Everything I Don't Remember

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  “Come on now. You can fix this, you will fix it, come on now, come on.”

  My first thought was that he was talking to someone on the phone. Or that he was playing some sort of game.

  “Samuel?” I called. “Is everything okay?”

  For a few seconds, there was silence. From inside his room I heard the song end and the next song begin.

  “Definitely. Sorry. Everything’s fine.”

  His voice sounded like it was coming from a pressure cooker, as if he had to use all of his abdominal muscles just to say those words. I stood by the door, I rested my hand on it, I thought that I ought to help him, but I didn’t know how.

  *

  I couldn’t work, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t see friends, I couldn’t read the paper, I couldn’t watch TV, I couldn’t listen to music, I couldn’t check my email, I couldn’t shower, I couldn’t look out the window, I couldn’t hide under my blankets, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t dream, I couldn’t do laundry, I couldn’t do dishes, I couldn’t live, I couldn’t answer the phone and I couldn’t call him, no matter how much I wanted to. At last my sister came over and when I opened the door she looked at me and said:

  “Smart choice. Looks like you feel terrific.”

  She shook her head and took a big step across the pile of newspapers on the hall floor.

  *

  Samuel took off work sick for a week or so. He sat at home in sweatpants, in the kitchen, surrounded by notebooks full of scribbles. Unshaven, he read through the notes from their year together, he mumbled to himself and when I asked what he was up to he claimed he was “on the trail of something.”

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. But it’s here somewhere.”

  He picked up another notebook and read through the tiny letters.

  *

  I imagined that Samuel was sad for a few days. Then he moved on. By the weekend after we broke up he was back out on the town. He and Vandad were standing at the bar at East, they were shaking their skulls in time with basslines, they were nodding at mixed beats, they were flirting with yoga instructors and organizing druggy after-parties. It only took a few weeks for Samuel to meet someone new, she was like me, only prettier, smarter, richer, simpler. Samuel suggested coffee at Petite France and when she arrived he was already in his usual spot, they hugged and when he returned with the coffee he used the newspaper clippings on the walls as a pretext to start talking about memories and nostalgia. He told her about the chips getting stuck in his teeth. Then he reached for the glass and poured water on himself, slowly and deliberately, secure in the knowledge that she would never be able to forget him.

  *

  One time Samuel asked if I thought he was fake.

  “What do you mean by fake?” I asked.

  “Well, I mean, Laide insinuated that I was. Several times. That there is something wrong with the way I act around other people. She thought I conformed so much that I erased myself.”

  “I’ve never thought about it,” I said, being almost completely honest.

  “I think she has a point. Before her I never thought about the way I acted. I just was. Blissfully unaware, somehow. But now—the more I do it—the more fake I feel.”

  He drank cup after cup of tea. He walked around at home like a pale, smelly ghost. I tried to tell him that the only way to get over an old love was with a new love. But he just looked at me and said he felt tired, terribly tired. I let him sleep for ages, I hoped he would find his way back to himself soon. After a few weeks had passed I suggested that I go over and have a talk with Laide. I thought I could mediate, get them back together. Better a Samuel who’s himself for short periods than a Samuel who has completely lost himself.

  “Talk as in talk or talk as in ‘talk’?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we can always ask Valentin how he felt after your ‘conversation.’”

  “Aw, that was forever ago. I meant that I would talk talk with her.”

  “What would you say?”

  “That she should apologize to you and reconsider.”

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t contact her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “A thousand percent.”

  *

  A few weeks went by. I tried to find my way back to my daily routine. My sister moved in with me and I went back to work. Since I didn’t hear from anyone at the house, I thought everything had worked out. I hoped that Samuel’s family had decided not to sell it right away. Maybe they had even opted to keep it once they saw the good it did as a place of refuge. I thought, if that was the case, then Samuel’s and my relationship had been worth something. Or. That sounds weird. Of course it was worth something, no matter what happened to the house. But if the house were to live on as a refuge, then maybe the value of our relationship was more permanent. Ugh. That sounded wrong too. Get rid of that.

  *

  Since it’s a sign of good health when you start doing things you actually hate, I was happy when I noticed that Samuel started going back to the Migration Board. But he was still coming straight home after work. He didn’t want to find fun things to do on the weekends. He was moving strangely, he walked as if all his body parts were heavier than normal. I saw him stop abruptly in front of the mirror in the hall several times. He smiled, he looked angry, he scrutinized his face like it contained the answer to a riddle he had forgotten.

