Jonas Khemiri - Everything I Don’t Remember

“I just wanted to talk to her,” I said.

He didn’t respond.

“She started it.”

Samuel went to the bathroom to get his toothbrush.

“I don’t know what you heard — but it really wasn’t anything serious.”

Samuel said he’d heard other things as well, like that I had exaggerated my rent to get him to pay more (untrue). And that I had started extorting money from people in the house (also not entirely true).

“Who told you that?” I said.

“Laide was fucking right,” Samuel mumbled. “You can’t trust anyone.”

When he wanted to leave, I stood in his way. He looked at me. The light in his eyes had gone out. I stepped aside. We parted. Not as enemies, but not as best friends either.

*

I speed up, cross the bridge, and zoom up to the home. All the parking spots are full, so I drive up to the entrance and help Grandma out of the passenger seat.

“You can’t park here,” Grandma says.

“It’s fine. We’ll be quick.”

I empty the plastic bag into her suitcase. The photos and perfume bottles, Grandpa’s fur cap and the Lars Roos CD with the see-through grand piano. Then I follow her to the front door. I remember the mnemonic and enter the code.

“Did everything go well?” asks an aide I don’t recognize.

“Not too bad,” Grandma says.

“Oh my, what happened?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Grandma says, waving her foot.

“Ingrown nails,” I say.

We hug, I kiss her on the cheek, it’s rough and full of liver spots, she smells like Grandma, she will always smell like Grandma, which is adult diapers and old-lady perfume and Emser lozenges and a faint hint of Vademecum.

“Thanks for our day,” I say.

“That’s nothing to thank me for.”

I leave. I take the elevator down. Then I discover her suitcase and turn back. When I walk into the TV room she looks at me, throws out her arms, and cries:

“At last! I’ve been waiting so long!”

I hand over her suitcase, stand there for a few seconds. She wrinkles up her face.

“Well? If you’re waiting for a tip you’re wasting your time. I don’t have any change.”

When I get back to the car there’s a parking ticket on the windshield. It was written at five minutes to four. I curse, stuff the ticket into my wallet, and start the car.

*

That was the last time I saw Samuel. Although after the funeral I still saw him. Everywhere. I mean, not people who look like him, but him , I saw Samuel. For real. The real Samuel was walking around the streets of Stockholm. He was sitting at a cafe on Götgatan wearing a turquoise tank top, he was rushing by on an escalator and carrying a large kite, he was driving a silvery Citroën with rusty back tires as he spoke into one of those old-fashioned Bluetooth headsets that sits on your ear. And if it had been a movie I would have walked up and discovered that it wasn’t him at all, that it was someone else, an actor with similar features, but here, every time, I noticed that I looked away until the person had disappeared. I had no choice, it was like my body wanted to let me believe that he was still alive, that he was walking around with kites and driving Citroëns and sitting in cafes in turquoise tank tops.

*

I approach the place where it will happen, I exit the roundabout, I pass the gas station, the superstore, the McDonald’s drive-in. I’m not going terribly fast. I don’t recklessly try to pass any other cars. No one sees me, no one notices me. None of the oncoming cars have gone past the tree and thought, soon, right here, a car will go flying as if its driver has decided that the road should keep going straight ahead even though it curves to the left.

*

A few weeks after the funeral I heard Samuel’s voice. I was walking by Medborgarplatsen, I passed the lawn with the drummers and the drunks and the junkies and the class-cutting students and it’s not a place that has any link to Samuel at all. I had made it to, like, the fountain, and a few Roma were washing their clothes in the water, it was soapy, a couple of kids were cooling their feet, their mom was trying to get them to come back to their double stroller, the air smelled like grilled eggplant, a dog owner was sitting on a bench eating a popsicle with its paper peeled down like a banana, it was very normal, nothing was special, and suddenly I heard Samuel call my name. It’s true, I heard his voice, it sounded part happy, part annoyed, as if he had noticed me ages ago and was grumpy because he thought I had walked right by him, playing blind, as if we had decided to meet in this very spot and I had shown up twenty minutes late without calling.

*

I stop at the red light, I wait, I rev the engine, I think about Vandad, I think about Laide, I think about the house, I think about Grandma, I try to figure out how I feel, I tell myself I’m sad, I look at myself in the rear-view mirror, I try to cry, I try to squeeze out a few tears, but all I see is that blank face, that false body that has never felt a genuine emotion, that has never burst out in rage without considering it first, that has never kissed someone without thinking about how the kiss will look to outsiders, that is still waiting for emotion to win out over control someday, and when the red light turns green I put the pedal to the metal, I drive far too fast through the intersection, I pass the crosswalk going seventy, I take the first curve at ninety, whatever’s going to happen it has to happen now, I have to feel something, something has to make it in, it all can’t just keep trickling through, and when the road curves left I go straight, I didn’t plan it, it just happens, as the road stops and the car approaches the tree I’m still thinking, it’s fine, there’s no problem, my seatbelt must be good enough, the airbag will fix this, the hood of the car is hard, the tree is skinny, I don’t have any last thoughts, no last wishes, no flood of memories from my childhood, all I see is Panther putting on a turquoise turban and asking if I can tell it’s a towel, Grandma putting out her right hand and introducing herself, Laide looking up from the editorial page of Dagens Nyheter and roaring, “Have you read this piece of shit?” Vandad eating up the last slice of his two pizzas and asking if I’ve ever been in love with someone for real.

*

Even though my brain knew that Samuel was dead, my body spun around, my eyes searched for him, it was like my body wanted to show my brain that it still had hope that Samuel would one day call my name. I heard his voice, crystal-clear. I am one hundred percent sure of it. You don’t have to believe me, but I know that he called out for me. It was him. I know it.

*

I’m sure that this isn’t the end, the tree is getting closer, soon it will plow its way through the hood of the car, the rotational forces will crush my brain, my internal organs will be ripped apart, but for now I have all the time in the world, there are the clouds, and further off the tunnel and the gravel pit and the soccer field and the highway and I think about the noise, I wonder what it will sound like, if it will echo, explode, crash, rumble, squeal, how far the sound will travel, will the people standing at the bus stop be the first ones to reach me, will the kids on the soccer field notice what has happened before the ambulance arrives, how loud does a crash have to be for it to be heard all the way into the future, how fast do you have to go to survive in someone’s memory, how close to death do you have to come to be worth being turned into history? I move my foot from the gas to the brake, I ought to brake, I have to brake, at the same time as the tree the tires the windshield the shards of glass the smash and then the silence. They say it happens quickly but they’re lying. It lasts forever. I’m still there. Waiting for the tree. And afterwards, as if there is an afterwards, there are no sirens. No voices. No explosion. Just the hissing sound of steam from the crumpled engine that has been shoved all the way into the front seat. The squeal of bent windshield wipers moving back and forth, back and forth. Running steps. Voices. Chirping birds. Sirens. From far off: the chimes of an ice-cream truck. The click of a phone taking pictures. The wind whistling through what was so recently a car and what was so recently a person. Now it is happening. Now it is happening. I smile when it happens.