The Invoice

by Jonas Karlsson

  Most of it was to do with my relationship with Sunita, but I also managed to squeeze in some of my and Roger’s failed attempts to pick up girls.

  Roger often dragged up “that disastrous night” many years ago when he and I had met Linda and Nicole. To him this was just more evidence of all the hardships he had to endure, but I wasn’t sure if it ought to be regarded as entirely negative. We had been sitting in a bar and caught sight of two attractive girls a few tables away. We were both focused on the tall blonde with the incredibly pretty smile, whose name turned out to be Linda. During our discussion of tactics about who was going to go for which one, Roger argued that he should go for the blonde—the one we both liked most—because, as he put it, he deserved something nice for once. He thought I ought to be prepared to support him in this and set my own sights on the brunette in the cap, and maybe even put in a good word for him so she could pass it on to her friend later.

  I pointed out that it was a bit difficult to sort that out when we had no idea of their opinion on the matter, and that we should probably count ourselves lucky if they wanted to talk to us at all. Roger said I was just trying to make excuses, and in the end I agreed to try to set things up as best I could for him and the tall blonde.

  After a couple of beers we plucked up the courage to go over to them, and luckily they asked us to sit down. I stuck to the agreement and mainly talked to Nicole, who turned out to work in comics and was great fun to talk to, while Roger and Linda had a separate conversation. All in all it was a very pleasant evening, and a couple of days later we started dating our respective girls.

  I liked Nicole more and more. She taught me all about drawing and comics. She was very engaged with the environment and animal rights. She was a vegan too. Ate soy mince and You-can’t-believe-it’s-not-chicken, but occasionally her concentration would lapse. Sometimes she was halfway through a bag of sweets before realizing that they contained gelatin. She would check the list of ingredients, then go and spit them out into the toilet. I enjoyed the afternoons and evenings I spent in her apartment, lounging about on her sofa talking to her while she drew her cartoons. Sometimes she answered, sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she went off on long rants about society and Swedes and people in general. Her cartoons weren’t all that nice to look at, or even particularly comprehensible. They weren’t very realistic, but they were produced with passion and care. I loved them. We ended up getting together, and went out for at least a month.

  Roger and Linda embarked on a relationship as well, but I soon started to get reports about her failings. She talked too much, laughed too loudly, devoted too much time to her appearance. She was far too interested in his background. She would “interrogate” him, as he put it. Wanted to know what he thought about all sorts of things. She wanted to go out a lot too, and do fun things in the evenings, but these rarely turned out to be all that much fun, although they still cost a great deal of money. When she eventually—after Roger, on my suggestion, had told her that he wasn’t comfortable doing all those expensive things and proposed that they stay at home and do things there instead—floated the idea that they experiment with more adventurous sex, he dumped her.

  He came round to see me and Nicole and went on about how awful it was for him. He sat there on the sofa claiming that the world was against him.

  “I was always going to end up with the nutter!” he said. “Typical. You had all the luck, as usual,” he said to me, glaring at Nicole over at her drawing desk.

  He also went into great detail explaining the difficulty he had had in telling Linda that he didn’t like cream in spray cans, or blindfolds, and then—once he’d told her—finding a decent way to end it. He later declared that at least I hadn’t had any of those problems, seeing as Nicole dumped me a few days later.

  —

  Once I’d described a number of occurrences with the help of an outline of the body on which you had to indicate where you felt your emotions were based, I had to fill in a load of forms with preprinted questions where you had to rank different types of experiences. Once again, they began with general issues and gradually became more specific.

  I might have exaggerated slightly. Maybe I answered a little more negatively than I would have done under different circumstances.

  For instance, in the column marked “Social Competence / continuing ed.” I ticked the options connected to alienation, bullying, and deficient group dynamics.

  Under “Social Competence / dating / early rel. / sex. exp.” I took the opportunity to emphasize as much insecurity and performance anxiety as I could. They could probably work everything out themselves, down to the smallest detail, but I couldn’t be entirely sure, seeing as they had missed the whole story of Sunita. Besides, I reasoned that it wouldn’t do any harm if I added a bit of extra confusion with condoms and colliding front teeth.

  Under “Work life / prev. empl.” I ticked lots of boxes relating to irregular working hours, poor conditions, and unpaid overtime.

  When I was something like halfway through the pile of forms I went to the door and asked if I could have another bottle of water, but the woman in the scarf just shook her head. As if someone had told her not to leave her post on guard outside the glass box. I struggled through the rest of the questions and handed over the completed forms, by which time it was long past lunch.

  “Can I go now?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, looking rather excited. “You have to come with me.”

  She led the way to the reception desk and left my forms there. I sat down in the same armchair as before, and the woman in the scarf went and stood by the lift. A few moments later Georg emerged from the frosted-glass door. He went over to the desk, collected my bundle of papers, then disappeared into the secret room again. The woman and I were left in reception.

