The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  ‘Will that do?’

  It was an exact copy of the original.

  ‘Perfect,’ Julia said.

  He folded the page across the middle and gave it to her.

  ‘They noticed that we were forging them,’ she said, looking at me. ‘They even had a meeting about it in our class, so if you’re going to get away with it now, it has to be really well done.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’ She got up and folded the note again and stuffed it into her back pocket. ‘I’ve got to go — lesson’s about to start.’

  ‘See you at home,’ said Grim.

  ‘See you round,’ I said, attempting a smile.

  ‘Yeah, see you round,’ Julia said, before disappearing back through the door.

  HE SHOT BIRDS with an air rifle, smelled his way to cash, and could forge his parents’ signatures. And he was called Grim. He was more like a cartoon character or someone from a film. But he wasn’t. He was completely ordinary and real.

  ‘Someone has to pay the bills and sign things,’ he said once we were on the bus back to Rönninge High. ‘That’s how it is in all families, including yours, I assume. It’s really not that strange.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘In my family it’s me, because no one else remembers to do it.’

  It had started when their mum forgot to sign a form from the welfare office. Grim had found it lying on the coffee table. Their dad was off sick at the time, and the form was about the family’s financial support. Next to it lay another form, from Social Services, which was also missing a signature. Grim dug out a form with his mum’s signature on it, and practised it a couple of times on a notepad before carefully reproducing it on the two forms and posting them off. After that, similar things had happened a few times, and Grim told Julia, who told their dad.

  ‘He was furious, of course. It was sort of illegal, really. I don’t know. But before long I knew more about their finances than they did. Dad can’t be bothered with it, and Mum’s ill. The medication makes it hard for her to keep on top of things. I do it — I mean take care of the bills and stuff — for Julia’s sake really, so that she can … I don’t know. So she doesn’t need to worry.’

  The bus driver had the radio on, and the silence between me and Grim meant I could hear the song playing up front.

  ‘What kind of ill?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You said your mum was ill.’

  ‘Hadn’t I said that before?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  He sighed and stared out the window.

  ‘After Julia was born, she got depressed. Psychotic even, for a while. They said it was down to the birth. She was … she tried …’ Grim hesitated, for a long time. ‘I was angry when she came along, when Julia was born. At least that’s what I’ve been told; I’d only just turned two at the time. I got angry that she was getting all the attention. But one day, when the psychosis had started, I was sitting on the floor at home somewhere, and Julia was screaming. They say you don’t have memories from that early, but I’m certain that I do because it’s all so vivid. I came into the living room and it looked like she had been sitting there breastfeeding Julia. Suddenly she just put her down on the floor, or dropped her, or let her go; I don’t actually know, and I don’t really want to. Either way, she just left her lying there. Dad was at work, so I picked her up, and we sat on the sofa until she stopped crying. It took ages — at least that’s what it felt like. I remember being so scared. When she’d finally stopped, Mum turned her head and said, “I can take her again now.”’ Grim shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to give Julia to her. It’s fucked up; I could hardly talk, I was that small. Yet I had a sense that something was wrong. Eventually my mum got up and took her from me and carried on feeding her. But I stayed there the whole time, worried that something might happen. I don’t think Dad ever found out.’

  He seemed unsure of where to go from there.

  ‘Later, years later, I still didn’t know whether she’d been dropped or not, so I started worrying that she might have been injured somehow. I started looking for signs of it.’

  ‘Signs of what? How?’

  ‘Well, if she had been dropped it could have caused brain damage, I thought. And I knew that certain types of brain damage aren’t discovered for years, if at all. So I started looking for speech impediments, amnesia, whether she had any trouble learning.’

  Grim told me that he was never ill as a child. He was born healthy and stayed healthy, managed to avoid all the normal childhood illnesses. Julia, on the other hand, got chickenpox, whooping cough, croup, the lot. She was always ill, and when she started school she was almost malnourished, so much so that the school nurse — old Beate, who smoked Yellow Blend and had felt all the boys’ balls, including mine and Grim’s, to check that all the junior-school boys in Salem had two and not one or three — had expressed concern.

  ‘I took that sort of thing to be a sign of it.’ He laughed. ‘Crazy, considering Julia’s the healthiest of all of us now. It was never really a problem, I suppose. Anyway, Mum’s never got rid of the depression altogether. She has better days and worse days, but never good days, so it’s hard for her to manage money and stuff. And Dad can’t be bothered.’

  And by the way, old Beate was now dead, Grim added. His dad had told him, because Beate happened to be the mother of one of his colleagues.

  ‘Right,’ I said, not really wanting to change the subject from Julia, although Grim obviously didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  I looked out the bus window, and the world swished past: green trees, grey skies, faded yellow houses.

