{"id":308412,"date":"2026-03-30T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=308412"},"modified":"2026-03-30T10:51:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T14:51:22","slug":"mount-verity-by-therese-bohman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/mount-verity-by-therese-bohman\/","title":{"rendered":"I Wish It Wasn’t My Job to Ask You About Jelly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An excerpt from Mount Verity<\/em> by Therese Bohman<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The sound in the large room was subdued, kind of muffled. There was a worn gray wall-to-wall carpet, and the ceiling was covered with spongy polystyrene tiles, tiles that absorbed the hundreds of telephone conversations that took place every evening between people who would much rather be doing something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I logged on to the computer. The system was old, the text large and pixelated, and the graphics were simple and clumsy, only two colors. I put on my headset, adjusted the microphone and clicked on the first call. It rang out for quite some time before anyone answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSundstr\u00f6m,\u201d said a female voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHi,\u201d I said. \u201cMy name is Hanna and I\u2019m calling from VQS, Vision Quest and Survey in Gothenburg. I was hoping to speak to Yvonne Sundstr\u00f6m.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s me,\u201d she said in the slightly wary tone almost everyone adopted when I had introduced myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGreat! We\u2019re currently conducting an investigation into consumer habits, and you have been chosen at random to take part. So I was wondering if you have a few minutes to answer some questions?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few minutes<\/em> was a deliberately vague statement, it rarely took less than fifteen minutes, sometimes twenty or more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs it about how I vote?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, we\u2019re looking into consumer habits and product knowledge. It\u2019s mainly concerned with groceries and household products.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo I get paid?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUnfortunately there is no payment for this particular investigation, but your answers are important for the statistical analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a cunning formulation, designed to evoke a sense of obligation and responsibility, and I was slightly ashamed every time I had to come out with it. She sighed with an air of resignation. The power of the telephone was remarkable\u2014older people seemed to feel that they had to answer and then cooperate when someone called them. Presumably things would soon change, when the sought-after consumers came from a younger generation with a more careless attitude toward the telephone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, I was just about to make a start on dinner, but . . . okay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPerfect. First question: How often do you eat jelly?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was silent for a moment, confused perhaps by the contrast between my formal introduction and the banality of the question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow often do I eat jelly?\u201d she said suspiciously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you mean ordinary jelly? Like . . . strawberry jelly and . . . lingonberry jelly, that kind of thing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, ordinary jelly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She laughed. \u201cI guess . . . a few times a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWould you say once or twice a week, three to five times a week, or more than five times a week?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, I mostly have it with my porridge, so that\u2019s maybe three times a week. So I\u2019ll go for three to five times a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExcellent. So my next question: How often do you buy jelly?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI sometimes make it myself, but maybe that doesn\u2019t count?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis particular question is about jelly you buy from a store. But I bet your own jelly is delicious!\u201d I added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She laughed again. \u201cLet\u2019s see . . . I\u2019d say I buy jelly a few times a year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWould you say once or twice a year, three to five times a year, or more than five times a year?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI guess that would be three to five times as well. The children eat quite a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI understand. Now, what brands of jelly are you familiar with?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She sighed. \u201cLet me think . . . Bob, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I selected Bob from the options on my screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan you think of any other brands?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEr . . . \u00d6nos, maybe?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u00d6nos, good. Any more?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFelix?\u201d she said hesitantly. \u201cOr is that mainly peas and that kind of thing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll add it to the list. Any more?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence. \u201cCoop, I suppose, if they have their own brand? I\u2019m not sure. And ICA too.\u201d She suddenly sounded enthusiastic. \u201cAnd maybe Willy\u2019s? And Hemk\u00f6p?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPerfect. Can you think of any more?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She fell silent again. She really was taking this seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, that\u2019s it I think.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExcellent. Can you tell me what brands of jelly you\u2019ve bought in the last fourteen days?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t bought any jelly lately.\u201d She sounded a little defensive now. \u201cWe\u2019ve just been eating the lingonberry jelly we\u2019ve already got.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo problem, I\u2019ll make a note of that.