Titus is hungry and dissatisfied. He is not only in a bad mood because fruit acids and coffee are extremely unsuited to each other. Most of all he is angry with himself. He doesn’t function properly in company any longer, he just sits and is grumpy as soon as he meets anybody. He doesn’t participate, just juggles with a whole load of unfounded suspicions inside his own brain that slowly but surely is being transformed into a centrifuge that is out of balance. And the idea of pretending to be more or less tipsy, what nonsense! Damn it, he is an adult, he tries to convince himself.
Titus must cure himself. First something to eat that is rich in proteins and carbohydrates. Then he needs the company of an old friend or colleague to get a bit of perspective on life. Perhaps he has quite simply imagined that Eddie X is out to get him? What proof does he actually have? A weird meeting at the City Library, a Summer programme that wasn’t about what Eddie said it would be, a forgotten note with a cryptic message, an imagined break-in without any witnesses and with nothing missing – just the lid of the laptop that had been lifted up. Hardly something to turn out Interpol over. A police investigation wouldn’t even call that circumstantial evidence; Håkan Rink would just have snorted and muttered something about his NPNC-doctrine: No Proof, No Crime. No, Eddie was probably fully occupied with charming the world. He couldn’t give a damn about me, Titus thinks. Or could he?
Titus walks past a sign announcing: Dish of the day, fifty kronor. Irresistible, without a doubt. There is a solitary but nice table outside the Chinese restaurant. He takes a seat and waits for someone to take his order.
Eddie’s Neptun yacht is well looked after down to the tiniest detail. The cover on the deck is painted in a dark lilac colour, the hull in a lighter lilac tone, with large ornamental letters from midships in black: Come aboard amour. One might well assume that Eddie had christened the boat; the name matches his poetry perfectly. But it was the first owner, the legendary entertainer Sven-Bertil Taube, who named his shining new yacht at the boatyard together with his wife at the time, Inger. The name is said to have come about by chance when the elegant gentleman held out his hand to help her aboard. To rename a boat means bad luck, and Eddie X would never deliberately court ill fortune. Besides, he is certain that he garners considerable benefit from the amorous Taube inheritance, and he never misses the opportunity to tell the story.
The mast is of rigid and sturdy Oregon pine. All the ropes run across the roof of the cabin back to the cockpit so that the boat can be sailed by a solitary person without them needing to leave the helm. Eddie likes to be in control. He also has a considerable weakness for the old-fashioned romantic world of sailing. For example, all plastic is forbidden on board; you must eat on proper china and drink from proper glasses. When dishes are to be washed, or decks be scrubbed, you haul up the water with a bucket made of waxed sailcloth. That’s what Sven-Bertil used to do too, according to Eddie. The bunks in the cabin have chalk-white cotton sheets and old eiderdown bedding, which can get a little damp if it rains, but no worse than can be steamed away with a few old oil lamps.
Eddie has timed his sailing tour with Astra perfectly. When the hot afternoon air finally leaves Stockholm’s roofs and slowly rises, the vacuum is filled with cooler air from the archipelago which in turn is chased inland by the almost cold air in the open Baltic. As soon as they have left the jetty, the lukewarm onshore wind catches the foresail and the mainsail. The Neptun cruiser sets off like a spear through the water. Adrenalin and a sense of well-being spread through Eddie as the water ripples all the faster around the bows. He looks up at the sail, now perfectly taut in the light wind. He trims the mainsail further and the boat heels a little more. Astra is sitting on the lee side in an orange Helly Hansen life-vest from the 1960s. When the water splashes up beside the railing, she starts to laugh.
‘Eddie, this is like a big dipper!’
‘Is it the first time for you?’
‘Yes, you must promise to be careful.’
Both become silent when they realise the ambiguity of the conversation. They look at each other. Then they burst out laughing. The ice is broken. This is going to be a wonderful evening.
Titus looks at a large heap of sticky rice and the three small pieces of deep-fried chicken. He sighs deeply and heaps soy sauce over it all in an attempt to save the meal from impoverishment. He tries to get a good grip with the chopsticks. Pah, it won’t work. He takes the fork and scoops up a first mouthful.
I need a plan of action, he thinks. If only I could do something completely different for a few hours, then perhaps I will see everything in a new light early tomorrow morning, probably realise that this is just some crazy paranoia and that I can forget the whole thing. Or, I’ll become even more convinced that Eddie really is trying to steal my ideas. And that would be okay too, because then I can start collecting evidence.
That seems sensible. Have a rest and take it easy. Do something else.
Titus eats slowly and reflects. Do something else. Nothing comes to him. What does it mean, do something else? What could that be? All summer long he has been crazily obsessed with the book. He hasn’t got any friends any longer. The few he had are presumably sitting at the Association Bar, ‘celebrating’ as they call it, as if they had an official excuse to be there every day like a job, an important task. They pretend to be intellectuals but all they manage to read nowadays are the evening tabloids’ sports pages. Evening after evening, the same story: today we’re celebrating that Djurgården had a home victory, today we are celebrating that they managed a draw in an away match, today we are celebrating that the Champions’ League is starting, today we are celebrating the Champions’ League final.
No, he can survive without that. He is forced to start afresh, find new friends, create a new life. Perhaps there might even be a woman in that new life, a woman who wouldn’t slam the door behind him after only a couple of days. But for the time being, that feels extremely distant. This new sober life is bloody boring, he thinks. But at least it is a real life. Better late than never. I’m never going to touch a drop again, he thinks solemnly. It is wonderful to be boring.
He thumbs through an evening paper that an earlier guest has left behind. Is there a good cinema to go to? Stand-up comedy?
‘Now we’re going to feast on prawns!’ Eddie shouts.
Come aboard amour has berthed beside some flat rocks in a little bay on the western side of the Fjäderholm islands, a mini archipelago between Lidingö and Nacka. The sun still warms you, and the August darkness won’t overtake the evening for a couple more hours.