  —

  She must have stood there by the lift for two hours while I tried to find a comfortable position in the narrow armchair. I stretched out as far as I could, but it was obvious the chair wasn’t made for long-term use. I felt tired and sweaty and a bit dazed after all those questionnaires. There were posters on the wall next to the lift, and the table in front of me was covered with all sorts of information leaflets from the campaign I had evidently missed. “Time to pay—have you checked your E.H. score?,” “Give or take?,” “Time to even things out!,” in large, slanting blue lettering printed over colorful pictures of children and adults. They were in a number of different languages. As I looked at them, it dawned on me that I may well have seen those leaflets at home somewhere, but had thrown them in the recycling without ever thinking that they concerned me. They looked disconcertingly similar to all the other advertisements that I usually ignored. I picked up one of the brochures and leafed through it. There was a short history, and an account of the big international agreement. Various politicians and leaders from different areas of society were quoted: short, punchy sentences.

  It went on to give a description of the next step: the process of redistribution, when those with negative scores were going to receive compensation, and how this was going to happen. Toward the end were contact details for anyone wanting to lodge a complaint or who thought he or she had been unjustly treated.

  From time to time, as I sat there reading, people went up to the reception desk. Some had similar questions to mine. Some wanted more detailed repayment proposals, some were angry. Some came to plead their case, others swore and gesticulated wildly. I wondered if my amount was higher or lower than the average.

  A couple of times I almost dozed off, and once I was roused by a voice that seemed strangely familiar. After a while I realized that it was the girl with the necklaces from the lift in my building, the one whose phone call I had overheard a few days before, standing and talking over at the desk. She seemed really on top of things as she spoke to the receptionist. She took out some papers and a loan agreement, and explained the repayment schedule she had worked out for herself. I couldn’t help but be a bit impressed by her p
roactive attitude. I was struck by the advantage people like that had in society. She was probably already saving for her retirement, compared electricity suppliers, and had registered her children—born or unborn—for the best schools. And now she was here to get the lowest interest rate possible. For a moment I felt a little envious, and thought that I ought to be more like her. The sort of person who could look after themselves and sort things out. Then I would probably never have ended up in this situation. As it was, I had to stake everything on Sunita.

  —

  Eventually the woman with the bank name appeared.

  “Hello! We’ve met before, of course,” she said, and it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask for her name again, so I was none the wiser this time. She was dressed in a mauve jacket and skirt, the same severe cut as before, but now she had a large artificial violet-colored flower attached to her lapel. She was holding a folder to her chest, and led me into the big conference room. She asked me to take a seat. The woman in the scarf stayed outside.

  Shortly afterward Georg arrived, bringing with him an older man with bushy eyebrows and a dimpled chin. The three of them stood in a little group on the other side of the table, and the woman with the bank name gave the new arrival a brief summary of my case. Every so often Georg interrupted with a clarification. Sometimes they very nearly talked at once. I recognized some of the terminology this time.

  “Maximal E.H. score…”

  “High values for euphoria, harmony, sorrow and pain, melancholy…”

  “Sensitivity?”

  “Maximal, as far as we can tell. But without lasting trauma…and, well, you know what that means. The resulting experiential charge shoots up…”

  The woman held up a graph that the other two studied very carefully.

  “Bloody hell, that’s the highest quotient,” the man with the eyebrows said.

  “Definitely. I’ve got nothing but fives here…”

  They bent over another document.

  “And the curve for shortcomings?”

  “Latent,” she said.

  “To take one example, he’s only declared life-enhancing humiliation,” Georg said. “Nothing but character-forming setbacks. All according to the progression framework. There’s no deviation from the development model. He’s almost a textbook example of the Live for today template.”

  “The only infections he’s suffered occurred at exactly the right time to cause the least possible problems and the mildest symptoms, yet with optimal results for his immune system. Just look at this graph…”

  They lowered their voices and I could only hear fragments of what they were saying, because they were trying not to be overheard. Occasionally they covered their mouths with their hands.

  “…Almost absurd levels of pleasure…and full access to his feelings. According to our contact, on certain occasions the subject has the ability to forget basic simplifying acts in daily life which on sudden recollection give a twofold increase to his E.H.”

  “And now…” the woman with the bank name said, picking up a new folder. “Now a hitherto unknown relationship has come to light. With a woman named Sunita.”

  “Look here,” Georg said, pointing with his pen at the new folder. “Post-Sunita, life-affirming results all the way.” He leafed forward a few pages and pointed again. “Here again…life-affirming.”

  The others nodded.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  All three of them looked at me, aghast. As if they’d forgotten I was sitting there, or didn’t know I could talk.

  “I thought I was going to be seeing Maud,” I went on.

  The man with the eyebrows looked quizzically at the woman with the bank name.

  “Maud?” he said. “Who’s this Maud?”

  “Maud Andersson,” she replied. “Apparently she works down on the second floor. He has indicated…”

  She turned to a different page.

  “…here that he thinks ‘she is doing a very good job.’ ”

  The eyebrows were suddenly fixed on me.

  “I see,” he said, shaking his head at me. “No,” he said. “No, no, it will just be the three of us.”

