‘Samfunn’
Photographer Eric Calloway
Samfunn
Trill, grumble, sad-whoop ... Trill, grumble, sad-whoop.
They’re doing it again, the neighbours down in B2. For the third time this week the delicate balance of her evening has been upended by their noises — their odd and unkempt sounds of life, if that’s what they are. B4 has been counting, she’s made a note of each occurrence, and not just the night-time disturbances.
There are other things these unseen newcomers are guilty of, disruptive things. Certain behaviours warranting mention to the appropriate authorities.
In the past, a swift correction would have followed; perhaps a public outing of the offenders. This apartment complex even had a Walk Past once, though she might be the only one left who attended.
Such a mild-sounding exercise, but she remembers clearly the bite of the wire at her own still-scarred wrists — in an earlier time, in another place. She remembers the savage looks and vile words from neighbours and acquaintances as they filed past. And gave the same when it was someone else’s turn; in this place, her home.
But those things are no longer done. They’re relics of a bitter past. These days there are committees that smile instead and nod in crude approximations of understanding. Could a strongly-worded letter be written to her own Community Guidance Committee?
Opening a new page on the computer, her fingers twitch above the keys. The cursor blinks restlessly, accusingly. No sounds come from below.
She closes the page, rubbing puffy eyes and gritting coffee-furred teeth. That too is no longer done. It has been deemed ‘inappropriate’, ‘against the principles of community living’.
Instead they have Samfunn.
It’s not until Sunday and she still isn’t sure what they’re supposed to do. Something about community, a get-together, clear skies or clearing the air? On the website are photos of people that could just as well be selling life insurance. They form an absurdly diverse group, at-ease smiles at one another telling her nothing of what to expect from the day or—
Trill, grumble, sad-whoop ... Trill, grumble, sad-whoop.
There they are again, those sounds. What are they even doing down there?
Beneath her feet, B4 can feel the strangely rhythmic trilling noises, the low grumbling of some machine, followed by a deflated whoop. When she stood outside their door the other night, debating whether to knock loudly and correct them or leave a note, she heard gasping sounds as well.
A note never solved anything in her life. Neither did confrontation, so she just slid back upstairs like a murderer’s shadow and seared her skin in the shower before bed.
Is it a sex toy? Is this troublesome new couple experimenting at the expense of her work and sleep? Does their sex life and sad wallowing in ‘adventure’ trump her need for rest?
“Fuck-ing shuttup!”
The words are out and ricocheting off of the bare walls before she can seize them. Folding herself quickly under the desk, she is still. Sweat pricks at her hairline and her thin chest itches fiercely. Just like that other time. The scent of her animal fear is sharp and urgent, somehow comforting.
She chews her lip, loosens and tugs a strand of red hair from her bun, and waits for the scuffing on the stairs, the knock at the door — firm and resolute, impossible to argue with. They wouldn’t listen anyway. They didn’t then, so why would they now. She knows them, or their type. Judge first, punish second and then wrench from you a reason, a justification for their violence.
The computer hums quietly above her, a TV mumbles vaguely somewhere in the complex, loud dance music from the neighbouring building shuffles the air. At this hour, on a Thursday?
And the sounds below continue, incessant and confusing: trill…grumble…sad-whoop, trill…grumble…sad-whoop.
There is no response to her outburst. Does no one care?
A naughty child’s smile plucks at the tight line of her lips, and the laugh that follows is awkward and harsh with disuse. It ricochets like the outburst, before she swallows it down and climbs unsteadily to her feet.
Staring at the door for a few minutes, waiting maybe wanting, she returns finally to her seat. Wasn’t there something about grievances being aired at Samfunn? But dressed up in some schmaltzy language she despises — all positive, all dripping smiles. As though the world was never harsh or brutal, and instead a wonderful dream we all can share.
Sneering at the thought, she clicks deeper into the details of this new celebration of… what? ‘Community’ they all say with smooth, plastic faces, ‘A new path on our road to better living. Together’. And something else that catches her eye.
There’s a corporate blue pop-out box with information about addressing issues and clearing the air — pap, pap, drivel, pap, and then what she has been looking for. Airing grievances at Samfunn has been given an entire page, with vague instructions to ‘allow interpretation in the context of your shared living environment’.
She reads carefully, a smirk plucking at her sleep-sagged face. That’s what she wants. The chance to correct those in B2, to take back the comforting solitude of her home. All of that squeezed into a handwritten note.
