The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  ‘I like you,’ I said after a while.

  ‘How long have you liked me?’

  Not the reaction I was expecting.

  ‘Erm, yeah, I don’t know, a while?’

  ‘A while,’ she mimicked, laughing. ‘I’m not going to say it back.’

  ‘Why not?’ My heart beat harder again. ‘Don’t you li—’

  ‘It’s not easy for me to say stuff like that.’

  On the train home, I kissed her. She tasted salty on her lips, from the popcorn, and sweet inside, from the fizzy drink. It was me that kissed her, not the other way around, and I was ready for her to give me a slap just for trying. Julia Grimberg seemed like that kind of girl. Instead, her mouth met mine, and I soon felt her hand on my thigh again. This time it didn’t move away, and I wanted to touch her hair but I didn’t dare to move my arm, worried it might spoil the moment. The train stopped, and people got on. They sniggered, and I thought it was at us. I didn’t care.

  We separated in front of the Triad, where the three blocks towered high and white above us.

  I looked at her. She seemed deep in thought.

  ‘I’ll give you a hundred kronor if you tell me what you’re thinking,’ I said.

  She laughed.

  ‘It would cost you more than that!’ she said, and let go of my hand. ‘See you soon.’

  GRIM WAS WALKING ACROSS the playground towards me. I wasn’t ashamed, but I realised that I was going to have to lie to him. Julia was more important to him than anything else, and my kissing her wouldn’t make him happy. I pictured his face if I were to tell him that we’d held hands.

  ‘What did you do this weekend?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing much. Went to the football.’

  ‘Football? Do you like football?’

  ‘No. It was for my dad’s sake. We got the train in to Södermalm together.’

  There was the lie. Perhaps it should have been hard, but it wasn’t. It was easy. I thought of Julia’s face. I hadn’t seen her since we said goodbye on Friday, and I hadn’t heard her voice either. That made me feel miserable.

  ‘What about you?’ I mumbled, without looking at him.

  ‘This.’ He held something out towards me and I took it off him. ‘My first.’

  I caught his stare and saw the glint in his eye.

  ‘What do you think?’

  He’d given me his ID card. I looked at it, turned it upside down and back-to-front. It was nothing more than that.

  ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘What do you think that is?’ He beamed, broadly and proudly.

  ‘An ID card.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He leant over towards me. ‘Look at the year.’

  He put his index finger next to it.

  Then I understood.

  ‘You were born in seventy-nine,’ I said. ‘Right? This says seventy-eight.’

  ‘Compare it with this one.’ He sounded excited. ‘See any difference?’

  He pulled out an ID card identical to the one I was holding. Same style, same information, same photo of Grim staring at the camera with a blank expression, the blond hair short and the lips pursed.

  ‘The year,’ I said. ‘This one says seventy-eight; the other one says seventy-nine.’

  ‘Apart from that? Any difference?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Have you shown anyone else?’

  He shook his head. ‘I wanted to show you first.’

  I looked up from the ID card and our eyes met; I could see how proud he was, and I realised I didn’t know what to do next. I couldn’t lie to him about Julia, but I couldn’t tell him the truth either.

  ‘I started with Tipp-Ex on an old card, on the surface itself,’ he said. ‘About six months ago. I put a tiny drop over the nine. And if you just glanced at it quickly, you didn’t see that it actually said seventy-nine. But if you ran your finger over, it just felt like a tiny crumb had stuck to it. I thought about how I could make it better, and tried other stuff, until I found a way to redo the whole card.’

  I rubbed my fingers over the card, and felt the ridges in the hard plastic.

  ‘It’s not completely smooth,’ I said.

  ‘You have to cut the plastic really carefully to get it like that. That’s what took longest. That, and finding thick-enough plastic. It’s the same stuff as they use.’

  I must have looked blank.

  ‘The Post Office. The ones who do the real thing.’ He took both the cards off me, and stuffed them back in his pocket. ‘I think I can make money from this.’

