Everything I Don't Remember (15 page)

*

Things seemed a little empty. I have to admit that. I saw him when he came home to pick up some underwear or drop off dirty laundry, and each time I suggested that we hang out,
have a few drinks, go out and take the pulse of the city. But Samuel didn’t have time, he always had to take off, he packed plastic bags full of shirts and underwear, shouted bye, and then he
was gone again.

*

What do you mean “try being a little more concrete”? What is it you want to know, exactly? How often we fucked? Which positions we used? Whether I had single or
multiple orgasms? Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I wouldn’t be able to give you many more details. We hung out in bed ninety percent of the time, but we slept like three hours per
night because there were endless amounts we had to say. The threads of thought of all those conversations formed a finely meshed net that tied us together and every time we started talking about a
new subject there were ten links back to something we’d talked about before breakfast and twenty links to something we would talk about later that evening and even though we shared all these
words it feels totally bizarre to realize how little I actually remember of our conversations. One evening we couldn’t agree on whether Japp bars and Mars bars were the exact same kind of
candy with different names, or different kinds of candy with similar ingredients, so we ran down to the kiosk and bought one of each and arranged a blind taste-test. Why do I remember that in
particular? Out of all those first intense conversations about parental conflicts and generational anxiety and childhood fears and sibling envy and hopes for the future, I remember that taste-test,
how we sat there naked in my bed with the pieces of chocolate in front of us, immediately unsure which kind was which.

*

No, I didn’t feel lonely. I didn’t feel deserted. I was glad for Samuel. He seemed happy, and his happiness made me happy. It was just sometimes, if we happened to
run into each other at home and I asked how it was going and he replied that it was absolutely fantastic and he had never experienced anything like it in his life and he really hoped I would one
day get the chance to feel the power of being really, really in love, of loving someone in a way that made you go completely limp at the thought that something might happen to the other person,
sometimes, for a brief moment, I would feel a little bit like an outsider.

*

Yes. There was a difference. One is a little fluffier, the other tastes more of caramel. But I don’t remember which is which.

*

Around the time Samuel vanished, I started having trouble getting hours at work. Blomberg said that it had to do with a lack of customers, that there was an economic crisis and
fewer people could afford to hire a moving company. But at the same time we figured something was up because the moving trucks were just as busy as usual. There were new last names in the schedule
binders, non-Swedish names that weren’t listed in the salary binders. The owners of these names came in early and worked late and the only difference between us and them was they didn’t
have T-shirts with the company logo, they didn’t have lifting belts, and they had to bring their own work gloves. At the end of the day, they received their pay in cash, just like we did.

*

One weekend we were sitting in my courtyard. It was five in the morning, we had flipped day and night, we were wrapped in blankets, everything had that special gray dawn light
with haze in the air and frost on the grass and we were whispering so we wouldn’t wake the neighbors. We had been talking about our family backgrounds, I told him how my mom fled here, how
she and my sister had been given a spot at the camp outside Borås, how they had waited there hoping that my dad would arrive before I was born but everything took a long time, there were
papers and political issues that had to be dealt with and when Mom had me my sister stayed with a Nigerian family they had gotten to know at the camp and some kid in that family thought I should be
called Adelaide, but I’ve always used Laide when I’m in Sweden. The only place that nickname doesn’t work is in Francophone countries. I was three when Dad finally came to Sweden
and he had changed, he wasn’t the man Mom had left behind, he had grown thin and hard and they stayed together for several years anyway, they divorced when I was twelve, Dad moved to
Malmö and Mom still lives here, she’s with a Swedish man now, they live in a terrace house in Tullinge.

