I am on the verge of a breakdown, but have stopped just short. That is where we meet, at the Atlas boxing club in a basement on Bondegatan. You are slender and do not look like a fighter at all. But we are not boxers either, just ordinary people who want to try something new, thinking we can punch the frustration out of our bodies. It ought to work, it might work. We hope it will work. Not that I want to beat the shit out of another human being, I just want to surprise myself, never thought I would end up in a situation like this. I am more of a yoga guy. You might not see it in me, I have the biceps for this, an attitude for knocking people over in bars, but a soul for spiritual cultivation. And you: who are you? The first time I see you I jump to conclusions I will have trouble extricating myself from. You work as a salesman in a mobile phone shop, I think, the sort who does not mention unexpected clauses in contracts, who knows all along there are much better deals elsewhere, but still insists you should sign, just do it, sign, just do it.
After training, in the changing room, you ask if I have any cash. I do not know you, so I hesitate. I would have hesitated even if we were friends, come to that. You can hear that something is wrong. Cash is cash. You say you have lost your wallet, but have Swish. The metro does not take Swish, you say.
“No, I understand,” I say. “How much do you need?”
I try not to draw attention to myself as I slip out my wallet and pinch a few hundred kronor from it, but you see that it is as fat as a well fed seal. You probably know you should not ask, because you do not know me, but you cannot help yourself. You ask jokingly if I work as a debt collector or something, and laugh terribly nervously.
Me:
“How much did you want? Will four hundred do?”
You come up to the street with me. I have showered, but you say you will shower at home. Perhaps something about me interests you. Not just the wallet, you are probably thinking about the scar that strays up past my shirt collar like a winding snake. A mark from my birth, I nearly died right at the start, but survived. It has been like that all the way since. Always on the verge, never over it.
Now you want to know which way I am going. Towards Skanstull or Medborgarplatsen.
“Which way are you going?” I reply.
You say Medborgarplatsen, so I say Skanstull, but then you are in no hurry and can walk with me. You find me exciting in the sense of electric. You tell me that you and a friend sometimes bring deckchairs and unfold them in the cycle lane. That you have never had a proper job in your life, that you somehow survive anyway, something always turns up. You believe I am something turning up. You believe far too much. It is as though you have just been born and are guessing your way into an existence.
When we are on the platform at Skanstull I make sure you board the train first. Then I say I have forgotten something and quickly step off. You stay there, somehow looking cheated, but I have not promised you anything.
“See you next week,” I say, thinking I probably will not go to any more classes.
You say something in reply, but I cannot hear it, the doors have closed.
Next time I am there after all, I need the exercise. We get to punch at each other, padded mitts we slip onto our hands. We are going to do a bit of jabbing, the trainer says. It is quite a ridiculous sight, really, if you were not in the middle of it. The gym brings to mind the boxing clubs of earlier times, a little grubby and rough, think Gentlemen. Here you do not talk, you fight. A little further away, over by the rings, people are boxing with frenzy and adrenaline. But this group brings pottery classes to mind rather than bloodied eyebrows.
I should not mock. In this setting I am a beginner like everyone else. Of course I have fought before but I need to learn the basics. I realised that the last time I was knocked down on the pavement, hard punches are not enough, footwork is the key to being a successful fighter. I do not even need to be successful, really, as long as I am not knocked down again.
You are here, of course. You give me a brief hello, but stand some distance away. When we are to change sparring partners you step forward and ask if I want to punch the mitts for a while.
“Sure,” I say.
You ask if I have been watching Rocky or something. You think I could play a Russian. Ivan Drago.
“I am Russian,” I say.
You fall silent. I am not Russian, but that sort of statement deserves that sort of reply. In fact I have Bulgarian ancestry, but I do not need to say so. I do not need to say anything, really. Just do not start talking about Putin and Ukraine now.
I land a punch that makes you lose your balance, and bounce back a few steps. You say that was a heavy hit, that I will probably be able to move on to the next level soon.
“If you do not work, who pays your rent?” I ask.
You just laugh. This is the first question I have asked you, so perhaps you think I am interested in finding out more about how you live and who you are. I am not. You should not think that, but you do. You say you write music for computer games, make little jingles and get a few öre for every copy sold. You ask if I have heard of Minecraft. I have not. Apparently you have come really close to selling your music to that game.
