The Invoice

by Jonas Karlsson

  “Hi! Have you gotten yours?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Invoice. Have you gotten yours?”

  It sounded almost like he was running. He probably wasn’t, but his way of sighing as he spoke, combined with his general poor fitness, made it sound like he was.

  “Hang on,” he said, as if he’d just remembered something he had to do. “There’s someone here…Can you call me back?” He hung up.

  Roger had always been very careful with money. Presumably he was worried about being poor or feeling exploited, unless it was just in his genes. And apart from adopting various rituals to save money—the sort all really mean people do, like never leaving tips, taking his own bags to the shops, reusing unfranked stamps and old envelopes, turning the car engine off when he was going downhill, all the usual stuff—he had also gotten into the habit of never making phone calls and waiting for people to call him instead. No matter how urgent it was. If he ever did have to make a call, he made sure he started the conversation, then broke off quickly so the person he had called would have to phone him back.

  He answered on the first ring.

  “Yes,” I said, lying down on the sofa.

  “It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?” Roger panted. “What the hell’s it all about? As if there wasn’t enough shit to deal with already. Now they want even more money. It’s insane. Don’t you think? Completely insane.”

  I put both legs up on the armrest. It struck me that I almost always lay down when I talked to him. As if I had a particular posture for conversations with Roger.

  “Yes, it is.”

  There was a crackling, knocking sound down the line, as if he’d dropped his phone or bumped into something. He never did just one thing at a time. He was always busy doing things that no one else really understood. He had the ability to sound in a hurry even though he didn’t have a job, or anything else he had to do.

  “Hello?” he said after a while.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I mean, it’s completely unbelievable. Isn’t it? You think this sort of thing only happens to people who are well off. Now I’ve got to get a bank loan and all that crap. I’m going to have to mortgage the boat or something…Are you still there?”

  I said I was, as Roger battled on with whatever he was doing. It sounded like he was out in the wind. Were there people in the background? Maybe he’d gone down to the marina to look at his main asset. At first it felt rather reassuring that even Roger was going to have to make some sort of sacrifice. It felt good to have someone I could share my worries with. A man with his attitude to money must be completely beside himself at receiving an invoice like that. It must have hit him like a bomb.

  Roger had a very nice sailing boat that he took good care of. It was his passion. He would take me out on it in the summer. In return for a contribution to the cost of the petrol for the engine and as long as I brought food, beer, and so on. We usually ended up floating about in some inlet somewhere. Drinking beer and watching the birds. But even though it was nice, it was still a fairly small boat. Six or seven meters at most. How much would he be able to borrow against that?

  I put my legs back down and sat up.

  “How much was yours, then?” I asked.

  “What?” he panted as he fiddled with something. His voice sounded muffled and distant. I could tell he’d wedged his phone between his ear and his shoulder.

  “How much have you got to pay?” I said.

  “A fuck of a lot,” he said in a loud voice, to make himself heard over the sound of an engine in the background.

  I stood up.

  “How much?”

  “220,000 kronor.”

  The sun was going down over the city, casting dazzling reflections off the rooftops. It was still so warm that I had the windows wide open. I could hear the rowdy voices of children playing football or hockey down in the street. Their warning cries to each other whenever a car appeared. How could I possibly have ended up being charged so much more than Roger? There had to have been some sort of mistake. They must have missed something. Maybe they’d gotten me confused with some rich kid from the Wallenberg set? Or some oligarch. Admittedly, Roger was a tragic loser with no income and no prospects. Obviously I would have expected to have to pay more than him, anything else would have been very odd. But this? This was unbelievable.

  I did a quick run-through of the problems and setbacks I’d experienced in my life, and decided that I was far too wretched to warrant this new amount of 10,480,000 kronor.

  —

  I lay down on the sofa and thought about how much I missed my parents. This was precisely the sort of time I’d have called them to say I was in trouble. I’d have a bit of a moan, and they would have listened carefully with the phone between them, then they’d have comforted me and said that everything would be all right. And then it would have been. I felt an intense longing for the warm, fluffy feeling that always blossomed in me as soon as I’d dumped a problem on them. Then I could have curled up in my pajamas in front of the television with a bag of cheesy puffs. I thought about all my friends. They’d long since gotten married and had kids, and they barely had time to see me anymore. What had once been deep friendships and endless days of unconditional socializing and spontaneous outings, weeks of shared discoveries—at one time they were the only fixed point in my life—long conversations, discussions about politics and relationships and the world…All of that had soon been reduced to a snatched cup of coffee in passing or a quick beer once every six months. The only one left was Roger, who had never seemed to be able to make much sense of life. He never really offered any resistance to anything, and was no great support. As time passed he was getting increasingly stressed about growing older, and the fact that he never had time for anything, that nothing ever really happened. But at the same time he never seemed able to work out how he wanted things, and just sank deeper and deeper into self-loathing and an increasingly unhealthy attitude toward money.

