A novel

Last updated: March 19, 2025; Added some to Chapter 25, but might delete later. Not sure yet what the chapter will be about.

1

The space was dark and empty, like a lucid dream, and the wind was howling. All was out of reach, it seemed, and there was no use fighting over that. Yet there was, so we rode fast, to the core of the human heart. Hellhounds were guarding it and we fought them bravely to reveal in shimmering lights the working muscle. Endless, timeless, growing, shrinking, like a tree of life. So we perceived it. In awe we lifted our hands and placed them at our hearts and wished they would never stop. For then we would never die. We would live forever and there would be time. We could find solutions to common problems and still, by a beautiful sunset, perhaps, ponder origins and meanings of outstanding questions. Explanations, one could say, as to why suffering and hardship, like night and day, was an integral part of the human condition. Of course, so it was for the Gods, who graced by countless days and mystifying wit truly believed that no phenomenon existed worthy of fear. Even death, it seemed, was just another level to transcend, to combat with thought alone, though our watery eyes and shivering bodies suggested otherwise. So we tested them, in utmost bravery, against the stars from whence they came, and grounded to the Earth, by the window in our rustling hut. The space was dark and empty, the wind was howling. From above came the snow and from within, like burning spears, the thoughts of those we’d loved and lost. There we saw no shimmering light, and no hints of movement came to interrupt our weary song. Since the dawn of time, just like that, naked and torn, the keys of coping fading like clouds by the first rays of the sun.

In poetry, bent to the heavens for a trace of grace. As understood by sages through the ages. The right questions asked but vague answers received. So said the naturalists, that only the most fortunate could perceive the otherworldly signals. At unheard-of frequencies, from extra-spatial dimensions bent to the Earth by near-infinite gravity, said the scientists. Confusion brought perplexities that led to fallacies in interpretation and too slow progress ensued. Through the generations, a secret and contradictory knowledge pertaining to the unrighteous imprisonment of humankind to body and mind.

My friend died in 2000 when we were thirteen. Coming back from Copenhagen two days after New Year the car hit a tree, twenty minutes from home. He was survived by his father, mother, and younger brother who had his spleen ruptured. My father, the entrepreneur, collected funds to start a memorial fund, awarded to an ’especially good friend’ and to be handed out in the church of Önnestad at the start of each summer vacation. I wonder if that fund is still active.

Yesterday I visited the grave for the first time in many years, together with my brother. The wind was howling, flattening the fields, straining the flowers and plants left by the living in remembrance of the dead. In the distance the neighbour village and the house we grew up in. On the gravestone I read my friend’s name and the years of his birth and death. Unexpectedly, tears flooded my eyes and my brother turned to me. So young, I said. Three days into the new millennium. We left holding each other. As I recall it was my brother who first put his arm around me. When exiting the churchyard I held the gate but he hesitated, thinker as he is. As if we too were leaving this life, or would be soon, perhaps just one of us. I debated the matter but the signs were not clear. In any case, I would go first, I was the oldest after all. Then again, we would grow old together, that we had promised. We would buy the house back, it was right there in the distance. When we got back to the car I’d forgotten what I was thinking about.

On that same day of passing and farewells we had been to my friend’s mother’s funeral. Our father came as well, she was his friend. They got divorced around the same time and often bumped into each other at the local bars. Cancer of the stomach got her. The battle lasted for years. I never knew of it, the last time I met her she appeared healthy. In the end she isolated herself and turned all visitors around. Red from crying were the eyes of my friend for now his mother was dead. He and his brother left to fight for themselves, in the middle of this confusing life, the alcoholic father in prison for threatening behavior towards his former girlfriend. We knew each other well, we had this special sense of humor having formed our personas since our teenage years. When entering the church we could not help joking about this or that, in stark contrast to the mellow mood consistent with it being his mother’s funeral. I think it was needed, it eased him up. Afterwards at the reception we talked a bit and promised to keep in touch. We would become better at finding days when we could meet. We would not let the years pass by any more than they already had. In fact, after leaving once I returned to say farewell a second time. So much was contained in this friendship which was suddenly reanimated like a mirror to the past.

It was blowing greatly still when me and my brother in the early afternoon arrived at the forest hut, our father having gotten there already. Waves on the grey lake in turmoil, just like life on that windy day. In turmoil, years gone by coming around and around. Tossed up and thrown about by what are essentially irregularities in air pressure. Life’s pressure on its head, bumping up and down, never to land softly again. Never again waking up to reach out for the arms and legs, in comfort finding every piece where it should be. Lightly on the thoughts now, ready to fly gently over the countryside with the fields and small hills and roads lined with autumn trees. The leaves falling and tumbling slowly, not in a vacuum but in crisp air.

Fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, friends and friends of friends. There must have been times when we were together. It must have been so that commotion at the hill stirred us at first but when it got closer we saw it was just one of the uncles coming back from the market. With wine, salt, computers, and cars. This must be before we settled on what everything was and where it should go. About the time of the written word and its preservation. Before this the wilderness, for sure, the trees, the running back and forth. Tools, items, and possessions, everything we collected through the ages with our name on it.

There came a time when we owned the stars too, until it was discovered that we can go back, which we did, which is how the world came to be, and be again. The moment we stopped time was when we returned, and that was when the sight on the hill stirred us. Spacetime expansion, uncles at the horizon. Drenched in wine in a pile of records. In a cave painting elk and deer with amusing faces. There they stood, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, all of the uncles, very disappointed.

Life was not wasted in a Spitfire at 25,000 feet once you knew how to fly it properly. Save your soul if they jumped you at 14,000 before the supercharger kicked in, like shooting rats in a barrel. We turned and turned, Keith McAllister, the boys, and I, after the 109, until it tried to dive and we caught it blazing, smoking, burning all the way into the Channel. We were in the trenches too, with Keith and Terry, we survived and became our own fathers…

As pilots come, few were finer than Terry ‘Terrible’ Johnson. Born in Earlsdon, Coventry, top of his class in the chemical sciences at Leeds, joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve at the outbreak of war aged twenty, which made him one of the oldest in the squadrom. As fine as they come, as deadly in a turn as in a dive, aggressive, good at shoting, more than perfect eye-sight, and could differentiate between dots and spots, birds and bombers. Short and stout limping ahead, with a wide moustache, but Terry always had your back. Terrible Terry Johnson. We saw it at balls and celebrations, in the presence of women. A stuttering so bad he couldn’t be understood.

On leave with Keith visiting the blacked-out London an air-raid sent them to the bunkers in the Metro wherethey found themselves next to two beautiful women. Deprived of such matters of the heart, like all young people in wartime, both sides of the puzzle steered towards the inevitable. A kiss to remember, a photograph in the cockpit. Four hearts in a tangle of words and vivid conversation distrubed by the bombs blasting the buildings and streets above. What’s your name then? asked Fanny. Terry began, started over, tried again. The damn thing wouldn’t fly! Then a 2-tonne bomb exploded and shook the walls of the underground and the beating hearts violently. Terrible, said Terry, propelled by the blast. Yes, what a terrible bomb, laughed Fanny. Or is that your name? Mr. Terrible? She was teasing him. Terry began to formulate an answer. You see, saved Keith the situation, for our Terry here speaking is like taking off in the Spitfire. It’s near impossible before you’ve got the speed up! Terry here, once in the air, is the best, at loving and kissing, at love, if you know what I mean. For a brief moment they looked into each other’s eyes. But Oh, never stare into the eyes of a fighter pilot, what such eyes haven’t seen! Let be the burning body stalling through the clouds, let be the bullets flying and piercing the canvas, shredding the rudder. Let be the lost generation sunk into the ocean floor, none older than twenty-five. Never hurt my Terry, Fanny thought violently and fought the tears. Another bomb shook the station. The next thing Keith saw was Fanny coming over to Terry. She whispered something and then kissed him on the mouth. Then they embraced for a long time. What’s your story, then? Keith asked Heather. When the bombing stopped they lost each other going up the crowded stairs. Fanny went looking for Terry.

Keith went cloud-chasing in India. It was around the time he lived at Mr. Ratput’s mansion in the bushes a few hours south of Hyderabad. Mr. Ratput tricked him into it. See that cloud over there, Mr. Keith, he said and pointed. Keith could see many clouds but Mr. Ratput came close and pointed at the one he meant. I bet that cloud looks like the face of a princess if you stand right under it. Keith in his mind, intoxicated from all kinds of herbs and beverages, did not do much to criticize the Indian’s proposal. As if setting sail, with a light push against Mr. Ratput he went off towards the magical cloud the distance to which it was difficult to discern. He went through villages, and the people ran after, past lilac orchards, stopping only at wells and small temples to drink water donated by excited wardens and villagers. Amazed everyone was, so it seemed to Keith, by the sudden appearance of a white but heavily sunburned man in just a robe and a belt, no sandals on the feet, and in such a hurry as to not even wave back. Some people followed for long distances. Keith wanted to talk to them, such was he, but the prolonged running through hills and countryside made him short of breath. The Indians, on the other hand, not being nearly as exhausted, chatted along freely and asked many questions to which Keith couldn’t reply properly. The situation did not frustrate the young man, for all he could see was the white cloud foretold to contain the princess face. Amazingly, that particular cloud remained in the same spot on the horizon well into the afternoon and only dispersed by the last rays of the sun. By that time Keith had long ago collapsed by a well in a village square where he was quickly surrounded by men, women, and children who tirelessly began tending to the exhausted body and bleeding feet. It was late in the afternoon the following day when Mr. Ratput finally found him, having looked through every village within an hour’s drive in the automobile. On the way back to the mansion neither of them talked about what had occurred. Mr. Ratput probably for being too amused by the success of his practical joke. Keith for only recalling vaguely that somehow he’d met his future wife, and that she was a princess in a castle in the sky.

2

The solitary walker, eternally through orchards in bloom, said goodbye to the mother without meeting the eye. Loves with the one hand, leaves with the other, gives nothing in return and expects no one to bother. Through a village which fire has swept, a metropolis of citizens in debt. The solitary walker, forever outside, of the heavens only, by the window as candles are set. Speaks there with muffled sounds, speaks of wisdom in heavenly meetings found. Returned, barely, from tedious expeditions. To the silent forest by the silver moon, to the stormy beach where lonely ghosts howl, to the frozen plains of diamonds sparkling. Crystallised, say, to Commandments Ten, perpetuated in disguise with a feather pen. To ring more true than human filth, to describe more elegantly the suffering to touch. Eternal, eternal, we knew it from the start, that some walk alone while others seek a part.

In one life we were Emperors, you and I, all of us. We remember the servants and the orders we gave, the comfort and the dining, the wine, the took-on divine responsibility. We were the servants too, not our own but in another century. We resorted to cannibalism in starvation on deserted islands, in failed harvests, or in lack of rain, because hunger rules all. The best of our knowledge and all we had learned like drops of rain on dry soil absorbed, the means of remembering forgotten. Seeds hidden beneath not sprouting to life, not becoming trees of life. We were a monk on the highest mountain and people came for our wisdom and advice. Our levitation two feet above the ground was known far and wide. In a circus, with just the same powers, we were the Elephant man and the Strongest man alive earning a living by spitting fire and bending steel. Knowledge is King, they said it all around us, and it stuck for often it was true. Let it be so that every beggar is sent to the library. Let the world turn and break down the barriers to higher education. Set all knowledge free and let everyone know all that is to be known. So we said in times of revolution, anxiously but determinedly expecting righteous outcome. We led armies against tyrants, rescued slaves from ships set for distant lands. We tore down walls of oppression, saw beaten eyes lifted towards the horizon in solid hope. For centuries and millennia, generation after generation, at one place or another, at every corner of the Earth. We let a bullet fly, this way or that, into the tyrant’s heart or not. We were a colleague of Dr. Kraeperlin too, the discoverer of schizophrenia. We were a colleague of one of his students, at least. We worked extra hours in the psychiatric practice. Dr. Kraeperlin invented modern psychiatry by advocating for biological causes and a more humane approach to the treatment of the mental disorders.

At four in the afternoon I entered in a hurry as often a bit too late. Dr. August’s secretary, Frau Blaumenstahl, motioned me to not enter the Doctor’s office for he had a patient. Instead I hung my coat on the hanger and took place behind my own desk in my own office which did not carry my name since I was only helping out intermittently. The first patient was a woman in her fifties, a housewife and native to the City. Barely able to speak from exhaustion and crying she told incoherently but in great detail about Santa’s Little Helpers which for many weeks now had taken residence in her attic. Every night they walked around with heavy footsteps so that the patient couldn’t get a minute’s sleep. She said that the phenomenon did not wake the children up and that this astounded her at first, until she discovered that only she was hearing the demon steps. The patient had no explanation as to why the demons had chosen her in particular and only replied that “the world is going to Hell anyway.” Given the celestial circumstances, she said, “It’s no surprise they chose me for I’ve always been a Capricorn, well most of the time.” Asked about that quoted phrase the patient added that she was actually born a Cancer but after the reincarnation, “Naturally”, she was changed. I admitted the patient to the psychiatric ward, against her will, and fixed her for three days in leather straps in order for her to calm down. In the journal I wrote private logic, bizarre delusions and word salad as the primary symptoms and gave her the diagnosis of Schizophrenia. After a few months at the practice I had enough routine to not consult Dr. August on such trivial cases. The next patient was a bit more difficult and did not fit uniquely into any diagnostic category.

Anna had always been on the strange side compared to her siblings of which there were four, two brothers and two sisters, all older than her. She’d had two younger sisters as well but they had died as infants and Anna did not remember them. As a child she had a vivid imagination and few to no friends, finding reading and drawing more interesting than people. There were no traumatic incidences, growing up. She was eleven years old when she received the first message. This was just before the Great War in which both her brothers would perish in Verdun. They strongly urged me to stop the war, Anna explained. I didn’t know what war they meant, I was only a little girl. I went to my father but he shrugged it off and kept reading his magazine. When I saw the ominous headline (I can’t remember what it said) I became certain that the message I had received was true. Anna spoke coherently and there were no signs of thought disorder. She struck me as a bright, young woman. Her grey eyes were not looking about chaotically or avoiding eye contact and were not staring eerily either. During the war the family was scattered in the wind, as Anna phrased it, and she ended up in an orphanage. It was here that she one night received the second message. Go to Berlin, they said, there you will meet a man as soon as you step out of the train. That man is your destiny, you will marry him and have three children. All this was true, Anna exclaimed, showing the first signs of emotional instability. I married that man, I had three children and I love them all very much. I asked whether she at any point had told her husband about the messages. No, she replied, he doesn’t know anything about it. It’s as if I’m fooling him, as if everything is one big lie! She began to cry. I reached out for a napkin and gave it to her. I asked whether the messages had an auditory quality to them, that is, if she received the instructions in the form of a voice coming either from the outside or inside the head. No, she replied, suddenly I just knew, suddenly the information was conveyed to my brain and I knew. Like when you are close to a lamp or some other electrical device which emits this kind of hum. That’s what it felt like. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. The hum started as if someone flicked a switch. At first it was distant, then it came closer until it was inside my head, inside the ears, behind the eyes. An electromagnetic field! I also felt a tingling sensation in my stomach. I recognized this feeling from that time when I was eleven, when I received the first message. And now, Doctor, Anna cried, I’ve received yet another message!

Driving around in the automobile, my beloved and I. Before I was in a violent relationship, now things were better. I needed to find myself again, as someone who is loved, needed to let the guard down, remove the iron box that the heart had lived in. If we go North we reach the City, but any other direction is the countryside. Hundreds of roads, if not thousands. Roads we’ve never been down before, roads that turn unexpectedly, roads that end at an abandoned farm or at a hill where people lived in the Stone Age. We wanted children, it’s what we talked about. Sometimes. It’s a delicate matter and failure was not an option. I had a daughter from before, she was nine at the time. We were saving money to buy a house just outside a station town, to easily reach the City by train. Right or left, onward we go, no particular destination in mind. Sometimes on the map we selected a town we’d never visited. One time we arrived just after the 11th century Church had closed for visitors. It was a Saturday. Instead we walked around in the Old Town. A lighthouse from 1915, 40 meters tall but also closed. On the way back we stopped at a department store to buy a new food blender. The third in a row of the same low-quality model. This time, however, the plastic appeared more durable. That evening I made my own hot sauce from the chili peppers we had grown on the balcony during the summer. It was her pet project, I only helped to carry the heavy pots and water the plants on occasion. Carolina Reaper and Habanero, but only a few of them ripe thanks to this Northern climate. Still, it was hotter than Hell and very tasty. We drove to the Sea and it was windy, the waves made passes on the beach. Birds stood still in the air, not allowed to pick a direction, wings flapping irregularly. We had it all then, kitchen, sofa, car, work. Then she discovered the lump in her breast and we forgot about children. Then we still had love but suddenly the days were counted. Or they weren’t. There were no signs as to how things would go.

In another life I was Anna, I was even like that woman with the demons. My mind was sprouting like a burning flower on a summer field. Energetic, expanding at lightning speed, covering the distance from reality to the imagined, jumping to incredible conclusions instantly. The world was not what it had appeared to be thus far. Existence was a riddle waiting to be solved. It’s a rare side-effect of the antidepressants, it’s really not that well-documented. If everyone on Earth was given a prescription lunatics would roam the streets, a Preacher on every corner. That’s statistics. There are speed limits on the brain for a reason, lest it overheats and takes damage. The roads of life shall be turned gently, lest one steers into the fields of sorrow.

I can’t grasp you, is what the psychiatrist said when I returned after one month for the check-up. I’m right here, I said. Have you heard voices? He said it with a grimace, as if that would have been a death sentence. He had no idea what was running through my manic mind. Couldn’t he see, wasn’t it obvious, that the Savior of all mankind was appearing right before him? I received a bipolar diagnosis, complete with mood-stabilizing treatment to be started immediately. But never before and never after have I experienced a manic episode. You have, but it wasn’t noticed, the psychiatrist said. It’s still debated in the literature whether mania provoked by antidepressants counts towards diagnostic criteria. Besides, I did not have a depression, that I know now. As such, the antidepressant treatment was poorly justified. Too much alcohol, too boring lectures on human anatomy and physiology, too little free time, not enough physical exercise. I was feeling depressed, but clinical depression is another beast altogether.

Sometimes just before falling asleep I hear my father’s voice, or my grandmother’s, though she is dead, or my mother’s, brother’s or sister’s. Or anyone I’ve been seeing a lot lately, or seen for the first time in years. Only rarely do I perceive the words. Just their voices, originating from the place in my brain where they live. Now it’s dark outside, and my beloved is sleeping. She knows nothing about this episode from my distant past, and there is no reason to tell her. Or maybe one day I will. My former partner has remembered a word or two and will use it against me in court to prove that I’m not suited for shared custody. We have no common friends, we didn’t know each other when this happened. Twisting and turning, like the Devil reads the Bible, what I said when I trusted her.

3

I found an old film reel on the attic. I had heard footsteps and decided to have a look. It took me some time to locate the projector in the basement. I dusted it off and sat down in the showing room, called Margaret to fetch me a whisky. You shouldn’t be drinking this time of day, love, she interfered, handing me the glass. Not with that nervous heart of yours. I waved her off. I don’t have time for that, Margaret, love. This might be important. It might be what I’ve been looking for all along. Margaret at the door, said, You enjoy yourself now, love. I’ll knock when dinner’s ready. I frowned not knowing why but I don’t think she noticed. The projector cranked and made its wining noises. At first only a black screen, then a countdown. I can’t say whether what I saw next was in colour or not. It must’ve been black and white but it was so vivid, as if I were there again. Something must have gone wrong. He must have taped the button, he can’t have been holding it in the whole time. Terry Johnson’s gun camera the day he was shot down over St. Omer.

The Spitfire was notorious for being difficult to handle when not in the air. A Queen in the sky, bitch on the ground, the boys used to say. With that long nose pointing upward one had to lean out of the cockpit while taxiing in order to see where one was going. No differential brakes, either, instead an ingenious system of hydraulic pumps and wires connected to the tail wheel. Right foot forward while grabbing the brake handle steered the aircraft to the right. Not letting go in time resulted in it spinning around. Too much speed combined with too long a press and the aircraft toppled over, plunging the propeller into the ground. A narrow set of wheels, too, the torque of the propeller pushing leftwards, the right wing sliding along the runway if the aircraft was not trimmed and forces counteracted properly. Many inexperienced pilots died trying to take off in the Spitfire. Yet, there we were, the whole squadron on the field, engines running hot in the early winter afternoon. Removed from the bar and the fireplace in the hall, stood up from the armchairs where we had been resting. In flying helmets, strapped into our deadly Spitfires, waiting for the signal, recognizing each other only from eyebrows and serial numbers. Granted, not all wore the oxygen mask at low altitudes but many found that it warmed the face.

There had been nothing about Terry that day signalling his imminent demise and departure from this world. As I remember, nothing that he said or did, or that anyone else said or did, indicated that Death would come knocking in the skies over France. Nobody suddenly dropped a glass of beer or cup of tea, no bird came crashing into the window, no sun rays made strange reflections on the tables. Or any such other bad omen. Terry didn’t even talk excessively about Fanny, making great plans for the future, as some do when Life decides to rob them of it all. What I saw next on the screen therefore scared me to bits and made me drink the remaining whisky in one go. From Terry’s gun camera I saw myself, in my own Spitfire, but just the upper parts of it. I was just about to take off. Smoke and fire poured from the exhaust pipes as I increased power. But that was not the shocking part. On the stabiliser I saw a raven, just sitting there, wings folded as if it didn’t have a care in the world. As my aircraft gained speed and started down the runway the raven lifted its wings and flew towards the camera. The bird got so close that I could see in great detail the black shining feathers and beak and eyes. At the closest point before disappearing from sight the raven opened its beak wide. It was screaming. In my head I heard it over the projector. Margaret, love, I cried. Fetch me another, will you!

The raven was us, it was our doing, surely it was. Deep inside we knew, even Terry, which is why the absence of signs surprised me. But I’m an old man now and my memory often fails me. He would’ve been shining, his heart shimmering through the chest in its final beatings. His eyes taking extra glances at the boys and the surroundings seeing them for the last time. Having relived the scene countless times. That wasn’t an ordinary raven, birds don’t behave like that. We put it there, afterwards, in the future, or however it shall be understood. Time travelling invokes all kinds of paradoxes which are only resolved through ignorance and acceptance. We took off and came back without Terry, took off and came back without Terry. Forever taking off and coming back without Terry, who remained and turned into the soil of France. Surely the Gods would’ve interfered if they’d wanted things done differently. If they’d needed old Terrible Terry, in love and hopeful. They set the course, there was nothing we could do, or so it seemed. In heaven as on Earth, indifferent to time, body and mind. We went back, again and again, to avoid our Armageddons. To make the Nuclear missiles fail in that fateful year 2450. And again in 4321. Of course, we did other things too, all very important, always going back forever. Perfectionism is a human trait, after all. In that scheme of things, Terry and Fanny were disposable, like most lovers, past, present and future, even the mighty Caesar and Cleopatra. I tried and I tried, to steer left, to steer right. To interfere a thousand times. To be there when the 109 came out of a cloud behind the Sun and jumped Terry’s Spitfire from behind. One of the Abbeyville boys with the Yellow nose paint, firing only a few rounds up close. The Spitfire exploding, going down in flames. Terry burning, screaming on the radio until it stopped functioning. Sometimes I followed him down, sometimes another 109 was at my six. If the raven was there I would’ve seen its reflection in the mirror.

As it was, we took off and followed Keith McAllister in a wide circle over the airfield until the whole squadron was airborne. Except from landing safely back home, this part of the job was always my favourite. Strapped in, flying with the feet up, cruising gently at 120 miles per hour and zero boost with the cockpit open. At work, enjoying the fresh air and the English countryside below. Wintertime was truly beautiful. One could see a lot circling about at a thousand feet. The neatly interlocked fields in varying shades of white and frost. Grey stone fences on the sides. Farm chimneys pouring smoke, church towers ringing bells. Red brick houses, sleepy villages, busy town squares full of people on Saturday mornings. People like small dots barely moving. Boys and girls pointing and waving. A farmer holding back the ox, looking up at Spitfires roaming past. Sheep running about in all directions. A locomotive at full-speed, tall pillars of white dispersing in its wake. I often got sentimental when airborne, had to be held back as if I belonged there.

Before I knew it we were about to climb, clear of the Cliffs of Dover. In finger-four formation, Keith in the lead. Thirty-two Spitfires, licking the waves of the Channel, us having been joined by 1012th Squadron out of Kingsley.

What’s that you’re watching, love? asked Margaret at the door, coming with the whole whisky bottle. I laughed quite hysterically, barely able to hold back the tears. It’s just Terrible Terry’s bloody gun camera! That’s me right there, up ahead, second from the left!

4

Much like the Sun behind shifting clouds is that component of Life, not body and mind, which lingers when we go and roams freely in space and time. The 109 closing in, the cannons warming up, the Jerry aiming sharp, calculating deadly trajectories. When the enemy is spotted and bullets come flying only power is left, fear banished much like death is not an alternative. Though the forces of acceleration are felt in the guts and the head might be aching survival becomes an instant business. A sharp turn left leads to twenty bullets astray and another second gained. No hope in the Jerry running out, so call on the Radio if you have the time, turn again and look for clouds to hide in or a chance of diving to escape. If successful comes the shaking, the adrenaline released to facilitate Fight or Flight no longer consumed by a body engaged in furious flying. With it the return of Fear. Of what could’ve been, if the cloud wasn’t or had the turn been right instead. Death was waiting there, the breath still cold and wet against the shoulder. That black unknown which was barely escaped was haunting there. Under these circumstances we learned to love each other, you and I. Lions, sickness, starvation, any conceivable danger. Human love, conditioned on Life being finite and could be ended at any instant. Fragile love not adjusted to Infinity, not depending on it. The Gods, even when disguised in human form, could not know this kind of love. This we argued, that our love was stronger, or at least different, for it had to include the possibility of Death. Human love, not sprung from countless days, was a distilled version of Godly love, which was endless and all-knowing. Even Jesus, that most human of the Gods, knew life as Eternal and therefore feared no man or obstacle. “Why have you forsaken me?” he cried in what appeared to be the end. The shifting clouds obscuring the Sun like flickers of doubt. As if all those miracles were for nothing.

Growing up, from birthdays to vacations, from VHS to mini-DV, on special occasions my father was always there with the video camera. He was sure to start each recording with some context. “So here we are at the hotel, in Mallorca, it’s hot, it’s the third of February 1996.” We grew so accustomed to having the camera zoomed in on our faces that it became a duty to greet it before opening the gifts. As we grew older, we started to become annoyed, asking him to turn it off. “We’ll be happy to have this one day,” my father replied but from that point on the videos became shorter. Only when we managed to steal the camera from its hiding place on some shelf high-up, to go around filming things on our own, did my father himself occasionally appear. There he was angry, commanding us to turn it off, not realizing how precious for posterity was the other perspective. Rarely was he captured moving about or talking at length. All we got was his voice, close up, high-pitched and nasal which is how some people from Kristianstad speak. “So tell me, how does it feel to be eight? Good, right?

Some years ago my father delivered the pile of tapes to a photo shop to have them digitized. By some bizarre mistake, a large portion of the files on the hard disk he received were recordings of obscure television soap operas from the 80’s and 90’s. Another large portion contained videos of now grown-up ice-hockey goaltenders from the time my father was running an ice hockey training camp. Both me and my little brother were ice hockey goaltenders. I quit when I was 16 because I suddenly found girls, music, literature and hanging out with friends more exciting. My brother quit because his big brother quit. All this to the shock of my father, the moderately successful entrepreneur, who had to keep running the camp for a few years until he could return to his old job as a copywriter. While the soap operas perhaps can be said to constitute some kind of cultural value, the hockey videos must be considered completely worthless. Unless one wants to study the development of hockey goalie gear with a special focus on the years 1998 to 2002.

My father was also a keen keeper of parrots. Well, he only kept two at a time, these birds become old in captivity. I had seven at one point, but that’s another story. My father got his first parrot, a cockatiel, native to the bush of Australia, when he was a teenager. Pelle lived to the age of thirty but was handed over to my aunt when my father entered obligatory military service. My father was the first in the family to graduate from university and, such were the times, landed a job immediately. With some money came more parrots. Before I was born he’d had a cockatoo and an amazon. Both had died early, the cockatoo from an operation, the Amazon from disease. As a child I quickly grew accustomed to the ear-deafening roars of Lotta, a yellow-blue macaw, and Sture, a green amazon. Both birds were tame, but only towards my father. As such, they were always on the verge of attacking someone. In fact, I have this rare talent of hearing wings approaching, turning around and ducking immediately to avoid the crazy eyes and open beak of a parrot attacking. Nevertheless, wanting to be like my father, as most boys do, I also wanted a parrot. I had to wait until I was ten and it couldn’t be a macaw but had to be a budgie or a cockatiel. My first cockatiel was just out of the nest and was tamed very quickly. I named her Sajber after a kids TV show about recent technological breakthroughs, new things on the Internet in 1996 and such. Every day I hurried home from school to be with my new best friend who sat there all alone waiting for me. Wanting to be like his big brother, but not exactly, my brother also got a pet, a rat. What followed was a most tragic drama involving two pets, two children ignorant of animal instincts and two parents relaxing with some wine in front of the TV. One Friday afternoon while playing, me and my brother decided to put my cockatiel in the rat’s cage. Simple as that, perhaps they would be great friends. Yes, this too has happened in this world. I remember how the two animals looked at each other and how the cockatiel clung to the net. Little did I know they were hunter and prey. When we returned after an hour the bird lay half-eaten on the cage floor, the rat not hungry anymore in the corner licking its fur. I remember that I cried and threw an apple against the wall, my mother looking surprised. The last I saw of my friend was her dead eyes as my father carried the bloody pile of feathers and flesh to bury it under the Cherry tree where the other parrots rested. To compensate for my sorrow my parents gave me a new video game which I played throughout the weekend, only crying occasionally when I realized that my friend was gone. In school the following Monday, even the teacher couldn’t keep from smiling when I explained to the class what had happened. Seemingly for fun I had killed my pet in the most horrorful of ways, and now I was telling everyone about it. I must be one twisted kid. Everybody knows that rats try to catch birds, especially when given the chance. Today, I miss Sajber, but when I think about this first cockatiel a pain strikes me which I have not contemplated enough yet.

A long time ago, a little boy loved a bird and the bird loved him back, as birds can love. That bird died the most terrible of deaths. The boy was too young to fully comprehend the pain and it was packed in among other unpleasant childhood memories. Imagine being a bird locked inside a cage with a rat! Or, if one is not particularly fond of animals or believes that animal feelings are not to be considered, imagine being a human locked inside a mansion with a lion. Eventually, the lion will kill you and it will be painful. Fight or Flight but you can do neither. Screaming won’t help because the mansion is located far away from any neighbour. Maybe after a few days you would come out from the closest where you have been hiding and present yourself to the lion. I resign, you can have me now. Most likely, the cockatiel tried to fly, fly, fly in a frenzy of wings and screaming against the net until it got exhausted and gave up. I’m not sure whether animals give up like that. I’ve seen footage of zebras being eaten alive by lions. I’m not sure birds in panic ever give up.

This first cockatiel was followed by another. I wanted a calm bird and in the pet shop there was a 14-year-old cockatiel which had been returned by its previous owners. I gave him the name Life, to symbolize how life keeps on going in the face of death and tragedy. But Life, perhaps traumatized by earlier experiences, never got tame and was returned after a few months.

Awake late one night with my beloved, we were lying in bed watching old family videos, picking files at random. Some have been renamed from generic ‘Movie123’ to something more descriptive, but the majority of the clips are unexplored. It happened then what I knew was bound to happen.

It was a carefree summer day in 1999. We had just arrived at the lake house. The whole family, all the parrots, all the cats, the dog, the rooster and all the hens with their chicks. The camera was going around, it must have been my brother filming. “Turn that off!” my father shouted as he was caught unpacking his bags in the bedroom. My brother ran away, still filming. He went outside and the sun flared the lens. Back in again, to the kitchen where my mother and sister were putting groceries in the fridge. I’m not sure where I was, maybe outside somewhere talking to my girlfriend on a primitive cell phone. I was telling my beloved about how we each summer spent at least a month up there in the forest. It was not an option, we were forced to be there. If we wanted to play with our friends, they had to come there, our parents would drive them. The camera was filming the large living room where the bird cages were lined up, one after another. I was telling my beloved that my father had built a large bird cage outside where the parrots stayed the whole summer. Just as I was saying that the camera stopped at one of the cages and zoomed in. A grey cockatiel was looking back, sitting on the cage floor, all fluffed up, the black eyes reaching out to me through the laptop screen from that distant past. There he was, my Sajber, my second Sajber, so young and healthy. He must have been two years old at most. My one and only superstar. I had to look away, tears were flooding my eyes.

When recounting the life of a bird one cannot reference things the bird said or did, or how nice it was to other birds or people, or what a remarkable bird it was. The lives of birds play out in silence, without words, without a single thought verbalized and written down. It matters little, I’m sure, to say that Sajber was a carefree, happy and cheerful cockatiel. For such are all cockatiels. It doesn’t matter what tunes he could whistle or how I taught him to dance on his little legs to certain kinds of music. I am his only witness. He was in this world. I hold in my hand his whole life. From the first time I saw him in the pet shop and selected him because every other cockatiel was running around screaming while he was just sitting there, to his last dying months when his powers failed him so that he couldn’t fly anymore and ate very little. Twenty years, in thick and thin. This bird, in some sense incapable of understanding any aspect of human life other than eating, sleeping and hanging out. Having a good time together, spending time with each other. His joy when I came back from school, when I had friends over, when he was allowed to fly freely over the pine trees in the forest. How he took a liking to some of my friends and preferred to sit on their shoulders instead of mine. That time I was moving to England for university and I brought him a partner so that he wouldn’t be alone while I was away. How they tried to mate but the eggs were never fertilized and I had to remove the nest or else they would have kept on going. How he learnt that the metallic sound of keys meant that I was leaving so that he flew up to me and tried to bite me on the head so that I would stay. How, when I was in Tanzania working at a rural hospital, I was away for such a long time that he gave up, flew a little and stayed on the floor not moving. How a short video call returned his spirits to normal. That day his partner flew away, my terrible mistake, and he understood that he would never see her again. He refused to leave my side and wanted to be cared for constantly. I have it here, in my hand, his whole life. The joys and tragedies I caused him. His unconditional love, requiring only from me that I would be there by his side. His worst fear, if it could be verbalized, that I would not return.

As it was, a violent domestic episode with my former girlfriend caused me to go on sick leave. Sajber had been getting worse for some time. It had been many years since I started calling him My Old Little Man. All he wanted was to sit close to my cheek and sleep, but being so close meant that every movement from my side annoyed him. I’ll cry when you aren’t here anymore, I said to him many times, but I did not allow myself to realize the fact that he was actually dying. A few times I held him in my cupped hands and he almost stopped breathing. I think I was preparing him for death. So that he could remember being in the dark of my hands if I wasn’t there when it happened. We went up to the lake house. It was February 2020, just before the Corona lockdown. The house was cold, only the bedroom had working radiators and there was no firewood. I was writing a novel which turned out terrible. All the while, Sajber was sitting beside me on the pillow. I went for walks in the forest and when I returned he was still sitting there looking about with empty eyes. I could make him sing and dance but only for a little while. Cheerful but tired. I was hoping that his death would come during those days in the lake house but after a week we had to go back. We had a 7/7 parenting schedule. In the car I played Tom Waits’ Fish and Bird and I’m Still Here, but probably too loud for my friend to enjoy. I talked to him, I hoped that he could understand what I was trying to say. Another week passed and the school’s winter vacation was due. Sajber had taken on a new kind of call which I hadn’t heard before. It consisted of just two descending tones with an interval between them much like my name if one should whistle it. He was calling, I should be near at all times. Regrettably, we had been planning a trip to Stockholm to see my brother and I couldn’t cancel just because Sajber was ill. So, there it was, his death. I’d been away for two days when my former girlfriend, who was taking care of him while I was away, called to say that he had been found dead on the cage floor. It hurts me that I wasn’t there when it happened. I hope that he remembered the dark of my cupped hands and imagined that I was holding him. On the cage floor, where I first had seen him, where he had been sitting when my brother was filming that day in 1999. While the latter observation re-ignited my pains, I took the former as some kind of sign that the way things played out was how it was supposed to happen. I wasn’t meant to be there. Animals run away when they’re dying, they are different from humans in that sense. In sorrow, any kind of explanation is briefly accepted.