There’s a prescribed word limit, a format to ensure it’s kept civil. The Community Guidance Committee decides how they are distributed and dealt with. Could it be a Shame Board or a list read out? But those too are all things from before.
She’ll write the note anyway, pare down the problem, and sharpen the points on which to skewer her neighbours in B2.
She feels better already, lighter and more secure. More at home.
“I don’t feel welcome here, not really. It doesn’t feel like our place,” the woman in A5 says, wincing in that way she does. As though she’s being tickled painfully.
“I know it doesn’t, not yet. But the house is gone. We lost it, remember? It was way too big anyway, we don’t need so much space,” says her boyfriend, or partner.
He hates the term partner. It’s too formal for someone you’ve had to undress and bathe those times when they were too drunk to manage themselves. It’s changed things, those moments staring into her glassy-brown, unknowing eyes. Maybe forced him closer and shredded a few paper walls. Or worn away at the love. Gnawed at it until it’s as threadbare as the rug they brought with them from home.
He still calls it that. To himself so she won’t feel bad about her mistake, her awful fucking judgement and behaviour. She’s sick and surely needs his support. The truth is he needs her just as much, though it’s a mysterious need he can’t quite place.
Oblivious tonight, impervious to comment, she brushes aside her long auburn hair and sips delicately at her fourth glass. He can see how the night will go when she starts flicking out her tongue, catching the tiny red droplets left on her lips. Will she fall over and wake with a bruise? Or just sleep fitfully, snoring and grinding her unbrushed teeth.
Making it to Friday without some minor calamity deserves a house red — cheap and cheerful, she always says. Some work or home disaster on the order of being fired again, or setting an accidental fire that destroys the couch, would call for something much stronger. And then something much darker for them both. How much further can they fall?
“This place is perfect for us. We didn’t use half that house. Just walked through areas to get to those places we spent the most time.”
He’s trying to be practical, to make the mental leap from things like that flourishing garden to this balcony with his few mangy plants. Aphids appeared today from who knows where to devour what’s left.
“Yeah … Yeah, I guess so. It’s an adjustment is all. And some of the people are pretty rude. Like that red-haired woman from B4, she’s a bitch.”
“She’s a bit rude, but she’s been here longer than anyone. Probably feels like she owns the place, or something…” He trails off, remembering a night this week when he was depositing rubbish in the collective bin and saw her standing outside the door of B2. She seemed to strain against some urge, her tall, wiry frame swaying there and looking so vulnerable — a lone moth batting helplessly at the window.
He’d seen her before, years ago now, looking just as helpless and bereft. But the shame was what he remembered most from that time. It suffused her, lit her from the inside with a lurid glow. And when they finally removed the wire from her wrists, she had slumped in on herself with a strange hissing sound. Deflated and made so much lesser, he doubted she had ever recovered.
That was his first and only experience of a Walk Past. It was the first of many for his brother.
“I feel sorry for her. I think she’s lonely,” he says, returning B4 some dignity by saying nothing of that childhood experience.
“What!? She’s just a nasty piece of work. I bet she was right in on all those, what did they call them? Walk Pasts, that was it. We live in better times,” she says sagely, aiming for a wise nod but merely wobbling her head.
“I guess so. You know my brother used to go to them — Walk Pasts, I mean. I think for the fun of it.”
“Really? What? I didn’t know you had a brother. How do I not know this?”
“I stopped seeing him ages ago, before we met. It was for the best.”
“Oooh, tell me more. What was he like?” she says, taking a gulp from her glass.
“He was … cruel. And all that public shaming shit they used to do made him worse. I don’t want to talk about it now. Another time,” he says, waving his hand dismissively.
She just nods, saying nothing. Perhaps she won’t remember, or wait for the worst of times to bring it up again. It’s the past and that’s where he wants him to stay — far away from them.
“I like the idea of Samfunn,” he says. “Great name as well, but what’s going to happen Sunday? I mean, are we supposed to hold hands and sing or something?”
“I don’t know. Should we write a note about B4? About what a bitch she is? We’re supposed to clear the air and all. I wonder how they’ll run it.”
“I think we should write something positive, you know,” he says, trying to turn her mood around and forget B4, forget he ever had a brother.
“We’re lucky to find this place, and we can start again. Do it better this time.”
“Yeah, maybe. I’m not feeling very jolly tonight, Babe. And it’s late. Could you write it? I’ll give some pointers.”
