Little Star

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  As he moved into position he could hear Theres’ voice like a rhythmic mumble, rising and falling as if she were singing a lullaby. When he got closer, he could hear what she was saying.

  ‘You mustn’t be afraid.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You mustn’t get upset.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You are little. They are big. They do bad things. They will be dead. They are angry because they will be dead. You are little. You will not be dead.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You will live forever. You are not in pain. You do not hurt anyone. You have a lovely song inside your head. They have ugly words. You are soft. They are hard. They want your life. Do not give your life to them. Do not give them tears. Do not be afraid.’

  Her voice had a hypnotic quality that made Jerry start to sway back and forth where he stood. He too was touched by the message. Do not be afraid, do not be afraid. The fear he had felt in the shop was washed away, like words written on the shore. He had never heard Theres’ voice like this. It was caressing, inviting, healing. It was the voice of a mother comforting her child, it was the voice of a doctor telling the patient that everything will be fine, and it was the voice of the person who takes your hand in the darkness and leads you out.

  Despite the fact that the voice wasn’t even speaking directly to Jerry, he swayed along with its rhythm and believed the simple truth it revealed: There was nothing to be afraid of.

  As he swayed he lost his balance and moved his foot to straighten up. Theres heard it, and turned around. For a second she gazed into his eyes, looking at him like a stranger. Then her eyes slid away and she stood up. The other girl got up too. She was holding her head high now, relieved. Jerry shook himself as if to wake himself from a dream he didn’t really want to leave.

  On the way home Theres said in her normal voice, ‘You mustn’t lie. You’re not to lie.’

  ‘What?’ said Jerry. ‘I haven’t lied. Everything turned out just the way I said.’

  Theres shook her head. ‘You said the little girl wouldn’t be harmed. She was harmed. The big person harmed her. What you said was wrong.’

  Yes, thought Jerry. Bloody good job, too.

  During the late summer they would still sit jamming with the guitar sometimes, writing outlines of songs, but something had changed between them. After the incident in the shop Jerry had the feeling that he had unequivocally been moved into the category ‘big people’, and could therefore no longer be trusted. That it was only statistics that made Theres accept his presence: he hadn’t tried to kill her yet, and therefore was probably unlikely to do so in the future.

  He thanked his lucky stars that she couldn’t remember how their acquaintance had started. He really had been trying to hurt her then. Perhaps she did remember somehow, and it was lying there beneath the surface, smouldering away as a lingering suspicion of evil intentions. But he had been a different person then. Or had he? Do we ever really become a different person?

  Perhaps not. But people change. When Jerry looked back at his youth, he could hardly grasp what kind of person had broken into summer cottages and run wild. He seemed like the bad guy in some obscure old film.

  It was when he sat on the cellar steps in his childhood home looking at the remains of his parents smeared all over the floor that he had taken the step. No. It was just after that. When he had decided to protect and care for the person who had murdered them. He could have made a very different choice. But at that critical moment he took a step in an unexpected direction and set off along a new road. Since then he had continued on that road, and it was taking him further and further away from his former self. It was just visible, far far away, and soon it would have to start sending postcards if it wanted to communicate with him.

  Two months before Max Hansen sat down to write his message to Theres, she got a letter from TV4 congratulating her on a successful audition, and inviting her to present herself at Studio 2 in Hammarbyhamnen for sound check and make-up five hours before the program was to be recorded. There was also a new contract which involved signing over all her rights to everything.

  Jerry couldn’t work out what idiotic impulse had made him set this particular ball rolling. The papers and the contract made it clear that he had no control whatsoever, that TV4’s machinery had both him and Theres firmly in its grasp. They were no longer the ones rolling the ball; the ball was rolling along with them inside it.

  He might have been able to hide the papers and forget the whole thing if it hadn’t been for the fact that Theres was expecting them to arrive. Some girl at the auditions who had got through last year but fallen at the last hurdle had explained the whole thing to her. Theres knew exactly what was going on, and knew the date even before the papers arrived. There was nothing he could do.