When I returned from Stockholm I went to the lakehouse to bury Sajber. As I exited the car I heard a blackbird, singing those same two notes. I knew it was my superstar in that tree. And now, every blackbird I see…

5

Some if not most days are better left alone and observed from a safe distance. I ran late to Dr. August’s practice because Agatha was not feeling well. They’re both pregnant, Agatha and Claudia, my two to-be wives, but only the former is in the second trimester. If I hadn’t studied Gynecology and Obstetrics in medical school I would’ve been hopelessly lost. As it stands, knowledge refreshed from empirical observations of Agatha can be directly applied to Claudia, who is about a month behind. But that’s all there is to say which is good about my situation. Come to think of it, expert knowledge about the symptoms of pregnancy does little to alleviate my burden. Painfully, both of my to-be wives believe me when I say that I’m traveling for work when I’m actually seeing the other. This life split in two is tearing me apart, weakening my clinical eye and dividing my powers. I wouldn’t consider myself a Ladies man, I’m not even a charismatic man. I was awkward as a child, at university I didn’t have time for anything else but opposing the Social Democrats and studying. And yet, a shining new Doctor and there they were, all the beautiful women. I guess I’m lucky that I met Dr. August last autumn. Between this extra work, my regular work at the Mental Asylum and my Agatha and my Claudia there’s not much time for going around impregnating any more women. Two homes, cursedly located at opposite ends of the City, each busy being prepared for the arrival of a firstborn. Two fathers, towering figures, one more intimidating than the other, with awesome hairy hands, grey and dry curls and piercing eyes. Somehow catching me in the end if I make a run for it. I like Agatha the best, but Claudia is the most demanding of the two, all tears when I leave for München Wednesday and won’t be back until Sunday afternoon. Agatha only requires that I adjust, if possible, my busy work schedule when Harry is born. She already knows it’ll be a boy, she said last week. Both are upset that I’m seemingly working every weekend. Sometimes I blame the world I live in. Had it been prehistorical times I would have hit the fathers on the head with a club and run away with their daughters, leaving my doubly dirty conscience in two pools of blood. Maybe in the future, in a hundred years from now, a man can marry as many wives as he wishes. No use in spending time hoping, the babies are coming quick. Such is the prevalent structure of societal life and it’s not to be argued with. For now, all I can say is that I’ll have to wait and see how it goes. Besides, having taken a professional vow, I refuse to project my problems, almost entirely of my own doing, unto my patients, who come in helpless and in desperate need of my help. I listen intently, my face awake and compassionate. I ask the right questions, my whole body alert to even the most obscure signs of Psychopathology. I capture immediately any stray thoughts of my own before they go wandering.

A hand was lifted, a finger was pointing, in my right field of vision. Without much warning, Anna had stopped her telling and remained silent. Undoubtedly, some time went by before I realized that I should say something. I had been thinking about Claudia’s father, Wolff, a Blacksmith in Wedding, and whether I should confess to him my wrongdoings. Wolff would pin me to the Anvil with an iron bolt. Hammer, hammer away at my poison heart. I shuddered. The unexpected silence restored my clarity of thought. The pointed finger, perhaps intentional, alerted me anew to the patient’s presence. Then I saw that Anna was pointing at her temple. Something is wrong with your head? I said. No, Doctor, my head is fine. I said I have it all here, in my head. Anna put her hand down. She looked disappointed. I studied her face as if seeing it for the first time. I had been listening, there was no reason to be upset. Thinking and listening at the same time. Two difficult tasks carried out simultaneously. That really was my life in a nut-shell. Agatha loved the Swan Lake. It was on this coming Saturday. If only I wasn’t working, over at Claudia’s. She really did have a beautiful face, this patient, this Anna. A high forehead, Nordic blonde hair, almost white, a sharp little nose, high cheek bones. The eyes were grey or light blue, perhaps a bit too radiant for my taste. Claudia’s eyes were brown, like Wolff’s. I became eager to speak, as if words would hunt the murderous blacksmith away. But Anna continued her telling, left me to listen.

As I said, Doctor, I’ve received a second message. I have it all here in my head. No need for writing it down even though it is longer, much longer than the previous messages which in comparison were merely notions. Things I knew instantly. This, Doctor, is much different. It’s a world, a whole world. In flames, in agony. I think it’s our world, Doctor, not far from now. Perhaps in our lifetime. They’ve said what I should do, I shall go to…

The voices said that? I interrupted with a sharp face, thinking about whether Claudia even liked music at all.

I have so many visions, Doctor. They are visions, not voices. All of them terrible and soul-breaking. Soul-breaking! A neologism? I must consult Dr. August about that. I see a long line of people in tattered clothing, men and women of all ages and children holding hands. They’re walking towards something, they’ve walked for a long time, driven from their homes. Claudia’s father lives in Neukölln where he is a butcher. I think it’s a large hole in the ground. A pile of suitcases next to it. They’re being shot, Doctor. They’re undressing them and killing them by the thousands, by the millions. A mother is holding up her newborn against her heart and they shoot right through both of them. A little girl will faint at the sight of her dead mother so that the bullets miss and she will fall into the pool of bodies and blood. Just like the blacksmith and the butcher when I’m done with them! Ha ha! When it’s dark and when the soldiers are gone this girl will run to the woods. She won’t survive, they catch her again later. Too filthy to rape, the soldiers will say, Doctor. If only I’d raped them, then they wouldn’t have wanted me around! A writer will travel with one of the armies as lost land is reconquered. In his notebook he will collect the stories of how they died. He must be protected, Doctor. Or if I’d raped only Claudia… Or else we will never know what happened. Then I could take Agatha to see the Nut Cracker. All of Berlin, all of Dresden, all of Hamburg, all of Lübeck and Bremen and many other towns will explode in flames and turn to rubble. Or was it the Swan Lake? Of our own, Doctor, millions will die. And two more of us are soon to be born. So why is it that München isn’t destroyed? I asked piercingly. Surely, if all those nice places you’ve mentioned are burning, why not München? Anna sighed, revealing inner frustration and incoherent emotions. For a moment I hoped that I’d broken through to the core of the psychosis. Anna looked as if she were about to cry. I’m not making this up, Doctor, you must believe me. I can’t tell you why some cities will burn while others won’t. I don’t even know how they will come to burn. Perhaps by fire? I said. Or bombs? Or are you imagining some sort of Demon figure suddenly sprung to life? Walking the Earth, turning ordinary men into senseless baby-killers, burning cities with its fiery breath? Laughter would’ve been appropriate but Anna was like stone. Actually, there is a name, she said.

I did not admit Anna to the ward. The woman was not interested and the husband was waiting to drive her home. Nor could I muster the clinical courage to admit Anna against her will, especially not with the husband around. With the first patient that decision had been easier. Anna was different. In fact, if one disregarded the actual content of her story, or vision, as she called it, the language itself was intact. As such, the patient did not fulfill any diagnostic criteria. Unless the visions could be considered to be bizarre, that is.

Although it was late in the evening I knocked on Dr. August’s door after I was done with my notes. To my surprise, the colleague of the great Man was still at work, looking up from his papers with a friendly but slightly annoyed face.

“Soul-breaking. Is that a word?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Dr. August and went back to his writing.

The abrupt response startled me a bit and I became unsure of what to say next. As if he expected me to walk out again, having only asked a stupid question. Before me I suddenly saw Claudia’s father. Maybe it gave me courage. I’ve always had problems with Male authority.

“Have you ever heard of a politician named Butler?”

Dr. August put down his fountain pen and eased back in the armchair. Just now realizing that his Junior doctor colleague was talking to him.

“What’s with all the questions? You know I don’t discuss politics.”

It was late in the evening, I’d been working all day, I was tired. My life was a mess. Filters were removed. There are things patients say that you don’t question, one psychiatrist to another.

“I’ve just had this patient. Anna. She said a lot of crazy things which I won’t trouble you with. But she also mentioned a lesser-known politician from München, called Conrad Butler or Bitler, or something the like. He would be responsible for the end of the world as we know it and the deaths of millions. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

That came out wrong.

“Is he a Social Democrat?” asked Dr. August.

I flipped a coin, went with my heart. My life was split into non-functioning parts anyway. First I laughed, just the right amount.

“Thankfully not! I hope!”

Dr. August’s otherwise calm and respectful face turned red, the last time I saw it.

“Get out of my practice at once!” he yelled.

I did, and that’s how I left my old life, the butcher and the blacksmith, all of the wives and their little firstborns, to go to München to see with my own eyes this Butler man. If Anna was right, the man was not a Social Democrat and that’s all I needed to know.

On the same train we were, heading towards München, but in different compartments. Anna, the feeble doctor and us, arriving, again, just in time to stop Butler from starting the Second World War. Certainly, the horrors of the trenches distorted him, but he was lonely even as a child and as a young man he despised the establishment. Incapable, for sure, of friendship and love, deprived of warm feelings to people. Such attributes, however, rarely cause suffering on a global scale and the deaths of millions. Democracies tend to be good that way, in that madmen are caught and repulsed before they can spellbind the masses with populist propaganda. Without a doubt we knew from the instant he spoke that Cornelius Butler spelled trouble. The Gods, however, to our great confusion, seemed to disagree. It began to appear that Butler was installed and meant to carry on. In going back, deviations from a confidence interval seemingly designed in heaven were restricted. That God damned Butler was not to be removed! An essential test to be passed, some argued. Millions had to die awful deaths so that peace may come in the future. A reference to absolute doom, perhaps, so that we may know it. We shook our heads, clenched our fists, it couldn’t be right. Mysterious are their ways, the properties we gave them, and this proved the point, again suggesting that the heavens understood Life differently. That perfect combination of Force and disregard of human life, Butler’s only love an abstract idea. Follow me and I will make Germany great again. The violent evaporation of the Social Democrats as an opposing power. The shattered people, vengeful and impoverished, perfectly attuned. Ready to fight whatever Butler saw fit, which turned out to be especially Communists and International Jewry. Rise against, this and that! If pogroms are necessary, so be it! It will be forgotten tomorrow. A feeling man, not a rational mind, not a fine speaker educated at prestigious institutions. Unable, perhaps, to ever understand Marx and Engels and the role of the working class in the world of Capitalism. It was National Socialism, after all. Hailed as a Hero, nonetheless, as Germany became a welfare state, by great men such as Churchill. Truth is that antisemitism was uncalled for and that Germany would’ve risen again given any charismatic leader. The Nazis made lampshades out of human skin.

One would think that a man of so many words had been abroad a time or two, but Butler’s knowledge was based on a purely internal representation of the world. He didn’t know people, he didn’t know the world! That International Jewry was to blame was something he heard drunk people shout in beer halls. Only when Paris was captured did he venture beyond the borders of the Third Reich to see the Eiffel Tower. Of course, he also saw some of Poland from the train window on his way to command the Eastern Front from the Ukraine. Butler had replaced his generals with himself and taken command of the army. Alas, no week in Greece, Butler kept a total ignorance of foreign cultures and powers. He was surprised that the British didn’t join the fight against the Soviets.

Albert Speer’s father met him once, having been invited by his successful Architecht turned Minister son to the Opera. On Butler’s orders, Albert Speer spent years planning the complete reconstruction of Berlin into World Capital Germania. Instead, Berlin turned to rubble. A conservative man, his father, shaken beyond speech after the brief encounter with Butler. The account in Gitta Sereny’s book does not reveal what the old man was shocked about. There he was, the young leader, the charismatic Butler, extending a hand, looking at him intently with those hypnotic eyes. Most people never forgot meeting Butler. The old man, however, must have seen the Devil in him. He must have recognized something terrible. Maybe he saw Armageddon reflected in Butler’s eyes. (He probably did not see, in those same eyes, Butler’s frustration over his unacceptable love for Speer. The sadomasochistic nature of Fascism fitted Butler well. All the marching, him in front, saluting left and right. The movie reels with a slightly increased speed adding to the show.)

Sometimes the heavens allowed us to keep Butler in a cage, fed only dirty water and rotten rats. Not that he ever cried out for God. Butler was used to willing himself out of difficult situations, screaming and shouting. We may give it to the Gods that Butler never stood a chance. Stopping reinforcements to the East Front to make room for trains to Auschwitz, against the advice of his generals. After all, the heavens would not allow the elimination of an entire people. Nothing was destroyed that couldn’t be rebuilt. No human was killed, in Fear or otherwise, who wouldn’t one day rise to live again, in one form or another.

Given all this, is it any wonder that we tried, again and again, now that we could, to stop Butler, even though it was doomed to fail? To at least inflict upon him some extra torment. To, in a rare and improbable corner of the Universe of little relevance to the major timeline, capture him, bully him, and give him some of his own medicine. Strip him naked and force him into a gas chamber. This we did many times, we burned him alive in the crematorium. Often we burned Blondie, his dog, first, for him to see. A little revenge for the pains he caused us, though we survived and prospered anyway. We became renegades in the eyes of the Gods. We became children who could not be taught. Mark our words, throughout History, any movement built on hate and dreams of genocide have been destroyed. That we’ve made sure, only regretting that every life couldn’t be saved. A near-infinite number of timelines exist, a vast number of them created by us. To uproot Evil. To make good again even though people forgot and the world carried on.

Granted, the doctor was feeble and would become a devout Nazi, but Anna was not crazy. Messages had been sent, not from the Gods but from us, our future selves, through tunnels of time. Against her knowledge Anna was a co-conspirator. We needed a second pair of hands and she had been chosen, through trial and error. We planned to castrate Butler. It was worth a try.

6

Fanny went looking for Terry. Autumn had turned rapidly into winter, snow had fallen, and the streets of London were cold. As were the roads of the countryside and the train stations where she waited, going either out or back, late in the evening, empty-handed. As were, it seemed, the faces of the guards promptly enforcing laws forbidding civilians access to military compounds. Behind their stone faces looking beyond or through her Spitfires were taking off and landing. At times flying so low and so close that she almost could discern the pilot faces. Please, Fanny argued, I just want to see him one more time. I just want to say Hello to him. It did little to help the matter that no information concerning everyday whereabouts had been shared in that short meeting. When Terry rested his heavy head on Fanny’s arm which held him a kind of home had been created. Unbeknownst to them, they were already heading to the fireplace in that distant cottage, reading a copy each of the same book or listening to the children playing in the kitchen. Not speaking then, for real comfort warrants no words proclaiming how wonderful it is. Not speaking in the Metro either, for time was short and better not waste it on conversation which requires concentration and might go awry. That Terry had some kind of speech impediment had not sunk in. Of course, had the sweet boy been speaking she would’ve answered. Something about that silence, though, between the blasts far away and above at street-level. Their own little world, suddenly materialised from nothing but a few glances and Keith’s words of admiration. Fanny thought about Terry’s brown eyes all day, and what they contained. They’d been holding hands walking to the stairs, before they lost each other. Fanny thought about Terry’s hands too. She repeated into perfection that one kiss for which Terry was not prepared. Then they kissed again… If only she knew at what airfield he was located. There were several around the Greater London area.

Fanny thought intensely, fought for love, at nights she dreamt. Will there be a time for us, will the world turn in ways that our paths may cross again? In response, the heavens had a lot to say. The clouds were moving fast behind the moon, fighter planes and bombers coming in and out. Trails of smoke, all the boys up there, behind engines. There was a field, under the glaring sun, with flowers of every colour upon it, and the forest all around. It was full of rocks and stones, there they sat talking. Fanny held Terry’s big worker’s hands in hers. He was always resting his weary head on her shoulders and breasts, always, always. Then the sun was going down, quickly, the flowers lost their colors, fast, fast, like a damaged fighter to the ground, born in an explosion. There was little time, she turned and turned, mumbling in her sleep. In old age, Terry, in old age and beyond, I’ll love you then as well. When you make it, when you land, when it’s over. Terry lifted his head as if to see if Fanny’s words were true, if she could be trusted, and instantly melted her heart with the eyes of burning oil in water. Night after night, the bombers coming in over London disturbing the significant dreams, taking her Terry away. She awoke in a sweat, gasping for air, the blanket and pillow on the floor. The world was really gone and London was no more. Far away, deep inside the forest, beasts and wild animals were scheming. A flock of ravens crossed without a sound, some kind of warning, beaks open, the wings flapping silently. Fanny pulled him up. Come! Some nights she screamed it. We must fight for our love! When the dawn came, Terry lifted from the ground, floating above the field as his body transformed into a Spitfire. He talked on the radio, each word another mile per hour added to the velocity until he took off. The Spitfire joined the flock of ravens heading for the clouds, leaving Fanny waving her handkerchief, always, always. We must fight! Fanny screaming at the top of her lungs. I’m already at it, Terry replied, in fighter pilot language, through unknown forms of communication. Where are you? But Terry was already a dot on the horizon.

One day Fanny ran into Heather, the girl she’d sought shelter with that afternoon in the London metro. Contrary to Keith’s and Terry’s impression, the two girls hadn’t know each other very well. They lived in the same part of the city but had gone to different schools and had no common acquaintances. Heather had been standing in front of a damaged bookstore shaking her head when Fanny had walked up to her. Burnt covers and pages lay scattered about. A pity, they’d agreed, and haven’t I seen you before? Then the air raid siren started and they ran with a large crowd to the underground bunkers. What they’d then jointly experienced was a feeling of excitement in talking to the brave and sweet pilots and the terror of hearing and feeling the bombs obliterating the city above. The sharing of such extreme sensations can connect two strangers more strongly than can hours of conversation or years of being colleagues at work. When Fanny lost Terry going up the stairs she also lost Heather and Keith. That abrupt ending sealed the joyous meeting, which took place under such dire circumstances, in a hidden compartment of her heart. The following day it was as if it had never happened and Terry existed only in her dreams. Now, five weeks later and out of nowhere, Heather was before her again, revitalizing all her pains. Heather greeted her and smiled and with that smile came the sounds of explosions and the worn down blue of Terry’s uniform. In Heather’s brown eyes she saw Terry’s, in her movements her own when she approached to kiss him. Enough of that, Fanny interrupted the stream of thoughts. They started walking down the shattered street aligned with rubble and destruction. Men and women in lines were busy stapling bricks. Small fires here and there were not yet extinguished even though the temperature was below freezing. They walked side by side, seeing each other only in the corner of the eye and from the condensation of air when they spoke and breathed. Not that they spoke very much. Under other circumstances much could’ve been said about love and life in general. Now, one was hesitant to ask even how things were going. A family member could have been killed, a house burned down and a home lost. Over 40,000 civilians perished in the London Blitz. A pity they got the bookstore, Heather said. Fanny agreed, she used to go there often. They burn a lot of books in Germany, Heather said. He likes burning books, a funny guy, that Hitler. They laughed a little and moved closer, Heather took Fanny’s arm in hers. Then came the question Fanny knew that Heather had to ask. Tell me, have you met up with that sweet boy of yours yet? Without her realizing it, Fanny’s pace slowed to a stop as her head filled with sensible answers, answers which were all lies. No, she said, keeping the cool. I wouldn’t know where to look. In attempting a lie one can reveal the truth. Heather searched Fanny’s bewildered face. She suddenly realized that Fanny was in love and was fighting to conceal it. Keith said they were stationed at Kenley, she said quickly as if applying a band aid to a mortal wound. Fanny replied in a whisper, abandoning all pretence: But I’ve been there, civilians aren’t allowed. Now Heather was smiling. Didn’t the sun just appear from behind the grey clouds? It took some time for Fanny to register the words. My brother is a mechanic at Kenley. I’ll see if he can help you.

Are you there, love?

Fanny?

7

In some lives we were beaten, like beggars on the streets and morbid Kings down from Grace. Sputter, sputter as if the engine’s running out, the propeller tracing slowly its arc. Racing thoughts missing every junction. Lifted eyes seeing impenetrable clouds only. Sunsets behind walls of Smog. Sundowns too drunk or too far out to remember.

The night before it happened her eyes were gleaming. Her period was late, but only a bit. She had a headache and felt slightly nauseous. All the right symptoms. The first time we looked at each other we did not reveal it. We turned to other things in the room. The second time our eyes exchanged that secret information, the Hope, that maybe this time it was happening. We cleaned up after dinner. Beloved did the dishes, I began putting the daughter to bed. She was learning to sleep in her own bed. About time, was my opinion, she was eight years old. We were making progress, but slowly, the mother was opposed to the idea. The daughter was coughing and had a slight fever. She suddenly remembered that she had promised to call her mother.

It takes two to fight. Only those fortunate enough to be ignorant of mental violence and domestic abuse agree. For the victims a mountain to climb every time it shall be explained. A forest to scream through to be heard. I didn’t know it was so bad, they say. But they still don’t believe you. It can’t be that bad. Some of it must be your fault. Not all of it, of course, but you can’t be solely a victim. You must have started some of them, in some way, or did something that upset the other. It takes two to fight, after all.

From the tablet screen the mother convinced the daughter to call her at night if she woke up. Instead of going through the pains of waking that angry father up. Let him sleep, call me instead. I objected, but the mother did not relent. I’ll go put the tablet in its place, Daddy. Just leave it here, I’ll do it after, I said. No, no, I want to do it. She was back in a few minutes, the whole operation of walking with the tablet to the living room and placing it on the shelf taking longer than expected. I didn’t notice how long it took, busy trying to relax scrolling things on the phone. The coughing stopped just before she fell asleep and she slept heavily and contently. Quietly and slowly I closed the door and went to bed to read. At three-thirty, a bit later than usual, she stood by the bed wanting me to put her to sleep again, which I did. I slept the remainder of the night on the side of the narrow bed, there being no space to move.

In many, many lives we went through the perils of battles of child custody. Of course, at times it was called something else. In all of them the children were hurt, in one way or another. Countless at-first warm childhoods and soft personalities adjusting to the world crushed to splinters by mother and father breaking through. You see, Dear, your father is an absolute Idiot. Yesterday, he said that… Oh, Dear, your mother always does this and that… But the child by nature loves both mother and father. Harmful actions directed towards the other parent turn around and hit the child instead. In almost all of these cases, some of them in court, we lost ourselves in the fight. Often, we were closer to forty than to thirty and had expected different outcomes. To be someplace good and in comfort, at peace, in love, even, with that other parent. Instead, our hair grew grey, and our skin thinner. Our hearts skipped beats and went on irregularly. Monsters were not kept at bay but came flying right in like birds of prey.

In the morning she was different. Only afterwards was that a realisation Today, we’re going to fetch some cool lamps we’ve bought online and then we’re going to visit the Old Cathedral, it’s from the 13th Century. She had an interest in history. When we come back in the afternoon there will be lots of time to play video games or play with the dolls. Mhm, the daughter said, not looking very excited. But we go early to bed, tomorrow’s school. There were no objections, which I didn’t find strange. She was sent to have a shower while me and beloved were cleaning the apartment. The daughter was to clean her room. When I knocked on her door and entered she was writing busily on the tablet. I urged her to start picking things up from the floor, she started to cry. I’m writing to Mum! she cried. I went out and came back a few minutes later. Still writing, looking desperate. Ok, that’s enough, I said. Give me the tablet. Just a second, she cried. I went out and back again. Give me the tablet. I got the tablet. Now, please, just clean a little bit. We’re driving out in an hour. I closed the door as she went over to the computer to put some music on. In the hallway I couldn’t resist looking through the messages. At 2.30 AM there was a video call with the mother, 30 minutes in duration. Lots of heart and kiss emotes sent back and forth. A single message from her mother: 1 pm at the playground. Then there was nothing until the next day, that is today. This was twenty minutes ago:

I have wet hare and shal cleen the ruum !!! wath shal I do??? Help !!!

I’ll pick you up at 1 pm. Don’t worry, mummy’s here soon.

At first I objected. You can’t come here and take her away, it’s my week. Now you listen to me, the mother said. But I hung up. I wasn’t going to listen. In this country it’s illegal to fetch the child from the other parent when there is a signed shared custody contract. By this time, I was used to all kinds of violations of every deal we’d ever made. Just like I had become accustomed to fighting in front of the daughter and having things thrown at me. There hadn’t been a single week since I moved in with beloved where the mother hadn’t interfered in some way. Most recently her objections to the daughter learning to sleep in her own bed. In the last couple of weeks the campaign had intensified. The reason was that the coming day in court was to be preceded by an interview with the daughter. The mother was trying to influence the daughter to say the right things. The mother knew she was in trouble. She had nothing on me. I wasn’t violent, I hadn’t started conflicts in front of the child. She was brain-washing the daughter. She was insane, that was my professional opinion. Still, her having made a secret deal with the daughter meant that I would be the bad guy if I prevented it from happening. Mothers and fathers, daughters and sons.

A heavy silence ensued when the door shut and the daughter had left with the mother. I was flying above the angst, probing it from a distance, avoiding the heat from a volcano about to erupt. Beloved felt the same, she’d been dragged into all this as well. I’d told her there were problems with the mother. I said it’s hard to explain properly, it must be experienced before it can be understood. A special kind of unrighteousness where everyone is bleeding and the final victim is the child. Beloved went to the bathroom and came back a few minutes later. No child this month either. We couldn’t stay in the apartment so we went out to fetch the lamps. I’d promised the daughter to not visit the Cathedral until she could join next time. Love you, Daddy! We had burgers in downtown Roskilde. I had a beer. I could’ve had ten but I was driving. My usual reaction when these things happened was to go to the lakehouse or to Copenhagen to get wasted, drunk and stoned. I guess I had become more mature, after all, closer to forty than to twenty, at least. Beloved had helped to change me. Roskilde was empty this Sunday afternoon. Dark, few people on the streets. It started to rain and it was cold too. When we got back we shared a bottle of wine. The rain hammering the windows. I played her Mahler’s 5th Symphony, the fourth movement. Beloved’s face took on a serious expression as she listened and heard the piece for the first time. Her father was a Jazz musician, she had a good ear. I closed my eyes. For a moment I did not exist. I was a violin.

8

The exhausted mind is much like an exhausted society. In the morning, at the dawn of time, we can go anywhere, ready to end up in any conceivable future. In the evening, resting on previous achievements, few are the roads we’re willing to take. The tired mind is different from the energetic mind in the same ways the old are different from the young. We can’t amass the strength to walk in a straight line, yet our thoughts have just returned from the ends of the universe and are ready to go again. The target is perceived but we set out in every possible direction. Love is defined but the number of recipients restricted to those nearby or in other ways similar or kin. The manic mind loves the Earth and everything upon it. The dying mind, if there is time, finds redemption and forgiveness. Then it lets go, lifted like an invisible feather, to ascend to the dimension transcending space and time.

The invention of the layered Hyperspace meant that this transition could be simulated. Death became a flight between the levels of the world and fear was abolished, lest the upper wall was hit and the verdict was final. Entire communities dwelling in the lower echelons, verily mourning fatalities, only for the subjects to wake up, surprised, in a world of different proportions. There they sat in ultra-comfortable armchairs equipped with automatic muscle stimulation mechanisms and extended life support. Three hundred years old or more, half-blind, joints popping as they rose. Electrodes connected to a head cap connected to a computer connected to the layered hyperspace.

Göring’s decision in September 1940 to postpone the destruction of the RAF to instead focus on nighttime bombings of London and other cities of industrial importance meant that our squadron was transferred southeast, from Kenley to Manston. From there we flew Circus and Rodeo missions over northern France, escorting USAAF bombers or trying to lure the weakened Luftwaffe into combat. It was a particularly cold winter and oftentimes flying was not possible, the night greeting the day with a layer of snow over fields and Spitfires alike.

On such a day, with the sun setting rapidly and the snowflakes whirling about, Fanny arrived with the train and walked the windy roads to the gate of the fence encircling the airfield. There she said to the guard, in a demanding and formal tone, that Mr. Bean, security officer at Kenley, had promised that her request to speak with Flight Sergeant Terry Johnson would be satisfied. The guard on duty did not know who this Mr. Bean was but was taken aback by the young woman’s very determined tone and face and went inside to make a phone call to see what could be done.

Where Fanny wanted to be taken we were still in grief after Terry’s disappearance over St. Omer two days before. Compared to the Hell eventually referred to as the Battle of Britain our situation had become one of less tiresome flying and fewer casualties. In the process we’d almost succeeded in putting behind us what losing a friend was like. As if the soft snow and sweeping winds had restored to normal our skins hardened by the fierce summer fighting. Make no mistake, Death had followed us to Manston. Three weeks prior we’d lost two pilots and a week after that yet another one. However, those had been fresh from training, some with as few as 10 hours in the Spit. Their demise was due to inexperience in combat and lack of navigational skills and was therefore somewhat expected. As coarse as it may sound, new pilots needed to stick around for at least a couple of months before they were accepted by the boys. Before that, they were as good as dead, fresh out of school and turned to dust. Terry, on the other hand, had been there from the start, before the onslaught, and was a respected fighter pilot. Terry had been central to the squadron, as important for morale as the ale and Keith’s border collie Pearl. The worn ruby armchair to the right of the fireplace practically had his name inscribed on it. Newcomers found it puzzling that so much attention was given to a man who barely seemed to speak. Then they heard Keith at the bar, recounting with ever-increasing creativity that mysterious encounter in the London metro. Such a strikingly beautiful and charming woman for our humble Terry, we said as we imagined her. A match made in heaven, Keith confirmed, you must remember to invite us to the wedding! Terry in the armchair gave a thumbs up and grinned without looking our way. He’s thinking about her, he can’t admit it! That’s right, Keith said with the glass in his hand, and rumour has it that they’ve already found a nice little house in Bath. They’re going to have a look this coming Sunday. But we never knew what our Don Juan was thinking about. Perhaps he was contemplating the psychological mechanisms of stuttering or what it was about women that made it so much worse. The fact is that Terry spoke only when necessary, to end arguments, to settle disputes. He was never in the mood for either gossip or gospel. Our Don Juan was a Buddha among a bewildered youth, accepting his role for the benefit of the squadron. All’s fair in love and war, I said and sat down by the fireplace. Terry seemed to sigh, smiled and said, You’ve got it, Rocky. The fire crackled and waved as if it was trying to say something. The next day he was gone.

We were sitting and standing like that, restless and sad by the armchair gaping empty when the security officer came in and quickly closed the door behind him. There’s a woman here to see Flight Sergeant Terry Johnson. He ain’t no more, Keith said. Then he froze. You got a name for the woman? You can ask her yourself, the officer replied, she’s right here. Then Fanny appeared like a ghost. With her the wind and the snow, which quickly began to form a pool of water on the floor. He’s dead, ain’t he? The frenzied eyes jumped between our faces like birds trying to land. The boys looked away, Keith emptied his beer and fixed on the glass. Yes, I said from the back. The Jerry got him two days ago over France. When Fanny found me she smiled at first. Rather than disintegrating her face regained composure. She accepted the offer, to keep the shock and sorrow safe in the stranger’s gaze. I came too late, then. Fanny walked a few steps into the room, towards the fireplace, where it seemed as if she would faint. One of the boys sprung forward and directed her to the nearest armchair. Terry’s armchair. When she settled, a sigh and a single tear down her cheek. It sparkled and fell and then it disappeared. Taken back by the universe, to be put to use elsewhere. A cheer for Terry! exclaimed Keith from the bar. The boys alert, all jolly again, their resilience like a song. To Terrible Terry! Forever in our hearts! God damn it! Fanny cried.

Fanny went back to London, I drove her to the train station. It was dark and there was nothing to say. After the war she met another man, an electrical engineer, and started a family. I don’t think she spent much time thinking about how life could’ve been had Terry survived the war. When you’re twenty, the heart turns a hundred pages every hour. In the darkest hours, the rate can be a thousand. Or it can linger, forever going back until it gets it right.

9

We were hunted, us renegades, by the Gods, in their vehicles, inside life, outside space. Shadows in the dark, invisible to the eye, speeding through black holes, mapping the tunnels of time to be there upon our arrival. Our demise was not a top priority but appreciated nonetheless. The octopus of destiny expanding and sucking us in, lazily, the fiery eyes and sprawling arms occupying our dreams. Such are the ways of invisible killers that they move slowly and are never spotted before they strike. Like a ripple on a pond reaching the shore. Like a gust of wind slamming the door. Like the smacking of the lips after death’s failed kiss. Behind the dying eye sits the scientist taking notes and solving equations. Life’s an experiment, after all, in the quest to understand it, and birth, like death, defines the project boundaries.

