Lenny’s dad for the most part sits there listening. He asks a lot of supplementary questions and wonders how this and that ‘feels’. His face is sad. Sometimes he takes deep breaths and releases cavernous sighs. Now and then he directs Astra so that she takes the right road to the cottage. He says that he has known this day would come sooner or later. When Lenny’s mum died a few years earlier, Lenny broke off contact with him totally. But he had understood that Lenny has sometimes secretly been to the cottage. In some ways that has made him hopeful. Now he is a bit happy but mainly worried. If everything goes all right then he’ll never let go again. Now he is going to support Lenny. That, he’ll promise.
There is a very serious atmosphere in the car.
CHAPTER 37
Party Prison
Titus blinks slowly when he tries to follow the course of the smoke ring on its way to the bunker ceiling. The ceiling is completely soft and slowly whirling around the cable that the light bulb is hanging in. Unpleasant. He turns his gaze away, looks down instead.
With clumsy fingers he squeezes the cigarette butt between the back of his thumb and the top of his index finger. With a comparatively nimble flick of his finger he sends the fag-end flying towards a large pool of cognac that he has spilt in the middle of the floor. When it lands there is a swoosh and a crackling and the pool burns up.
‘Haha, what a suuuuperb floor flambé. Nice consissstency, without a doubt. Haha…’
Titus tries to roar with laughter.
‘HAHA! Hahahaha! Haha…’
He can’t get it right.
In a hoarse and leisurely voice he tries to talk himself into action again.
‘Give me a P – P, give me an A – A, give me an aaaaR – aaaaR, give me a T – T, give me a Y – Y, and give me a P – P, give me an aaaaR – aaaaR, give me an I – I, give me an S – S, give me an O – O, give me an N – N. And what do you get: Paaarty prison. I can’t hear you – wha’d’ya get? PaaaaRTY PRISON! Make an effort now, one more time…’
Jesus, what a fucking boring earth dugout.
He has tried everything. He has sung all the drinking songs he can remember. He has told all the jokes he can recall. He has roared and yelled, pulled all the funny faces and laughed. He is one hell of a party animal, one in a million.
But now he can’t get it together.
He reels like an old heavyweight boxer that some greedy promoter has managed to resuscitate a final time with the promise of regaining his honour – if only he will allow himself to be knocked about just once more. But this vegetable has stopped defending himself years ago. He’s taken knocks in many long rounds without so much as lifting his hand in defence.
Now all that remains is that final fall to the floor like a lump of lead. With his hands hanging loosely by his sides and with his nose as the bow door, Titus slops off the chair and down onto the floor.
Titus Jensen has gone quiet. Silence reigns now.
Dark red blood runs out of both nostrils and mixes with the dark earth colour of the floor.
A couple of minutes – that could just as well have been a couple of hours – pass.
The bundle on the floor moves.
He rolls onto his right hand side and first opens half of his left eye. Looks around. A half-empty bottle lies an arm’s distance from him. With a final effort he stretches his left hand after it, gets hold of it and, with a shaky hand and considerable effort, manoeuvres it towards his mouth. He frees his right hand, which he has been lying on top of, and helps his left hand to get the bottle into his mouth. With their joint resources, the two hands manage to stick the neck of the bottle into Titus’ throat. No more vomiting reflex; it’s a long time since his muscles have tried to do battle. He hyperventilates through his nose since his mouth and throat are full of the bottle.
Then he turns on his back. The bottle sticks right up out of his mouth. A cross on a grave.
The contents gurgle slowly down his throat, into his stomach, bowels, lungs, blood, brain.
Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.
Active euthanasia. A suicide attempt. Help to self-help.
The hours are like minutes, which could be seconds.
He doesn’t have a body any longer. Yet his back seems to be pushed against the ceiling. As if he had turned gravity upside down and was lying there resting on the ceiling. He can see himself lying down there on the cellar floor. Bloody and very much the worse for wear. But still with some respect, despite the cross in his mouth.
Still.
Not moving a muscle.
Not taking a breath.
A black iris circle closes in around the picture of the body on the floor. In the middle, the light gets all the stronger. The body gets slowly smaller and smaller and is mixed up with the white light. The white circle gradually disappears like the opening in the tunnel behind an underground train.
Titus feels the calm spread through his soul, the same almost euphoric calm that he has often experienced when he been sitting and writing this summer. He thinks about his old desk of mahogany, of the little airing window on the left beyond the computer screen which lets in the slight murmur from the city traffic and filters the chirping from the small birds in the trees outside.
He thinks of all the words that he has become friends with and all the favourite phrases he has tickled under the chin. How the work has made him realise that it is precisely work that separates him from decay and addiction.
Now, the white circle is only a little dot in the black tunnel. The last star in the universe is about to fade forever.
He found what he had been looking for.
A brief moment of balance between fortune and misfortune.
A short life.
His life.
He must settle for that.
Or not.
With a roar, Titus lifts up the upper part of his body. At an angle of 90 degrees he sits on the floor and stares straight ahead. Blurred, dizzy.
