The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  I am five; I’ve just learnt to ride a bike. My dad’s trying to film it, but every time he gets the camera going I fall off, and the only thing that ends up on film is my brother, cycling around in the background, carefree and self-assured, on a bicycle that is much bigger, with bigger wheels and more gears.

  I am twenty-eight or twenty-nine; I’ve just met Sam. Something I say makes her laugh. We’re on a boat. I recognise a face among the passengers — someone who looks like Grim, but it’s not him. Sam asks if everything is all right. I say yes.

  I am sixteen; Grim and I are standing at the foot of the water tower. He’s been arguing with his parents. It’s late spring, and Klas Grimberg has received a letter from his son’s form tutor. She writes that she has tried to contact him and Diana by telephone, without success. Grim has hit a classmate, and if it happens again the tutor will have to involve the police. Klas gets angry and drinks while he’s waiting for his son to get home. When he does, they row, and it ends with Klas shouting at Grim to behave himself at school and not end up like him; if he doesn’t sort himself out, he’ll knock some sense into him. At least that’s what Grim claims he shouted at him. We go up the tower and shoot birds. Grim laughs when I say that one of the clouds is like someone we know, a fat boy who everyone calls ‘Ram’. Another cloud looks like Julia. I don’t say this to Grim.

  The same year: it is early spring, and Grim and I are out in Handen, waiting for someone to sell us some hash. Neither of us has tried it before. Grim’s wearing a T-shirt with MAYHEM printed on it, and we prowl the streets. Four men with boots, studs, and long hair appear from out of the darkness. They come over and ask what we’re doing, wearing T-shirts like that. They point to Grim’s T-shirt, visible under his open coat. Then they kick the shit out of us, and my ribs hurt for weeks afterwards. We find out later that people connected to the band Mayhem have been burning down churches in Norway and Gothenburg, and we get scared. Grim gets rid of the T-shirt. We never mention it to anyone, not even Julia. It’s something that just I and Grim share. On the local train home that night, someone plays The Prodigy on their ghetto-blaster, way too loud.

  A day or so after the fiasco in Handen, we buy some hash from a guy who comes up from Södertälje. We do the handover in Rönninge and smoke it sitting on the water tower. I don’t feel anything, and I suspect Grim doesn’t either, but we giggle till our bellies hurt, because we’ve heard that’s what people do when they’re stoned. The second time I smoke, I get really sweaty and feel sick. Grim looks dozy. That time we’re on the football pitch on the outskirts of Salem, lying on the grass. It’s evening, and the air is cool.

  Grim is interested in technology but he’s no good at maths. When he gets maths homework, I have to help him, till one of us has had enough. He’s always on time, never late. He has trouble respecting people who aren’t punctual, just as he can’t accept the police lurking around Salem at night. Every time Grim sees a police car, he gets down. It’s the start of the summer, 1997, and Grim hardly ever talks about his dad, I realise. On the few occasions he does, he says nothing flattering, yet I sense something behind the words, something that doesn’t come out. As though he identifies with him. Maybe that’s why they clash the way they do. I plan to ask Julia about it, present my theory to her, but it never happens.

  Two months later, I meet Klas Grimberg when we have to eat dinner with them. I’m struck by how like his father Grim is. I think about mentioning it to both Grim and Julia, but I don’t, because I’m not sure what it implies.

  ‘What happens if the most important thing you have,’ Grim says one afternoon, on a northbound local train, ‘was never even supposed to exist at all?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Imagine that there’s some kind of fate, or whatever the hell you want to call it, and we were never meant to be a family? If somehow it wasn’t supposed to happen? If it just ended up this way, by accident? I mean, look at us. Considering what life is like at our place, everything could be an accident.’

  ‘All families are fucked up.’

  ‘No. No, they’re not.’

  I AM SEVENTEEN. It’s been several months since Julia died. I smile for the camera. It’s for the class photograph, and I don’t recognise any of the people around me.

  XVI

  When Grim returned from Jumkil, he arrived in one of Social Services’ anonymous white vans. The air was close, and a short while earlier I’d seen Vlad and Fred walk past, a street away. I wondered what they were doing in Salem, and struggled to breathe. I sat down on a bench between the blocks of the Triad and tried to make myself inconspicuous until they’d disappeared from view.

  The van parked in front of the Triad, and one of the back doors opened. Grim climbed out with his bag, the same black hold-all that he’d had the air rifle in the day we met. It felt like a long time ago, but in fact we’d only known each other for less than six months. A man with an off-licence carrier bag, dirty cap, and wild white beard was sitting on a bench close by. He stared, alarmed, at the white van before gathering up his possessions, rising shakily to his feet, and walking off with forced dignity. Grim closed the door, and the driver — a man, I couldn’t discern any more than that — turned his head, did a U-turn, and drove off, as though he had urgent duties to attend to somewhere else. I stood up, which gave Grim a fright. When he saw it was me, the confusion was replaced by a smile, and he raised his hand. I was smiling, but him coming back felt weird for me, as though the freedom I’d had access to had been temporary, and had once again been replaced by a sort of straightjacket.

