand to answer when I saw that the man in the television already had the receiver pressed to his ear. I did the same.
I was about to ask if he was still alive when I heard a click at the other end, then some crackling, and then “Dinner at Eight” by Rufus Wainwright played on a poor-quality sound system.
I listened. To the whole track. I sat there perfectly still and enjoyed it. Like when you’re given a present you’ve always wanted or a genuine compliment or a big hug. Eventually the song came to an end. There was a click, then there was no one there. I hung up, almost certain that the person at the other end was a friend.
But was it Magnus Gabrielsson? And how could he play Rufus Wainwright if he was dead? And if he wasn’t dead, which seemed more likely, why would he be playing Rufus Wainwright? Did he even know who he was? Magnus had clung to a fairly fundamentalist line when it came to what music he listened to. There was no place for Rufus Wainwright there. Whoever was playing music at the other end of the line wasn’t the Magnus I knew. It was a different one. Unless it was someone else altogether? In which case, who?
I went over to my computer and did a search for Magnus Gabrielsson.
* * *
—
I tried typing in Magnus’s phone number, and found both his name and address. So he does exist, I thought rather stupidly. But the person on the phone didn’t feel like Magnus. Magnus would never sit in silence and then play “Dinner at Eight.” Anyway, how could anyone else know about “Dinner at Eight”? I hadn’t mentioned to anyone that I’d been thinking about it. Coincidence? Maybe, but it was more likely that someone had picked up on me humming it. The girls at work? A customer? Dansson? Anyway, how loud was my humming? Did I really walk about singing to myself?
After a while the phone rang again. I answered on the first ring. Neither of us said anything. I went over to the stereo, switched it on, then held the receiver up as I played “Who Are You?” by Scarlett Johansson.
The next morning I called Dansson from the phone at work. I waited until I was alone in the employee changing room, then sat on the bench leaning back against the lockers. I had a headache and could feel the sweat on my back.
“Have you heard anything about Magnus Gabrielsson?” I said as soon as he answered.
“Roxette?” he said blearily.
“What have you heard?” I said.
I heard Dansson breathe heavily into the phone.
“That he committed suicide, you mean?”
“Who did you hear that from?”
“You. Among others.”
“Who else?”
“Well…you, anyway.”
My head was throbbing, and I thought I’d better try to find a painkiller.
“I didn’t say that,” I said.
“No? What did you say, then?”
“I said he’d disappeared.”
“Oh?”
“That’s one hell of a difference.”
I closed my eyes and tried to calm down.
“Has anyone else said anything about him?” I asked after a short pause.
“Don’t think so,” Dansson said.
“Seriously, has anyone said anything?”
“No,” Dansson said. “What the hell—can I go back to sleep now?”
That evening the phone rang again. At first the line was silent. Just that same breathing. It felt simultaneously creepy and exciting, kind of forbidden. As if Magnus and I, if it was him, had found an entirely new way to communicate.
This time I was ready. I’d made it a bit of an occasion. I’d bought a bar of chocolate and broken it into squares, but left it in the wrapper so I could have some whenever I felt like it. I popped a piece in my mouth as I went over to the record shelves, wondering what to play.
I pulled out both Fink’s Sort of Revolution and Matthew E. White’s “One of These Days,” but before I had time to choose a track I heard noises at the other end of the line, then “This Is Killing Me” by Skid Row started to play.
I concentrated on listening. What did he mean by “This Is Killing Me”? What was killing him? Was he in some sort of dangerous situation after all? Was that why he couldn’t talk? Maybe he could only play music and was using it to send coded messages to me? Should I inform the authorities? Or was it his kidnapper playing the music?
Skid Row? I thought for a long time before finally putting on “Who Am I Talking To” from Andy Pratt’s eponymous album.
A long silence followed, then Anthrax’s “The Devil You Know” started to play.
* * *
—
I stared into space. What did that mean? Was whoever it was trying to scare me? I didn’t feel particularly scared. It was all far too weird, first spending several evenings sitting in silence, breathing into the phone, before finally playing “The Devil You Know.” And there wasn’t anything frightening about listening to the disc being taken out and carefully put back in its case. So it was someone with a CD player. Who handled their music carefully. It must be a friend, I thought.
In the end I decided to play “About Today” by the National: “Today, you were so far away,” Matt Berninger sang in his deep, cracked voice.
When I went over to the chocolate bar there was only one piece left. Where had the rest gone? I looked around as if expecting to see someone else in the flat.
Just to be sure I went and checked the front door. It was locked.
