The Best Book in the World

CHAPTER 28

Working Period


A few days pass. August comes to an end and September takes over.

After his visit to study Eddie’s home, Titus feels a great sense of calm. Eddie has obviously had the idea of starting on The Best Book in the World since he has a folder in his computer with that name. But everything he touches is lacking in substance. It is useless. He is never going to succeed by himself. That is most satisfactory, in Titus’ opinion.

Titus, however, is churning out chapter after chapter for his concise manuscript. It is brief, powerful and without a load of boring digressions into detail and recourse to cliché. He is going to keep his readers on tenterhooks and treat them to one cracker after the other.

He finds several wonderful recipes that will allow H?kan Rink to stick to his ABC Method. Soon he’ll have a fully fledged cookery book. The parallel track around fulfilling yourself and finding your self-respect is also becoming much clearer as H?kan Rink and his team achieve major breakthroughs in their personal lives and in their police work. Titus writes checklists and provides examples of concrete plans of action so that the readers can build up speed with their own successful lives as soon as they have finished reading. No end of doctrines, tips and good advice. Meanwhile, the thriller itself is most captivating; the run-through of Serial Salvador’s driving forces is not only an exposé of the dark side of mankind, but also an excellent guide to the history of the twentieth century seen from the perspective of the most important ‘isms’ of the whole period. Titus writes several short essay-like sections which he indicates with an indentation of the text so that the readers will understand that they can just skim through if they are feeling impatient. It is vital keep the readers on-side.

Surrealism lay to a large degree behind the rapid development of business imagination, the entertainment branch and communications industry during the twentieth century. But there was a dark downside when the subconscious creativity took up such a lot of space. Many of the worst genocides carried out during the last century would presumably never have taken place if there hadn’t been that green light to live out your innermost dreams in reality. The relationship with Nazism is very clear:

Surrealism celebrates the inner superman; Nazism the outer.

Both these ‘isms’ gathered strength at about the same time, in the depressive shadow of the First World War. Mental strength was celebrated, and at the same time there was a trend for narcissistic examination of not only one’s own neuroses but also of one’s own power, which risked breaking out into black psychoses and war. That one’s own personal strength could be used to protect those who were vulnerable or to learn to understand dissidents was not something that was embraced by these ‘isms’. Everything was geared towards trying to win personal independence, an imagined increase in freedom that would benefit the ever-advancing collective. The freedom gave a spiritual experience which, as opposed to a purely religious and emotionally based experience, was built upon theoretical – albeit fragile – foundations. To become a free person, you must first come to grips with your own reason, your morals and your aesthetics.

But, as always, art and politics led to essentially different consequences. Guillaume Apollinaire, Tristan Tzara, André Breton, Franz Kafka, Salvador Dali and all the others who worked with a free flow of the senses can hardly be blamed for the horrible deeds of which Adolf Hitler was later guilty, much as Albert Einstein was not responsible for the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, nor Marilyn Manson for the lethal shootings at Columbine High School.

These days, with summer nearing its end, have turned into yet another intensive working period for Titus. He follows his routines of gym training and regular meals. He skips the sunbed because he risks at any moment ending up looking like a cultural drunk who has gone to seed, not least when he does that reading at the Poetry Slam Festival that Eddie persuaded him to agree to. Muscles and senses on full alert, that is the order of the day until the book is finished. Better to be obsessed than dependent.

He doesn’t have any more contact with Astra. She doesn’t answer when he phones, and he doesn’t leave any messages on her answering service. He knows very well that everybody at the publishing house has lots to do in the run-up to the annual book fair in Gothenburg at the end of September, and as regards the advance presentation of the project The Best Book in the World he is fully confident that Astra and Evita will produce a smart brochure which will have a knock-out effect on the buyers from foreign publishers. Evita thinks with her wallet and normally succeeds in everything she touches. Titus Jensen is not going to be an exception, he thinks, hopefully.



Astra is also slaving away. After the evening sail she has turned off everything which isn’t connected to work. She has allowed a bomb to explode in her calendar which is now full of meetings with authors, book-cover designers, marketing people and literary agents.


Eddie tries to phone her many times. He sends flowers and poems. On one occasion, he even sends her an old cuddly hamster soft toy that plays David Bowie’s The Prettiest Star when you squeeze its tummy. Astra can’t help smiling a little when she thinks how many vintage shops he must have trawled through to find that.

She refuses to see herself as a victim. What does it matter if Eddie has talked with Lenny about how he is going to seduce her? Isn’t it rather charming for a guy to know what he wants? And how many times hasn’t she herself objectified Eddie and appraised his bottom instead of his poetry? No, this isn’t about Eddie’s intentions – it’s the double-dealing in his behaviour that she can’t accept. You can’t act as if you are an androgynous poet and the next second transmogrify into a babbling male chauvinist pig. Is he a man or a teenage boy? She wants a decent mix of oestrogen and testosterone, not to feel like she has been picked up after a boozy evening at a bar by somebody who tastes of caveman. Her feelings for Eddie are mixed, and she decides to take a break from everything to do with emotions. Leave it for a few weeks and see which feelings survive and which go up in smoke. The next time she meets Eddie, she wants to be certain that her brain and her loins will cooperate.

And as for Titus, at the moment she is simply hopelessly fed up with him. She knows that he has tried to get in touch but as long as he doesn’t have anything important to deal with, they can just as well each work on their own. He has a one-track mind and probably isn’t thinking about anything besides himself and his book project. And she has done so much to make it easy for him: arranged his computer to force him to take breaks, got him a gym pass and fixed all sorts of things so that he can get a life again. But does he show the slightest bit of gratitude? No, he doesn’t. Everything, simply everything, revolves around The Best Book in the World, and even if he doesn’t say it straight out, she can feel that Titus’ world is becoming increasingly full of weird threatening situations and shady conspiracy theories. He seems to be high on speed, and the whole thing is extremely irritating. But she isn’t surprised in the slightest. It must be harmful to throw yourself from one extreme to the other like Titus has done. One moment he is a hard-drinking cultural has-been, the next he is a hard-working artist who delivers superb texts. She is a little worried that it will soon be like pouring ice-cold water onto a rock that has been many hours in the full sun – when he cracks open, the explosion will be powerful.

‘He has been inside my home. He has stopped my love. He has stolen it!’

Eddie X slams his hand down on the desk so that the computer jumps up. He can’t concentrate on work. He can’t write, not a single word. Something is churning away inside him, an unpleasant sensation which is increasing all the time. Sometimes it feels as if he had swapped something valuable. Sometimes it feels as if he had lost it forever. And he can’t get hold of Astra either.

He is tired and feels apathetic. The blood is draining out of his veins. Words disappear from his mouth. Ideas evaporate from his brain. What is left is a vacuum, an empty space. He will soon implode.

It doesn’t help to go into vintage shops and buy colourful clothes. It doesn’t make it better to smile at people he meets in town and who expect a friendly reception.

He wants to be able to kick an empty beer can without people wrinkling their nose at him.

He wants to be able to disappear like a chameleon against a wall.

He wants to sleep.

But he can’t.

He has been reading. And, sure, it is an obvious theft. They are going to discover that. Now he must work, regain the initiative. That is the right path.

He knows what must be done, and he is concocting his plans.