The Best Book in the World (18 page)

Lenny looks frightened. His eyes wide open, he stares at Eddie and nods.

Titus stares too, with his millimetre eye, from the sofa.

The fury.

Romantic poets can evidently have many sides to them.

When Astra gets out of the taxi outside the theatre, the square is almost deserted. It is a few minutes past eight and the festival has already begun. She hurries up the stairs and goes to the box office. She’s lucky, there are still a few tickets left. The upper gallery, next to the spotlight ramp. Might be a bit hot there, but she can see and hear well. Only 190 kronor.

‘I’ll take it,’ says Astra, and pays.

The opening act is something of a highlight: Legendary jazz and groove poet Gil Scott-Heron is on stage. The man behind classics like
Home Is Where The Hatred Is
and
Whitey On The Moon
gets the adrenalin going in the magnificent theatre auditorium. He is the opening act and will also close the evening as the final act. In the 1960s and 1970s, he made a name for himself for his militant stance in the Afro-American liberation struggle. During his entire artistic career he has fought against injustice and discrimination by reading and singing revolutionary texts to funky background music. Lots of people regard Gil Scott-Heron as the father of hip hop, although he personally hates the way a large part of black music over the last twenty years has treated women in such a degrading manner. It is both sad and degrading that a people who have been
the victims of apartheid can’t raise themselves above the standard of their oppressors.

When Astra takes her seat, the whole auditorium is already on the verge of meltdown. Gil Scott-Heron’s time machine has thrown the public back to 1970, a time when the revolution was raging. The old legend stands alone on the dark stage with only one spotlight right above him. He looks like a scarecrow: grey beard, grey jacket, black shirt, black leather cap. Everything is too large, too sack-like. Funky background music with bongo drums, lazy bass and indecent transverse flute. His head bent slightly forward towards the mike. You can’t see his eyes. A hoarse, feverish voice. One hand gripping the mike stand. His other clenched fist up in the air, out towards the auditorium. Black power.

Astra just manages to hear the final words. Gil-Scott Heron’s warm-up.

Whistling, cheers and foot stamping on the floor. The ovation seems to go on forever. Everybody loves what they have just experienced. Imagine, actually hearing
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
live! Admittedly, more than thirty years after the event, but even so. This is the best revolutionary song in the world!

Tomorrow the audience will be back at their jobs earning the money to pay the interest on their mortgages for their expensive homes. But this evening they are all of them activists who can and want to change the world, and those who now and then hope there will be a revolution do at least have more fun than those who never hope for anything. Particularly when they do it together.

It is an enchanted evening.

After Gil Scott-Heron’s magical opening, a stable and decent programme follows. The themes spread wildly and the
performances
are about everything from freedom of expression to sex. Eddie X does a great job as MC and manages to get the wild programme to hang together in a neat and warming way. He also reads some of his own poems in the intervals. Love spreads. The audience are delighted in their seats.

Astra thinks about Titus and wonders how he will manage the
evening. It ought to be time for his appearance soon. She knows how confused and irritable he has been the last few weeks. Can he really manage to be teetotal and to stand up in front of a whole theatre auditorium filled with people who demand to be
entertained
? As long as they don’t do that gimmick with the luggage trolley. Please, please, no trolley!

Now Eddie X returns yet again to the stage, his arms opened wide towards the public. He walks slowly up to the microphone and smiles.

‘Dear audience! With us this evening we have a Swedish classic, as angry as Strindberg and as black as Norén. Yes, now, of course, you understand to whom I am referring. Perhaps you have already seen him read something from our unknown literary treasure trove earlier. Perhaps you have only heard about these celebrated literary occasions. Whatever, here he is – the full-blood writer, half pain, half blackness! My friends, please give a warm welcome to – Titus Jensen!’

Then a flashing stroboscope light starts up. The bass beat from White Stripes’
Seven Nation Army
booms out of the loudspeakers. Eddie looks as if he is jerking in the flashing white light although he is standing completely still.