  ‘Probably,’ I said, thinking of all the people we knew who would like nothing more than to get into clubs with age limits, where brain-dead bouncers who’d failed to become cops stood on the door and ran the world.

  ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘Me? Er, sure.’

  ‘Give me your ID. I just need it for a week or so.’

  I held it out and he took it, studying it so closely that the card almost touched his nose.

  ‘It’ll be the first time I’ve done someone other than myself,’ he mumbled, turning the card over. ‘I wonder if it will be as good.’

  ‘Grim, I …’

  ‘What?’

  They were alike; not at first glance, but it was still there, in their expressions.

  ‘Nothing.’ I looked down at my shoes. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  We agreed a price for the card. It was lower than I expected, but I still had no idea where I was going to get the money from.

  The money he’d sniffed out at my place — I could use that. I hadn’t touched it.

  Break was over. I left Grim, and walked over towards the nondescript entrance.

  SHE WAS WAITING for me behind the water tower. When I got there it was dark and black; squawking birds circled the tower, as though encouraging someone to fall. I had my hands in the pockets of my hoodie and I took them out, hoping that my palms would get less sweaty.

  She was wearing jeans, a red vest with narrow shoulder straps, and black Converses, and was holding a thick black cardigan in her hands. I wondered if she might be cold, but when she came over I felt the temperature rise and I could hear a muffled hum — something in the tower, maybe a generator or a motor of some sort, making the spot where she was standing unnaturally warm.

  ‘You’re early,’ she said.

  ‘So are you.’

  When Julia put her arms around me she stood on tiptoes, and then pressed her slim body against mine, her small breasts soft against my ribs, her hands around my neck, and her hair in my face.

  ‘It’s very warm here,’ she said quietly, with her lips to my ear.

  ‘You could have stood somewhere else.’

  ‘I didn’t want to, in case you couldn’t find me.’

  She let go, and we stood there looking at each other.

  ‘Grim’s got my ID card,’ I said, because you have to say something.

  ‘I know. He showed it to me,’ Julia giggled. ‘You look funny in that picture. Sort of young.’

  After a while we climbed up the tower, and sat down on the ledge. Julia’s hand was resting in mine, and it felt very small.

  ‘I always get a bit thoughtful, or whatever you call it, when I’m sitting up here,’ she said.

  ‘How come?’

  She nodded towards one of the many buildings below us.

  ‘I knew someone who lived in one of those blocks over there, the one with the red roof. It just always makes me, well, just thoughtful, really.’

  Julia told me that they’d gone to the same pre-school and were the same age and had the same shoes. That’s how it had started; the little boy was getting teased for having the same shoes as one of the girl
s. Julia had helped him out by explaining to the others that he didn’t actually have girls’ shoes; it was she who had boys’ shoes. Julia was a peaceful child — the calm before the storm, you know, she once said to me, and laughed — and the boy was, too, so they would often play the same games and go to the playground together. They became friends, and started at the same school, started listening to music together. They eventually drifted apart, as you do when you start a new school and end up in different classes, but they stayed friends.

  ‘But,’ Julia said, ‘there was always something strange about him. When we were about eleven or twelve, I started to realise that he was keeping something from me. At first I was sure he fancied me, that it was that. But it wasn’t — our relationship was never like that. We were more like brother and sister, you know?’

  Julia had even told him about her family, which she hadn’t told anyone else apart from Social Services, and that was more or less under duress.

  ‘Isn’t that strange?’ she said. ‘That he never said anything?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  They drifted further apart, despite going to the same school. When they met in the dark-grey corridors, they would only say hello.

  Another summer floated past, as they always did in Salem, warm and eventful. Julia saw him at the recreation ground during the end-of-term ceremony that June. And then, after the summer, he was just gone. Disappeared. A week or so of the new term went past before it dawned on her. She hadn’t seen him, started worrying for some reason she couldn’t describe, and called his parents. They weren’t living there anymore, and Julia had no idea where they’d gone.

