In any case, I had him on the hook, he was listening attentively and asked several interested follow-up questions and for several minutes I had him spellbound. I laid it on thick, pretended that I had once sent completely the wrong products to a client but had succeeded in convincing them that they were just what they needed, instead of the original order. ‘You don’t want grey chairs in your lobby, these red leather sofas are so on trend. And the comfort!’
I was like a fisherman straining the truth. A two kilo pike became a ten kilo pike, no, a ten kilo perch. From the quay. With an ordinary rod. I enjoyed the situation a bit too much and had to restrain myself from climbing down from the quay and, so to speak, walking on water. Frisk swallowed every word though, as doers are often gullible, in spite of being so false themselves and they really ought to be able to recognise a lie when they hear one. But no. In his eyes I was a great doer.
The job would include a lot of travel, he said, was that a concern for me? No. I loved being out on the road, to be constantly in motion. Was that not in fact what life itself was all about, moving forward? He smiled. But why this job specifically, why had I applied here? Was it the products that were interesting? I of course could not tell him the truth. I had actually applied for just one sales job to complete my little research project (a salesperson would naturally have applied for more), but that I chose precisely this one was more to be considered as chance, it was the first job in sales that turned up. I couldn’t say that. There had to be something special with this company, what could it be? Yes! There was something about how they kept up with current trends, always seemed to have their finger on the pulse, to feel when the next change in beat was coming. They adapted to the times and did not get stuck in old habits. I saw that Frisk was flattered, it was probably due to his clarity of vision that the company could be considered in that light. Flattery always works on doers, they shamelessly receive compliments as if they were children. The doer has all of the child’s undesirable qualities – selfishness, ignorance, greed – without showing signs of any of the accompanying redeeming aspects.
The Soulless continued with his questions. Where did I see myself in the future? In exactly the same place as now, my internal voice answered. At home, unmoveable, the same as I have always been. Be. Don’t do, do, do. My outer voice said something completely different. I wanted to earn money, I said, but that was not the most important thing, I wanted to make an impression. If I got the chance, precisely this company would probably still be the arena for my tour de force for ten, twenty years. No, of course I didn’t use the expression tour de force, this was after all a salesperson I was talking to.
I hit the jackpot with every answer, I could feel it, he hadn’t said it yet, but the look on his face made it clear that the job was mine. He passed his hand through his hair, that heavily pomaded hair, and we were quiet for a moment. Every pause was filled with a low chattering from a commercial radio station playing on the doer’s computer, banterous voices laughed and joked irrepressibly from the speakers as if everything was fine. It made me think of the Titanic’s violinists. The vessel starts taking in water, but they play on. No one is suspicious or asks questions, we have built an unsinkable ship, an unsinkable Sweden, so we laugh falsely and talk over each other so that nobody notices that we’re bound for hell. The radio voices joked about trivialities, something that happened in the toilets, haha. Traffic jams, haha, a text message that was sent to the wrong person, haha.
A person’s choice of radio station reflects who they are. Frisk’s personality was no more than a mashup of borrowed wind from other superficial individuals. It is ironic that this evil species has never met with their own dark side, never confronted it and doubted themselves. They do not know themselves. If they did, they would not just doubt, they would despair. If they could see their own perniciousness, experience the withering shame that knowing yourself and your own inadequacy implied, the doer would cease doing, the salesperson would cease selling! But I kept on Frisk’s side, I was there as an ally, I came with peaceful intentions. The most noble would have been to awaken him from his secure slumber, to actually destroy his illusions. It is after all the truth which sets us free. But, I thought, my vocation was even higher: to study doers at close quarters and to present my scientific findings to the world.
Frisk could easily be fifty or so, but with the eternally youthful appearance that characterises his type, those who do not experience the same weight of gravity as the rest of us. He was blond too, which further emphasised his youthfulness. There is something insidious about grown men who are still bright blond. I don’t trust them. Smooth cheeks, non-existent eyebrows. There was something unhealthy in this boyishness, it was as if he was stubbornly hanging onto his childhood. Adult, blond men are their own race, I thought as we sat there, a mythological and ill-natured race. But I smiled my most friendly salesman smile to this goblin and asked interesting questions to better understand the job. It was just a matter of formalities now, I could feel it, he could just as well finish up and say see you on Monday, there’s your office, we’ll organise a company car.
Instead, we slid into small talk, which is every doer’s and salesperson’s forte. Renovations, cars, sport. All the frivolities which are the badges of a soulless life. I felt helpless, blindsided. The bastard! I had carefully prepared for the role of aspiring salesperson, I had learned their vocabulary and imposing manner, but had completely missed this elementary weapon in every truly vapid individual’s armoury. Small talk was such a given that I hadn’t spared it a thought! I started to sweat and felt my confidence leaving me. I became a nodding, smiling, goofy, blushing, nervous schoolboy. He’d bought a boat, ok, what do you ask someone about that? All I could do was nod wide-eyed and whistle to demonstrate my reverence. He kept my eye as if waiting for a verbal reaction. I carried on nodding to show how impressed I was, but could not get any words out. Not after five seconds, nor after ten. He was torturing me! It was a battle which played out between us and he was the alpha male. He had hustled me into the corner of the ring, was jabbing frenetically and I hung on the ropes, punch-drunk and powerless.
