A well-used wooden toothbrush. A tube of Colgate, half-full. How were Killian’s teeth? He hadn’t noticed.
A razor, Gillette. Pretty dull. Tiny grains of sand in the blades. No, hair. Killian’s. Tiny, tiny bits of hair. The last time he shaved must have been just before the funeral.
A plastic bag containing one last, unopened beer, Spendrups Premium Gold. Where had the beer come from? Not the state liquor store.
An open, creased box of Beyond Thin condoms, the kind handed out for free by the Association for Sexual Education, sixteen out of thirty left. Could he have a child somewhere?
A bracelet made of light-brown leather, a little worse for wear. Soft from rubbing against his skin.Like mine,Sander thought,only lighter brown. The same clasp. They must have been made at the same time.In the winter of 1999, he made one for each ofus.
No ID. No credit cards. No diary. Nothing. But: nine hundred andfifty kronor, cash, rolled up and secured with a purple rubber band. Hundred-kronor bills and smaller.
A hardcover book, Harper Lee’sTo Kill a Mockingbird,in the new Swedish translation published just recently. It was heavily dog-eared up to page 218. Sander couldn’t remember seeing Killian with a book, much less a hardcover one. A gift? Tucked in the middle of the book was a small bundle of papers and photographs.
In that bundle:
A piece of paper carefully torn out of a graph-paper notebook, much-thumbed; on the paper, an ink drawing of a cabin. The measurements carefully printed in Sander’s handwriting. In the floor, a hatch with an arrow pointing to it, and a label:Beer Bunker. Killian’s writing. They had made a blueprint? Yes, maybe. Way back in his memory, faintly, he could see their heads close together over a table, Killian propping his hand on his forehead. Yes. He remembered now.
Clippings of obituaries, several of them, Linda and Sten Persson’s among them. Others, too, but with names Sander didn’t recognize. From the years 2007, 2009, 2015.
A photograph: A vast sky. Treetops. It looks hot. They’re all there, together. Down by the lake where they liked to grill. Mikael, Pierre, Jakob, Killian. And Sander. Smoke from the firepit. Killian isn’t wearing a shirt, and he has an arm around Sander’s shoulders. They’re both smiling. Who took the picture? He doesn’t recall.
A photograph: Felicia. A portrait, must be from the fall of 1999. She’s wearing a T-shirt and an unzipped black down coat. He remembers that; it was the same coat she wore all that winter. Looks like it was taken in the forest somewhere. Maybe they were on a walk together. Killian is the photographer. She’s beaming.
A photograph: Killian’s mother and father, before the divorce. It was taken by a real photographer in town, maybe Göte Karlsson himself. They’re kneeling, and between them, on a chair, Killian is a pink, round blob in pastel overalls. All three of them are laughing. Each parent is touching Killian. Rock-a-bye baby.
A photograph: A woman of around thirty, blond, unfamiliar.She’s standing outside in a city. This picture looks more recent; that’s all he can say aboutit.
A photograph: Killian and Sander. Eleven or twelve. They’re outside the school, must have been school picture day. Killian is wearing a bow tie; Sander’s hair has been wet-combed. Mom took this picture, Sander remembers. Killian is half a head taller than him. It’s bright; they’re squinting into the sun.
A photograph: Another one of the two of them, but they’re older. Must have even turned eighteen already. On the road that runs through Skavböke, Killian in black jeans and a white T-shirt; Sander in pale blue jeans and a flannel. One blond head, one dark. They’re walking side by side, laughing at something. What was it? No idea. Sander doesn’t remember the occasion. Maybe Felicia was holding the camera? They look inseparable.
107
He couldn’t see very well as he stood up, leaving the backpack on the floor. His vision was misty. He tucked the last photograph into his pocket.
Belongings. Maybe they don’t say much about a person, really, not much and not the important stuff. Or at least, you can tell yourself that, if you needto.
Sander needed to. Because now he remembered.
—
He’s back at ground zero. It’s December of 1999. A party like so many others. He witnesses the instant before everything begins to distort. The needle of the compass still untouched. It’s one o’clock when he and Killian leave the party.
Is it obvious, to look at Killian, what he’s about to do? Maybe. Love is strange, and the heart is a fickle thing.
They go their separate ways in the night. Nothing hurts.
—
A bag of rice dropped onto the roof from up in the tall tree. That’s what it sounds like.
You have to climb pretty high up the nearest tree, scoot as close to the end of a branch as you can get, and hang down from it. Then letgo and land on the roof of the garage. From there, you can climb up to the roof ridge and boost yourself—this is the hardest part—over the edge and onto the ledge closest to Sander’s window.
As a kid, Killian could do this almost silently. That was how he got into Sander’s room unnoticed, so they could read comic books and play games long after the lights went out in Mom and Dad’s bedroom. But it’s been a long time; he hasn’t done it in years.
Probably never will do it again,a thought that dissolves and fades into memory: the sound of his friend, grown way too big and heavy for this, letting go of the branch and falling to the roof with a thud; Sander himself going to the window and unlatching it, opening it so Killian could climbin.
But it’s happened again after all. It’s nighttime, the same night as the party, but Sander is already home and in bed when a sound outside the window wakes him from a heavy, dreamless sleep.