\u201d The fact that she hadn\u2019t bought any jelly meant that I didn\u2019t need to ask her what brand she had bought, which would speed things up a little. \u201cNext question: what brands of jelly have you seen advertised during the last fourteen days?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAdvertised . . . Do you mean like leaflets through the door?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re thinking of all kinds of advertising. For example, leaflets through the door, ads in newspapers and magazines, on public transport, at the cinema, on TV or the radio.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She laughed. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever heard jelly advertised on the radio!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, maybe jelly doesn\u2019t come up too much on the radio,\u201d I said in a friendly tone of voice. \u201cBut how about the other types of advertising I mentioned?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time the silence went on for quite a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think I might have seen something on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you remember what brand it was?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are difficult questions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan you help me out with some brands?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her desire to get it right was touching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m afraid I\u2019m not allowed to do that. This investigation is concerned with what you have seen and what you remember.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She sighed. This was going to take some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThink about the brands you mentioned just now,\u201d I prompted her. This was actually off-script, but I wanted to move on. \u201cHave you maybe seen an advertisement for one of those?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI might have seen Bob advertised,\u201d she said eventually. \u201cOn TV4.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither of us said anything while I filled in her responses, then clicked through to the next segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs that it?\u201d she said optimistically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot quite. The next question is about ready-made and frozen pizza. How often do you eat ready-made or frozen pizza?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

It started raining as I headed toward Korsv\u00e4gen. According to the display the number five was due in seven minutes, so I went into the newsagent\u2019s and flicked through a few magazines to pass the time. When the tram came rattling along, the rear section was full of young guys in expensive clothes on their way from \u00d6rgryte into the city as usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I usually tried to avoid walking to the tram stop with anyone from work, I hurried away quickly after the last call of the evening. Sometimes I failed, but if it was someone who talked so much that I didn\u2019t really need to contribute, it wasn\u2019t too taxing: Samir, who usually babbled about some new sci-fi movie, or Tilde, who would tell me all about the party she\u2019d been to over the weekend and the party she was going to next weekend. It was more difficult if I ended up with someone who wasn\u2019t as chatty as them, because a conversation that demanded input from me was almost painful. After five hours on the phone my brain was anesthetized. Sometimes I thought it might have been different if the surveys I was conducting were about politics or social issues, if they were genuine opinion polls where people gave genuine, well-thought-out answers. At the same time, it was quite appealing to do something that didn\u2019t require me to think at all, to sit there almost like a robot typing in witless answers to equally witless questions. Sometimes I really got into it, regarded it as a challenge to lead the interviewees through the conversations, tease out the next product name, make them feel important. Maybe I ought to work in a similar field, I thought occasionally, but for real: become some kind of counselor, listening patiently to people struggling with their bad relationships, nodding and making appropriate comments, giving simple advice that was seen as meaningful, because people who ask for advice on that kind of thing are ready to believe that any opinion on their situation could carry a truth within it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was quite appealing to do something that didn\u2019t require me to think at all, to sit there almost like a robot typing in witless answers to equally witless questions.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Vision Quest and Survey was a company where you worked until you found something better, or something you would rather do. Most employees were students just like me, sitting there for several evenings a week to supplement their student loan. Some were middle-aged or older, I felt sorry for them because the reasons why they were there were never positive. Some had lost a better job because of downsizing or disagreements, and hadn\u2019t yet managed to find anything else. One had suffered burnout and was easing himself back into work. One man who must have been in his fifties had worked there for many years, and still believed he would soon get his breakthrough as a composer. Most of this older group worked days, the shifts were longer and presumably quieter, because fewer people would answer the phone. My nightmare was that I would end up like them, that I would be sitting in the same staff kitchen in ten years, waiting for the career as an artist that had never taken off, working long shifts to pay for a studio that led precisely nowhere, but I couldn\u2019t let it go because that would mean the final failure. As long as I had my studio, there was still some hope of success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The calls were generated at random by the computer, and every time I hoped that a man in Stockholm wouldn\u2019t answer. Men in Stockholm were just the worst\u2014always stressed, often condescending. \u201cDon\u2019t you have anything better to do?\u201d was a frequent question, and it always got to me. Of course I have<\/em>, I would think, and then: Do I really?<\/em> And I would get angry, because it felt as if they had won. I pictured their lives as a distant and exotic image of success, a fantastic career and beautifully ironed shirts, a suntan that lasted well into the fall, a big house and a wife and children, maybe a mistress, an impressive golf handicap, overseas vacations, and a rich social life with others who shared the same status in society. And then someone calls from Vision Quest and Survey in Gothenburg, making demands on their time to ask questions about their cell-phone contract, what a joke. \u201cFifteen minutes?