Peter Stjernström - The Best Book in the World

‘Absolutely. Aye, aye, captain!’ Astra giggles.

Eddie gets up to leave. When he passes Astra he lets his hand caress her shoulders. He says he can find his own way out. Both Evita and Titus stare openly at Eddie when he goes out through the room. If a resurrected Jesus had gone through the room at the same time, nobody would have seen anyone but Eddie.

Astra, Evita and Titus sit in silence for a few moments after the romantic wind has blown the outer door shut.

Titus can’t restrain himself any longer. He must give expression to his worry.

‘Do you think that he… I mean, why did he come just now? Was it just a coincidence or…’

Astra looks surprised. She has no idea what he is getting at.

‘What? No, but, well of course he knows where I live. I told him that when we were out eating.’

Evita is equally unable to grasp what Titus is worried about.

‘He’s just delightful! Entirely governed by impulse. He must have been nearby, the sun was shining, and he felt that he wanted to sail this evening. No sooner said than arranged. And now he has a date.’

There is a vacant look on Titus’ face. He is absolutely convinced that Eddie X is more interested in getting hold of book ideas than in getting hold of sailors. Besides, he knows how men function. The hunt comes before romance.

‘Please Astra, you must promise me not to mention The Best Book in the World. Not to a soul, and especially not to Eddie.’

‘But of course, Titus! Why ever would I do that? You can trust me. The Best Book in the World stays between the three of us.’

Titus gives a wry smile. He is by no means convinced.

Titus totters out onto the street outside Astra’s flat. Astra’s coffee was not at all satisfying. The coffee is good of course, and the milk hot and frothy. But where are the cakes and biscuits? Not a bun to be seen! No cakes, no sandwiches, no Danish pastries, no croissants, nothing. The only thing on the table was an enormous fruit bowl: organic fairtrade bananas, apples and plums. Sure, fruit can be tasty, but it isn’t what you expect when you go for a coffee. If you have fruit with coffee it ends up as something quite different to a coffee break – a damned fruit break, like in a children’s nursery. A jolly little fruit break. Kumbaya, my lord. Titus gets the shivers when he thinks about himself as a little boy at nursery school. It was on the whole quite unusual for kids to go to nursery when he was little, most stayed at home with their mothers, playing in the yard with nice new toys from the new Co-op department store. Miniature mechanical diggers. Footballs made of real leather. But not Titus. His mum cleaned offices instead of looking after him, and since he was delicate and a bit different, he always got to sit next to teacher when they assembled for a sing-song in the afternoon after the outdoor break. They all sat in a circle on the grey-beige linoleum floor and held each other’s hands. Miss Leaf (Titus had never heard her first name) had cold sweaty hands and fluttering but kind eyes with little lumps of that black stuff on her eyelashes. A shrill voice: Kumbaya my lord, Kumbayaaaah! Morgan sat on the other side of Titus. Meany Morgan. He had tough paws and he used to mangle Titus’ hand so that his fingers sort of rolled up inside Morgan’s dirty fist, back and forth until his little hand was round as a cigar. Morgan’s victory cigar. Scornful milk-teeth pegs. And then – fruit break. Brown-spotted bananas. Soft apples. Morgan’s teeth-marks. Swedish nursery schools in the shadow of the expanding welfare state in the early 1970s.

Titus is hungry and dissatisfied. He is not only in a bad mood because fruit acids and coffee are extremely unsuited to each other. Most of all he is angry with himself. He doesn’t function properly in company any longer, he just sits and is grumpy as soon as he meets anybody. He doesn’t participate, just juggles with a whole load of unfounded suspicions inside his own brain that slowly but surely is being transformed into a centrifuge that is out of balance. And the idea of pretending to be more or less tipsy, what nonsense! Damn it, he is an adult, he tries to convince himself.

Titus must cure himself. First something to eat that is rich in proteins and carbohydrates. Then he needs the company of an old friend or colleague to get a bit of perspective on life. Perhaps he has quite simply imagined that Eddie X is out to get him? What proof does he actually have? A weird meeting at the City Library, a Summer programme that wasn’t about what Eddie said it would be, a forgotten note with a cryptic message, an imagined break-in without any witnesses and with nothing missing – just the lid of the laptop that had been lifted up. Hardly something to turn out Interpol over. A police investigation wouldn’t even call that circumstantial evidence; Håkan Rink would just have snorted and muttered something about his NPNC-doctrine: No Proof, No Crime. No, Eddie was probably fully occupied with charming the world. He couldn’t give a damn about me, Titus thinks. Or could he?

Titus walks past a sign announcing: Dish of the day, fifty kronor. Irresistible, without a doubt. There is a solitary but nice table outside the Chinese restaurant. He takes a seat and waits for someone to take his order.

Eddie’s Neptun yacht is well looked after down to the tiniest detail. The cover on the deck is painted in a dark lilac colour, the hull in a lighter lilac tone, with large ornamental letters from midships in black: Come aboard amour. One might well assume that Eddie had christened the boat; the name matches his poetry perfectly. But it was the first owner, the legendary entertainer Sven-Bertil Taube, who named his shining new yacht at the boatyard together with his wife at the time, Inger. The name is said to have come about by chance when the elegant gentleman held out his hand to help her aboard. To rename a boat means bad luck, and Eddie X would never deliberately court ill fortune. Besides, he is certain that he garners considerable benefit from the amorous Taube inheritance, and he never misses the opportunity to tell the story.

The mast is of rigid and sturdy Oregon pine. All the ropes run across the roof of the cabin back to the cockpit so that the boat can be sailed by a solitary person without them needing to leave the helm. Eddie likes to be in control. He also has a considerable weakness for the old-fashioned romantic world of sailing. For example, all plastic is forbidden on board; you must eat on proper china and drink from proper glasses. When dishes are to be washed, or decks be scrubbed, you haul up the water with a bucket made of waxed sailcloth. That’s what Sven-Bertil used to do too, according to Eddie. The bunks in the cabin have chalk-white cotton sheets and old eiderdown bedding, which can get a little damp if it rains, but no worse than can be steamed away with a few old oil lamps.

Eddie has timed his sailing tour with Astra perfectly. When the hot afternoon air finally leaves Stockholm’s roofs and slowly rises, the vacuum is filled with cooler air from the archipelago which in turn is chased inland by the almost cold air in the open Baltic. As soon as they have left the jetty, the lukewarm onshore wind catches the foresail and the mainsail. The Neptun cruiser sets off like a spear through the water. Adrenalin and a sense of well-being spread through Eddie as the water ripples all the faster around the bows. He looks up at the sail, now perfectly taut in the light wind. He trims the mainsail further and the boat heels a little more. Astra is sitting on the lee side in an orange Helly Hansen life-vest from the 1960s. When the water splashes up beside the railing, she starts to laugh.