The Circus

by Jonas Karlsson

  There are some things you just know. If anyone were to ask “How do you know that?” you’d reply “I just do.” It’s as obvious as the sky being gray and the grass brown. If the weather’s been bad and the summer dry. The question itself seems almost provocative. Something similar happened when Jallo leaned back in his fancy office chair, the one he loved to rock backward and forward in, with his elbows on the armrests and his fingertips touching under his chin. There was something ridiculous about the whole situation. Even so, somehow he had managed to get to me, and I was breathing fast.

  “What are you trying to say?” I said.

  “I’m just saying what I see,” Jallo said.

  “This is absurd,” I said. “Magnus…Magnus is just Magnus.”

  He held the palms of his hands up, and moved them up and down as if he were weighing something in them.

  “So tell me,” he said, swiveling in his chair again. “Does it seem plausible?”

  I snorted. I tried desperately to think of something smart to say to put a stop to this ridiculous situation.

  “If you stop and think about it…,” Jallo went on, “doesn’t it seem a bit strange that you’ve both got the same name?”

  “What’s strange about that?” I said.

  “It’s a remarkable coincidence, though, isn’t it?”

  “I’m called Magnus, and so are lots of other people. Plenty of people have the same name.”

  He nodded.

  “But…don’t you think it was very convenient that he first showed up all those years ago just when you needed him most?”

  I shrugged.

  “That was a good thing, wasn’t it?” I said.

  “And then he vanished when you put him to the test.”

  “OK,” I said. “That wasn’t quite so good.”

  “Why didn’t he stand up for you then, that time with Dennis, when you really needed him?”

  I felt myself getting angry. What did he know about Magnus? What did he know about what he was like?

  “He couldn’t,” I said. “OK? He just couldn’t!”

  “Fine,” Jallo said, holding his hands up as if in surrender. “I’m not trying to force you to see things a particular way. But perhaps you could try thinking about it.”

  I got to my feet. Anger had freed something inside me. It felt almost refreshing. I glared at Jallo and tried to maintain the accusatory tone in my voice.

  “That he doesn’t exist, you mean?” I said.

  Jallo didn’t answer. He didn’t nod. He didn’t move at all. He just sat there looking at me calmly as I stood there breathing hard.

  “That he’s never existed?” I went on.

  He shrugged as if we were talking about something random, like a PIN number or a postcode.

  “You could try it out as an idea,” he said, then reached back so that his elbow touched the red velvet curtain behind him. It was sloping. The whole room was sloping.

  “Are you saying that the circus never existed either, then?” I said after a pause.

  Jallo peered at the window.

  “I don’t know. I’m sure you know better than anyone.”

  Jallo raised one of his fingers to his mouth and bit the nail. He pulled a face and stopped. He opened the top drawer of his desk and very carefully pulled on a pair of bright white cotton gloves.

  “Maybe try looking at it like this,” he said after a while. “We become new people all the time.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “We change. There’s nothing odd about that.”

  I found myself looking at the dresser and standard lamp in the corner, on top of the handwoven rug. The extension cord was curled up beside them.

  “We try to create order,” Jallo eventually said. “But the natural state is chaos. You know what Shakespeare said?”

  “No. What did he say?”

  “ ‘All the world’s a circus’!”

  “ ‘A stage,’ surely?” I said.

  Jallo waved one white-gloved hand in the air impatiently.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “That’s what he meant, anyway…”

  * * *

  —

  He looked tired, as if he was trying to bring the discussion to an end, but suddenly he raised his eyebrows and held one gloved finger up in the air as if he’d just thought of something funny. He turned and hunted through his drawers. He pulled out a cable, then a red microphone, and held it up in front of me.

  “Karaoke?”

  After a while I began to hear the sound of voices out in the waiting room. Jallo cleared his throat. He put the microphone away and glanced at the door, stood up, walked over, and closed it. As he did, I noticed the full-length mirror on the back of the door. When he started to close the door, only the table, part of the floor, and the bookcase at the other end of the room were visible in it. But as the door closed, first my clothes then more and more of me came into view in the mirror. Once it was shut I was standing there.

  Jallo went back to his chair. He closed the drawer containing the karaoke equipment, sat back down and reached over the desk, and dropped his pen into the desk tidy.

  “So what happened at work?” he said.

  “What?” I said, looking at myself in the mirror.

  “The other day. You ran off.”

  I nodded.

  “It was Mr. Magic Bobbi,” I said, still staring at my own reflection in the door.

  Jallo frowned.

  “Who’s Mr. Magic Bobbi?” he asked.

  “And you were there,” I said.

  “Yes,” Jallo said.

  I could sense him leaning toward me even though I couldn’t see him.

  “Magnus, your imagination is a great asset,” he said. “It’s a gift. You just need to learn how to manage it. Do you understand? You need to learn how to use it properly. Think of it like this—you’re like a superhero who just needs to learn to control his superpowers.”

