The Circus

by Jonas Karlsson

  “I’ve got a good idea for a graduation cake,” he said.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Mmm,” he said. “Imagine, a white princess cake—”

  “Hang on,” I said. “Let me guess. With a little black peak—”

  “Exactly!” he said, breaking into a grin. “On one side, made of marzipan, so that…”

  We said it at the same time: “…the cake itself looks like a graduation cap!”

  He looked delighted.

  * * *

  —

  It could have been far more uncomfortable to find myself eye to eye with Dennis like that. But for some reason it was getting easier and easier with each passing second. I don’t know why, but in the end I was almost enjoying standing there. I could have carried on for a good while longer, just looking him in the eye. He looked tired. As if life had treated him roughly. He didn’t seem to have anything against standing there like that either. It was clear we weren’t going to start socializing. We were never going to be friends. I didn’t want that at all. Nor did he, presumably. We weren’t going to go out drinking or bowling together. It wasn’t the slightest bit dramatic, and the notion that I had once been desperate for his friendship felt very distant indeed. I thought about saying as much to him, but it felt a bit too much. Too big, somehow. And possibly also rather cruel. It was like we’d both woken up from an unpleasant dream and realized that although the waking world may not have been that great, at least it was different from what we thought back then.

  He rubbed his hand across his face a few times, screwed his eyes shut, and frowned.

  “Look,” he said after a while. “I know I’m supposed…What’s it called? I’m supposed to atone…”

  “What did you say?” I said.

  “Atonement,” he said. “What am I trying to say?”

  He took a deep breath. Closed his eyes again.

  “Look…I admit my guilt and would like to apologize for the way we treated you.”

  He breathed out. Opened his eyes again and looked at me in a way that was both anxious and expectant. I stared at him. Neither of us spoke for what felt like a long time. We stood there in silence. Dennis with his cap in his hand and what he had just said hanging in the air, looking sheepish now, afterward, as if he was expecting some sort of response from me. I almost burst out laughing. What the hell did he mean? Did he really think that we could draw a line under everything, the whole of our teenage lives, and move on? As if it was possible to forgive something like that, to wrap up that whole period, everything that had happened at school, and put it into words. Sort it out, put the pieces back in the right place, and start afresh from the beginning. As if we, if we felt like it, could erase it all and do everything differently.

  I just gawked at him. Even so, it was good to hear it, and provided at least some small measure of relief.

  * * *

  —

  After a while of neither of us saying anything he started to glance sideways. As if he was wondering how long this had to go on for and wanted to check the time to see when it could be regarded as done and dusted.

  In the end I was the one who broke the silence.

  * * *

  —

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  He looked at me with those tired eyes as though he had an idea what was coming. As if he had prepared for this. The attack. Revenge. All the difficult questions I was going to ask. He was making a real effort to take responsibility without losing his temper or going to pieces. But I didn’t want to ask any of those questions. I wasn’t expecting any answers. Not from him. Absolutely not from him. There was only one thing I wanted to know.

  “Was it my Walkman?”

  Whatever he’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. That much was obvious. He looked like he didn’t even understand the question.

  “What?” he said.

  “That’s all I want to know,” I said. “Was it my Walkman you took?”

  “Yes, of course it was,” he said. “So, yeah…”

  I nodded. He nodded back.

  “Christ,” he went on after a while, giving me a look of pity. “You were so alone. You didn’t have anyone.”

  “Well…,” I began to say, “I had…”

  I suddenly felt that I wanted to get away from there.

  “But you were, though,” Dennis went on. “You were always utterly alone. It’s no fun being on your own. It’s fucking horrible. I can see why you wanted your Walkman.”

  “Oh, it’s just…I always wondered if it was really mine, or if I was imagining it…Jallo suggested that—”

  Dennis brightened up.

  “Do you go and see Jallo as well?” he said.

  I stared at him. Shook my head.

  “No…He’s just a friend of mine.”

  * * *

  —

  Dennis looked at me, winked, and nodded. Almost as if we shared a secret. Was he implying something about me and Jallo? If so, what? Maybe he just felt relieved. He certainly looked much less tense now that he’d got the apology out of the way, and it was impossible to tell what he meant by his expression. I felt the urge to get out of there even more strongly now.

  “What film are you showing?” I asked.

  Dennis glanced toward the cinema.

  “Something experimental,” he said. “About some friends. Although it’s hard to know who the real friend is…”

  I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Is it any good?”

  Dennis frowned.

  “It’s kind of deep,” he said with a shrug. “But the music’s good. You’ve always liked music, haven’t you?” he said.

  He looked happy again, the way you do if you remember something about someone else that makes you look like a more considerate person. Or less arrogant, anyway.

  “I listen to quite a lot of stuff myself,” he went on when I didn’t say anything.

