“I’m full. Can I take my plate to the kitchen?” says Margareta.

“Are you sure you’re all full?” asks the mother. Her son rises impatiently.

“I’m full too. Can we go swim now?”

Benjamin turns around to look at his reflection in the newly washed window.

“Isn’t it too cold?” the father tries to object.

“It’s not too cold at all,” says Margareta.

“You don’t know that,” says the mother. “Does Ingmar want coffee?”

“I’d like that, love. Either way, you two have to wait half an hour so you don’t end up in spasms.”
Benjamin looks at his reflection in the newly washed window.

He sinks deep into his reflection. He does that sometimes.

Slowly moving his arm to see his mirrored self do the same. Studying his eyes, his face, tilting his head slightly in one direction, then the other.

Then he suddenly presses both his palms against the glass. His hands leave clear imprints behind.

“But what did you do now?” the father exclaims, annoyed. “I just washed the window!”

It’s only now Benjamin becomes aware of his surroundings once more. He gazes upon the handprints with wonder.

He thinks: “I am here.”

It’s a grand and powerful thought.

He has discovered that he exists.

Throughout his entire life he will remember exactly this moment. The summer eve, the veranda, the sea. The mark of his hands upon the glass. That he could see himself.

It was something he saw there in the mirror of the window. Something that stared back and him and kind of nodded affirmatively. This will become one of his earliest memories.

“Now get the cloth and the spray and get rid of those handprints.”

The father continues to eat. That’s how he always does it. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t get angry. He decides something, and then that’s how it is. Then the others will settle for what he decides. They’ll <i>want</i> to obey.

Benjamin loves his father. And he loves his father’s authority. That he decides how everything is.

“That’s okay,” says the boy cheerfully, “because I think it’s fun to wash windows.”


The young man in the bed has opened his eyes. His gaze flicks back and forth on the ceiling worriedly.

He sweats. He breathes. Stubbornly, terrified.

It’s an effort to breathe. He lies there with his palms turned up, like in a prayer. He whimpers. He’s very tired and very afraid.

The tears stream down his face. He cries and cries. The young man who sits next to him tries to not see that the man in the bed is crying. Instead he tries to focus on the poem he’s reading.

Not raise his voice.

Not be infected with the worry of the other.

Keep calm. The authority. With his authority he will persuade the ill one.

Love and control. They cannot be separated from one another. In actuality he wants to shout and grab his beloved, shake life back into him, hit him, caress him, comfort: “Don’t cry, my love, you should never cry!”

But he doesn’t shout. He doesn’t hit, he doesn’t caress, he doesn’t comfort, he simply reads aloud instead, the poem by Karin Boye, seeks his way inside the words: “We sank in fragrant green depths without floor…”

He chokes against his will. He has to suck in a deep breath to keep the wailing that wants to ride up through him down, and he forces himself to continue reading, calmly and to the point, like he’s been raised to do, like his father would have done.

“We sank in fragrant green depths without floor and felt no fear of eventide's hour.”

The ill one throws his head back and forth, feverishly and worriedly. His gaze wanders.

He’s choking. That’s where his worry and his terror stems from.

The young man who lies in the bed will die and he knows it.

He’s very afraid of dying.


Margareta and Benjamin play naked in the shallow water in the evening sun. It’s not any warmer than fifteen, sixteen degrees Celsius, but they’ve waited so for this spring, this summer, that they can’t wait any longer.

Their parents watch them. The father takes the opportunity to cleanse the beach of rocks which he throws back into the ocean. The sun shines so brightly even now in the evening that the sand appears to be on fire. The water glimmers, and the birches and the asps by the dock glow.

“Now I’m gonna dip,” the son suddenly decides and takes a few steps toward deeper water.

“But Benjamin, it’s ice cold!” his mother tries to object from where she stands next to his father on the beach.

The boy wades out into the water without listening. It really is ice cold, but he does it anyway.

“Not any higher than to your navel!” calls the father.

Benjamin stops, crosses his arms, and sucks in air.

Then he slowly and decisively lowers himself into the still so cold water.


The young man lies in the bed and sweats and cries because he’s going to die. The other young man sits on a chair and tries to keep his feelings in check by reading one of Karin Boye’s poems.

“Where did our eternity go? How did we forget its holy secret? Our day became too short.”

The young man who reads continues reading.

It’s like an incantation.

Like a prayer now that he’s no longer allowed to pray, now that he’s lost the right to pray.

He thinks: “We who no longer believe, we also pray, people simply don’t listen to us when we pray.”

“In strife we form,” reads the young man who sits upon the chair, “in spasm we rhyme,” he takes a short break between each part, “a work that shall be eternal — and its essence...”

He looks up at the ill one who has momentarily calmed down and shut his eyes anew. Two nurses who have bandaged the bed-bound’s wounds silently leave the room once their duties are finished.

“… is time.”

The young man carefully sets the book with Karin Boye’s poems aside, a complete collection bought at the book sale back in February. He watches the other man breathe.

Still short and quick like a frightened bird. His head still lolls back and forth on the pillow, but now with very shallow movements.

The young man in the chair stands up to clean the ill one’s face. The ill one whimpers, as if his concentration was interrupted. The young man runs his hand over his chest.

Feels the ribs. Lets his hand rest.

Feels the heart that still beats.