The Circus

by Jonas Karlsson

  Like the time we walked across the railway bridge. We had been walking all evening without saying much, just wandering about kicking stones. He’d started wearing black clothes and had got hold of that stupid badge, LIVE HARD AND DIE YOUNG. It felt like a hard-rock thing to me. I said as much. Asked if he was planning on becoming a rocker instead. He just grinned and stopped next to the railing.

  “Let’s climb along the outside,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “Are you too scared?” he said, swinging over the railing.

  “Course not,” I said.

  I climbed over and clung on to the outside of the railing next to him. There was a drop of maybe five or six meters to the railway line. I felt the wind in my hair. In the distance we could hear the train approaching. Magnus looked at me. It was only a game, but I got the feeling that he would have jumped. If I’d asked him to, he would have done it. Without hesitation.

  * * *

  —

  The teachers at Vira Elementary told us to be careful about socializing with kids from other schools. Which basically meant Berg School. Especially if they offered us drugs. Magnus didn’t do drugs, but he did develop a sort of unpredictable side to his character. Sometimes I imagined that he came up with things like that to impress me. But in actual fact he just became more and more tragic.

  * * *

  —

  A few weeks later I met Jallo again. By then he’d given up on Esperanto. He said he’d got a part-time job as a buddy at Berg School. Why didn’t I visit him there sometime?

  I told him that according to Magnus, Berg School was hell on earth, but Jallo said he’d never seen Magnus there.

  “Never?” I said.

  “Nope,” Jallo said.

  “Not once?”

  He shook his head.

  * * *

  —

  I never broached the subject with Magnus. That was his business. Somehow I had already realized that he didn’t spend much time at school. He had a world of his own. He grew less and less engaged in music, and more and more peculiar. He got interested in magic and some homespun version of numerology. He saw a connection between the number of records in a box and good or bad events. He had a weird period when he was interested in magic tricks and magical thinking. He said he was going to become a magician. I tried to explain to him that all magic acts were based on different types of illusion, and that the people who performed them spent hours practicing, but he seemed to think it was more to do with formulas and codes rather than tricking the audience into concentrating on something else. It was like he wasn’t at all interested in hearing what I said. Unless he just thought it didn’t matter.

  He kept coming up with increasingly strange suggestions. Once when we were standing by the marsh he suggested jumping in.

  “Let’s do it,” he urged.

  “Are you mad?” I said. “What for?”

  “Why not?” he said with a grin.

  “Idiot!”

  Why not?”

  I sighed.

  “Because we’d get sucked down and die.”

  “So?”

  I looked at him, but he just glared back with that provocative expression. As if it was all a bit of fun. As if we might as well walk into the marsh and see what happened. No matter what the consequences. As if nothing mattered. As if nothing made any difference.

  “You’ll have to do it on your own,” I said.

  “Then you’ll be alone.”

  I snorted.

  “So? I’d just have to find someone else to hang out with.”

  “Who?”

  I snorted again.

  “Anyone,” I said.

  “You haven’t got anyone. Who?”

  I shrugged. “Jallo.”

  “Jallo’s an idiot,” he said. “He’s dangerous. Can’t you tell? He doesn’t understand anything.”

  “But you do, I suppose?”

  “More than you and him do,” he said.

  “He,” I said. “More than you and he do.”

  “Are you the grammar police now, then?” Magnus said.

  “No,” I said. “That’s just the sort of thing you learn if you go to school.”

  Magnus didn’t respond to that.

  “Jallo’s trying to manipulate you,” he said. “Haven’t you noticed? He keeps trying to get you to think you’re someone, you fucking loser.”

  “Says you, just because you’re a loser.”

  “No more than you and him are.”

  “You and he.”

  * * *

  —

  Recently he’d started to adopt a tougher way of talking. It didn’t suit him and was just embarrassing. I tried to get him to stop and act normally instead.

  Sometimes I wondered if I should tell him what people said about him when he wasn’t around. At school. The way they made fun of him. Saying he was crazy and disgusting and an idiot. Not just that, but that he was sick in the head, and that people were scared of him because he’d evidently done all sorts of weird stuff that people loved to talk about.

  There were any number of stories about Magnus, each one worse than the last. People were only too happy to gossip about him. Not when I was around, obviously. They knew we were friends, so they always stopped the moment I appeared. But I couldn’t help hearing anyway—it would have been impossible not to. Magnus was something of a sobering example, a myth. And in a way some of that rebounded on me. I ended up being automatically associated with him and all the stupid stuff he got up to.

  Perhaps I should have said something to Magnus. Tried to make him realize how strange he was getting. Tried to get him to wake up and show him the guy I kept having to protect and look after. But I could never come up with a good enough reason. What good would it do? It would only make him even sadder. Even more alone. Even more weird.