Finally I succeeded in forcing out a question. ‘Driving license,’ I gasped. ‘What’s the deal with driving licences, do you have to have one? For the boat, I mean,’ I said.
The look he gave me then made me realise that my research project had failed. It was as if he realised in exactly that moment that I was a completely different creature to himself and his smile was of a new kind. At first confused, then merciful – or acted merciful, as mercy does not exist with doers – in any case it was a smile directed at the idle loser, Fredrik Jansson.
We both sat in silence for a long time. The enchantment under which I had been holding him was now broken. He could see again, the veil had fallen from his eyes. Woken from his hypnosis, he now saw me for who I really was: a person who deeply disdained him. I knew nothing about boats, I didn’t care. I knew nothing about the world in which he moved. I gave up the pretence. My posture regained its careless shape, my eyes shrank, my jaw muscles tightened. I smiled at him and for the first time my smile gave away my true feelings for him. He looked suddenly uncertain, almost afraid. I wanted to ask him what he thought the point was, the point of his life, his little, pathetic life. I wanted to tell him that he had everything and yet nothing, that everything would be torn away from him sooner or later. Soon he would be lying dead in a bed or on a floor somewhere, cold and dead in a mortuary, dead and rotting in a grave. Dead, dead, dead. The seasons would pass without him, the world would continue to turn. People would laugh, he would be dead. People would work, drink coffee, take the bus, he would be dead. Some would maybe remember him for a while, then they too would die. The headstone would be there for a while longer, until he was just a name amongst thousands of other names of people who also died a long time ago. Then the grave would no longer be there, or even the graveyard where he lay. There would just be forest, or concrete. New generations, new ambition
s, new vanities. A thousand years would pass, ten thousand years. His time here meant nothing, there wouldn’t even be a trace of him anywhere. His life was just a brief parenthesis in an eternal nothingness. But for goodness’ sake, drive your boat!
Then I heard his voice, as through a fog.
‘What do you say about that?’ he was saying.
‘About what?’ I said.
He laughed. ‘I said that I would like you to start here as of October.’
‘Start in October?’
‘Yes.’
What came next happened in a trancelike state. I remember that I gratefully said yes to a salary, I don’t know how much, we shook hands and I think that he showed me around. More handshakes, more salespeople, more grins and straight backs. He wanted me. It was incomprehensible. I hated him, he wanted me, he liked me. Ha! Me! I, who have never had a job. Oh, how naïve he was. Oh, what a useless people person!
I am going to have the chance to study them up close, I’ll be able to practice their dark magic myself, spellbind innocent people with a smooth tongue, take their money in exchange for something they never knew they needed. But becoming like the doers, that will never happen. I am an infiltrator, nothing more.
Meanwhile, I’ll be earning money. What do I care about money? And even if I were to use my money to create a little comfort, just the most ordinary things, that doesn’t make me one of them. No, no, I’ll just use their hospitality, just for a while, like a visitor to the country of mammon. Is it not in any case better that the money goes to me, who does not care about it, who has a healthy relationship with money, than that it goes to the doers? I know when enough is enough, I can set boundaries. Money doesn’t mean anything to me, nor what it can buy. But if I do have money, then I may as well use it. For relaxation, for example. Scientific study is hard work, I’ll need recuperation time. Of course studies are impacted by the environment in which they are carried out. I can create good conditions for further investigation by getting a more comfortable seat to sit on. An armchair would be practical, maybe some unassuming decoration as well, to rest the eyes on now and again. With simple means, I can make my academic project more efficient. All in the name of science!
I start tomorrow. I have already updated my wardrobe. Not because I want to follow their moronic trends, no, but if I am going to play a credible character, I need to create the right conditions. Shirt, tie. I look presentable, even stylish. That is completely unimportant to me, appearance is the last thing I care about, the absolute last thing. But as I don’t care about how I look, it of course makes no difference if I look a bit more dapper, so long as it helps the cause. People notice me now, women say hello in a different way. Their gaze lingers a little longer. And they say beauty comes from within! Ha! I’m the same person, I’ll never change. I’ll just be using their own means against them.
That is why it’s also important that I do a good job. The more I sell, the more money I make and in this way can continue to finance my project. I’ll step into the doers’ world to learn everything about them, how they think, where they get their motivation from. And finally, when I have gathered sufficient material, then I will present the results. It will be the most thoroughly executed psychological study ever carried out! Then the doer will be exposed, he will stand there naked and everyone will see him for who he is.
But until then, during a brief number of years, I will have to pretend to be one of them.
Bigger than Dylan
‘Welcome, Irina,’ said Bo Sundman.