\u201d they would sometimes yell after they\u2019d asked how long it was going to take, and of course I was lying anyway, because if they answered in a particular way there would be more questions, questions that would require them to fetch a pen and paper and write down support words and rate their phone operator. I always hoped they would say no to the survey, because if they said yes I would hear their frustration increasing after only a few minutes. Sometimes we had only gotten halfway through after the promised fifteen minutes and it was already seven thirty, they were having a barbecue, they were going out, they had to put the kids to bed. I would miss out a question or fill in the wrong answer to avoid the need for a follow-up question, always aware that a supervisor could be listening in to our conversation, I might be called in and told in a stern voice that I was endangering the statistics, and that if this happened again I might lose my job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

I was invited to a party at Tilde\u2019s on Saturday. I rarely went out with my coworkers on the weekend, the parties my fellow students organized were always more fun, but she had made it seem as if it were important to her that I went. Her apartment was on a street off Linn\u00e9gatan, which made no sense at all to me. How could she live there, when she was studying and had a badly paid part-time job, just like me? Then I realized there were parents who could help out financially, that the hundreds of thousands of kronor that made no sense to me obviously didn\u2019t come from her job as a market researcher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tilde was studying Education and was going to be a teacher, which sounded stable and well-considered. I found it slightly embarrassing to say that I was doing an art foundation course, it sounded more like a hobby than something you could actually live on. Maybe I should stop thinking that was a possibility, and become a teacher too, an art teacher, it might even be enjoyable. Encouraging a particularly gifted pupil to pursue art, making a difference to another person\u2019s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tilde provided box wine, Franz Ferdinand was playing in the living room, some people were already planning to go on to Pustervik later. Samir was talking to a girl I didn\u2019t recognize, maybe one of Tilde\u2019s fellow students, they were standing close together, closer and closer as the evening progressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sometimes wondered when love would come to me. As if love were a resource that was shared out through the providence of someone else. Like the tax declaration form from the IRS or a summons to the dentist: if it didn\u2019t show up there must have been a hitch at a higher level where these things were dealt with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought that was how it seemed to work, people around me got together in an almost mechanical way that maybe didn\u2019t always have much to do with love, it was more a sense of responsibility or duty, a need to fulfill the task of being part of a nice couple who enjoy long, lazy breakfasts on the weekends, go for a walk in the botanical gardens, measure a wall in order to put up a shelf they\u2019ve driven to IKEA to buy. There was something irritatingly fabulous about this togetherness, and I often wondered to what extent those involved really wanted to be there. They didn\u2019t seem excessively happy, but they weren\u2019t unhappy either, they accepted their relationship with stoical equanimity: This is what you do, this is how you create a grown-up life. After spending several years doing everything to break away from exactly that kind of life, represented by their parents, they suddenly performed a U-turn and accepted that they ought to become exactly like them, accepting their money for the deposit on a place to live, buying their IKEA shelf, having cozy dinners at home instead of going out partying, maybe getting a dog, eventually upgrading to a child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally I half-heartedly went back to someone\u2019s apartment from time to time, without imagining that it would generate anything other than a brief closeness, or lead to anything else. What did I want from life? It stressed me out that I didn\u2019t actually know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

I often dreamed of Erik at night. Sometimes we were children again, lengthy dreams with no clear action or content, when the endless summers of our childhood played out in my mind like idyllic postcards from the past: Erik and I trying to paddle a canoe, Erik and I picking wild strawberries in the cow pasture at Grandpa\u2019s summer cottage, our hearts in our mouths, Erik and I fighting for space on a Lilo in a forest pool, the warm, amber-colored water all around us, gray mountains and tall, straight pine trees lined up against the backdrop of a completely cloudless sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes the dreams were different. In one I was in the forest, on the track leading up to the railway, when a deer suddenly appeared in front of me. It looked straight at me, and I got the feeling that the deer was in fact Erik, that he had come back, in the form of a deer for some reason, but that didn\u2019t matter, the important thing was that he had come back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t go,\u201d I said, but when I cautiously took a step closer I trod on a twig that snapped. The deer stiffened for a second, then turned like lightning and fled through the forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another dream I was at Mount Verity searching for him, and as I stood in the cave I saw an opening in one corner, with light pouring from it. How strange that no one has seen this opening before<\/em>, I thought and stepped inside. I found myself in an enormous hall, like in a fairy-tale palace: columns and crystal chandeliers, gold and jewels, everything sparkled and shone. Erik was sitting at a table. He was wearing brightly colored clothes, he was older, and his hair had grown into a golden pageboy, the same style he had had when he was little. He looked like a handsome prince in a painting by John Bauer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHave you been here all the time?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He nodded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWon\u2019t you come home with me?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt as if I had been tasked with living in a certain way, that this would compensate for the fact that Erik never got to grow up.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have to stay down here,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always woke up with a strange feeling in my body, simultaneously sad and comforted, everything felt kind of woozy, like a slight hangover, and I would try to cure it in the same way: a long shower, coffee, a walk. But however far I walked I couldn\u2019t forget that I was the one who had been allowed to live, that I was walking around, I was alive, while Erik was still missing. I ought to be more grateful<\/em>, I thought, I ought to take better care of my life<\/em>, but how do you do that? I felt as if I had been tasked with living in a certain way so that justice would be done, so that this would somehow compensate for the fact that Erik never got to grow up. It was a debilitating thought. Nothing I could do would ever compensate for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

