There are times when we want to escape, and times we want to hold on.
Greger’s Antiquarian Bookstore is just a short walk from the cemetery. Forsberg no longer goes there, nor to the Catholic church situated in the same area as the store. It feels like swimming against the current. Every thought and feeling contains endless resistance. Nils Forsberg spends his time in his own rooms, drinking, sleeping, dreaming, screaming, beating the walls. He writes a couple of lines in a notebook, draws what looks like a map, sorts papers and books. Again and again he arrives at one and the same name.
Nils Forsberg imagines that he’s following a trail, that he has an assignment. To anyone on the outside it’s obvious that we’re looking at a human being who’s lost all ability to act like a human being. He’s chasing the wind, a phantom. He sees a fundamental problem. It has to do with a pattern and intentions. It has to do with probabilities. The important question is: is it possible to see what’s going to happen? Yes, Nils Forsberg answers himself, if you can see what’s already happened.
Forsberg had thought a lot about Greger lately. In between the alcohol attacks, and during moments of clarity, it occurred to him that he should have gone there, that he ought to have visited Greger in his bookshop in the basement, at least shown him that he too was struggling. But he’d just not had the energy. Nils Forsberg simply sank. Of course, he also should have settled all his small debts. He didn’t do it. Sometimes he had the same dream, a recurring dream he’d had this past year: He was by a lake, the water was still, lake water, black water. The forest surrounded him, sighing, alive. In the middle of the lake floated a naked body, facedown. It was important, he had to get there, into the middle of the lake-but he couldn’t move. He saw the body, how it tipped downward, more and more until it completely disappeared-and then he screamed out into the silent forest. The dream kept coming back to him. It wouldn’t leave him alone. There was something that should have been said. He never got there in the dream. The naked body floated on in the black water.
The wind grew stronger, heavy rain-wet snowflakes spun through space and immediately melted away when they touched the ground. Nothing lasts forever.
Even when there were memorial services for people completely unknown to him, Forsberg still sat there. It was as though all the dead belonged to him, as though he carried so much grief that he was forced to unload it onto other people as well.
It’s January, and the rain comes sliding in over town, then blows off again. The homeless people look for refuge, in gateways, public shelters, bicycle storage rooms, huddled together in small camps, seeking protection from the violence, the gangs who come at them with bicycle chains and sticks. House façades are deteriorating, tree trunks are rotting. Forsberg has expanded his two earlier categories-those who commit crimes and those who have to prevent crimes-with those who long to get away and those who long to go home.
We want to be everywhere we’re not. That’s one of the reasons Malmø forces itself into a state of anonymity, of having no history. The new city has no room for the ugly, the limited, that which reminds us of the passing of time, of work and death. That which makes us what we are: live human beings.
We do not want to be broken, changed. It makes Nils Forsberg think of a flickering flame in a dark room. Life is like that.
Violence. Cruelty.
Faceless, meaningless, cruel violence runs through the city like quicksilver, pulsating, forcing out opinions, points of view. All the places Nils Forsberg loved had in some way been left to themselves: churches, libraries, parks, antiquarian bookstores. They were places that were in some ways open, in other ways-finished. They were places where there was room for the abandoned, the leftovers. Of all these places, it was especially the antiquarian bookstore that attracted Nils Forsberg. That’s where he felt at home, and often he thought about what this might mean. Why just antiquarian bookstores? Perhaps it had to do with the curious fact that time became a paradox within these rooms. It was both past and present, one layer on top of another, and unlike at a museum, it was possible to touch and smell everything. Every book carried an impression of its readers, but also carried a hope of being rediscovered.
Such light, happy days, and some darker, more profound days. Life could slide right along while he browsed his way through it, and love would suddenly be present, be real.
The city grows smaller and smaller, while at the same time it’s bursting its own embankments and boundaries. Everything is in flux. Of course, it’s all controlled by economic interests. Everything originates in greed. You eat sugar and fat and what you want is more sugar and fat. The changes in the city are also controlled by the economy, and eventually what will remain are only vapid cafés and anonymous shops.
Malmø’s oldest porn shop, The Cave, will finally be crowded out of the Herman neighborhood, along with a small furniture store, a hat shop, a photo shop, and a knick-knack boutique.
Because Värnhemstorget, this complete social and architectural mistake, is about to be restructured. A new area, Gateway to Malmø, will be built up right along the approach to the city. The homeless people have been forced into Rörsjöparken, near the city center. They too want to be near where the money is, it’s that simple, whether you’re a bicycle messenger or a CEO. The easternmost parts of the city are moving further and further in toward the canals. The boundaries are being erased.
All the falafel stands have had their rental agreements canceled. The only constant in the area are the junkies who circle back and forth. The address Hermansgatan number 8 has been junkie central ever since the square was built. If you’ve lost your bicycle or your stereo, you can be certain that’s where you can find it, number 8, third floor-the only apartment in the area with a glass-enclosed balcony.
Every evening and morning security guards patrol the area. Along the back of supermarket parking lots and construction sites found all over the area, the streets are filthy with construction dust and refuse. Everything with any kind of scrap value has already been stolen or carted away. The copper thieves come out at night, digging and drilling like moles for anything that can be melted down and transformed. Even here in the underground, everything is a constant hunt for money.
“It looks like a warzone…” the security guard Jan Brandberg thinks when he walks his nightly round, shining a beam behind the scaffolding with his powerful flashlight. The dog pulls at the leash, searching and straining-but no one’s out there, all is empty, the world is on standby. As usual, Brandberg turns at the end of Hermansgatan and walks back toward the park again. He usually stops by the tent camp to make sure no one’s about to freeze to death. He was taught to show this consideration by an older colleague: “It has to do with finding a balance…” He couldn’t help asking: “Which balance?” “You must try to be careful with human life.” And since then he’s made sure to check in on the rag piles-made sure there was life, that they moved when he poked them with the tip of his foot. “Even they are human beings, in a way…”
During the last few days the water in the canals has risen. Cans, twigs, and plastic float about on the surface. The water slowly rises toward the edges of the canal. Everything’s in movement. The public shelter has just opened its doors, and the first guests take off, always junkies first, the mentally ill last. It’s all driven by hunger, by need. The mornings are always chaotic, and everything’s again pushed to the extreme.
To live. To survive.
Rörsjöparken is empty. The pond in the middle of the park is filled with rainwater and garbage. The benches were moved inside the municipal storage buildings at the beginning of September. A siren cuts through the morning as the fog comes rolling in from Öresund. In the last few years the population has grown more and more quickly. At the same time, organized violent crime has become rampant in the city. We cluster together. Everything’s about ownership. The alternative being: to be owned. Between these poles we are tossed about, like balls in a pinball game, more or less out of control, at the mercy of the times we live in, of our desires.