  Besides which, he felt the same as he had when it came to the auditions. However nervous Jerry was about the whole thing, a part of him was curious to see how things might go. The ball again. Something has been set in motion, and must be allowed to complete that movement.

  They practised ‘Life on Mars’ and when the day of the recording arrived Jerry gave Theres precise instructions. The incident in the shop haunted him, and he was pushed to the very limit of his patience as he explained to Theres over and over again that whatever happened, she was not allowed to harm the big people.

  ‘What if they want to make me dead?’

  ‘They won’t do that. I promise.’

  ‘But if they do?’

  ‘They won’t. They won’t do you any harm at all.’

  ‘But they’ll want to. They always want to.’

  And so on and so on. The time when they would need to leave was drawing closer and closer, and Jerry still wasn’t sure he had got anywhere. He turned to the last inducement he could come up with: ‘OK. Bugger all that. But listen to me. I’ll be furious if you do anything. Furious and upset.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because…because it’ll cause all kinds of problems.’

  Theres was quiet for a little while. Then she said, ‘You want to protect the big people.’

  ‘Think that if you want. But actually, I just want to protect you. And myself.’

  Jerry had to use all his powers of persuasion to get his own pass at TV4, but after all it wasn’t exactly unknown for Idol contestants to want someone with them to provide support. He promised to stay in the background and not disrupt the preparations for the recording.

  He went and sat right by the edge of the stage as Theres tested microphones and sang to the backing tape that had been prepared for her. As usual her voice gave him goosebumps, and all activity in the studio seemed to stop completely during the three minutes the song lasted.

  Then Theres was given instructions on how to behave with regard to the cameras, and Jerry started chewing his nails when he saw her body stiffen as a choreographer gently took her by the shoulders to move her into the right position. Jerry was on the point of leaping out of his seat to explain the choreographer’s instructions, but the young man—who in Jerry’s opinion was almost certainly gay—was so soft and flexible in the way he moved that Theres never seemed to perceive him as a real threat.

  Jerry couldn’t hear what was said, but he could see that Theres was listening to the instructions, looking at the cameras and into the cameras. When she sang the song again, she moved her body and her eyes in a way that suggested she had embraced the choreography, at least to a certain extent.

  It was time for lunch, and when Theres quietly accepted that she couldn’t sit among the rest of the contestants eating baby food, Jerry began to relax slightly. She was adapting to the situation in spite of everything, and perhaps it was all going to work out.

  After lunch a woman came along, cast a critical eye over what Theres was wearing, then disappeared and came back with a shimmering silver number which she ordered Theres to put on in the changing room. This too went well. The woman had picked up on the title of the song and found so
mething that was a cross between a spacesuit and a ball gown. It didn’t particularly suit Theres. She wasn’t bothered in the slightest.

  One hour before the recording they were told to go along to make-up. After being directed up various flights of stairs and along corridors, they came to a large room with eight empty hairdresser’s chairs. A young woman with seriously teased blonde hair was sitting reading a magazine, while a big black woman of about Jerry’s age was sweeping underneath the chairs.

  The blonde woman stood up as they came in, welcomed Theres without looking at her and held out her hand. When Theres made no move to take it, Jerry shook it instead. Her hand was cold and slender, and she had lots of bracelets around her wrists. She was wearing a very low-cut top that emphasised a pair of unnaturally globular breasts; Jerry assumed he ought to find her attractive, but he didn’t.

  Theres sat down in the chair and when Jerry went and stood next to her, the woman pointed to an ordinary chair at the far end of the room and said, ‘It would be fantastic if you could go and sit over there.’ When Jerry hesitated, she said, ‘Or outside would be brilliant too.’

  Jerry lumbered over to the chair and perched on the edge. He had a bad feeling, and he wanted to be ready. The woman slipped a black hairdresser’s cape around Theres’ shoulders as she sat staring at her own reflection. Silence. The only sound was the whisper of the broom across the floor.