  He always managed to feel hard done by. It was as if he assumed he was going to end up the loser, even if things actually looked okay. With the passage of time he would turn his successes into failures, like some back-to-front version of Buddhism. Any unexpected moments of happiness always carried with them a measure of unease, which eventually took over. Once, a long time ago, his beloved boat fell off its winter stand on the quayside and ended up with a big hole in one side of the hull. “It’s a fucking nightmare,” Roger said. “It’s going to cost tens of thousands to repair.” After some investigation, it turned out that the crane driver had knocked into the stand earlier that winter, and that the marina was therefore obliged to pay for the damage. A conflict flared up between the marina, the crane driver, and the insurance company. Each thought that one of the others was liable.

  “Typical,” Roger said when he finally got me to call him. “Now no one wants to pay. It’s going to cost me tens of thousands of kronor.”

  He spent all winter going on about how many tens of thousands of kronor it was going to cost him. Eventually the insurance company agreed that it was their responsibility and that Roger would get full compensation for the damage. When the hull was being repaired, it turned out that it made more sense to replace a good part of the deck as well. A highly professional boat company did the work very thoroughly, and in plenty of time before the sailing season began. To smooth things over, the marina offered to waive the rent for the following year. So when it came down to it, Roger had actually gained from the whole business. But he still went on referring to it as a huge disaster, and took it as proof that only bad things ever happened to him. “Do you know,” he would often say, even years later, “the whole thing cost tens of thousands of kronor.”

  —

  For the first time in a long time I missed having a girlfriend. I found myself thinking about Sunita, and felt a tug at my heart. I thought about the evenings we spent in her beautiful apartment in Vasastan. It was really her father’s, but because he worked
in Mexico and the rest of the family lived in India it was basically hers. When we were together it had almost felt like mine. Even though I always knew that our relationship was finite.

  We met at the film club at the university where she was studying. The members were mostly foreign students, and the club organized a program of screenings of Swedish classics on Monday evenings. Bergman, Sjöberg, and so on. I was invited to come and run the sessions. The film club offered wine, and I would give a short talk about that week’s director, explaining recurrent themes, showing stills and short clips, and on the whole I enjoyed doing it. Each Monday evening after the movie, Sunita and I would stand there looking at one another, and in the end I asked her where she was from, and she told me, not without a degree of pride and in surprisingly broken English, that she was from the holy city of Varanasi, but had grown up in Bombay. That pride, combined with a very fetching degree of shyness, made an indelible impression on me. She seemed so incredibly exotic. Maybe I seemed the same to her. We never spoke anything but English, but I think she knew a bit of Swedish, even if she pretended she didn’t. She loved films, and Bergman in particular. I managed to get hold of special editions with extra material, and we spent hour after hour in front of the television in her big living room, on an enormous soft white sofa.

  —

  Sunita’s father was a diplomat. He had recently been transferred from Sweden to Mexico, but for some reason he didn’t want Sunita to go with him. Maybe he thought she should finish her education first. It was probably also to do with the fact that she had an uncle who lived in Sweden who could act as a combination of guardian and chaperone, albeit from a distance. And presumably they also reasoned that it was safer for Sunita here. They hadn’t counted on me.

  Sunita was the apple of her father’s eye, and the affection was mutual. Time and time again I heard about how great this father of hers was. That all Indians only wanted sons, but that her mother and father had been happy when they had a daughter. That it was extremely unusual for a daughter to be allowed to travel and study. Sunita always said she loved her father above everything and everyone else, and because he was such a distant presence I had no problem with that.

  Her relationship with me had to be kept secret, under all circumstances. No one must know anything. Not our families, and not our friends. I wasn’t allowed to breathe a word about our relationship to my friends or anyone else I knew. She had been granted a few years to study and see the world, but she would have to go home and get married before she turned twenty-five. That was nonnegotiable. The family already had a number of candidates lined up back at home. I never really understood the point of that whole tradition of arranged marriage and the caste system, apart from the fact that it was the father who took the decisions, and that she belonged to a higher caste than most people and that this fling with me would be regarded as absolutely inconceivable. The sort of thing that simply didn’t happen. It was so far beyond the bounds of possibility that it was unthinkable.

  Eventually the whole family would be reunited back in India. But in the meantime she was able to live a relatively free life here in Sweden. The only requirement was that she studied hard and was still a virgin when she returned to Bombay.

  She wasn’t.

  She was very careful to start with. Me too. We talked a lot. Mostly about films, but gradually more and more about each other. She would light candles and incense. She had dark eyes—almond-shaped, that’s what people say, isn’t it?—and incredibly soft skin. Long hair, and oddly full cheeks given the fact that she was otherwise fairly slender. She often complained that her backside was too broad, and that her nose was too big, but she was actually astonishingly beautiful. I loved just looking at her. I told her, and I think she rather liked the fact that I did that. She was always beautifully dressed, in green, yellow, and red fabrics that looked extremely expensive.

