Peter Stjernström - The Best Book in the World

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.

When Eddie and Lenny open the door to the earth cellar, they are almost knocked over by the stench and the smoke from Titus’ party. Eddie holds his nose and pushes the door with his foot.

‘Hello, Titus? Are you there?’ he says, cautiously. He doesn’t want Titus to be hiding just inside, ready to ambush him.

Titus hasn’t answered for more than twenty-four hours when they have tried to call him on the walkie-talkie. Sometimes they have heard a violent yelling and singing at the other end. Other times it has been either completely silent or they have heard him snoring loudly. When he was awake, they have tried to talk to him, but it has been completely impossible to get any sense out of him.

‘Hello? We’re coming in now.’

When the fresh country autumn air dilutes the stinking cloud, the fug in the cellar is dispersed. Eddie and Lenny get the situation under control.

Titus Jensen is not about to ambush them.

He is sitting at the camping table and sleeping with one cheek resting on a heap of cheese puffs. He has vomited and all the vomit has run down from the table and over the pile of empty bottles, crisp packets and half-eaten salami sausages. The two empty wine bottles on the table are filled with cigarette ends. One of the fluorescent lamps is hanging loosely from the ceiling. There is some sparking from the loose electric cable.

Eddie and Lenny stare at the mess and the human wreck. Titus breathes heavily.

‘Urgh! Jeeesus. Poor bastard,’ Lenny whispers quietly.

‘We’re getting close now,’ Eddie notes coldly.

‘I really hope so. This is no way to treat people.’

Eddie goes up to Titus and shakes him.

‘Titus! Wake up!’

He grabs the collar of Titus’ jacket and pulls him up against the back of the chair. His face is all slack and his mouth open. Eddie takes a large plastic bottle of tonic from the shelf, which he shakes thoroughly. Then he unscrews the cork and sprays Titus’ face with a hard and concentrated shower.

‘Titus, damn you. Wake up!’

‘Blaaah… Urrgh…’

‘We’re here now. You must confess. Sign the paper.’

Titus opens his eyes and stares at Eddie with a vacant look on his face. There is something friendly and accommodating deep inside that gaze. Not the slightest indication of hatred or anxiety. He raises his right hand somewhat listlessly.

‘Erglsss… plshhh… schine…’

‘What? What are you saying? Do you confess?’

‘Mmmm… appsollll…. mmm.’

‘Good. Repeat after me.’

‘… fffter mmmeeee’

‘I, Titus Jensen…’

‘Hiii, Titush Jenshen…’

‘…do hereby certify that I have stolen ideas as well as texts from The Best Book in the World from Eddie X. I confess that I have made a break-in at Eddie X’s. All the material that I have shown to my publishing house so far is nothing more than a completely plagiarised manuscript from works written by Eddie X. I hereby renounce all future claims to The Best Book in the World. ’

‘Shhure… Appsolllute…! Yepp.’

Eddie grabs hold of Titus’ arm and drags it across the table a few times so that rubbish and dried-up vomit is wiped away. He places a sheet of paper on the table and puts a pen into Titus’ hand.

‘Sign here!’

Titus looks first at Eddie with a lazy gaze, and then at Lenny.

‘C… cock in your ear…’ says Lenny vacantly.

Titus puts the pen near the paper and the line on which he should sign. He hiccups before scratching his straggly signature.

‘Yepp. Iiii’mmm Titusssh… Titush Jenshen.’

‘Thank you.’

Eddie grabs the piece of paper off the table and with a few quick steps leaves the cellar. In the doorway, he turns round and looks at Titus and Lenny.

‘The next time we see each other, everything will be back to normal, won’t it?’ he says in a low voice. ‘Won’t it?’

Lenny looks at him with dead eyes. He doesn’t nod, but nor does he shake his head. He just stares at Eddie, his old friend whom he no longer knows. Titus’ gaze has become a little bit clearer. His eyebrows are now high on his forehead, he looks as if he has just woken up, surprised. What’s going on, he seems to be thinking. He looks first at Eddie, then at Lenny. His face gets some of its shape back and he breaks into a loving smile.

‘Cheeeerssh?’

By the time Astra and her companions approach the little Sörmland cottage, Eddie has long since left. He is on his way to the book fair in Gothenburg in his old Dupont-style Peugeot decorated with hand-painted hearts. There he will be cheered by the masses and he will show his new secret manuscript to his publisher. He is certain they will hit the roof with delight. For a long time they have been saying that he needs a vitamin injection for his future writing. To be on the safe side, he will always have the document with him too. He doesn’t expect the drunkard Titus to make a fuss, but just in case.