  LATER ON, we went up to the water tower. The air was still, and the sun shone down on us. Most of the cars that passed us on the road below were full of camping gear and families. It was the end of July, and there was ages left of the summer holidays. Grim was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, yet still wiped the sweat from his forehead several times.

  ‘I’m going to Uppsala tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘Seeing Jimmy. He’s still on remand.’

  ‘Do you know how he’s doing?’

  ‘No. But I think he’s okay. He’s doing better than the guy he stabbed, anyway.’

  Grim was the one who wanted to go to the water tower. I would have preferred to do something else, ideally somewhere without any connection to Julia whatsoever. Instead, we went up the tower, and Grim sat down on the ledge, exactly where I’d been sitting a few days earlier as Julia climbed out of her knickers and straddled me. It felt absurd, unreal.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ he asked.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You laughed.’

  ‘Oh. No, nothing. Just had a funny thought.’

  ‘When we met at the camp,’ Grim said as he pulled out a bottle of spirits and two glasses from the little rucksack he was carrying, ‘we never had time to talk about you.’

  ‘It felt like there was more important stuff going on,’ I mumbled.

  ‘How’s your summer been?’

  ‘Good, I suppose. Micke moved out. Me and Dad helped him move, and neither of us have seen him since.’ I hesitated. It would have seemed strange for me not to mention it. ‘I had dinner at your place.’

  Grim filled the glasses and pushed one towards me. I drank some, and after that so did he.

  ‘It’s fucking strong,’ said Grim. ‘I think it’s absinthe or something.’

  He drank from his glass. ‘You were at our place?’

  ‘I was going to borrow a CD from you.’

  ‘Which one?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I can’t remember now.’

  ‘Oh. Other things got in the way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dad made you stay for dinner.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  In the distance there was a bang — a cra
shing noise — and a car alarm started wailing.

  ‘It is,’ Grim started, ‘not Julia’s fault, but Mum … have I told you she has problems?’

  I already knew this, but I wasn’t sure whether Grim knew that I knew. At that moment, I couldn’t remember who had told me — whether it was he or Julia. Everything had gotten so complicated.

  ‘I can’t remember. Maybe.’

  ‘Well, she does anyway. She has had as long as I can remember. It goes in waves, up and down. When I got sent to camp, it got a bit worse, if I understood right. And Dad has subconsciously — at least, I think it’s subconscious — put the blame on Julia. Which makes everything about … I don’t know, but I end up on the outside. And that doesn’t bother me; it suits me fine. It’s better to be outside when you see what it’s like for Julia. But it makes it really hard to be at home.’ He laughed. ‘Despite all the shit at the camp, it was nice to be away from home. Can you imagine? I guess I hadn’t grasped how bad it was, until I realised that’s how I felt.’

  ‘You can ask for help.’

  ‘From who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Social Services?’

  ‘Social Services can fuck off. They’ve already been around and stuck their noses in.’

  ‘Well, someone else then.’

  ‘Who?’ He looked genuinely tormented. ‘Who do you ask for help? Who are you supposed to turn to? And is it really my responsibility?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Stop saying “I don’t know.”’ He tilted his head back, leant against the water tower, and closed his eyes. ‘When I went up to dump my stuff just now, it was chaos. I think Mum had forgotten her medication, and Dad had been drinking. He’s just started back at work, and he always drinks more than usual then, presumably because his job is so fucking brain-dead.’

  We said nothing for a while. I wanted to leave, go and see how Julia was. The frustration was getting to me, making my palms cold and clammy.

  ‘I saw Vlad and Fred.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ said Grim.

  ‘Vlad and Fred.’

  ‘The idiots that used to give you grief?’

  ‘Yes. I saw them earlier on. Do you think …?’ I took another sip. It scraped my throat horribly, burned my stomach. I did my best not to sound scared. ‘Do you think they’ve moved back?’

  ‘Why would anyone move back here? I bet they were just visiting or something.’

  He took his Discman out of his bag, gave me one of the earphones, and we sat listening to music and drinking until the batteries ran out, which didn’t happen until very, very late. After that, I hobbled home, terrified I might bump into them — but I never did.

  ‘YOU SEEM A BIT DOWN, Leo.’ My dad looked up from the paper, and put his coffee cup down on the table.

  ‘I’m just tired.’ My head was pounding, and every time I blinked my eyelids hurt. ‘I was up late last night.’

  ‘Late.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘I don’t know what time it was.’

  ‘Considering how you smell, at least it’s not hard to work out what you were up to,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t smell.’

  ‘You stink.’

  I chewed my toast slowly.

  ‘Don’t tell Mum.’

  ‘Where do you get the booze from? Is it smuggled?’

  ‘No, Dad,’ I sighed.

  ‘I can’t stop you from drinking. We never stopped Micke. But …’

  ‘Oh yes we did,’ Mum’s voice came from the bathroom, followed by her footsteps as she came into the kitchen. She looked at me with a stern expression. ‘If you drink again, you won’t be allowed out.’