  —

  We took every precaution we could. We never spoke to each other in public, and rarely let anyone see us together. We never phoned each other, and came up with a special code and secret signs that no one else would be able to understand. A twist of a bracelet would mean that there was a sealed letter at the reception desk where I came and went fairly regularly to pick up films and packages for the film club. To start with they were just short messages: “9 p.m.,” for instance. Which meant that at nine o’clock precisely I would step through the door on the other side of her block, cross the courtyard, and be let into her apartment a couple of minutes later. Never any knocking on doors. Never any doorbell.

  Once we were there we would stand for a while in the big living room, just looking at the view. We would talk about the weather and university, maybe about something that had happened. Sometimes she would offer me mineral water or juice of some sort. Then she would very slowly start to take off her thin layers of clothing, almost in passing, while we talked about something else or watched a film. When the film was over we would sit still and just wait. Breathing. Inhaling each other’s scent. Looking into each other’s eyes. Sometimes for several minutes. I never imagined I would ever meet a woman like her. In a way, I was just happy to be near her, but the prohibition of love and our mutual caution—the tentative way we approached each other physically—meant that the air in the room was charged with desire.

  Only after a number of weeks did we actually touch one another, slow, feather-light strokes, and it was even longer before we kissed. Slowly but surely we shifted the boundary of what was permissible. Once or twice relatives or guardians or governesses or whatever they were showed up. On one occasion, the state I was in meant that I had to hide on the balcony. Otherwise, I was a special tutor who was helping her with her studies. Maybe I was given a title and name, I don’t know. They would spend a long time talking. I didn’t understand a word, but to judge from their behavior it looked like they accepted her explanation. That uncle of hers never appeared. Maybe he had people who checked up on her for him. Either way, everyone seemed happy, and she remained unsullied in their eyes. None of them seemed able even to entertain the thought that anything untoward might be taking place in that apartment. Which was ridiculous—we were young, after all.

  As time passed our messages became more and more refined. Sometimes the letters contained gifts. Napkins or a box of matches bearing the address of a certain restaurant. That didn’t mean that she and I were going to meet there, but that I was welcome to look in and pick up a signal about what might happen later that evening.

  Sometimes I would find the place and sit down alone at a suitable distance, and watch her dine with one or more of her relatives or whoever they were. If she twisted her bracelet a specific number of times, that was a sign that it was okay to go back to her place afterward, as long as I waited until the coast was clear before creeping in the back way and being let in for a late-night rendezvous.

  As we grew more comfortable with the arrangement, she also became more provocative. Once there was a padded envelope waiting at the reception desk. Inside was a note with a time and the address of a smart restaurant, plus an item of clothing which she wanted me to understand that she wouldn’t be wearing beneath her brightly colored sarong that evening as she ate dinner with three elderly ladies and a gentleman who all looked like they were liable to fall asleep at any moment. I sat five tables away and couldn’t bring myself to order anything but a Coke, which was a blessing seeing as even that turned out to cost three times as much as I thought it was possible for a soft drink to cost. At one point during the evening she glanced in my direction and looked me in the eye for a long moment. Suddenly I began to worry that she had twisted her bracelet and that I had missed it. I was sure I had noticed some sort of movement, but perhaps she had just been checking the time? I sat there for a long while with ice cubes in my mouth, just staring at her in the hope of picking up a more obvious signal. But none came. Just to be sure, I went to her apartment anyway. I stood there on the landing, thinking I could hear her inside, but the door never opened.
>
  —

  She had an ability to smile with her whole face when she looked at me, as if she could see past the mask, past my ordinary, everyday self. Sometimes when we were lying in bed she would trace the features of my face with her finger. From my hairline, down across my forehead and nose, over my chin and down to my chest. It was like a film.

  I was never allowed to sleep there. When it was late enough, I had to gather my clothes together and get dressed, then creep out the same way I had come in.

  When Sunita had turned twenty-four and finished her degree, the anticipated command arrived from Mexico telling her to move back to Bombay to get married, and Sunita didn’t hesitate for a second. She was conditioned to obey her family’s wishes, and constantly surprised me with her loyalty to a system which—in my world, at least—could only be regarded as oppressive. She was utterly faithful to her father’s wishes, and just got angry if I questioned any part of the arrangements. She was proud of her roots and who she was, and it would never occur to her to want to change anything. And that was something that no arguments about gender equality or fleeting erotic adventures would change.

  On our last night together, we made love and cried the whole time, and the next day we stood at Arlanda Airport separated by a safe distance of thirty meters. Between us we had all her many relatives and hundreds of passing strangers.

  A brief glance, then she was gone.

  —

  It took me several years before I could really think about anything else. I imbued all music with my own heartfelt sorrow, compared every sad lyric with my memories of us. Every so often I would wake in the middle of the night and imagine that she was there beside me. But each time the bed was empty. Sometimes I would walk past one of the restaurants she had sat in and imagine that I could see her, but it was always someone else.

  —