Everything I Don't Remember (2 page)

“You don’t happen to know where I can find a knife, do you?” he asked me.

I pointed at the knife block.

“Thanks.”

Samuel took a watermelon from the fruit bowl, split it in half, and asked if I wanted a piece. I nodded. Then he cruised through the kitchen, handing out pieces of watermelon to anyone who
wanted one.

“Lame party,” he said when he came back.

I nodded.

“Are you guys going somewhere else later?”

I shrugged.

“Do you want to try something cool? Here—stick your hand in here.”

Samuel held out the watermelon half. I wondered if he was entirely sane.

“Seriously—do it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It will be memorable.”

And without really knowing why, I put out my hand and stuck it into the melon.

“How does it feel? Weird, right? Awesome? Now it’s my turn.”

It didn’t feel like anything special. Wet. And crisp. I pulled my hand out of the watermelon and Samuel stuck his own in. The other people in the kitchen looked at us like we were pissing
in the sink. But Samuel just smiled and asked if they wanted to try it.

“You’ll regret it,” he said when they shook their heads.

*

The neighbor sighs. He stood there. Next to his grandma’s Opel. With his hand raised in greeting. And I was close to waving back. But then I saw the soot-covered yard,
the remains of what had been his grandma’s attic, the black burn marks on the roof of my garage. I remembered how badly it might have ended if the wind had been blowing in a different
direction. I looked away. But it was harder than I would have expected. I nearly had to do this so my hand wouldn’t wave all on its own [pushing his right hand down with his left]. Some
things are so deeply ingrained that it’s impossible to stop yourself. You’ve done them all your life and they’re just automatic. It’s like with sexuality.

*

Samuel wiped his hand and introduced himself. I didn’t know which name I should use because when I was out doing rounds with Hamza I never gave my real name. One time I
called myself “Örjan.” Another time I introduced myself as “Travolta.” Once when we slipped into a private party in Jakobsberg, on the hunt for twin sisters who had
borrowed money to keep their hair salon afloat, I called myself “Hoobastank.” I could say anything I wanted, because when you look a certain way no one would dare to tell you that your
name is not your name. But when Samuel introduced himself I told him my real name. I braced myself for the inevitable questions. “What did you say? Vamdad? Vanbab? Van Damme? Oh, Vandad. What
kind of name is that? What does it mean? Where are your parents from? Did they come here as political refugees? Were you born here? Are you whole or half? Do you feel Swedish? How Swedish do you
feel? Do you eat pork? By the way, do you feel Swedish? Can you go back? Have you gone back? How does it feel to go back? Do you maybe feel foreign when you’re here and Swedish when
you’re there?” When people realized I didn’t want to talk origins they would ask about working out, whether I liked protein drinks, or what I thought about MMA.

*

The neighbor pushes away his coffee cup and clears his throat. In retrospect, I think I might as well have waved back. What difference could it have made? Maybe none at all.
Samuel’s day would have started out a bit more pleasantly. He would have been in a slightly better mood when he pulled out into traffic. But there was no way I could know that it would be the
last time I saw him.

*

Samuel was different. Samuel didn’t try to talk origins or working out. Samuel just said:

“Vandad? Like the shah who battled Genghis Khan? Rad.”

Then he devoted ten minutes to talking about Mongols. He said that point-five percent of the men in the world share DNA with Genghis Khan solely because he had sex with-slash-raped so many
girls. He said that Genghis Khan’s empire was the largest in world history and that the Mongols killed like forty million people. He said that the Mongols punished cheapskate village
chieftains by pouring freshly melted, red-hot gold into their bodily orifices until they were fried. I had no clue why this scrawny little dude was talking to me about Mongols, and I had no clue
why I was listening. But there was something different about the way we were chatting. We never brought up jobs, addresses, or backgrounds. We only talked about Mongol weaponry, their battle
techniques, their loyalty, their horses. Or. Mostly Samuel was the one doing the talking, and I listened. But when the girl whose party it was came into the kitchen and saw us standing there, super
deep in conversation, it was as if she started seeing me in a different light. I liked the way she was looking at me.

