The Pale Yellow House Series: Ronny Karlsson

Tales of life on Green Mountain Street - Part 2

Oskar Kokoschka - Knight Errant

1.

He was a slender man, black jeans hanging below a thin leather jacket, a flat cap pulled low over his brows as he stood on the cliff face, arms out, facing the precipice, like a seagull about to take flight.

Driven by the perpetual flame of energy that constantly jagged and pulsated through his body, he began swirling like a whirlwind, his arms at full stretch, fingers splayed out, the rain drenching down from the heavens and flowing in high-tide tributaries across his face.

He’d been hearing trumpets and trombones rising and falling all day, a swinging bass and high hat, joyous piano chords below a tumbling, flying, whistling flute and only now was it reaching a crescendo as he danced and spun and sang into the pouring rain.

Soaking and steaming on this warm, wet summer’s evening, a crowd of drinkers gathered under picnic-table parasols, cheered and applauded as the thin apparition suddenly ceased his impassioned madness and turned from the cliff and strolled past them, past the theatre and down towards Green Mountain Street like a newly freed man, innocent and brimming with everything, his head nodding to the rhythm rolling through his mind.

He sheltered from the rain in the entrance of our pale yellow building and smoked his cigarette with a chefs-kiss grip, humming his tune, a gorgeous self-consciousness that always attracts the eye, nonchalant and studied. He took out his key and entered the building, trotting up the stairs with a trail of rainwater behind him.

2.

Anna and I lay on the bed in the rising morning heat, like two castaways on a drifting raft, humid air rolling through the window.

“She’s a nightmare to go shopping with” Anna is saying, “she never likes anything. No matter what, I’ll show her how-ever-many things and she’ll just hate them all, “no, no, no,” one after the other, she just can’t make up her mind.”

I watch a fly confined by an invisible force field just below the light shade. Plonk, turn left, plink, turn left, plonk, turn left.

“Have you seen that new guy on the second floor?” I ask.

“It’s all just too much for her.” Anna replies.

“She’s right,” I say, “it is all too much, but have you seen that new guy?”

“I’m not saying she isn’t right, it is all too much, but she’s still a nightmare to go shopping with.”

“I don’t blame her,” I say.

“Yes, but what I’m saying is that I’m going alone. I’ll text if I find anything and more to the point, which new guy?”

“The skinny guy.”

“The one who moved into Old Lady Lansing’s old apartment?”

“So he’s Jussi’s new neighbour?”

“Yep.”

“He’s going love that.”

“Which one?”

“Both of them.”

Somehow the fly finds an escape route and suddenly barrels toward the window where it smacks headlong into the pane and drops to the sill.

3.

We eye each other, we humans, as if were always on the cusp of falling in love, studying and pondering and feeling and scrutinising, casting forth our trawler nets and hauling back every minuscule detail, landing deeply sensual impressions of each other onto the decks of our lives. Mirror neuron’s perpetually directing theatrical productions within our very souls as we mimic and experience the intimacy of being an other, in our never ending search for affinity and communion.

I watched Jussi’s new neighbour emerging from the mini-market with a graceful self composed saunter, as if he were mimicking a tiny self in his own head, a confident, breezy and detached tiny self not weighed down by the drudgery of everyday life. He walked as if he had more time, without burden somehow. He had a certain poise about him, simultaneously genuine and ludicrous, a poise that was both begging derision and extremely appealing. It felt like ease, frankness maybe, like a person yet to be broken. A rare thing indeed. He crossed the street, stood on the corner, lit a cigarette and casually glanced about.

“They call it Old Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard,” I said as I went and stood beside him, holding my palm flat the ground and the dog obediently sitting in response. Jussi’s new neighbour took me in with a single glance, partly scrutinising my every atom and partly without the slightest interest. He seemed to be waiting for something.

“You’re Jussi’s new neighbour,” I hear myself saying, holding out my hand.

He flashes momentary confusion, “You mean that crazy old bastard? Do you know him?”

He takes a puff and wavers for a fleeting moment, then shakes my hand.