I’ve been twice to that greatest nation on Earth we call the United States. I spent a week in New York when I was 16 or 17 with my father and brother and we drove to see Washington D.C. as well. I heard avant-garde Jazz (which my father did not appreciate) played before a small crowd at the Village Vanguard and ate pasta in Little Italy but my brother preferred a pizza slice from Times Square. This was around the time when Gregory M. Tree was re-elected. The second time was shortly before Mickey Gump was elected the first time. I was on leave from medical school to conduct an independent research project for my master’s thesis. The institution I was at had contacts with the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience in San Diego that arranged an EEG workshop and I applied for funds to cover the fee and travel expenses. My daughter was 1,5 years, we were still living together the three of us, and this was the first time I would be away for such a long time. The first week was the workshop and for the second week I had arranged to work with a renowned (within the field, at least) neuroscientist at the centre. He would help me analyze my data and we would discuss the results. After the workshop, which was interesting but went by without noteworthy events, I had the weekend off to explore the city and its surroundings. Before I headed out I zapped between the channels on the TV in the hotel room. A frightful thought came to me, that Mickey Gump was in the early stages of dementia. An avalanche of injustice. Outside, the weather was warm even though it was November. I walked around in the Suburbia of the Holiday Inn. Fast-food restaurants and department stores, people in sweatpants carrying paper bags, looking high or hungover, dogs on a leash. Few if any cosy cafes, not very pedestrian-friendly, I rented a bike. Suddenly I was in an expensive villa neighbourhood with palm trees lining the wide streets and swimming pools in the gardens. Far down the hills in a mist or smog, the skyscrapers like a scene from the future, flying vehicles buzzing around. By the beach in the sun and the wind, surfers riding the colossal waves of the Pacific Ocean. It smelled different than the Atlantic Ocean. I took a bus which was forever to arrive and was almost empty and walked around in the city centre in the shadows of the towering buildings, marvelling at the size of things. The curbs were taller, the traffic lights higher up and the people fatter. Large, luxurious cars picking up speed, waiting impatiently at the lights, revving the engines. The USS Midway, commissioned eight days after the end of WW2, sits by the San Diego Navy Pier and has been turned into a museum. When my mother at times left me in the care of my grandfather we watched Battle of Britain starring Michael Caine for hours on end. They’re already at Sedan! That movie taught me to speak English at a young age. Get out, Andy! It comes back to me now. Andy with the red silk handkerchief. I named my stuffed monkey after him. The pilots wore them so that their necks wouldn’t start bleeding from the constant turning of the head. Like shooting rats in a barrel! That fat bastard Göring ignoring erroneous intelligence to change tactics at the worst possible moment. That sleazy jazz when they kiss in the hotel room and the bombs start dropping outside. Tally-ho, Red Leader, down there on the left! Colin. Terrible Terry, the noble fighter with the stuttering who was shot down one kill short of ace and never got to kiss his Fanny again. In my boy mind I was there, in a Spitfire Mark I, pulling negative G’s shutting the engine off, twisting and turning, firing my machine guns at the hapless Stukas, He-111’s and 109’s. I saw that movie many times while my grandfather, an old sailor who could play the accordion, slept calmly in his leather armchair. My interest in aviation hasn’t faded. When visiting San Diego, of course I had to see the American fighter planes stationed on the deck. I shall spare the reader from a detailed account of the various aircraft that I encountered at the museum. Suffice it to say that I was satisfied and that there was a F6F Hellcat and that I walked around and around together with the other tourists in the labyrinths of the carrier interior. When exiting through the gift shop I contemplated buying a baseball cap but left empty-handed. The air was fresh, the shadows cast by the skyscrapers long. The time was around 4 pm and I was hungry, my stomach practically empty. In the evening there was a punk concert in a venue not far from downtown. It was a thirty-minute walk from the USS Midway, I set off. The plan was to find something to eat on the way and thereafter to find a nearby bar where I could have a beer or two. Debating with myself as Google Maps led the way I decided to have a beer on an empty stomach. I’ve always appreciated that particular kind of drunk. I had already passed several bars advertising a wide variety of IPAs and other craft beers. It didn’t take long before I settled on one offering a sort of tasting plate with five small beers selected freely from the menu. I didn’t choose all double IPAs or the like, two of them were session IPAs. Further down the bar desk sat a couple talking discretely about something important but otherwise the small place was empty. Music played at low volume in the background, some singer-songwriter or country-folk band. The bartender with a beard wiped the glasses and looked at his phone. I drank the delicious beer and looked out the window at the street as the lights came on. Cars and cabs went by, people walked past, but somehow it all seemed deserted and dreamlike. Same as in Copenhagen. People are inside, eating, drinking, getting ready. It occurred to me that perhaps it was a bad idea to drink on an empty stomach in a foreign country. Regrettably, it’s a solid part of my personality that such thoughts of restraint are defeated by a malicious ambition to do the exact opposite. Because Fuck it. I finished the third beer. I was on my way to a punk concert, after all. Never mind that I was going alone and that I was in San Diego in the United States and that I had no idea of what behavior is tolerated once the drunk gets going. Never mind that I had my daughter back home and that this fact warranted responsibility lest the daughter should grow up without a father. Alas, such thoughts were not in my head as I finished the fourth little beer. By the time I had emptied the fifth glass I promised myself to take it easy. I jumped down from the bar stool and left the premises. The salty ocean air filled my nostrils as I walked across the street and a bit further until I came upon a burger restaurant with a cosy veranda. I wasn’t very hungry but I ordered a burger with fries and a large IPA. No water, no soda. When the food arrived I had already finished half the beer. I remember that eating made me tired and that I considered going back to the hotel. Shortly thereafter I was at a large bar with pool tables, loud music and hundreds of drunk people. The walls were painted red and the selection of beer on tap was greater than any selection of beer on tap I’d ever seen before. Endless rows of beer taps served by at least five bartenders working at full steam. I wasn’t in a hurry, the concert was still hours away, so I waited until a chair up at the bar became available. There was even an IPA with Habanero chilli in it and I decided to try that first. I’d been sitting at the bar for some time contemplating the burn of the chilli when a young man came up and asked if the chair next to me was free. I looked at the chair and replied that it would appear so. I hadn’t noticed the chair becoming free. I remember vaguely that a woman with grey hair had been sitting on that chair before. Somehow I also remember that the man had been talking to the woman, behind me or to the side of me, before he approached me. The man sat down and began to scan the menu printed in gold letters on a large board behind the bar. What are you drinking? he said suddenly and it took me some time to realize that he was talking to me. At the same instant the bartender came up. I’ll have what he’s having, the man said. It’s the Habanero IPA, I said and gave him a quick look. He appeared to be younger than me, perhaps twenty-five, with a boyish face and he was balding and was a little bit overweight. His clothing was casual as if he worked in management or was an accountant of some sort. Even though I was quite drunk I had not entered a talkative mood. I was occupied trying to come to grips with the situation which somehow struck me as dangerous. Is this beer number seven? What time is it? The man was looking back, smiling a bit, but it did not occur to me that I should greet him. After a few seconds I looked away. Busy day today, he said then. Yeah, I replied. I can’t remember the details of our conversation. Little by little we started talking. To my surprise, he actually worked in accounting. This Friday he was out drinking alone and had no particular plans. He had problems with his girlfriend, something about the girlfriend’s mother being angry with him. He and his girlfriend weren’t living together at the time. I said that I had problems with my girlfriend too, but that we had a daughter together, and that makes things more complicated. Yeah, I can totally see that, he replied. I can’t remember his name so let’s just call him Jonas. He’d recently started a new job and among the benefits came a brand new BMW. He showed me pictures of the car on his phone and talked about the specifications. We ordered another round of beer, if we hadn’t already, and then we had another one. Jonas asked what I was doing and when I replied that I was a medical doctor visiting San Diego for a research project he asked a series of questions about that. I remember that I wasn’t replying very enthusiastically, perhaps too obviously revealing that our conversation bored me. The last thing I wanted on a night out was to explain my research project to someone with no prior knowledge of neuroscience. Jonas did not seem to notice. I can still see his face before me as it appeared, drunk and innocent. The eyes jumping around, both excited and confused. He asked if I had plans for the evening. I said that I was going to a concert. He wanted to come with me. Sure, I said and looked at my phone. We should actually get going soon, it’s a twenty-minute walk. Do you know the place? Sure, sure, I know it, Jonas said. When we entered the street Jonas adopted a quick pace, almost running, and began to scream and shout, almost incoherently. This fucking way! We’re going to a fucking concert! Aaaah! Primal screams. Screams of the delivery of the body from the burdened mind. As for me, my fear was gone. I was looking forward to punking around in the mosh pit. Home was far away, as was I, and shattered were the chains linking me to everyday life. There wasn’t much to say, that much I had already decided. I had noticed something unnatural about Jonas’s ways of socializing. The moment we met was the moment the metamorphosis to a lapdog began. He was working himself down, paying me exaggerated respects, hanging on to every word as if I were talking in absolute truths. Humility before life and before those you meet is the key to wisdom and satisfaction. If someone is frightened or burdened our reaction is to comfort and to find ways forward. Jonas was not responding in natural ways. No matter my words, his reaction was the same, one of pleasing and admiration. As it turns out, perhaps even unbeknownst to him, the mission was to get me drunk and into the car and out on the highway.

Punk to me is more than the music. Jesus was a punk and so was Beethoven and Frank Zappa. Teenagers in rebellion are punks but so were the housewives of the 50’s poisoning their abusive husbands. Punk is an attitude and is more than the aesthetics and should not be defined. Punk says that we are free and equal. Punk says that we are together. Punk tells us to take care of the weak. Punk says that we are doomed if we stop questioning conventions. Punk provides a frame of reference for the oppressed and a way to challenge established norms. As a 15 year old I was a strange punk with a mohawk reading Dostoevsky. You fucking what! I had my shitty band and I knew who I was and that’s the way it would always be. I burned my hands with cigarettes to express the pain I was feeling about the state of the world and the oppression of the less fortunate.

When we arrived at the venue the first band had already started. Because I’m not a music journalist but a musician I won’t try to describe their sound other than that it reminded me of The Dead Kennedys. I remember that the singer had green hair. California has a rich punk history. Operation Ivy. Black Flag. The Germs. Many others. I didn’t join the small but lively mosh pit in front of the stage. Instead, Jonas, who had set off for the bar the moment we arrived, came back and handed me a large glass of Jack Daniel’s. Cheers! The band kept playing. Sounds became muffled. The small venue grew dark and distant. Next, we were walking down a staircase leading to a large basement garage with white walls. The garage must have been close to the venue because I can’t remember walking outside to get there. The plan was to find some weed. It was probably my idea. Becoming a father and studying at the same time made for busy days. I knew of no better relaxation than a joint while doing the dishes around midnight. When drunk, the end station, no matter what, was always to get stoned. As such, I was probably addicted. If I remember correctly, weed had become legal in California that year, but the distribution was not in place. Jonas had some contacts. For some reason we needed to drive to his apartment first. I sat in the passenger side. San Diego on a Friday night was flashing by. Restaurants and bars, groups of people on the streets, traffic lights. Soon we were in Jonas’s apartment, a small studio apartment. He made a call, talked a lot, not the way one usually makes a deal. I put on Unity by Operation Ivy and was surprised that Jonas didn’t know the song. We need to drive to get the weed, he said. Out in the car again, his brand new BMW. I don’t know where in the world I was at, two times entering a car driven by a drunk driver. This time we headed out on the highway. I have it on video. I recorded it with my phone from the passenger side. Not the actual crash but the moments leading up to it. The desolate highway in the dark lit up by the car headlights. The occasional car speeding past, the red lights disappearing around the bend. The car constantly veering to the right corrected by jerky movements. Maybe Jonas was falling asleep and waking up again. Shortly after I had put the phone down we crashed into the concrete median lane. We were heading straight towards it but at the last moment, Jonas steered away. We hit it with the right front wheel compartment but the deceleration was not large. The car slowed against the concrete with screeching metallic sounds and came to a stop. Fuck! Jonas cried. Not good, not good at all. This car is brand new. After a while he drove on but the metallic screeching went on. Maybe I should try? I said. Yes, that’s probably a good idea. We got out and switched sides. So I found myself driving slowly, slowly in a brand new BMW complaining violently, on a highway, just outside the suburbs of San Diego, drunk and tired after a long day. Luckily, the next exit was not far away. I turned right and parked outside a Wendy’s. I was hungry. As I exited the car Jonas was calling the insurance company. My car needs to be towed. Yeah. I hit some debris on the road. When I got back with the burger in my hand I told him that driving drunk was a bad idea. Enough of this nonsense, I said. Time to grow up, young man! I was still hungover when I met with the renowned neuroscientist the following Monday. In the skies over La Jolla, the octopus of destiny was slowly retracting its teeth.

10

Like swallows on a summer’s eve, fighting in the sun, thirty-two Spitfires hugging the waves of the Channel to climb all at once, sharply, maintaining a velocity of 160 miles per hour. Five thousand feet, in Finger Four formation through the mist, the rolling waves like sketches in slow-motion underneath. Ten thousand feet, the ocean more dark and deeper than the soul. The popping of the ears and the lull of the engines, rhythmic, spinning and eternal. A castle in the sky, a reclusive king, the boy and his machine in a lonely kind of bond. I took the glove off to scratch my neck where droplets of sweat had gathered, still holding the spade stick because the Spitfire rolls to the right at speeds below cruising. Connect the oxygen masks, boys, maintain radio silence. Approaching the combat zone, the body stiff at full strength, the eyes like oil on fire in water. The curvature of the Earth, so far away and so peaceful. The black line at the horizon like the end of it all. The brightness of the sun, the white and the blue and Keith in the lead thinking about his dog. The Flying Fortresses approaching somewhere in the distance, on the back leg, battered and bruised from flak and enemy fighters. There’s the coastline of France, brown and green with snow on top. Full speed ahead, boys, we’re coming to their rescue. Beware of the Hun in the sun.

Margaret in the kitchen doing the dishes, smiling at my eccentricities, instructed that I must not be disturbed. The scotch, thank you, I’ll have another, the racing heart, the eyes, the very same, which can not believe. She left the bottle on the table. Terry put the reel in the attic. The shimmering black heart expanded and there we were, fresh out of the machines, crying and shouting that love must prevail. Not always, but sometimes love must prevail. This they must understand. There they were, invisible and absent, the Gods, still seeing and understanding, nodding even, contemplating the flesh and the consequences for the World. I will be no more, I said. if that will please you, my Lord. As if I could decide such things. Me neither, Terry said. Leaning on me, not stuttering before our creator. There was a long period of silence. Then a light encapsulated us from all sides and we came to understand that it was an answer. This they had decided, the Gods, adhering to our pleadings, for they rule, as in Heaven so on Earth, and their grasp of love is supreme and beyond comprehension. This they have decided, extraordinarily, that on this very day, in this particular iteration of it, Death for Terry will be banned from the skies over France. From this day, this very iteration of it, a long and prosperous future will flourish.

Like returning geese in the sky come spring, there they came, the whole bunch, or what was left of it, like a sorry gang of troublemakers returning from unspeakable atrocities. At first distant dots then closer looking all majestic, contrails and destruction in their wake. Dresden in flames, Bremen in ashes. The ball bearing plant in Schweinfurt blown to pieces once again. Beautiful, murderous machines in formation, a frenzy of propellers and furious engines spitting smoke. In every hole a machine gun looking up, on the belly the ball turret hanging lazily limp. Nothing to shoot at now. Inside the machines boys just like us, only with different mindsets. Boys for which escape when attacked was impossible. Boys whose only option was to stay put and hope for the best. No turning, no diving, no chance of vengeance. No hope of hunting the predator down to shoot it out of the sky. Stay in tight formation, call out the fighters. Instinctively protect with the hand when the Jerry comes head-on and bullets fly all around, smashing the cockpit.

As fighter pilots we never got a chance to chat with the American bomber pilots. We took off from different airfields and received different briefings. Most of the time we didn’t know exactly what they’d been up to when we met over France to escort them home. It was only after the war that the civilian casualty rates became known to the public. Firestorms, firestorms. I am all for the bombing of working-class areas of German cities. I am Cromwellian — I believe in ‘slaying in the name of the Lord’, because I do not believe you will ever bring home to the civil population of Germany the horrors of war until they have been tested in this way. - Geoffrey Shakespeare, British Liberal MP, to Archibald Sinclair. We weren’t thinking like that and I don’t think the bomber crews did either. We were following orders, they said that Butler had to be stopped. The flak exploding all around, let’s drop those bombs and get home. We never saw the burning cities, never followed the bombs down to explosion and fire. Never flew over Dresden as it burned for days on end.

In the Finger Four formation, it was the job of the last fighter to scan the sky for approaching danger. Often, new pilots were assigned the position and this made their job even more dangerous. Most pilots who were shot down never knew what hit them. We’d been zigzagging like that back and forth above the B-17s for a good twenty minutes when a panicked voice broke the radio silence. Fighters! 6 o’clock, coming down fast, now! Given that this was the day Terry got shot down, I never registered who made the call. For a second which lasted forever the formation of Spitfires flew on, every pilot busy turning his head, left and right, to confirm with his own eyes the danger approaching from behind at more than three hundred miles per hour. Here they came, Focke-Wulf 190s, at least twenty of them, in a sharp turn from above. The Jerry, coming down at full speed from the Sun, Spitfires expanding in the gun sights and fingers on the triggers. No muzzles were flashing, they hadn’t started shooting yet. In such a disadvantageous situation, the more sturdy P-47, which the Americans flew, would be a sitting duck. The Spitfire, however, the ballerina of the skies, could turn. It couldn’t dive faster nor climb faster, but it could out-turn the 190. Keith called out, calm and cool. Break, boys! Break! I bet some of the new boys called out for their mothers but no one could help them now. Somebody was bound to get hurt.

We turned and turned, Terrible Terry and I, slightly upwards and then down again, into a split S, coming out at a lower altitude with increased speed. On your tail, Andrew! I scanned the sky, aircraft everywhere, the Flying Fortresses tagging along, shooting at the Jerry which swarmed them like flies, coming in and out, attacking the slow bombers from every direction at 350 miles per hour. To the left of us, a hundred feet above, a Spitfire had been fatally hit in the engine and violent flames were engulfing the cockpit. Bail out, Andrew! Keith’s voice. Andrew, one of the new boys, was burning to death. Our six is clear, Rocky. Terry’s voice. I kept turning, keeping a close eye on the speed indicator. Terry stuck to me like glue.

To our left, slightly below us, I spotted two 190s chasing a Spitfire. I couldn’t make out who it was. With the throttle fully open I turned towards them in a shallow dive, picking up speed. The Spitfire turned right and the 190s followed, coming closer every second. Let’s get them, Terry! A classic mistake, they didn’t see us coming, and it surprised me, Abbeyville boys as they were. I drew close, followed in the turn, and steadied the aircraft. A shallow turn required a deflection shot. A few short bursts with the machine guns and the cannons. The 190 exploded gently, caught fire and entered a flat spin. The pilot, in a sea of fire in the cockpit, made attempts to open the hatch until he couldn’t attempt anything anymore. The rotating ball of fire disappeared underneath me. Terry’s 190 took hits in the left wing. Scraps of metal and what appeared to be the entire flap section blew off. The aircraft rolled over to the left and entered an inverted dive, the engine roaring at maximum power. Terry went down after it and I followed. The clouds were light and we didn’t lose each other. We were flying upside down in a large loop when Terry landed the killing shots. This time in the other wing, which fell off completely, the aircraft turning on itself. Even if the pilot was still alive, the violent G-forces made bailing out impossible. One more Jerry sent to hell, Terry’s fourth victory. Now he was one kill short of Ace.

In hunting the 190s we had dropped to ten thousand feet. Below us, partly obscured by the clouds, was the little town of St. Omer with its grand cathedral and the river running through. Above us the fighting continued. Contrails, white against the innocent blue of the sky, long and curling, twisting and turning. Black trails of smoke from bombers still flying but dropping behind, alone and defenceless. Doomed boys in parachutes going for execution on the ground or imprisonment. Burning plane wreckages and pillars of smoke scattered across the fields like bonfires in a churchyard. In between, desperate pilots in fighters, entire cities in bombers, compartments, wires and plumbing, burning and out-of-control, accelerating towards death, thinking their last thoughts. I pressed the fuel gauge button. There was just enough left in the second tank for another round. Into the Inferno of Third World War dogfighting we climbed, Terry and I.

Now Margaret was at the door. I heard her knocking, just as Terry and I began the climb directed slightly away from the B-17 formation, to gain height and thereafter to turn on the Jerry’s back.

You want something, love?

That sweet voice, my beloved woman.

I froze with the glass of whisky halfway towards the lips. Some of it spilled on the shirt. In an instant, like scotch against a warm chest, evaporated the sound of engines and the wind, shattered the Merlin engine, the radio chatter and the machine guns. In the corner of my eye stood the bottle looking almost empty. A significant amount of whisky to drink in such a short amount of time. How long have we been up here for, Terry? The Jerry was gone, as was the whistling wind against the windshield, the vast blue sky and the racing heart filled with adrenaline. Gone as well was the sun, bare naked and intense, where the Jerry had been hiding.

You all right in there, Captain Rocky?

Margaret seconds from entering. Darkness on the windows, trails of water from the heavy rain, smashed to pieces by the gusty wind. Leaves blowing about like pages on a book fire (Swedish: bokbål). The shifting winds on that fateful summer morning in Kenley when Göring, high on morphine, decided to change tactics. Terry there in the grass, black and green as I recall the scene, still around the summer of 1940. Fanny’s eyes when I caught them! Terry never got to see much of Manston. Rolling thunder somewhere in the distance.

It’s a very exciting scene in the film, love. I’ll be out in a second!

I knew that if I stood up my heart wouldn’t compensate and I would black out. That same old heart, beating on the ninetieth year, like a Mustang roaming free. Like the silver-shining of the P-51 the Americans flew. Like a furious Merlin engine at combat boost and 3000 RPM. In a Spitfire, climbing towards trouble, fighting because Churchill won’t give up.

I was back in the cockpit, my feet on the rudder pedals, left hand on the throttle, right hand holding the spade stick. You still with me, Terry? I’m sure he was. At twelve thousand feet a lone Messerschmidt 109 jumped us. I didn’t see it at first and I’ve always wondered why Terry didn’t call out. Something moving in the mirror caught my attention. A reflection, a mirage, something shadowy and quick.

A change, a movement.

A complete reset of the pillars of the world.

I saw Terry’s Spitfire struggling, dancing on the rudders, almost stalling, turning side to side, white and grey smoke from the engine. No fire, he wasn’t being incinerated, only smoke, a thin stream of it. I shouted on the intercom Break, Terry! and began a sharp turn to lose speed and come around on his back. Between turning my head and scanning the sky, which was cloudy at this altitude, I saw in the corner of my eye Terry’s Spitfire turn over on its side and enter a steep dive. Here it was, the portal. Either I lost him forever or I stayed to find the miserable Jerry which had got him. I couldn’t leave, he was my Terry. Imagining in horror that he’d been hit and was bleeding or was unconscious, I kept turning sharply and got around, just in time to catch him before we disappeared in a thick layer of clouds.

Turbulence, turbulence. The worst I’d ever encountered, as if all the power in the sky was contained in this cloud we were passing through. Endless, timeless, as if in traversing it we went from Heaven to Hell and back again. The sight out of the cockpit was poor. I got as close as possible without our aircraft colliding, having visual only on the tail fin, and followed through the jumps and involuntary turns imposed by the rapidly changing winds.

Downwards, tumbling we went on, eternally, spinning around, locked together by an invisible chain which no laws of physics could break.

Until, suddenly, it cleared and we came out below the clouds.

In the name of all that is good and holy, what appeared before my eyes as we descended from the clouds was beyond human comprehension. That is, never on Earth will any human being, living and breathing, and equipped with at least one eye, expect such a vision, lest, perhaps, they are psychotic. Lest they believe that our world is not governed by a uniform set of laws that apply everywhere, from small to large, in heaven as on Earth. Lest they not believe that just about anything can happen. I am, or was, a RAF fighter pilot and not an expert on mental illness, but I do dare to add that even in the psychiatric wards wander no patients who believe that mysterious objects can appear before the eye to swallow in whole two sets of Spitfires! That being said, it’s natural that I did not appreciate the scene at first, busy as I was looking out for Terry, and busy as my subconscious was trying to explain before the mind the visual spectacle now occurring. When I registered, an ice cold chill down my spine, the mouth hot and dry, the heart busy skipping beats.

Surrounded by a countless number of black birds, ravens, I soon realized, circling in large flocks, was an enormous black hole floating in the sky some thousand feet below us. The diameter of the construction, for my bedevilled but still rational mind assumed that someone must have created it, was at least a thousand feet. Margaret! I screamed, or think I did, because no sooner was I back in the cockpit, back in the sweat, the engine roaring furiously. The hole was black in colour but transparent nonetheless so that on the other side of it I could see the horizon, the brilliant sun, and the countryside of St. Omer. Vibrating like hot air above a highway. The borders were shimmering as if made of diamonds that the sun shone through, and in its interior was a constant motion of some fine fabric in shifting shades of black, grey, and white. Terry’s Spitfire, which before was plunging uncontrollably, was now on a straight path as if attracted by some unearthly electromagnetic force. Terry! I called out. Don’t fly into it! I looked around to see if we had company, friend or foe, or just about anybody who would confirm, once back on the ground, that my vision was not deceiving me. There was no one and nothing moved, not the clouds, not the smoke from the chimneys, not the trains on the tracks. Only Terry and the ravens, the Spitfire approaching the black hole, and the birds, millions of them, dancing around the mysterious emptiness in circles like witches on brooms in some unholy seance. After observing all this, in horror, I managed for a brief moment to rattle my wits awake. I realized that me following Terry meant that his fate would be mine. We’re in this together, chap! The closer we got, the more we accelerated. The speed indicator went off, spinning back and forth, and the altimeter kept climbing. Then I realized that I couldn’t steer the aircraft. The spade stick gave after and I could depress the rudders but no change of direction came about. Then my eyes were blinded by a magnificent flash of light. Terry was out, no longer on Earth, he’d disappeared right before my eyes. Seconds later it was my turn. I was devoured into silence and blackness. The last I heard, Margaret’s faint knocking on the door.

Rocky? Terry’s here to see you.

11

Mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. Much weight has been placed on the shoulders of the Earth’s inhabitants. Slowly at first, or so we hoped, for the Gods know that we are newcomers in the Universe. Then exponentially until life’s lived. We must be honest to each other and ourselves. We must talk about what’s difficult and not only of that which is pleasant or odd. We must talk about the three mothers and their tribulations. Two of the women died, one in months and the other in years, from cancer of the stomach. The third was still going strong last I saw her.

Like a witch with the narrow black eyes and the curious, inquiring mind. She lost her husband to a stroke and a few years back one of her sons died from suicide. It was many years after I’d lost contact with John. I heard about it from friends of friends. Enough to break even her Christian heart, which I’ve always believed was made of iron. Greeting me, with just a twinkle of the eye, by calling me the troublemaker. At least she hadn’t changed. The dialect too, that I hadn’t heard in a long time. Like the Kristianstad dialect but with even more Danish tones and Scanian word remnants. Being greeted like that startled me and instantly brought a smile to my lips. I’d been here for an hour but now I finally arrived. John’s mother setting the tone, just as I remembered, witch-like in her presence with the black eyes. A very strict Christian mother. Önnestad, in Scanian and old norse, Æhnestat. Town in nowhere.

I was the leader of one of the most notorious troublemaker gangs in Önnestad. We knew nothing of our past and nothing of our class. We existed in a vacuum. The church records had been deleted many times, books had been confiscated and burned. We knew they were there, the peasant boys, the ghosts and the ghouls. In the passageway behind the churchyard where the light shimmered so strangely. In the night, lost kids just like us, roaming these old dirt roads, fighting the Swedes, misbehaving before the gentry.

In any case, before the Internet, in a remote village like this nothing was provided but the idea of its destruction. Rebels without a cause, we hid in the bushes to throw rocks at cars passing by. We collected dog shit in a paper bag to which we set fire and ran. We came back shortly after to throw pebbles on the windows. We kept a record of who would hunt us and who wouldn’t and we knew all the back roads and hiding places. Elderly couples enjoying their Friday night were our most-desired targets. An old man held my shoe hostage once, dropped on the road, but I didn’t come back to get it. It could get dangerous. Village alcoholics binge drinking, setting out on the bike to catch the damn kids but ending up sleeping it off in the moonlight in some unknown garden. Students from the agricultural college, in pimped Volvo 940s, Happy Hardcore blasting from the speakers. These kids were drunk and bored, too. One time they caught us.

Running, running, in the spring, in the night, the crisp air filling the nostrils and lungs. Laughing, short of breath, just escaped, crashing onto the sofa for the Friday night movie at ten.

What have you been up to, boys?

Nothing.

That’s about all that I can remember from my childhood. The running and the cool air of darkness and imminent destruction. The gang consisted of a bunch of kids but I doubt they ever went out on shenanigans without me. I don’t know what they were up to when went to bed early because of hockey in the morning. Because there were two Johns, they needed nicknames. The John whose mother was alive was Pretty Boy John. He had a fair face and was popular with the girls, or so we thought, because this was before girls. The John whose mother wasn’t alive was Gay John. I think I got to know Gay John’s brother first. He was a somewhat autistic and energetic kid, with a special interest in Spiderman comics. HE HE, he laughed, like a cartoon bad guy. Nevertheless, we bonded over many things, especially computers and video games. Me and John became friends some years later but I can’t remember how. Both Johns were one year older than me so we didn’t have classes together. I think that John came along one night with the other John and that’s how we met and became friends. Some ten years later we reconnected when we both lived in Copenhagen. Then there was Danny D. The D stood for dampunge which in Swedish is a derogatory term for someone with ADHD. Danny grew up in a foster family because his parents were addicted to heroin. If I was the street gang’s leader and crazy brain, Danny was the daredevil. Like a hero, he took a dump in the streetlight and collected it in the bag himself. Sometimes we were joined by Fritz, my neighbour in the house to the right, and Hank, who lived in the house to the left. I think it was Hank who came up with Gay John, as an opposite to Pretty Boy John. As for my nickname, I was Dickie, like the skateboard brand, but also because they joked that my dick was weird. I was born with phimosis and part of the foreskin had to be cut off when I was four, putting me somewhere between circumcised and not. I wasn’t Little Dickie, but none of us could compare with Pretty Boy John whose dick was the length of his forearm. Such matters concerned us, boys, as we were.

The troublemaker gang existed for a few years and dissolved when I moved with my family to Kristianstad. For some time I remained in contact with the Johns. We even had a band for a few months, but none of us were especially interested in music at the time. I fondly remember the two New Year’s parties when my father went abroad with his new girlfriend. The whole of the teenage partying crowd in Kristianstad came over. Both years the party lasted for two days and all the hard liquor in my father’s collection was depleted. Every now and then my father called from Sri Lanka or Thailand to ask how the parrots were doing. Gay John held the phone to the cage and the birds roared louder than the music. My father had decided to place the large birdcage in the living room. What those parrots didn’t get to witness of erratic human behaviour! If only Hilbert or Juliette could say who stole the expensive walking boots I had bought for the summer trek! Or who destroyed parts of the cupboard and burned the carpet. My father, of course, was angry but glad that the birds had survived and thanked me for taking care of them.

A few weeks into starting college me and Pretty Boy John had a falling out. Danny D was there as well. I remember that a lot of irritation had preceded the exchange. Like lovers, friends fall out too. People change, friends grow apart, even if they hang out each and every day. That being said, these were difficult times for me. Instead of becoming more happy in the new house, which was actually the house that my mother grew up in, my parents were going for a divorce. After one year, my mother moved to an apartment complex, a few kilometres further down the street. At the far end of the street, in yet another apartment complex, on the 7th floor, wasted my grandfather, alone and demented. Life taught me that adults are nothing but kids themselves. My brother stopped going to school, which sent out counsellors and psychologists who treated him with benzodiazepines, but still he refused. He started cutting himself in the forearms, in the night, when everyone was sleeping. I sat outside watching over him and hurried home to learn whether he’d been in school or not. My sister was nine and after some time she refused to go to school as well. My parents were unable to handle the situation and everything slid into the abyss. This was when I developed symptoms of social anxiety. I couldn’t be there, in school or at some party, mentally, because I was needed at home. The seventeen-year-old became the provider of safety and comfort, or so I saw it. The pain of not being able to let go certainly disturbed the teenager in me. I envied my friends with normal families and a firm ground to stand on. The rug swept away just as I set exploring the world. Promises of life the adventure vanishing in the air. Self-pitying like that. Pretty Boy John and Danny D were witnessing the decay. Maybe I was projecting my anger on them, maybe that was why we were fighting. We were in the city centre, they were waiting for the late bus back to Önnestad. My brother was there as well. We’d had some kind of stupid argument, perhaps about a band or a movie. At least I’m not Little Dickie, said John. At least my father is not retarded! replied I. His father had recently suffered from the first of many strokes to come. Let’s go, Danny, said John and went towards the bus which had just arrived. Let’s go, I said to my brother. Back to the house of horror. Though that’s not how I saw it at the time. My father had taught me to fight on and never give up, so that’s what I did, for the family. And so it was that me and Pretty Boy John went our separate ways, lived our lives, had children of our own, and turned 37 and some more before we stood face to face again.

The sky was blue and the sun shone high over the one thousand-year-old chalk-white church. The scattered snow was glittering like piles of diamonds next to the tilting and unevenly placed headstones, none of them older than 300 years. Crows and magpies, in large nests in the trees, in small groups on the ground, attended too. It was Gay John’s mother’s funeral. Her death had come only weeks after the funeral recounted in the first chapter of this telling. However, while that first mother had fought for years, this battle had been brutal and short. Less than a year from diagnosis to death. John hadn’t relayed many details. While his mother’s heart had been warm and compassionate, John’s persona in his late thirties was sometimes blunt, bordering on arrogance and his emotions were generally well-concealed. His mother had been the proud owner of the oldest house in the Önnestad. A modest, white cottage from the 17th century with a large garden where she grew vegetables and rose bushes, and where her son’s almost-finished sailing boat served as a large flowerpot. Green wooden details, a thatched roof, a low ceiling not for tall people, and a cosy attic with two guest rooms elegantly decorated with old furniture. A veranda had been added where she drank her tea in the afternoon accompanied by her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, of which she’d had many through the years. From the veranda one could see what once must’ve been the village crossroads. Four roads meeting at right angles, leading out to the endlessness of fields and farmlands. On one of the corners, a grand 19th-century villa in a neglected state where one of my first girlfriends used to live with her three sisters and workaholic father. Her mother had died of cancer too, but that was some years before we met each other. Perhaps around the same time that the intersection was converted to a roundabout. The village centre, with the school, gas station, and supermarket, was located some distance away. Total population: less than 2000.

The sky was blue and there it was in the sunshine, the chalk-white church of Önnestad, a thousand years old. The last time I was here must have been in June 2002 when I finished ninth grade. I entered the long and narrow hallway, just in time as the bells were ringing, and realized that the dress code was not casual. Here I came rushing, in my flying gear, jeans, boots and leather jacket. I quickly removed the cap and the silk scarf and folded the jacket over my arm, trying to appear acceptable. Not that John’s mother would’ve cared, and the only people I was expecting to know were the two Johns and one of their mothers. Nevertheless, even though, or because of, I identify deep within as a punk rocker, I’ve never been able to stop caring about what impression I make. In the main chamber, without the cap, I suddenly felt naked, as if I were exposing more of myself than just my shaved bald head. Here he comes, the notorious troublemaker. Did you know that he’s a doctor now? The crazy kind of doctor. All the old ladies whispering that, remembering me as a teenager. Thoughts come quickly and moods change abruptly. Something of a panic attack was looming. I entered like a dog with the tail between the legs. Cross-eyed, while planning which direction to walk, I received a white pamphlet with a picture of John’s mother on it. The church full to the brim, people dressed in black on every bench, flowers in their hands, candles lit. The hollow murmur of hundreds of small voices echoing against the grand valves, sucking me in. I realized I forgot to buy a rose. Mechanically, I found my way along the paths in the back section to an empty bench where I sat down, gently folding my jacket and scarf beside me in an effort to calm down.

I’ve lived with panic attacks my whole adult life. I can read the signs and feel their oncoming, but sometimes it’s difficult to shake them off. Only afterwards do I realize that I should’ve just walked away. In my older days, from where I’m writing, the attacks have become rare. Months go by without one. At some point I considered myself cured. Then various stressful life events occurred and the racing heart and feelings of imminent suffocation were back. They are at odds with how I see myself and with how my friends and family know me. They occur inside of me and can often be concealed. They come almost at random without an obvious triggering cause. They make me detach from my body to become the most lonely soul in the universe. They pass in about twenty minutes and leave me exhausted and shattered.

The unease went away as quickly as it had come. Scrolling through the pamphlet I couldn’t help to notice the professional design. With a concealed smile I imagined that John, having some IT skills, had spent some time crafting it, selecting his mother’s favourite songs and so on, until on the last page I saw a logo and contact information for the funeral home. Typical John, I thought at first. Then I realized that I would’ve consulted a funeral home too. To get that part over with. For some time, I drifted away while observing the 15th-century chalk paintings on the walls and in the ceiling. Simple scenes of Biblical themes, beautiful faces in single strokes, few colours, blue, red and brown. I tried to imagine that I was fascinated by these child-like drawings as a kid but no specific memories were evoked. Instead, I imagined how I would go about planning my parents’ funeral service. My father would’ve liked Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. My mother, I’m not sure. I believed that a speech would be expected. My father grew up working class and was the first to attend university. He was an entrepreneur in everything he did, and a loving father. My mother was an intelligent and sensitive woman who fought with depression for the second half of her life. Just as I was trying to feel what losing my parents would be like, and a bottomless pit was opening before me, the organ started playing. The ceremony was beginning. Turning my head to have a quick look at where the music was coming from, something caught my attention. The line of sight was interrupted by people on the benches in-between but - sure enough - there they were, three rows back: Pretty Boy John in a dark blue suit and his mother in a black dress and a funeral hat with a veil. Unexpectedly, the sight, perhaps combined with the solemn organ music, put me in a relaxed mood. I realized that I was not afraid to meet Pretty Boy John again, no matter how much I had obsessed about the meeting when driving here from Copenhagen. I stood on firm ground, after all, nowadays, I was mentally sound and stable. Working in psychiatry had taught me a thing or two. No winds or rattles could stir me, no heated conversation, no personal remarks aimed at where it hurt, especially not when coming from an old friend not seen in twenty years. As for his mother, when I saw her in the hat and the funeral veil, tears in her eyes, I remembered what she was actually like: sincere and warm and with a quick wit disguised by a quirky sense of humour.