  Jerry glanced towards the sound. The woman who was cleaning had a broad, dark brown face and coal-black curly hair caught up in a bun at the back of her neck. She must have weighed ninety kilos, and everything about her was big and round and soft; you might have thought she had been put there purely as an effective contrast to the make-up girl’s blonde rigidity.

  The cleaner seemed to become aware that he was looking at her; she turned towards him and fired off a smile that was impossible to resist. Jerry felt like an idiot as the corners of his mouth curled upwards without any help from him, and he had to stare at the floor. Then he caught sight of himself in a mirror, and the smile died away.

  Not much to write home about.

  He looked like a superannuated teenager. He had made a special effort for the occasion and combed his hair back and up into some kind of rockabilly style, and with the bushy sideburns he could never quite bring himself to shave off, he looked like an Elvis well past his prime. His puffy face, the dark circles under his eyes, the nose that seemed to get bigger every year. The fact that someone had given this face a smile was a major event.

  He saw a flash of silver in the mirror, then everything happened very quickly. The make-up girl had obviously decided that Theres’ face didn’t need any major input, and instead had turned her attention to her hair. It was long, blonde, and slightly wavy.

  When Jerry saw the flash of silver, the make-up girl had already grabbed hold of Theres’ hair with one hand, and in the other she was holding a pair of scissors that flashed for a second before she moved them down towards the girl’s neck. If Jerry had seen what was going to happen, he could have prevented it. But his attention had wavered for a short while, and now it was too late.

  Theres growled and hurled herself to one side, which made the chair spin around with some speed. The footrest hit the make-up girl’s shins. She gasped with pain and fell backwards. In a second Theres was out of the chair and on her, snatching the scissors out of her hand.

  It all happened so fast. Jerry had barely got out of his chair by the time Theres raised the scissors in order to stab the make-up girl in the face. Fortunately there was someone quicker than him. As Theres raised her arm, a dark hand grabbed hold of her wrist. With a single movement the cleaner lifted Theres and plonked her back in the chair as she said, ‘Hey girl! You mad or something?’

  She took the scissors off Theres and threw them back on the make-up table. Then she stood there with her hands on Theres’ shoulders as Jerry hurried over. The expression on Theres’ face was something completely new. There was fear, but also sheer amazement. Her jaw had dropped and her blue eyes were wide open.

  ‘Thanks,’ Jerry said to the cleaner. ‘I mean…thank you very much.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ the cleaner said with a strong American accent. ‘What’s the girl’s problem?’ She squeezed Theres’ shoulders. ‘Hey there! What’s your problem? You seem pretty nervous!’ Theres didn’t move; she simply stared in the mirror at the creature towering behind her.

  The make-up girl got up from the floor, her legs trembling.

  ‘What the fuck…’ she said. ‘This is crazy, I don’t have to put up with this.’ She had started to cry, and the streaky mascara gave her a ghost-like appearance. She pointed at Theres and sobbed, ‘She’s off her head, she shouldn’t be here, she shouldn’t be anywhere, she needs locking up…’

  She staggered out, presumably to report to a higher authority. The cleaner spun the chair around so that Theres was facing her, and tried without success to catch her eye.

  ‘Hey girl,’ said the cleaner. ‘You’re so pretty. You shouldn’t be so angry. Come on, let’s get you looking even better.’

  She lifted up Theres’ hair, and Theres allowed it to happen. She plugged in the curling tongs and started to wind strands of hair around it; Theres simply kept on staring. After a couple of minutes Theres turned her head in Jerry’s direction and asked the question that explained her incomprehensible acceptance of the fact that someone was touching her. She asked, ‘Is that a human being?’

  Jerry blushed and started stammering out an answer, but the cleaner just laughed and said, ‘Where have you been for the last hundred years, girl?’ as she carried on doing Theres’ hair.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ said Jerry. ‘She’s not really used to…being out like this.’