There’s a loneliness about him, a remoteness, an aversion to casual pleasantries, a bubbling uncertainty. He’d have preferred to avoid my close attentions, so I said nothing and looked around and just waited to see what would happen. His discomfort was obvious, and like most people I expected him to fill it with himself, but instead a couple hovering on the edges break into our sphere and ask him a little giddily if they can get a selfie. He gives me a side eye and the smiles magnanimously as he takes turns with their arms around him. They tell him they loved him as they head off.

“They loved you,” I say.

He flicks his cigarette butt and chuckles, “Cat’s out the bag then,” he says, his hauntedness sailing in the wind for all to see.

I get a text. It’s a picture of a pair of running shoes. They look more like moon landing boots. Then another text with a question mark: “?”

4.

Fame is a dangerous game with no winners. Plucked from the sanctuary of shared social space and platformed as a symbolic human, the rickety and fragile self falters, feeling both cavalier and terrified, as the realisation of a lifetime of isolation, in full sight, slowly dawns.

Jussi’s neighbour lived an Icarian fame. Desperate as he once was to escape the imprisonment of what he imagined would be an unfulfilling life, he yearned to be recognised, courted fame, readied himself, even though he was but a child, perhaps because he was but a child, he believed he could master the fickle hand of fate. But, of course, fate will not be mastered, and while Icarus received the mercy of death, Jussi’s neighbour spent an unrequited lifetime trying to return to the great heights he had so fleetingly tasted as a younger man.

But Jussi’s neighbour, it turned out, wasn’t destined for musical longevity, instead he was bound to fill a one-hit wonder shape carved into the universe. It wasn’t his fault. No one invents their destiny, no matter what the protestant work-ethic capitalists will tell you. We fall into our destiny’s like ball bearings cascading through a bagatelle’s nails and pathways until we finally come to rest in a hole. Even with free will, the nails and the holes are already there, ready and waiting to wrangle and negotiate with your limited choices. And for Jussi’s neighbour, it was the bagatelle’s wish to drive him into, and then away from, that which he sought the most, to be seen, to feel loved, to be whole.

I saw him, when the two complete strangers asked for a selfie, experience a terrifying moment of validation, like a trembling rush, that both fed and provoked his deeper desperation to feel loved, to be seen, to feel whole. Sometimes, for no reason, there’s a perfect alignment between that which will break a person and that which they seek. And Jussi’s neighbour had found himself experiencing the perfect calibration between his desire and his nemesis. I knew right there that his desire to return to the spotlight would be his ruin and I knew there was no way I could ever make this clear to him or to myself. There are so many deep truths in the world that can never be said, never be explained, they can only ever be felt and known. But if you speak them they melt into nothing like water pouring into water.

At that moment I get another text of another pair of running shoes. These ones might be useful for actually running. I imagine putting them on and running and running and running.

5.

We are lying on our raft again. Thunder clouds rolling upward, the sky darkening as a vast gang of ravens sweep by. Sweat pouring from the both of us, the kettle boiling in the kitchen.

“I’ll make it,” I say.

“What’s he like?” Anna asks.

“Mmmmmmm,” I say.

“You know he had a hit in the 90’s,” she says.

“What’s his name?” I ask

“Didn’t you speak to him?”

“Yep.”

“I can’t remember his name,” she says.

“Did you buy any shoes?” I ask.

“No, she didn’t like them.”

“Shall I take her?”

“Ronny Karlsson! I think it’s Ronny Karlsson, wasn’t he called Ronny Karlsson?”

“Or I could just give her the money.”

“Yes, look,” and Anna holds her phone toward me which I push away slightly to focus. There on the screen is a younger Jussi’s neighbour, sitting on a bar stool playing an acoustic guitar above a ring of spotlights with a caption that says Ronny Karlsson - Don’t Ever Forget Me.

“I loved that song,” she says.

“He still does,” I say.

“Maybe go with her,” she says.

“I’ll go with her,” I say as I walk through to the kitchen to prepare tea.