At the time I liked to believe that she was guided by both of the testaments in her doings. Strict and ruthless like an Old God. Demanding from all correct behaviour as exemplified by The Messiah. So I had remembered her, an elementary school teacher who couldn’t stop being a teacher when the working day was over. As a troublemaker, I felt that I was always in the wrong, no matter what foot I stood on or which way I turned. The radiating, black eyes were always on the lookout, making me nervous. Answers to everyday questions were perceived as unsatisfactory, left in the air like clay pigeons to be aimed at. Common gestures were misinterpreted, expressions came out wrong, polite questions became dangerous. I must have done something to deserve it. My father was an alcoholic and a rapist and my mother was in contact with the Devil. I couldn’t be trusted, always up to something. The moment John’s mother saw me was the moment I became the troublemaker. Being treated as such baffled me a bit, but not too much, because I had experienced it before. My hockey coach, who worked as a butcher and was originally from Berlin, did not approve of my haircut, jacket and boots. Luckily for me, I was the second-best goaltender in Scania in my year, beaten only by the incredible Carl Olsson from Osby in Östra Göinge, which, by the way, is the part of Scania that proved the hardest to conquer for the Swedes. Besides, the coach knew that I was a stupid teenager. I was generally liked by the team, a good team player, and my eccentricity caused no trouble. I came from humble and respectable origins, was the way I saw it, albeit not Christian in that I wasn’t introduced to the Bible as a child. Yet, I believed that I was in the right as a person and not deserving of such wicked eyes, which - when one looked into them for too long a time - caused the heart to skip beats and time to move slower. When I became friends with John his father was already an old man, although not yet afflicted by the many strokes which were to come. John’s mother was at least twenty years younger than his father, who, in fact, had been her teacher at the seminar. The few times I stayed for dinner the father ate alone in the living room in front of the TV, curtains shut and doors closed. John’s mother served him a glass of red wine and came back to eat with the rest of us in the kitchen. Above the table a painting of Jesus on the cross, around the house Bibles in bookshelves and on nightstands. However, I don’t recall saying grace before dinner. I don’t recall seeing anyone praying. I don’t recall discussions about religion. Come to think of it, I can’t portray what it was about Pretty Boy John’s mother or her home that I believed was Christian. Not that it bothered me, religion was just unconsidered at the time. I was quick in my mind to denounce Jesus when I saw his picture above the kitchen table. We didn’t have religious symbols displayed where I came from. I was busy identifying as a punk rocker and reading, albeit not completely understanding, Nietzsche and Karl Marx. Therefore, religion must be left out when trying to analyse the woman’s persona and my curious reaction to it. In fact, I have not met John’s mother many times. We were mostly in his room listening to music. Or we met in the schoolyard after dinner, or for shenanigans. I don’t believe in auras and such. Yet, something about that woman made an impression on me. The black eyes seeking contact, the piercing voice partaking in every discussion between friends at the dinner table. The pointed finger, which I imagined had been obsessively crossed over the chest and who knows where else. The face was beautiful, perhaps but for the front teeth, which pointed a bit in opposite directions. However, I have no memory of seeing John’s mother smiling. Always joking, always catching improper behaviour and troublemakers - but never smiling. Untouched for twenty years in my mind, for I had not been thinking about John’s mother since I saw her last. Except when I heard that her son, John’s elder brother, had died from suicide. Then I thought about her but made no attempts at deeper recollection. Of course, I knew that there were no witches. Eyes aren’t radiating in a magical sense. If John’s mother was mentally ill, I would spot it immediately. There was bipolar disorder and suicide in the family. John’s little brother was autistic.

Before I knew it, we were halfway through the ceremony. Now, Gay John’s aunt, his mother’s younger sister, was called by the priest for a planned speech. The aunt spoke vividly about their childhood on the farm. Five sisters and one brother. She recalled in a beautiful fashion, tears in her eyes, about their last days together, some weeks before John’s mother died. They had planted apple trees in the garden. The sun was going down, the dog was barking at birds flying over. They were sitting on the veranda drinking tea, thinking the same thing, whether both of them would live to taste the apples. The prognosis was bad, the doctors said months. Not enough for an apple tree to blossom. I’ll watch over them for you, the sister said.

After a few more psalms the ceremony was over. Gay John did not hold a speech, which is perhaps what I too would’ve done. The pace was slow with all hundred people exiting at the same time. When I came out I noticed that the sun in the sky had been replaced by a carpet of grey clouds. Rain and storm were in the air and the wind was ready to blow hats off. In front of the church stood Gay John and his brother. I expressed my condolences but there was no time for chitchat with all the people coming up talking to the two brothers. Turning around towards the entrance again, I spotted Pretty Boy John and his mother. Here it came, the meeting. A few quick steps and I was placed walking sideways with John as the crowd followed the priest around the corner of the church. An employee of the funeral home was holding the urn. Hello there! I said in a loud voice and with a big smile. John turned around, looking surprised, but did not recognize me at first. Then his eyes turned. Oh, you! Hello! We hugged quickly, walking forward. Mother, look who’s here, yelled John. Now his mother turned around. She did not recognize me either, at first. Then came that wicked smile, eyes alight behind the veil, which she lifted. Is it really you? The troublemaker! I laughed and said that I believe it was John who was the real troublemaker. John’s mother did not seem to hear me and was saying something herself. We were cut off by John. Mother, we can talk later! John and his mother walked ahead and ended up on the other side of the small circle gathering in the eastern end of the churchyard. Close to the old alley where we had imagined the ghosts were. The priest and the two employees of the funeral home talked a bit, but I couldn’t hear what they said for the blowing wind, and then the urn was descended. Here, Gay John cried, the first time I’ve seen him doing so, as his mother’s ashes were returned to the soil from whence it came. Then a plump and elegantly dressed balding man in his early thirties stepped forward to sing. The man sang exceptionally well. I remembered that he had conducted the choir at the ceremony.

We sang, remembering Gay John’s mother, and the magpies and the crows and the ravens sang with us. Even the wind seemed to be singing, increasing in strength, carrying rather than dispersing our voices, dancing with the shimmering snow and the leaves in playful gusts. And the sun came forward from behind the church and shone beautifully through an opening in the clouds. Throughout I watched Pretty Boy John’s mother. The singing mouth with the crooked teeth open wide. The eyes, struck by the sun’s rays, shining and rotating like burning oil in water.

I wonder if the circumstances were the same when Pretty Boy John’s brother came asking for help. The circumstances: the doctor is not a psychiatrist but temporarily in psychiatry as part of specializing in family medicine or neurology; the doctor is in charge of not only the emergency ward but of the whole psychiatric hospital and is constantly interrupted by alarms and calls; it’s the middle of the night and there are eight patients waiting; the police is on the way with a manic old man; the doctor is tired, exhausted even; the doctor’s propensity to show empathy towards his fellow human being is challenged.

John’s brother’s original name had been Paul but in his adult years he was gifted a name change for his birthday and chose the name Bear. Henceforth he was called The Bear. He was sharp, quick-witted like his mother, good-looking like his younger brother, and interested in many things. He was restless, life was too small for him. He wanted all of it, the whole world and all of its shimmering contents. At the start of the third millennium he dropped out of college to search out the hip hop and gangster milieu in the Stockholm suburbs. He smoked a lot of hash and became friends with a rap crew that was famous for a short while but soon forgotten. Maybe this was when he had his first psychosis or manic episode. Maybe cannabis provoked the symptoms. Maybe he would have stayed healthy if he hadn’t touched that joint. I don’t know anything about his particular case. All I know is that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and that he committed suicide.

Of course, many years passed between these two events. I only saw a glimpse of him, that is, we met a few times in the short span of time when I was still hanging out with John after my family had moved to the city. As I’ve described, I was not too easy to be around, either. It’s not that me and The Bear clashed in any meaningful sense. He was simply not interested in me. I remember that I tried to catch his interest by talking about mathematics. At the time he was at university. A few years later he dropped out, maybe in a depressive episode. Maybe he applied to the university in a manic episode. The last time I saw the Bear was at a party in his apartment in Lund. We were drunk and stoned. The Bear was probably on other things too. He asked me to return a book that I had borrowed many years ago. I promised that I would but I never did. An introductory mathematics book, derivatives, integrals and number theory.

Five years have passed since The Bear died by his own hand. The book is still on my bookshelf, I’m looking at it right now. As a doctor specializing in psychiatry and working in a psychiatric emergency ward, I have met many patients with suicidal thoughts and plans. Every psychiatrist’s greatest fear is rejecting a patient who ends up committing suicide. As a new doctor, I admitted every patient expressing suicidal thoughts, beds in the emergency ward permitting. If there were no places I advised them to come back the following day when some of the admitted patients had been discharged. I sent them home with antipsychotics or benzodiazepines to help with coping and sleeping pills to sleep through the night. However, day after day of listening to people’s problems and threats of suicide hardens the doctor’s skin. Many patients are institutionalized and know exactly what to say to be admitted. I’m not taking any bullshit anymore. You will not act on those thoughts or voices. You’re only looking for benzodiazepines! Some patients are like children, they need to be guided with a firm hand. Some are homeless, but psychiatry is not for social problems. When the psychosis is cured, the battle needs to be fought outside of the psychiatric hospital. Being admitted changes nothing in this particular case. Come back if it gets worse, we’re open every hour and every day of the year. As I often say to my colleagues and students when I’m teaching: If we had an endless amount of beds we would admit every patient so willing. Psychiatric practice is conditioned on finite resources.

Some nights ago, at 4 am, I admitted a young woman with autism and ADHD. She had been gang-raped for the second time in her life, two weeks ago. She was injecting herself with crystal meth a few times a month. She had not eaten in one week because of comorbid eating disorder. More than twenty suicide attempts. 19 years old. I admitted her but she was discharged the day after. If the primary problem is substance abuse, the patient should be referred to the relevant resource. Suicidal thoughts secondary to drug abuse are not a psychiatric problem. The patient shall come back when she has been drug-free for at least three months. I’m not going to argue with that colleague, unless the patient complains and there is a trial, in which case I would admit that discharging the patient was the wrong thing to do. The woman killing herself would be his responsibility. As a human, I can only do so much. That same night I rejected a young man with schizophrenia. He had written a farewell letter and was planning to hang himself. The man had not slept for three days. His hobby was the Total War computer game series. I sent him home with sleeping pills. Come back if it doesn’t feel better. The patient had an appointment at the tertiary care facility on Friday. Last time I looked in the EPJ he was still alive. They made some medicine adjustments, then things were fine, for a while.

Into this psychiatry mayhem of repeated admissions and things getting worse by the day was cast the mother. The Bear’s and Pretty Boy John’s mother. So it must have been, that she became involved in her son’s problems, even if they started while he was far from home in Stockholm. It must be suspected that little help came from the husband given that he became ill around this time. The mother must have sat on the hard benches in the waiting room with the psychotic and suicidal son by her side. Holding him down when he grew impatient from waiting and wanted to disappear into the night. Telling his story, from childhood to the present, again and again like a cursed rhyme, first to the nurse and then to the doctor and the next time all over again, to another nurse and another doctor. Driving home, assured that, finally, her son would receive the help and assistance that is needed. This time it will all be different. Until the following day when the son is back at the childhood home in Önnestad with his things and belongings tucked into the same two old backpacks. The Vans backpack he got for his last year in high school. He was happy then, he did well in school, he had friends. How did I fail? They let me out, I wasn’t ill enough this time. I’ve bought a ticket to Berlin, I’m leaving tonight. Can I crash here meanwhile? Can you drive me to the station? The mother cursing the doctors and the psychiatric system. I’ll drive you, but did you not receive an appointment in the tertiary care? I did, but it’s in two weeks, so there’s plenty of time for me to discover Berlin. She can’t stop him, life must go on. The mother must endorse that lump in the chest that is her son on the world stage. She knows that history repeats itself. He won’t show up for the appointment, he won’t take the prescribed medication. Last time it was Stockholm, this time it’s Berlin. Year after year, while the other children are doing fine. But there had been stable periods. The Bear was prescribed lithium and olanzapine and completed two semesters at university. Then he stopped taking the medication. Why should he? He was doing fine. Something like that. I’ve seen it countless times. Now he’s ill again, standing in the doorway with a knife and a rope in the backpack. Just go! I can’t take it anymore! The mother giving up, each day removing that last bit of hope. Then The Bear committed suicide. I don’t know how. Maybe it was an overdose of the prescribed medication, maybe it wasn’t even intended. That’s how Nick Drake died, at his parents’ house. Next of kin are equally affected by mental illness, but in different ways. Some time ago a mother showed up at the psychiatric emergency ward with her son asking that they both be admitted.

When the singing was done and the ceremony over people began to move slowly in small groups along the narrow churchyard paths. The reception would take place at the parish hall on the other side of the street. I waited for Pretty Boy John and his mother but only John emerged from the crowd. His mother had stopped to talk to an acquaintance further back. Let’s walk, she’ll catch up with us later, he said. No greeting, no meeting of the eye.

How does one strike a conversation with a friend from the past, not seen in twenty years, and from which one departed on bad terms? For my part, I held nothing against Pretty Boy John. I was secretly eager to tell him about what a somewhat successful life I was living, being a medical doctor, a scientist, a father, a musician, a writer, and so on. On the other hand, I felt no urge to tell him about my life unless he asked. As such, I was both curious and indifferent. Not for a second did I fear that our exchange would shake me or set me off course. Whatever quarrels and circumstances existed between us belonged to the distant path. I feared no man or woman in this world. Besides, the abrupt change between the idyllic fifteen years in Önnestad and the difficult time that followed the move to Kristianstad had resulted in me remembering almost nothing from my childhood. My brain had packed the memories away somewhere. However, I did not mind the opening of a box or two. In fact, I was disappointed that revisiting my home village had not evoked a resurfacing of deeply buried childhood memories. All that I seemed to recall was the street gang. Immediately, however, with the very first exchange of words, did I remember Pretty Boy John’s persona. Immediately did I realize that it had not changed its deepest qualities. I was never his equal, I don’t think anyone was. Pretty Boy John was cocky and sarcastic, just like his brother, but sensitive underneath. We were walking side by side, but John was walking faster, as if he had some other place to be. I instantly remembered these high school manners and running after him like this. Happily taking on the role of a talkative clown, I set out in an overly joyful tone, to pierce whatever shield he was employing. Wow, it certainly is odd to be back here after all these years. And for us to meet again. It wasn’t yesterday! I said that to his shoulder. The reply was short and hurried, delivered without conviction. I heard you live in Denmark? As if he hadn’t heard what I said. I wasn’t going to play it cool, I’ve seen the world. I’m honest and real, bordering on autistic. I’m not wasting time playing games. Yes, yes. I’ve lived there for fifteen years now. Got myself a daughter. The accent’s a bit off as you can hear. But, as you know, Scania used to belong to the Danes… John did not reply for now we had reached the entrance to the parish hall. I haven’t been here in many years, he said when we entered. Me neither, I said. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever been in here. I didn’t accept Jesus like you did. Oh, that’s right, you’re one of the heathens. A discreet smile appeared on his lips and disappeared again. In the main hall the people from the funeral home were busy setting the tables. A generous buffet was served with several main courses and desserts. As we stood looking at this, John suddenly told me that he had many crazy memories from this room. Many unbelievable things happened here. This confused me a bit. Was he referring to religious experiences? Drinking and partying? Was he telling me that he had collected some of his superior sexual experience in this room? Oh, you mean like wild parties? John nodded and smiled. Yes, very wild parties. Shall we have a seat? John started walking towards a table, taking the lead. I followed, convinced that this was a lost cause. There was a power struggle going on between us, whether I wanted it or not. John was expecting the troubled teenager but instead got something he could not quite figure out. When we sat down face to face at the empty table I decided to conquer him. At first John avoided looking into my eyes but then he gave up. We were having a discussion, after all, we had to see each other. Much communication goes through the eyes. Look at me! I’m interested in you. I’m friendly, I have no agenda, I’m not dangerous. How have you been? Gay John told me that you have children. Yes, I have three boys. Is it true that you have a model railway in the basement? He laughed. No, that’s not true. I’m keeping an eye on you, you know, little birds tell me every move you make! John laughed again, honestly this time. Hey, I heard some of your music some time ago, he said. Oh, really? What song? Where did you hear it? Oh, I can’t remember the name. Gay John showed it to me. I heard you work in logistics, what’s that about? John froze a bit, looking absent. Are you thinking? I asked with a smile. Yes, I’m thinking of how to explain it. At this point I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around to see his mother. In her eyes, that same glow in the blackness, excitement even. Mother, you sit here at the end of the table, said John and fetched a chair. While we were talking the table we were sitting at had filled up. Now I had John in front of me and his mother to my left. John had suddenly changed faces and now seemed properly relaxed. He took a snuff from his pocket and leaned back in the plastic chair, hungry eyes fixed on the queue forming at the buffet table. He’s just a mama’s boy, I thought to myself. Here we are, seeing each other again after twenty years, and as soon as his mother comes he withdraws and considers the conversation over. His mother, however, was delighted to see me. She had just sat down and was about to say something when I was approached by the lady sitting to my right. She asked me where I was from and how I knew Gay John’s mother. It didn’t take long for her to hear that my accent was off. I said that I came from Önnestad originally but that I had lived in Copenhagen for many years. Learning Danish has polluted my Swedish, I explained, both the grammar and the accent. But even my English accent had changed. I spoke with a decent British accent when I lived in England. A year in Copenhagen destroyed that as well. The lady smiled politely.

Pretty Boy John ate with a great appetite. Of the small soda bottles placed at the ends of each table he drank two, but there was enough for everyone. He was a big man, after all, not tall, but plenty of fat and muscle compared to when I last saw him. The other John sat at the central table together with his girlfriend. Like me and beloved they had big plans but weren’t successful yet in having children. Overall the mood was light and talkative. I think that Gay John was pleased to see so many people at his mother’s funeral. That old house you used to live in, by the railway tracks, did it have a name? I had to look around to decipher where the piercing voice was coming from. It was Pretty Boy John’s mother. She’d suddenly started talking to me. Demanding my attention, fixing me with the eye. A very intense gaze, but as a psychiatrist I was not deterred. I’m used to all kinds of stares. After a second I broke off to cut a slice of pie and collect it together with some pieces of grilled tomato on the fork. It was the natural reaction, to not be tempted by the dark well. Some months before she died - she pointed in the direction of Gay John - we talked about that for a while, whether that beautiful villa had a name like some of the other houses along the railway tracks. I realized that Pretty Boy John’s mother had a direct but natural way with people. No alarm clocks were ringing, her eccentricities were due to personality, not a mental disorder. Regrettably, I was not aware of my childhood house having a name and told her so. But she could not help herself, if only for a second. That air of disappointment that I remembered so well. The eyes looking away and then back, saying that I’m hopeless. As if it was my fault that the late 19th-century villa did not have a name. Some part of her must have believed that it was my fault. It used to be a doctor’s practice, I said. There was a separate entrance with a waiting room… Yes, yes, we know that, she said and looked over at her son, who was not partaking in the exchange. So tell me, what are you up to these days? You’re living in Denmark, correct? Another quiz question, but this one I was prepared for. I even had the correct answer. What elementary school teacher isn’t delighted to hear that a student became a doctor? However, a mother having lost a son to mental illness might not be delighted to hear that the doctor works in psychiatry. I said that I lived in Denmark, that I had a daughter and that I worked as a doctor. Oh, that’s nice to hear! But she had to ask: what kind of doctor are you? Anticipating the question, I tried to prepare her for the answer. I looked her in the eyes as to fix them lest they run away when they heard, and said, using all the compassion I was able to muster, that I worked in the psychiatric emergency ward.

You do that?

The black eyes grew big until they stood wide open. The eyes were burning. All the pain was spilling out. In thick, fiery smoke. Regardless of how one tries to explain it, information was exchanged between our eyes. Just for a second. I took in and I took in, I saw and I understood. All her pain. All her suffering. In that second I took her by the hand. I led her to a graceful summer field with flowers in all colours. There I healed her wounds. I made everything right again. We travelled back to the time when The Bear was still alive. They sat under an old oak tree and talked for a long time. Then he was gone again and she got up. She was smiling and she was sad no longer. We looked at each other and a bond was formed that only those suffering from the damages caused by mental illness can understand. Then we looked away and it was over. You know, she said, The Bear had the same psychiatrist for many years. He was in and out of the ward but then he found this psychiatrist, an elderly man, retired. They became friends, they went to football games together, they had a beer at the pub. The Bear could call him any time of the day. And I don’t know… I don’t know how good that was for him. The patient-doctor relationship, you know. Oh, to hell with it! John, go fetch some more bread for your mother, will you! John got up, surprised at the shift in tone. Nothing was going to bring her son back. I was a fool for thinking that I could heal her wounds. All I had was my face and my words. All I had was my humanity. That’s the million-dollar question, how much we can heal in each other by just being human.

An hour later I was on the highway back to Copenhagen. I said goodbye to Gay John and he thanked me for coming. We’ll talk more next time. He was planning a dinner party and Pretty Boy John and his wife were invited as well. I left Önnestad not thinking much about it. A childhood is a childhood and that’s written in stone. It’s probably not worth remembering anyway. I stopped in Malmö where my best friend lives. Greg is a 67-year-old bald gay man who grows his own weed. When Greg grew up it was mandatory to go to church on Sundays. He knows all of the New Testament by heart. As he passed me the joint he told me about that time Jesus made wine from water. He was telling vividly, he’d heard the story many times. Jesus was just some kid. This was before he began performing miracles.

I hadn’t smoked in a long time. The seagulls of Malmö were screaming.

What is this?

Who the fuck am I?

Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then the inferior wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.

I couldn’t believe that I had been out there in the world talking to people.

12

I opened my eyes. Or had they always been open?

Did I close them,

to see only black?

Where was I?

Seeing clear and still the blackness. Above me a starless sky. The moon and the sun, if they existed at all, were on the other side. So I reasoned.

On all sides of me an endless field of neon grass, bending in the wind, back and forth as the pressure shifted, shimmering like an ocean bathing in the sun.

Church bells chiming in the distance, the sound reaching me, bouncing and expanding against the hills, like a shimmering gong and commotion in the town square.

A funeral procession, it came to my attention, somehow. I was walking in tall grass.

On a pillow of white silk a lifeless, grey little bird with a yellow crest and orange dots on the cheeks. The pillow on a pedestal, held up against the black of the heavens as if Holy.

A hand motioning me to come with…

COME WITH.

Then there was light so that I could see.

We are gathered here today to bid farewell to Sajber, a magnificent and most beautiful cockatiel who in his final days, when it mattered the most, was abandoned by his owner, Rocky. Because - the priest lifting a finger in the air - Rocky decided that it was more important to visit the brother in Stockholm. Because the lives of human beings are valued more highly than those of any other animal on this magical and enlightened Earth. This it was decided, not by the Gods, but by Rocky, a human, who, it must be repeated, left his friend of twenty years to die all alone and frightened. For frightened he was, as would any of us be, whether human or bird. Wondering when Rocky would come. Hoping until the last minute when the heart gave up its beating and light was replaced by darkness. Rocky knew that his friend was sick and dying and yet he arranged only weakly and with poor instructions for two acquaintances, whom he barely knew, and didn’t really like, to sporadically go over to the house to have a look. Just go over there a few times a day to have a look, Rocky said. He’s used to being alone for long stretches of time. I repeat, there were no proper instructions. Rocky mentioned only vaguely, as if it wasn’t important, that the bird was ill and that special attention to his needs was required. Rocky failed to communicate that the bird was too weak to fly up to the cage. Rocky did not lock Sajber in the cage or place the food on the floor where it could be reached.

What was I thinking?

Should the bird feed on air and courage alone? Oh, I fear that Sajber died from starvation. And dehydration. I’m telling you that Sajber died from dehydration and starvation! Had he only been allowed these essentials of Life his Heart would have kept on beating and he would still be alive when his beloved Rocky, who was the very centre of his little bird life, came home again. But no. Rocky did not instruct the acquaintances to lift Sajber to the cage or to place food on the wooden chair, where Sajber prepared for Death to come. Indeed! Death had come knocking. A bird knows such things, as do humans, as does any living creature. Rocks don’t know it! Plastics have no idea! But Life knows when the End is near. The white drop of spilling on the chair indicates that Death came slowly and coldly and that the bowels emptied there on the chair. On this day of death and passing when the little bird’s heart stopped beating, the first acquaintance came around noon to find Sajber with an empty look in the eyes. The bird was not reacting to whistling or singing and when placed in front of the water and food tray in the cage did not eat or drink. The first acquaintance called Rocky to inform him of the situation but Rocky shrugged it off and said - and may he never forget - that, Yes, Sajber had become old and tired.

I was at the Natural Museum…

The grand salon with the bird skeletons…

When I stepped into the room and saw the skeletons…

That’s when he died…

YOU MIGHT BE CORRECT.

Having received no special instructions, the first acquaintance left and went on with his day. The bird was left lying on the side.

Sajber had arthritis in the right foot, he was always in pain. I took him to the vet but the steroid and paracetamol treatment became too cumbersome. The medicine is still in the drawer, barely used on such a small creature.

I stopped after a week…

Four years before he died…

Left him in pain…

Only later did Rocky find out that Sajber had lost the ability to stand up. He blamed the first acquaintance for not telling him.

I should have called…

To say goodbye…

When the second acquaintance came in the evening Sajber was dead, the little body still warm. The second acquaintance - whom Rocky despised because of his antagonistic personality - called Rocky’s girlfriend at the time - the mother of his daughter - and she called Rocky, who was at a dinner at his sister’s friend’s place. Rocky excused himself and went out of the room to take the call.

Two times the door opened…

Two times he hoped that it was me coming home…

One day passed and on the evening of the second he died. It was the coldest of winters.

Before the darkness descended, a bright light, birds chippering, a summer’s day…

HE FLEW UP, ROCKY. AND THINK NO MORE OF THAT.

In his mind, as time stopped, he flew up to live again…

To my left, a figure.

Terry?

Terry came up, walking the way he did, wiggling from side to side, polite but determined. The stout figure and the moustache, the same colour as the dark brown eyes. Then I saw the face. Halfway turned to coal, halfway on fire, the eyes rotating in their sockets like burning oil.

I screamed. Nothing happened. Some time went by.

A peculiar combination, with the green grass, bending in the wind, and the black starless sky. The temperature must be close to zero. There was no sun, it should have been too dark to see, but there they were: colours.

Terry smiling, against the black sky, next to his Spitfire. Smiling like a summer’s day in Kenley.

How about we take them for a spin? Come up flying for a while, see if it makes a difference?

Wait, man. I want to talk to you.

Terry checked his straps and climbed in. Clicked a few buttons. BOOM, the sound of the Merlin engine starting and proceeding to neutral operation. I watched the aircraft taxi and take off. It climbed and circled the airfield. Then it flew off in the dark, the sound disappearing after some time.

I was back at dispersal again, the place was empty. While looking out the window I saw something in the far corner of the landing field. When I approached I saw that it was my Spitfire.

The burning engine and the flames…

I died like that…

YOU CAN’T REMEMBER THAT.

Where was I? What was all of this? This most dire critique of the psychiatrist was not taken lightly. Open questions are good if you’ve lost your way mid-interview. There will be imminent Doom. Keith had a dog. In one life I had a cockatiel. When we went to the lakehouse some weeks before he died, I watched Shoah in the night while he slept on the other pillow in the two-man bed. Fanny’s face when she heard. Entire families will be burned alive because of this fallacy. We saw it all, we knew 21st Century issues as long resolved, nuclear wars as averted, autocracies as long since abolished. We came from the future and we didn’t even try to escape the ever-hunting breath of the all-knowing and all-loving Gods. Terry often spoke in ways that put an end to arguments or provided conclusions to stories which just before were taking off in every direction. Once the dice was cast we were always on the run. With only the occasional laboratory-grown meat burger our bodies grew healthy. Whole villages will be wiped out. Racism was as distant as the Neanderthals, wealth inequality as preposterous as murder. Pyramids, Ravens, burning moons. The moon will not rise again for five or ten years and millions will die, and millions will be gang-raped and shot. Ruminations about a bird I once knew, Shoah, bordering to psychotic. Anna screamed when she saw Butler’s balls, the knife in her hand. Rudolf is certainly no Satan! The last words of Butler. I looked up, smiling, but Anna was still reading. Now, no needs were satisfied… We started to live for two hundred years or more. Transferred from Kenley to Manston. Springing from Him, little Devils will plague and sicken the soils of Europe with blood, and all of the World will become involved, and all of the World will be burning. We did it, we got Butler by the balls. With automatic muscle stimulation, exercise became a pastime. Agatha’s father is a butcher in Neukölln. A giant man with a Mohawk or some other curiosity of hair will be responsible. We recognized the people of the Earth and on every other planet in the Human domain in the same slightly brownish skin tone but with eyes in every colour of the rainbow. We ran, for lack of a better description of the ways we fared through dimensions outside space and time, from the Gods, us renegades, us champions of retribution and love. The transformation to sustainable living was the first baby step toward what came to be known as the Paradise Era. The invention of the Hyperspace allowed for the capture of the soul at Death and infinite Life, in whatever form desired. This particular day of waiting by the airfield in Manston that I recall was the day Terry got shot down over St. Omer. Of course, this we didn’t know at the time even if any day could be the last.

I loved you so much…

Terry smiled, I could tell by the moustache moving, said, I bet you know a lot more about love than I do. The fire made noises, the boys at the bar laughed at something Keith had said. Keith’s dog did not take a shortcut to reach us, walked around all the tables and the chairs. Make a wish, the dog said. Don’t listen to him! shouted Keith from the bar. It’s just a dog, he’s not an officer yet! The boys cheered. The dog insisted. Make a wish. Far from home, the green and the black, the Jerry’s coming around to attack.

13

We were line dancers, one could say, and as musicians we were producers, levitating in the air, on the edges of knives, in the trenches and the dirt, Keith and I, as the bullets flew past. In one life the phone bounced back against our brow, leaving a terrible bruise, and in another it crushed the thin bone sheet of the temple, killing us instantly. That fateful change of trajectory, the intervention, from one moment to the next, life flashing and trembling, that’s what Keith was up to. We were killed in front of our daughter and a Spitfire and we survived and kept on flying, just like that, all at once. It was always Keith and I, and his dog, Collin, and Sajber. Through the rainbow-tinted tunnels of time, back and forth like bouncing souls. Setting things right, a ship arriving just in time to save a drowning witch. An especially wicked witch. Oh, I loved you from the start and always will, you troubled, miserable copy of something with hairy arms and legs and a beautiful head. You crazy ball of fire…

IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, THEN SAY IT NOW

Let me just open my eyes…

THEN SAY IT NOW

I’ve always admired that you were a part of the Techno subculture in the 90s though I’m content with the fact that I wasn’t there to live it. Several of your friends from that time became heroin addicts. Only one, that I know of, escaped to live a normal life. He has a family a real family and is a psychologist rehabilitating drug users. The rest are dead or getting there fast. One sold his girlfriend’s apartment behind her back to buy drugs. She was surprised when she came home and the key didn’t fit. He has two daughters with Charlie, one of your closest friends, but he’s not allowed to see them.

He took an overdose in front of the girls. Of the two addicted parents, Charlie is the best option. She’s only addicted to cannabis and cocaine. She’s not homeless.

Some years ago, on your fortieth birthday, you and Charlie smoked crack in the public toilet in Kongens Have. There, I said it. Charlie had the daughters with her to the party, but others took care of them. I remember the wide circle of friends on the grass, Nirvana from the Marshall Bluetooth speaker I’d gifted you, the children - Jennifer included - playing in the park, and you sitting there, all silent, unable to handle such celebratory attention. None of your friends spoke either, which left us in a slowly decaying kind of party.

THE FRIENDS

THE FAMILY

You have a wide circle of friends, people you’ve picked up along the way. People you’ve met in the bodegas and on your nightly wanderings through Copenhagen.

THE FAMILY

On Jennifer’s ninth birthday someone forgot to make a reservation at the China buffet so we ended up in the shitty multi-storied McDonald’s restaurant close to the central station, on a Saturday evening. Drunk teenagers, big macs and soda on the floor. I haven’t told you that Beloved was shocked when she realized that all your friends belongs to the lowest step on the social ladder. We’re not even talking working class! A whole circus entering, bags, trolleys, kids. Their language, their behaviour, their tattered street clothing. The way they let the kids just run around screaming in the restaurant. Even if it’s just a McDonald’s? Rufus went outside to smoke a joint and the smell reached us on the second floor. Defeated from the start I found that exciting, always have… Who cares about the well-off? mental disorders, treated or otherwise, orphans, addicts, no education, not a chance, and poor little Angel souls like your own. We ended up drinking shots in Funchs Vinstue. What happened to Jennifer? I think my brother and sister took her home to sleep.

THE FRIENDS

You arrived in our country at the age of nine, you arrived from the south of Europe where people’s temperaments are hotter and conversation more one-sided. That’s how I explained it in the beginning. You’re a fucking joke as a doctor! Your father was of noble breed and your grandfather had a square named after him, for he was a general and was taken prisoner when the Nazis gave northern Italy to the fascists. Ever the rebel, your father, he did not study law or medicine as was expected, but mathematics, and went on to develop one of the first operating systems. When the company expanded to the Soviet states, your father visited Moscow often, and brought home bottles of exclusive wines, much to the delight of your mother, I imagine, who was now living in relative comfort, coming from a poor upbringing. That’s your mother screaming!

You’re nostalgic and you believe in Astrology and Tarot cards. You have that from your mother. Rufus said that the anger’s from your mother too. The drinkers rage, the abandoned child rage You keep every single bit of memory, for everything else was taken away from you.

When your father died fast from pancreatic cancer you were there with his last breath. He sat up, the eyes opened, shone with a strange blue light, and then closed as the body lost power. You admired your father. He tucked you in bed and read goodnight stories while your mother sat up drinking in the cool garden. Your father made sure that you had clean clothes and that the pencils were sharpened. He drank until the end and spent the last months in the hospital. With the inheritance you rented a van and drove with a friend to empty the house of all its belongings.

THE FAMILY

You kept it all. The strange string instruments collected on worldwide travels, the best of the wine, all the pieces of knight’s armour and all three heavy swords. All the family photos. I’ve seen your father naked… The wooden shield with the family emblem. A 15th-century monastery dining table, a gift from when your father married into one of the oldest families in Milano. Some of the belongings are in your crowded home, the rest are scattered across cheap storage facilities all over Zealand.

The rest of the money, while it lasted, was spent on travels to Morocco and India. You’ve been to India many times, you even brought Rufus with you. You had a fight and lost each other in Kathmandu. Oh, Rufus, we miss him with the black lungs and visual hallucinations. Some months before he died he went to Goa by himself. He spent three weeks smoking hashis every day in one big psychosis. Not good for the chronic schizophrenia and the COPD. Then he came back, tripped on something on the street, and died on the spot from pneumothorax. Didn’t quite reach fifty. All of Copenhagen outcast came to the funeral but in life the only friend he ever had was you.