  ‘I haven’t seen him since,’ Julia said. ‘And I don’t know why, but it’s hard when people disappear. It’s hard to deal with; even though you weren’t that close before they disappeared, it’s still like something is … well, missing.’

  ‘What was his name?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think you’d know him.’

  ‘Tell me anyway, what was his name?’

  ‘Tim,’ said Julia. ‘Tim Nordin.’

  The name was like an invisible punch in the gut. I was winded.

  ‘No, you’re right. I don’t know who that is.’

  SUMMER HAD COME ROUND again, the kind of summer that paralyses a whole town. Along with my dad, I’d helped my brother move out. He’d turned eighteen and worked in a carpaint shop, making rust buckets look like new, every day from eight till four. I’d agreed to help him move after being offered money; but once we’d finished, taking it didn’t feel right. It felt great doing something together. We didn’t do it very often then. When we were kids we’d go on outings in the summer, to zoos and amusement parks. We drove go-karts and played football on a field outside Salem. I hadn’t been to the field in ages. Maybe I could take Grim there now. He’d like it.

  During the move, we were down in the cellar, rummaging through boxes. And in one of the boxes we found a framed newspaper cutting from 1973; the picture showed the remains of an old petrol station outside Fruängen. In the background you could see fallen power lines. MOTORING MADNESS ENDS IN DISASTER was the headline. Dad liked telling that story — how this was before he got back together with Mum, how he used to gamble heavily on the horses. Once, he won a big bet at the Solvalla races and bought a white Volvo P1800 with the winnings, ‘the type of car Simon Templar drives in The Saint’. He loved to thrash the hell out of it on the roads around Fruängen. At the crossing by the petrol station, he lost control of the car, drove onto the forecourt, and knocked two pumps over, smashing into one of the roof’s supporting pillars in the process. The roof collapsed behind him as he carried on towards the power lines, and the last thing Dad remembered was sparks above the bonnet. The power went out in the neighbourhood, and at the time of writing it was unclear whether the ‘madman’ (the doctor’s word, not the reporter’s) would survive. Dad was in hospital for two months, and he received a letter claiming damages for several hundred thousand kronor. I’m pretty sure he thought it was worth it.

  During the move, Dad told us the story. We had heard it before, but this time we both let him tell it again. It was reassuring to hear something from the past, like some sort of echo from childhood.

  ‘It feels strange,’ Dad said, sitting there behind the wheel, on the way back to the Triad. ‘Now Micke’s gone, and it’ll soon be your turn.’

  ‘It’ll be a while yet, Dad.’

  ‘I know.’ He hesitated. ‘You haven’t thought about getting a job?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A summer job somewhere? Isn’t it about time? A lot of people your age do.’

  ‘It’s too late now.’

  ‘Yes, it might be, but have you even thought about it?’

  I hadn’t. Just the very thought of working bored the shit out of me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought about it. But I don’t know where it would be.’

  ‘You have to take what you can get, at your age.’

  I listened to the radio: a news bulletin was just finishing, followed by a song, and Dad turned up the volume. When the song finished, he looked at me with a faint smile.

  ‘Your mum and I used to dance to that.’

  ‘Course you did.’

  ‘We did! It’s ABBA.’ He was quiet for a moment.

  ‘He liked it here, didn’t he? At ours?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Micke.’

  ‘Ah-ha. Yes. Yes, he did.’

  Dad looked at me and smiled.

  ‘Thanks.’

  We drove on. Dad cleared his throat. He always did when he needed to say something important.

  ‘The money in the vase,’ he said. ‘I don’t care why you took it, and if you’ve already spent it I don’t want it back. But don’t ever do it again. Don’t take what isn’t yours. It’s wrong, cheap, and wicked. If you need money, borrow it from us. Or, even better, get a job.’