“How do you know all of this?” I asked, thinking that maybe he was a history teacher.

“I don’t know,” Samuel said, and smiled. “I think it comes from some computer game. My memory is fucking weird. Some things just stick.”

“But mostly they just vanish,” said his red-blanket-clad friend, as she came back in from the balcony in a cloud of smoke.

*

The neighbor brushes a few crumbs from the vinyl tablecloth and says that he certainly isn’t like
some
people in the neighborhood. I don’t have any prejudices
against people from other countries. I have never understood the point of different cultures isolating themselves from each other. I love to travel. Ever since I retired I’ve spent the winter
abroad. Indian food is very good. There’s a guy who works at the fish counter at Konsum who’s from Eritrea and he is very nice. I had no problem at all when new people started moving
into Samuel’s grandmother’s house. It didn’t bother me that some of the women had veils. On the other hand, I didn’t like it that they used the grill out on the roof terrace
and threw their garbage bags in my garbage can. But that had nothing to do with their background.

*

When Hamza came back, the mood in the kitchen was transformed. People held their glasses closer to their bodies.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Do fags fuck in the woods?” he said.

“Why do fags fuck in the woods?” Samuel asked.

“Aw, it’s a fucking figure of speech,” Hamza said. “Read a book and maybe you won’t have to broadcast your ignorance.”

Hamza and I took off; I noticed that he was in a mood, something had gotten into him, it was going to be a long night. I was right, before the night was over some stuff had happened, I
can’t get into exactly what, but I backed him up, I didn’t let him down, I’d said that I would be with him all the way and I was, I had his back, loyal as a Mongol. But on the way
home I promised myself I’d scale back and try to find a new way to pay the rent.

*

The neighbor shakes my hand and wishes me good luck in reconstructing Samuel’s last day. If I were to give you one piece of advice, it would be to keep it simple. Just
tell what happened—no frills. I’ve read parts of your other books, and it seemed like you were making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself.

The nurses’ aide on the first floor says that she doesn’t want her real name to appear in the book. Call me “Mikaela” instead. I’ve always wanted
to be “Mikaela.” I had a friend in daycare with that name, and I was always so jealous that she could say it and no one would ask her any questions about where she was from and what her
name meant. She looked pretty much like me but because of her name she was treated differently. Put that I didn’t really know Samuel. I had only met him a few times at work; all I did was
open the door for him when he visited his grandma. The last time he was here I heard a rapping sound at the door, a sharp noise that hurt my ears, and when I came out Samuel was standing there
knocking on the glass with a car key. I had given him the code before and once I had even given him my mnemonic, the one I used to remember the code at first, but now there he was again, knocking
and looking kind of ashamed when he saw me. He looked like he’d just woken up. He was holding a plastic bag that was full to bursting and a round ring of vapor had formed in front of his
mouth and I recall wondering how long he had been standing there trying to remember the code.

*

Nothing in particular. Believe me. If it was crucial to the story I would tell you. Some crap. Shenanigans. Hamza was meeting a guy who owed him money, and the guy and Hamza
were not in complete agreement about how big the loan was. We had to take him to the bathroom and remind him of the amount. Nothing serious, I don’t think he even reported it. It was just a
normal night that ended with us calling our taxi-driver contact, who took us home nice and quick with no receipt. Hamza was giggling in the backseat, he was happy with the night’s profits, he
counted out bills for me and as usual he said that we ought to join forces, strike out on our own, not just slave for other people. But I had decided I was done with all that.

*

“Mikaela” smiles when I ask about her mnemonic. I mean, it sounds super nerdy when you say it, but that’s the thing about mnemonics, the nerdier they are the
better they work, and back then the code was fourteen seventy-two and I always thought that the job was like a mix between entering a world war—fourteen—and being kidnapped by
terrorists in an Olympic village—seventy-two. I shared my rule with Samuel twice because I was tired of opening the door for him, and here I had to do it again, I opened it and said hi and
asked him, didn’t he remember the mnemonic?

