Peter Stjernström - The Best Book in the World

‘Idiot!’ screams another part of his brain. Better to be obsessed than dependent: have you already forgotten your mantra? Without poisons in your body you can do whatever you want with your life. If you are clean, you can perform miracles. You’ve already written a classic manuscript, now you must see it through to the end. Better to be obsessed than dependent, never forget that!

Then he is a little boy again lying on a young woman’s bosom, her breasts heavy with milk. He breathes calmly. He keeps time with her. She strokes his head. He has that downy soft baby hair. Her nipples are still and beautiful. He puts his lips around one of them and lets a wet tongue lick round it.

Titus can feel calm returning to his body. This cognitive self-help therapy with reward images saves him yet again. With a trembling hand, he puts the open cigarette packet back on the shelf.

A crackling comes from the colourful baby monitor on the table.

‘Cheers, Titus!’

It’s Eddie.

Who is he really, thinks Titus. He who just a couple of months ago was a good person has now been transformed into a repulsive monster. Why? What have I done to deserve this hell?

‘Hello? Hahahaha! Woof, woof, you pathetic drunken dog. Did you find something tasty?’

‘Eddie, why are you doing this?’ Titus asks in a calm voice. He looks at the wall behind the walkie-talkie as if trying to establish eye contact with Eddie.

‘Haha! And you wonder why? Haven’t you understood anything? Ever since we thought up the idea of this book, you’ve been tormenting me. I could perhaps have lived with you writing a version of your own. But I can’t allow you to steal all my ideas.’

‘But I haven’t done that!’

‘Yes you have, every single word is stolen. Don’t you think that I can see what you’ve done? Do you think I’m an idiot? But perhaps I could even have lived with that theft too. If you hadn’t…’

The walkie-talkie goes silent.

‘If I hadn’t… what?’ Titus wonders.

‘If you hadn’t infected me.’

‘Infected you?’

‘You have infected me, Titus Jensen.’

‘With what?’

‘Your confounded darkness. I can’t shake it off! It’s driving me crazy. I wake up every morning and the only thing I want to do is go to a bar and have a large, strong beer. I can’t write a single sensible word. But you will bloody well confess that you’ve stolen my book! You have stolen my idea, my manuscript and you have infected me with all of your damned Titus depression. To hell with you! But I want my life back, do you understand? Cheers! Hahaha!’

There is a click from the walkie-talkie. Eddie has gone.

‘Hello?’ Titus attempts. ‘Are you there?’

No answer.

Locking up a sober alcoholic in an earth cellar full of spirits is not a kind thing to do. It is torture.

Titus shakes his head. Eddie has gone completely nuts. What’s with the ‘infected’ thing? He can’t help it if Eddie has lost his touch. Just because he has got his energy and joie de vivre back this summer, surely that doesn’t mean that it must disappear from somebody else? As if the energy had simply transferred from on to the other?

He sits there, on the camping chair by the table, and thinks over his situation.

Energy cannot be used up – he remembers somebody having said that. You can’t destroy it and you can’t create it. The energy that exists can only be transformed and redistributed. Energy goes round and round, a system complete in itself. For example, you pump up oil from under the sea, make it into petrol and use the petrol to create kinetic energy for a car. And around the car thermo-dynamics are created in the air, that is, energy which in turn affects animals, insects and sound waves, and the energy is knocked further into the atmosphere. Round and round, like a perpetual motion machine.

The thoughts inside Titus’ head whirl round all the faster.

What if the same applies to human energy? The energy and love in the world just hops around between different individuals! Why shouldn’t the laws of nature be the same for humans as for the sun, wind and water? You can’t use up human energy and love. But you can transform it, move it.

In some perverse way perhaps Eddie is right. The mind boggles at the idea. But just imagine if it actually is true that Titus has functioned well all summer because he has got his energy from Eddie? All that time he has been under the impression that it is his actual work with The Best Book in the World that has kept him away from the hard stuff, but he can’t deny that the idea cropped up when he was boozing with Eddie. What if he was really charging up with a load of energy from Eddie then? And at the same time emptying Eddie!

He stares in front of him, glares at the shelves filled with the best alcohol, tobacco and snacks in the world. Is he in his true element now? He feels empty inside.

He thinks about those young people who wanted his autograph at Södra Teatern. What did they say? That they had became a couple because of him? That he had given them love… Had he really been infected with Eddie’s ability to give love? Could he, Titus Jensen, have given love to those young people…?

No, it’s an impossible equation. He can never become Eddie X, and Eddie X can never become Titus Jensen.

The craving washes over him again. Just one glass of whisky – that would make him see clearly again. He must test who he really is. Is he the new energy-creating Titus or is he the same old drunk of a writer that he always has been? If he tastes the whisky, he’ll have the answer. He will either pass the test and put the glass aside once and for all, or he will get totally sloshed as usual.

The cognitive behavioural pattern makes one more attempt to save Titus. The mantra chants repetitively in his head: better to be obsessed than dependent, better to be obsessed than dependent. But it sounds more feeble than obsessed. When he tries to find the reward image of himself on that soft woman’s breast, he can only see a toothless tramp with a grey beard who laughs scornfully at him. The old wreck has lain down on top of a woman who sobs vainly and has turned her face away. Titus waves his hand in the air in front of his eyes but this figment of his imagination won’t disappear. The man stretches up a bony and filthy hand in the air holding a mug of cloudy beer. The man says something. Have a glass, brother Titus! You have earned it. Cheers, damn it!

‘He’ll soon sign the paper, you wait and see,’ says Eddie, and grins under the light bulb above the kitchen table.

‘I really hope you’re right,’ answers Lenny.

‘Yeah, for sure, he’ll soon be himself again. And then everything will be business as usual.’

Lenny looks at Eddie with a sorrowful expression.

‘Nothing can ever be the same after this.’

‘Of course it can,’ hisses Eddie. ‘Who we are and how we are regarded is a zero-sum game. One man’s loss is another man’s gain. I’ll soon be the usual Eddie X again, and you the same old Tourette’s-Lenny. And Titus, he is Titus. A fucking booze-hound.’

‘Stop, I’m not sure I want to be a part of this any longer…’

‘You what? Stop pretending to be scrupulous, damn it, it doesn’t suit you. Why are you here in that case, if I may ask?’

‘You know why.’

‘There you are then.’

‘But I don’t know if I care any more…’

‘Hahaha! So you want to live the rest of your life as a bluff? “Do you remember Lenny, the guy who was the rock star in The Tourettes? But who was just a fake.” What, is that how you want to go down in history?’

‘No… but it’s all this stuff with Titus. What if he never comes back? I think we’re going too far.’