Peter Stjernström - The Best Book in the World

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.”’