The Best Book in the World (23 page)

He uses the last of his adrenalin to break his way free. He gets up and stands with his legs apart and his arms stretched up towards the cellar ceiling. Scrapes with his nails on the cold and loose mortar. He can break this off. He must get away. Now there is only one way out left.

‘Aaaahhh!’ he roars as loud as he can and goes up to the shelf. ‘It is me who is Lagavulin! I am intense, smoky and dry, full of richness and a salt flavour. But there have been women who have said that I have sweet undertones. I remember them all.’

He turns to the walkie-talkie and yells:

‘My heart is coloured by amber! I have a slight aroma of tar and seaweed. Stored best at an even temperature! Year after year. Do you hear me – I am Titus Lagavulin Jensen!’

He stamps his feet on the stone floor, rapidly and heavily, like an anonymous execution patrol being rushed to their posts to fire their superiors’ deadly shots.

‘Can you see me? Do you hear me?’

He pulls the cork out of a bottle with a plop and throws it at the cellar door.

‘AAAAaaaahhh!’

Puts the bottle to his mouth. The gulps run down his gullet. A lot of the whisky ends up outside his mouth and runs down his chin and neck. He drinks almost a fifth of the bottle before stopping.

‘Aahh, Jesus that was good!’

Another large gulp and then he puts the bottle on the table with a crash.

‘Now it’s party time!’

He rips open a bag of cheese puffs and tips the contents onto the table. He takes a fistful and puts them in his mouth,
chews wildly and laughs out loud. Yellow flakes of cheese fly around him. He wipes his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. He isn’t quite so sweaty any longer. His fluid balance is returning to a normal level.

‘Hahaha! At last. The cognitive picture therapy can go take a running jump. It might suit everyday problems. But not
earth-cellar
torture! Farewell reward images! Goodbye threat images! When it comes down to it, no therapy in the world can prevent a person’s true driving forces. Cheers, Titus Jensen! Welcome back to life! Where have you been? I’ve missed you. Hahaha!’

Before the whisky has even started its journey from his stomach and out into the bloodstream, he uncorks a dusty bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from 1998. He gulps that down too, in a hurry as he is. Gulp, gulp, gulp. He wipes his mouth with his jacket sleeve.

‘
Bienvenue,
Titus Jensen.’

He lights a cigarette and inhales greedily a few times before releasing it from his lips. He leans his head back and shuts his eyes, balances on the two rear legs of the chair and rocks slightly back and forth. Smoke blows out through his nose. He inhales deeply again and puffs out two perfect smoke rings.

‘Oh, how delightful.’

He means what he says.

The intoxication is now charging through his body. The nicotine gives him a few minutes of inner softness and rest while the alcohol makes every cell in his body wake and tremble with expectation. There’s a party going on. There’s a good time on the way. Soon everything will be much better.

It is a liberating feeling. The anxiety about his relapse and failure lets go of him, and Titus smiles widely to himself. He picks up a large beer glass and some cans of beer.

‘Silence. Take one. Listen to this.’

Titus opens can after can slowly and solemnly. He quivers with pleasure when he hears the wonderful tiny fizzing sounds. Pjui. Pfff. Pssff.

‘Cheers.’

Titus pours out a cold beer, letting it run down the side of the glass to limit the froth. He doesn’t want to have to wait
unnecessary
long seconds for the froth to settle before the drink can reach his thirsty throat. Jesus, an ice-cold beer tastes so good! After having gone through a hard and sober working period, you must surely be allowed to be human again? Yes, right on, that’s the least you can ask for. He is going to get through this.

Titus’ body has lived a comparatively long time without alcohol, which means that the first intoxication quickly turns into a severe drunken state. Had he been his old self, he might well have coped with such a tough start to the party. Now he gets sloshed in just a few minutes, lightning drunk in fifteen and unruly after thirty.

He cheers and yells and gulps and smokes like nobody’s business. There is a very crazy one-man party taking place in the earth cellar.

Now and then he takes a few unsteady dance steps with an imagined party princess by his side. He bows, curtsies and
gesticulates
wildly. Now and then he shadow-boxes: a clumsy punch here and there, roughly like he thinks boxers do it, ducking and dancing around.

But then he gets a grand idea. There isn’t enough singing in this cellar.

‘But hello there! Isn’t there going to be any schnapps at this party?’

He collapses like a heavy sack of potatoes onto the chair and starts singing the Swedish drinking song
Helan går
at the top of his voice while unscrewing the cork of a quarter-litre bottle of Norwegian Linjeakvavit.

‘…And the one who doesn’t take the whole / Doesn’t get the half either / The whole gooooooooes / Sing hup fol-de-rol la la!’

Gulp, gulp, gulp.

Bang, crash, thud.

Bottoms up.

T
here are relationships between people where the bond has crystallised. Such ‘cement’ formations arise both in families and between friends. When these people get together, there is only room for predictable information and expected events. You are who you always have been. You think what you always have thought. And should perchance anything actually occur that transgresses the boundaries, then it is best for all concerned to pretend that nothing has happened, otherwise the roles and the friendship start vibrating dangerously and the foundations can crack. Cement people socialise regularly and serve each other nicely packaged, boasting and completely predictable successes and failure. When they later slowly crumble away, they do so in controlled harmony.

Then you have the relationships where people are suddenly gathered together by chance. It could, for example, be a major experience or a crisis. It can happen to anybody at all, even to cement people. When it occurs, they can suddenly become totally open and share their innermost thoughts while at the same time being really anxious to get to know their fellow human being. The sense of presence is total, and they are absolutely convinced that they have created an honest and open bond that will last forever. And that of course might happen. But at home in the cement factory of everyday life, the miraculous relationship can often stiffen into a strange and unfamiliar lump.

Astra sits behind the wheel and speeds southwards from Stockholm in her large car. Malin is sitting beside her on the passenger seat, and Lenny’s tall dad is half-lying across the rear seat. It wasn’t easy to find him, but they succeeded in the end.

The situation has got all three to open their hearts to each other.
There are no cast-iron roles here. They realise that they must get to know each other in a hurry, so they are almost all speaking at the same time.

Astrid tells the story of Titus Jensen and his important book project. Of a man who was going downhill but who now is on the verge of a new, perhaps final, possibility; that there is something fishy about the relationship with Eddie X and that it looks as if Lenny too is mixed up in it some way or another. Now she must get Titus to the book fair, whatever the cost. Eddie X would also be at the fair, he always is. As a rule he performs in the middle of the fair floor, in the crowd, and is usually a mega-success every year. She says that she has been close to falling in love with Eddie but that she can’t really interpret her feelings. Is he a charming guy or just a charmer? The last time she saw him, he was obsessed with Titus. Mysterious and suspicious. Where Lenny fitted into all this, she couldn’t really say.

Malin is very worried about Lenny. She tells of her
relationship
with him and about his strained relationship with Eddie. The two of them have been mates all their lives, and sometimes Lenny cares more about Eddie that he cares about her. It is not fair. She can’t understand why Eddie has such a strong influence on Lenny. And actually ‘influence’ is the wrong word; ‘power’ is nearer the mark. Eddie lords it over Lenny. Lenny is Eddie’s slave, almost. Yeah, Lenny has been super weird all summer and she doesn’t know at all where she stands with him. She wants him to take some medicines but he just gets grumpy and says it’s not necessary. Perhaps he has started with hard drugs instead. She has read that lots of people with Tourette’s and similar problems medicate themselves with alcohol and drugs.

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.

T
itus 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.