From off-stage Lenny comes in wheeling a black-clad Titus standing on a yellow baggage trolley. He does a few laps of the stage to audience applause and laughter. A lot of people know what to expect. As Titus is brought up to the front of the stage and the microphone the music goes quiet and the usual spotlights replace the flashing lights. When Lenny stands the trolley up and tips off his load, Titus takes a couple of unsteady steps out on to the stage floor. He screws up his eyes against the light, holding his hand like a peaked cap to shade them. He sways slightly, his mouth open and slack, drunk as a lord and high as a pylon. He is embarrassing and hair-raising at same time. Is he going to pull this off? Giggles and laughter in the audience.

Astra puts a hand on her brow and squirms in an effort to shake off the repugnance she feels. This is just crazy, she thinks. How can people find this funny? Bloody parasites.

And what should she do now? If Titus has broken his promise of temperance then the book project is a write-off, that much is obvious. The manuscript will never be ready in time and Evita will cut off the funding the second she hears what has happened. Damn and blast, and after she had invested so much time in that blithering idiot.

Eddie rests his arm on Titus’ shoulders. He looks at the audience but speaks to Titus.

‘Hello, Titus.’

‘Hello.’

‘Nice to see you here!’

‘Mmmm.’

‘And now you are going to read for us?’

‘Thank you.’

‘What are you going to read?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Is it in Swedish, do you think?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Is it something good, do you think?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Do you want to know what we have chosen for you?’

‘Okay.’

‘We have chosen a fantastic book from the literary treasure trove, a rarity we found earlier today at an antiquarian bookseller’s just near here. The book is called
What a Young Husband Ought to Know.
It was written by the American moral preacher and doctor of theology Sylvanus Stall about one hundred years ago and was translated into Swedish in 1930. Take it away, Titus!’

Eddie X puts a fancy little volume with a half-calf binding into Titus’ hand, and backs off the stage. Titus remains standing alone together with the motionless microphone stand. There is an expectant silence in the auditorium.

Titus opens the book and looks at some random pages.

‘Oh goodness, what tiiiiny print! Were people smaller in the old days?’

Laughter immediately. The audience has decided: this is going to be fun.

Titus digs out a pair of reading spectacles from his pocket and places them on the tip of his nose. He clears his throat and starts to read like an old Sunday school teacher in a 1930s film.

‘Chapter Nine: about your future bride! “It is necessary now to call the attention of young husbands to the fact that in women there exists less sexual desire and satisfaction than in man. Perhaps of the great majority of women it would be true to say that they are largely devoid of sexual pleasure.”’

Titus exaggerates the ‘e’ in all words containing the syllable ‘sex’, making the words even more ridiculous than they already are. Seeeexual desire and seeeexual pleasure. This attracts howls of laughter from the audience.

Astra doesn’t laugh. She sits there with her arms tightly would around her chest, as if in a straitjacket. She thinks that what she is seeing is quite simply the worst sort of humour, based on people’s disabilities.

‘“In regard to the seeeexual intensity of the seeexual instinct, women might with some accuracy be divided into three classes. The first class, which includes the larger number, is generally supposed to be quite devoid of seeexual inclination and feeling. The second class is composed of women who find in the marital relation a moderate and nooormal pleasure when they are in health, and if indulged in at times which are agreeable to them, and at suitable intervals.”’

Titus is now up and running, Astra can see that. And the audience is with him. They laugh every time Titus pronounces something in a particularly funny or emphatic way. He stands erect and does actually manage to express a little human pride, despite
everything
. That’s something at least, Astra thinks.

After a short pause for effect, he holds the book theatrically at an arm’s distance and continues to read in a clear and distinct voice:

‘And, my friends: “The third class represents the few in whom seeexuality presides as a ruling passion. This class is by no means as numerous as some might imagine and such women should never be married except to men of good health, strong physique, large powers of endurance, and with a
pronounced
seeexual inclination.”’

Titus gives an exaggerated bow and gains applause. He turns the pages to a new passage in the book. Now he has really got up steam. He stands, legs apart, and glows with self-confidence. Astra relaxes a little. This is actually slightly amusing. Bloody stupid, but amusing.

