There was supposed to be a book club meeting on Sunday. We were going to discuss “Egenmäktigt förfarande” by Lena Andersson. But when one out of three decided she was too pregnant to go traveling across the city, we decided to cancel. There will not be a book club on Sunday. I will have lunch with Hanna instead.
Having lunch with Hanna is not bad. It is not bad at all. But I also don’t really know what to do with myself. I don’t remember the last time when a book made such a strong impression on me the last time. Physically, to the point that I found it hard to breathe sometimes. I think telling someone else might have helped me get perspective. Separate my life from the life in the book. So let me tell you about it instead. Inarticulate and incoherent as I might be, at midnight on a Wednesday. Even though I should be sleeping. I have a full day of lectures, thesis supervisor meetings and computer labs ahead of me tomorrow. But I just wanted to get this thing off my chest.
The book is about a youngish poet who falls in love with an older man, a famous painter, and they have a brief affair. The poet falls head over heels, she is consumed, possessed, her thoughts move in small circles, always returning to the same place. The same person.
Lena Andersson uses the Swedish language lightly. To the point that I didn’t notice how complex and singular it is until I try to translate it. Already in the title. According to Google Translate, it translates to arbitrary conduct, but even though that is the right translation for the two words separately, it doesn’t feel right. It is impossible. I cannot possibly do it. But, I am going to try. I have to. I need to.
The poet and the painter have just had their second night together. The painter did not have any breakfast at home, so they went to a 7eleven around the corner and he left her there, saying he needed to start working.
Nothing had been said about the continuation and nothing about having entered each others lives or the silence that had followed. Nothing about anything.
They had stopped talking the moment their bodies started to. Love needs words. One can trust the wordless feeling for a short while. But in the long run, no love can become without words, and no love with only words. Love is a hungry beast. It lives of touch, repeated assurances and an eye looking into another eye. When an eye is very close the other eye neither eye will see anything.
She sat there for quarter of an hour, then she took the bus home. The air did not get off the ground all day and he did not call. Neither did she, but when she did not call it meant something else than when he did not, because he was in charge, he had the power. There was no proof that that was the case and no doubt either. The one slowing down always decides. The one who wants the least has the most power. Not calling hardly meant him thinking: Now I have to hold back and not call all the time.
This is hell, she thought the next morning when 24 hours had passed. This is hell and this is the hell that exists. She was burning up from inside.
And I probably was not very clear-headed while reading this. I was there, in the book, feeling as if I was the poet. In hell, translating the feelings into rash actions in my other life, the one where I sleep and breathe and go to university every day. So maybe I’m not the right person to judge the qualities of this book. Overly involved, and all that. But isn’t there a quality in that too, a piece of art that makes us lose our grip on reality, making lines blurry between the words on the book pages and the ways in which we formulate our everyday lives.
I can only say: I’ve been there. It is true. And it is painful to relive it, even if it is in written form.
I will translate some more quotes from the book, but on another day. I’ve finished the book now and my grip on reality is firm again, I’ve completed and turned in a literature review, had a discussion session on our thesis proposal work, had a long talk about relationships with Ashley and done some aerial photo digitizing and been to French class. Eaten an entire creamy blue cheese and watched Girls with Lina. Efficiency and indulgence. A way of healing. I’m feeling the entire day in my body. I have to stop now.
Katja Malmborg 