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

  GRIM HAD FINISHED my false ID card. I could now claim to have been born in seventy-eight, instead of eighty. It was flawless. That didn’t surprise me, for some reason. I kept it in my bedside drawer. One afternoon at the beginning of June, I met up with Grim outside the Triad. He was walking home from town, the headphones from his new Discman on his ears. He raised his arm and smiled when he saw me, and started taking his headphones off.

  ‘You look pleased,’ I said.

  ‘I am pleased.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I’ve got hold of some money.’ He winked. ‘I’m going to the water tower — you coming?’

  ‘No,’ I said, without thinking.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve got … I’m busy.’ I started walking towards town, and his eyes followed me. ‘I’ll come later. In a bit.’

  He seemed disappointed, but nodded once, turned around, and carried on.

  ‘Leo.’

  I turned around again.

  ‘Yes.’

  Grim’s satisfied look had disappeared, and now he had a dejected, cold expression.

  ‘I’m going away for a month after midsummer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I, er, I stole the money from the school’s travel kitty. It wasn’t the first time, but this time Social Services got called in, and they’re sending me away.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It was a lot of money. I needed it to do the cards and stuff.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  He shrugged, didn’t answer. He just looked at the ground.

  ‘Where are they sending you?’

  ‘The summer camp in Jumkil. They think that’ll be best. I was go
ing to run away, you know, stay away for a while so they wouldn’t find me, but that would just make it worse.’

  ‘Probably.’

  He seemed unsure.

  ‘You’ll keep … could you keep an eye on Julia while I’m away? So she doesn’t … just keep an eye out, while I can’t.’

  ‘Course,’ I managed.

  He looked at me for ages, before he nodded and waved his hand.

  ‘Go on. See you round.’

  ‘Yes. We’ll have loads of time before you go. I’ll be there in a bit.’

  ‘Sure.’

  It was going to be a long summer.

  JUMKIL’S SUMMER CAMP was outside the town itself, attached to one of the toughest young offenders’ institutions around. I’d heard of the institution, because my brother’s friend had been sent there after trying to steal a car. It was the sort of place where feral youngsters were supposed to be treated and then released on the right side of the law, but in fact it achieved the opposite. The neighbouring summer camp’s reputation wasn’t much better, and Julia was worried what it might do to Grim.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ I said, lying next to her underneath the water tower.

  Her hand sought mine, and found it. It was the Monday after midsummer, which I’d spent with the family in Blåsut, where Granddad lived. Arthur Junker had joked about Alzheimer’s for years; but when it took hold of him, the joke was over and he became miserable and introverted. He called my mum ‘Sara’, which was my grandmother’s name. At certain points during the dinner, he didn’t seem to recognise me or my brother. After the meal, I went to a party near Salem Church with Grim. He didn’t want to socialise; I think he came along for my sake. During the party, he sat in the corner looking anxious, as though he didn’t know how to behave. And now he’d gone, to Jumkil.

  ‘Do you remember after the cinema,’ I said, ‘when you said it was hard for you to say you liked someone?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  Julia lifted herself up slightly, propping herself up with her elbows.

  ‘I just haven’t had good experiences with boys, that’s all.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘It usually just … I’ve only been with a few, like three. But it’s always ended with me getting hurt and John getting furious.’ She sank down again, looked up at the sky. ‘About a year ago I was at a party and I drank a lot. I fancied one of the guys; he was in the first year at Rönninge then. I ended up passing out, I can’t remember how exactly. But when I woke up I was lying on a bed, on top of the covers, with no knickers on. It didn’t hurt, so I hadn’t been … I hadn’t been used that way. But I found out afterwards that it was him, the guy I fancied, who’d interfered with me. Apparently someone had come in to get something from that room; they’d put their booze in there so it wouldn’t get nicked. It was just chance that someone came in, but he got scared and left. That’s the sort of experience I have of guys. I know you’re not like that at all, you know? You mustn’t think I think that about you; I don’t, it’s just so hard to sort of … start again.’