  “Oh,” I said. “I suppose it’s easy these days, with Spotify and SoundCloud and all that.”

  I glanced at the door. He put his cap back on. It sounded like the end credits were playing inside the cinema.

  “Well,” he said. “I’d better get back to work, but it would be good to meet up and talk a bit more.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “I’m afraid I don’t have a mobile, so—”

  “Nor do I,” Dennis said. “How about tomorrow? What do you say, dinner at eight?”

  I left the cinema by the main entrance.

  I walked over to the pedestrian crossing on Götgatan and when the light turned green realized that I should actually be going the other way. I turned around and managed to get back to the other side before the lights changed again. I walked until I came to a bus stop, looked up at the sign, and saw that the bus was going my way. So Dennis was seeing Jallo? Why would he be doing that? What did they talk about? Me? Did Dennis have psychological problems? I couldn’t help thinking that it was probably his turn to have some now. As if there was some sort of force in the universe that balanced things out. But what had happened in his life to make him think he had to go and see someone like Jallo? And why had he mentioned “Dinner at Eight”?

  “You always have to look at new ways of communicating,” Jallo once said when we were sitting in his office and he was telling me about some sort of mime course he was thinking of setting up. “Because of course language is mainly just a barrier to understanding.” I’d stopped listening to him when he said that sort of stuff a long time ago. I mostly just nodded and agreed with him while I thought about other things.

  Eventually the bus showed up, and as soon as I sat down I fell asleep and managed to have one of those dreams that feels like a whole lifetime. Someone was walking behind me and I couldn’t see who it was. Just as I was about to turn around I woke up and r
ealized that I’d gone at least three stops too far. I looked out the window and saw that I was right outside the door to Jallo’s office. The big illuminated sign was already switched on even though it wasn’t quite dark yet. The red and yellow neon letters lit up one after the other, from the bottom, until eventually the man was visible, with the letters forming his hat.

  * * *

  —

  I got off, thinking that I may as well stop in to see Jallo now that I was there. I could take the opportunity to ask him what the hell he was up to.

  I went up the narrow stairway with the creaking steps. I kept hold of the handrail because it felt like the wooden steps might give way every time you put your foot down. The receptionist had her face buried in her phone as usual. She didn’t bother to pay me any attention, so I didn’t say hello to her. I knew my way. I’d been there enough times. I wound my way through the narrow corridors with their bright orange textured wallpaper and the uneven floor that bulged in places and smelled faintly of mold, past the vending machine, following the trail of lights laid out along the edge of the cheap blue carpet. Just before I got to Jallo’s office I stumbled over that wretched strip of lights and fell on the floor. I only just put my hands out in time. Jallo looked up from behind the desk in his room.

  “Magnus?” he said with a look of surprise.

  He came out and helped me to my feet. He brushed me down and carried my rucksack into the room. He turned his arm to look at his watch.

  “I’m seeing a client in twenty minutes, but grab a seat and we can have a quick chat.”

  I followed him into the small, windowless office, tucked between the toilets and the recycling bins.

  He folded a newspaper that was lying open on the desk. Waved it in the air.

  “Interesting article here,” he said. “They’ve come up with a new way to measure happiness. They’re going to debate it at the United Nations. Happiness. Can you imagine? Ridiculous.”

  He laughed and shook his head. I sat down on the chair on the other side of the desk.

  “All nonsense, obviously, if you read between the lines. But you have to admire their nerve. Pushing it as far as that, I mean. Like they say, ‘The bigger the lie…’ ”

  He tossed the newspaper on the floor, picked up a pen, and put the top back on. He leaned back.

  “So, my friend,” he said.

  I ran my hands along the armrests.

  “What’s all this business with Dennis?” I said.

  He put the pen to his lips and tapped it a few times without replying.

  “Why did you send me to see him?”

  He still didn’t say anything. Just looked at me with that lazy, inscrutable gaze.

  “You knew he’d be there, didn’t you? At Bondegatan 34?”

  He threw his arms out.

  “I thought it would be good for you to meet,” he said at last. “Good for both of you.”

  I leaned back and heard music playing very faintly from the computer in the middle of the desk. The same old Sinatra playlist that Jallo always played. The very worst way to listen to music: a barely audible carpet of background noise that you really had to concentrate on if you wanted to make out any of the details. How could he bear it? He must have it on the lowest possible setting. I stopped mid-movement and tried to sit as silently as I could.

  I was well aware that some music has the ability to put me into a trance-like state. I did things without thinking about it. Or imagined that I was doing things that never actually happened. Jallo had once pointed that out to me, and had suggested that I try applying that plausibility test of his. So this sort of music that you could hardly hear always felt a bit sneaky. I wanted to know what sort of music was being played so I could figure out how it affected me.