“There’s someone at the other end,” I said to Dansson when I phoned him from work the next morning. “But they don’t say anything.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “Because sometimes there can be a delay on the line. You know, when you hear your own voice, only much later.”
“Hmm,” I said. “This isn’t like that.”
“Maybe it’s a sales call,” Dansson said.
“It’s not a sales call,” I said. “It’s…someone who plays music.”
“Music?”
“Yes.”
Just before lunchtime I looked up to serve a customer and saw Jallo on the other side of the glass counter. I said hello, but it was impossible to tell if he’d come to see me or just to buy bread. I didn’t like him standing so close to the bread with his chapped red fingers, but I had to go to the other end of the counter with another customer to fill a box with vanilla slices, so I didn’t say anything. Then, on top of everything else, the customer claimed I’d squashed some icing against the side of the box and demanded that I swap the slice for an undamaged one, so I had to put it back in the display and carefully replace it with another one.
For some reason I happened to look past the customer, and some way off, standing behind a pillar by the tables in the café, I saw a figure in a blue anorak who pulled his head back the moment I looked in that direction.
I could have sworn it was Mr. Magic Bobbi, the magician from the circus.
I looked over to where Jallo had been standing, but could no longer see him. I made an instant decision.
I swung around the end of the counter and set off toward the pillar. I pushed as fast as I could through the sea of surprised customers clutching their queue tickets as they waited to buy bread.
In a matter of seconds I was at the pillar, flew around it, and collided with a man in late middle age who apologized, even though it was obviously my fault. No Mr. Magic Bobbi.
I mumbled an apology as I looked
around. It occurred to me that this was the perfect crowd in which to disappear. A large number of very slow-moving customers wearing a garish array of colors. Like the one good song on a compilation album.
I glimpsed the blue anorak over by the stationery department. The figure’s long hair had been tied in a ponytail. I headed toward it, weaving between the café tables. It didn’t take long to catch up. I was about to slap my hand on the man’s shoulder and ask what the hell he’d done with my friend—I actually had my hand in the air—when I realized that it was clearly someone else. Someone much shorter. Who also happened to be a woman.
I followed her for a short while, and when she stopped at a display of notebooks I pushed past. Mostly because I couldn’t just turn round.
I carried on through the doors that led to the underground station, trying to think of a good reason for why I had left work and run off like that. But nothing I came up with sounded even vaguely plausible.
“Do you feel like telling me what happened?” my boss asked later when we were sitting in his little office to discuss my odd behavior. I thought for a moment and then decided that honesty was probably the best policy after all.
“I thought I saw…someone.”
He looked at me in surprise.
“What did you say?”
“Someone who…”
I hesitated. How was I supposed to explain this in a factual way? I began again, in a slightly more steady voice.
“I thought I saw a magician,” I said, nodding slowly as I attempted to adopt a convincing expression. I quickly realized it was hopeless.
Have you ever heard the Bob Dylan song “Hurricane” on the Desire album, about the falsely accused boxer? My boss told me off so emphatically that it was all I could think of. I was briefly close to tears. The bow tie was pinching my throat, and I loosened it with a couple of fingers. During the rest of the reprimand I thought about my recurrent dilemma of where to put compilation albums. What do you do with an album featuring two equally big names when it isn’t obvious that one of them is making a guest appearance on the other’s album? Some are obvious of course: Frank and Nancy Sinatra get filed under Frank. Besides, they’re related, which makes the decision even easier. But what about the Traveling Wilburys, for instance? Or Grimascher och telegram, which features both Jan Johansson and Cornelis Vreeswijk? Cornelis’s name is more prominent on the cover, but it’s perfectly obvious that it’s a Jan Johansson album.
Jallo was gone by the time I got back to the bakery counter after my dressing-down. Perhaps he assumed I was going to be gone for a long time? Perhaps he thought that was how I usually went for lunch? He doesn’t generally have anything against waiting. Either way, he was gone when I got back. I stood there for a while looking for him before I heard a familiar remark from the other side of the counter: “Young man, what do you think you’re here for?”
I clicked to bring up another number, then went over to the woman and took her ticket.
“I’d like to place an order,” she said. “And it’s rather special, so you’d better fetch a pen and paper.”
I fetched the order book from the till.
“I’d like to order a cake. Completely white, like this.”
She moved her hands in a circular motion.
“And with a black ribbon around it. And a little peak on one side. Can you guess what it’s supposed to be?”
I shook my head slowly.
