The Best Book in the World (6 page)

I
s there any limit to how quickly you can think? Sound travels at 340 metres a second in ordinary air. The fibres of your body transport nerve impulses almost as quickly.

Since the screaming mouth is as good as inside Titus’ ear, it is only a question of a hundredth of a second before the sound is transformed into an impulse which is sent to the brain along half a metre of winding fibres inside Titus’ skull. So it takes a second or so before he is aware of what is happening. The scream paralyses him in the meanwhile. During the second that passes, some traumatic episodes of Titus’ life are screened before his eyes, like a condensed and nasty near-death experience. An unpleasant situation flashes past, like a frozen memory image for a tenth of a second, before it disappears again.

He is in school, fifteen years old. Two boys in the class with downy beard growth have him in their grip. He can see their teeth. They smell of cigarettes, and beer: Pripps Blue. Titus starts to panic. They are going to hack their pencils into his hands. They are going smash him to bits. He writes too much. They hate that. They won’t let him be good at anything. They hate him because he does something they don’t understand. Poems are for homos. Only queers read novels. But writing is the only thing he can do! Writing is the only thing he wants to do, and they are going to take that away from him. He must flee. He must get away. Fight or die. Help, where is his reward image?

Ah, plop, there it is! Suddenly he is lying on the woman’s bosom again. He licks away his milk moustache. He breathes easily. He becomes calm.

One second has passed since the scream in his ear to self-control and calm. One second that proves to Titus that anything is possible.
His technique works. Whatever the situation he finds himself in, he has only to resort to his threat or reward images. It takes less than a second. He is strong now. Titus turns toward the loudmouth.

‘Lenny… nice to see you,’ he says without conviction, and touches his ear as a sign that he intends to protect it from further aggressive trespassing.

‘M-me too. I mean… the same. Sorry that I screamed in your ear. Can’t help it. It just happens. Tourette’s syndrome, you know. As soon as I get the slightest bit excited or surprised, then it comes. I was happy to see you.’

‘Yes, but I know, Lenny. It’s cool. It’s okay.’

‘Thanks, Titus. Well, what are you doing here?’

‘I’m just sort of scouting around, you could say. Got a new project going and I need a bit of inspiration. And you?’

‘M-my girlfriend works in the museum café. Malin – have you met her?’

Titus shakes his head.

‘Well, she works in the restaurant here. Shall we scrounge something tasty?’

‘Okay.’

Titus gets in the queue for the cashier behind a couple of cultured ladies dressed in black. They smile at him and nod very discreetly, as if they knew him. Or had known him a long time ago and now wanted to make themselves known so as to avoid any embarrassment. Has he slept with one of them? Or both? Nothing is impossible, Titus realises, and nods back almost as discreetly before looking away.

The counter is filled with enormous ciabatta sandwiches and cakes and biscuits that are as big as small plates. The sarnies are a bit rustic and look as if somebody had scattered too much flour onto them before they were put in the oven. Houmous, brie, salami, some fancy cabbage leaves and sun-dried tomatoes, the contents are overflowing on all sides.

The giant biscuits have extremely uneven edges. Titus thinks that the person who has baked them must have been a little child or somebody with a serious disability. It’s a very good
thing that they employ disabled people at Moderna Museet! The cultural upper class can be in need of a bit of grim reality. To be forced to cope with your own or somebody else’s handicap is an everyday occurrence for many people. It doesn’t really matter what the biscuits look like; it’s the contents and the taste that counts. And the contents are extremely visible since the biscuits are very buckled. Here and there, bits of chocolate, raisins and nuts stick out. Besides, not all the biscuits have been baked properly; some are even burnt at the edges. Titus takes a handicap biscuit and fills a large cup with coffee. He pushes his tray towards the cash register.

‘That will be fifty-nine kronor, please,’ says the cashier and gives him a friendly smile.

‘What, I took one of the failed biscuits! Look, it is almost burnt. Isn’t there a price reduction for these?’

‘Very funny!’ the cashier laughs. ‘No, they are meant to be like that. These are Jamie Oliver’s biscuits. They are really tasty, I promise. We sell his biscuit and cake book in the shop.’

Now Lenny comes up to the cash register. On his tray he has a portion of cake that is the size of a little flower pot. He leans over Titus and makes a kissing sound with his lips.

