Jonas Khemiri - Everything I Don’t Remember

*

Later that night, all was forgotten, he came out of his room and walked around the kitchen with the sweeping gestures of a mental patient.

“She’s so fine, so fine, so incredibly fine.”

“Okay. Do you want coffee now?”

“We have such fucking amazing conversations. It feels like she gets me.”

“Okay. Coffee?”

“But we have so much more fun when we chat on the phone than when we meet.”

“I’ll pour you some coffee. How many times have you seen each other?”

“Once.”

“That’s all?”

“Both of us have a lot to do at work, with Christmas coming up.”

(Brackets: This was in the middle of November.)

Why didn’t Samuel want to see Laide? Or was she the one who didn’t want to see him? Was she cheating with someone else? Did he have a feeling it would end badly? Was he afraid that she would hurt him? Was he in love with someone else? If I knew the answer, I’d tell you.

Samuel said that Laide had moved home from Brussels, and now she was going around with a lump in her stomach because she had to be here, not that she didn’t like it here, but because it felt like the world was still turning without her, somewhere else.

“And that’s exactly the way I feel!” Samuel cried as if he had found the answer to the riddle of the universe.

“You do? I’ve never heard you talk about that before.”

“No, but it’s obvious, isn’t it? That you can long to be somewhere else sometimes.”

Then apparently they talked for a long time about how Samuel could possibly work at the Migration Board.

“Why?” I asked.

“I guess she’s thinking of my background.”

“What about your background?”

“Well, how Dad had political friends who had a rough time, and. . you know.”

“No, I don’t know. Are you not allowed to work wherever you want, just because your dad’s friends have a certain history?”

“Well, but, I don’t even want to work there.”

“That doesn’t matter, does it?”

I didn’t really know what we were talking about, but we didn’t agree. Samuel filled the kettle and asked if I was hungry.

“Cottage-noodles?”

“Cottage-noodles. Want some?”

I nodded.

*

A few days went by after our first meeting. Then Samuel called.

“Everything’s fine on my end,” I said. “You?”

“Yes, thanks. Everything’s fine. Just wanted to see how things were. Later, then.”

He hung up and I stood there with my phone in hand, wondering what the hell he was up to. A few days later he called again and this time we talked for longer, at least ten minutes, before I had to go and take a work call. The third conversation lasted twenty minutes, the fourth an hour and a half. When we weren’t together in person, we could be much more relaxed with each other. He told me about his background, his childhood, how he had a crush on a girl in the same basketball league in upper secondary school, they hung around at all-night cafes, her religious family suspected they were a couple, she ran away from home to get away from her relatives, they slept in a bunk bed in his room for six months but he couldn’t bring himself to confess his feelings. Now she lived in Berlin and was trying to make a living as an artist, even though she seemed to spend most of her time going to art parties. Another time Samuel told me about friends who had died, the guy who drove his motorcycle drunk and crashed into a bridge railing, the guy who overdosed when he was working at a summer camp, the girl who was bitten by a snake when she was in Sri Lanka to visit the woman who had given her up for adoption.

“But that kind of thing happens,” Samuel said. “Life goes on.”

I sat there on my sofa, feeling empty by comparison. I didn’t know anyone my age who had died. My friends had political jobs and talked about the importance of social mobility, they traveled to third-world countries on aid money, they wrote papers about feminist mass media and articles about LGBTQ issues, but hardly any of them came from a background where death was present. For us, death was something that affected old people. Death was something we saw in the movies, or something we read about in articles from war zones. Death wasn’t part of real life the way it was for Samuel.

“But that’s true for me too,” he objected. “Death has never come really close. But for Vandad. .”

I didn’t say anything, waiting for him to finish the sentence. Or at least explain what he meant. In what way had death touched Vandad? In my mind I saw several potential explanations lined up, each as dull and reasonable as the next. Vandad works as an undertaker. He has a second job at a morgue. He’s a gardener at a cemetery. But Samuel never finished that sentence.

*

We ate cottage-noodles and drank Castillo and it was like a peace pipe. Cottage-noodles was the dish Samuel made most often. The recipe went like this: pour boiling water (free) over a packet of three-minute noodles (four for ten kronor) and once it’s cooled, you put a scoop of cottage cheese (twenty-five kronor for a whole tub) on top. Then sprinkle some herb salt and pepper on it. If you want to be really fancy you can add broccoli, too.

“How often do you actually eat cottage-noodles?” I asked.

“Not that often. No more than three times a week. But I can mix up the flavors, you know. One day you go with beef noodles and red pepper-flavored cottage cheese, the next week it’s mushroom noodles with onion cottage cheese. The possibilities are endless.”

Samuel raised his glass. We had a toast. I took a portion of cottage-noodles and remembered when I used to go on rounds with Hamza. Five-course dinners to celebrate a good night. The bottles we’d order without even popping them. The drinks, appetizers, the feeling of never having to squash an impulse. Times were different now. In many ways, better. In some ways, worse.

*

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we had just kept going on like that. Never seeing each other. Only talking on the phone. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t have been for the best. Just imagine if that was the point when we were happiest, when our expectations for the future were greatest and our daily life seemed most distant. Before we started the home, before we started sleeping together, before we turned into that strange couple who might go to bed without making up after a fight about whether or not we should buy organic coffee. Maybe it would have worked out if we’d kept to just talking to each other for several hours and it felt like our words opened up parts of my brain that I hadn’t activated for several years.

*

After dinner we watched video clips on his computer. We took turns, he showed me two minutes of Frenchmen climbing up a crane without safety cables, I showed him Japanese monkeys chilling in a hot spring with snow on their heads, he went with a killer whale attacking its trainer, I showed some Eastern bloc workout-fail videos from the early eighties. We were half-lying on the sofa bed in his room, it was full of his clothes, his shirts, his scents. On the table was an ad flyer from Elgiganten, and Mike Tyson was visible on one of the TV screens on it. Samuel pointed at him and said:

“Mike the Rock Tyson.”

Which was an odd thing to say because Tyson has been called a lot of things, but never the Rock. Then Samuel yawned and said he needed to sleep. I stood up. On his way to the bathroom he asked if I had plans for New Year’s.

“No, not really,” I said. “Why?”

“Apparently she has a friend who’s having a party.”

“Who?”

“Laide. We’re all invited.”

“What do you mean, ‘all’?”

“Didn’t I tell you? Panther is coming up to celebrate New Year’s with us.”