John Ajvide Lindqvist: Can't See It! It Doesn't Exist!

John Ajvide Lindqvist

Can’t see it! It doesn’t exist!

Frank Johansson is waiting for the picture that will change his life.

He is sitting in an elm tree, six metres above the ground. In order to avoid chafing, he has wrapped two layers of foam rubber around the branch on which he is sitting. Since he began his surveillance two days ago, he has drunk fifteen litres of water. His back is killing him.

It is summer. A fat, Swedish summer. The sun is blazing down through the foliage and the sweat is pouring off him. The only breeze comes from the wing beats of fate. This is his last chance. It’s the picture or the abyss. Well, bankruptcy anyway.

One million.

The picture will bring him a million, as a ballpark figure. He’s worked it out, he’s checked. The Sun alone is willing to cough up fifty thousand pounds for the rights. Then minor royalties from others, later.

A million will solve all his problems. 1/250th of a second is all he needs. The shutter opens, exposes the film to the Picture, closes again, stores it in the darkness of the camera and Frank is a rich man. His palms are sweaty; he wipes them on his trouser legs and grips the camera with both hands, points the lens at the pool and sees the same thing he has been seeing for two days now: Blue water. Two wooden deckchairs beneath a large white parasol. A table between the chairs. A book on the table. With his 300 millimetre lens he can zoom in so close that he can read the title: Lord of the Flies.

The surface of the water is like a mirror. Nothing is moving.

It would take less than this to drive a person crazy.

Frank zooms out, allowing the surface of the pool to fill his viewfinder. A cloud drifts across the sky, making deeper shades of blue flicker across the water. His head is boiling. If only he could slide down into that water, allow himself to be embraced, cooled.

He takes a swig of water warmed by the sun from his bottle.

One million.

Someone has been here. Someone has sat on the deckchair, read Lord of the Flies and put it down. Amanda. It has to be Amanda. Roberto—can he even read?

All they have to do is walk out through that door—Frank tracks their route with his finger—walk over to the edge of the pool and… kiss. One kiss, one simple little kiss and Frank will be saved.

But they don’t appear, they don’t want don’t want to save Frank, and he hates them. As the scalding sweat pours down into his eyes and his back is agonising crystal and weariness gnaws at his soul, he keeps himself busy by dreaming and hating.

Wouldn’t you?

Someone can save you with a kiss, but refuses to oblige. Perhaps that was all Judas wanted: a kiss. When he didn’t get it, he responded with his own. Thirty pieces of silver, what was he going to do with those? He had responded. Then he went and hanged himself.

Frank stares at a thick branch above his head. He pictures a rope and feels himself falling, hears the sound as his neck is broken—chapack as the connection between body and soul is severed and you are as free as a little blue bird in a night without end.

Blue, blue…the surface of the pool lies at his feet and his thoughts begin to wander. Minutes pass, hours. A mosquito lands on his forearm and he watches it with interest as it sucks his blood. Paparazzi. They say Fellini came up with the name because it reminded him of an irritating mosquito. Paparazzi, paparazzi.

As the sated mosquito withdraws its proboscis and prepares to take off, Frank kills it. It turns into a smear on his skin; he raises his arm to eye level, studies the remains of the mosquito. Black spiderweb legs dotted among the red blood, like some calligraphic symbol.

The sun drags itself across the sky, displacing the reflections on the surface of the pool and dazzling him. He shades his eyes with his hand and moves a few centimetres. He hears a creaking sound. A hammer slams into the bottom of his back and pain shoots up from his tailbone, explodes inside his head. He cries out, almost falls forward but manages to grab hold of the branch above.

The camera slips off his knee, the old strap around his neck jerks and then breaks. Through a yellow mist Frank sees the camera drift towards the ground in slow motion, hears the delicate crunch as the lens shatters. He squeezes his eyes tight shut and hugs the branch. The tears well up, forcing their way out beneath his compressed eyelids.

No, no, no, no, no…it’s not fair.

He sobs, his body hunched over. His tears follow the camera’s route through the air, landing on the dry grass. He’s reached rock bottom. He screws this fact through his body, rotation by rotation, and continues to weep. Eventually it becomes a form of enjoyment. He opens his eyes and sees the surface of the pool through his tears, a billowing rectangle.