“But you have not,” I add, because I understand it is supposed to be a famous game.
You say one must live in hope.
The music itself is not particularly sophisticated, it is about contacts in the industry, getting in and doing a good job. So far you only sell to silly mobile games from India, new versions of originals, bringing in a few thousand kronor at a time at best, but in the future you want to go all the way. I punch with all my strength, but you manage to block it and bounce to one side.
“Can you stop talking,” I say.
You say my reflexes are beyond a joke.
Next week: You call me a lunatic and an idiot and you are not lying. We were going to start fighting, gently, to drill a few new punches, but now you are lying on the floor with your jaw broken. That was bloody unnecessary, I hear someone say behind me. But good God, someone else says. You hold your cheek with both hands and try to speak intelligibly, perhaps you have lost a couple of teeth too. Something about the situation was familiar, I acted reflexively, as I always do, let myself be swept along by my impulses. You had been dancing out of the way of my punches for several minutes, teasingly slipping past as I kept throwing hooks. It was all a game to you. It should have been to me too, but then your concentration slipped. I am a person who sees opportunities, and I snapped forward, caught you perfectly. And now this: they are calling an ambulance. You make me come with you, you are going to tell me something, so we might as well get it over with.
No ambulance comes, we wait outside Bonden Bar for fifteen minutes with blood running down your shirt. We have to take a taxi to Södersjukhuset, I pay and think you will give me the money later but you will not. In the waiting room you leaf through a copy of Mama magazine. Pause at an article about how parents can help shy children, it holds your interest for a few minutes. Why do I come along? I probably feel guilty, above all towards the others in the class. They must not think I did it on purpose. I am just like them. In class we are all equal before the trainer.
The room is packed, a pensioner has had a stick driven straight through one thigh and goes to the front of the queue. Five hours later you get to see a doctor, who talks about “anterior dislocation” and “joint hypermobility”, then puts her fingers into the roof of your mouth. She clicks your jaw back into place, it seems to work. Now the doctor is talking about a liquid diet. Afterwards we eat hamburgers, you chew baby carrots like a stupid dog with no future.
“I am sorry about that,” I say.
You think it is no problem. It was a good thing, really. Because you need my help with something.
“Oh, what?”
It concerns a debt.
“And how could I help you with that?”
I could collect it.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I will get a quarter of the amount.
“Your whole head seems to be dislocated.”
Half.
“I am leaving now.”
I stop going to training, I do not need that. I could not stand having to explain myself every time either, hold back my punches and act weak. I carry on with my own things, deal with my work as it turns up. Nothing more to it, devote no thoughts or feelings to it, just let it be processed. It is a kind of happiness, not quite flow, but a reasonable way of doing things. A few months pass before we are in touch again. You have found me on Facebook and I wait a couple of weeks before accepting the request, mostly curious about what you want. Before long I am invited to an event you are involved in: a computer games fair in Sollentuna. You are sharing a stand with a few other musicians, going to play songs on Game Boys. A Castlevania theme, apparently, that is what it says, whatever that is. I have nothing else to do that Saturday so I go.
“How is your jaw?” I ask when I see you.
You look up in surprise.
“It looks fine,” I say, “but apparently you have lost the power of speech.”
You ask if we can go for a walk. We stroll among tattooed geeks, either too thin or too fat. In this setting I must look like a cut price Bruce Willis from Eastern Europe, hired to promote some new product with a Cold War theme. Feels as if everyone is looking at me, but I am used to it. There is something about you, you seem so lost, not playfully teasing as before.
You say you are in love with me.
You say I do not need to say anything.