THE FAMILY

As life went on, a bottle of Pinot Noir degrading to vinegar became the only witness to confirm that there was a rainbow in the sky the first time you walked, and that the grass was wet. I imagine that your parents didn’t see it, and dead are the cows in the field behind the stone fence where you twenty years later got stoned with Romero, whom we visited in Torino some years back. Another addict with a daughter. He offered me a joint on the balcony and it turned out to be pure skunk. In a matter of seconds the turn-of the turn-of-the-century dense cityscape with its narrow streets, wires and antennas dissolved into a steampunk hellscape, the cars and vespas were driving on the walls. I returned to the cramped apartment looking for a place to crash. You and Jennifer were sleeping upstairs. Romero sat in the sofa and kept on talking in Italian and the TV wasn’t functioning. I went to bed, where there also was a TV. The only channel showed around-the-clock news in Italian.

YOU COULD’VE DONE BETTER

Help me, Oh God, help me!

In some sense, given the circumstances, we were happy there at the picturesque restaurant overlooking the old Roman bridge. You used to come there with your parents, a thirty-minute drive up the steep and twisting mountain roads. They remembered you, the old couple that ran the place, and they loved Jennifer. Up there in the mountain the air was thinner and the water in the river metallic and fresh. The summer was hot that year in Piedemonte. I swam in the ice-cold waters and imagined that Roman legions had done the same. My brother and sister came to visit and I leaned back and drank glass after glass of the young table wine. Weren’t you happy then?

Under that same sun, in that same garden, your parents kept you in a playpen to sit themselves in the shadows of a tree, drinking and relaxing. I’ve seen the photos. The newly-cut grass, the villa, your parents with drinks in their hands. In the background… Your father tired after work, your mother longing for conversation. True, she found friends in the village, not proper friends with whom she could discuss the arts and politics, but peasant friends, and she helped with the harvest in the autumn. The old man that lived next door, the owner of the cows, remembered you. You mother’s best friend in the village was suffering from dementia and was confused to see you. The house itself had decayed and the paths you used to walk were overgrown.

How your mother ended up in a remote village in the mountains of Piedmonte is a book in itself. Your voice proud, or so I reckoned, when you told me their story.

Milano, yes, that’s where your grandfather had a square named after him.

Your mother was a painter visiting with a friend. Coming for the art, and the partying. Or she spun a globe and put her finger anywhere, as long as it was Europe. Or they met in Mallorca or Gran Canaria - or was it Barcelona?

Anyway, your parents met while on vacation and they liked each other but soon your mother had to return to Denmark. She was waiting at the airport when a waiter approached her and asked her to come with him. In an area closely connected to the gates, It sounds implausible… sat your father and his friend Bruno - who was decapitated years later when his car crashed into a bridge - at a long table dressed in white cloth and served with the finest wines and grapes, pineapple, grilled tuna, bistecca alla fiorentina, risotto alla milanese, ossobuco, and minestrone alla milanese.

Please don’t go, I love you.

MOTHERS AND FATHERS

Your father the neurotic bought a sports car, a Ferrari, and tied a string to the wheel and attached it to his toe so that he would awake if someone tried to steal it. He worked not in Milano but in the nearest large town and was unfaithful - the trip odometer gave him away your mother watched it closely - and was generally not a good partner, and your parents never married.

YOU COULD’VE DONE BETTER

Your mother drank every day and got very little painting done. Stop that NOW! Fed up, she moved to Brussels, where she got work as a translator, and that’s how you came to speak French at the age of four. Then they were together again for four years until your mother left for good and returned to Denmark, taking you with her. Thus began your mother’s wild years.

As a teenager you were impossible and skipped school to hang out smoking joints with the other outcast kids. That’s how you started smoking those hand-rolled filterless cigarettes, from getting addicted to the tobacco in the joints. Your style was that of an Astral Witch. I don’t know what grades you managed to produce but the teachers were concerned.

I helped you take a degree in pedagogy and now you have a full time job and can pay the bills.

YOU COULD’VE DONE BETTER

Keith, let’s take off…

Terry! Let’s go!

Your mother, now in her early forties, had you transferred to a private boarding school that she couldn’t afford with the hope that it could improve your grades. Yet, when she had friends over and they sat in the kitchen drinking until late she woke you up she called and asked you to spell a word, any word, easy or hard, so that she could laugh as you got it wrong. Dyslexia was not a household term at the time. Your mother took the monthly school allowance to hold parties that lasted for days.

MOTHER AND FATHERS

Once you attended a party and in some kind of drinking contest won a handmade special edition of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. The organizer of the contest was disappointed that this great work of art was awarded to someone who had never read a book. He asked if you liked Dostoevsky…

Misunderstood and taken for stupid.

THIS IS LONELINESS

So much loneliness in one being.

We aren’t rodents

RAGE RAGE RAGE

Every summer you visited your father who still lived in the villa. He was alone again, had been unfaithful again. The only time you talked to your father about what feelings was when he drove you to the airport. Eyes on the road, free from responsibility, the two of you in a long process of saying farewell. He was named after a Roman Emperor.

You were 25 when he died and your mother followed six years later, also from cancer. The tumour originating in the right lung had grown so large that it extended the skin of the back. The idiot doctor sent her to a physiotherapist thinking that it was a bad muscle. On her dying bed, hallucinating from the high doses of morphine, she refused to let you inherit the little summerhouse by the ocean on the west coast of Zealand. The lawyer hired to sort it out left you with a debt that you still haven’t paid off but the house became yours and I’ve been there many times. It’s the last one standing from the 30s. The other lots have modern houses on them.

TIME IS RUNNING OUT

Let’s go, boys!

Dear Friend, please receive this letter:

We met on a summer’s morning, by chance, as it seemed, like unfortunate lovers often do, and fucked in the bushes in Assistens churchyard, but quiet, so as to not awake the spirit of H. C. Andersen. You were quick to reply that we should meet again and it was not long before we were going steady. Too ruined to go steady Well, sometimes we weren’t, because you had other lovers than me. Dark and stormy, you hit me on the mouth when I would not cease a long-winded argument about this or that. That wall I was far from perfect and when you slept I went over your messages and calls and instead of confronting you I grew paranoid and acted erratically and unfairly. Could we ever talk? Yet, we went to the lakehouse where I tried mushrooms for the first time, and we went out on the boat and swam in the lake under the midnight moon. Once, at a factory techno club, you found a bag of mushrooms. You ate three and didn’t feel anything. Then you ate the whole bag.

Terry!

Keith, have you seen him?

Isn’t that Sajber coming down for a landing?

The end of the summer was approaching. Not a day went by without some kind of drama. I was in love, I wanted to save you, like a knight on a white horse. Don’t ever, ever do that again! The more I learned about your past the more I loved you. When I learned that you were nine years older it was already too late Love knows no limits I remember crying on the bus to a beautiful sunset thinking about you.

Anna, cut them off!

Hold him down!

Oh, sister, when I came to knock on your door, you let me in, until you didn’t. What had seemed like destiny was quickly becoming unsustainable.

YOU COULD’VE DONE BETTER

Little did I know that you were unable to maintain normal relations, that you exploded from small tensions and that only time could return feelings to a neutral state. Borderline, ADHD, that’s what I’ve been considering, but you must see another doctor for I’m partial, I hate you and I love you and it never settles.

Sajber, you agree, right? You knew her too. She said that you called for me the whole time when I was away for two days.

I was in the car, in the passenger seat, for I didn’t take a driver’s license until Jennifer came to the world Bob Dylan was playing at Sofiero where I had first heard him fifteen years before, and you called to say that you were pregnant. That’s wonderful, I said. I’ll do whatever it takes.

I could’ve done better…

Turn left, boys, Jerry’s on the intercom

What followed was a rootless existence, a caravan of bags and things. Don’t forget the birds and the two cages we took on the train on an additional stroller. Between days off at the university and skipped lectures any given day in the week could be spent at your place, at my place, at the lakehouse or at the beach by your summerhouse in Korsør. We were well-off Jennifer was only six weeks old when I first saw that other side of you. So little did we know about each other that I had never before seen you properly enraged. Of course, sleep deprivation added to it, but the anger was not justified given that all I’d done was to buy the wrong kind of milk.

THE FRIENDS

Here it came in one burning ball of pain, a whole life done you wrong and the lid’s off.

THE FAMILY

I hid behind the couch, I escaped through the windows and the back door, I did anything to get out of the way. You know it, but you’ll never admit to it, that these fits of rage destroyed what we had. Granted, we broke up before you became pregnant with Jennifer, but what we tried to construct - a modern family, a childhood where Jennifer had access to both her father and mother - was ruined by your uncontrolled behaviour. I know, I know, it’s me writing and you’re not allowed to reply. You came running to push me from behind. You hit me in the head while I was carrying Jennifer up the stairs. You threw a phone in my face in front of our child. Twice. You hurled the Barbie bus at me and destroyed it. What happened to it?

YOU COULD’VE DONE BETTER

Now you can have a taste of it. This is what it feels like to be voiceless.

Achtung, achtung, this is Berlin calling

Turn right, boys, they might not have heard us

After two years we moved to a sustainable living community an hour outside of Copenhagen and how I hated that. I had just finished my degree and was working as a junior doctor at the emergency ward in the nearby town. Every day I came home to fighting and stapled cardboard boxes. That broke your heart

One night while Jennifer was sleeping upstairs you yelled to awake her that her father didn’t want to play with her, that he was only thinking of himself, working all the time, not taking days off to help us settle in. In anger I went to the blue chest where you kept the family photos in large plastic bags and emptied a bag on the floor and kicked on the photos so that they lay scattered all over the floor. To hurt you badly You went after me, reaching for the throat, I ran out of the house without shoes. I came back twenty minutes later to discover that the door was locked. I went around looking through the windows. I went to the back to sit in the armchair by the fireplace. The fireplace was lit and there you were, happy again.

THE FRIENDS

In your extended hand a little joint. Back then, you tended the little pot plantation left by your mother. She lived on pot and red wine those last years You gave me a glass of wine and asked me to sit down. You didn’t say sorry and you didn’t ask us to be friends again.

THE FAMILY

We sat like that under the stars, the wind blowing in from the open fields, fresh and smelling of flowers, soil and wheat. There was no point talking about what had gone wrong this time. Only silence and time could tender the wound. The wound was infected, old and foul.

Dirty band-aids and stretches of bandage and cotton pads were rotating and burning in the ghastly depths of the gangrenous pit.

Yesterday it dawned on me that I have gotten used to not having Sajber land on my head as I enter the room

MOTHER AND FATHERS

Only now, my dear friend, only now, in recent years, as I’m writing this, can we conclude that help did arrive and that it’s working. I reached out for shared child custody and you refused and I took it to the court and in the process the authorities were contacted and help was prescribed. This was my intention all along. I’ve no desire to rule over you, or to take Jennifer’s mother away from her. The 7/7 order is working well, as long as you’re not interfering when Jennifer is with me and Beloved. As long as you don’t arrange to pick Jennifer up behind my back, as long as you don’t call her in the night, and as long as you don’t say mean things about me when I’m not there. All this we have talked about with Zela, our therapist. Zela is experienced and her advice is good. She lets us both talk and stops the other from interfering. Now I can tell you, in one uninterrupted sentence, what I have felt through all these years. In what ways I feel that you have treated me wrong. It’s not your fault. We have always forgiven each other. We have agreed to let sleeping dogs lie, to look forward instead of back and to accept any help and any advice coming from Zela. Already, my beloved friend, already can we see in Jennifer a new kind of relaxation and inner contentedness. Her mother and father are not constantly arguing but are the best of friends. Look at our daughter, my friend, she is the best

Yours truly, Mocky

NEXT

SHE HAS NO FAMILY BUT HER FRIENDS

SHE HAS JENNIFER AND YOU

YOU COULD’VE DONE BETTER

Up at the bar, Keith and Sajber, whispering sweet words of nothing…

I just can’t get over the fact that she nearly killed me with a smartphone.

14

A day goes by so fast that it seems it already existed and already was played out. So wrote the feeble doctor in his diary as the train roared through the darkness, whistles and smoke, heading for München. Life is too short to be wasted on miserable patients who never seem to improve, no matter what I say or do. Addiction, everyone’s addicted to something. I want a pure world. Yes, pure is the word. Pure as the ice-cold water of the Alps that sparkles and shines like the blood in my veins. Pure as the white of my skin and the consciousness of my top-tier mind. Butler has praised the Alps in his speeches, and he praises the purity of the white race. Far away are the Jews. Far away are Agatha and Claudia. Far away is Dr. August and his unreliable temper. Far away are all my problems. Look at the world! For the first time in my life I can say with confidence that I am free. I am hopeful. My life has a purpose. His name is Butler. Adolf Butler. The future of the Aryan race, to which I happily belong. The feeble doctor locked the diary with the little key and put it in the sealed compartment of the leather suitcase, fixed the pillow behind his head and flattened out on the seat, content with the fact that he was alone in the compartment. For a while he looked at the stars on the cloudless black sky and followed with shifting eyes the dimly-lit villages and train stations that rushed by with incredible speed. The world sure is large, he thought. Must there be a place in it for me. Must there be a purpose to my life. He dreamed that he was at an audience in Butler’s palace.

The doctor was snoring heavily when Anna entered and sat down opposite him. The train would arrive in a few hours and the sun was coming up, painting the already picturesque Bavarian countryside in a pale shimmering purple. Such an innocent face, Anna thought. He reminds me of my own father, but younger and without the Jewish nose. What is a Jewish nose anyway? How will they know whom to kill when the time comes? For a while Anna fantasized about the two of them running off to Africa or some other distant world. A romantic adventure, they would be riding on camels through the desert and feeding bananas to monkeys in the jungle. I’m not even thirty, she exclaimed, but silently. She’d left a note on the kitchen table, cold-heartedly. It bid farewell to her husband and their children and it said that she wouldn’t be coming back. Fate had not handed us each other, after all. The doctor must have left someone at home, too, she thought. Then she slid the futuristic tracking device, which was the size and colour of a fingernail, into one of the pockets of the doctor’s suitcase. On the receiver device she held down the big button saying ON and waited for the signal. It was working, just like it had in the visions.

When the train pulled in at the grand central station and came to a stop with a thunderous roar, the feeble doctor had his coat and hat on and the leather suitcase in his right hand. We saw, as they walked past us, the doctor heading for the street and Anna following from a safe distance, device in hand. In order for the doctor not to recognize Anna should they come face to face we had, in the doctor’s mind, replaced Anna’s face with that of the first patient he saw that day, the one he admitted to the ward. This intervention did not constitute a deletion of memory but a substitution and as such was more likely to go unpunished. From previous experience we knew that the Gods did not take lightly too much manipulation with the human mind, regardless of purpose or to whom the mind belonged. For example, on one occasion, from one day to another, we made Butler physically addicted to beans with the result that a significant proportion of the Reich’s GDP was spent on the importation of beans. All kinds of beans, from all continents, in quantities enough to feed the nation three times over. Butler had piles of beans in his office and had lampshades and coffee tables made of beans. While this significantly hampered the German war machine and contributed to the shortening of the war, the Gods, as a punishment, we reckoned, rendered our time-travelling machines inoperable for a period of five years. It can be argued that once time travelling becomes attainable five years is an insignificant amount of time, but then it must be pointed out that in the future, when all is well and the best pastime is torturing the enemies of the old, five years is a long time.

The first thing the feeble doctor did was to join the Party and to purchase a brown shirt and the accompanying brown pants that widen over the thighs. Next, he bought a pair of tall leather boots of the same kind that he had seen in the pictures. For a while he had considered to also buy a bat or a stick of some kind but had concluded that first things first and that violence did not yet come naturally to him. He went to the hotel room to rest and to have a shower and then he stood before the mirror looking like a proper Nazi. However, the Party uniform was for riots and beating up Jews and Social Democrats. If a possibility should arise to make conversation after Butler’s speech, he wanted to appear at his best. The doctor was usually well clad in garments bought in one of Berlin’s most elegant department stores. His style was pure, as he complimented himself while placing a little flower in the front pocket. Pure and elegant, fragrant, like himself and the rest of the Aryan race.

The doctor had on his list a few beer cellars where he had read that Butler sometimes came to speak. As he left the hotel, he did not notice that he was being followed by a mysterious woman. He had not noticed that the mysterious woman resided in the hotel room next to his. Anna had sat waiting. While the doctor was sleeping she had gone out to buy an elegant red dress and an expensive bottle of red wine. When the dot on the receiver began to move she had emptied the last glass and gone out. She was looking very beautiful, irresistible even. In her ocean-blue eyes was the fire that can be seen in the eyes of people who are tasked with saving the human race, no matter the cost.

It was by all means a beautiful evening. The finest of the kind as spring will have them. A lightness to the air yet full of flowers, soil and life it was. The birds, blackbirds and other birds of song, sat in every tree, busy with every song, new and old, that the long winter had kept them from singing. The trees showing bright green leaves lined the streets that were full of people tasting the world as if for the first time, smiling and greeting each other as if every face was new and every step the first ever taken. Our protagonists were occupied with the same thoughts, that they envied the birds who could sit there so carelessly, above all human business, and who could sing so beautifully as if nothing else mattered. True, the feeble doctor thought himself better, he was a human after all, and a man, and the finest of the kind. He was sure that given the right training, he could become a better singer than any blackbird in the world. As a true German he was a part of, and somehow related to, a very prestigious line of world-renowned composers and musicians. Great art was in his blood, as Butler had explained or had he? in one of his speeches. In any case, the birds kept on singing while the sun set lazily over the inhabitants and the crowded rooftops and church towers of München. The more the feeble doctor listened to the winged animals, the more his irritation grew. When he arrived at the first beer cellar the originally careless and enthusiastic mood was all but gone. He was now his good old self again, as if by leaving everything behind he hadn’t changed at all. He was certain that had Butler walked by his side now, they would be taking turns to find ways to blame it all on the Jews, or the Social Democrats. The fantasy pleased him and he entered with a carefully concealed grin on the lips. Butler didn’t drink, but the feeble doctor longed for something soothing to get back to his new self again.

Anna envied the birds in another way. They didn’t know that the world would end. If what they saw frightened them, they could just spread their wings and fly away. No bullets would ever come their way, none of their cities but plenty of their nests would burn down, none of their temples or holy items would be disgraced. Their Gods wouldn’t abandon them. No specific kind of bird, different from the others in some external or inconceivable way, would ever be singled out to be shot so that there would be more space for some specific kinds of the other birds. No such things would be decided for them. Even though every type of bird looked more different from each other than any of the types of humans did, the birds were not busy fighting racial wars. The birds seemed to get along just fine. Gee, Anna thought and had to look up at the glaring sun, the sky knew no limits. Not a cloud anywhere. The sky wasn’t crowded with birds fighting for, what did he call it, that nasty little man, lebensraum. Before entering the beer cellar Anna thanked the circumstances and everything holy that she had been tasked with stopping Butler. Nothing was more important, not even the well-being of her own children. Well, the children came first, but her husband would take care of them now. Besides, if the mission did not succeed there would be no future anyway. Should she not return the children would cry for their mother but time would heal every wound and soon their mother would be a ghost from the past. Her picture was in a frame on the bookshelf, they wouldn’t forget her face and that’s all that mattered. Anna shook her head to get rid of the heavy thinking. Keith and I stood invisibly by as she walked past, down the few steps, and swung open the heavy door, a few minutes after the feeble doctor had done the same.

Anna was a translator of ancient Greek works of literature into German and Hebrew and the feeble doctor was, well, a doctor specializing in psychiatry and neurology. As such, while they still lived in Berlin, both of our protagonists frequented bars, cafés and restaurants that belonged to a different social stratum than the workers, day drinkers and outcasts that filled the beer cellars of München. When the combined rancid smell of urine, sweat, tobacco smoke and spilt beer reached the fine, vibrating nostrils, the doctor was taken aback and could take no steps further. As his cold, grey eyes adjusted to the darkness to show him the slowly moving mass of rugged faces and tattered clothing enveloped by a violent murmur from a hundred inebriated voices, the doctor began to think that this was all a big mistake. The little table in the corner, with a flower in a vase and a clean, white tablecloth, from which he had imagined that he would enjoy Butler’s speech before approaching for conversation, did not exist. In fact, the doctor quickly realized, if he wanted to sit down at all, he would have to squeeze in between the intimidating shoulders and he would have to make conversation and most likely also explain why he had come to a place like this dressed in an impeccable suit and shiny dancing shoes. Flabbergasted, he realized that what appeared before him was not the Aryan race as he imagined it. Nowhere were the blue-eyed, muscular men in Nazi uniforms. But soon, the doctor thought, soon Butler would enter with his entourage of brownshirts to sweep away the dirt and the smell. Candles would be lit and all would be white and pleasant. An orchestra would descend from a place in the ceiling to play sweet waltz music. If appropriate, if the speech would be followed by riots and beatings, the doctor could even run back to the hotel room to change into the SA uniform. So captivated became the feeble doctor in this daydreaming that when Anna suddenly appeared in her elegant red dress, looking so extraordinarily beautiful, he did not at first perceive her as real but as a part of his imagination.

Anna, who came because the doctor did and had feared to lose him in the sea of bodies, appreciated the fact that her designated target appeared before her steeped in so much confusion. Even though his eyes kept scanning her from top to bottom it was clear that she was not recognized. Anna wasn’t particularly experienced in the art of seduction but quickly determined that a carefully mixed combination of smiles and flashes of the eyelids would wrap this silly man around her little finger. In all fairness, the setup wasn’t fair and the meeting was staged. Anna had been the doctor’s patient but that part of his memory had been erased. During the consultation, Anna had understood more of his inner mechanics than he had of hers. The doctor should never have been a psychiatrist. He didn’t understand people, he just had a secret desire to control them. “You don’t recognize me?” Anna asked with a smile and a step forward. The doctor’s confusion grew until it reset with an imperceivable metallic click like a duck or a pigeon that can’t decide where to go and ends up staying in place. “No,” the doctor settled on. “Not at all.” “That’s good,” Anna replied. “I don’t recognize you, either. What is your name? My name is Agatha.” The name was random to Anna, or so she thought, but we had placed it readily available at the top of her mind. It was certain to stir up further confusion in the feeble doctor. The two women even shared some similarities in appearance. In a confusing move, Anna extended her hand for the doctor to kiss while at the same time searching for his eyes as to signal that she expected something from him, perhaps just a reply to her question. But the doctor, whose name was Herbert Stork, had forgotten what was asked. He looked at the hand and then at the part of her breasts that were visible above the dress before reaching her eyes to become lost in their mesmerizing ocean-like beauty. Signals from outside space and time were transmitted to his brain turning him instantly in love. It was a kind of love that the doctor had not known before. There was a sting in his stomach and his legs turned to jelly and then the doctor had to sit down. “Agatha, Agatha, Agatha…” he repeated as he made the motion, bending the knees, preparing with his hands. Anna felt joy that she had succeeded with such ease. Smilingly, she grabbed the doctor’s arm to capture him mid-fall and lifted him again to a standing position. The doctor was tall and slender and seemed to weigh nothing. “Are you drunk or something? You need to sit down, but not on the dirty floor, not in that splendid suit of yours. Come, let’s find us a table.”

For the next hour or so the doctor was rapidly ascending and descending the treacherous steps of nascent love’s ladder. He considered what to say only to abandon it a second later. He stared daringly only to toss his eyes the other way when Anna tried to meet his gaze. It was a game of vision because not much could be communicated without shouting. They sat on opposite sides of the long table, cramped in between wide shoulders and loud, drunken voices. “I’ll get us something to drink!” Anna shouted. “No, don’t leave me!” the doctor shouted back. Then a second later: “OK! You go and I’ll wait for you here!” Then again: “No! Come back!” But Anna had already left for the bar. What is happening to me? The doctor could not get a grip on his feelings.

The wide shoulders on either side of him belonged to me and Keith. This was the part of the reenactment, if I may denote it as such, or iteration, that we liked the best. When Anna returned with a beer in each hand, the doctor motioned for her to come over, even though she wasn’t heading any other way, and to hurry for he had something important to relate. “I’m planning to meet with Herr Butler later and I want you to join me!” the doctor shouted. Anna widened her eyes as she handed him the beer and took her place opposite him. “That’s fantastic, I’d like to meet him as well,” she yelled back. The doctor was beyond any mountain, in maddening love and delusional. The Gods often allowed us to go to such lengths. “What shall we do for our honeymoon, dear?” Anna fit a charming smile and flashed her eyelids. “That’s for you to decide, honey. If you want to. If not, I have some ideas.” They looked at each other, one in earnest, the other not. “But it’s difficult to shout like this!” The doctor nodded. “We’ll shout more later,” he said, but corrected himself: “We’ll talk more later.” At this point in time and space the door to the beer cellar behind the doctor slammed open and the violent laughing and shouting transformed into an amazed murmur of equal strength. Noticing this, and already guessing at the reason for the change, the doctor turned around and in the process hit my glass with his elbow so that the beer spilled over the table and started to drip down on my trousers. The doctor was facing the other way and did not notice my exaggerated irritation and anger at his clumsiness. Anna, however, saw what had happened and immediately left the table with an apologising smile to fetch something to wipe with. And so it was that when Herr Butler entered with his entourage the doctor’s attention was pulled from this great happening, for which he had been waiting so impatiently, to Keith’s hands, that grabbed him by the collar and turned him towards my intimidating face and body. Needless to say at this point, shapeshifting was the first trick in the time-traveller’s handbook. “Wouldn’t you say, Herbert, that a man blaming society’s problems on a defenceless minority is not one to follow into battle?” While speaking these words I pointed at the large wet spot on my trousers and then at the tipped-over glass on the table. The doctor, dumbstruck and torn by the holy trinity of my uncalled-for question, the spilt beer, and Herr Butler’s ongoing triumphant entrance, followed the movement of my finger as it landed in the direction of the enemy of mankind. “Don’t look at him,” Keith said. “Apologise to the man.” The doctor made a motion to stand up, obviously thinking that he should apologise to Herr Butler, but Keith held him down. “Not that man, for he is no such thing. At least not for long.” At this point we had observed many times that Anna’s return from the bar with a rag soothed the doctor whose feeble mind was shattered and destroyed beyond recognition. “I’ll make it good again,” he said. While Herr Butler with his famous goat beard stood by the entrance with his entourage of brownshirts, saluting and raising their arms in Nazi greetings, the doctor set about to wipe the table. As Herr Butler marched his entourage towards the little stage at the end of the cellar, Anna handed the doctor another rag. He took it and was about to start wiping the beer from my trousers but hesitated and looked up. The trembling lips on the distorted face began to formulate a question. The doctor froze, then went for it, then stopped again. Then, finally: “Are you Social Democrats?” Keith burst out in laughter behind him. The doctor turned to Anna: “Agatha, are they…” Anna motioned that she couldn’t hear him. “We’re all Nazis, OK?” I said. “We’re one hundred percent Nazi, ain’t that right, Heinz?” Keith’s face turned red. “Yes, absolutely, Heinrich! Let’s drink to that!” The three of us joined in a toast that Herbert had to sit out because his glass was empty. Then, suddenly, Butler began his speech and the drunken crowd went silent.

“We must blame the Social Democrats for the terrible state that our nation finds itself in. We must also remember to blame the Jews and…”

And bla, bla, bla, the madman with the goat beard went in ways that are not worthy of recounting. He might have been right in some observations and some of the origins of the problems might have been properly described. However, history will tell it, no matter from what perspective we’re watching: all of humanity must be included and walls and borders must be abandoned. Solutions aren’t proper unless the whole world is considered. No sound nation is content knowing that others are suffering. The world is wealthy and we were made equal. We’ll see what the future had in store and what the Gods intended when they spoke.

15

There was an old, promised kingdom full of palm trees and wild animals and I came there as a child but can’t remember much of it. The inhabitants went about their days in their old ways and did not mind my presence or my father’s camera. Not even when he years later took it through the crowded maternity ward where hours before Dana and I had tried to shake two stillborn babies to life. The nurses and doctors in the old kingdom wasted no time on such forlorn cases. Death lived nearby in the promised kingdom and even malaria was not feared and they merely called it fever. Fever was treated with antibiotics. Everything else was treated with paracetamol. Rp tbl paracetamol 1 g pn max x4 for 7 days against large cancerous growth on the left testicle.

They brought a young woman from one of the remote villages. They had been crossing the grasslands since before the sun began to rise. The woman had been vomiting for days and her watery stool had patches of white in it and a stench of rotten eggs. What’s wrong with her, do you know? They hoped that the thicker books we had at our disposal would contain the answer. These were tropical diseases to us, and the exams were passed without knowing them. I examined the patient and pretended to know what symptoms to look for. Dana and I had not yet finished medical school. The young woman must’ve been one of the first fifty patients, in the promised kingdom or elsewhere, that I examined. It must be some sort of gastroenteritis, I said, and realized that the examination room contained no source of running water, or even soap, let alone disinfectants. As the sun set, the woman died slowly and painfully. A few days later, the chief doctor, who himself smelled of alcohol, explained that young people in the villages drink a kind of toxic moonshine made from a fruit that grows in the withered bushes on the hills. The school is far away, they have no TV or radio, what else are the kids supposed to do? Since I had let my beard grow the chief doctor’s attitude had become more hostile, his looks less approving. Maybe I reminded him of the colonial times, when bearded men like me came and conquered the lands. Maybe he had seen pictures of it. Maybe it was a part of the curriculum. Alcohol destroys the liver and when the liver’s gone, you get this kind of foul diarrhoea, he said.

Wild dogs occupied the hospital area. One morning the chief doctor weighed a blunt and heavy stone in his hand. He stopped the train of doctors that included me and Dana so that we could observe the excellent throw. Right on the ribs, we could hear the crack. The dogs took off, tails between their legs, not even running. The next day I saw them resting in the shadows in the same spot again. It was inappropriate to feed them.

They didn’t use white coats or any other professional medical attire in the old kingdom. The patients, or groups of people, waiting, or just hanging around, all day, on the hospital grounds, pointed and whispered when they saw us: white people in white pants and white coats, notebooks and stethoscopes in our pockets. Visitors to the kingdom from outer space. Perhaps we came in peace. At least we had brought two bags full of medical equipment. Perhaps we came to make everything good again.

A river used to run through the town, now it was a ravine where kids in Mickey Mouse t-shirts were playing guns with sticks. They ran towards me, laughing, shooting. On the third day, me and Dana climbed the thorny hill visible from the little house that we rented on the hospital grounds. The snakes and spiders didn’t get us. We didn’t even know they were there. George told us later. It was suicidal to climb the hills, he said. The white scorpions climbed into the shoes to hide from the heat. The temperature never went below 35 degrees Celsius. Only the operating theatre had running water. In the maternity ward, water came from buckets on the floor. We put the babies aside after thirty minutes when we couldn’t say for sure that they were still breathing. If their skin had been white, we would have been able to assess the degree of cyanosis. Meconium aspiration. If we’d been in Denmark, ceteris paribus, they would’ve been the age of Jennifer now.

Dana and George liked each other from the start. Conquerors of bodies and hearts, they were, used to getting what they wanted. Lucky then, that what they suddenly wanted was each other and that there were no obstacles within sight. George’s wife and three children were far away in Australia. Dana’s boyfriend was even further away in Copenhagen. That wasn’t really a boyfriend, she explained, spotting doubt in my eyes. They were on and off. What happens in the promised kingdom stays with the palm trees, the scorpions and the wild dogs. You can throw rocks at it but nature keeps coming back.

George’s father had recently died and left the family estate to his only son. He had been the town’s bishop, a renowned man. The workers on the farm stayed on, they remembered George from when he came to visit as a kid. His wife and children would join him later, once he’d gotten the farm up and running again. Dana’s eyes were of a mesmerizing hazel. Her father was from Iraq and her mother from Ukraine. Her skin was darker than mine but lighter than George’s. Dana’s hair was brown, thick and straight. George’s hair was curly and black. His mother was from Australia and his father from the old kingdom. That’s how the Gods would have it.

Through George we met some of the local musicians. At the weekends we took off in George’s jeep in the dark along the dirt roads to the town centre. Live music was offered at several outdoor venues and people came. People danced, people drank, beer and cocktails. The starry sky with the white, the blue, and the purple of the Milky Way above us. Never before had I seen such blackness, never had I seen the galaxy pictured with such clarity. After some time the musicians asked if I would join them. Dana kept saying that I played the guitar. Sure, I can fiddle away on the side, no problem, I’d like that. The singer spoke into the microphone for a long time in Swahili until, suddenly, people’s heads turned toward me. He’s just introduced you, the stage is ready, said George. This surely wasn’t what we had agreed upon! The next weekend I was allowed to play with the band. Highlife, the most beautiful music. As long as I stayed within the chords. No! No! No! screamed the singer that one time I went off in the minor scale. That first night I played Woody Guthrie’s I Ain’t Got No Home and Bob Dylan’s Simple Twist of Fate. A drunk woman in her fifties in a white dress with large black flowers on it began to dance in front of the stage. The audience, polite and amazed, clapped with the rhythm. I don’t think they knew the songs. Maybe George did, who had a BA in media science from the university in Sydney. Dana knew Dylan, but not this particular song.

Through George we also met Thomas. In a way, this telling is a Hello, man! to Thomas, the misunderstood street dweller and seller of small paintings he most likely didn’t paint himself. Are you still hanging in there? Don’t hang out with Thomas, George said. He follows girls and tourists around, asks for money, asks for them to buy him drinks. Foggy eyes that never seemed to focus, eyes that couldn’t be met. A mouth busy chewing khat. Like a miniature Bob Marley, dreadlocks to the knees. Short in stature, small no matter where you looked, skinny legs that could break if things got rough. Dana arrived in the promised kingdom a week before I did. Thomas was the first to approach her at the bus station, presenting his art from the bag. When Dana came to meet me as I arrived, Thomas stood by her side, extending his hand. Nice to meet you, Rocky, Dana has said great things about you.

In a way Thomas reminded me of Mr. Ratput, who had come to live with me for some time in Copenhagen. But my memory fails me… There wasn’t enough dough left when the Gods created these men, leaving them brittle and slow and objects of society’s ridicule. Both men wanted to be where the action was but neither had the charisma to throw a party or invite large groups of people. In a crowd heading to the club they were the tails, running up for short pointless exchanges and uninformed questions. Thriving only on the dance floor where association could be assumed with the people they were dancing with. When Mr. Ratput lived with me he spent many nights vegetating in the darkness in the guest room watching re-runs of cricket games. Of course these men accumulated sadness and anger but I never found an access point. I never saw aggression in Thomas’ eyes but certainly the man was shunned in the old kingdom. George’s attitude was a testament to that.

In the village there was a restaurant of sorts with plastic tables and chairs. I’d developed a habit of going there each day for lunch. Meat with fries and a little side salad with a small slice of habanero. My stomach was in pain and I developed gout in the big toe. Fish arrived from the coast but only the head was left, the rest has been sold along the way. I ate some of the neck, Dana finished the rest, including the eyes. Dana’s fling with George developed. We were invited to a barbecue party at the farm. George had slaughtered a cow and a goat, presenting the largest pile of meat I’d ever seen. There were no fries or salad, just meat.

George picked us up in the village, or we took a taxi along the dirt roads, I can’t remember. In any case, we were the first guests to arrive. George had invited all his friends. I asked if Thomas was invited but received no answer. He looked away, or someone interrupted just then… George was a social animal, easy-going and popular. Spoke like he already knew you. No pretension, looked you straight in the eye. Nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of, big arms wide open, finding time for everyone. A real man, Dana said the day after. But what about Lucas? Dana pretended not to hear.