The reflections of the sun lift from the surface, turn into stars floating towards him. He waves his hand wearily to keep them away, but they penetrate his head like burning needles.

‘Aaaaaah…’

He bangs his head with the palm of his hand, but the needles are already inside, moving around as if they are searching for something. They puncture his brain, scratching and cutting, and he feels as if he’s going to be sick. He is being dissected alive.

_____________________________________________________

The reflections of the sun are resting on the surface of the water. His back is aching. Carefully, one branch at a time, he clambers down from the tree and crouches beside the camera like a little boy grieving for his dead pet. He unscrews the lens and shakes it. Something is irredeemably broken inside.

You’ve taken your last picture, my friend.

Fifteen years together. He carries the lens to the house, places it in his bag and takes out the Sigma lens. Not the same thing at all.

The camera itself seems to have survived, so he screws the Sigma in place and attaches the strap from his back-up camera. Then he fills up his water bottle and eats a couple of slices of cold pizza. His jaws move mechanically, up and down, up and down. His head is empty. He looks around the exclusively decorated room; his eyes fasten on the Bruno Liljefors hanging above the open fireplace. A picture of the sea.

I thought he only painted foxes.

Frank allows himself to flop back on the sofa, closes his eyes and falls asleep.

He is in darkness in the depths of the sea, sinking. A pinpoint of light appears, far away. He swims towards it. If he can just reach that point everything will be all right. If he doesn’t make it, he will carry on sinking. He swims. His strokes are slow, sluggish, as if the water were syrup.

The pinpoint is not getting any bigger.

But he gets there. The patch of light quivers before his eyes. He reaches out to touch it.

Then he sees the mouth opening wide beyond the light. It’s one of those fish. He’s read about them. They live at the bottom of the sea where the sunlight never reaches them. They lure small fish with a little lantern. When the fish get there…

A door slams shut and Frank is wide away. Marcus is standing in front of him, grinning.

‘Hi there, Frankie boy. How’s life in the bushes?’

‘It’s…’ Frank blinks a couple of times, frees himself from the darkness, ‘…not great.’

‘Why not?’

‘They haven’t turned up.’

Marcus opens his eyes wide, his expression one of exaggerated surprise. His eyes are bloodshot and he appears to be under the influence of something or other. Perhaps the big gestures are all he can manage. He flops down into an armchair and points at the remains of the pizza. ‘May I…?’

‘Help yourself.’

Frank gets up and gathers his things together. When he reaches the door, Marcus clears his throat.

‘The thing is, Frankie boy, one or two complications have arisen.’ Frank waits, without turning around. ‘It’s…well, the purely financial aspect of our rental agreement doesn’t seem to me to be entirely satisfactory.’

‘Rental agreement.’

‘Yes. The tree. The rent for the bloody tree.’

Now Frank does turn around, looks at Marcus sitting in the armchair licking the grease off his fingers. He’s wearing linen trousers with turn-ups, loafers and a white shirt worn loose. A rich man’s son. Parents on holiday. Short of pocket money.

‘You’ve had ten thousand.’

‘Yep,’ says Marcus. ‘I have. And I’ve spent it. So now…I think our rental agreement will have to be torn up. Unless it can be renegotiated, of course.’

Just as when you stub your toe and wait a moment, knowing that now…now the pain will come, Frank waits for the rage to surge up inside him. But it doesn’t happen.

Calmly he asks, ‘How much?’

‘Don’t know. Five?’

‘And if I refuse? If I sit there without…paying rent?’

Marcus pretends to look shocked.

‘But that would be trespassing! I would have no choice but to ring the police!’

Frank nods and says, ‘Tomorrow.’

He has no cards to play against Marcus. His father probably wouldn’t be very happy that his son has rented out their tree to a tabloid press photographer, but there’s no proof.

‘Tomorrow, fine by me,’ says Marcus, getting to his feet. ‘Off to bed. Good luck.’