‘He-hello, Malin.’

‘Hello, Lenny.’

‘H-he is with me. This is the Titus Jensen that I told you about. The festival, you know.’

‘Oh yeah! Eddie’s mate. Right. Hi, Titus.’

Cashier Malin glances at the queue behind Lenny. Some young mothers stand pointing and deciding among the various biscuits and pastries. Their indecision has created a little gap after Lenny and Titus. Malin lowers her voice and gives them a sly look.

‘Okay, coffee and cakes are on me today. Enjoy yourselves. See you!’

‘Oh, thank you very much,’ says Titus, and rather regrets not taking a giant sarnie instead. But they looked so expensive and he hadn’t really trusted in Lenny’s being able to get one for free.

He takes his tray and aims for a couple of empty chairs beside the window facing towards the Vasa Museum. Today, Stockholm
is in its very best mood, Titus thinks, when he sees all the people walking in the sunshine on Strandvägen on the other side of the bay. Somebody has just lit a grill on the afterdeck of one of the houseboats moored below the museum. The smoke rises straight as an arrow up into the sky. Even the sea breeze seems to have gone on holiday.

Lenny stays for a while and talks to Malin. Lenny is tall and lanky. His body looks nervous, despite a confident go-to-hell-I-am-a-rockstar attitude when it comes to clothes. A lot of black, a lot of studs. Malin, too, looks like a rock girl with all her rings and her unruly hair, even though today she is disguised in the black and white uniform of the restaurant. Now and then, they look in Titus’ direction.

The two cultured ladies are sitting a few tables away. They, too, look at Titus now and then. Titus pretends to be staring straight ahead. Over the years he has acquired a certain ability to look from the corners of his eyes. He is never able to be fathom whether people stare at him with admiration or contempt.

Lenny gives Malin a kiss and strolls across the limestone floor. The sole of one of his canvas shoes has loosened and when he gets close to the table Titus can hear the squelching sound. Even though Titus’ financial situation is more often than not somewhat precarious, he does at least always have decent shoes. His dad went on about that when he was little. ‘As long as you have decent and polished shoes, you’ll stand firmly on this Earth.’ It was easy for his dad to say that, he was a shoemaker with his own hole-in-the-wall shop on Skånegatan. The shoe repair shop was open six days a week. His dad never did anything other than repair and polish boots and shoes. He had done it since he was fifteen years old. When he became a pensioner, he sold the premises to a paper shop for 15,000 kronor. Then he sat in his kitchen for two months before his heart said stop. He died with his eyes open and his forehead on the kitchen table right next to a cup of coffee, his chewing tobacco and his pools coupons. Death was no sadder that anything else in his quiet life.

‘W-what’s the biscuit like?’ Lenny wonders when he sits down opposite Titus.

Lenny evidently feels comfortable and relaxed. His twitching and stammering is much calmer now than when he and Titus met at the festival.

‘Quite all right,’ Titus answers.

‘M-me, I took a great big cake. Like a lunch in itself.’

‘It’s a muffin.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a muffin, not just a cake.’

‘You’re taking the piss!’

‘No, I am not.’

‘B-but muffin sounds like an insult. “You bloody muffin!” type of thing…’

‘Yeah, I agree it sounds a bit daft. But it is still called a muffin, a sweet muffin.’

They sit in silence for a few moments. Whether it is just a cake or a muffin is hardly a subject of conversation to get people relaxed. Titus feels a gust of anxiety. What was the point of saying what he did? Must he be such a damned know-all? Fuck, now a large cold beer would taste really good instead. His hand trembles a little when he lifts the cup to his mouth. Pull your socks up, Titus, damn it! Better to be obsessed than dependent, he thinks.

‘Did you have fun at the festival?’ Titus wonders in an attempt to jump-start a conversation.

Lenny blows some air out of the corner of his mouth as if he was trying to blow his fringe away from his face. Pfff. Pfff. Twice in quick succession. But his fringe doesn’t move an inch. It never does when Lenny blows air out of the corner of his mouth. Titus realises that Lenny’s tics are more a case of twitches on account of his Tourettes than on account of the irritating fringe.