“Okay, sure. You take it easy. Slow down on the drinking, though.”
She doesn’t answer, just turns and stares out the window at the only other light on in the complex, in their new community.
“Samfunn tomorrow,” says C1 out loud to no one, to everyone likely fast asleep in the building. A glorious day, but will it all work out? Will they embrace his vision the way they should? They must. After all, he’s their Committee Chairman and their best interests are his.
The suggestions from Central on how to run it were vague, ideas from other Committee members ludicrous — mental, really. They’re a bunch of casual layabouts, numbskulls. What a great word for that collection of flaky bumblers. But he loves their enthusiasm, and perhaps that’s all that’s needed to execute his plan.
He chuckles with delight in the small pool of light at his table, surrounded by handwritten gripes, alone in the small hours. He’s always been alone and happy for it, or mostly so.
There was someone once. His softly bearded face hovers gently in the corners of a tightly-drawn darkness before bed, and when C1 wakes in the hazy pre-dawn to stretch, exercise and eat poached eggs with dark toast fingers. Jeramy was cool and tall and kissed with his long-lashed eyes always closed. A dapper man, a prince of the imagination. It couldn’t last.
Admitting his faults, his needy jealousy that drowned their joy, is beyond him most days. Better to remember the rosy light and languid, intimate conversations in the bath.
He relived such precious moments late last night while putting the final touches on months of careful preparation. Something about the ordering of many lives he could be leading set him off. Or perhaps fulfilling other people’s lives, somehow.
The tree was installed this afternoon with all its positive, colourful messages aflutter on the summer breeze; surely his best idea yet. And the tents will be propped in the morning by those fuzzwits mediating — another great word to add to his collection. A book of these insults should be written. But who would read it? Jeramy would have.
There’s still the sorting of grievances and suggestions to go through tonight, and the final touches on his grand speech. Nothing negative, no shaming — that much was explicit in the memos from Central. Only hopeful words for his fellow dwellers, his people now.
He’ll inspire them all to come together, but he misses the old days. He remembers dealing with troublemakers and naysayers in the past, lone wolf types and antisocial swine.
There were Walk Pasts he arranged and even took part in. A couple of times he wrote Shame Boards. Reading aloud the list of malcontents was his favourite task back then. Not really so long ago. He has the voice for it: gravelly and sombre, threatening but detached. People always listened. And when the tide turned and Central took a different approach, he was never to blame. It’s just a job and I’m maintaining order, I’m doing this for you — that’s what the voice conveyed. He will use a different one tomorrow.
Although she surely can’t know it, he once Walked Past the tall, spindly, red-haired woman in B4. In another place, and he can’t even remember what she had done. Something about stealing a neighbour’s washing or killing a cat. Maybe touching a child? Some truly crazy thing she was accused of. They found out later, much later, it was a lie. Evidence had been produced, but it was all manufactured by a jealous accuser who thought B4 was after her man.
“Petty, silly creatures us humans,” he says aloud, surprising himself.
While Walking Past he had worn an appropriate scowl of disapproval, had slowed and hissed suitably cruel things at her. The shame that seared her face, leaving all beneath so exposed, still colours his view every time he sees her. It lies like a scorched landscape beneath her defensive squint, the rehearsed meanness of her features. He avoids talking to her. Nodding and smiling instead with as much sincerity as he can muster.
Tomorrow she will make a complaint. There’s nothing from her in the pile, but he has no doubt. His job is to bring them all together and lay these troubles to rest.
What is the best voice to achieve that? Upbeat and familial? Perhaps the friendly and approachable tone he uses during meetings with Central. No, it has to draw them in and make them feel included. He’ll use Jeramy’s soothing voice. That man was a diplomat at heart, a chronic middle child. He could talk anyone around because he cared.
Almost everyone is there waiting to hear the Committee Chairman’s speech. Standing at the edges of the courtyard that centres the complex, or sitting under the towering, flag-covered tree drenched in buttery afternoon light. The uppermost flags flitter in a breeze unfelt below — coral pink, rainforest green, egg-yolk orange and electric blue, all sitting at eye level with the penthouses. Further down the tree and legible from the ground, flags with words like ‘hope’, ‘family’, ‘together’, and of course ‘community’, droop and bunch in the still air.
The couple from A5 are chatting amiably with a lithe, ferrety woman siting between them on a rug in the courtyard, bisecting their morning argument. She’s from somewhere in D block, but is coy about where exactly. The woman from A5, wincing and brushing back her long, dark hair suspects a penthouse. Her partner doesn’t care.