  He put one hand to his mouth as he leafed through the file with the other.

  “Intellect?” he muttered to the woman.

  “Intact,” she replied.

  “Here again,” Georg said, still looking down at the file. “Look, same as before…”

  As I sat there watching these three people, my attention was taken by the new man’s build. His body looked out of proportion. At first I couldn’t work out what it was, then I realized that his legs were far too short. Which meant that he had an extremely low waist. The end result was about right. He was more or less of normal height, but now that I came to think about it he was almost entirely torso. It looked a bit odd when you saw the three of them standing next to each other.

  The woman with the bank name took out another diagram. Georg interjected from the other side: “We can’t possibly allow continued access as things stand,” he said.

  “No,” the man with the torso whispered. “He’s past the debt ceiling, so we’ll have to impose a 6:3 on him.”

  The others reacted sharply.

  “A 6:3?”

  One of them took out another document. The meeting moved farther along the table as the paperwork spread out. They slowly sat down as they carried on talking.

  “He can’t request any deductions either,” the woman said. “He hasn’t really had any grounds on each of the…” She fell silent for a moment. Almost as if she had lost her train of thought.

  As if on a given signal, all three stopped and looked over at me. Astonished.

  I realized that I was something special. Georg broke the silence.

  “But,” he began slowly, “as I understand it, his repayment capacity is practically zero?”

  The woman and Georg took turns tapping new numbers into a calculator.

  The man with the bushy eyebrows and short legs was still staring at me. He very slowly leaned across the table and held out his hand, as if it had only just occurred to him that he ought to shake my hand. I took hold of it, and he pressed my hand, at the same time as continuing his conversation with the other two.

  “Have we carried out a home inventory?” he said, still not taking his eyes off me. As if the handshake were taking place in a parallel world.

  Georg and the woman both shook their heads. The man with the eyebrows replied with a low rumble of disapproval.

  “See that it gets done as soon as possible.”

  He leaned back and sat down on his chair again.

  “Well…,” he said, looking through the file until he found my name. Then, when he evidently realized it was too late to get personal, he didn’t bother to say it. He simply nodded, as if he were content merely to know what my name was.

  “Your debt has just been increased to 149,500,000 kronor.”

  The inspectors came early the next day. I opened the door and let them into the apartment just after half past seven in the morning. They were large and taciturn. Careful and thorough. They worked efficiently and almost without speaking to each other. They went through my belongings quickly and methodically, rather like customs officers. A woman in the same sort of uniform looked through my clothes and registered the things in the bathroom. I tried to help them as much as I could, but soon realized that they were best left to their own devices.

  For each item they made a small mark in a pad. They pulled out my kitchen drawers, opened my cupboards. Checked my pictures and photographs. They dealt with some things in bulk. One of the men looked at only a couple of my vinyl records, for instance. And not even the two most valuable. None of them noticed my copy of Jimmy Smith’s Softly as a Summer Breeze, for example, no scratches, original pressing. The one checking the records merely shook his head and made a note.

  An hour later they were finished. One of them handed me a “next-of-kin form” that he said
I should fill in. They thanked me and left.

  I sat on the floor looking at my things. Now that the men had gone, they felt even more worthless.

  —

  It was oppressively hot inside the apartment. The kind of sticky heat that clung to your body. Like having a tight helmet round your brain. It was as bad as trying to breathe in a sauna, and it didn’t get any better when I opened the windows even wider. The sultry air outside was completely still. Swallows were flying low. I looked at the piece of paper in my hand and wondered who I should give as my next of kin. Jörgen? Roger? In the end I wrote my sister’s name and address.

  I paced up and down in my boiling-hot living room and tried to make sense of my thoughts. Had I presented everything wrong? Was there something I’d missed? Was it really possible to claim, as W.R.D. were, that I had taken the best from my relationship with Sunita? Okay, so our relationship was already starting to feel a bit tired when we separated. We didn’t really share any interests beyond film, and we didn’t agree on most things. She had a rather spoiled way of looking at the world, but at the same time she could seem pretty helpless. She was provocatively uninterested in other cultures, and declared on one occasion when we were having a row that I was more or less insignificant. That what we had together was only a parenthesis, something that didn’t count, and, quite regardless of what she might feel now, would have absolutely no impact on her future. It was as if she didn’t really value her own feelings. As if everything she had with me, all the films and her education, our entire culture, was just one long dream. Soon enough she would be going back to reality. She was Daddy’s little princess, and when I once pointed out that he didn’t seem to have been in touch for several years it was enough to make her expression freeze and break the spell between us.

  It wasn’t that great standing outside in different places in the winter and shivering, waiting for a sign that might or might not come. Toward the end she had almost seemed a bit bored, as if she had had enough. I daresay we both realized that it wouldn’t have lasted much longer, but the fact that we were forced to split up suddenly made the whole thing feel incredibly sad. And the pain. The pain! I could still feel it as I walked back and forth, sweating, between the window and the living-room table.