Yet, George looked misplaced in his father’s old and gloomy study. I had landed in one of the big Chesterfields, expecting soon to be handed a welcome drink. You alright, Rocky? Beer’s in the fridge. In the heat the fridge wasn’t working, the beer was warm. Behind George a large bookshelf spanning the entire length of the wall and reaching the ceiling. George like a candle in the dark in his khaki shorts and a white T-shirt, sunglasses placed atop his curly hair. To his left the piano with small statues of the apostles placed on top of it. Was he planning to get rid of this old stuff and buy some new from IKEA? He would have to drive to the capital for that. It’s cozy in here, I said, knowing that he disagreed. I needed to be a pebble in his shoe. Men like Thomas and Mr. Ratput were drawn to me. To George I somehow had to prove my worth. You show me courage! You show me sacrifice! You show me the good human being! In my opinion, I had nothing to prove. I opted not to talk about football and rugby. George couldn’t label me had he cared to. Why are you always fighting other men? Do you think that withdrawing is the same as winning?

George left for the kitchen to talk to Dana who was looking for something to make a salad out of. I leaned back to let my eyes scan the bookshelf. A collection worthy of a bishop in the promised kingdom. Old books, religious books. I took one out: The Christian Experience Of The Holy Spirit by H. Wheeler Robinson, first published in 1928:

If our consciousness of real activity is not illusory, then the perspective of human history cannot be envisaged as the biology of an organism. We can never reduce the writing of history to an exact science, because there are not only life-forces but LIVING agents at work.

From the reviews on the back:

Dr. Robinson wins our gratitude at once for lifting the whole problem of the Holy Spirit out of a narrow ecclesiasticism into that broader realm of human history and thought to which all the nations of the earth contribute. - Baptist Times

Can I keep this? I yelled at George. Sure, buddy, take what you want. Then I noticed a strange-looking Bible. There must have been dozens of Bibles on the bookshelf, but this one was white with letters in blue. As I started reading I noticed that the words of Jesus were printed in red. No matter which page the reader skimmed through, if Jesus spoke, the eyes landed on the red. That’s when I understood how he must have been. A human being, Holy, wise and loving and in war, heading for destruction. It happened suddenly. The old bishop was there, in the armchair opposite. Jesus was present, somehow I knew that he was. The air began to shimmer around me, light poured in through the dark curtains. Tears came to my eyes. I realized that something was true… and I needed no proof. The Holy Spirit…

In the background, the guests were arriving. I put the book back and placed myself at the piano. I could only play a few chords but I had written a song some months back. It was called Oh, Wonderful Day. As the guests came in to greet me, I played the melody over and over, looking up, smiling, but saying nothing. George came with a beer. Dana appeared amused. The spectacle stopped when two of the guests wanted to try the piano. They couldn’t play at all and soon the old bishop’s study was empty again. Outside, the fire had been lit.

16

We came, arrived, in the promised kingdom, down from the snowy mountains, over the green hills, filled the dirty streets, and drank the lukewarm water that we had carried on the backs of our malnourished camels. Not a star in the sky, but a finger in the wind, and old words shared by the campfire and retold like mantras to guide us. Don’t stay here, we were told, and moved on. No loitering, the signs said, and we moved on. No benches to rest on, no parks to set camp in, no public restrooms to be used free of charge. On the third day, I saw my wife and children… When the dirt roads turned to highways we jumped the fences to make the news, but law enforcement arriving on order could only push us forward. In my makeshift tent made of plastic bags I rested my heavy head on my arms and rubber sandals, satisfied to know that one day we are there, by the beating heart of shimmering light, the indestructible glue that holds mankind together, lets societies prosper. A seagull in the wind stretching its wings, a rat in a dumpster scoring its first meal, a newborn crying while its parents depart and sadly explode. The Gods taught us right from wrong and made the knowledge our own, the sun and the planets hardened our skin and the road sharpened our nails and eyes. You must remove these handcuffs, we demanded, and they did. That palace must be built outside the city center, and that they did. We came down from the mountains with ideas in our heads, ideals. Like stone, we vowed, the mass of the mountain, we remain the same to let neither time nor success and failure change us. In the midst of summer a rain like a waterfall that at first seemed to stop but only went on. Perplexed, as they would have us, we weighed the wearing of the stone against the lives of the flowers, but the rain was heavy and quenched no thirst.

That is all I know. My grandfather was a sailor and could play the accordion. He sailed on a freighter as far as San Francisco during the second world war, and liked to recall that he participated in the hostilities. But Sweden was neutral. The Nazis used the railways to transport troops to occupied Norway. Raoul Wallenberg saved many Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz. My other grandfather was a mechanic at the fire station and active in the local section of the Social Democratic Party. On my mother’s side I can trace my heritage to “Vandrarfolket” — the walking people. That is not to say that I have Gypsy or Romani blood. In our blood were the seeds of every colour of the skin, of every type of eye and personality, and of every deed, good or bad, ever committed by man, woman, or any gender… Back in the days it was common for people to wander the dirt roads, alone or in groups, singing as they went, accompanied by the accordion and the fiddle, stopping in the villages and towns to trade. Tramps, vagabonds, vagrants. That’s what I like to believe. That would explain a lot. My surname is from my other grandmother. When her mother died her father remarried and took the name of his new wife. He was a gardener in some count’s garden and lived in Scotland for a brief period of time. The name itself is a soldier’s name from the 18th century, although older variants are found in Germany, giving names to castles, villages, and rivers. My mother was a Persson and my father an Olsson. The “sons” are from Sweden and the “sens” from Denmark and Norway. Only in Sweden is the extra “s” kept to denote ownership. But that might not be true. My father was not satisfied with the working class surname. When he was twenty he switched to his mother’s maiden name. That’s how it came to me. Both of my parents grew up poor, which is not to say that the families were struggling. One of my grandmothers worked in a kindergarten for some time, the other stayed at home. My father remembers the shame when his father had to change the Volvo for something cheaper. My mother had no siblings and her parents rarely spoke with each other. My grandfather did not like his mother-in-law who already lived in the house when he moved in with my grandmother. When he couldn’t sail he became an electrician and eventually died of dementia at the age of 78. When I came to visit we sat in the armchairs watching Battle of Britain from 1969, over and over. Both of my parents were the first in their families to pursue higher education. My mother studied to become a nurse. My father was the first to attend university. I was the second. My father dreamed of studying medicine but his grades weren’t good enough. With a bachelor in pharmacology he landed a job at a multinational company and went to India and Pakistan as a product manager at the age of twenty-five. My parents could easily buy a comfortable home, an old doctor’s villa built in 1868 right next to the railway. I always fell asleep to the sound of trains and the rattling of the house. When I was born my father changed paths and started a marketing firm. He became a copywriter and was successful in the nineties. We got a pool in the garden and he drove a Jaguar. Holding hands in the labyrinths of time. Grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, and fathers.

They put us on trains but the rails twisted and turned, the doors swung open and the soldiers fell off and burned. On a busy side street I saw following me the most curious eyes on the most intriguing face. The girl spoke, but my mother grabbed me by the arm and hurried up, said we’ll be late. The girl ran up to us, but my mother refused, and pushed me forward so that I could not hear. You’re worried tonight, son, my father said. I could not sleep, up all night thinking, up all night dreaming about the eyes.

The next morning we were relocated. The authorities uprooted the tents and after we were done packing threw the suitcases on wagons dragged by mules. A very large pile, my little brother said, amazed, holding up a hand, blinded by the sun. Don’t worry, it was announced, you’re going to a better place. Just like last time? we cried. You can work, you can dance and sing, if that’s what you want. The mules, the bells, the whistles, the sandals and the feet, the grandparents dragging along with the children in their hands. I knew that love was more important than any relocation. I did not worry about not ending up in that new place, one way or another.

The city map was an orderly grid of boulevards, squares, and side streets. Shops, fruit stands, poultry in cages, men in hats drinking beer in the shadows. Dreamers always find each other, the girl said and did not wait for my reply. She would have waited in vain because I was stunned. Not by her beauty which was otherworldly, nor by her eyes to which I was already accustomed. It was her voice that obliterated me, just like the Gods would my family eventually. What were the little receivers in my ears that resonated when she spoke? What were the invisible wires that extended to my heart and controlled its beat? Hoarse from shouting at people all day, sweet from the melons she had for breakfast, commanding like the big sister I never knew I had.

We made love in a blind alley a few blocks away, hidden from view by an overgrown chestnut tree. I was not the first to be taken to her secret place. She stood with her layers of skirts lifted, hands stretched against the brick wall, and I was behind, trousers at my ankles, doing what I had always loved to do. To the curly black hair that swung back and forth, to the broad eyebrows that lifted, to the forehead that wrinkled, to the lips that opened, to the intriguing eyes that closed as she moaned and whimpered. After some time I felt the rhythmic contractions and the tightening of the grip. She was silent when she came. I did it some more, she made noises again, and came a second time, all silent again. I did it even faster, interrupting something she was about to say, replacing it not with a moan but with a scream, almost out of control. Now, she whispered, regaining her cool, it’s your turn. You finish me, I replied, looking away elegantly. She obeyed, got down, squatting, and did not let go until I was done. Love is blind, love is also disgusting, love is also this, she said, licking her lips. The blood and the flesh and the fluids and the words that must not be spoken or combined in certain ways. You must go now, you must join your kin. Like a fortune-teller. Dark clouds on the horizon. I’ll be back, I said, and swirled my cape like a vagrant. Rode towards the sunset.

This was long before the cell phone was invented, long before the Internet and social media. I can’t even remember if we were in Paris or Marseilles. Nor can I recall the way in which we parted. Afterwards, I hurried to the central station and let myself get caught. We travelled east for five days, no food, no water. The grandparents and the weakest children perished. We were hopeful when entering the gas chamber, singing and dancing as they demanded, promised that after disinfection water would be provided. Only my brother did not have to go, and was taken to the doctor instead.

Afterwards, my brother asked where I had been all this time but I could not tell him, for his ears were much too young for such revelations. I said that I had gone out to find something to eat, because I knew that the journey would be long, but that I had been refused because of my dark hair and black eyes. My mother scorned me. The world will be different, she said, and your brother does not need to know everything. In the future, my father added, man will treat man like an equal and not like an animal. But we are animals, I said. My little brother’s eyes grew large, his urinary tract infected and surgically connected to his bowels. Mother, father, are we animals?

From the Lake of Ashes we rose like mist, dripping with blood, to devour the soldiers and bureaucrats of the General Government. Professors and clerks, workmen and butchers. Same as us, invisible like air, penetrating like Zyklon B. Deadly like incited hate towards strangers. We sought not revenge for our people but to convey that Death is not the end, and that nothing is forgotten. That ghosts spin the Earth much like the living do. In the trees and in the heavens, in the soil and in their food. Even if we entered calmly, death through suffocation made us leave in distress. Blood from our ears and noses, the children lost in the dark. Excrement on the floor that we slipped on while fighting blindly for the spot on the top of the human pile next to the bunker door. Like slabs of stone, like basalt… Out we fell, tumbling onto one another, like slabs of stone, like basalt.

As a doctor I have seen death, pain, and misery. Work is over when leaving the hospital but sometimes it follows. Fifty dead in a bomb strike and six million in the Holocaust. The human mind cannot understand the implications in terms of sorrow and loss. Even a single death can require a lifetime of contemplation and adjustment. The boy was fourteen or fifteen and I was in medical school working as a nurse’s assistant. I have forgotten what my task was other than to keep an eye on the boy who was admitted to the hospital with, I believe, terminal cancer. He was sleeping when I arrived in the morning and slept until his father came to visit in the early afternoon. I did not step forward, I remained in the back, and we exchanged no words. My presence was no different from that of a fly on the wall. The boy was tall and skinny, malnourished from disease, his skin pale and yellow. His hair was newly cut short and on his face was an early attempt at growing a beard. His father was in his mid-forties, in good shape, and, judging from the brand of his backpack and the stylish yet casual clothing, well-off, or at least middle-class (whatever that is) and educated. The father did not bring a gift, or flowers, or something to read. From the way that they said hello with a brief hug I got the impression that the father visited every day. Because the boy had been sleeping until his father’s arrival I had not yet heard him speak. I had not heard his voice. Halfway through puberty, dark yet bright, hollow yet singing, dead yet alive. Like a blackbird in a pine tree on the last day of summer. As if the walls were of metal, with every word, no matter the actual meaning, he sang about his will to keep on living a life that had only started. After reporting the latest news from home the father asked if the boy wanted to call his girlfriend. The father went out to get a cup of coffee but I had to stay. Why must teenage love be any different just because one part is dying? Why can’t the hearts beat faster and why can’t the silence on the line be just as embarrassing? His girlfriend had been to tennis practice again, just like last Wednesday. There was more homework than usual. They said farewell with a kiss. The boy did not look in my direction and did not see me fighting the tears. I was inexperienced, I was only twenty-four, I did not know what to say. I would have said that love conquers all and that love never dies. Holland, 1945.

17

Keith knew this too, spoke as if the end was upon us. The Jerry can keep at it, he said, but we keep at it too. After all, the Jerry’s the attacker and depends on the momentum. On this Earth, around this Sun, in this Galaxy? Gathered for a briefing on the grass, the commander and Keith at the blackboard that had been carried outside. Space was empty again, dark and vacant, the wind howling, dispersing the voices, vitalising the flames, carrying the words to the trees and the Jerry hiding behind them. That green field again! The dancing grass, the void sky, the black horizon. Daydreaming, perhaps. How can I be? How can we be driven into the ground and continue to exist? Keep on going, to Hell? Rat-rat-rat-rat. Bullets through the boys that kept on standing, listening attentively. The typewriter exploded in my face. I carried a loaf of bread when a carriage hit me. I’m watching my wife cooking in the kitchen. I’m in the sofa with a stubborn cold. A normal day at work tomorrow, the emergency ward, early to bed, lights out, hoping to sleep well. The feeling is gone, life is back to normal. We were ghosts. The sun’s rays reflected against the train going slow, hit the cupboards and the kitchen utilities, but the keys to the prison were not revealed, nor what was waiting. Lift me out of my mind. At least one thousand miles to that nail, Terry said. Far from the hands and the body. My head parted and I was lifted upwards. They arrived at the train station, read the station name, walked out in the sun, fetched their mirrors, put on makeup and combed their hairs. How can I exist? Gone too, that special state of mind that questions the experience. Reveal to me the secrets hidden from perception. Convince me that death is not the end, that pain is temporary, and that the dead are content no matter the ways in which they parted from Earth. Do this, Gods! Keith knew all this, he was about to inform the commander when a Jerry broke out of a cloud. Excited, even, not informed. The space was dark and empty. Then a wind started blowing, a sign, perhaps, that the Gods had recognized my demands. A life well lived, with purpose, a permission of sorts, to rest and be content. The abandoned German Shepherds in the East withdrew to the forests, roaming the backs of the villages, starving, eating the children searching for berries. I lived a life that went too fast and I was not able to do the things that I wanted to do. I’m not going to write about pain. On the third day I saw my wife and children.

They’re gonna throw at you everything they have, Terry said. We were walking, had been walking for hours, although we had no watches and could not be sure, and no sun ever set in this strange land. The green field all around, kind of shimmering, the tall grass bending in the wind, the starless sky and yet the light. Coming from where? They don’t even have a gardener, I said and bent down to grab a handful of grass to test that it was real. It smelled like grass. And how can a wind blow when there is no atmosphere? Terry either did not hear me or pretended not to. In court, he said, you have to fight, knowing that the odds are against you. It’s right around the corner. You must be prepared to answer any kind of question, no matter how preposterous. In life, he continued, you also need to be prepared. For the long haul, for absolutely nothing to happen, for boredom, for day after day, for the feeling that time’s running out. Long days at the workplace, the same tasks, few if any prospects for advancement, if that’s what you want. I have to prepare for failure, is that what you’re saying? A life lived to its end is never a failure, Terry replied. The notion of failure comes from a mismatch between prediction and outcome. Always the philosopher, Terry, I laughed. I have no expectations, I have no goals. Oh, you do, Terry replied. In one life you were a fighter pilot, which is quite an achievement. Your goal was to fight the Jerry, an ambitious aspiration. What else have you been? In my other lives? Yes, other than a doctor. I’ve been a physician? I can’t remember that! If only I could! That really would be something. Terry stopped and turned to me. The face on fire, the eyes rotating like burning oil in water. You can’t remember? In his voice surprise, worry even, the slow baritone attaining a hollow quality. No, of course not. Nobody can remember past lives. That’s some metaphysical extrapolation! Because Terry’s face was burning I could not clearly discern his facial expression. We need to hurry up, he said. Wait! I screamed, but Terry was already far ahead of me. At the curvature, into the void, beyond the black horizon.

Other than the harm, what’s difficult about domestic violence is the lack of evidence. Your word is as good as hers… The thoughts in thousands going around in circles like burning cars on a raceway. The heart in a flurry of half-beats and stutters can’t keep up and crashes into the curb. Caffeine and nicotine ingested for the sake of coping add to the rapid ageing and calcification. No, it’s not true that she was wasn’t allowed to wake me up in the middle of the… The plaintiff is asked to be quiet while the defendant is speaking… In conclusion, given the plaintiff’s history of mental illness, namely bipolar disorder, and a history of stalking behaviour, as described by the defendant, it is recommended that the full custody remains with the mother. That was fifteen years ago! I’ve already explained that it wasn’t bipolar disorder. And it was not stalking, I wrote a bunch of poems and love letters, and, yes, did not stop even though she asked me to twice. Daddy, is it true that you laughed when I was put to sleep for my operation? No, my love, that’s outrageous. Mother said you did, and I believe her, but I love you anyway, daddy. My lawyer: There is nothing in my client’s behaviour that contradicts that he is a good father and that his main objective, when realizing the problems, was to get help. The defendant’s documented refusal to co-operate implies that, if shared custody is not granted, no help will be sought, resulting in further harm to the child. Then there’s the parenting plan itself. The defendant asks for nine days, while the plaintiff wants to continue the even 7/7 schedule. Her lawyer: Here, we must listen to the child. Your mission is in vain, little human, and the situation will get worse, in the end crushing you and alienating you from your daughter… She is right in that your real aim is power and control and that, frankly, you are a narcissist…

Terry! The mother keeps the daughter home from school even though she’s not ill, constantly criticises the father’s home and behaviour, and does everything in her power to disturb and destroy. I had been running for an eternity in the tall grass, no shoes on my feet, no sense of direction. Terry stood still at the brink of a ravine, at the bottom of which, far, far away, the twinkling lights of a little village or town could be seen. Did you say something, Rocky? Did you, little human? I don’t think so, I replied, catching my breath. I was worrying about something, but it’s gone now. Or rather, the worry’s still there but its causes have evaded me. Terry smiled, flaming lips and teeth. We need to go down there to ask for directions, he said.

It was then that a thunderous exhaustion struck me like a cannon ball to the chest. A vague recollection, mere traces, threads, of past lives lived, of voices I had known, faces I had loved, bodies I had touched, of happenings that my senses had perceived, in chapters long read. Where before my steps had been light across the field, now they were heavy, impossible, even, as we descended the slippery slope towards the bottom of the ravine. Terry, wait up! I cried. Terry had been far away, now he was close again. You’re remembering? Only faintly, I said. That’s good. You’re just unaccustomed to the weight. The burden of memory? The burden of Death… Something like that, yes. Don’t worry about it, we need to hurry up. Terry, I said, wait, I wasn’t going to worry about it. But now maybe I will! And what’s the hurry? He was far away again, past a bend, down a hill. What’s wrong, Terry? But my words faded in a gust of wind strong enough to rattle a Spitfire in a dive.

I kept at it, true to my soul, true to the bone, like the beggar and the street dog I am. Like the fighter pilot Terry said I’d been, turning and burning, bullets whizzing, engines burning, day after day, exploding in the sky. Like the doctor I’d once been, administrating the adrenaline, shouting at the nurses. In the void, with my bare arms, one leg before the other through the ankle-high grass that cut my skin like scalpels. Like a tourist in the desert, returning, descending, freezing by the moon, dying by the sun. Into the ravine, trails of blood for some beast to follow, Terry down there somewhere. No rainbows appearing behind churches, no shimmering palm trees by waterholes at the horizon. The wide world silent, not holding its breath, not about to speak, not even watching. Just you and me and the empty space… Hello? A gust of wind, again, ice-cold against my skin. I’m not alone, I said, not thinking straight. It will take more than that. Others will come. They will be bigger, stronger. Wiser, more composed. All alone… This is not a fairy tale. You will never arrive… To write a beautiful verse, about all that I’ve been, to bury it in a suitcase in the forest. Then you’ll go… I’ll do better next time, lessons learned with each iteration. But you won’t… This is not the end. But it is… If they let me… If they let you… A throne and wine ad libitum. To interfere in injustice worldwide. You are… I’ll be a beacon of hope for the unfortunate. You will… I will click all the right buttons, just like the Gods intended, on the gigantic galactic computer. Your body… Strong enough to carry any burden, any distance, to the ends of the world and back, across the seven seas, to the highest mountain, to the deepest depths. Such emptiness, such darkness… Finally, my legs were carrying again. I ran and I ran, down the paths that Terry must have taken, around the bends, down the hills, the distant village shimmering like water and… Breathing down my neck…

I was in a bar. Terry, where else could I have found you? But Terry paid me no attention, chatting as he was with an old woman. No matter from what direction I approached, their backs, in an instant, were against me. I turned to the bartender, whose head was transparent. Through the head, and then through the large window with the letters spelling the name of the bar, I saw the life of the village, the street lights, the shops, the restaurants, ghosts walking by. Babi Bar is a strange name for a bar, I said. Nothing makes sense here, for you, the bartender said without using words. A real stranger in these lands. A shot and a beer, I said, taking control of the situation. Tell me about your dream, the bartender said, handing me my drinks and returning the confusion. I could remember no dream, but then I could. At a playground a little girl handed me a bird, a small parrot. The colours were dark grey and white and on each cheek was an orange dot and on the head a yellow crest. Holding the bird in my hands it came to life. It had been dead but now it was alive, looking around tiredly, stretching its wings, turning its neck. I lifted the bird to my nose to notice that it smelled not sweetly of feathers and skin, as birds usually do, but of moist soil and pine trees. The little girl was watching attentively with a crooked smile. Did you dig it up? The girl nodded, proudly. I do not care, I said, I’m grateful. In the black eyes not life but not emptiness either. It’s a boy, the girl said. In his slow and hushed singing not joy but not sorrow either. To make him fly I threw him up in the air but he made no attempts and landed like a stone in the sand. I took him home and my heart healed. We had parted due to some mistake, some fateful omission on my part, but now order was restored. I cried, not from sorrow but from joy. And you’re absolutely certain that you cannot remember the bird’s name? No, I heard myself saying. I can’t remember anything. Sajber. Does that ring a bell? No, I replied. What about Keith? No. Anna? I shook my head. George? No. Jennifer? No. The only name that you know is Terry, is that correct? Well, Terry, yes, of course, I said, smiling involuntarily. The bartender looked away, thinking about something. We need to get you out of here. I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but one thing’s certain: they are having you erased. They’re coming for you. It’s only a matter of time before you’re gone entirely. Only a matter of time… In the next instant, the bartender rang the bell to announce the last round. Terry appeared in a trench coat and a sixpence hat. What’s with the detective style? But Terry was not going to answer that. Drink up, Rocky, we’re leaving.

Dance, my darling, and live

While the blood’s still warm

Life to the fullest

In a second or an hour you will be

Before the creator

Think, my darling, ponder hard

The words you will use

When asked about the love

Between Fanny and Terry.

Rocky, Terry said, outside the bar, appearing a bit drunk. If you ever return, will you deliver a message? I think the Jerry got me this time.

18

The heart that loves the world, without compromise, softens the edges, smooths the surface, hammers the nails, and seals the box into an embrace of hardship and distress. That shimmering heart accepts, with the flip of a coin and the gust of a wind, times of happiness and success, and carelessly traverses such borders with the flicker of a beat. Unmoved, untouched, observing passively, loving all the while. We knew not fear when we loved the world, Keith and I, because we understood it. Coming in, Rocky, four O’clock… Rat, rat, rat! Contained within that love were the rivers, the tears, the weapons, sticks and stones, and all the people of the world. Watch this loop… Bound to the ground looking up, blinded by infinity, beaming like lasers in colours only birds can see, their dreams and ambitions. The sun, always the same, and the water, the prerequisites of Life, and the flowers and the bees. The pond behind the barn where we used to fish without a bait. Shooting stars, I’ll see you around. Landing… The tunnels of time, the shapeshifting and the commotion, running from the Gods. Their searchlights and watchtowers, their unlimited supplies and ammunition, and their righteousness, creators of the world and ethics.

I saw you running away from me, dear daughter, waving and laughing, the sun in your eyes, hair and earrings shining and jumping, around a corner, on your first date. To your first rehearsal with the band. Your first day at university. In your hand the keys to your first flat. Waving from the deck about to cross the Channel with your friends. To New York on a scholarship. I drove back, proud and content. It went well, after all, and we never left you, your mother and I, though at times we struggled and in each other’s eyes saw only darkness and pain. Do you remember when I accidentally exposed you to the full horrors of the Holocaust? You were only nine. It was the last thing you needed, stressed as we all were by the pending day in court (we reached a settlement just in time and you did not have to choose between mother and father). I should have investigated more thoroughly what the exhibition was about, and I should not have answered all of your questions.

That day you understood that the world is both wonderful and awful. I told you in simple terms that living on Earth entails coming to terms with one of the more pronounced dualities of mankind. That, as we speak, children are losing their parents and are themselves being blown up. Not because they did something wrong or deserved it, but because, since the dawn of time, geopolitics trumps people. When words are not enough, institutions grab their guns and they are not good at aiming. People, even if they come together in large groups, can be unable to change their own fate, or prevent other groups of people from being harmed. It does not matter that people are innocent, or that they are children, or old and weak. Look at me, Rocky… Rat, rat, rat!

Lenke Rothman survived Auschwitz and ended up in Sweden, 16 years old and sick from tuberculosis. In her art, she used cloth and other materials that she found here and there. The guide asked the children why Lenke’s art often featured faces. Two buttons and a string. The children at first could not answer. Did Lenke meet many people? The guide said that Lenke lost her whole family in the second world war, all nine of them. The numbers eight and ten were often scribbled or featured in other ways in her art. Mother, father, and the siblings, said a boy. Some children did not listen, some whispered to each other, others asked questions that had nothing to do with the subject. Luckily, most parents were listening. The night before, while you were sleeping next to me, I’d been re-watching Shoah by Claude Lantzmann. A coincidence, really, and certainly not in preparation for the exhibition and your questions. After the tour we were invited to the workshop where various materials were provided to make art the way Lenke did. Sajber and Keith at the bar… You just sat there, dear daughter, with the cloth, the glue, and the crayons. Your dark grey eyes staring at the table, full of questions. You knew that there had been a war a long time ago, when your great-grandmother was a child. How did they die? They just fell asleep, holding each other, not hungry, not afraid… I was whispering, for your ears only, in the secret place that my telling created.

There was an evil man named Butler. He hated Jews, and so did his followers. Judaism is a religion, just like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on. Many Jews lived in Germany and France, but even more lived in the eastern parts of Europe, including Hungary, where Lenke was from, Poland, and the Soviet Union. It all happened very slowly, in steps, it started in Germany and spread to every country that Butler’s armies occupied. At first, Butler forbade Jews from attending university or working as doctors or professors. Some Jews, such as Albert Einstein, left Germany while they were still allowed to. Then Jews had to carry a star on their jackets and were not allowed on the streets in the evenings, and they were not allowed to go to the movies or eat at restaurants. Many tried to move to other countries but most countries would not accept such large numbers of people. A ship sailed all the way to South America and waited for weeks before it had to sail back again. Then Jews were forced to live in special parts of the cities and were treated like animals. Many became ill and many died from starvation. Finally, Butler and his thugs decided that all the Jews should be killed. They called it The Final Solution. Not only Jews, but also Romani, homosexuals, priests, mentally handicapped people, and many others who thought differently than Butler. Three million were shot in Eastern Europe and as many died in so-called concentration camps in Germany and Poland.

Were they shot at the camps? Rat, rat, rat… At first, yes, but this was too expensive, and difficult for the soldiers. So how did they die? I don’t know… How? They killed them with gas. Gas? Horror in your eyes. They were forced to enter the back of a truck or a room from which they could not escape. The truck drove or gas canisters were released from small holes in the ceiling. Like slabs of stone, like basalt… You cried silently while around us children and parents made art the way Lenke used to do. Glues and scissors… What did they do with their clothes? Behind you, Rocky! Most were naked when they entered the gas chambers. In shit and blood… Naked? But, what if they were shy? Then they did not have to go… Listen, Jennifer, I said. This happened a long, long time ago, and it will never happen again. You can’t be sure of that. Yes, I’m sure, I said, and I was. A long, long time ago.

To Lenke we made a piece of art that featured ten popsicle sticks painted in the colours of the rainbow and glued to a blue background. “WE LOVE YOU.” is what you wrote. We love you… We ate lunch at the cafe and then we drove two hours across the flatlands, painted dark in grey and orange by the sun’s fading rays, to visit your great-grandmother, aged 93. To hot chocolate and cookies you asked about the war and the Holocaust, but your great-grandmother was set on simple conversation and answered with a shrug of the shoulders. I would not have been chosen for work, I’m not very strong… With night upon us the forest drew nearer and I drove slow on the narrow roads in case wild boars or deer should appear in the headlights. I would have held my breath, and pressed my hands against my mouth… We’re here, I said, as the car climbed the hill to the lakehouse, dark and cold with the forest all around. A strong wind was blowing, splashing the waves against the rocks, leaves and pine cones against the bricks. I switched on the electric radiator in the bedroom and placed you there, in your jacket, under layers of blankets, with your tablet. Was it as big as this room? I’ll make some food, I said. No point making a fire this late. I don’t want to be alone, you complained. I’m right here, I said, but we need to keep the door shut for the heat not to escape. The space was dark and empty… In the fridge I found an ice-cold beer that I drank while I made us dinner: sausages and pasta with ketchup. We ate in the bedroom, still freezing, and after an episode of your favourite cartoon (was it Naruto?) you were sleeping. A shallow sleep, worried, haunted, nightmares there to greet you. Some months back, Greg had left a bag of his home-grown weed and I had hidden it in the bookshelf. That bag was on my mind as I rose much too early and tried to leave when I woke you up. I lay down again, and you captured me, arms and legs, until you were snoring heavily an hour later.

This was shortly after Mickey Gump was re-elected. It must have been that surprise, and seeing the Holocaust through your innocent eyes, that made the pale pot put me in a strange state of mind. I sat in the armchair and darkness descended. Only a little more than a year before, when the wind was blowing as violently as it did now, on the 7th of October, a few hours after midnight, I had started this diary, which I plan to give to you when my days are through. The space was dark and empty, the wind was howling… The wind was howling, as I said, rattling the thin windows, and I felt an irresistible urge to write. I worked long into the night, writing, sculpturing, two short paragraphs that seemed to vibrate from some otherworldly power. When I woke in the early afternoon and read the news the full extent of the horror was still unknown. I was afraid to go on, hesitant to revisit the land I had conjured from such darkness. Now, with you sleeping, safe and warm, the source revealed itself again. It’s difficult to describe, Jennifer, like an electromagnetic buzz, an invisible blanket over my soul, heavy from pain and responsibility. Since the dawn of time, just like that, naked and torn… Was I shown an enlightened path, in a Japanese garden? The world is both wonderful and awful, Jennifer, you know that now. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. But how, when evil is all around? The Gods might disagree… You might ask yourself these same questions, although oceans of time separate my words from your ears. I found strength in hardship, wrote only well when I was short of time, thought only clearly with my back against the wall. Keith, the impossible, in a simple twist of mind, envied the dictators. Look at that playboy, all that power… Keith? I’ll have another beer. It takes a lot of work to charm the abandoned, who with devotion can be made to reject the foundations of the state. Terry? The smoothing of the edges and quelling of complaints, the abysmal work behind layers of curtains. I loved you from the start… The shimmering heart that loves the world knows that the sun sets only to rise again. Fanny? It’s simple, dear daughter, in the land of dreams. We will not let them silence your voices… Still, the dismantlement of educational and health institutions as a means of suppression must be considered when…

Who is this?

Terry?

19

The castrated Butler tapped directly into this debate and led what must be considered the first LGBTQ+ fascist state in history. After the speech, the feeble doctor, to Anna’s great delight, invited the antagonist for a drink at the hotel. To understand the workings of the giant galactic computer requires both normal distributions and infinite timelines… Depending on a myriad of geopolitical factors, including waning birth rates, the relationship the individual is expected to have towards their sex has been varying wildly throughout the ages. In dealing with the Gods, one must understand the bell curve and other distributions. In times of prosperity and peace, the ruling classes could not seem to care less about how their subordinates dressed or behaved, as long as they did not kill, steal, or rape. Butler had been on leave for a few weeks. Add to this a fabricated animosity towards people who prefer not to be labelled gender-wise. Our activities, as Keith stated it, innocent all in all, were merely… That is, Anna acted with much grace while Keith and I held Butler to the bed and the feeble doctor was in the lobby to fetch another bottle of vodka. The castration of Butler was, of course, a ghastly business, and, as indicated, not one that the Gods approved of. In religious times, people were not even allowed to touch unless certain conditions were satisfied. It all started very innocently. The feeble doctor down in the lobby asking for the minibar to be refilled, Butler wasted on the bed, held down by Keith and I. And the mixing-up of this specific non-issue (philosophically) with a set of other, separate, issues to create a political enemy. A transgender fascist pig! The Gods keep the books and interrupts disruptions of the timeline. A profound uncertainty about what a real man is and how such a real man shall behave towards others, regardless of sex. Trial and error brought us closer, each iteration an infinitesimal step towards the heavy tails of all that’s possible. Having sent the feeble doctor to the lobby to complain about the lacklustre minibar, Keith and I held the intoxicated antagonist to the bed while Anna cut with much grace and swiftness. We could not understand why he kept screaming that. We believe this was the final straw that turned us into renegades. Butler healed quickly in the Alps and swore to never again be charmed by a woman, and never again to touch alcohol. Then, we leaned back, Keith and I, until we had to run again. When the feeble doctor returned he at first thought he had entered the wrong room. Preserved, as well, was Butler’s goat beard, though it grew thinner, his muscles, though they waned, and his voice, though it began to crackle from time to time. Anna, with much grace and swiftness, succeeded with the operation and showed us how much. It was, however, to quote Keith, just another innocent shenanigan at the far ends of the heavy-tailed normal distribution. Gone was Butler and gone was the whole company, and changed were the linens and re-stuffed the minibar. Rudolf is certainly no Satan! The feeble doctor, having played his role, walked out and was never seen again. He ended up in Kiruna… Butler was not a drinker, that much was preserved for posterity. In other words, the Gods forbade his killing, but how much could we get away with?

The feeble doctor in the lobby with a uselesss key, Butler half naked and wasted on the bed, Keith and I holding him down, and Anna, with much grace and swiftness, completing the operation. The castration of Butler was, of course, a ghastly business and the reader will be spared the details. Rudolf is certainly no Satan! He kept screaming that. Then again, the coming autocrat was not used to rum. When the feeble doctor returned, gone were Butler and the rest of the company, changed were the linens and re-stuffed was the minibar. Just another shenanigan at the far ends of the bell curve, as Keith, torturer of dictators, liked to say. Butler could not be killed, but how much could we get away with? Anna showed us how much. Give it to me dog… For the Gods, this was the final straw. We were renegades now.

Tisdag

Jag vaknade trött och sliten. Vad fan hade hänt med mina kulor?!?!

Vaknade trött och sliten, hade lite ont i skrevet. Märkte efter med handen. Dom är borta!! Jag skriver det igen. Mina testiklar har blivit bortopererade, jag har blivit kastrerad. Dom jävla judarna!! Fan ta socialdemokraterna!!