Summer comes. We start seeing each other. Mostly out at clubs before we go home to your place in Hagsätra, never mine, that would not work. You want to spend Saturdays talking, sitting at the kitchen table and just talking, nothing else. You do not even drink your coffee until it is at room temperature, then you down it with a grimace. You explain that the business with the debt was just an attempt to make contact, you thought we would see each other more often if I had a job to do for you. It shows that you do not meet people in your everyday life. You go on like a lonely old man with no family. You say again that I am electric. If only you knew. I sometimes suggest we drink vodka, but your thoughts are too fragile for alcohol, you claim, but I do not listen to you, I drink myself free. What else is there to do in Hagsätra? Once we walk up to Högdalstoppen, you are painfully out of breath when we get there. Your wet breathing bothers me. But the view is worth the trouble, you promise. I see a view: trees and the odd tower block. Nothing I have not seen before. Another time we break into an allotment cottage in Orhem and spend the night there, there are sheets and everything. We do it again for several nights until a neighbour sees us and asks questions, then we know we need to move on. Summer drifts away like this, without a plan we let the months follow one another. I will remember it as a lovely time, separate from everything else I have experienced. A beautiful parenthesis, complete in itself. But we both know this will not last in the long run, there are too many obstacles, really we have nothing holding us together but the obvious.
Your hands are always warm, but it is easy to make statements like that in the hot summer months, because when autumn sweeps in over the streets with chestnuts and routines you disappear. I work away at my own things and do what I always do, shut myself away again, find a kickboxing class I sign up for. It leads nowhere, but I keep visiting Atlas all the same to find my way back to some original purpose that is no longer there. I understand that when I have landed a few perfect kicks and think I have improved, but that no one cares, not even me. A slightly older man seems to take to me somehow, he sits a little too close in the changing room, wants to talk about life at home. I feel like punching him in the mouth, but I do not do things like that. I feel like it anyway. In the end I tell him I will call his wife if he cannot control himself. He has no wife. So I threaten him with his mother, and then he never comes back. I ought to feel guilty, but it is just a relief to be rid of the bastard.
You occasionally flicker up as online on Facebook, but I do not dare write anything when you are busy. The whole autumn is one long extinguishing. I lie awake at night and think about that summer, as if it happened decades ago, and understand that summer will always be that summer, the one when I lived my real life, the one that had been available all along but which I had never dared approach. I cannot. That is how it is. I am not like that, not wholly and completely. It is a shame. Yes, you could say that. It really is a shame. A sin.
In October I am remanded in custody for a crime I have not committed. A mugging by the library at Medborgarplatsen, some old woman who has lost a wallet and a pair of glasses. Completely pointless, far too risky and probably the work of some desperate second rate crook. I know they have nothing on me, I just look like someone else and then my name comes up. They pick me up outside the entrance and I do not resist. Why would I? All I need to do is wait them out. They know that as well as I do.
I spend my time in the cell meditating. Sit in the lotus position and imagine you in Hagsätra with the synthesiser, picking out little ridiculous retro sounding phrases that grow and acquire bass lines and violins, until you reach nirvana with me, enveloped in notes, physical notes, like Fantasia in the imagination. When I am released from custody I feel relieved all the same, I call work and say I will still be off sick, probably for the rest of the week at least and perhaps longer. I say I have a doctor's appointment.
Close to Christmas Eve I spot your name in a free newspaper. You are asked briefly in the third column about your forthcoming collaboration with a man from Norsborg called Notch. He is supposed to have made a game that is compared to Lego, and now he has a new one in the works for which you are writing the soundtrack. Games are the new music scene, you say foolishly, but get quoted anyway and the reporter reels off figures about users and players and calls computer games esports. I laugh at the comparison and put down the newspaper. Then I think about you again. It is hard not to think about you, but harder to do it.
When the last kickboxing lesson is done and finito I get a certificate. Like a child who has spent a few hours in a soft play centre. Supposed to make me return and scrape together more points, I imagine, or put the piece of paper on the fridge, on display so guests can see: Beginner's Kickboxing. People might boast about that sort of thing. Not exactly a black belt.
I have not hurt anyone this time around, though I have come close on several occasions. Then I have let my punches veer to the right, lowered my kicks, felt restraint spreading through my joints like glue. I have gone numb. After a while it became easier. I no longer feel anything for all that.
December comes. Snow lies in dirty drifts across Södermalm. I wear out my shoes, which I have neither polished nor waterproofed. Take the metro into the city centre to get a new pair. My phone is dead so I have to stare somewhere, see a poem on an advertising board. Poetry in Transit, it is called. My body vibrates as if from the core as I read. I write down the lines and wait a long time before sending them to you. At New Year I do it: The city has got stuck inside me, the streets burn my feet, etc. You get in touch, push aside the branches and remember us again.
You write: I am bleeding.
I write: now I am too.