Jonas Khemiri - Everything I Don’t Remember

*

One time Samuel asked if I thought he was fake.

“What do you mean by fake?” I asked.

“Well, I mean, Laide insinuated that I was. Several times. That there is something wrong with the way I act around other people. She thought I conformed so much that I erased myself.”

“I’ve never thought about it,” I said, being almost completely honest.

“I think she has a point. Before her I never thought about the way I acted. I just was. Blissfully unaware, somehow. But now — the more I do it — the more fake I feel.”

He drank cup after cup of tea. He walked around at home like a pale, smelly ghost. I tried to tell him that the only way to get over an old love was with a new love. But he just looked at me and said he felt tired, terribly tired. I let him sleep for ages, I hoped he would find his way back to himself soon. After a few weeks had passed I suggested that I go over and have a talk with Laide. I thought I could mediate, get them back together. Better a Samuel who’s himself for short periods than a Samuel who has completely lost himself.

“Talk as in talk or talk as in ‘talk’?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we can always ask Valentin how he felt after your ‘conversation.’”

“Aw, that was forever ago. I meant that I would talk talk with her.”

“What would you say?”

“That she should apologize to you and reconsider.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t contact her.”

“Are you sure?”

“A thousand percent.”

*

A few weeks went by. I tried to find my way back to my daily routine. My sister moved in with me and I went back to work. Since I didn’t hear from anyone at the house, I thought everything had worked out. I hoped that Samuel’s family had decided not to sell it right away. Maybe they had even opted to keep it once they saw the good it did as a place of refuge. I thought, if that was the case, then Samuel’s and my relationship had been worth something. Or. That sounds weird. Of course it was worth something, no matter what happened to the house. But if the house were to live on as a refuge, then maybe the value of our relationship was more permanent. Ugh. That sounded wrong too. Get rid of that.

*

Since it’s a sign of good health when you start doing things you actually hate, I was happy when I noticed that Samuel started going back to the Migration Board. But he was still coming straight home after work. He didn’t want to find fun things to do on the weekends. He was moving strangely, he walked as if all his body parts were heavier than normal. I saw him stop abruptly in front of the mirror in the hall several times. He smiled, he looked angry, he scrutinized his face like it contained the answer to a riddle he had forgotten.

When several months had passed and Samuel was still acting odd, I took the bus to Bagarmossen. The same bus Samuel always took when he was with Laide. I crossed the square we had passed that New Year’s Eve that felt like a hundred years ago. I found the street and the front door. I pressed the light button and stood in the stairwell for a moment to gather my thoughts. Laide’s last name was on the list of occupants. I mostly wanted to get her to understand that she couldn’t treat people any way she pleased. I wanted to talk some sense into her. I wanted to explain to her that if Samuel shared her secrets with me it didn’t mean that Samuel didn’t love her, it meant that he loved her so much that he couldn’t stop talking about her. That everything that happened to him could be linked back to her and that it was impossible for him not to pass it on to me or write it down in one of his notebooks. I readied the words, I didn’t want to stumble over them, I was breathing calmly, I pressed the light button again. I was just about to walk up the stairs and ring her bell when Laide came through the door. She was carrying two grocery bags and the sight of me startled her.

*

My sister was going to go grocery shopping. I said I could take care of it. My sister refused, she insisted on going. I wanted to make sure to pay for it, at least. I found some bills and stuffed them in her jacket pocket. She took them out and put them on the bureau in the hall. They would stay there for several weeks, every time I saw them I shuddered and yet I couldn’t move them. Blood money, I thought when I saw them.

*

She looked the way she usually did, maybe just a little older. She was wearing her owl brooch and when I tried to talk to her she walked straight past me like I was invisible.

“Hey there, hold on a sec,” I said.

“What the fuck do you want?” she said in a voice that sounded harder than I remembered. She kept walking up the stairs briskly, and I walked behind her. I said that she ought to learn that there’s a difference between empty air and people and that everyone is worth listening to and when she didn’t listen, and instead walked even faster up the stairs, I ran to catch up with her and grabbed her wrist. Her grocery bags fell to the floor. Her self-confident smile vanished. Finally, she understood that I was serious. I never wanted to hurt her, I just wanted her to listen, but she yanked herself free and started screaming, and to make her be quiet I put one hand over her mouth and told her to calm down. Then she bit me and I adjusted my grip and told her that if she bit me one more time she would regret it.

“Just be quiet and listen, and everything will go fine, okay?”

But instead of listening she struggled and kicked me in the shin and I pushed her up against the wall to get a little distance. I wanted to say what I had come to say, that Samuel was unhappy and that she ought to reconsider, but I didn’t have time because she bit me again and this time her sharp teeth punctured my skin and the lights on the ceiling went out and for a few short seconds I lost control, I didn’t hit her but I shoved her, once against the wall and once against the railing. That was all. Two tiny shoves. Then I left the stairwell.

*

My sister didn’t come back from the store. After twenty minutes I was worried. I called her phone, and at first I thought she had forgotten it because I could hear it ringing, it was ringing somewhere in the apartment. I went from room to room and finally I realized that it was coming from the stairwell. I opened the door and hit the light button. She was lying on the second floor, the first thing I saw was her left arm lying at a strange angle from the rest of her body, the white shaft of bone was sticking out from the tear in her denim jacket, her face was turned toward the floor, there was blood on the wall, blood on the railing, her mouth was a gaping hole of broken teeth and split lip, she woke up when I touched her, she started crying when she saw me, she mewled, I held her, I said that everything would be fine, I screamed and kicked on doors until the neighbors came out into the stairwell.

*

I took the Metro so I wouldn’t be seen by any bus drivers. I hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. But she had gone on the attack and bitten up my hands and the lining of my jacket was wet with blood and it stiffened in the cold as I walked home from the Metro. I washed my hands and used paper towels to dry off so the towels wouldn’t turn red. Samuel was in his room. I went to my own room. I thought, if anything had gone wrong, it was Laide’s fault.

*

The police labeled it an attempted rape, but my sister said it felt more like a junkie looking for easy money. She put up a fight. He never got hold of her wallet.

*

Yes. Of course I regret it. But you have to understand, we’re talking about two shoves. Two tiny shoves. That was all.

*

After the attack I decided to leave the country. I couldn’t bear to stay. I couldn’t handle walking through that stairwell every day and thinking about my sister’s motionless body. I had promised myself not to stay for too long, and I wanted to keep my promise. In March of two thousand twelve I left Stockholm and moved to Paris. It felt like a weight was lifted from my body when I landed at Charles de Gaulle. Five days later I had picked up enough interpreting jobs to brave signing a lease on an apartment.