‘“Chapter Four: Essentials in husband and home. If your wife is to have a fair chance for a pleasant home and a happy and useful life, she will need a husband who can sacrifice his personal luxuries and self-indulgences in order that he may share with her and the family the comforts and blessings of their home – a man who will scorn the saloon, avoid the club, remain away from the lodge,
give up his cigar,
and spend his time and his money for the comfort and happiness of his family.”’

Even Titus laughs while reading. He never usually does that. Astra starts to think that Titus’ eyes are shining in an extremely alert manner. Is he really sloshed? He doesn’t look particularly intoxicated any more.

Titus turns the pages again and sticks his finger in at random.

‘“Do not stimulate impure thinking by theatre-going, the reading of
salacious
books, participation in the round dance, the presence of
nude statuary and suggestive pictures
; avoid such bodily exposure and postures as mar the modesty of both man and woman. Marital moderation is most easily secured and maintained where married persons occupy separate beds; and, indeed, in many instances such conditions exist as render separate rooms not only desirable, but essential. Mr E.B. Duffey says: ‘If the husband cannot properly
control his amorous propensities
they had better by all means occupy separate beds and different apartments, with a lock on the communicating door, the key in the wife’s possession.””

Yet again, time for a brief rhetorical pause. Titus looks out over the auditorium with a broad smile. Astra thinks that he seems to be enjoying himself. The audience is also in good form; they belong to a laid-back generation that can laugh at historic
stupidities
instead of being shocked.

A young black-clad couple on the front row have stood up holding hands and are reaching out their hands towards Titus. Some
sort of message is written along their arms. They are jumping, dancing and look as if they love Titus more than anyone else on the planet. To think that Titus can arouse such emotions! That is something new.

His gaze searches up over the balconies, right up to the gallery where Astra is sitting. She gets the impression that he is looking for her, and they make eye contact, Astra is almost certain of that. What was that, did he see her, did he give a wink? Titus’ gaze wanders further over the audience as if he is searching for somebody. But surely that was a wink? At least it was some sort of signal.

Titus reads some more short passages from the past ages of the moral preacher, before suddenly shouting:

‘Now listen, here comes the last verse from our very own doctor of theology, Sylvanus Stall. Are you with me?’

The audience stands up, their hands in the air with fingers pointing towards the ceiling, stamping the floor. Titus Jensen is king.

‘“Seeeexual excess is one of the most destructive forms of
intemperance
, degrading alike the body, mind and morals.” So think about that, girls and boys – go home and fuck each other this evening! Have a nice time! Thank you for listening to me, my name is Titus Jensen. Today and for ever and ever!’

Shouts of laughter and applause. This was one of the highlights of the evening, most of the audience agrees about that. Even Astra thinks that Titus made a good job of it. Perhaps these
spontaneous
readings are not quite as degrading when you get down to it; the public is laughing just as much at the ridiculous texts as they are at Titus. But of course it is pathetic that nobody cares about his own texts. Why can’t they pass muster for a festival like this? They are just as good as most of what she has heard this evening, that’s for sure. She decides to seek out Titus when the programme is finished. It is time to normalise their relationship again and besides, she must find out whether he really has broken his temperance vows.

After the festival, several of the performers and a large part of the audience hang around in the upper foyer and in the vicinity of the
bar in the middle of the room. Since the weather is so nice and the evening warm, the enormous terrace outside is open, too.

Eddie X is holding court around a table in one corner of the terrace. He has had a good evening even though the energy drained away somewhat after Titus’ climax. Eddie’s interval act simply didn’t strike home like it usually did.

Various refreshments are available on a large tray in the middle of the table. Titus has managed to fill his glass with something that looks like a large gin and tonic with lemon – without adding a single drop of gin. He bellows in time with his fellow revellers. His nervousness has gone and now it is as easy as pie to act drunk. He is sitting next to Lenny who is comparatively relaxed and doesn’t have to shout out expletives all the time. Lenny is fairly drunk too, but for real. He twitches and stutters much less than usual, almost as though alcohol alleviates Tourette’s, Titus thinks.