  * * *

  —

  More and more often I found myself wondering what sort of person I would have been if Magnus hadn’t existed. Who I might have become if the two of us hadn’t hung out together all the time. I could have been someone completely different.

  “No, you couldn’t,” Magnus said. “You are who you are. You can’t just become someone else.”

  “Can’t you?” I said. “Surely we choose who we are for ourselves?”

  He snorted.

  “You’re not the type.”

  “What type?”

  “Someone like that…”

  “I could have been.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Just because you get bullied doesn’t mean I have to. I could have gone out with Maddy…”

  “Hardly.”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you know what you are to her?”

  He pulled his hand out of his pocket and formed his thumb and forefinger into a zero.

  “And how the hell would you know?”

  “I just do.”

  * * *

  —

  I took a deep breath and leaned my head back against the wall. I looked at the time and realized it was five minutes past four. I pulled the bow tie off and undid my top button. Went off to the changing room, hung up my uniform, and got changed into my own clothes. I put the padlock on my locker, picked up my rucksack, and walked out.

  Dansson was waiting outside the staff entrance when I came out.

  “Do you want to come to Record King?” he said, and I very nearly nodded before I realized that I didn’t want to. I was tired of Record King and wanted to try something new. Not that there was anything wrong with Dansson, but hanging out with him every day in the record shop had started to feel like being strapped into the back seat of a car, out of reach of the radio and unable to influence the choice of music.

  I wondered if there was any go
od reason for me not to go. I felt in my pockets and found Jallo’s note on the health-food shop receipt.

  “I need to find an address,” I said and showed him the scrap of paper.

  Dansson took it and read.

  “Bondegatan 34,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Bondegatan 3A. That’s an A. It’s just Jallo’s…”

  I snatched the receipt back.

  “Right,” Dansson said, sticking his hands in his pockets.

  “It’s…He was in a hurry when he wrote it…It’s just Jallo’s…” I said, looking at the writing. “It’s supposed to be 3A.”

  “OK,” Dansson said.

  I looked at the note again.

  “You can see it’s supposed to be an A?”

  “Sure,” Dansson said.

  “You can, though, can’t you?”

  Bondegatan 34 was nothing more than a door. In the middle of a wall. No sign. No windows. Just a door, nothing else.

  And it was open.

  Right inside the door hung a bead curtain, the sort you see in Asian films, usually with a pattern on it. A sunset or a beautiful woman. Walking through it was like walking through water, a slow shower. I let myself be washed by it and emerged on the other side. I found myself standing at one end of a very long corridor with the curtain still swaying behind me.

  The walls, ceiling, and floor were covered in dark blue plush. There were small but fairly powerful wall lamps every ten meters or so. I took a couple of steps forward and ran my hand along the soft wall. It felt lovely.

  The air smelled of synthetic bananas. Sweets.

  I took another couple of steps and realized that walking was surprisingly easy. As if the passageway sloped gently down, extending as far as the eye could see. I walked a bit farther and felt how nice it was to stretch my legs, to let go and stride along.

  I carried on down the soft, soundless carpet. The slight slope gave me a bit of extra momentum, and I was swept on by the seemingly endless row of wall lamps. They were relatively bright, but the distance between them was great enough to leave pockets of darkness. You walked out of the light into darkness, then back into light again.

  Gravity led me on down the corridor. I just had to keep walking and take long enough strides to stop myself from stumbling.

  After a while I started to make out the outline of a door at the other end of the corridor. It looked like an ordinary office door, but as I got closer I saw that it was padded, with round buttons studded across it in a diamond pattern. The handle was wood, perhaps teak. I tried it. The door was locked, but the lock was on my side of the door. I turned the lock and walked into a large dark room with a flickering light in the distance. I could hear soft music. The hall was full of hundreds of people who suddenly burst into synchronized laughter. Blue light enveloped everyone sitting in the auditorium. I turned and reached for the handle to sneak back out again, but the door wouldn’t open. The lock was on the other side.

  “Don’t you see? It’s a message?” a voice said in English from the loudspeakers. I decided to walk past all the rows of seats. It got darker again and thunderous music started to play. Before the flight of steps was illuminated by an explosion of light I managed to trip on one of the treads and almost hit my head on the carpet, which smelled of popcorn. I got to my feet, pushed through some swing doors, and emerged into a foyer.

  A very short fair-haired man in a red cap nodded to me as he handed a customer their change across the counter. A young man was sitting on a bench beside the popcorn machine, scribbling in one of those free film magazines.

  Behind him, a little farther away, stood Dennis.

  The same broad shoulders and large head. The permed hair was gone, but he still had the same thick, heavy eyebrows. And saggy cheeks. It was definitely Dennis. In one of those cinema uniforms.

  I stood by the doors, and the music grew louder again behind me.

