Free The Best Book in the World by Peter Stjernstrom

Eddie. The atmosphere is far out. You can almost touch the love in the air. And touch the heat too. I love playing in a marquee. It’s a bit like lying down and making out with the entire audience in a hot midsummer tent. Everybody sleeping with everybody else, but in a good way. Do you get what I mean?’
    Titus looks at Lenny. He doesn’t get it all. It sounds absolutelyrevolting to sleep in a hot tent and make out with hundreds of teenagers. At the same time, he must keep his end up and be a little accommodating. Lenny has fixed a free café visit after all.
    ‘Yeah, I think I get it. I agree, there is a special atmosphere around Eddie. I remember the first time I saw him. It was when Stockholm was the Cultural Capital of Europe. They arranged a culture marathon out by the gasometers at Ropsten. A whole week, day and night, with actors, writers and artists who took turns reading classics and newly written works that in one way or another were about love. I was there one night when it was hot, full of people and a really brilliant atmosphere. Then Eddie read
I Adore Love.
There was only just him and a guy with a double bass. Eddie was wearing a white silk suit, as big as a shift, with the arms rolled up, and he was barefoot. He had feathers in his hair, he looked like a Sitting Bull on a bathing holiday by the Riviera. There must have been five hundred people in there sitting on the floor around him. It was like he had an aura, and he looked bloody handsome too. I’m not usually easy to impress but even I thought it was a bit magical.’
    ‘F-fuck, bloody great.
I Adore Love
is brilliant. Was that the time he read the whole book?’
    ‘I suppose so. It took half the night. He was slower in those days, sort of more northern and reflective. It was as if people were in a trance. It sounds like a cliché but I really think that the world gets a little better with nights like that. Even I felt happy for hours afterwards.’
    ‘What do you mean “even you”? Aren’t you human like everybody else?’ Lenny wonders, and takes a big mouthful of his mega-cake. Or rather, mega-muffin.
    ‘Sure, but mass experiences are a hell of a problem for me. I become suspicious, I think that somebody is trying to sell happiness to me. You can’t buy happiness. You can’t give it away either. Happiness is, if anything, an absurd way of regarding the world. I mean, sometimes happiness occurs, even for me. But it is not because I have hunted for it, rather the opposite. It is not until you stop hunting it all the time that it can come. At the same time, itis almost impossible
not
to try to hunt happiness. Hunting happiness is probably the most human activity one can imagine. Animals can be satisfied without happiness, but not us humans. We need more, always something more.’
    ‘M-me, I’m not so fucking sure about that. Are you hunting happiness just because you go to a concert reading by Eddie X? Can’t you just take it easy and have a cosy time? Just be, sort of, fairly content?’
    ‘Yeah, of course. And that’s what I mean. The world gets a bit better from that sort of thing. But if it is happiness or not, that I don’t know.’
    ‘Does it make any difference what you call it?’ says Lenny, and blows with the corner of his mouth: pfff, pfff.
    ‘No, you’re probably right about that.’
    Titus glances at the cultured ladies. Are they still there? Yes, they are, they’re sitting and breaking small pieces of their enormous biscuits, popping the crumbs into their mouths like beautiful small birds. Giggling and glistening with their nice teeth. They look rather expensive from a distance, with their highlighted hair in fancy coiffures. Something has definitely happened with cultured ladies in recent years, Titus thinks. Just a few years ago, most of them had hair that was dyed red, preferably with an uncombed look and set up with a colourful hair ribbon. Sensible shoes and multi-coloured clothes. Now they are more discreet and