  ‘Annie,’ Dad began, ‘he’s not — ’

  ‘No,’ she said sharply and stared at him. ‘I’ve had enough. He’s never home anymore.’

  ‘Annie, let me talk to him.’

  She looked at me, then Dad, then back at me.

  ‘You pull yourself together, starting right now,’ she said before she left the room.

  Dad looked tired. He drank some coffee and stared at the half-eaten toast on my plate.

  ‘Aren’t you going to finish it?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You need to eat.’ He hesitated. ‘Your mum and I would both be a lot happier if you just got a job.’

  ‘Dad, for fuck—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he cut me off and held his hands up, apologetically. ‘I know.’ He put his forearms against the edge of the table and leant over. ‘She’s right, Leo. But there’s something else, isn’t there?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘As I said, you look a bit down.’ He waited, but when I didn’t say anything he added, ‘You can talk to me if you need to.’

  I looked up, unsure.

  ‘How well do you know the people who live in the Triad?’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘No one knows anyone here really, not even those living within the same four walls. So I can’t claim to know them at all.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Is it someone in this block?’

  ‘No.’ I nodded towards the window. ‘Someone in that block.’

  He followed my gaze towards the block where the Grimbergs lived.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You don’t know anyone who lives there?’

  He shook his head and drank some coffee.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ he said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Dads see that sort of thing.’

  I took a deep breath, and Dad looked hopeful. He tried, I thought to myself. I stood up and left without saying anything, and went to my room. I closed the door and sat down by the window, looked over at the block they lived in, and studied the windows of their flat, hoping for a glimpse of Julia.

  NOTHING HAPPENED. I started feeling pathetic, and Dad didn’t come in, so I lay down on the bed instead and listened to music for the rest of the day. I thought about ringing them, but I was worried that Grim would answer; he would notice that something was wrong, I was sure of that. And if Julia answered, Grim might ask her who she’d been talking to, and then she’d have to lie. She wasn’t good at lying, which was one of the things I liked about her, but this time her inability to lie was not helpful.

  Eventually I rang anyway.

  ‘Diana Grimberg.’

  ‘I …’ I began. ‘It’s Leo. Could I …?’

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Julia. Phone.’

  Diana’s voice was so quiet that it really shouldn’t have been possible to hear it unless you were standing right next to her. Maybe you develop hypersensitive hearing or heightened awareness if you live with someone like that, because I soon heard footsteps coming towards the phone.

  ‘Who is it?’ Julia asked Diana, but got no reply.

  ‘Hello?’ she said instead.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, hi. Hang on.’

  Footsteps. A door opening and then closing. Music in the background that slipped away and disappeared.

  We talked as long as we could. In a few days’ time I was going to Öland for a week. My uncle lived there with his family, and we spent a week there every summer, at the end of the holidays. That was the only time I used to leave Stockholm. My brother had always come, too, but this time he couldn’t because he had to work.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ she asked, sounding hurt.

  ‘I haven’t … I was thinking about not going at first.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because of you.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said hesitantly. ‘But now you are?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘W
hat’s changed?’

  ‘I don’t know … nothing.’

  ‘Must be something.’

  I lay there for ages, listening to her breathing. I wondered if Grim was lying on the other side of the wall, listening to us talking.

  ON ÖLAND, the time dragged. We came back after a week, and in that short time something had happened in Salem: I met Grim outside the youth centre, and his eye was purple-blue and swollen. He was trying to hide it behind a pair of Wayfarer shades, but it wasn’t working — the bruising was too big. We sat on a bench in the sunshine. He told me how he’d made an ID card for a guy who’d tried to use it to get into a club.

  ‘There was nothing wrong with the card,’ Grim said. ‘The problem was with this idiot. He wanted to get in to places where you need to be eighteen, and I sorted that out for him. Would you believe that the idiot goes to a twenty-plus club? He was denied entry, of course. What does he do next? Drives out to Salem with two mates, looking for me, because he thinks I’ve ripped him off. They even came to our place. When Dad found out, he was drunk, and he chased me out of the flat. The guy and his two mates were waiting outside, and I got a smack in the face before I could get away.’ He shrugged. ‘Fuck it.’

  ‘But why did your dad chase you out?’

  ‘He wasn’t chasing me out — he was just chasing me. But it was better to try and get out than to get caught.’

  I tried to imagine Klas Grimberg chasing his son. During that dinner at their place, there had been something in his look that suggested he was probably capable of it, despite his measured calmness. But he had been sober then.

  Grim pulled out a folded envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket, just as someone came round the corner of the youth centre. He was our age, with baggy jeans and big clonking Adidas, a hoodie, and a cap. He didn’t go to our school, I was pretty sure of that.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Grim said when he came up to us.

  ‘Yeah, man,’ he mumbled, and glanced at me.

  ‘He’s safe.’

  The guy looked around and gave a little nod. His hoodie had a pocket on the front, from which he pulled out neatly folded five-hundred-krona notes and then handed them to Grim, in exchange for the envelope. It all happened so quickly that if I’d blinked I would have missed it.