Samuel sat quietly and listened. When it was his turn he told me about his parents, his Swedish mom and his North African dad who had met at a bar in Andalusia, his mom was there as an exchange
student and his dad worked as an undercover security guard at a mall, they had started talking, they exchanged addresses, a few years later his dad came to Sweden for a visit, they became a couple,
they got married, Samuel’s sister was born, then came Samuel, his parents were happy at first and then less happy, Sweden changed, Samuel’s dad started to worry that he would be fired
from his job (Samuel never said what sort of work he did), he got sick (Samuel never said with what, and I didn’t want to dig for details), his mom decided she wanted a divorce and Samuel
took his mom’s side, there was some sort of conflict and even though Samuel didn’t specify what it was about I got the feeling it had to do with money, it was something about an
insurance policy his mom had through her job that his dad got a lot of money from and then his dad broke off contact with his children and moved back and they hadn’t heard from him since,
that was many years ago. As we sat there a newspaper delivery guy ran in and out of doors, he had a reflective vest on, a large blue two-wheeled cart full of rolled-up papers. We sat there on the
ice-cold outdoor furniture and Samuel nodded toward an apartment on the ground floor where the living room was lit by a string of lights. Out of nowhere he said:

“You know those built-in bookcases? I could never have ones like that.”

“Why not?”

“Every time I see them, I think they’re going to collapse.”

We took the stairs up to my apartment and fell asleep to the sound of the neighbors’ kids’ footsteps,
electric kettles, gurgling pipes, and the mumble of morning TV.

*

The discontent grew stronger among those of us who had worked there longest. Bogdan called the new hires “pack mules” and Luciano said that if he didn’t get
more hours next month he would have trouble making rent and upkeep. Marre had worked with one of the new guys the week before, apparently he was “a Romanian from Bulgaria or maybe a Bulgarian
from Romania,” and he had told Blomberg some sob story about how he was here illegally and couldn’t work and had to support three children.

“But have you seen his fingers?” said Marre. “No ring anywhere.”

“Maybe he has kids without being married,” said Bogdan. “Like you do?”

“Hardly,” said Marre. “And I don’t have three kids. Plus can’t you work legally if you come from Romania or Bulgaria? Aren’t they part of the EU? I swear they
just
choose
to work under the table because they don’t give a shit about insurance or retirement. People like him are the reason we’re in the shit.”

Bogdan and Luciano nodded and I agreed. I felt the same way. But at the same time, I wasn’t all that worried. I thought the job was just temporary anyway. I could always find something
else. The world was full of possibilities. All you had to do was make use of your strengths, call your contacts, go out into the working world, and help yourself.

*

Another time Samuel told me that he had taken standard Arabic classes for five years and all he remembered were a few random words.

“Like what?” I asked.

“
Mohandis
and
fellah
, for example.”

I laughed and asked if his teachers had focused on anything besides occupations.

“Yes, but those were the things that stuck. That and the fruits. I’ve forgotten everything else. But I can still read and write. It’s just the words themselves I need to brush
up on.”

We were standing down by Söderbysjön, the sun was going down, dogs were swimming in the lake, birds were flitting about. I thought about it as we walked home, that it was typical
Samuel somehow, to learn to read and write but not remember any of what he needed to be able to communicate naturally with people.

*

I think we’ll take a break there. We’re about halfway through. The juiciest stuff is coming up soon. But before we go on, I want to talk financials. How much are you
planning to pay me for this? Do you want to go with a percentage of the book sales or a lump sum in advance? It’s up to you. I’m flexible.

*

Okay. I understand that you’re “super worried about getting bogged down in clichés.” But remember, I’m the one describing what happened.
It’s up to you to rework it so it makes good fiction. We really did stand there in the sunset by Söderbysjön. The colors turned red and then blue. We turned into oblong shadows that
wandered home through the dusky forest. We took off our clothes and lay down next to each other. We listened to each other’s heartbeats. If you want to write later on that something else
happened, I guess that’s your prerogative. I’m just telling you the truth.

*

Okay. I understand what you mean. I hear what you’re saying. But I didn’t agree to meet you because I like charity cases. I’m not free. My time has a price
tag. Even if I am stuck in here. I’m giving you my memories, my stories. It’s simple logic that you should give me some sort of monetary compensation.

