The suburbs are not the slightest improvement on the countryside. People in the suburbs are farmers. Instead of tractors, they drive around in enormous estate cars. All they talk about is the weather, sports news and lotteries. The only difference from real farmers is that the suburban people have cheap blue suits instead of cheap blue overalls.
Now, Titus is forced to visit the suburbs. Well, forced is perhaps not strictly accurate. He has been given a chance to learn about therapy for free. It would be an abuse of his professional responsibility not to profit from the chances that pass his way.
FF, as Håkan Rink would have labelled it. Follow the Flow.
When Titus gets off the bus he is on the very edge of Stockholm. Beyond the roundabouts and viaducts he can just make out the thousands of detached houses, terraced houses, the blocks of flats, the playing fields with artificial grass, and the shopping centres. He shudders and thanks his lucky stars that he only had to go as far as no-man’s land and not the whole way, deep into suburban hell. Valhallavägen 1 and the roundabout at Roslagstull are without doubt Stockholm’s precipice – another couple of metres and he would have risked falling over the edge and that would be the end of it.
Instead he presses the bell down by the entrance. It just says Dr Rolf. Strange that there isn’t any surname. What sort of doctor only has a first name? Has he come to a children’s hospital?
‘Yes, hello!’ a voice shouts over the intercom, loud enough to drown the roar from the roundabout which catapults the big silver-coloured suburban cars northwards.
‘Yes, hello!’ Titus shouts back into the microphone. ‘I have a free appointment for multi-therapy at 10 o’clock!’
‘Come inside, I’ve nothing to hide! Fifth floor. There’s a lift on the left!’
A short buzz signals that the door can be pushed open. Titus enters and approaches the lift. When the door shuts behind him, he finds himself in total silence. The feeling of being in the suburbs soon fades. This is going to be exciting, he thinks, and overcomes his aversion to lifts.
When he reaches the fifth floor, the door to one of the flats is already open. He sees a hall that could well belong to a therapy clinic.
‘Next!’
A large and jovial man in a white coat suddenly appears from nowhere. He stretches his hand out towards Titus.
‘Hahaha! Titus Jensen, I presume.’
‘Quite right.’
‘I am Doctor Rolf. Ralf Rolf.’
‘Ralf Rolf?’ wonders Titus, who thinks that Ralf Rolf sounds more like a dog barking than a name.
‘Exactly! Ralf Rolf. But you can call me Ralf. Doctor Ralf Rolf or just Ralf, that’s me. Welcome!’
Titus looks around in the waiting room. Along one wall there are open empty chests full of theatre clothes and strange props all jumbled up together. Police uniforms, loose noses, wigs, dresses, coats of mail, theatre masks, fake boobs, and enormous Tyrolean short trousers. In the corner next to the chests is a room divider with an arrow and sign that says: Get changed here.
On the walls, Titus sees enormous framed poster-like images with black one-liners against a white background:
Hmm, thinks Titus, what a good idea. One-liners are philosophy in a concentrated form. An idea what won’t fit in a one-liner can never be understood by the masses. Naturally, The Best Book in the World must have the best one-liners in the world. He has already touched on that subconsciously, but can throw in even more into Håkan Rink’s dialogue. Ingenious abbreviations and one-liners, that’ll be what characterises the chief inspector’s language. A person who talks with abbreviations and one-liners wins Respect with a capital R.
And a capital R is something that is always on Håkan Rink’s mind.
‘Do you like them? I found them on Internet. On my own homepage, hahaha!’ chuckles Doctor Rolf with loud joviality, and puts his arm around Titus. He leads him into the consulting room.
‘Take a seat! But don’t take it home with you, haha!’
Titus finds them rather trying, people who are implacably jolly. It is as if they have a monopoly on good cheer. They smother everybody else’s attempt to be cheerful. Doctor Rolf is most certainly one of those people who starts a party by reeling off four or five funny stories, Titus thinks. It is so damned twentieth century to tell funny stories. And without a doubt he’ll be an expert on dirty stories too. Dirty stories are the worst sort of all funny stories.
Doctor Rolf sits down behind his large desk that is full of folders, prescription blocks, pens and a keyboard that looks a bit sticky. A plate with a half-eaten Danish pastry explains that. Doctor Rolf is one of those people who munches away and makes a mess while surfing or working. Since all his attention is directed towards the screen, he doesn’t notice when he spills something on the keyboard.
Titus sits in the visitor’s chair on the other side of the desk. It is a bit low in relation to the desk top, and Titus feels small. Besides, the armrest is too high. And the armrests are too close to each other for it to be comfortable to have your arms inside them. It’s too cramped; he feels like a fatty in a doll’s chair. So he puts his arms on the armrests even though it makes his shoulders almost shoot up towards his ears. His fingers turn white as he firmly grasps the front of the armrests.
He does not feel at all comfortable with this visit. Doctor Rolf doesn’t seem a hundred per cent serious. Rather the opposite, in fact.
‘Yes, well indeed. Welcome, one might well say.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Right, you wanted to know a little about multi-therapy, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much do you know?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh, I see,’ says Doctor Rolf, and indicates his serious intentions by pulling a little on the collar of his white coat.
‘Let me start from scratch. What is your problem? I mean, why were you curious about coming here?’
‘I don’t have any problems. I came because I got curious after a telephone salesman phoned me,’ said Titus, in a friendly tone.
‘Excellent! That is a good basic attitude. “I don’t have any problems.” One might think so. It is not entirely correct, but I won’t say that it is entirely wrong.’
‘No?’
‘Multi-therapy is based on an ancient philosophy. Everything that you understand as life and “the world” consists of events that are processed by your brain. Your brain is unique, so your picture of the world is unique too. What you perceive as green may be seen as red by somebody else. What you see as right is wrong for another person. When you think “nemas problemas”, your fellow man may regard the situation as terrible.’
‘Mmm, yes…’
‘Experiences are nothing more than chemical reactions. Take what people call love, for example. Falling in love is about a bundle of hormones rushing around inside your body. There is no rational explanation for why a certain person attracts another. But what we do know is that we can influence the selection processes through conscious acts. By, for example, following norms and changes of fashion, our ability to attract increases. Adaptation is considered attractive because the opposite party understands that we have enough imagination to manage to support our offspring. Thus: our actions affect our hormones. A pair of modern jeans on a perfectly ordinary bottom gets more hormones going than does a pair of old-fashioned jeans on the same bottom. The act sets off a chemical reaction that creates the experience of love. It isn’t the bottom that gets the hormones going, it is the act. The choice of the correct pair of jeans, that is. The act itself is everything. Do you understand?’