‘Y-yeah, man. It was a fucking success. It’s always great to play with Eddie. The atmosphere is far out. You can almost touch the love in the air. And touch the heat too. I love playing in a marquee. It’s a bit like lying down and making out with the entire audience in a hot midsummer tent. Everybody sleeping with everybody else, but in a good way. Do you get what I mean?’

Titus looks at Lenny. He doesn’t get it all. It sounds absolutely
revolting to sleep in a hot tent and make out with hundreds of teenagers. At the same time, he must keep his end up and be a little accommodating. Lenny has fixed a free café visit after all.

‘Yeah, I think I get it. I agree, there is a special atmosphere around Eddie. I remember the first time I saw him. It was when Stockholm was the Cultural Capital of Europe. They arranged a culture marathon out by the gasometers at Ropsten. A whole week, day and night, with actors, writers and artists who took turns reading classics and newly written works that in one way or another were about love. I was there one night when it was hot, full of people and a really brilliant atmosphere. Then Eddie read
I Adore Love.
There was only just him and a guy with a double bass. Eddie was wearing a white silk suit, as big as a shift, with the arms rolled up, and he was barefoot. He had feathers in his hair, he looked like a Sitting Bull on a bathing holiday by the Riviera. There must have been five hundred people in there sitting on the floor around him. It was like he had an aura, and he looked bloody handsome too. I’m not usually easy to impress but even I thought it was a bit magical.’

‘F-fuck, bloody great.
I Adore Love
is brilliant. Was that the time he read the whole book?’

‘I suppose so. It took half the night. He was slower in those days, sort of more northern and reflective. It was as if people were in a trance. It sounds like a cliché but I really think that the world gets a little better with nights like that. Even I felt happy for hours afterwards.’

‘What do you mean “even you”? Aren’t you human like everybody else?’ Lenny wonders, and takes a big mouthful of his mega-cake. Or rather, mega-muffin.

‘Sure, but mass experiences are a hell of a problem for me. I become suspicious, I think that somebody is trying to sell happiness to me. You can’t buy happiness. You can’t give it away either. Happiness is, if anything, an absurd way of regarding the world. I mean, sometimes happiness occurs, even for me. But it is not because I have hunted for it, rather the opposite. It is not until you stop hunting it all the time that it can come. At the same time, it
is almost impossible
not
to try to hunt happiness. Hunting happiness is probably the most human activity one can imagine. Animals can be satisfied without happiness, but not us humans. We need more, always something more.’

‘M-me, I’m not so fucking sure about that. Are you hunting happiness just because you go to a concert reading by Eddie X? Can’t you just take it easy and have a cosy time? Just be, sort of, fairly content?’

‘Yeah, of course. And that’s what I mean. The world gets a bit better from that sort of thing. But if it is happiness or not, that I don’t know.’

‘Does it make any difference what you call it?’ says Lenny, and blows with the corner of his mouth: pfff, pfff.

‘No, you’re probably right about that.’

Titus glances at the cultured ladies. Are they still there? Yes, they are, they’re sitting and breaking small pieces of their enormous biscuits, popping the crumbs into their mouths like beautiful small birds. Giggling and glistening with their nice teeth. They look rather expensive from a distance, with their highlighted hair in fancy coiffures. Something has definitely happened with cultured ladies in recent years, Titus thinks. Just a few years ago, most of them had hair that was dyed red, preferably with an uncombed look and set up with a colourful hair ribbon. Sensible shoes and multi-coloured clothes. Now they are more discreet and stylistically pure: high heels and tight skirts, pretty as models, almost regardless of age. You can no longer distinguish between culture girls and upper class chicks. That sort of hairdo must cost at least a thousand kronor. What has happened? Have wages gone up in the culture sector? Not in Titus’ sector at any rate, he is quite certain about that. Although when he thinks about all the glass and brushed steel he saw in Astra’s flat he becomes uncertain again. She is pretty in that way too. Not sexy pretty, but expensive pretty. Fuck, I’m way behind, he thinks. I want money too! But not so that I can look like an expensive upper-class chap. I just want the freedom.

‘And what are you working on at the moment then?’ Lenny
wonders. ‘A new book under way? I’ve read
Storm Clouds
and
Treacherous Charades.
Quite a lot of pain and blackness. Perfect reads for a grim week on Gotland in November. Is there more in that style coming along? Pfff. Pfff.’