Peter Stjernström - The Best Book in the World

Astra slams on the brakes and the car skids to a halt on the gravel. She leaps out and rushes up to Lenny, who is sitting on the porch steps. He looks calm as he sits there drinking coffee from an old china cup and saucer.

‘Where is he? Where’s Titus?’

Lenny holds up a silencing index finger to his lips and then puts the soles of his hands together and places them like a pillow against his head on one side. With his thumb he points over his shoulder into the inside of the cottage. With a sideward nod of his head, he invites her to enter. She runs in.

Now Malin and Lenny’s dad get out of the car too. Lenny sees Malin first and smiles at her with a serious look. She runs up to Lenny, throws her arms around his neck and disappears into his arms. He looks at her and strokes her cheek.

‘It’s over now,’ he says slowly.

Malin looks up at Lenny. She doesn’t recognise him. There is something strange about him. He is not nearly as wound-up as usual. They haven’t seen each other in quite a while but even so he isn’t stuttering the slightest. Is he on tranquilisers? Is he ill?

First she nods slowly, as if to reassure Lenny. It doesn’t matter if he is ill or weird or just high on whatever. She must be on his side now.

‘It isn’t over yet. But soon.’

Steps can be heard in the gravel in front of them. Lenny looks up.

‘Dad!’

Lenny’s dad stands with open arms just a couple of metres away. Tears run slowly down his cheeks. His chest heaves a little from his sobbing.

‘I’m sorry, Lennart.’

Malin slips out of Lenny’s hug and sits on the steps with her arms around her drawn-up knees. She looks expectant. This is not like anything she has ever experienced before. She knows that it will be a lovely scene, one of those you can live a whole life without experiencing in reality. A string orchestra is playing inside her and emotions are flowing over in her tear ducts. She takes a deep breath so that her sobs won’t disturb the moving tableau.

Lenny gets up. He gives his father a serious look. It looks as if a million thoughts are passing through his head. He puts his hands up to his face and over his nose and mouth, and inhales with big and heavy breaths through his nose. He stares at his dad through his little fingers and ring fingers, all with rings on them. Then he runs his fingers through his hair and down over the back of his head, back and forth.

The seconds that pass feel like an eternity. Malin looks at them in turn, first one and then the other. She smiles, because it will soon come. Oh, how lovely it is.

Then Lenny holds out his right hand and takes a step towards his dad. Their hands meet in a handshake that immediately turns into a hug. When his dad puts his arms over Lenny’s shoulders, then Lenny can’t restrain himself either. He starts to cry and leans his face against his dad’s shoulder. The tears run down the cheeks of both the well-built men. They look at each other and laugh through their tears.

Malin dries some tears with her large shawl. Her inner orchestra is now playing the most sorrowful music one can imagine. It is as if all the clouds are dispersed and the sun warms up the yard. If it had been a film, then little cherubs would come skipping out of the forest and throw confetti over Lenny and his dad. There is a glow and sparkle in their eyes. This is almost better than Malin had hoped for.

Astra sits on the edge of the big sofa-bed in the back room. The ceiling is low and the bed takes up most of the floor space. The old roller blinds are lowered and the light is weak. But here and there a few rays of sun break in through tears in the cloth and particles of dust dance in the cones of light. Titus is lying under a heavy old woollen feather duvet with an attractive upper side of gold-coloured silk. He is thin and looks like a little nestling that has fallen out of the nest too soon.

When he wakes up, Astra is holding his hand. With her other hand she is stroking him slowly on his forehead and his stubbly scalp.

He looks at her. Now he recognises her: she is the young woman on the reward picture. She disappeared but now she has evidently come back again.

He doesn’t need her any longer. He still likes her, he feels that distinctly. But he doesn’t need her to survive.

He almost died there in the earth cellar, he thinks. He was only a hair’s breadth from drinking himself to death. A few more bottles and he would have had a major stroke. A few more cigarettes and he would have suffocated.

Miraculously, there in the cellar he had actually regained the will to live. He knows why. In the cellar there was time to think. Sure, he was sloshed when he thought over and over about his situation and analysed it. But the answer became all the clearer, the more time passed.

He had managed to write a book again.

Undeniably, the battle over The Best Book in the World was lost, but that didn’t matter any more, he thinks. He can write some more novels, even better books. That’s all that counts. As long as he can work, there is cause to live. It is the work itself that is the point, not the end product. Before, he always expected the publication of the finished book to give him joy and satisfaction. But the euphoria never came, and he had to deaden the growing rage within him with alcohol. Now he knows that it is the actual writing process that is the reward. That is when he is alive. He doesn’t need any more cognitive therapy, no breathalyser locks or inflated personal vendettas on which to project his anxiety. He doesn’t even need The Best Book in the World.

All he needs is himself. Sober and in good working order.

The final hours before Eddie and Lenny came and released him, he hadn’t drunk a drop of alcohol or smoked a single cigarette. He had just been sitting there and waiting to sober up and become the new re-born Titus. The turning point was just as clear as the mushroom cloud after an atomic bomb. From this point on, he would heal.

He has taken over his life again. Since he – excepting a few short periods – hadn’t been sober for thirty years, he must now define who Titus really is. Metaphorically, he is young again. He has all his choices before him.

Freedom is the understanding that you have a choice, he thinks. And as long as he has recourse to himself, he can do anything at all. Never again will he reject himself.

He looks at Astra, who is sitting on the stool next to his bed. She has let him wake up slowly and he is grateful for that.

‘I’m free now,’ he says.

She nods slowly.

‘You are indeed free, Titus. Now we’re going to Gothenburg.’

Astra comes out onto the porch steps with her arm around Titus’ back. He sags like a little sack by her side.

Titus blinks in the sunlight and looks as if he has just woken up. He gives a smile of recognition to Lenny and Malin.

Then he sees a large smiling man in a white coat.

‘Doctor Rolf? Ralf Rolf?’

What is that nutter doing here? He recognises the noisy and crazy multi-therapist that stubborn telephone seller had conned him into meeting. Who talked about placebo therapies and fell into a heavy sleep in the middle of the conversation. They are not going to con him into lots of daft multi-therapy now, are they? If this is one of Astra’s new ideas, then she is way off…

‘I’m Lennart’s dad,’ says Doctor Rolf and interrupts Titus’ thoughts. ‘Lenny’s, I mean. I am Lenny’s dad.’ A big liberating laugh rolls out of his mouth. ‘Call me Raffe, all my closest friends do that.’

Titus looks at Lenny and at Doctor Rolf. He can’t believe his eyes. Are the two related?

‘We’ll sort it all out in the car,’ says Astra. ‘We’ve got to be in Gothenburg in five hours.’