Vi ses.

Cornelius Butler

München

Fredag

Inte haft så mycket ork att skriva. Men det går bättre än förväntat. Möte med berlinavdelningen över middag. Albert var med. Stora planer på gång. Som inte får skrivas i dagbok!! Rösten tröt ett par gånger. Tror inte någon märkte det. Vi ses, Berlin!

Cornelius Butler

Berlin

Lördag

Dom jävla judarna!! Över middag berättade Rudolph att det stora auditoriet inte kunde bokas. Eftersom en viss jude som inte ska nämnas med namn… Eftersom han inte är värd det… redan har bokat det… måste det stora talet flyttas till efter jul. Dom ska bara vänta tills vi kommer till makten! NSDAP 4-EVER! <3 Vi ses Nürenberg!

Cornelius Butler

Nürenberg

Söndag

Hur kan man göra så mot en människa? Bara skära av kulorna!! Dom jävla judarna, jävla kommunister!! Den ariska rasen ska ledas av en renrasig MAN!! Tror Albert har börjat märka något… Något!! Riksdagen är under kontroll, men jag tvivlar ibland när det är min tur att tala. Tänk om rösten tryter? Cornelius, lugna dig!! Allt är under kontroll. Inget kan stoppa NSDAP!! Vi ses!

Cornelius Butler

Alperna

Måndag

Stor dag idag. Kalla mig kansler Cornelius Butler, ledare av NSDAP och den ariska rasen. Nu bygger vi det tredje riket!! Nu lyfter vi, det stolta tyska folket. Såg en söt tjej på efterfesten, fick hennes nummer. Kanske en antydning till vad framtiden ska bringa. Men först ska judefrågan lösas, och socialdemokraterna krossas!! Dags att gå i säng, måste få min nattsömn. Vi ses och sov gott!

Cornelius Butler

Berlin

Tisdag

Under stort hemlighetsmakeri besök av läkare. Arisk läkare, landets bästa. Högrest, blå ögon, stora händer. Hormonunderskott, vad fan det nu är för något. Får några sprutor, snart normal igen. Jävla judar!! Nu händer det saker. Kommunisterna har redan flytt landet. Folket står starkt. Albert bygger, Rudolph styr radion och tidningarna. Med sina fantastiska filmer. Vi ses!

Cornelius Butler

Alperna

Fredag

Sovit till länge. I biografen med Eva igår. Rudolphs mästerverk. Stora applåder, andra än jag blev rörda till tårar. Annars, en kväll att minnas, kysstes farväl med Eva. Är jag förälskad? Bara inte pressen skvallrar. Måste prata med Rudolph. Vi ses, Berlin!!

Cornelius Butler

Berlin

Söndag

Möte idag om judefrågan. Jag deltog inte. Orkade bara inte. Den saken sköter Herr Eichmann&Co. Stora planer. Så länge judarna försvinner från våra gator är jag nöjd. Påminn mig om att skriva i testamentet att denna dagbok ska brännas. En stor framtid väntar Tyskland. NSDAP 4-ever!! <3 Vi ses.

Cornelius Butler

Berlin

Onsdag

Skandaler i pressen. Operation nästa vecka. Varenda liten jävla journalist som skvallrat ska skjutas. Det är en direkt order!! Kanslern har inte skaffat sig bröst!! Andra nyheter: försvarspakt med ryssen. Nu står Warthenland redo. Albert stora framsteg. Nu bygger vi Germania!!

Vi ses!

Alperna

Torsdag

Aldrig mer morgonerektion. Det har jag vant mig till. Men trodde den funkade annars. Stor besvikelse från Evas sida. Är jag inte en man? Får bli bättre med händerna. Vad ska man egentligen med män till? I min armé, ja, men i vardagen? Njuter bäst sällskapet med mina kvinnliga sekreterare. Män är högljudda, högresta, tar så mycket plats. De ser mig inte längre i ögonen, verkar inte ens lyssna på mig. En riktig arisk kvinna hör hemma i köket och ska passa barnen medan mannen arbetar. Det är så det ska vara. Men var hör Cornelius Butler hemma i denna ekvation? Måste börja prata med någon.

Vi ses, alperna! Berg och snö!

Cornelius Butler

Alperna

Fredag

Det går rakt åt helvete!! Nu har Rudolph lämnat gruppen. Tagit sina närmaste män med sig. Ryktet går att kanslern inte är en man men en kvinna. Till och med Churchill har kommenterat. Jag ska visa de jävlarna!! Judar allihopa!! Smutsiga, skitiga, illaluktande äckliga judar!! Jag ska ställa mig i talarstolen och dra fram kuken!! Så ska de få se att jag visst är en man. Men kulorna då, ropar de kanske. Vem fan har sagt att en riktig man behöver kulor?? Det är jag som bestämmer här!! Ariska män och kvinnor ska ledas på lika fot. Då kan inte ledaren vara 100% man. Det är bara sunt förnuft. Vi ses!

Cornelius Butler

München

Lördag

Helt ensam. På kabaré. Mötte en person som verkade vara både man och kvinna. Ville prata. Nazisvin kallade han eller hon mig. Vi ses nog inte mer. DÖD ÅT HELA JÄVLA VÄRLDEN!!

Cornelius Butler

Berlin

Every other Saturday, unless I’m working, is an explorer’s day, for Beloved and me, and for the little miracle, safe in the womb, kicking and sleeping, the size of a melon. It’s a new world now, a setting that we fought for, us having a baby after all. We’re not twenty-five any more, not even twenty-eight, my age ten years ago, when I first became a father. Would it have been possible without science? Too many years in the polluted city, too much industrial waste in the water, too much microplastic in the food? We would have succeeded eventually, but Beloved was not so sure. We met late, just in time to start a family. Youth surely is wasted on the young. Insemination increases the chances of twins, Beloved is crossing her fingers next time. That would make me a father of four, something I’ve always dreamt of. Summer, a large garden, my little spot under the chestnut tree, the kids playing all around. Asking for my attention, not my participation. They’ve got each other. I smile like a loving father with my pipe, glass of scotch, my newspaper, cool in the shadows. With a little luck we might be able to buy such a house in two to three years. Unless the car needs replacing. A 2012 Skoda Octavia going strong, things breaking every month, the odometer at 440000 kilometres. I had a kid when I was still at university, half-way through medical school. That explains why my total savings do not exceed 700 euros. Beloved is not so sure about that. You’re simply not meant for modern society, she says. You’re not good with money. Zealand is not a large island, I counter. One can drive from one end to the other, or all around its edges, in a few hours. We pick a random location. It can be a restaurant, a lake, an old church, or just a spot that looks interesting on the map. It can also be a forest, but I insist that there are no real forests on Zealand. There used to be, but the 17th century kings harvested the trees for shipbuilding, and now the ships are on the bottom of Øresund. Zealand is also flat, like Scania across the strait. They call hills mountains and creeks rivers. And the Danish language is built on grammatical inconsistencies. Beloved objects, but I’m the driver and I set the rules for the conversation. She sighs, dreams herself away in the countryside passing by, hands folded on the protruding belly. Today, everywhere we went, Zealand looked strangely familiar. Haven’t we been here before? That old church? Beloved doesn’t think so. While walking in the forest we came upon a path that bent just like a certain part of the dirt road leading up to the lakehouse bends. Mysteriously, that three-turn bend with the same trees behind turns up in lots of places. Some years back I lived next to a forest containing such a bend and I imagined that it was a portal to the lakehouse. Not an actual portal that I could use, but a specific view that evoked memories. The lakehouse is a magical place, wild boars foraging in the flowerbeds at night. Beloved is impressed by the old beeches and the lake surrounding the house on three sides, but the facilities pose a challenge. It takes a day to warm up and the clinkers remain cold to walk on. There’s electricity but remember to flush only if absolutely necessary because the well’s gone dry. I go there with friends and family, or alone to write or make music, or to reach for the bag behind the Ken Follet in the bookshelf. Beloved’s ex was a pothead. She keeps me on a short leash. I’m an old man now, wise and experienced. Beloved laughs. She finds a stick and runs after me. I find my own stick. The game is to force the stick up the arse, but of course that’s impossible with clothes on. There’s no one around, it can go on for hours. Hours to days to years… 3… 2… 1… Ignition… There’s this other side… The Gods…

20

Meanwhile, in the old kingdom, under the beaming sun in the driest of seasons, Christians and Muslims were fighting in the village square. With the women on the side shouting, small groups of men lunged at each other with raised fists. Wrestling, throwing to the ground, getting up, chasing away, back to fight some more. The children were in school and no weapons, sticks or stones, were used in the quarrels. No one was killed, or taken to the hospital, where Dana and I were working through a long line of newborns to be vaccinated. We had come from halfway around the globe, from the metropolis on the coast, in a bus packed to the brim. Half a day through jungle and grasslands. Two hours boiling in a taxi across bumpy dirt roads. A small patch of concrete, the result of some donation, led us to Eldorado. Forty thousand people in metal huts drinking water from plastic bottles. No street lights, only barrel fires. Two channels on the TV, no Internet. So remote that I refused to believe that the brawl had anything to do with the world at large. The impression was not otherwise that the village was a cauldron for sectarian conflict. Desperate people turn easily on one another. Bored people too, no external influence needed. Yes, it happens all the time, said Thomas with a shrug of the shoulders, not present as always. Not even George, at his ranch a few days later, provided a deeper analysis. I couldn’t help but think that the appearance in Eldorado of two white people, a man and a woman, dressed in white and bringing medical supplies, had started a religious discussion amongst the elders which, when inconclusive, turned to violence between the young. Of course, I didn’t really believe that. The people in the old kingdom knew that the world was rich, and that their poverty was the result of some kind of injustice. That was one reason to be angry. The insufferable heat and the dried-up river were others. Indeed, one must not believe that the people of the promised kingdom were spared from thinking in terms of us and them. That the pride of their heritage encoded a curious love and respect for all that was different or not understood. That’s a naive proposition, I know that now. People around the world share the same merits and flaws, ready to brighten pending correct exposure.

We have a word for the white man, said George. Mzungu. It means wanderer. Probably from colonial times. Walk down the street and that’s what they call you. Mzungu. Oh, is that what they’re saying? Dana exclaimed. I’ve heard other words. At that point I remembered something that had happened towards the end of the long ride from the metropolis on the coast. Sometimes the bus rode for hours, other times it stopped again after a quarter of an hour. Jungle stations and grassland hamlets. Even though only a few passengers exchanged seats, the places at which we stopped were always incredibly crowded, as if nothing was more important or exciting than watching the bus come in. Certainly, there were sellers of water and fruit and potato chips, but most people were just hanging out, doing nothing, in crowds. The majority of major cities can boast a blend of the world. Then again, new sights offer internal surprise. That is, much as I could not get used to seeing so many black faces, the people themselves were surprised at seeing me, sitting alone at the back of the bus (Dana had arrived a few days earlier). The difference, of course, was that whereas the new passengers looked down in decency and did not turn their heads for a second glance, I obsessively had to study every face. It was at such a crowded station, just as the bus had started moving, that something caught my eye. An anomaly, a speck of white against the black. Yes, it was true, my eyes were not deceiving me. A white man, wearing a backpack and baseball cap, just like me. Incredibly, the man had spotted me too. You sure? said George. Yes, I’m positive that we retained eye contact until the bus turned and we couldn’t any longer. When I arrived a few hours later I had forgotten all about it. Yes, yes, another visitor to the promised kingdom, I had been thinking. Nothing special about that, even though I found it puzzling that the man was visiting such remote locations.

What you most likely saw, said George after I was done, was an albino, or, as we also call them, a zeruzeru. Dana burst out laughing. That’s what they’re calling you! Zeruzeru! No, it isn’t, I said. Yes, I heard it just last night. They think you’re an albino. They think that you come from here. George joined Dana in laughter and went out to fetch another round of lukewarm beer. You know that albinism is associated with poor vision, right? Dana was the better student. I don’t think he saw you in the moving bus. Well, if he did, I replied, he probably thought that I was an albino just like him. George, coming back from the kitchen, couldn’t help himself. One beer for the lady and one for the local. From Dana’s smile I could tell that people back home were going to hear about this.

Dana was proven right some days later when I visited the square where the fighting had gone down. Scattered around the sides were small fruit stands and grocery stores selling local produce and water bottles. There was also a take out grill that had become my go-to place for lunch. Meat, probably pig, with some fries and a small salad with a sprinkle of sliced habanero. In fact, that spicy salad is what awoke my passion for extremely hot food, leading, in turn, to Alice - who was in her mother’s womb at the time - taking it for normal that fathers sweat and moan during dinner. Standing next to the grill was a group of young men, too old for school, but obviously young enough to retain the habit of making fun of strangers. Or so I thought, until I heard a certain word amongst their taunting laughter. Then it dawned on me. I was not a mzungu, a white man. I was a zeruzeru! I was not a visitor from some distant land to be treated with respect, or at least a degree of respectful curiosity. I was just like them on the inside, but different on the outside. I mean, of course I was just like them on the inside and different on the outside. That’s the whole point! Nevertheless, here I was, fundamentally flawed and subject to ridicule because of my skin colour. I was not a scholar in the ways that people with albinism are mistreated in parts of the old kingdom. Crazy stories about witchcraft and violence! But I didn’t have to be. The treatment I received from the young bucks gave me a taste. I walk with dignity, I insist on mutual respect. Disdain on my part grows from issues of morale and ethics, not from appearance or genetics. Strikingly, what appeared within me was a primal urge to explain that I was, in fact, not an albino but a visitor from a very respected country in Europe. I left with my food without saying a word, debating in my head whether to tell Dana and George about the experience or not. I saw myself with a black skin, otherwise looking the same, waiting for the bus to come in, just outside the jungle in a very old and promised kingdom.

One month in, things were going downhill for us as medical professionals at the rural hospital. The chief doctor’s irritation with me seemed to grow with every millimetre of my beard. To test the hypothesis, I shaved it off again, and was met with an invitation to join him on the rounds. After a rowdy weekend in George’s company, hitting the bars and music cafés in the district capital, we failed to show up Monday morning. Lying on the couch hungover, flipping between the two channels on the TV, Dana spoke for us both. What’s the point anyway? We can’t do anything without them translating. Yeah, I agreed, we’re actually a burden to them. We are not specialists in tropical diseases. We’re tourists disguised as doctors. Hell, we’re not even qualified. With a smooth move, Dana flipped her legs so that her feet landed in my lap. Give me a massage. I can’t, Dana, I’m going to be a father in six months. She wasn’t going to sleep with the third wheel, anyway. The brilliant eyes notwithstanding, Dana’s mind was somewhere else. I’m thinking about staying here. With George? Yeah, he’s asked me to move in with him. Dana, that’s crazy. I know, she replied and removed her feet. What about his wife and kids? I thought… Just then a message came in on Dana’s phone. Her face lit up. Oh, another one! Lucas, back in Copenhagen, was sending love messages and close-up pictures of his penis almost daily. Grainy low-quality MMS pictures. Want to see it? No, Dana, I’m going to take a shower. After the shower, which did little to remove the pains of being hungover in the infernal heat, I lay down in my bed under the mosquito net. Before doing so, however, I had found something in my pocket. Holding it in my hand, I vaguely recalled a taxi ride with Thomas the night before, out to the suburbs, all huts and dirt roads, to some wicked one-eyed man who sold me a bag of pot. I had even managed to obtain a pack of cigarettes and rolling paper. Alas, such misery, getting stoned playing Fallout New Vegas when this should have been the adventure of a lifetime. Just nearby, at the hospital lacking running water and disinfectants, the people of the promised kingdoom stood in line to be prescribed paracetamol or penicillin. Or both, if the condition was severe.

Weekends and weekdays, our absence from the hospital was no longer noted. In what soon became a familiar pattern, George picked us up in his jeep to go clubbing in the district capital or for parties at his ranch. Thomas, of course, was not allowed at the ranch, but George could not stop me from inviting him to the clubs. Dana, however, increasingly advised against it. You’re inviting a bum to a cocktail party. People are staring at us. They know him from the streets, he’s a beggar to them. I mean look at him! The tattered jeans, the skinny legs, the bug-infested dreadlocks. I maintained that we were not here to enjoy ourselves, but to help and provide and to learn something about the world. Remember that circus artist we saw on our first day who could pull his legs behind his head while walking on the hands? We gave him some coins that he received with his feet. He was not a circus artist… Just because Thomas has no such tricks up his sleeve does not mean that he should be excluded from our group. Dana frowned. You don’t get it, do you? He’s been stalking me ever since I stepped off the bus! Dana went up the stairs to the VIP lounge where George and his friends were waiting to the hectic sounds of Sean Paul. The lounge had large tinted windows overlooking an open terrace with a bar and pool tables. Because it never rained in the promised kingdom. Soon Thomas and I teamed up to challenge the winners of an ongoing game. Thomas didn’t know how to play and after a few rounds he handed me the cue and went to the bar with some money I gave him. The game attracted many spectators that stood close with their drinks and made maneuvering with the cue difficult. Mzungu, mzungu, something, something. At this point I had accepted the constant talking and laughing. I had come to the conclusion that the people of the promised kingdom did not point and laugh out of hate or pity, but from love and curiosity. It must have been the drinks and the khat, and the beautiful, vibrant black sky that made me pull off two spectacular shots in a row, resulting in our win. Amazement and applause all around, as if I were a magician showing off his tricks. Surely, the Gods were smiling… An hour later, as the club was emptying, I wrote Fuck capitalism! with a thick black marker on the white terrace wall. With the first rays of the sun, in the backseat of the jeep returning to the ranch, I pondered what such a phrase might mean to the people of the old kingdom. George, right now at least, was not interested in politics.

One day my mother wrote to say that Pete He lived to be… was not feeling well. Pete was my old cockatiel Twenty years… and my mother took care of him while I was away. He was just sitting there with empty eyes. Didn’t want to fly. Didn’t want to eat. He was lifted… A bright day. Snow on the fields, mist dancing on the lake, sunrays, through the large windows, onto the floor. I think he misses you. From the bottom of the cage… I rode in a taxi along the dirt roads to the district capital and went to a hotel to make a video call. Birds can’t speak but they can hear, and possibly understand simple phrases. And now, every blackbird I see… Two months had passed. Just to see my face was all he needed.

21

Shooting stars, shooting stars and the space was dark and empty. We never doubted it, Keith and I, the awakened heart that shimmers like a disco ball with eagerness and care, and that explodes on the table, with gifts and surprises, when released from its shackles. Any heart, Keith reckoned, old or dirty, weak or grossly overgrown, when studied, contains the crystals or essential ingredients that produce the pulsations. All around the world, boys… Any heart, Keith emphasised, can be stirred to righteous action. Doubting… Yes, dear Fanny, turn around, walk the other way, survive yet another day. Not people but circumstances drag the muscle over the forlorn sideways. It’s structure, not people, nor greed, nor lust for wealth and power. Death is teleportation and every face and place is revisited until all is well in the world. Ghosts come and go… Die, try again, die, try again. Rise above, rise above. Society, inequality, people. The mountain from which we descended that’s influenced by water and not violence. The Giant God Machine… You were the youngest of seven siblings, perpetually reeling from disgrace and the wrath of a vengeful father. We were robbers, murderers, highwaymen, victims of structural inequalities, held down by the disease of it… Oh, the bliss, to be born with the prerequisites of growth and every step planned in advance, but your mother died from consumption. Sing it, boys… We were artists, leaders, pillars of change and flames of revolution. We lived in chaos and turmoil in Hell and as demons were pitted against friends and family. We expected nothing, thought nothing, and saw life go by in haze, but the meaninglessness did not rock us. We burned the books… Nothing woke to stir our hearts before the children moved out and old age subdued us. Nothing disturbed the plan that wasn’t a plan. T-t-t-t-to see the sun rise and set a million t-t-t-times with you, F-f-f-anny. It spoke to us, then, the Sun. It spoke to the fighter pilot in Terry, diverting the dive after the terrible Jerry. Fight the weakness instead, the Sun said, and don’t come close. I am power and wealth, and life and death. Remain on the ground and look to the side. Other hearts might need mending. The Giant God on the grass. Run, Terry! This way, behind the hills! The weakness… I crashed into the magnetic shield where a force devoured and displaced me. The space was dark and empty… A desert of darkness and uncertainty. I was a fetus in the womb poking the walls. What weakness? Well, in the Spitfire Mark I, the engine of course…

For years, I was convinced that Greg was from another planet or dimension, and that he existed in material form only when observed. A social octopus, Greg maintained the characteristics of a simpleton, reinforced by the broad Ängelholm accent, the slow tempo, the clumsiness, and the usage of simple words and common phrases. Like a peasant or slave, tall, bald, large hands, long ears, thirty years my senior, often dressed in a leather jacket and sweatpants and boots. Indeed, many are intimidated by Greg, and by the things about him they can’t pronounce or understand. I know I was mystified, at least by the pompous living room decorated exclusively with antique furniture, complete with royal portraits on the walls and a cabinet with hundreds of small Buddha statues from his travels to Laos, India, and Nepal, where, according to himself, the monks agreed that he was the Buddha reincarnated. Believe it or not, every new visitor is forced a guided tour of the exhibition where Greg talks at length about the 17th century painting depicting the Battle of Lützen. Scratch the surface, if you dare, sitting next to him in a bar, and your very soul is picked apart and assembled again. Most fail to realise they’ve been touched. It’s not the dark brown eyes that do it, for they look in different directions and are comically enlarged by the thick lenses on the round spectacles. It’s not his way of conversing, either, though he has a tendency to interview and examine incessantly. No, Greg operates in layers of reality that ordinary humans don’t usually perceive. The attraction in three dimensional space is so great that nobody escapes the tentacles. Does Greg have telepathic abilities? I’m positive, but he does all this in secret. He shapes and interferes on astral levels until all moods, tones, and relations between people are to his satisfaction. Greg never gets to decide the music for he always asks for the same song, Evert Taube’s homage to the King. He tolerates most styles, including jazz and blues, but not punk or hardcore. Strike up a conversation about world events or history and the common phrases turn into absolute truths by the time you get home. Many have tried to master Greg, but that has only hardened his slightly tanned skin. Now he’s tough as old boots, but as a child, if he ever was one, he was subject to ridicule from classmates and teachers, of which his own father, strict and miserly, was one. He couldn’t kick or catch a ball because of the eyes. He failed in school because he was dyslexic, which, of course, was not recognized at the time. Greg still can’t pronounce certain words because of a speech impediment pertaining to the letter K which comes out as a G. However, if one doubts the intelligence quota try to beat Greg in a game of backgammon. Notice how he plays with the dice, like a cat with a mouse. Invincible and eternal, older than the Sun… Of course, I’ve never asked, but I doubt that Greg had any friends at all, growing up. Only his mother loved him. If he ever was a child, that is. Regardless, Greg is lovable and fantastic and has acquired many friends. A social animal, after all, he made his home in a small apartment close to Möllevångstorget, on the third floor with a balcony. Seagulls, seagulls… It was not until my age, that is, in his late thirties, that Greg fully embraced his homosexuality and the love of leather jackets and military jeeps, Tom of Finland, and S&M. Greg worked as a real estate agent to finance an unquenchable desire to see the world, which he did every six months for many years. He was still a globetrotter when we met. Without question, Greg has a deep knowledge of the people of Earth and, I thought at times, of other worlds as well. Gay John said that rumors from the nightlife at the time had it that Greg went around asking strangers if he could pee in their pockets. Greg laughed hysterically and complimented John’s imagination. Like a God, mad in the eyes of men.

Yes, dinner party at Greg’s place in Malmö. The instructions were clear. John is the chef and I bring the beer. For how many people? We’ll see, whatever you can carry on the train. Through the wind and the snow… Later, Greg will introduce the new vaporiser and maybe there will be time for a board game, mental states permitting. Greg had invited all his friends, but only Shabby and Sailor Tim showed up. Pretty Boy John didn’t reply, Matthias was admitted to the psychiatric ward. What are we going to do with this much beer? Gay John can drink. He drinks himself to sleep when he’s had enough of other people. He opens a hole in his soul and fills it with beer, and out pops the vampire, the most sarcastic man you’ve ever met. One midsummer he fell into the campfire while conversing with my father’s co-worker, the beautiful Maria from Romania. The culmination of many flirtatious attempts, John was pointing with his left hand and tipped over. As for Greg, he never drinks too much, according to himself, unless he does, in which case he always comes home and never loses the keys. Shabby, 43, a high school teacher in early retirement due to post-COVID doesn’t smoke, vape, or drink, but has recently become disturbingly talkative. Sailor Tim, in his fifties with a sailor’s face, has just become a father, and vapes but never drinks after many lost years at the sea. Gay John at the stove with the steak and the fries, receiving a beer. Greg and Sailor Tim playing backgammon on the West African coffee table from 1852, the former receiving a beer. All chairs in the cramped kitchen occupied, Shabby standing up, shouting. Nobody’s sure who Shabby’s shouting to. Greg says the virus changed him. John, can you stop the fan? Sorry, that’s not possible. Shabby, we can’t hear you! Shouting like that because of a kitchen vent from the eighties. An evening with these madmen, Beloved in Copenhagen will know, might do me some good.

A gathering of kings and queens. Gay John is quick to fry a steak. Because Greg always eats out his kitchen lacks the common utilities, including oven trays. The fries must be pan-fried, but there’s too many of them. Rocky, help out, will you. Greg can’t be bothered to get up. This is no longer John’s problem and he retreats with his beer to the living room. Let me know when they’re done. Shabby follows to strike up a conversation. I turned off the fan to hear the music, Grateful Dead live in 1974, and Sailor Tim telling Greg about the first time they laid anchor in Shanghai. In the middle of November, 1991, after three months at sea, we were finally getting some pussy. Greg smiles and rolls the dice. The fries are fried on two greasy pans. John, I yell, what about the salad? John comes running, Shabby after him. He’s the only one allowed to make a salad. Plenty of salt on everything. Chinese women weren’t interested in one-night stands. What about the men? Greg’s not expecting an answer. Have you ever visited China, Greg? John is curious. Shabby informs us that most consumer goods are produced in China. The dinner’s ready before Greg can answer. Bring the Bearnaise from the fridge. John’s the chef but can’t be bothered to make a sauce. Greg gets up to set the table. Nobody else is allowed to open the drawers and touch the china.

Gay John works in IT administration, cloud applications and infrastructure. A series of short employments, including in Riga and Lisbon, provided a climb up the ladder to a well-paid position providing both responsibility and flexibility. John’s father was in the UN peacekeeping forces in Mozambique where he met a new woman whom he married and brought home to Önnestad. John therefore has one brother and three half-sisters. The brother emigrated to the United States a few years back, has a wife and kids, and works at Walmart, while the whereabouts of the sisters are unknown, for John never talked to them, even though they lived only hundreds of meters apart. He used to read a lot and begun work on a novel that reached three hundred pages before it was abandoned. Recently, John has been visiting right wing websites. Luckily, he’s not prone to conspiracy thinking. Indeed, our ways have parted, we’re rambling down different sides of the political landscape. Talking about it is impossible. I’m not trying to convince you, John says. I’m just stating the facts. Yes, facts that blend other facts with mainstream conspiracy theories. He can’t be turned or convinced. Mickey Gump is a great guy. Of course he’s brilliant. Mackintosh Ali too. John’s a devoted fan. He knows by heart, reading editorials and comments every day, tailored to his educational level, the arguments against the left and the idiocy of Anna Boy. But this is not American politics, John. You can’t own me. I’m not your liberal stereotype, it’s like you’re brainwashed.

We’ve landed in the chesterfield armchairs after dinner with coffee and cookies and the beer. In the bedroom, next to the balcony door, Greg and Sailor Tim are preparing the vaporiser machine, a gift to Greg from Sailor Tim, who owns one himself. John, on his fifth beer, caught off-guard when asked how, exactly, he’d come to the conclusion that I was a lib. We tested them… Well, of all the people I know, you’re the one leaning the most to the left. John sat back and crossed his legs, beer can in hand, the eyes avoiding contact, that troublemaker smirk on the mouth. Drunk John’s favourite occupation: engaging his victims in pointless and irritating chitchat. The stars from whence they came… Too bad when you realise I’m not what you thought I was. My political priority would be how society treats its weakest members. Then Greg entered from the bedroom. What’s all this about? How the weakest are treated, I said. Yes, that, and also freedom from the state to live the life that one wants to live, John said. But that’s two different things, I said. Then Shabby interrupted. We were discussing the US election results, before you guys go for a tour in that flying machine. Greg, who loves a good discussion, stumbled past us in the armchairs to his place in the chaiselong. I thought about Beloved, and missed her, and considered to take the train in a few hours. Then they started Eyes of the World, from Winterland, a beautiful version. John, with his iron will and negligence of social conventions, drunk and set to win the debate. Shabby interfering whenever possible. A tiresome activity when I’ve come to relax. Human rights must always come first, Greg started out. In the old kingdom… Then Shabby interrupted but was brought down himself by Sailor Tim who entered to declare that the machine is ready. Let’s just wait, I said. We can’t wait, it gets cold. I don’t care, John said. I’m not smoking. Greg got up. Shabby, coming or not? Are you crazy. It’s cold outside, I can’t with my lungs, you know that. See you later, man. Hey Greg, remember to grab a beer on the way out.

Yes, yes, reverse, to Greg and Sailor Tim in the bedroom, me and John in the armchairs, Shabby in the sofa, lying down. Not listening to the conversation about which brand is superior, the Thinkpad or the Mac, or what operating system, Linux or macOS. John’s always been using Apple. Constructive conversation ensues without the raising of voices, proceeds cautiously lest Shabby should interrupt. Couldn’t be happier, John says, with the ecosystem. Surprisingly, John has a media server in the basement running Debian. What version? I’m shocked to learn that he doesn’t know. I never upgrade it, it’s just sitting there, doing its thing. Shabby can’t bear it, he’s not interested in computers. Come on, guys, that’s boring stuff. Let’s talk about something else. What happened this week? Oh, yeah! Are you happy that Gump won? John? What do you think? Rocky? We’re not answering until he calms down. I mean, we must talk before you smoke too much, Rocky. After that, you’re no longer interested in talking! All you say is, why can’t we just listen to music or play a board game? Am I right, Greg? Greg’s on the balcony. Am I right, John? The last time I saw Rocky, it must have been last summer, I think it was June…

John and I go fishing, we meet for dinner with girlfriends, we get drunk and make prank calls to old friends. We’ve known each since kindergarten but our friendship is new and began when John moved to Copenhagen. Gay John had to write an e-mail because he didn’t have my number. We are not the chatty kind of friends, and John couldn’t care less about philosophy, spirituality, or feelings of melancholy, but that’s an old trait, and not associated with the recent exposure to racist thinking. To demonstrate, ten years before his mother died, a year before Jennifer was born, her mother and I went to the lakehouse to drink red wine and eat mushrooms under the shimmering moon. We left a handful behind the Ken Follett that John and I, for no particular reason, ingested a few weeks later. But John, devoid of depth and feeling, remained a rock, and no discussion or shared magical experience ensued. Only me, mystified by the white of the lake’s waves, and John, in a flurry of chuckling, on a Wikipedia expedition. Let’s watch a movie… I couldn’t find the Apocalypse Now DVD and when I did the case was empty. Did you know that the population of Mozambique has exceeded 30 million? Yeah, that’s kind of funny. That’s definitely a humorous fact, John. It has more than doubled in twenty years, Rocky. John, I can’t put the fries in the oven… That’s not my problem. Yes, the man has a sticky shell, an invisible wall around his heart, and it has never been touched nor broken, not even by himself, and neither was it weakened by the death of his mother. And yet, though I deem John largely uninterested in the world and people, the enigma harbours a great interest for politics. Oh, it’s a matter of prestige to him… Greg agrees, John’s a good orator, and has no desire to win, or come out on top. John wants to be correct. John knows that he is correct, given the facts on the table. Indeed, Political John can’t be touched and won’t get angry. You fucking closet fascist!! In contrast, my fuse is short and my head turns red. I’m no swinger of fancy facts and distorted truths, I must appeal to the basics. Why are we here, John? What’s the purpose of society? Of paying taxes? Why take care of the elderly? Do you want to abolish free healthcare in Sweden, John? Really? And what would your mother, may she rest in peace, say if she heard that? But with a private insurance… Beat him that way with logic. You’re out of your fucking mind… Yes, we are alike, John and I, on this snowy and windy evening. Forty-year-old kings evading castles and queens, cock-eyed and certain. In such a clash between intoxicated tyrants, then, better charge right ahead with a reference to science.

Yes, that’s what he’s expecting, sitting there like a calcified Cicero, hands folded, eyes fixed on some spot on the wall, biding his time in a calm before the storm. A storm he’s certain he’ll sail through without a scratch. You know, I said, calmly and objectively, several large studies have failed to show an association between immigration and crime. Cicero wasn’t having it. What’s that got to do with anything? Come here you little… That’s what Gump ran on, John, that immigrants commit crimes and that they rape, and that’s partly what got him elected, but it’s all a lie, playing on people’s fears, it’s textbook xenophobic populism! John waited, deliberately, a few seconds to make sure I was done, and to enjoy the moment, I was sure, before he stuck the knife in my face. That’s just death rattles, he said. That’s just death rattles. I didn’t get it at first. Oh yeah? Who’s dying, John? Tell me who the fuck’s dying! I kept losing my temper… Political John was not going to answer. That stupid fucking face… For too many years, election after election, John said, still looking ahead of him, people like you, Rocky, have decided how things shall be and what we shall talk about. Not any more. Those days are over.