He challenges his reflexes a last time and forces almost all of his hand into his mouth. He manages to get his fingers part of the way down his throat. He wiggles his index finger. It works. His throat starts to twitch with muscle spasms.
Now.
It’s happening now.
He vomits and vomits. Unbelievable amounts of putrid matter pour out of him. He sobs uncontrollably and the tears spray out of his eyes. The blood vessels on his eyelids rupture from the effort when the muscle contractions strike like lightning through his body. The small dots form a red eye shadow.
He wipes his mouth with the arm of his jacket and quakes from the effort when he laboriously clambers back up onto the chair. He puts his hands on the table top and stretches out his fingers. They have saved his life, yet again. They are dirty. They are trembling. But they are alive.
He straightens his back.
He sits in his writing pose. He is not going to abandon that one more time. Now he must empty himself of what is bad so that he will be able to empty himself of something good. He looks at his fingers. They have work to do.
Now.
Now is the turning point.
CHAPTER 38
The Contract
When Eddie and Lenny open the door to the earth cellar, they are almost knocked over by the stench and the smoke from Titus’ party. Eddie holds his nose and pushes the door with his foot.
‘Hello, Titus? Are you there?’ he says, cautiously. He doesn’t want Titus to be hiding just inside, ready to ambush him.
Titus hasn’t answered for more than twenty-four hours when they have tried to call him on the walkie-talkie. Sometimes they have heard a violent yelling and singing at the other end. Other times it has been either completely silent or they have heard him snoring loudly. When he was awake, they have tried to talk to him, but it has been completely impossible to get any sense out of him.
‘Hello? We’re coming in now.’
When the fresh country autumn air dilutes the stinking cloud, the fug in the cellar is dispersed. Eddie and Lenny get
the situation under control.
Titus Jensen is not about to ambush them.
He is sitting at the camping table and sleeping with one cheek resting on a heap of cheese puffs. He has vomited and all the vomit has run down from the table and over the pile of empty bottles, crisp packets and half-eaten salami sausages. The two empty wine bottles on the table are filled with cigarette ends. One of the fluorescent lamps is hanging loosely from the ceiling. There is some sparking from the loose electric cable.
Eddie and Lenny stare at the mess and the human wreck. Titus breathes heavily.
‘Urgh! Jeeesus. Poor bastard,’ Lenny whispers quietly.
‘We’re getting close now,’ Eddie notes coldly.
‘I really hope so. This is no way to treat people.’
Eddie goes up to Titus and shakes him.
‘Titus! Wake up!’
He grabs the collar of Titus’ jacket and pulls him up against the back of the chair. His face is all slack and his mouth open. Eddie takes a large plastic bottle of tonic from the shelf, which he shakes thoroughly. Then he unscrews the cork and sprays Titus’ face with a hard and concentrated shower.
‘Titus, damn you. Wake up!’
‘Blaaah… Urrgh…’
‘We’re here now. You must confess. Sign the paper.’
Titus opens his eyes and stares at Eddie with a vacant look on his face. There is something friendly and accommodating deep inside that gaze. Not the slightest indication of hatred or anxiety. He raises his right hand somewhat listlessly.
‘Erglsss… plshhh… schine…’
‘What? What are you saying? Do you confess?’
‘Mmmm… appsollll…. mmm.’
‘Good. Repeat after me.’
‘… fffter mmmeeee’
‘I, Titus Jensen…’
‘Hiii, Titush Jenshen…’
‘…do hereby certify that I have stolen ideas as well as texts from The Best Book in the World from Eddie X. I confess that I have made a break-in at Eddie X’s. All the material that I have shown to my publishing house so far is nothing more than a completely plagiarised manuscript from works written by Eddie X. I hereby renounce all future claims to The Best Book in the World.’
‘Shhure… Appsolllute…! Yepp.’
Eddie grabs hold of Titus’ arm and drags it across the table a few times so that rubbish and dried-up vomit is wiped away. He places a sheet of paper on the table and puts a pen into Titus’ hand.
‘Sign here!’
Titus looks first at Eddie with a lazy gaze, and then at Lenny.
‘C… cock in your ear…’ says Lenny vacantly.
Titus puts the pen near the paper and the line on which he should sign. He hiccups before scratching his straggly signature.
‘Yepp. Iiii’mmm Titusssh… Titush Jenshen.’
‘Thank you.’
Eddie grabs the piece of paper off the table and with a few quick steps leaves the cellar. In the doorway, he turns round and looks at Titus and Lenny.
‘The next time we see each other, everything will be back to normal, won’t it?’ he says in a low voice. ‘Won’t it?’
Lenny looks at him with dead eyes. He doesn’t nod, but nor does he shake his head. He just stares at Eddie, his old friend whom he no longer knows. Titus’ gaze has become a little bit clearer. His eyebrows are now high on his forehead, he looks as if he has just woken up, surprised. What’s going on, he seems to be thinking. He looks first at Eddie, then at Lenny. His face gets some of its shape back and he breaks into a loving smile.
‘Cheeeerssh?’