  When several months had passed and Samuel was still acting odd, I took the bus to Bagarmossen. The same bus Samuel always took when he was with Laide. I crossed the square we had passed that New Year’s Eve that felt like a hundred years ago. I found the street and the front door. I pressed the light button and stood in the stairwell for a moment to gather my thoughts. Laide’s last name was on the list of occupants. I mostly wanted to get her to understand that she couldn’t treat people any way she pleased. I wanted to talk some sense into her. I wanted to explain to her that if Samuel shared her secrets with me it didn’t mean that Samuel didn’t love her, it meant that he loved her so much that he couldn’t stop talking about her. That everything that happened to him could be linked back to her and that it was impossible for him not to pass it on to me or write it down in one of his notebooks. I readied the words, I didn’t want to stumble over them, I was breathing calmly, I pressed the light button again. I was just about to walk up the stairs and ring her bell when Laide came through the door. She was carrying two grocery bags and the sight of me startled her.

  *

  My sister was going to go grocery shopping. I said I could take care of it. My sister refused, she insisted on going. I wanted to make sure to pay for it, at least. I found some bills and stuffed them in her jacket pocket. She took them out and put them on the bureau in the hall. They would stay there for several weeks, every time I saw them I shuddered and yet I couldn’t move them. Blood money, I thought when I saw them.

  *

  She looked the way she usually did, maybe just a little older. She was wearing her owl brooch and when I tried to talk to her she walked straight past me like I was invisible.

  “Hey there, hold on a sec,” I said.

  “What the fuck do you want?” she said in a voice that sounded harder than I remembered. She kept walking up the stairs briskly, and I walked behind her. I said that she ought to learn that there’s a difference between empty air and people and that everyone is worth listening to and when she didn’t listen, and instead walked even faster up the stairs, I ran to catch up with her and grabbed her wrist. Her grocery bags fell to the floor. Her self-confident smile vanished. Finally, she understood that I was serious. I never wanted to hurt her, I just wanted her to listen, but she yanked herself free and started screaming, and to make her be quiet I put one hand over her mouth and told her to calm down. Then she bit me and I adjusted my grip and told her that if she bit me one more time she would regret it.

  “Just be quiet and listen, and everything will go fi
ne, okay?”

  But instead of listening she struggled and kicked me in the shin and I pushed her up against the wall to get a little distance. I wanted to say what I had come to say, that Samuel was unhappy and that she ought to reconsider, but I didn’t have time because she bit me again and this time her sharp teeth punctured my skin and the lights on the ceiling went out and for a few short seconds I lost control, I didn’t hit her but I shoved her, once against the wall and once against the railing. That was all. Two tiny shoves. Then I left the stairwell.

  *

  My sister didn’t come back from the store. After twenty minutes I was worried. I called her phone, and at first I thought she had forgotten it because I could hear it ringing, it was ringing somewhere in the apartment. I went from room to room and finally I realized that it was coming from the stairwell. I opened the door and hit the light button. She was lying on the second floor, the first thing I saw was her left arm lying at a strange angle from the rest of her body, the white shaft of bone was sticking out from the tear in her denim jacket, her face was turned toward the floor, there was blood on the wall, blood on the railing, her mouth was a gaping hole of broken teeth and split lip, she woke up when I touched her, she started crying when she saw me, she mewled, I held her, I said that everything would be fine, I screamed and kicked on doors until the neighbors came out into the stairwell.

  *

  I took the Metro so I wouldn’t be seen by any bus drivers. I hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. But she had gone on the attack and bitten up my hands and the lining of my jacket was wet with blood and it stiffened in the cold as I walked home from the Metro. I washed my hands and used paper towels to dry off so the towels wouldn’t turn red. Samuel was in his room. I went to my own room. I thought, if anything had gone wrong, it was Laide’s fault.

  *

  The police labeled it an attempted rape, but my sister said it felt more like a junkie looking for easy money. She put up a fight. He never got hold of her wallet.

  *

  Yes. Of course I regret it. But you have to understand, we’re talking about two shoves. Two tiny shoves. That was all.

  *

  After the attack I decided to leave the country. I couldn’t bear to stay. I couldn’t handle walking through that stairwell every day and thinking about my sister’s motionless body. I had promised myself not to stay for too long, and I wanted to keep my promise. In March of two thousand twelve I left Stockholm and moved to Paris. It felt like a weight was lifted from my body when I landed at Charles de Gaulle. Five days later I had picked up enough interpreting jobs to brave signing a lease on an apartment.

  *

  And it’s not like Laide was so innocent. Sure, I shoved her. But she had crushed Samuel. She got into his brain and rearranged the furniture until he started doubting himself. Some things heal faster than others.

  *

  It took a few weeks before I heard what had happened. And yes, of course I was sad. I thought about his family. His mom and sister. His friends and acquaintances. But you want to know something strange? I really didn’t feel guilty. That chapter of my life was over. We hadn’t spoken since we broke up. There were other people who were closer to him. And I suppose part of me was grateful that we weren’t together when it happened. I don’t know how I would have survived that.

  *

  She made him believe that he could trust her and then she betrayed him and he never got over it.