  LATER THAT EVENING, the phone rang. We had three in our flat: one in my brother’s room, one in my parents’ bedroom, and a cordless one, which was never where you thought it would be. Wherever you looked, it was always somewhere else; Dad swore that that phone would send him round the bend one day.

  There were phones ringing all over the place, and I didn’t answer. I sat flipping through old yearbooks from Rönninge Middle School, looking for Julia Grimberg. I still hadn’t found her, but it was a big school with lots of classes. Someone answered the phone, and, shortly after, there was a knock on my door.

  ‘Leo, it’s for you.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Someone called Julia.’

  I stood up, opened the door, and took the phone off Mum. I closed the door without saying anything, shut the open yearbook and put it on top of the others, then pushed them out of the way.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, it’s Julia.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  Beyond Julia’s voice I could hear nothing but silence. I wondered if Grim was there, or if she was on her own.

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  ‘What … has something happened?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  Has something happened? Who says that? I wanted to punch myself in the face.

  ‘I just wanted to,’ she went on, ‘I don’t know. I saw your number in John’s room.’

  ‘Do you ring all the numbers in his room?’

  She laughed.

  ‘This is the first time.’

  I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. We chatted for a while without really saying anything. I wondered why she’d rung, but was too scared to ask.

  ‘Are you watching telly?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Back to the Future is on 3. Have you seen it?’

  I hadn’t. I switched the telly on, but put it on mute. Michael J Fox was busy avoiding a girl who fancied him.

  ‘That’s his mum,’ Julia said. ‘He’s gone back to the future to make sure that she and his dad get together, so that he gets
born. The only trouble is that his mum has fallen for him, her own son. But you know, she doesn’t know that he is.’

  We watched the film together. Julia laughed every now and then. It was a nice laugh; it reminded me of Grim’s.

  ‘Where would you go, if you could travel through time?’ she asked.

  ‘Hmm, I don’t know, never thought about it.’

  ‘Would you go forwards or back?’

  ‘Back. No, forward. No, back.’ I heard how Julia laughed. ‘I don’t know, this is really hard. Do I only get one trip?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sounds like a shit time machine, if you can only go once.’

  ‘But if you can do as many trips as you like, it’s pointless.’

  ‘Dinosaurs,’ I said.

  She laughed again.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘They say they were wiped out by a big meteorite. But I don’t know. I’d like to see if that was true.’

  ‘What fun, Leo. You can go wherever you want, see whatever you want, anything at all, and you choose to go and see some dinosaurs. Anyway, you might die yourself. Could you even breathe back then? I mean, that long ago, wasn’t the air all poisonous and dangerous?’

  ‘I’d take some oxygen, to be on the safe side.’

  ‘And what would you do?’ she asked. ‘Just stand there watching them? Stroke them?’

  ‘You’re taking the piss.’

  ‘Only slightly.’

  ‘Where would you go then?’

  ‘Forwards, definitely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just to see what everything’s like. So you don’t have to worry. Then again,’ she continued, ‘maybe you’d go back to your own time and just relax, because you think everything’s going to be okay anyway, if everything does look good in the future, I mean. And then perhaps you end up not doing the things that make the future what it is. You get me?’

  ‘I, er … I think so.’

  I had no idea what she was on about.

  ‘It might be really important that you don’t know how things end up. So maybe I would go back. But then, if everything is fucked in the future, if you did go forwards, then you have a chance to sort it out, don’t you, as long as you know what needs sorting.’ She hesitated. ‘I’d like to know what’s going to happen to Mum and Dad. And John. And me.’

  ‘Do you worry about the future?’

  ‘Everyone does, don’t they?’ She went quiet for a moment, and I could hear her breathing. ‘I think Dad’s back.’

  ‘Aren’t you allowed to talk on the phone?’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t want him to hear. My room’s right next to their bedroom.’

  It went quiet, again, but it felt calming and warm. Then we carried on talking, about what we were doing that summer, about music and films, and about school. She asked if I’d heard of The Saint.

  ‘The Val Kilmer film?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s out at the cinema, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to go and see it, but no one I know wants to go. Do you want to see it?’

  ‘With you?’ I asked, and opened my eyes.

  ‘If you want to, I mean.’ She sounded unsure. ‘You don’t have to. It’s just so boring going on your own.’

  ‘No, I just … sure.’

  ‘Don’t tell John.’

  AS I REMEMBER IT, I used to think about them a lot, the Grimberg family. What their life was like and what had actually gone wrong. What you could see from outside, the family’s outward appearance, was nothing unusual for Salem; several people I knew had the same sort of background. I think there was some violence, or at least there had been at some point. Julia always ended up in between her mum and dad while Grim did his best to stay out of the way. For us, that was always the way. At school, at home, during our free time: someone got away; someone else got caught in the firing line. What made Grim different was that he was so overprotective when it came to Julia. There seemed to be a lot going on that I couldn’t grasp, despite my best efforts. Maybe I still can’t.

