Max > Recent Status Updates

Det pågick så mycket man inte visste något om, hela Ibsenpjäser, och sedan kom man på middag och betraktade toppen av isberget en stund.

Egentligen, sa hon till flickvännen, handlade det inte så mycket om svaren som om frågorna. Folk fokuserade för mycket på svaren. Som om de skulle kunna lösa någonting. Det enda sättet att ta sig framåt var genom en ny fråga […]

Jag förstår, sa de. Men vad var det de förstod? Rakel var inte helt säker. Inte heller kunde hon fråga utan att framstå som helt imbecill. Tänkte man sig att hon var traumatiserad? Att detta Svek hade Skadat Henne, kanske för gott? Att hon borde börja sin egenterapi omgående? Vad var det egentligen, tänkte Rakel, som genererade all denna varma medkännande förståelse?

Hon ställde ifrån sig vinglaset och la händerna runt hans nacke. Och precis som ackorden i en låt följer en inre logik, en obeveklig ordning som hela ens väsen svarar på och som upprepas med små förändringar gång efter annan i olika stycken, följde allt det andra.

Genom läsningen får du tillträde till andra världar än din egen. Du får testa på att vara en otrogen rysk adelsdam eller en alkoholiserad brevbärare som går till prostituerade. Du får följa med på en utflippad roadtrip tvärsöver Nordamerika. Du får vara vem som helst.

Martin Berg låg på vardagsrumsgolvet med händerna knäppta över magen. Runtomkring honom var högar av papper utspridda. Vid hans huvud fanns en halvfärdig roman, vid hans fötter drivor av tjugofem års samlade servettanteckningar.

Picture them all there together. To imagine also is life: the life that is only imagined. Clatter of saucepans, steam from the kettle. Even to think about it is to live. Hard cold wind blowing in from the sea, blowing his coat back, raising white hackles on the river. Nothing is fixed.

What can life be made to accommodate, what can one life hold inside itself without breaking.

How to live up to all this: which seems at times the only question. Feels he has at once too much power and too little, enough to make a mess of everything, not enough to sort it out.

She knew of course what he had been thinking. Always knows. Maybe we both thought we could get away with it. To be loved, yes, for no reason, with no imaginable reward. Sudden proliferation of grace. It probably just makes everything worse. Which in a way it does, worse, more complicated. Tethering him down into the world, barring the emergency exits. Stay and suffer. I promise. Of course.

To hear his name in her voice, he closes his eyes. The name has become so precious to him, from the way it sounds in her mouth.

Let me suffer, please. To love just these few people, to know myself capable of that, I would suffer every day of my life.

The demands of other people do not dissolve; they only multiply. More and more complex, more difficult. Which is another way, she thinks, of saying: more life, more and more of life.

Yes, the world makes room for goodness and decency, he thinks: and the task of life is to show goodness to others, not to complain about their failings. Bending down, he takes Alexei’s body into his arms, cradling him like the little puppy he once was, and when he stands up again Alexei begins to lick his ear and jaw.

Sylvia too was becoming emotional, he could see that, and she put her arms around him, saying he deserved to be happy, he deserved all the happiness in the world. And the feeling between in that moment, wasn’t that true? Doesn’t the feeling between people have a truth of its own?

For a moment the screen darkens, connecting, and then the signal drops. Call unsuccessful. What does he have to tell him anyway. I just want to say, I’m on your side. I know I’ve never done anything to help you, Ivan, but in principle, in spirit. I’ve been on your side all along.

Wanting to say and hear the words again, that can never again be said or heard. To return to the house once more, and not find it dark and empty, but airy and bright again with open windows. To spend an afternoon together, playing with the dog, eating dinner, doing nothing, only being together, just once more.

Now he thinks he probably has been too hard on himself, which isn’t at all what his dad would have wanted. No: his dad loved him, and wanted him to be happy, he knows that. And if he can be happy now, it’s not betraying his dad’s memory, as he has sometimes felt, but in fact abiding by his strongest wishes, his wishes for his children’s happiness.

Maybe he doesn’t need to know about her life, she thinks. And if he wants to tell her about his life, she’s happy to listen. Is that so wrong? To spend a little time together, liking one another, even very much, and nothing more.

He was in a good mood, and he wanted to kiss her, and for s while they kissed, and then without talking any more he made love to her again. It was obvious then that it was not going to be enough that he was too young and going through a bereavement. Those were solid sensible ideas, powerful enough for the surface of daily life, but not powerful enough for the hidden life of desire shared between two people.

It’s weird, he says. I feel like if I created a new human being out of nothing, I would be very happy with them. Just that they were alive even.

It is wrong to be vain: obscurely, warming her hands over the air vent, Margaret knows and admits to herself that it is wrong. But wrong in what way? Who is the victim of the wrongness: just herself? Or, somehow, other people?

Then he kisses her again. It is, of course, a desperately embarrassing situation – a situation which seems to render her entire life meaningless. Her professional life, eight years of marriage, whatever she believes about her personal values – everything. And yet, accepting the premise, allowing life to mean nothing for a moment, doesn’t it actually feel good to be in the arms of this person?

But her explanations will only sound like lies. Nobody when they’re rejected believes it’s really for extraneous reasons. And it almost never is for extraneous reasons, because mutual attraction – which even makes sense from an evolutionary perspective – is simply the strongest reason to do anything, overriding all the contrary principles and making them fall away into nothing.

Didn’t seem fair on the young lad. That suit at the funeral. With the braces on his teeth, the supreme discomfort of the adolescent.

It’s your body, you can treat it however you please. The only area where you’re free to do just as you like. And even that doesn’t turn out how you wanted.

She took one more look around at the various objects inside the house. They did not belong to her. Just like her life had never belonged to her.

Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama. Death, who now stood by her side, was as familiar to her as a family member, missing for a long time but now returned.

After a while, the question came.
‘Why, is it such a bad thing to die?’

‘They say my insides have all atrophied, you know.’ In-hye was lost for words. Yeong-hye moved her emaciated face closer to her sister. ‘I’m not an animal any more, sister,’ she said, first scanning the empty ward as if about to disclose a momentous secret. ‘I don’t need to eat, not now. I can live without it. All I need is sunlight.’