CHAPTER 39
To Gothenburg
By the time Astra and her companions approach the little Sörmland cottage, Eddie has long since left. He is on his way to the book fair in Gothenburg in his old Dupont-style Peugeot decorated with hand-painted hearts. There he will be cheered by the masses and he will show his new secret manuscript to his publisher. He is certain they will hit the roof with delight. For a long time they have been saying that he needs a vitamin injection for his future writing. To be on the safe side, he will always have the document with him too. He doesn’t expect the drunkard Titus to make a fuss, but just in case.
Astra slams on the brakes and the car skids to a halt on the gravel. She leaps out and rushes up to Lenny, who is sitting on the porch steps. He looks calm as he sits there drinking coffee from an old china cup and saucer.
‘Where is he? Where’s Titus?’
Lenny holds up a silencing index finger to his lips and then puts the soles of his hands together and places them like a pillow against his head on one side. With his thumb he points over his shoulder into the inside of the cottage. With a sideward nod of his head, he invites her to enter. She runs in.
Now Malin and Lenny’s dad get out of the car too. Lenny sees Malin first and smiles at her with a serious look. She runs up to Lenny, throws her arms around his neck and disappears into his arms. He looks at her and strokes her cheek.
‘It’s over now,’ he says slowly.
Malin looks up at Lenny. She doesn’t recognise him. There is something strange about him. He is not nearly as wound-up as usual. They haven’t seen each other in quite a while but even so he isn’t stuttering the slightest. Is he on tranquilisers? Is he ill?
First she nods slowly, as if to reassure Lenny. It doesn’t matter if he is ill or weird or just high on whatever. She must be on his side now.
‘It isn’t over yet. But soon.’
Steps can be heard in the gravel in front of them. Lenny looks up.
‘Dad!’
Lenny’s dad stands with open arms just a couple of metres away. Tears run slowly down his cheeks. His chest heaves a little from his sobbing.
‘I’m sorry, Lennart.’
Malin slips out of Lenny’s hug and sits on the steps with her arms around her drawn-up knees. She looks expectant. This is not like anything she has ever experienced before. She knows that it will be a lovely scene, one of those you can live a whole life without experiencing in reality. A string orchestra is playing inside her and emotions are flowing over in her tear ducts. She takes a deep breath so that her sobs won’t disturb the moving tableau.
Lenny gets up. He gives his father a serious look. It looks as if a million thoughts are passing through his head. He puts his hands up to his face and over his nose and mouth, and inhales with big and heavy breaths through his nose. He stares at his dad through his little fingers and ring fingers, all with rings on them. Then he runs his fingers through his hair and down over the back of his head, back and forth.
The seconds that pass feel like an eternity. Malin looks at them in turn, first one and then the other. She smiles, because it will soon come. Oh, how lovely it is.
Then Lenny holds out his right hand and takes a step towards his dad. Their hands meet in a handshake that immediately turns into a hug. When his dad puts his arms over Lenny’s shoulders, then Lenny can’t restrain himself either. He starts to cry and leans his face against his dad’s shoulder. The tears run down the cheeks of both the well-built men. They look at each other and laugh through their tears.
Malin dries some tears with her large shawl. Her inner orchestra is now playing the most sorrowful music one can imagine. It is as if all the clouds are dispersed and the sun warms up the yard. If it had been a film, then little cherubs would come skipping out of the forest and throw confetti over Lenny and his dad. There is a glow and sparkle in their eyes. This is almost better than Malin had hoped for.
Astra sits on the edge of the big sofa-bed in the back room. The ceiling is low and the bed takes up most of the floor space. The old roller blinds are lowered and the light is weak. But here and there a few rays of sun break in through tears in the cloth and particles of dust dance in the cones of light. Titus is lying under a heavy old woollen feather duvet with an attractive upper side of gold-coloured silk. He is thin and looks like a little nestling that has fallen out of the nest too soon.
When he wakes up, Astra is ho
lding his hand. With her other hand she is stroking him slowly on his forehead and his stubbly scalp.
He looks at her. Now he recognises her: she is the young woman on the reward picture. She disappeared but now she has evidently come back again.
He doesn’t need her any longer. He still likes her, he feels that distinctly. But he doesn’t need her to survive.
He almost died there in the earth cellar, he thinks. He was only a hair’s breadth from drinking himself to death. A few more bottles and he would have had a major stroke. A few more cigarettes and he would have suffocated.
Miraculously, there in the cellar he had actually regained the will to live. He knows why. In the cellar there was time to think. Sure, he was sloshed when he thought over and over about his situation and analysed it. But the answer became all the clearer, the more time passed.
He had managed to write a book again.
Undeniably, the battle over The Best Book in the World was lost, but that didn’t matter any more, he thinks. He can write some more novels, even better books. That’s all that counts. As long as he can work, there is cause to live. It is the work itself that is the point, not the end product. Before, he always expected the publication of the finished book to give him joy and satisfaction. But the euphoria never came, and he had to deaden the growing rage within him with alcohol. Now he knows that it is the actual writing process that is the reward. That is when he is alive. He doesn’t need any more cognitive therapy, no breathalyser locks or inflated personal vendettas on which to project his anxiety. He doesn’t even need The Best Book in the World.
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