*

For thirty years I had been looking for someone to make me feel like I was one with the world. And then there was Samuel. And I celebrated by building a bubble and keeping the
world at a distance. But the world was bigger than us.

*

What the fuck do you mean “a couple thousand in cash”? Do I look like a whore? I want to know here and now what you’re prepared to give me to continue this
story. There’s a lot left to tell. All the important stuff is coming up next and I’m not going to say any more until we have come to an agreement.

*

My friends were curious about Samuel, of course, and the more I withheld the details the more they wanted to know. I hesitated to allow them into our world. My sister, though, explained to my
friends that I was hanging around with a guy named Samuel.

“He’s young. He’s beautiful. He has an extremely large head, very narrow shoulders, and when they first met I called him ‘the convert.’ Not as in Muslim turned
Christian but as in gay turned straight.”

But my sister hadn’t met him either. I had no reason to show us off. Samuel and I were the couple, it wasn’t him and my friends or him and my sister. But now—in
retrospect—I wonder if it wasn’t some sort of strategy to prolong our happiness. On some level maybe I knew we would become less
us
once we crashed into the outside world.

*

I don’t give a shit if “everyone else participated for free.” I’m not everyone else. I’m Vandad. And I’m not going to say another word until
you come up with an offer that makes this worth my time.

*

One spring evening I had a glass of wine with my sister at Babylon. She had come straight from her job at the Museum of Natural History, she was wearing a T-shirt from a new
exhibit under her denim jacket.

“Nice, huh?”

She showed me the print. It was two pandas hugging in a yin-yang type circle. One was smiling, one looked pained.

“I like this one’s face—check it out, it looks like he’s suffocating.”

I went up to the bar to order. The place was full of hipsters in skinny jeans, bearded queers, glitzy PR girls, and tattooed preschool teachers. We were sitting at a small table outside. Two
druggies were walking around in the park in front of the place, digging through the grass, it looked like they had buried something and then forgotten where it was.

“Haven’t seen you for a while,” said my sister.

“You know.”

“Is he good?”

“We’re great.”

“How great?”

“Really great.”

“You’re glowing, sis.”

*

[No one says anything. Vandad looks at me. I look at Vandad.]

*

“This is the first time I’ve felt this way,” I said.

“Super,” said my sister. “But you said that about your ex-husband too.”

“Did I? But this is different.”

“You said that about Emil too.”

“Yes, I know. But I’ve never felt this . . . whole.”

“But you said that about Sebbe too.”

“Oh, lay off—I’m sure I didn’t say that. He was a soccer hooligan, for Chrissake. There was nothing about him that can come close to what Samuel and I have.”

“Samuel?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Say that again.”

“What? Samuel?”

My sister laughed, drops of beer rained across our table.

“What?”

“No, no, it’s nothing. Sorry. It’s not his name. It’s just the way you say it.
Samuel
. I’ve actually never heard you say someone’s name like that
before. Try saying it without smiling.”

“What are you talking about? I say it normally. Samuel. Samuel?”

My sister laughed some more, the druggies looked up from their digging.

“That’s what I’m telling you. This is different.”

“What does he do?”

“He works at the Migration Board.”

My sister had to hold onto the edge of the table so she wouldn’t fall off her chair laughing.

“Stop. It’s not like you think. He doesn’t deal with asylum cases. He only works on bureaucratic stuff.”

My sister managed to calm herself down and wiped a tear of laughter from one eye. Two prim stylist girls at the table next to us were giving us the side-eye.

“What? Haven’t you ever seen someone laugh?”

The girls quickly looked down at their glasses and tried not to roll their eyes.

“Ugh, this fucking country.”

My sister shook her head and lowered her voice.

“And what’s the deal with his roommate?”

“I don’t know. But I get a sketchy vibe from him.”

*