The light is perfect when Frank returns to the tree. Afternoon sun and soft shadows. Not a cloud in the sky. Like a koala he scrambles up the trunk, makes his way out onto his branch and prepares to chew on the eucalyptus leaves of the minutes for a couple of hours.

The pool shimmers temptingly. The air is warm and caressing, and the deckchairs, the parasol form a stage that is not shouting, but only whispering to its actors.

Come along…come now…

Frank adjusts his position on the branch and takes another swig of his water, which is still cold. It goes down the wrong way as he sees Amanda emerge from the villa, and he presses the crook of his arm to his mouth so that he won’t make a sound, a sound that could be heard down below.

He coughs into his arm and his eyes fill with tears as he watches Amanda stroll slowly along by the edge of the pool. She is wearing a red bikini with yellow polka dots. Frank has seen a bikini like that before, but he can’t remember where. Panting, he picks up his binoculars and gazes at her.

The same studied, graceful movements as when she is accepting an Oscar for best female actress in a supporting role. For some reason Frank thinks she’s unhappy. Trapped in a role from which she cannot escape.

The irritation in his throat subsides by the time Roberto comes out. He walks up to Amanda, strokes her long hair. Frank picks up the camera, focuses, presses the button and captures Roberto’s hand just as it passes over Amanda’s cheek.

Maybe that’s enough.

There has been no photographic evidence of the romance. Now there is. A hand passing over a cheek. But the hand continues down towards the waist and stops there. Frank clicks away, holding his breath.

Go on, go on…

And…yes. Roberto moves his face closer to the woman’s, and all the hours Frank has spent hating him—this homemade Latin lover from Sundbyberg with his number-one hits and his English with a fake Spanish accent—are just blown away.

Good boy.

Their lips meet, the shutter flies up and down as Frank keeps his finger on the button, taking picture after picture until the film runs out. He trembles with impatience as the film rewinds automatically, promising himself that he will get a digital camera after this. He rips out the exposed film and quickly inserts a new one. His fingers are sweaty, but he manages to get it in and they’re still kissing; Roberto runs his hands over Amanda’s body and Frank’s chest fizzes with happiness as he clicks, clicks again. He lowers the camera for a few seconds and rubs his eyes.

The couple by the pool turn into two little dolls performing a pantomime. Frank sniggers. They are moving so stiffly, so robotically; Amanda would never have won an Oscar if she had played out this love scene on film.

Frank looks through the viewfinder again. The couple’s faces are oddly expressionless, as if they were playing a scene with no idea of how they ought to behave. And who is their audience?

I am.

Frank carries on snapping away, and what he hadn’t even dared to hope for actually happens. Roberto gently removes Amanda’s bikini and tosses it into the pool. Yellow polka dots on a red background. After a few seconds it begins to sink.

Amanda leans on the table and Roberto pushes into her from behind. The angle is perfect, so is the light. On top of everything else, the photos will be so good that no one will think they’re paparazzi pictures. He’ll be able to ask more than a million for them.

A million, that was for a kiss. But this… By the time Frank has run out of film, the couple have changed position twice. Roberto on a deckchair with Amanda on top. Missionary on the tiles. Frank lowers the camera. A drop of sweat runs down from the viewfinder onto his damp palm. He is suddenly terrified. Of losing the films, the camera, whatever. Of something going wrong.

Yellow polka dots on a red background…

A pointless thought in this situation, but where has he seen that pattern before? He can’t remember.

His hands are slippery with sweat, his skull a balloon because he has been holding his breath for what seems like several minutes. He feels dizzy. With slow, controlled movements he climbs down from the tree. The lovers have disappeared, gone back into the house. At the bottom of the tree are the four empty plastic containers he tossed aside as he took out new films. He leaves them where they are.

He doesn’t need to bother about Marcus any longer. Doesn’t need to bother about anyone.

_____________________________________________________

The camera bag is lying on the seat next to him. He glances at it from time to time to reassure himself that it’s still there. He is driving more slowly and carefully than he has done for years. He hasn’t been all that particular about his life, but what’s in the bag…

He pats it, strokes it.

He won’t just be able to make the payments on the apartment, he’ll be able to pay off the entire loan. Using the steering wheel as a drum he sings, ‘If you don’t want my kisses, then you can’t have my money…’

He is so happy.