  ‘Sometimes, when I’m on my own, I feel like I’m disappearing,’ Grim used to say, and even though I never really understood what he meant by that, that’s how I feel about them now. I have to hold on to them, Grim and Julia, fix them in specific scenes so that they won’t disappear.

  My youth, my childhood … With the passage of time, that whole period slips further out of focus, and Grim and Julia look increasingly like the mystery that they may well have been all along.

  IT ALL FELT FORBIDDEN. During the fairly short time Grim and I had known each other, we had become close. At least that’s how I felt; you could never tell with him. Despite that, we had never spoken on the phone. After that first call with Julia, I spent at least an hour a day on my bed talking to her on the phone. There was an intimacy between us that made me shake inside. I felt alive in a way I’d never felt before, as though my feelings were eyes that had always been blindfolded. Julia Grimberg turned everything on its head and made it feel bigger, infinite.

  ‘What are you wearing?’ she asked on the phone, the night before the cinema.

  I laughed.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I want to know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just want to know.’

  I was silent while I checked that my door was closed.

  ‘Boxers.’

  ‘They’re called underpants.’

  ‘Underpants is such an ugly word.’

  ‘But that’s what they’re called.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What are you wearing?’

  ‘Knickers. Is that an ugly word?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I like boys’ underwear,’ she said, and it sounded like she was stretching, before I heard her breathe out.

  ‘Are you a virgin?’

  The question just tumbled out, surprising me. I wanted to take it back.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Are you?’

  ‘No,’ I lied, pretty certain that she didn’t believe me.

  ‘How old were you?’ she asked.

  ‘Fifteen. You?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  I heard her gasping for air.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you think?’ she whispered.

  Her breathing became really heavy. The sound was spellbinding. I strained to hear every nuance of what was happening at the other end of the line.

  ‘Touch yourself,’ she said quietly, with a thickness to her voice that I’d never heard before.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, despite the fact that I was already doing so.

  ‘How does it feel?’

  What do you say to that?

  ‘Good,’ I attempted.

  ‘Imagine it’s my hand.’

  I was on the verge of exploding. Suddenly she was gasping, as though she’d been winded again and again, before she slowly seemed to be recovering.

  ‘I bit my lip,’ she giggled. ‘I think I bit through it.’

  Everything was spinning. I’d never experienced anything like it.

  VIII

  The dealer is a little sparrow of a man, with his close-set eyes, a sharp beak of a nose, and jerky movements. His slicked-back hair exposes his forehead, big and pale. He wears a long black trench coat that flaps behind him. On the back of each hand are two diamond tattoos. I hold up my mobile in front of him.

  ‘Do you recognise her?’

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘Do you recognise her?’

  He smiles weakly, revealing crooked teeth.

  ‘You’re still suspended, right? I don’t need to tell you shit.’


  ‘I’m back on duty.’

  ‘Show me your badge then.’

  I look around. We’re standing on a corner near the Maria Magdalena Church on Södermalm. I can smell freshly baked bread from one of the nearby bakeries; Hornsgatan hums away in the distance. It’s a beautiful day. I take a step closer to him.

  ‘How much money do you owe me?’

  The smile disappears and he looks up at me.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s a lot.’

  ‘You’ll get it back.’

  ‘Give me this, and we’re quits.’

  Felix used to be an informer. When we put a stop to the arrangement a few years back, he had nothing left and had to flee the country for a while. When he came back, I gave him the chance to start again, and he did start again, and just like before he snorted all the money. There’s probably a price on his head, and it’s a miracle that he’s still alive, but cockroaches like Felix do have a tendency to survive.

  ‘Straight up?’ he asks.

  ‘Straight up.’

  Felix’s eyes roam across the phone’s screen.

  ‘She must be important, eh?’

  I push Felix into the shadow cast by the church’s bell tower.

  ‘Do you know her name?’

  Felix plays with his tongue in the corner of his mouth, as if scratching an itch.

  ‘Rebecca.’

  ‘Rebecca what?’

  ‘Simonsson, I think. No, Salomonsson?’ He looks at me. ‘It’s Salomonsson. Rebecca Salomonsson. It’s her from Chapmansgården, isn’t it? I saw it in the paper.’

  ‘How do you know her?’

  ‘She sold.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘People sell all sorts,’ I say.

  He nods, approvingly.

  ‘True. But Rebecca stuck to drugs and sex.’

  ‘And where do you come in?’

  He looks down, as though he’s weighing something up. Felix’s forehead has started to moisten.

  ‘I know this is going to look bad, but Christ, I promise, Junker, I didn’t do it.’