All three have pinned a sunflower-yellow Samfunn badge on their clothes. The colour matches D block’s long, tanned legs, and the man in A5 stares intently at them beneath his sunglasses as she talks about her divorce. It was ugly, he belittled her, now she’s in a better place.
The usual story, he thinks. This is what you say to yourself when it becomes too much, when you realise your other has nothing you want anymore. What will he do if the drinking becomes too much, if his partner ruins it for them again? He looks across those golden legs at her and wonders.
The woman in A5 winces in response, perhaps guessing at his thoughts. She looks back hungrily to the woman from D block, stretching and basking in the attention she can feel but won’t acknowledge. Not yet.
Wrapping up her divorce story, the one she likes to tell to draw in sad couples, D block smiles suggestively at them both. The woman in A5 returns the look, a flutter of desperate excitement in her eyes. A silent agreement is made. What more is there to lose?
In the sweaty aftermath this evening, the couple from A5 will tell themselves it was just for the sake of curiosity, just to spice things up. It doesn’t mean anything.
The man grins sheepishly and moves them on to other topics, avoiding the subject of complaints as he crumples in his pocket the hastily-written note voicing their issues.
Hungover and bitter, his partner had insisted on writing it this morning in her strangely angular hand. But perhaps this really can be a fresh start, a clichéd turn of the page. Could they be something more than the lopsided duo they’ve become?
Behind them and beneath the lowest branches of the tree, hidden from the makeshift stage, are two white tents with comfortable seats and a simple wooden table resting inside. Old and grizzled mediators pretend to lounge in the sun outside each tent — they’re alert and ready to correct people, to punish if necessary.
The pens arranged carefully by colour in their breast pockets are the only reminder of times past. Red, black, and blue are a spectrum of severity beginning with disapproving blue. They were partial to the scathing red back then.
The tall, red-haired woman in B4 watches them closely from her place by the stairs. An itch starts in her chest, fierce and familiar. She knows them from before, the ones who knocked so firm and resolute at her door. And then passed judgement in neatly-rounded red letters.
Moving into the sun, she sits near a couple leaning close around a woman with long tanned legs on display. B4 offers her best smile, her most hopeful grin. It’s returned cautiously by the attractive, flirty woman. The couple seem confused, aggrieved somehow, as though she had cut in line.
Small talk is beyond her today. Maybe it was never with her. Instead, B4 casts the still-awkward look of hope out around her — to practice or prepare for light conversations she knows never come easy. Today they might. Far easier would be her discussion with the noisy couple below her in B2, when the time comes. She will find out what those sounds mean and demand they stop bothering her.
She looks back to the stage where a short, pudgy man in an ill-fitting suit has appeared. He’s out of breath, he looks out of place. Is this the man charged with bringing them together? Is this the Chairman of their Community Guidance Committee?
B4 chuckles quietly to herself as he begins too slowly, too formally for the occasion or the crowd. And then he hits his stride and his voice washes over her, gathers her up and carries her along towards his vision of their communal future.
Speaking the carefully wrought words, casting them out among his people, the Committee Chairman from C1 can see them shifting, changing and merging. He’s hit the right tone. A little gravelly, a touch of sombre, a lot of Jeramy, and something he only just realised he has, or feels. It’s not just a job, perhaps. He’s a leader and they can see his vision. It’s powerful.
The Chairman feels taller and broader. His hands are out and encompassing as he nears the final, closing point — those doughy puppet hands he never liked. Now they feel like conductors arcing positive, communal energy to each and—
Trill, grumble, sad-whoop … Trill, grumble, sad-whoop.
As one group, one community, they turn to watch as a shrunken giant of a man is trundled into the courtyard on a bed by a slight, twitchy woman with thinning blond hair. An array of small machines surrounds the man from B2 like an orchestra, each producing a specific sound that blends to form the distinctive melody. No one moves.
His wife smiles apologetically, looks at her feet and back at the prone man. A breeze lifts strands of hair she quickly smooths back in place. There’s a high, electric whine as the bed raises the man to a sitting position. He waves vaguely at the stunned, curious or hostile faces. There are always those who fear such obvious illness. His desiccated hand drops back on starched sheets.
Trill-grumble-sad-whoop,trill-grumble-sad-whoop,trill-grumble-sad-whoop.