  “I gave him your number a while back,” Jallo said. “But I don’t suppose he could bring himself to call you. I’ve asked him several times, but he keeps saying he hasn’t got around to it. Then he said that he had called, but hadn’t dared say anything. He said he’d call the following week, but a week later he said the same thing. So I thought it would be just as well to send you to see him. Did it go OK, then?”

  “What?” I said, suddenly thinking that perhaps I ought to have been listening to him and not the music. So I tried to remember what he’d said and listen. Sometimes you can hear what someone has already said: as if the words still hang in the air for a while, and you can pick them up after they’ve been spoken.

  “Seeing him again?” he asked.

  I raised my head and stared at his sly-looking face. That little smile that kept playing at the corners of his mouth.

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  He nodded thoughtfully. Looked at me intently, as if he was waiting for me to say something else. Perhaps I ought to. After all, I was the one who’d raised the subject. I didn’t know why though, now. I looked around the room.

  “He’s scared,” I said.

  “What of?” Jallo said.

  “Of me.”

  “Why is he scared of you?”

  “I don’t know. There’s just something about me.”

  “What?”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know. Something. What about you?”

  “Me?” Jallo said.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing about me.”

  “Why would you and him be seeing each other, then?”

  “He,” Jallo said.

  “What?”

  “You mean, you and he.”

  We looked at each other for a few moments. Jallo sat there quietly, smiling, as if he was waiting for me or had taken a vow of silence or something. It felt like it was my turn to talk.

  “He said it was my Walkman,” I eventually said.

  “Your what?” Jallo said.

  “Don’t worry; it doesn’t matter,” I said.

  Sinatra was singing “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” and I could just make out the lyric about a lonely heart learning the lesson.

  I took a deep breath and tried to get back to the conversation.

  “Why did you tell me where to find Dennis when you knew I was looking for Magnus?” I said.

  Jallo tapped his pen against his lips. Then he put it down on the desk and rubbed his face with both palms.

  “I gave you an address I thought you needed,” he said.

  “What does that have to do with Magnus?”

  He leaned back in his chair. Blew out his cheeks and let the air slowly escape from his mouth.

  “Well,” he said. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  He shook his head.

  “OK, then,” I said. “Look, this business with Magnus is driving me mad. I can’t figure out where he’s gone.”

  Jallo nodded. The song came to an end, and “Learnin’ the Blues” started to play instead.

  “I can’t help worrying,” I went on, shifting in the chair. I leaned over one armrest, but that wasn’t at all comfortable, so I sat back the way I’d been sitting before.

  “And then there’s the thing with the phone,” I said. “Someone keeps calling me.”

  “Oh?”

  Jallo raised his eyebrows in that nonchalant way, as if he wasn’t the least bit taken aback but still wanted to look surprised.

  “Yes,” I said. “Which is kind of OK, I guess…We play each other records.”

  “You play records?”

  “Yes! But I don’t think it’s Magnus.”

  “Why not?” he said.

  “It doesn’t feel like him.”

  “No?” Jallo said, nodding thoughtfully.

  He leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling. He tapped his pen against the desk in time to Sinatra.

  “Look, to be honest I don�
�t know that much about Magnus,” Jallo went on.

  “Oh?”

  “Seeing as I’ve never met him.”

  He stopped tapping the pen and made a vague gesture with the other hand. I watched him. Tried to work out what he meant.

  “Yes, you have,” I said.

  He looked me in the eye and shook his head.

  “Of course you have,” I said. “You always say—”

  “I know what I always say,” he interrupted. “I can’t help having an opinion about him, based on what you’ve told me. But I’ve never actually met him.”

  “Yes, you have…The two of you—”

  “When?” he interrupted again. “Give me one occasion when I met him.”

  I had to laugh. I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t think of what to say. My laugh sounded nervous. I could hear that for myself.

  “Well, the other day,” I said eventually.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “You were standing in your doorway, and you said you’d seen him. I never saw him.”

  “OK, a long time ago, then. Back at school.”

  He shook his head again.

  “You went to the same school as him,” I said.

  “So you keep saying. But he was never there.”

  We were both sitting upright now. Our eyes locked together.

  “He was,” I said.

  “Not as far as I’m aware,” he replied.

  “OK, maybe not in class, but afterward…”

  Jallo was still shaking his head.

  “I’ve never met him,” he said.

  “Well,” I said. “He’s not exactly the sociable type.”

  Jallo picked up his pen again and tapped it against his lips. I took a deep breath. Leaned back as relaxed as I could and tried to breathe normally. I felt like I needed to hold on to something. Jallo waved the pen in the air as if he was wafting a strand of hair or mote of dust away.

  “You know what I think?” he said, and the pen stopped moving. “I think you should stop worrying about him.”