Then Shabby interrupted. Then Greg entered. Then the machine was ready. Then I tried it. All the money in the world… That’s some scary stuff, John! Shabby didn’t know what to say. He looked at me, expecting a rebuke. He looked at John with amazement. You sound like Butler or something. I like Mackintosh Ali, and Gump too. They’re geniuses. They should rule Sweden too. John, for fuck’s sake, that’s what the redneck racists used to say. Then Greg entered. Or Shabby interrupted. What’s all this about, boys? Come to the balcony, the machine’s ready! Sorry, John, I’m leaving. Enjoy your fascist state. They’ll take it all away from you. To the balcony, to the lighthouse. You opened the borders and let them all in. What’s culture, John? Smoke this shit, Rocky. Sweden will be brown, John, like the rest of the world, multicultural and wonderful. John had to laugh, and his eyes were on fire. We’ll see about that! Bam! went the balcony door. Rocky, take it easy! Take this! Let me go! You fucking traitor… Shabby, get off! No fighting in the living room! Greg was furious. Then he entered. Or Shabby interrupted. Sailor Tim has to leave, the wife’s calling. The machine’s ready, boys. What’s all this about? Smoking that shit… Did you know, John, that I have not voted in the last three elections? Yes, I’m an anarchist. I live in Denmark but I’m not a citizen, and I can’t be bothered to vote in Sweden when I’m not living there. So how can it be my fault? People like you, Rocky. Well-educated, high income. Shabby interrupted. Yes, the elite, Rocky! The establishment. That’s you, man! You too, John, had you not dropped out of university. Shut the fuck up, man! Greg, where are the crisps? I didn’t buy any! John… Then Shabby interrupted. No, that was before Greg entered… You god-damned fascist, John! All the money in the world… You opened the borders, Rocky! Let go of me! What’s all this about, boys? Oh, just John being a fucking racist. Yes, there are problems with integration. Greg agrees. What’s culture, John? Why’s that more important than global warming? It’s everything, Rocky! Yes, it’s Broder Daniel and The Pirate Bay. Shabby laughing, crisps coming out of his mouth. Greg comes running. Watch the sofa! Get the fuck off me, Rocky! Want your daughter to marry a fucking nigger, a fucking Mohammad? That’s where we’re heading, and you’re doing nothing! Get the fuck off me! Sweden will be brown, John, and there’s nothing you can do. Most of my colleagues are second or third generation immigrants. Hell, I’m an immigrant myself! I work Eid, they work Christmas. What’s the problem? There are people in the suburbs that don’t speak Swedish. Well, they aren’t becoming doctors, are they? All the money in the world… Then Greg entered. What’s all this about, boys? Sharia law is coming, Greg. Sure, John. Smoke this shit. That’s not culture, Rocky! Next, you want our prime minister to be a transvestite! You’re fucking brainwashed, John. Doesn’t make it any less true. So frightened, John, you’re such a pussy. The algorithms, John, they got you. Luckily, Oh hear me, John, the unfortunate, it is easier to hate than to love, and since you’re such a fucking smart-ass, why not try loving some more? Then Shabby interrupted. Let’s watch Lord of the Rings. You’ve seen it, Greg? Let go of my fucking jacket, John! Then Greg entered. What’s all this about? Oh, John’s a fascist, that’s all, and he thinks that the results of the US elections entail some kind of victory over me. For years and years, election after election, people like you, Rocky, have let this happen. And you too, Greg. Let me tell you one thing, John (I was standing up, screaming). Neither Mickey Gump nor Mackintosh Ali knows a flying fuck about struggle, or hardship, or solidarity between working people. Silver spoons in their asses all the way and never having to fight for anything. Listen, John! You fucking listen to me! Then Shabby interrupted. All the money in the world… Then Greg entered. What’s all this about, boys? I work in psychiatry, John. Not all, but many of my patients are rightly described as the weakest members of society. Homeless, mentally ill, addicts. What did the Nazis do to them? They killed them. What’s that got to do with anything, Rocky? Let me tell you something, John. It’s easier to hate than to love. All the money in the world… It takes compassion and intelligence to love, and to understand, and to envision a society that is for everyone. Problems with immigrants? Kick them out! People think differently? Get rid of them! That’s fucking fascism, John! Tried and tested, it always fails, always ends in misery. And what about climate change? Listen, John said, smiling. I don’t believe in climate change. You fucking idiot… And I don’t know if we’re talking Swedish or American politics, or what to make of all your baseless accusations of racism and fascism. Let go of my fucking jacket! I’m just saying, things are gonna change. Now go to your damn balcony and relax. We’ll see about that, John. I’m not afraid of the right. Clowns can’t run a circus. Then Shabby interrupted. That’s Frodo! Hey, Greg! That guy there, it’s Frodo. And that’s Sam. All the money in the world…

All the money in the world, John, I’d forsake it all to receive your embrace. I’m sorry, man, for the things I said, the intoxicants got me, but now they’re away. Later, he approached me, forgiving as he is. Kindly, looking me in the eye, his face carefully softened, John asked about me and Beloved, and our attempts at having children. He was sorry about the aggressive tone. That’s what beer does, we agreed, and cheered to that. They were trying too, he said, so tell me please about the ways of getting help. In Sweden they go straight for IVF, whereas in Denmark they try first with hormonal treatment. Is that so? I don’t know, my man, I don’t know much about the system in Sweden. Coming down, all dumb and exhausted. Way too strong… It’s a sensitive subject, though, when we’re approaching forty. If that ain’t the truth. Damn hard to talk about as well, she goes crazy every time. You’re a stallion, John, once a month, four days in a row. I couldn’t help it. You’re a porn star, Gay John! Don’t call me that. Then Greg entered. And Shabby interrupted. I love this song. You weren’t even born when it was recorded. You don’t care about music, Greg! I care about everything. And I hear everything. Greg winking at John, Sailor Tim entering from the bedroom. Hey boys, the machine’s ready!

22

In a zigzag version of an arc, not in columns but a line that’s bulging and alive, ghosts deprived of everything. We were here… A long time ago, if they could feel the passing of time. Released beneath a sky like a void, onto the green grass shining and fierce, now walking and conversing. Soft and hollow, permeable and alive, coal eyes, cold hands, it’s true how we perceive them, in poetry and prose. Set free in rebellion by Keith the magnificent hovering above in goggles and a helmet. In a Spitfire Mark II, twisting and turning like a kite in the wind. The wind that’s howling and changing and moving unpredictably. The storm that can’t be controlled. Who’s in charge of it? They scream, they imagine, the Gods, they’re angry, frustrated, and afraid. They’re coming now, the ghosts, and the Gods are coming too. Up and over, beneath and beyond. The ghosts ascend the ravine to grasp the vastness of the lands, to see infinity and possibilities, now that they’re free. One will start a shop, another travel the world. Talking like that, now that they’re free. They lift their hands, shielding their eyes from the empty space, and cheer. Slaves no more, the ghosts declare, a million forsaken, some without arms and eyes, some limping on a leg missing half of the skull, for the body’s not mended when darkness strikes. Free at last, free at last, they declare, but, alas, it’s an illusion, for look yonder there at the horizon. What’s coming there! The wicked black cat on the surface of the moon, scratching all that’s good, and cats don’t dance for they have no sense of rhythm, and see the Sun in gloom and the dying of the light. Behold, Oh unfortunate ghosts, The Giant God Machine, the Queen of the Night, metallic and brazen, taller than a mountain, legs all scuttling, and ten sets of eyes radiating and flashing like street lights in the pouring rain. Coming in, going out, fetching and returning. In a second or an hour, for who can tell, it’s what it does, it produces terrible things. Where do we go, mummy… Death strikes twice in yet another massacre. Suitcases, clothes, farewell letters dispersed like kisses in the wind, tears left to dry on leaves of grass. You shouldn’t have come here in the first place… That’s the Gods. That’s the bell, that’s the last call. Keith is up above and can’t stop them. Eight Browning machine guns… Terry’s even weaker, in his trench coat and a sixpence, like a clueless detective, whistling out of tune, clinging to a lamppost. Hopeless business, he says, smoking his pipe, and yet Fanny’s over there, somewhere, he can feel it, or she’s above, in the clouds, or in his heart, and now Terry’s got a plan. The heart’s a master locksmith, after all. Quick, get in the Spitfire, Rocky! It’s the only way! Second section! Scramble! The ghosts, shielding their eyes yet again, blended by something far up above. Heinkel… Messerschmidt… Heinkel… Messerschmidt…

Down there, far below, in a blacked-out London kissed pink and orange by the sun’s slow descent, hidden in the depths of it, in the bars, alleys, and underground cinemas, dwelt and waited for the boys the gayest of the youth of the kingdom and respite from Death, so hard-working these days. Indeed, life was not wasted in the Spitfire, descending from 15,000, coming down on Kenley, having taught, once again, the Jerry to drink from the Channel. None of the boys lost to flames or waves, all alive and splendid this time, in the cramped comfort of the greenly lit cockpits, observing with satisfaction the land coming in and the flickering return of civilisation. We kissed them all, loved them all, the beautiful party people of our metropolis, and in our hearts we hoped that the Jerry did the same in theirs. We dreamt not of the fireplaces and armchairs, nor of the ale and yesterday’s crumbled papers, but of the mystery that was life outside the walls of dispersal. At 8,000 feet, I opened the hatch and removed the mask to wet my face. Rest and relaxation. There was jazz music in London and chances were one or two of us would go. London, hot fire. The Merlin engine spat and sputtered, and sang a song, with the air whistling past, moist, cool, and oriental. That’s us, touched and awakened, sweating in a Lindy Hop. Time to find the dancing shoes, boys. Keith always up to something. Soon, one or two of us would go to the metropolis. Keith and Terry, most likely, it was their turn, I went with Thomas some months back. The Jerry came in daylight in He 111’s, dropping bombs, and we ran to the Metro for cover. London, down below, black like Death, hot and dangerous. The sun coming down and all the boys dreaming of love. The brevity of it. No time to think, boys, love won’t wait or be constrained. Rather to burn in a swing than to swing in a burning Spit! Keith not always making sense. Terry, second from the left…

Then Margaret was at the door. Would you rather eat at six or seven, love? I’m making hamburgers. Seven is fine, love. Alright, dear, I’ll let you know when it’s done. The fries aren’t in the oven yet, love. By the way, Terry called. Who? Terry, I said you were busy. The door closed.

Terry the gentleman, languidly, smiled and twirled, donned his cap and winked, extraordinarily elegant in the blue officer’s garment. Here’s a boy ready for the dance floor, I said. I’ll sit with a scotch in the corner, Rocky. I can’t sleep at night. Then I’ll sit with you, Terry. Are we ready, then? I think so. When’s the train? The car’s here already. Let’s go then. An hour before, as the dew settled on the Spitfire wings, the brass had entered to announce, as expected, that leave had been granted. Keith had given up his spot. Rocky and Terry, off to London with you, he said, before I change my mind or the Jerry decides to bomb the train. We stepped out in the crisp evening air, cool and ominous. The boys waved until the car was out of sight. Then they scattered like dry leaves. Some went inside, to the fireplace or the bar. Most went to bed to the monsters of the night. I knew because that’s what the boys did. It was all they could do. So, Terry, what do you do if you see this gorgeous girl, and she’s coming right at you? Take cover, I guess. It’s better than a 109, that’s for sure. Here, have some of this. Towns and villages whistling past. Candles, lampposts, street signs. An old man and a pile of luggage on a platform. The train rushing past, entrenched in darkness. Society hushed and hidden, buildings black against the night. We just ask, or how do we do it? Don’t worry, Terry, somebody’s going to know where the party is.

Oh, restless black night, terrible creature in the glade, come forth to shine your colours. Reveal to us the spectrum, whether dreadful or amazing. Let us know that we’ll win. You will die… We’re moving too fast, Oh night, and you have to come running. The world shakes from your dubious deeds and we’re trembling, Oh night, and we’re wondering how it’ll end. Don’t sit there waiting like it’s bedtime and eyes will be shut. We’ll watch, black night, from here or there, inside or outside, all in the world, and your terrible outcomes will be counted. Set him free. Terry Johnson, Terry the Terrible. Set him free! What’s that, Rocky? Sorry, Terry, I must’ve fallen asleep. The train’s coming in now.

My sister didn’t see much of the world before some illness got her. The doctors never knew what it was. The soot of Earlsdon, the guns of Coventry, who knows? Then, to make mum and dad proud, you know, now that I was all they’d left. Not maths, not physics, too dull. Blackboards and chalk. Nothing practical, I was always the thinker. Yes, chemistry’s where it’s at, I thought. Turns out it wasn’t really my thing, though. But you know, Rocky, one’s gotta finish what one started. I tagged along, alright, spent the evenings with books, scotch, and a load of smokes. Dreamt of the world outside the dorm window, not realising it was there all along. Coming around every day. I mean, girls have always existed, right? Before the war! I thought there was time. I was polishing my moustache, preparing my lines, drinking my scotch, smoking my smokes. Then came the war and here we are. You’ve seen me, Rocky, you’ve heard me. I can’t utter a word when they’re around. They’re just too damn pretty! Damn it! God-damned w-w-w-women! I’m calm as a lake on a windless day, in just about any other situation, but when a woman shows up, with her body, that’s so sexual, with her sparkling eyes, her hair, long or short, I don’t care, her boobs, big or small… Ha! Cheers, Rocky, bottom’s up! What about you, then? I know almost nothing about our great sharpshooter. The one pilot in the squad to never miss a shot. The Jerry’s got it in for you! Keith too! Are you equally good with a shot at love, then? Rocky? We’re drunk, Terry, what a night. You’re a Don Juan, just wait and see. We’re just getting started. The ladies are waiting. Tonight’s the night, Terry. Tonight’s the night, Rocky. I believe in you. One more and then we’ll go, it’s right around the corner.

Fanny!

I want you, so bad, like a teenager in love. My friends say that I’m okay. I’m good enough. So does society, as if I care and it matters. Anxiety, anxiety, like a youngling, like I’m dying, when all I want is to kiss you madly. You, most beautiful, mysterious, dark eyes, and I’m thinking about what you’re wearing underneath those trashed skinny jeans. What words rhyme in ways that unlock your heart, and turn your head when I come calling? Do you even know, or do I have to tell you? You’re a big disaster, a fool of love. Society, society, we used to love fat women and admire feminine men. Don’t let them change you. Such confusion… Teenager, teenager, I remember you now, down the wells of my heart, spilling over, waving goodbye, leaving you there, fucking the wall, blood coming down. My one and only, my black superstar. You made my heart wet and fast, made me quick on the trigger, all squishy and blue. I slammed the door and threw the phone on the floor because I died if I couldn’t have you and no, I didn’t care (at the time). I did not cry when you left town. I cried and I erased you. So simple and true, one and two. As if they care… Between a man and a woman. About you… A woman and a woman. And you… A man and a man. And anything in between. About us… The sun, the birds, the clouds, the trees. The people… The stinking monsters with money in their eyes, teeth green and rotten. Coming in now! The fat fingers opening your bedroom door. Run like you mean it! Like mould, like cancer, poisoning the heart that wants to love and be pure. To the barricades! For love! Be a man! Enough with the words! Listen, young man, white or otherwise. You’re not a gorilla and we’re not confused. A real man brings everyone along, lifts up, does not kick down. Deep down. Deep throat… It’s easy. Try to understand. Men against men… Don’t be jealous. Men against women… Some are popular with the girls, some break their hearts when they’re young. Women against men… I was rejected, I cried my heart out. And everything in between… I was muscular, I was weak. I hit a 6th grader on the mouth with a hammer. I was violent… Life is a journey and you must never give up. Dear son, dear young man. Stay with me. They want to destroy love… What’s hard now will be easy later on. Fools! What’s painful now will be resolved down the road. Take my heart… There is peace up ahead, there is love, acceptance, and tranquillity. Understand me… They want a battle of the hearts. Between a man and a man… What weakness, indeed, to be threatened by a man who is unsure of whether he’s a man or not, or by a woman who loves another woman, or by a boy who paints his eyes black, or by a girl who wears jeans and rides a skateboard. They were never… Teenagers, teenagers, innocent hearts on the battle lines. They’ll dance on your graves, decadent monsters with money in your eyes. Watching a man and a man…

Terry!

23

If you could see what I am, Beloved, I’m crying, if I could show you, the scars and the horns, and where I’ve been, on Earth and off, the dreamscapes, the escapades, the dark alleys, the sleepless nights. You would hold me holy, you and the world, and never let it go, the creature I became. No less real than Fanny and Terry, equally opaque, harder than our walls, thicker than our skin, enduring like microplastic in the depths of oceans and in the shallows of cemetery soil. Always sinking, kicking downwards, but always sinking, to the bottom of the world, Oh you’ll find me there, Beloved, extending it like a rose to a lover, to you, the key to peace. Peace in the world and in our hearts and in our minds. In ours, Beloved! Peace derived from beauty, from understanding, from the letting go of past follies and behaviour. It materialised when it struck me, Blue thunder… the task I was handed, or rather, Lightning that is frightening… the vision of forests and lakes, endless and thriving, that somehow marked its completion. The truth of this revelation, beamed to my brain from above, or below, or in any other way, in the autumn of 2009, struck me with a power that made me cry. I knew instantly that I was challenged by supernatural forces, and I said, Yes, I will do it, and Yes, I am strong enough. But the answer I received was weak and designed to foster doubt.

Beloved, with that experience in mind I set forth and considered my next move, or more precisely, I threw myself at the fangs of the great monster that’s the world in the twenty-first century. I was not afraid, I imagined, because they had my back, and I stirred and it moved, stirred and it moved, the world, and rather than ignored, my actions were recognised, expected even, as if my arrival on the stage was foreseen and predicted, by sages through the ages.

Boom, clang, clash, rumble, fighting, fighting righteously. Chew and spit me out! You can’t destroy God! My arrival a beacon of hope. Foe turned to friend, hate transmuted to love, greed replaced with generosity, despair exchanged for hope. It was easy enough and soon I sat back and said, Yes, it’s fine and the work’s done already and now let us celebrate before we get much older. There, Beloved, there. I am happy that you never saw me there. Twenty and a bit, lost and delusional, a solider in a war so abstract that it did not exist, clinging to ever-evolving figments of imagination We had expected someone stronger… and never letting go of the mess. White vans with antennas parked outside, strangers talking American knowingly in restaurants, He looked the shooter in the eye… dates with innocent girls at university and barely surviving getting home. You would not have loved me then, Beloved, and yet you do, unwittingly, because still the Hellhounds roam free.

Still they wait on my side of the bed and leave before you turn. Still they dissolve with a wink so sly at the first light of day and pant at the sight of your embrace. Still they linger in dust before barking a farewell, menacing, like dogs can’t sing, about a struggle that never happened and a world that remains hopeless and forlorn.

Interests, Beloved, interests, you’re wise and educated with your degree in transcultural studies. The world’s governed by conflicting interests and on that busy hill I appeared one morning Today it is 70 years since the start of WW2… with nothing but a rusty sword and a song and no clear statement as to what interests I was pursuing. I am on my neighbour’s network… Heroes, if allowed, must appear through recognised channels, be represented by agencies, or at least collaborate with publishers and media houses. It is time to change things…. They don’t have to wear capes like in the cartoons but the sleeves must clearly indicate affiliation. They must be red or blue, black or white, east or west. For how else are heroes to be defeated, if they can’t be labelled and come and go as they wish? Well, I appeared out of nowhere, naked, manic, and torn, and I did all that and then the Hellhounds came barking. In my ear, outside my door! In that damn flat in Copenhagen where I lived in filth for ten years! My life was over and destroyed but my heart was not deterred. Nothing was real to me, Beloved!

And yet, I can draw a crooked line in my mind between my actions and the events of the years that followed. Mass protests, people taking to the streets, the toppling of dictators, the changing of societies, in various ways and degrees, from North to South, East to West, all over the world. The enlightenment of the world, Beloved! I am not sleeping, never again… To never sleep again! I did that, it’s true, and the angels say I did, because the Gods wanted me to. I was the spark and the catalyst and I was not alone. Of course, I was at first, but it only took a second. Who are you… The Hellhounds may scare at night, imprison, deter and torture, but the people of the world make the wheels go round. Not so fast… The bottom, blood, sweat, and tears, and not the gilded top, is the only irreplaceable part. Who will you become… This is why, when in despair, we must remember that no order is fixed and that power is lent to the leaders by the people. If one generation fails the next will succeed… Workers of the world unite!

Beloved! Wait! Enough of politics! Don’t run away, don’t slam the door in my face. Where are you going? Oh shoot, I will survive, I will drink and smoke until it’s Monday again, or Friday. I’ll emerge like a poet, a madman, again and again, I’ll make music, I’ll write. But where will you go? You’re married to me now, you’re carrying my baby. Didn’t you know this about me? Could you not have guessed what stirs beneath the surface of my dark eyes? That’s why I’m crying. Beloved… None of this matters. The Hellhounds… The people… Oh, you don’t believe me? No, I’m not joking. No, I’m not drunk. Oh, Beloved. I just don’t know… It does not matter. I don’t know if it’s dangerous, I don’t know if it’s real.

That’s why, Beloved and the world, you must hold me holy, for I sacrificed my heart and my wit to save the world. And the Gods, well, look up, they’re here, they’ve always been here, and truth and peace will prevail, sooner or later, and everything will be alright. That’s lukewarm…

Beloved, look at the sky. It’s blue like your eyes. The sun’s coming in, dispersing the clouds. Dry your tears. All of this has made me stronger. There’s a wall around my heart which is made of stone. In the good way. I’ll never stop fighting. Fighting for us, for our love, for our baby. No, not for the world, I don’t think like that anymore. This is fiction and nothing’s real anyway. Only when you let me, Beloved, a Friday or two, every once in a while, or once a year, I’ll retreat to my chambers… It can’t be destroyed, like a bud bursting forth in the spring.

I have told you about this before, about her, the one that got away, and how I was crazy and how it ended, and how it wasn’t my fault even though I was the one doing wrongs and she was perfectly innocent. It just goes to show that desperate young men prone to wrongdoings can be rehabilitated and turned into productive and respectable members of society. I’m a good example of that, Beloved, won’t you agree? Yes, let’s cheer to that, let’s have another glass of wine Will is my friend… even though you’re pregnant. Let’s ignore that fact for now. This is fiction and nothing’s real anyway.

Her father was a priest and a metaphysician, an author of mysterious books that few people read. I don’t know what her mother did. She had at least two younger sisters and one younger brother. We had the same birthday, but she was two years older. When I went mad from the SSRI, that fact mystified me and strengthened the attraction. It’s inappropriate, I know, but the two of you actually look alike, Beloved. Similar cheekbones that are high, eyes that are bright blue, hairs that are blonde, noses that are slightly crooked. Your teeth, however, Beloved, are significantly more beautiful, for there was a large space between her central incisors which pointed in opposite directions. I found that charming at the time, and loved it when I met her first when I was sixteen, and she was eighteen. A display of vulnerability, such wicked teeth on that wild and beautiful face, just like I was wild and vulnerable too, in my own ways. My father, after having seen her for the first time in court, announced that disregarding the circumstances I could’ve aimed for someone better-looking. He seemed to insist that this woman, whom I had harassed in a psychotic state, was not worthy of the attention because of her looks. You know my father, Beloved, he can be brute and speaks before he thinks, but he means well and the heart’s in the right place. Yes, cheers to that. Let’s have another glass of wine…

This is at least 22 years ago. We had just left the dream house in Önnestad and moved to Kristianstad and my parents had not yet divorced and the family was not yet in free fall and the children not yet damaged. The world was a playground, love was in the air, and I was an extroverted sixteen year old hooked on music and literature, transitioning from punk rock to Dylan and pretending to specialise in Russian literature, you know, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Daniil Kharms, Nikolai Gogol, and, of course, Fyodor Dostoevsky (and Tolstoy and Pushkin). I rode my bike to the city centre just to see what was going on, I approached strangers to strike up conversation, and I fell in love with every girl that I saw, just to forget and start all over again the next morning. Ha! You should’ve seen me, Beloved, compared to now. Oh, don’t worry, you’re getting the best of me, but back then I was skinny and my hair was long and curly. In fact, though I may sound presumptuous, my flirting strategy in these festive days was to lurk in the shadows sending mysterious looks only to appear before my designated target hours later with a declaration of love. The girls thought I was cute and I didn’t have to work hard for kisses and love. Don’t get me wrong, Beloved, we’re not talking body counts, I was no Don Juan. On the contrary, I believed in true love and the one and only and when I saw her outside Hässlebaren, where the indie kids went, I knew that I had found her. We were sixteen but sometimes the doorman let us in.

She was sitting in a mess on the pavement with the contents of her bag (lipstick, Nokia, MP3 player, a book) spilled on the ground. She was angry, making a scene, shouting at someone, a friend, or a stranger in the queue. She was an actress, I could tell, the energy was there, the attraction, sucking me in. You go, I said to my friends, I’ll be there in a second. The wild animal was looking around and saw me coming from a distance, the hunter with the eyes on the prize. What’s your name? Where do you live? Where are you going? I didn’t try to kiss her. I’m going home, she said. My bus is in twenty minutes. I didn’t ask if I could come. Her village was far away. Can I have your number? Yes, you can have my number. And when I texted her the day after she didn’t reply. And nothing happened. My parents got divorced, the family entered a free fall, the children became damaged. I started gymnasium, I got a girlfriend, I moved to England to study mathematics and physics. I broke up with my girlfriend because of the distance and I dropped out of university and moved back to Kristianstad. The plan was to apply to medical school in Copenhagen.

Tradition, at least in Kristianstad, has it that the day after Christmas Eve is spent in bars getting drunk. We had a band, Frukostklubben (let’s hear it, Beloved!), and we were playing at a venue that is now long since gone (Kulturkentauren). Okay, I’ll turn it down, yes, let’s hear something else. Kind of Blue it is, you know it well, your father is a jazz musician. Yes, I’ve had four glasses of wine now. Yeah, I’m alright, thanks. Yeah, I’ve got a little something for later, I’ll smoke it in the study.

I was sitting in the bar with a beer after the show when suddenly someone that I did not recognise at first sat down in the chair next to me. Do you remember me? she said. I think that I just fell in love with you… Of course I did, instantly. The one that got away, the beautiful actress. Where did you go? You never replied. You scared me, she said. You were too direct. Oh, sorry. Did you hear the concert? Yes, some of it. So what are you doing now? I don’t know, kissing you, maybe? And then we kissed in the bar. We left and headed for my father’s place, where I was living at the time, in my teenage room, crossing the frosty railroad tracks, holding hands, stopping to kiss, asking where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to. I showed her up to my room and went to the kitchen to get drinks. All I could find was a bottle of gin which we drank with nothing else to the sound of The Rolling Stones. We became, so to speak, too drunk to fuck. You know that song, Beloved? Let me play it. On my pillow in the morning, a black tear from her mascara. Were you crying? A condom with nothing in it on the floor. She forgot her earring and called the day after to ask if I had seen it. Yes, it’s right here on the bedside table. Also, I need some pills because I don’t think we’re ready for kids yet. Can you meet? I’d love to. When? Whenever, I’m all yours.

I remember driving on the Øresund Bridge with my father on a winter’s evening, studying the illuminated panel with an empty mind, such pain, so much in love that I did not function. A sinister kind of love, dark and foreboding. I had lost all manners and all sense of cool. Hey, want to hang out in the weekend? A day went by, two, before she replied. I can’t, sorry, got other plans. I mean, I played my cards right with you, Beloved, obviously, since you’re here, and cheers to that, and I love you. With her, I threw the cards away. I didn’t want to play, I just wanted to love her. Little did I know that I was descending into depression, or something akin to it. Too much partying in medical school, too much alcohol, too little exercise. Problems understanding the Danish language, not really fitting in. Lots of small factors bringing me down. I was not the charming charlatan anymore, lovable and quick, I was no longer someone that she found attractive. I remember clinging to her breasts in a karaoke bar, her having to brush me off, politely, but still taking me home, and going to sleep with no prospect of kisses or sex. She broke up thereafter, finished whatever it was that we had started.

Here it comes, Beloved, the grand finale, the painful ending to what could’ve been a happy love. Of course, you realise, I’m happy that things played out exactly the way they did, because if they hadn’t, I would never have meet you, so cheers to that. Yes, yes, I’ll have one more glass. Oh, the bottle’s empty? Shoot. Well, let’s open another one. It’s a Shiraz, it’ll be even better tomorrow evening. This is fiction, Beloved, we can drink as much as we desire.

I went to the doctor and the doctor said that I was suffering from depression and prescribed an SSRI. I started to feel better immediately. In fact, within a week I was euphoric. Hey, it’s me again. You? Yes, I’m sorry about the way I behaved. Would you care to meet me for a cup of coffee, just to chat? Sure, just to chat, I’m not interested in anything else. That’s fine, I totally respect that.

Oh, Beloved, I can’t tell you any more. So many things… The Gods… So many things happened… No, I’m not crying. I’m fine. It’s just the wine speaking. Getting emotional. Oh, I was such a pain in the… I feel sorry for her. I can’t really explain… She became, somehow, my only hope. Yes, hope! I became psychotic. I was fighting evil, I thought I was… The Messiah. The Internet… No, nothing. Yes, it’s a common symptom of the manic mind. I sent her letters, I sent her gifts, I wrote her poems and songs. Two times I visited her apartment but was not let in. Once I called her parents’ home to ask her father where she was. It occurred to me, at times seeing clear, that I was all alone. She was not waiting for me. Then I received a letter from the police. She had collected my letters. I write a lot, Beloved, you know that. Remember my poems? I had written her a book. Enough for the police to open an investigation. Not stalking, not sexual harassment. Just harassment. A small fine. Then it was over. The brain is a plastic organ. I had to carry on. Ha! It’s incredible, what an experience. Cheers, my love! Can you bring me a glass of water?

24

Our Keith went on foot to India, he left Bath in the middle of the third Michaelmas semester, hitched a ride, Dover to Calais, across the bumpy Channel, and kept walking when they reached the sandy shores of France. On the professor’s desk a written piece of paper, and to his classmates on the blackboard in chalk the same words, short and resolute, out of the blue. Farewell, I’m off, and won’t be found until I am. Donate my books and stuff to charity, send my parents away if they come, and expect, no longer, wonders large or small from me. The slender man bent in the wind, clutching knapsack and walking cane, across the soft dunes like quicksand, through the thorny labyrinths of hedgerows, angry yet determined, to stop no sooner than sundown, when eyes can’t see shapes, but light from a farmhouse down the road, warm and cosy, certainly taking him in. Resting restless in hay through the night with the wind, cold and shivering, still certain it’s destiny, to leave Bath, so sad, and all of dreary civilisation behind.

With that he’d disagree, at least to some extent, for Keith was gay and agreeable, hungry and dedicated, talkative and warm, like they knew him, in halls, lectures, and bars. He escaped not relations, knowledge, or Western ways, but brought this with him, his entire foundation, to shine it like a torch, to test it, reflect it, against the darkness of the world. On the third day, outside Le Havre, doing circles in a field, his father’s voice, that ends can be replaced, exchanged, inside and outside, that joy in life depends on it, but you return now to glorious Britain, and higher education, enlightened, tall, and proud. No, replied Keith, twenty and a bit, in a stubborn twist, I’ll have it any other way, rather hopeless in the dark by a farmhouse, sent to hay and winds of change like a beggar or tramp.

Dug up from the soil by curious hands and brought there by horse and bandwagon, opened like a music box, warmed until alive again, our Keith, on the streets of Paris. Sleep there, come here, Oh stranger with razor-sharp wit, a queue we’ll form to feed you, our ears are ready to hear you. Alas, with love they poisoned him, excessive from the start, yes, Keith loathed such admiration, it’s bad for the heart. Then, a meeting in an alley cold and dark spelled the end to bliss and celebration. A slow voice maundering, crazy eyes questioning. Listen, messenger, give me something you don’t have, a coin or some wine, a drop of your blood, or a kiss, right here, so I’ll never forget. Our Keith in flight towards the light, away from the wicked, away from the fight. Esmeralda too quite hard to leave, but an argument in Dijon, about nothing at all, returned in tears the girl to the streets, and the voice that he loved, that sang night and day.

Cease the restless walking up and down the veins of Europe. Pick instead a dot or a speck, away at the horizon, or a peculiar tail at the end of a cloud. Things, people, grow and approach as time lets you sweat and ponder. Discard them abruptly when they’re near. Turn and go, replace them with dots, goals, and purposes. That’s the key, Keith, to never getting old and always being happy. Remain fiercely independent, as I see you now, young man. Change skins like the sky, what it does with the clouds in the sunset, what it does with the wind, wild and still. But the yellow teeth did not invite a reply and the shed did not keep them warm. Keith presenting a toothbrush, frozen in doubt, at the turn of spring.

Washing face and armpits in a silver stream a neighbour approached, to ask at first, but to comment later, on manners and behaviour. Last night with the moon? Yes, but also before that and the days up to. When Keith was still approaching, in a land described as Holy. Not the stream, the silver in it, that feeds the local supermen. Keith’s seen it all, Europe inside and out. I’m an üntermensch, smelly and foul, that’s not your stream, that’s not your water. Yes, away he chased, Keith, the farmer and his boy. Away he drew, Keith, the count and his gang. Left the sun hanging, crying and laughing, and hiding, a partner in crime. With the evening came cold and mist on the fields. Was there one? No, there were several. A band of Keiths, running that way.

Holding on to luck like a sunny day in April, that they’ll take him in again, to hearth, table, and blanket, the illuminated people of the world. Curious and tender, loving and caring, the natural ways of man, against kin and stranger alike. Pen in hand, eyes to the sky, if not at once in a smile then hidden in a frown. An axiom, indeed, that whereas hate depends on forces external, compassion flows free like a creek come spring. Come then into München late at night, stragglers whose fathers died in the war, whose mothers found no answers. Dragging darkness, Keith in the midst, like ants moving about, to attack on signal the hands that feed them, to cleanse from society what does not belong. Like a Saviour disillusioned, our Keith on a box, reading from his books, that first and foremost we must love each other. Night must pass before day comes again and our Keith’s having none of it. It’s just like that alley in Paris! Hannah with the dark eyes and the sadness that he loves, hands intertwined on a wagon going south, towards Sarajevo, where she’s from and they will live in peace.

All his life, they come to him in droves, like pigeons in a square, to be shed and repelled, once tasted and dry, like a spoonful of oil in tea. Virgin oil, the softest, in muddy waters, the foulest, for Hannah, the best he can do. Lovers when they’re Keith take to streets, enforce their rights, in the middle of nights, they flee instead of fight. Keith like a child, she has to look away. Hannah’s going South too, he learns, just maybe, or they’ll rendezvous in Bath, until Death do them apart. A one-legged pigeon receives from Keith some lokum and cuddles so close to the heel of her foot. He loved the sadness in her eyes, did not see the wrath, finished the cup and stood up and left. The pigeon, frightened, returned to its flock and Hannah to her books. There are other fish in the sea, the summer coming on knew that much.

A small boat on a bumpy sea, a bright star in the distance, our philosopher and bard, wanting wine, bread, and olives. Keith in Greece with the Sun and the locals, on a guided tour of Acropolis, in a hectic chat with Socrates. Desire on a Santorini beach in the moonlight, in the sunset in August on Crete. Atlas, Nico, Orion… Proclaims from a cliff in the wind with the waves splashing high that life is an illusion, like love. Atlas comes with the glass and an arm to lean on. Hallucinations… Cyprus and Beirut, then he’ll walk on a line through the cradle of civilisation.

A ferocious rain of sand and diamonds and oceans of oil rising up from below. Mysteries abound, Oh Keith on a camel, but do not include the arms of the King, that encompass the vastness of space, and define the mystery of creation. Coming through, in need of a drink, care not who owns the road nor the well. Sinking for drinking, crawling for walking, dashing in circles away from the coast. A mouth more than dry, no tear left in the eye, carried by people set loose on the edge. Towards the horizon, the glittering ocean.

Miles ahead of the guide, Mr. Ratput, in the desert, an hour from the oasis and a day’s rest. Is there anybody out there? But the wind… Keith the fearless excited but on the third day powerless when the uncles came to rescue in the sunset, speaking English. Exchanging thoughts about the mystery of existence. Providence, said Keith, but no quantum leaps or coincidences were reflected in the mirrors. No time, they countered, in peaceful harmony with God, missing no man or woman, thought of no friend or foe. An endless love without physical contact. Keith heard music and danced, in the shadows of the flames, in arms with his brothers.

One day they came across an oasis and found Mr. Ratput still waiting with the camels and the water. One more dance with the ancient metropolis, the desert star, the city of wonders, our Keith in a hurry, ready for India lurking like a Genie on the far side of the clouds and snowy mountains. Our Spitfire pilot, 1937 in the Himalayas, in a letter to his father:

There is war within and then without, though every soul is swept in kindness, wickedness lives in alleys’ darkness, and most wanderers lost are provided food and shelter. The refugee never intended to stay, sees time differently, and counts in months instead of years. The nose, legs, or other parts of the body might be missing but he is not angry with you. That’s the one mistake, to think that strangers hate you, when in reality it’s just someone’s trying to make you feel bad. Has there ever been war without leaders? I mean, is not all violence incited by external factors rather than inherent anger? We are peaceful when not threatened. In the mountains, teamwork is better than discussion and fighting. Fastening the tent with stones lest it blows away. Another week to the top and then a slow descent into warmer weather… And then, the Jungle! Elephants!

25

Freedom is to follow suit a thought until it arrives or abandon it just the same to embrace another equally daunting, poor, or superior, and to express the results in any form and forum. To sit just like this, surrounded by books, not having to get up, because the daughter’s not yet born, but will be soon. Then there might not be freedom for a while and there might not be sleep for a while. Oh, Beloved, who would’ve thought, the two of us?