  The young man on the bench glanced at me idly, toyed with his pen, and appeared so bored by the whole situation that he couldn’t help yawning. I noticed that he’d drawn mustaches on Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

  The foyer was calm and very quiet. It was warm. The sun was shining through the windows facing the street, dividing the foyer into sunny and shaded areas. The line between them ran across the floor like a boundary. The customer walked off and the very short man went and sat down beside the young man, close enough for me to see that he had gone back to filling in the football pools. I couldn’t help noting that he was taking a chance on an away win for Crystal Palace against Arsenal, which seemed pretty risky. Perhaps he knew something that no one else did? No one was paying much attention to me.

  * * *

  —

  I looked over at Dennis again. It had to be him. It couldn’t be anyone else. I closed my eyes for a moment. When I complained to Jallo about all the weird things that only seemed to happen to me, he said that I ought to challenge my own experiences from time to time.

  “You can ask the question yourself. Ask yourself: is this really plausible?”

  I opened my eyes again. And there he stood. Dennis, the bully who had stolen my Walkman all those years ago. It seemed plausible. In spite of everything. The only particularly odd thing was that someone like Dennis was working in a place like this. A cinema? He ought to be an estate agent or a solicitor, maybe even a doctor by now. I couldn’t imagine Dennis’s parents congratulating him on getting a job as a cinema usher. But on the other hand, it was a job. An income. Times change. Everything changes. Perhaps something had happened. It often does. He was holding a can of Coca-Cola in one hand, and took a sip as he turned in my direction.

  * * *

  —

  His face froze. He recognized me instantly. We stood there looking at each other, and I realized it was too late to turn away. After a while he raised his head slightly. With the absolute minimum of effort. Barely noticeable and surprisingly calm. He didn’t even seem particularly surprised to see me. Almost as if he’d been expecting me to show up. As if he knew I’d be coming. He began to walk toward me. I felt my heart beat faster and had to make a real effort not to run away.

  * * *

  —

  It must have been at least ten, fifteen years since I’d last seen Dennis, at some school thing. Back then I was far too preoccupied with trying to walk straight, not hyperventilate, and show that that sort of reunion wasn’t a problem for me. That my time at school hadn’t left any scars. I was far too absorbed in my own behavior to notice anyone else. Some of them had their partners with them, I recalled, and I spent an hour or so mingling until I told someone I had to get going. I tried my best to come across as an unbroken individual who had dealt perfectly well with his school days, just in case anyone happened to think otherwise. I walked from group to group with exaggerated calm, raising my plastic glass in toasts and counting the minutes until I could safely escape with a breezy smile glued to my face. I remembered that Dennis had worn an earring. And hadn’t his face been a bit fatter even then? Had he looked a bit worn down? I wasn’t sure.

  * * *

  —

  Now here he was, standing in front of me holding out his hand. I shook it.

  “Hi there!” he said.

  I wondered if I had ever held his hand in mine before. It felt soft. Smooth and a bit flabby. Surprisingly limp. There was something subdued and nervous about him. From close up I could see that he had worry lines on his forehead. The last time we met I had been far too self-absorbed to notice him properly, but things were different this time. Did he feel that? Could he tell I was looking at him closely? In a way it was like I was seeing him for the first time. He had a few gray hairs, some crow’s feet around his eyes. He had a mole on his forehead that he should probably get checked out. I saw that his shirt collar was a bit too tight around his neck, beneath his bulging double chin. Maybe he was s
eeing me for the first time too? We stood like that for a while, without saying anything. Those moments were rather strained yet oddly lucid. And possibly more awkward for him.

  “Well,” he said eventually. “Yeah…he said you’d be coming.”

  “Who did?” I said.

  “Jallo.”

  * * *

  —

  “You work here?” I asked.

  He nodded and took his cap off. Folded and unfolded it a couple of times as if to prove that he had permission to do that. That he didn’t have to wear it if he didn’t want to.

  “Usher,” he said. “How about you?”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to shift my weight nonchalantly to the other leg. “I’m in the bakery business.”

  He nodded again and took another sip of Coke. It was like we were both trying to normalize the situation and pretend that this wasn’t a strangely unreal occurrence at all.

  “You got a lot going on now, then?” he said.

  I shrugged my shoulders. Didn’t know what to say.

  “I mean, a lot to do,” he went on, stifling a burp.

  I didn’t know how to respond to this sort of talk. Nothing unusual about that. It occurred to me that I never talked much about work. To be honest, I never noticed much difference in the seasons. You just stood there, pressed the button, and served the customers. I would have liked to have been able to say something funny and smart to prove that I knew a lot about the industry, while simultaneously demonstrating that I wasn’t that bothered about it—just that I was aware of it, in spite of the fact that it was him I was talking to.

  “Well, of course it’s school graduation season,” I said eventually. “Lots of cakes…”

  He nodded knowledgeably, as if he really did know something about it.