That he had shaken her hand as if she was a completely normal applicant couldn’t be held against him, thought Irina. How could he know that he was standing eye to eye with one of Sweden’s great future artists? He would carry out the interview exactly as if she was just anybody, without blushing at all or feeling any form of deference. Maybe she would get the job, maybe not, but for him this would one day be a valuable memory. ‘Like that time I interviewed Irina Pevitsa,’ he would say and recall how that great artist at a historic moment applied for a job working for him as an assembler. That would be something for Gramps to tell the grandchildren. She allowed him that. Everyone needed to feel a little important now and then.
It was when she won a talent show at the City Hotel that she realised that it was singing she should be betting on. Some of the city’s absolute best voices were there, so she was far from sure that she would take home the prize. But after a hard fought battle against especially one guy who did a solid Mavin Gaye impression, Irina succeeded in drawing the longest straw with her swinging version of ‘I Will Survive.’ It was a great day. Everyone around her said that she should apply for the TV program, Pop Idol. But why should she allow herself to be cast in such a fixed mould? She wanted to go her own way, tread musical paths that no one had previously wandered.
‘Incredible that it’s snowing already. It feels like we’ve just come back from the holidays,’ said Sundman.
‘Yes, it really does,’ said Irina.
‘Here. You have to have a hi-vis vest on in the factory.’
She put the vest on, Sundman opened a steel door and a metallic smell struck them. They went past a few men in earmuffs and a woman with a pallet jack.
Life could also be like this, Irina thought. Run the CNC machine, shrink-wrap pallets, live for the weekend; Friday beers, crisps and all that. And then clock in again. Monday morning, on with the steep toe caps. It was so good to know that she was just a visitor here and would never be anything other than that. Because this wasn’t what she was supposed to do, not at all, she was destined for something bigger. But going to interviews had become a necessity for her; without them, she would not be paid her unemployment benefit. It was a moment of irritation, but definitely worth it. In principle, it was of course a good thing that the unemployed were forced to actively apply for jobs in order to receive their benefits. Otherwise people could stay at home lying on the sofa watching the shopping channel pretty much as they wanted and live off the effort of the employed. What sort of society would that lead to? No, work was a positive thing. They were good people, Sundman and his gang, they created gainful employment for the great masses. They were absolutely necessary, they played their part. Not everyone could be a creator or an artist, but everyone was needed. She had great respect for the ordinary people, it was after all for them that she created, to give them some breathing room in their arduous little existences. That Irina happened to collect benefits wasn’t about exploiting the system, she was just buying herself some time. Time was necessary in order to create something exceptional and the job seeker’s allowance just happened to be a means to have the space to realise her dreams. A bit like a student loan. She would pay it back ten, thirty, a hundred times over when she had her breakthrough.
She needed in other words to go regularly to interviews for jobs she didn’t want. But she couldn’t say that to Bo Sundman, the benefits people would quickly get wind of it. No, she had to make an impact that was just negative enough to scare him off from employing her, but sufficiently subtle that she wouldn’t arouse suspicions as to her motives. She had to appear interested in the job but unsuited to it, a combination that she had become something of an expert of during the past year.
‘I thought I’d tell you a bit about us while we walk and you can just stop me if you have any questions.’
‘That sounds good,’ said Irina.
‘Then we can sit down afterwards and discuss in a bit more detail.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We have been around since 1982 and have had the same concept since. I say “we” but I first started here in 1990. That was when my brother and I took over. We do, you could say, everything within storage. Changing room lockers, as well as luggage lockers for train stations and other public spaces, all kinds of locker that needs to be more or less secure.’
‘There you go,’ said Irina.
‘An average order is for around two hundred thousand kronor, which corresponds to about fifty lockers,
depending on what kind it is.’
Irina had more important things to think about than Sundman’s lockers. Like her upcoming studio recording time. She preferred to not compare herself with others, she had a unique sound, but if she absolutely had to draw some parallels then the music itself was a cross between Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow. Although her voice was more like Björk’s, sort of elfin Nordic. That’s what it would say in the reviews when her first record came out: ‘Spellbinding Nordic debut.’ Just a shame that people didn’t buy records in the same way anymore. Her tracks could certainly be shared more quickly with digital technology, but it still felt special to handle a record sleeve, to leaf through the song lyrics. And it was the lyrics that were her strongest point. She’d written some really great songs. Mainly in English, it was after all the global language of music. Song lyrics came to her pretty much at any time. It usually started with an image, which laid the foundations for a story. They were songs that told stories that she wrote, almost in the country or folk tradition. Lyrically, she was most like Bob Dylan. But whereas he could be a little simplistic, she was always innovative. She had a deep source that poured out lyrics for her songs, things she had experienced and maybe her lyrics could be a support for those who had undergone similar experiences. Her life had hardly been a walk in the park.
Irina’s thoughts were interrupted by Sundman’s voice: ‘We are seventy employees and have played at that level for around the last ten years. In on the right there is the coating machine. We stuck that in back in the nineties, we run uniquely with powder coating. We’ve chosen to do it in-house and it works well. Occasionally we take outside commissions for coating work to deliver a smooth finish.’
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