  ‘You must live in a weird place—where do you live?’

  ‘Err, Svedmyra.’

  ‘Svedmyra? Is that the name of the place? Don’t you have any black folk in Svedmyra?’

  ‘I think it’s mostly…old Swedes.’

  The cleaner shook her head and started rubbing mousse into Theres’ scalp. Jerry was inexpressibly grateful for her intervention and would have liked to inform Theres that yes, this was a human being, and probably a good one. But if the prerequisite for her tolerance was that she regarded the cleaner as something else, then it would be best if things continued as they were.

  Naturally Theres had seen black people before, but Jerry hadn’t realised how she regarded them, because she had never asked. Perhaps the cleaner’s strong accent also contributed to the fact that Theres saw her as some kind of alien creature.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Jerry, ‘but what’s your name?’

  The cleaner wiped the mousse on her overall and held out her hand. ‘Paris.’ She pronounced it perris. ‘And you?’

  ‘Jerry. Is that…perris as in the city?’

  ‘Yes. My sister’s called Venice.’

  Jerry tried to come up with some witticism about whether they had a brother called London, but it just sounded stupid, and before he managed to think of something else to say, the make-up girl was back with a man trailing behind her.

  The man had a pass on a cord around his neck. He was in his thirties, and looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week. When the girl started going on about what had happened, his eyebrows went up and the outer corners of his eyes went down in an expression that said: Here we go again. Presumably a complaint from the make-up girl wasn’t a unique occurrence.

  He listened without interest for thirty seconds, then glanced over at Paris who was busy making Theres’ eyebrows a little darker in order to bring out her blue eyes. He shrugged and said, ‘Yeah, yeah. But everything seems to be back on track now,’ at which point he turned and walked out.

  The make-up girl followed him, and Jerry heard her say, ‘That’s actually my job!’ to which the reply was, ‘Evidently not.’

  Paris gently swept a powder brush over Theres’ face, and once again Jerry was amazed when Theres closed her eyes, as if she was enjoyi
ng it. Paris lowered her voice, ‘In America we have a saying: Go fuck yourself.’ She nodded in the direction of the door. ‘That woman. The number of times I’ve wanted to…how would you say it in Swedish?’

  Jerry thought for a moment, then said, ‘Stick och brinn.’

  ‘Stick och brinn. Like…fuck off and burn?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jerry. ‘Fuck off and burn. Stick och brinn.’

  Paris undid the cape and removed it. She said, ‘Stick och brinn,’ gave Theres a big smile and said, ‘Not you, honey. You did good. Maybe next time you should just relax a little.’

  She picked up the broom which she had dropped in the midst of all the tumult, and carried on with her work. Theres stood there looking at herself in the mirror. In her silver dress she looked like something from a sci-fi film, a wondrously beautiful creature sent to Earth to ensnare and seduce mankind. Or to be ensnared and seduced.

  Jerry cleared his throat, went over to Paris and held out his hand. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘I don’t really know what to say.’

  Paris looked at his hand without taking it. ‘You could do something instead.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Dinner would be nice,’ said Paris, her concentration fixed on the movement of the brush across the floor.

  ‘Dinner?’ Jerry understood each individual word she said, but what they implied was so unimaginable that his brain couldn’t make a sentence out of them.

  Paris sighed and stopped brushing. ‘Yes, dinner. You take me out to dinner. Sometime. Someplace. Don’t you do that in Sweden?’

  ‘Oh yes, absolutely. Yes,’ said Jerry. ‘Absolutely. I’d be delighted. Any time. Or anywhere. Or…shall I…have you got a phone number?’

  With a kohl pencil Paris wrote her phone number on a tissue, and Jerry tucked it in his wallet as if it were a claim certificate for a share in a goldmine. Then he backed out of the room with Theres, waved and slid around the corner.