“Mnemonic?” he said.

And I thought: Okay, it’s one thing not to remember the code, and another to not remember the mnemonic. But it is pretty weird if you can’t even remember that you ever heard a
mnemonic. I might even have been thinking: Okay, it’s a family trait, see you here in a few years.

*

Later that same week I contacted a moving company. I knew some people who had gotten jobs there on short notice. Blomberg was sitting there with his yellow baseball cap and his
headset and his binders and when I came in and introduced myself his eyes wandered from one of my shoulders to the other.

“Do you have a driver’s license?”

I nodded.

“Are you a Swedish citizen?”

I nodded.

“When can you start?”

*

The nurses’ aide on the second floor has no problem at all having his real name in the book. My name is Gurpal but everyone calls me Guppe. Do you want my last name too?
Write that I’m thirty-eight years young and single, I like long walks, space movies, and R. Kelly, but not his dirtiest songs. I’ve been working here for two years, almost three, but
it’s just temporary, I’m actually a musician, I have a small studio at home, built it myself, a converted closet where I record my own songs, it’s modern soul but in Swedish, lots
of strings and a piano, seasoned with bhangra influences, hip-hop beats, and melodic refrains. A buddy described it as up-tempo trip-hop pressed through a filter of jazzy soul, it’s urban pop
music marinated in classic bebop, with a jungle streak. Oh, it sounds wack when I describe it but I’d be happy to send you a few songs if you want to take a listen?

*

Before we get back to what happened then, I want to know a little more about you. How did you come up with this idea? Why do you want to tell Samuel’s story? Who else have
you talked to?

*

Guppe says it was the end of his shift when Samuel came out of the elevator. It was nine thirty but his grandmother had been up since seven and was asking about him every ten
minutes. By the time he finally arrived, she had fallen asleep.

“How is she?” Samuel asked, stifling a yawn.

“It seems to be a good day today,” I said. “Are you moving in?”

Samuel smiled and looked down at the plastic bag, which was as full as a trash bag.

“No, no, just a few things from her house. Nostalgia stuff. Thought it might be nice to have.”

“For you or for her?”

“Both. Have you heard this classic?”

Samuel dug a CD out of the bag. On the cover was a transparent toy piano full of candies.

“
Ear
Candy Seven
?”

Samuel nodded.

“By Lars Roos. Also famous for the masterpieces
Ear Candy One
through
Six.
Grandma listened to him all the time when I was little.”

Samuel walked over to his grandma, who was sitting in the TV room and napping. She was wearing white shoes, a thin beige jacket, and a skirt whose color I don’t remember. Her suitcase
stood next to her. I had tried to explain that she didn’t need it, that she was only going to the hospital and then she would come back. But she contradicted me; she said she had to bring it
along and if there was anything I’d learned in my time here it was that you couldn’t change her mind once she had made it up. “I’m not stubborn,” she liked to say.
“But I never give in.”

*

Okay. Take it easy. Put your CV away. I don’t give a crap which publisher does your books. I don’t care what else you’ve written. I’m just curious as to
what about your personal history makes you the right person to tell this story. What made you want to write about
Samuel
?

*

Guppe says that Samuel stood there looking at his grandma for a minute or two before he woke her up. She was snoring. She was sitting there with her mouth like this [he opens
his mouth wide as if he’s trying to tan the back of his throat by the fluorescent ceiling light]. Her suitcase was beside her and when Samuel opened it, out fell tea-light holders, a cake
slice, and two remote controls. Samuel patted her cheek [touches his own cheek twice, closes his eyes] and she gave a start and rubbed her eyes. She looked at her grandson. For a second or two, it
was as if she didn’t remember him. Then she smiled and cried [makes his arms into airplane wings]:

“At last!”

And then:

“What a surprise!”

They went to her room. When they came back out, Samuel was wearing this mangy brown fur hat. He had the suitcase and plastic bag in one hand, and he was using his other arm to steady his
grandmother.

“We’re off!” she cried with a wave. “It was nice running into you.”