The journey down here, just two levels in the elevator, has taken something from him. It’s gnawed through another tenuous strand tethering him to this life. He felt it go when they arrived, drifting off and up past the top of that beautiful tree like a thread of spider’s silk.
He’s not sorry, it’s where they should be. With their new community, supported and a part of it. How else will his wife manage when he’s gone?
They have fought for this and he’s lost his health for just this kind of connection — although maybe not the name. Samfunn doesn’t mean anything to him. His wife loves it and the sunflower-yellow it’s printed on. Her hair used to be that rich, golden colour. It was a marvel for him when they first met; a long and luxuriant mane, gleaming in any lick of sunlight.
Memories crowd him, they smother him. Suits and courtrooms he stood tall in, she by his side or taking the lead. Regular, furtive conversations behind closed doors late at night. Afterward came the marches in violent streets and excited speeches in the dangerous open. He would have preferred the bullet that took his friend to the poisoned meal that broke his body. He nods meaningfully to his wife, overwhelmed by the past.
Clearing her throat, she apologises and asks everyone to please continue.
“Happy Samfunn,” she says, relishing the warm, clipped sound of the word.
“Yes, happy Samfunn to you all,” says the Chairman from C1, regaining control, taking back the crowd with the final phrases of his interrupted speech.
He bows slightly, courteous and a little awkward — a man in his element taking it too far. But people clap enthusiastically, and he strides off to attend to other matters.
I’m a leader, I’m a leader, I’m a leader each step repeats as he walks briskly back to his apartment to pour a celebratory drink of Central’s champagne.
In the tender dim of his bedroom in C1, perched on the edge of his single bed, he lifts his glass to toast Jeramy and the bumblewits in the Committee — his Committee. And then cries for the things he has done, and maybe the good things he can yet do in this place.
The sound of laughter and conversation filter through to him from outside and he wipes away the sudden tears. There’s work to be done. He needs to keep an eye on the tents.
The red-haired woman in B4 watches as the Committee Chairman emerges unsteadily from his apartment. He practices a welcoming smile before drifting around greeting neighbours with the same look as those on the website. On him it looks real, or at least he seems to believe it. She shakes his hand and wishes him a sincere ‘Happy Samfunn’ when he mingles past. This man from C1, their Chairman, always looks past her, through her. This time he meets her gaze, squeezing her hand with an odd familiarity. How does he know her?
It doesn’t matter, not at all. In her hand is the note and the tents are empty. She should go and register her complaint against the couple in B2 who appeared so suddenly to disrupt the festivities.
Moving towards the tents, she sees them trundle into the elevator. They look emptied but triumphant. He doesn’t need a note, a buffer to make her grievance known. Now is the time to clear the air, to drive home her points and cut them down to size. Who do they think they are?
She strides quickly to the elevator, red hair catching the light and gleaming for the first time in years. Inside, the air is too thick and there’s a lingering, sterile-medicine smell from the man’s machines.
She presses the button repeatedly, rhythmically, until the door opens again on the right floor. Gulping the air and leaning out into the sun drenching the gossiping crowd below, she wavers. Is this the right thing to do? What is the point of—
Trill, grumble, sad-whoop … Trill, grumble, sad-whoop.
She can hear the sound from out here, the relentless strain that has punctuated her nights for far too long. In three steps she is at the door and knocking — firm yet resolute, impossible to ignore.
There’s no response for the longest time, just the trilling, grumbling, sad-whoop. Then the tune stutters, it stumbles and stops. She hears the woman in B2 cry out — an animal sound, a howl bereft and full of pain.
And then she is there in front of B4, the door flung wide and her eyes awash in grief. Her face is twisted in anguish beneath the limp blond hair. No recognisable words can be heard amidst B2’s cries — none are needed. Loss contorts her tiny body in a jerking dance of raw mourning. And then she pauses for a moment.
She sees the note in B4’s hand, knows her purpose and doesn’t care. Leaning out from the doorway, she draws in the tall, thin woman with the flaming red hair and clings to her, sobbing in slow, rolling waves that rock them both.
At their feet the crumpled note lies forgotten. Behind them in the courtyard, at the centre of their community, the brightly-coloured flags flitter softly on the tree in an afternoon breeze.
Crispin Anderlini is a professional storyteller using images, text, and video who now lives and writes and photographs in Penang, Malaysia. Previous work has appeared in various places, including Litro USA, Fresh Ink Anthologies, and Between These Shores Literary & Arts Annual.