  I looked at myself in the mirror. Raised one arm slightly, as if to make sure that the arm in the mirror moved at the same time. It did. It waved. That was plausible. It was all plausible. Even so, it still felt like I’d walked into a dream world. Where everything worked differently. It was as if words meant different things now. Unless they meant the same as before but in a different way. Unless they meant exactly the same things they had always meant, but that I had always thought they meant something else. I felt I ought to say something in order to stop myself from going completely mad.

  “But…,” I began. “What about the person who keeps phoning me? Do you think that really happened?”

  Jallo shrugged his shoulders.

  “Once again,” he said, “does it seem plausible?”

  I didn’t say anything for a while.

  “Someone’s definitely playing stuff,” I said.

  “Playing?” Jallo said.

  “Music. There’s someone at the other end playing music.”

  Jallo frowned.

  “Mmh…no,” he said, shaking his head. “That sounds odd.”

  “But I can hear it,” I said.

  Jallo nodded slowly.

  “Yes,” he said. “But who the hell would be playing music for you?”

  The phone rang again not long after I got home. I let it ring a few times, properly listening to the sound. I heard it echo in the room, so I was sure it was real. When I pressed the green button to take the call, neither of us said anything at first. Almost like a greeting. As if we both wanted to assure ourselves that the same rules—no words, just music—still applied. I clutched the receiver extra hard. Tapped it gently with my fingertips to make absolutely sure this was really happening. I decided to wait this time. Let him start. If nothing happened, then so be it. But I didn’t have to wait long before I heard
a click of a disc being inserted.

  “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake.

  When it was finished I held the receiver up to the speaker and played the short instrumental piece “I Know You” by Dislocated Timeline, from Memories from Tuesday. (He could always google it if he didn’t know it. Or use one of those music apps that tell you the artist and title with a minimum of effort. If they actually covered a track like that. I wasn’t going to make things easy for him.)

  After it finished there was a bit of crackling on the line, then he played “How Do You Feel” by Jefferson Airplane. I thought that was a bit unimaginative. I let out a deep and very audible sigh. So that the person at the other end would realize that I thought he needed a bit more instruction.

  I responded with “This Is Hardcore” by Pulp.

  He played Metallica’s “Sad But True,” which I reluctantly had to admit had a good, heavy intro and stirring verses. The bridge was OK as well, but the chorus wasn’t up to much. I replied with “U Think U Know, But U Have No Idea” by Eps. In response I got “All That I Have Done Wrong” by P-Dust, which—as far as I was aware—only existed on SoundCloud and possibly some obscure website. That made me think. There weren’t many people who knew about P-Dust. And it was almost as far from hard rock as you could get. Impressive. A bold move. Unconventional. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the combination wasn’t all that unthinkable. In a way it was perfect, because it was as elegant as it was unexpected. On my shelf P-Dust would have stood a long way from both Eps and Pulp, but now that I had heard it with my own ears, I saw the connection. It struck me that the choice between A and B could just as well be C.

  I played Ben Wilson’s “What Will Happen Next.”

  He played Robert Palmer’s “Can We Still Be Friends?”

  Tasteless. But still. Something had happened.

  I responded with Andrew Bayer’s instrumental “All This Will Happen Again.” Daring, I know, but sometimes you have to take a risk. I was feeling courageous.

  He replied with “It’s Going to Be Fine” from the same album. I sat there listening to the calm, repetitive piano music and synthesized voices. Looked out through the window. It was raining outside. Once again I found myself looking at the advertisement showing the guy in his underwear. The tear was even bigger now. Like a big, heart-shaped hole.

  “It’s Going to Be Fine” had finished a while back, and I quickly dug out Erik Ruud’s “How Can You Be So Sure?” and played it.

  There was a long silence at the other end, then some rustling and clicking sounds. And then: “Fix You” by Coldplay.

  The next day there was a letter lying on the doormat. I knew at once what it was. I took it to the kitchen table. Got myself a bowl of cereal. Opened the envelope and read the letter, written in that familiar handwriting.

  Dear Magnus!

  Probably easiest to reach you with a letter.

  I just wanted to say—thanks for everything.

  Best wishes,

  Magnus

  I turned the sheet of paper over and scrutinized it. That was all there was. I read the strange note three times. Sat for a while looking out the window, then read it a fourth time. In the end I put it on the pile of mail next to the fridge. I didn’t have time for that sort of thing just then. I had to plan my selection of music for that evening’s phone call.

  Also by Jonas Karlsson

  The Invoice

  The Room

  About the Author

  JONAS KARLSSON (b. 1971) writes plays and short fiction. One of Sweden’s most prominent actors, Karlsson has performed on Sweden’s premier stage and in several acclaimed feature films and television series. In 2005, Karlsson made his debut as a playwright, earning rave reviews from audiences and critics alike. Spurred by the joy of writing for the stage, Karlsson began writing fiction. With an actor’s ear for the silences that endow dialogue with meaning and a singular ability to register moods and emotions, Jonas Karlsson has blossomed into one of Scandinavia’s finest literary authors, with two novels and three short story collections published to date. He has been awarded with the Ludvig Nordström Award 2018 for his short story collections The Second Goal, The Perfect Friend, and The Rules of the Game.

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