According to the roster I finished work at 4 p.m., which meant I could start to get ready at quarter to. If you wiped the counter and did a bit of rearranging toward the end you could manage to spend the last five minutes tucked away in the kitchen. I swept the crumbs and flour from the large marble counter behind the till. Made up some boxes for cakes until I realized I’d done far too many, so I piled the rest up beneath the counter: they could always be used later. Then I rinsed some tongs and tried to avoid serving any more customers for as long as I could by making myself look busy. I checked the time, but it was still only ten to, so I sneaked into the kitchen.
The dishwasher was loaded and running through its cycle. The worktop alongside it was empty. All the cutlery and implements were carefully arranged in the plastic tray next to the sink. I sank onto the little plastic stool by the door. Some of the girls thought the big industrial dishwasher was hard to handle, but I’d learned to use one at the summer camp Jallo and I went to years ago. It was part of the daily routine there for residents to help with the cleaning and washing-up. I used to think it was a pretty easy job even back then.
* * *
—
The last summer at camp Jallo had signed up as one of the leaders.
“Much better,” he said. “And you don’t have to pay the enrollment fee. Besides, I already know how to do it all. And they say personal experience is a bonus.”
Even if he was the same person, it was more like talking to an adult. Suddenly he was taking part in self-awareness sessions and discussing things in a mature way. Asking about my social life, my routines, school, if I still saw Magnus—that sort of thing.
“Isn’t there a youth club or something?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Maybe you could set one up,” he said.
I muttered something about that probably being quite hard to do.
“Oh,” he said, “you just need to find premises. There must be somewhere that’s not being used?”
I shrugged again.
“There must be,” he said. “There always is. Look, do you think you could take those headphones off?”
* * *
—
Magnus didn’t like Jallo. I don’t know why. Maybe he thought he was a slacker. A poseur. Unless he was jealous because we had a different kind of relationship thanks to the summer camp? Maybe he saw him as a potential threat to our friendship. For good reason. Since the business with the Walkman things had settled down a bit. I suppose I’d forgiven him and realized that I was just going to have to accept him for what he was: a coward. But things between us were still frosty. Jallo wasn’t particularly pleasant toward Magnus either. One autumn he bumped into us after school.
“Hey, hi there!” he called. “How’s it going?”
I had almost reached the post office, where Magnus was waiting, when Jallo ran up to me and pulled my headphones off. I put them back on at once. I could still hear him perfectly well as he walked backward along the pavement ahead of me.
“Do you fancy coming along to a thing with me?” Jallo asked.
“What sort of thing?” I said as we carried on walking awkwardly along.
“Esperanto!” Jallo said breezily. “An Esperanto course!”
“What’s that, then?”
I saw Magnus standing in his usual place and slowed down. Jallo continued walking backward ahead of me.
“It’s the new global language,” Jallo said. “A new language that everyone in the whole world will understand, right? D’you see how cool that would be?! I’m going to do the course. You can come too…”
We had reached Magnus now and I nodded briefly in greeting, but Jallo didn’t bother to acknowledge his presence.
“No, I can’t,” I said. “Magnus and I are—”
“Oh, forget about him,” Jallo said wearily. Without so much as looking at him. Without bothering about him at all, in fact.
“Don’t you see how brilliant it’ll be when the whole world starts talking the same language?” he went on. “You know what this will mean for world peace?”
He leaned closer.
“And you know what an advantage it’ll be to know it properly before everyone else?! We’ll have one hell of a head start!”
I glanced at Magnus, who was standing right behind Jallo, unassuming as always, unwilling to take up any space.
“Look, Magnus and I are—” I began again.
He took a couple of steps and noticed, entirely without embarrassment, that he was standing right next to Magnus. He looked at me as if he was simply waiting for me to go with him.
“Well?” he said.
Magnus looked down. Waiting for me to made a decision.
“Are you coming or what?” Jallo cried.
I shook my head.
“Fine. Don’t, then,” Jallo muttered and walked off.
Magnus glared at him as he went. And there we were, together, again.
* * *
—
It annoyed me that Magnus always had to be so defensive. That he always let me make the decisions without contributing anything but a guilty conscience. But he never really wanted much. He never wanted anything new to happen. Everything was supposed to be the way it had always been. As if it was possible to stop time. Which of course it wasn’t. In fact he was becoming more and more peculiar. In the end I started to feel uncomfortable in his company.
For him everything was perfectly clear. We were two outsiders who belonged together, and we would always belong with the outcasts and rejects. Naturally I was grateful for his loyalty, but it was starting to feel more and more of a burden.
Perhaps he noticed, because he did try to change as time passed, adopting a rather more provocative tone and suggesting we try more challenging things.
The Circus Page 9