The smell of stale fixer hits his nostrils as he opens the apartment door. The low-lying sun is shining on the kitchen window, showing up the dirty marks and inviting the dust motes to dance. He takes the rolls of film out of his camera bag, lines them up on the kitchen table, takes a painkiller for his back, then sits down and simply looks at the five small metal containers. Now it’s a matter of being careful, meticulous. He daren’t give these films in to be developed—what if something goes wrong? He intends to develop the negatives himself, at least.

After a quarter of an hour’s dreaming, when the painkiller has started to take effect and his back is pleasantly numb, he sets to work. He starts by cleaning: rinsing out the plastic troughs for the various fluid baths, the negative spools and the developing tray. He wipes down the kitchen table and the enlarging apparatus. The five containers stand there, waiting.

He takes his time. When he has finished he takes a shower, puts on clean clothes. It’s that kind of occasion. When he returns to the kitchen the sun has sunk below the treetops on the other side of Gärdet, and the sky is red. The metal containers cast a lattice of faint shadows across the surface of the table.

Yellow polka dots on a red background…

He closes his eyes, tries to remember. The pattern flickers across the inside of his eyelids. Bikini. Pool.

Ah.

The swimming baths at Bällsta. He was fourteen. She was fifteen. Or so she said. The first girl to show any kind of erotic interest in him. Ma…ria? Yes, Maria. They snogged behind the changing rooms. Nothing more. She was wearing a red bikini with yellow polka dots.

That was it. Why had it seemed so significant?

Maria. Frank smiles. The hard-on inside his trunks, going home and jerking off until he was exhausted. The picture of her pounding inside his head. Oh yes. Now he remembers. She occupied his every thought for a whole summer.

_____________________________________________________

He closes the kitchen door, pulls down the blackout blinds. A scrap of light seeps in through the door hinges, and he seals them with parcel tape. Nothing can go wrong. He unscrews the bulb in the fridge just in case he happens to bump into the door. You can’t be too careful. The room is pitch dark. He gropes his way over to the table. He breaks open the first roll of film, winds it onto a spool. Then the next, and the next. When the films have been placed inside the drum he switches on the light and measures out the developing fluid with military precision. He turns the drum once every thirty seconds precisely. He makes a huge effort to control himself, to maintain this meticulous approach. Something within him wants to rush things, get it all done as quickly as possible.

When the stopwatch beeps he sets the films to rinse. Now they are negatives, irrevocable. He bites his nails. What if he’s done something wrong without realising? Used the wrong fluid. What if the negatives are blank when he takes them out of the drum? With trembling hands he switches on the light box and unrolls the first reel of negatives. The film is not blank. It shows the pool, the chairs, the table, the house. And nothing else.

He unrolls the entire film, looks at every single picture, and every single picture shows the same thing. The surface of the pool, yellow on the negatives, black deckchairs and a grey house. No people. Frank slumps down on a chair and hardly even feels the throb of pain in his back. It’s something that’s happening far away.

How the hell…

He takes the other reels out of the bath and unrolls them on the light box without bothering to dry them. The same thing in every picture. The same subject, in different degrees of enlargement. On one film he is able to follow the sequence of events, remembers zooming in and out.

That’s where Roberto was lying on the chair. That’s where I zoomed in as she climbed on top of him.

But Roberto is not on the chair. And there is no Amanda riding him. There is only a chair, and a table with a book on it. Frank has one hundred and eighty pictures of a patio with a pool in Djursholm. Nothing else.

He hangs the negatives up to dry and stands there with his arms dangling limply by his side. Has he gone mad, imagined the whole thing? No. He saw what he saw. Somehow the camera has been deceived.

I’m not having this.