  *

  Why did he do it? Do we know for sure that he did do it? That he did it on purpose, I mean? I heard he lost control of the car. His mom said that the brakes were bad. I think he was simply driving too fast. I can picture it, how he’s sitting there behind the wheel in his grandma’s car, revving the engine and deciding to push the envelope and see how fast he can take a curve. He probably wanted to see what would happen if he brushed up against death. Maybe he was curious about the light at the end of the tunnel. He wanted to experience something that no one else had seen.

  *

  She killed him.

  *

  Thank you. I have to confess, I was a little nervous but it was nice to get it off my chest. Do you have a plan for how you’re going to make it into a coherent narrative? Just as long as you don’t try to write Samuel in the first person it will probably work. I don’t think it’s possible to capture the voice of another person, it would be foolish to even try. Should I call a taxi? This neighborhood can be a little sketchy at night. My husband always takes a cab when he comes home late from the firm. But then again, that’s because he looks the way he does, people react when they see him, they don’t believe that he lives here. I’ll call a car.

  [A long silence as we wait for a taxi that never comes.]

  I’m convinced it wasn’t deliberate.

  [A long silence, she occasionally gets up to see if the taxi has arrived, it hasn’t.]

  Samuel loved his experiences far too much to . . . I think he was just driving too fast.

  [Short silence. Still no taxi. Laide pours water from a carafe.]

  Because, I mean. If it had been deliberate—how do you explain the seatbelt and the skid marks? Because there were skid marks, weren’t there?

  [Laide reaches for her water glass.]

  *

  Everyone I’ve talked to says there were skid marks.

  [Laide takes a sip, looks at the water, puts the glass down with a trembling hand.]

  Here it comes.

  PART III

  PM

  THE SELF (I)

  It’s a few minutes past one and I’m sitting in yet another waiting room. Grandma’s handbag is resting in my lap, the fake white leather leaves small flakes on my jeans. I open and close the zipper, then I open it again and let my hands explore its contents. There’s her wallet with its five-hundred-krona bills, her notebook, the bag of old candy all stuck together, the throat lozenges (Emser), the bottle of Vademecum mouthwash (its label worn), and her cell phone of course, the one she never learned to use. Grandma’s house is burned, Laide has moved, Vandad has betrayed me, and I have five hours left to live.

  *

  I was at the house that morning and everything was perfectly normal. The kids were playing in the basement, the moms were mopping the floor in the kitchen, young men were sitting on the terrace and scraping away at their Triss lottery scratch cards. It was a sunny day, the geothermal heating was working, there was no reason to use the fireplace or have lights on inside.

  *

  I take out Grandma’s yellowed notebook with coffee stains on the front. It’s almost unused. Her wobbly handwriting, the crooked “r”s. On the first page it says “What sort of Christian am I? Am I—” On the lines beneath, the same cell number, written twelve separate times. On the last line, the same cell number, but only the first four digits.

  *

  I was on my way home when my phone rang. Nihad bellowed:

  “Fire! FIRE!”

  I made a U-turn and biked back to the house. I hurried, but I didn’t think it could be that serious. Maybe someone had left something on the stove, maybe some kid had been playing with a lighter in the yard. I couldn’t imagine what had happened.

  *

  I rub my eyes. I yawn. Over the past few weeks, Grandma has started calling me at odd times. Two thirty in the morning. Three thirty, ten to five, my phone wakes me up and I see her name on the screen. Sometimes I answer, sometimes I let it ring. When I answer I hear her delighted voice:

  “Why, hello there! Are you awake?”

  Usually she just wants to make sure that this is really my number. She recites all ten digits. I confirm that the number is correct. She gives a sigh of relief and can go back to sleep.

  *

  When I reached the house I saw that the entire parlor area was full of smoke. It looked like all the windows were covered in black curtains. I jumped off my bike and dropped it onto the gravel just as a windowpane broke, I thought it was because of the heat, shards of glass fell onto the b
ushes like snow. Nihad, Maysa, and Zainab had gathered with their children and a few suitcases down by the street. Maysa was holding a rolling pin in her hand and there was flour on her face, Nihad was sobbing.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked in English.

  “Gone.”

  “Afraid of police.”

  “Is everyone out?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Nihad. “Everyone is out, right?”

  Maysa and Zainab looked around and nodded. Another window broke, this time it was a small round one up in the attic. The smoke came shooting out like a laser beam and at first I thought it was an optical illusion, but then I saw something moving.

  *

  Everything has taken longer than planned. The plan was for me to be back at work after lunch, but first they wanted to test Grandma’s vision and then her cognitive capacity and at last they let her into the simulator room. She looked nervous as she walked in. Her cheeks were rosy when she came out.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  “Absolutely wonderful.”

  The doctor showed us into a separate room and explained that it was over. There was no chance that she could get her license back. She had crashed into motorcycles, driven straight through roundabouts, she had backed into a lake, and even though the doctor had reminded her that she was in a simulator she repeatedly tried to roll down the windows.

  “It was so warm,” Grandma murmured.

  No one said anything.

  “When can I try again?”

  “There isn’t going to be a next time,” said the doctor. “You have to accept that.”