Frozen Tracks

25

MEMORIES LIKE NAILS BEING HAMMERED INTO HIS SKULL. BANG, bang, bang, in deep, and did it hurt? Did it hurt?!

There were no dreams out on the flats. Everything was emptiness and wind. He didn’t want to look heavenward, but where else was there to look? The filthy dome covered everything up above and at the sides.

It’s different here. I can see without things splitting inside my head.

He lay on the sofa. He looked up at the ceiling on which he had painted two scenes side by side. If he looked left he could see a starry sky, bright and radiant. He had painted the constellations from memory. If he looked right, the sun was shining from a blue sky that was the most beautiful one he’d seen. He’d made it himself, hadn’t he?

Sometimes he would draw a curtain that ran along a runner in the middle of the ceiling. He could go from night to day, and vice versa, as it suited him.

He felt a jab inside his head, and another. Memories again. “That couldn’t have hurt very much?!” The shadow above him, a peal of laughter. Several shadows, a circle around him. He could see only soil. It was raining. There were boots in front of his face. “Do you want to get up?” A boot. “He wants to get up.”

Was there anybody else there? He couldn’t remember.

He got up now, went into the other room, and sought out the new memories that didn’t hurt when he touched them: the car, the ball, the charm, and the watch. He held the watch up to the light coming from the street lamps as if it were dark in the room. The watch had stopped now and he tried to wind it up again, but nothing moved. It had stopped back then. It had been pulled off the boy’s arm and hit against something hard.

How had it been pulled off?

No, no, they were not good memories and he didn’t want to see pictures like that inside his head where there were already wounds from all the other stuff.

The boy hadn’t behaved as he should have. That’s what had happened, he hadn’t acted like the others to whom he’d shown things and who understood and who were nice and wanted him to be nice to them. The boy wasn’t like that, and it was a big disappointment when he realized it. He could think about that and remember. The disappointment.

He twirled the charm around in his hand. Rolled the ball on the floor. Pushed the car between the chair and the coffee table. A lap around the table leg.

It wasn’t enough. He let go of the car and stood up.

It wasn’t enough.

In front of the television screen he felt the relief; for a moment there were no memories. He had closed his eyes.

He could see now. The children were moving back and forth without knowing they were being filmed. Just think if they had known! Everything would have been different then. Not good.

He saw the girl’s face, the zoom on the camera worked. She seemed to be looking straight at the camera, but she couldn’t know.

He knew where she lived. He had waited and watched when they picked her up. He didn’t like them. Who were they? Did the girl belong to them? He didn’t think so. He would ask her. He would… and he started to sing a song in order to keep the thought of what he would do next time out of his mind. There was once a little girlie, tra la la la la, and a little boy, da da da da da.

There would be a next time, and it would be… bigger then. Bigger.

Next time he would do what he would’ve liked to do right from the start, but hadn’t been… brave enough. Cowardy cowardy custard!

You could hold hands. That would do.

He closed his eyes, looked, closed his eyes. Now all the children were there, as if they’d been given an order by the ladies who were standing like soldiers. He smiled. Like soldiers!

They were looking in his direction, straight into the camera that they couldn’t see. Nobody could see it or him. He’d left his car and stood hidden, just as everything else had disappeared into itself among the bushes and woods and trees. Grass. Stones, rocks, everything else there. Soil.

The children set off walking, in a long line. He followed them. Here at home on the sofa he could see how his hand was shaking as he emerged from the bushes; a branch came swooping toward the lens.

They were in the street. He was in the street. He was a long way away from them, but this was a good camera. One of the supervisors turned around and looked at it.

He leaned forward. She was still looking at the camera. He had zoomed in a bit closer. She turned away. She turned back again.

Buildings in the picture now. Uninteresting buildings that simply grew and grew upward and sideways. Cars in front of the picture, making it blurry.

He had turned the camera away to avoid that stare. It wasn’t her staring he wanted. Why was she there?

The buildings had gone now. He was somewhere else. He knew where. There were rocks behind the house. The girl was on a swing. Somebody was standing behind her. The girl swung higher and higher. He followed her up and down, up and down.

He sat there, following her with his head. The swing, the girl, the hands pushing from behind the girl. It looked to funny.

Somewhere else. A family, and he’d followed them until they grew smaller and smaller and no zoom in the world could have helped anymore.

Hours later, who could say how many. He drove past all the familiar places. Everything was the same as usual, but the light was brighter and dazzled him, must have dazzled others as well. Fir trees as if the forest had come walking to the roadside and left a deserted plain behind them. Then, when it’s all over, there will be no forest left anywhere at all. Only the fields where you couldn’t escape. Nowhere to hide.

There’s that park, and here’s this one. He knew them all so well. Everything was familiar.

“I’d like a monthly ticket, please.”

A woman sticking her face into his cab as if she wanted to squeeze her fat body through the opening and force him out through the window on the other side. That wouldn’t surprise him. They’re all the same. Pressing, forcing their big fat bodies against me, pressing up against me, their big fat bodies.

“Don’t you have monthly tickets onboard?” she asked.

“Er, yes, that’ll be 120 kronor please.”

“A hundred and twenty? They only cost a hundred at the newsstand.”

Buy one there, then, get out of here and buy a ticket there. At the newsstand. He didn’t want her here, in his streetcar. She was pressing. A man behind her was pressing. They wanted to get into here, into his cab. They wan-

“Why should I pay 120?”

“Because it costs 120.”

“But why?”

“I have to go now. Do you want a ticket or not? I have to get going now, you stupid bitch.”

“Wh… what did you say?”

“I have to get going now.”

“Wha… what did you call me?”

“I didn’t call you anything. I said I have to take off now because I have to meet a deadline at Söbergsgatan.”

“Söbergsgatan?”

“Söbergsgatan.”

“Söderbergsgatan?”

“Söbergsgatan.”

“Give me that ticket, then. I can’t stand here all day.”

“A hundred and twenty kronor.”

“Here.”

At last he was able to move again. The stupid bitch had disappeared toward the back of the streetcar. He could still smell her perfume. It was enough to make you sick. Imagine if she’s got children. No, no, no.

He was just about to get into his car.

“Do you have a second, Jerner?”

It’s already gone, he thought. I had it, but now it’s gone.

He got into the car without answering.

“Jerner?”

What did he want-another second? Here you are, out through the window-now that one’s gone as well.

“Turn the car off for a minute, Jerner. What the hell’s the matter with you? Didn’t you hear that I’d like to have a word with you?”

Have a word. What word would you like? How about asshole?

“If you don’t listen to what I have to say you could find yourself in deep trouble,” said the man who was still there beside the car. Jerner had turned off the engine. But the one who called himself the boss was still there. What did he want? He was babbling on. “The woman called HQ right away on her mobile and they passed the message on to me. She says you called her disgusting names and, well, were acting strange.”

Disgusting names? Whose behavior had really been disgusting?

He drove off, didn’t even bother to glance in the rearview mirror.