By the time the negatives are dry he has set up the processor, and prints twenty pictures, four from each film, on 10 × 15 paper. As the photographs emerge in the bath of fluid, they still show the same thing as the negatives, but he refuses to accept it. There must be something there. He wasn’t hallucinating. Roberto and Amanda were there, just as clear whether he was looking through the lens or with the naked eye. What kind of illusion can tolerate all those changes of focus, go on for so long and be so detailed? He examines the pictures closely. Nothing. In his agitation he has been careless with the exposure time: everything blue is a couple of nuances too pale. The sky is almost white. The surface of the pool…

Hang on, what’s this…

He looks from one picture to the next. Takes out a magnifying glass and examines them even more closely. He had hoped to find some kind of…trace left by Roberto and the woman. That is not what he finds. But there is a difference between the pictures. He studies them carefully, one after the other, with the magnifying glass. Of course it could be due to carelessness during the developing process, but in several of the pictures there is a faint shadow at the bottom of the pool. What has captured his attention is that the shadow moves. Changes shape. In some of the pictures it is no bigger than a football, in others it takes up a significant portion of the pool.

The shadow of a cloud…

Yes. If there had been any clouds.

_____________________________________________________

At half past ten Frank is back in the car. There is a hole in the exhaust, and the engine roars throatily as he drives out towards Djursholm. A few hours earlier, when he was driving in the opposite direction, he was sitting here wondering what kind of new car he should buy when he had sold the pictures. Almost amusing. There are no pictures, no millions. He is able to accept it now. For some incomprehensible reason the subject was not captured on film. Terrible but true. OK. What he cannot accept is the idea that the subject never even existed. That he is—to put it bluntly—ready for the funny.

And there is, after all, something that can prove he isn’t crazy. Yellow polka dots on a red background: the bikini that was thrown in the pool. If it’s still lying on the bottom, then he saw what he saw. If it isn’t…well, somebody might have removed it. Or something. He stops at the 7-Eleven on Sveavägen, buys a bar of chocolate and the evening papers, and stuffs the chocolate in his mouth on the way out.

The houses belonging to the multimillionaires sparkle like wedding cakes in the summer evening, and a faint aroma of barbecued meat drifts in through the open car window as he pulls up outside the house where he has spent the last few days sitting in the garden. The gates are closed, and the bass beat from some dance hit is pulsating out into the garden. Through the panorama windows Frank can see bodies moving. Marcus is having a party. He sits there, uncertain what to do. The party could go on for hours, should he wait until it’s finished? Or go in right away? He hasn’t got the five thousand to give to Marcus, and he’ll have all his cronies behind him, high as kites, yelling abuse as Frank climbs the tree…

No.

He picks up one of the evening papers, turning the pages distractedly, and suddenly stiffens. On the entertainment pages is a picture of Roberto and Amanda. They are standing side by side at what must be an airport. A heart surrounds their faces.

A heart surrounds their faces. ‘LOVE IS IN THE AIR IN MEXICO’

Frank reads the caption. It says that the picture was taken the previous day at the airport in Cancun. The couple have kept their relationship secret for a long time…a week’s relaxation at a secret location in Mexico…future film project…new album…left Sweden the day before yesterday…

Frank looks up from the paper, stares at the gates of the house with the pool. ‘It’s all lies,’ he murmurs, without knowing exactly what he means.

Wrong. Something else is…wrong.

He looks at the picture in the paper. He sees it now. Amanda has short hair. She’s had her hair cut since the last time he saw her on TV, at the Oscars ceremony. But the Amanda he saw by the pool a few hours ago had long hair. He sits there in the car, trying to make sense of it: Amanda’s long hair. The couple’s stiff, unnatural movements.

The fact that they didn’t appear on the film ought to be the most significant thing. And yet it didn’t feel that way. The most important thing of all is the bikini, the red one with the yellow polka dots.

He looks at the picture in the paper. He sees it now. Amanda has short hair. She’s had her hair cut since the last time he saw her on TV, at the Oscars ceremony. But the Amanda he saw by the pool a few hours ago had long hair. He sits there in the car, trying to make sense of it: Amanda’s long hair. The couple’s stiff, unnatural movements. The fact that they didn’t appear on the film ought to be the most significant thing. And yet it didn’t feel that way. The most important thing of all is the bikini, the red one with the yellow polka dots. He closes his eyes, tries to picture it. The curve of Amanda’s hips, Roberto’s hand caressing the broad strip of elastic fabric. The big yellow polka dots. Then Maria: those sweaty moments behind the white wooden building where every single knot had been poked out to make peepholes.

It’s…the same.

Yes. The appearance of swimsuits has changed over the thirty years since he and Maria were kissing behind the changing rooms, but the bikini Amanda was wearing not only had the same pattern, it was exactly the same.

And now it’s lying at the bottom of the pool.

_____________________________________________________

The lights in the house are switched off, only the floodlights over the pool are shining. Frank looks around and tries the gate. It isn’t locked. He slips through, walks up four stone steps and stands by the edge of the pool.

There is the fresh smell of chlorine. The artificial light on the tiles and the still water give the whole experience a dreamlike character. Blue tiles make the water blue, make his skin blue. He ought to be nervous—breaking and entering isn’t his thing, his place is just outside the property boundaries—but he feels strangely calm. As if he is anticipating a revelation. He walks to the edge and looks down into the water.

The bikini is lying on the bottom, undulating slowly like an aquatic plant in the current of circulating water. In the blue light the yellow dots are green. Frank closes his eyes and rubs them hard.

So who were the people who were there?

While he is still massaging his eyelids, the feeling from earlier in the day returns. Something is piercing his head. Thin needles are being forced through his skin, his skull, penetrating deeper and deeper, moving around, searching. He wants to press his eyes tight shut against the pain, but instead he opens them. At the very second his eyes open, the pressure disappears from his head, but he just has time to see. A number of threads, as fine as cobwebs, are floating between his head and the surface of the water. He just has time to see them before they melt away, or become invisible.

He blinks, fumbles in the air with his hand outstretched, but the threads are gone and the surface of the water…the surface of the water is covered in notes. He drops to his knees. Hundreds of thousand-kronor notes cover the entire pool like a lid. He shuffles forward.

The notes are real. Just a real as the picture he was waiting for, the bikini he was searching for. Frank puts his hands on his knees and laughs. Now he understands.

It’s all in my mind.

He laughs, shakes his head and sobs out loud. Because it’s tragic at the same time. The fact that his dream, the thing he wants most in the whole world, comes down to this. Pieces of paper. Perhaps he knows exactly what he’s doing, perhaps not. He reaches down towards the water to pick up a note. As soon as his fingers touch the surface of the water, the notes disappear. Something clamps onto his skin, and in a reflex movement he tries to pull back his hand, but it is impossible. His hand, his arm are slowly sucked down into the water, and Frank follows. When his face is just a couple of centimetres from the surface, he catches a glimpse of the thing that is pulling him.

It’s one of those creatures that lives down at the bottom. In front of its mouth dangles something that looks like a precious stone, shimmering in every colour imaginable.

Finally the will to live takes over. Frank screams, braces himself with his free arm and tries to haul himself out of the water. The creature offers stubborn resistance, but Frank is fighting for his life, and he is stronger. One centimetre at a time he regains his arm. The creature has vanished, become one with the water again. Only the precious stone, the rainbow spot is still visible. It is pulsating.

‘Frank?’

She clings to his arm. Maria. She is wearing her polka-dot bikini. He had forgotten how pretty she was. How could she ever have been interested in him?

‘Frank, come on…’

Frank relaxes, opens his mouth to say that she doesn’t exist. That she is just one of a series of dreams that never came true. Before he has time to speak she gives a start and he loses his balance, falls into the warm water.

The creature resumes its proper form and swallows him.

_____________________________________________________

When the pool man arrives in the morning to carry out his weekly cleaning duties, he sees something on the bottom and fishes it out with his net. A mobile phone. He shakes the water out of it and tries switching it on. Doesn’t work. He throws it in the bin and checks the water in the pool. It really is filthy. Full of fibres and fluff, discoloured. He makes several sweeps with the net, brings up scraps of fabric and…nails.

What the hell have they been doing?

The water still looks terrible. He decides to change the lot, and opens the valve. The water in the pool slowly runs away. After half an hour, it’s empty. The water continues on its way down to the purification plant. After passing through a number of filters and cleansing processes, it slips back out into the sea via enormous pipes. There it disperses, merges with the greater water and remains the same.