I ate at work on the evenings when I was there. I had a thirty-minute break, I would heat up a frozen ready meal in the windowless staff kitchen, where lamps hung from the low ceiling and spread their artificial light on the plants that just about survived in there, like we all did. I ate Findus cheese schnitzel with b\u00e9arnaise sauce and fried potatoes, or rissoles with potato croquettes, herb butter, and cherry tomatoes. Both dishes were salty and greasy, with a few obligatory green beans. I often thought that I ought to make myself a packed dinner to bring in, I ought to start eating better, but it never happened. I also hated the idea of my coworkers taking an interest in what I had, with curious looks and comments. That\u2019s the way they behaved with one another, especially the slightly older colleagues who clearly cooked delicious and nutritious dinners and brought in the leftovers. It felt personal, private: as long as I ate ready meals, I wasn\u2019t responsible for what was in them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I was going straight home from my art class I often bought something tasty for dinner, usually from the Chinese restaurant on the way. It was like a throwback to Sweden as it used to be, with old men drinking beer and reading the evening papers in a big restaurant where I had never seen more than a handful of customers. A neglected aquarium stood in one corner, while a TV mounted on the wall was showing the day\u2019s lottery draw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man at the till recognized me and was always pleasant. I usually ordered chicken with cashew nuts, or occasionally a chicken dish flavored with ginger, maybe beef in a dark soy sauce with onions or bamboo shoots, it was perfectly ordinary food, delicious in a perfectly ordinary way that I liked. The portions were generous, there was always enough for at least two meals, so even though I was buying takeout pretty often, it wasn\u2019t really expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would sit at a table and leaf through Expressen<\/em> while I waited, glancing at one or two album reviews. Then I would collect my bag containing the warm plastic boxes and cut across the square to my apartment. Winter was almost over and you could sense spring in the twilight now, it was cold outside, there were still gritty patches of ice on the ground, but the thin strip of light that clung to the horizon lingered for a little bit longer each day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Home was a sublet in one of the big blocks on Wieselgrensplatsen. It was close to the tram stop and several large grocery stores, sometimes there was a florist\u2019s stall in the square selling cheap, lovely plants, I filled both the apartment and the glassed-in balcony with them because it wasn\u2019t particularly cozy, it was an impersonal mixture of IKEA and old stuff that seemed to have finished up there by chance, nothing really went together. And yet I was happy there, the location suited me very well: the big building on the modest square that had a small-town feel, it managed to be magnificent and unassuming at the same time, carefully and benevolently designed in the finest tradition of the Swedish welfare state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otherwise I wasn\u2019t too fond of Gothenburg, I thought it was oddly planned, a collection of different parts of the city randomly thrown together, a kind of limbo where you waited for life to begin for real, hopefully somewhere that wasn\u2019t Gothenburg. In fact the entire city was like an enlarged version of my workplace: a temporary stop on the way to something else. It didn\u2019t feel as if anything was really real in Gothenburg, I always thought: it\u2019s cool that you have a morning paper, but it isn\u2019t a real morning paper. Cool that you have art schools, but they\u2019re not real art schools. Cool that you have a city, but it\u2019s not a real city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hisingen was also a weird place, the suburbs were sort of eating their way into the city center but were hindered by a bridge that could actually be opened; if they wanted to they could stop us from getting into the city, raise the drawbridge and shut us out. Hisingen was city yet not city, it was intersections and suburbs and large grocery stores, a place to catch a bus that would take you even farther away, McDonald\u2019s at Backaplan shopping center that was a fragment of the real world, between old men boozing and parking lots and superstores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My hallway was small and dark, I picked up the mail: mostly advertising leaflets, a bill, and then a window envelope that looked both formal and fun at the same time. The edges were decorated with a border of balloons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere does the time go? It\u2019s crazy, right?\u201d it said in a cheery typeface on the piece of paper inside. \u201cIt\u2019s ten years since you left high school, and to celebrate Reunions R Us are inviting you and everyone else who graduated from your school in 1994 to a party. A party that will go on all night long! With music from back in the day, of course\u2014will you have the nerve to ask the person you had a crush on to join you in a slow dance this time?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t want my food to go cold, so I tipped one portion onto a plate and sat down at the table with the invitation in front of me. The party was to be held in the school dining hall, a simple three-course menu would be served, drinks at cost price, please inform the organizers of any food intolerances or allergies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was no longer in touch with anyone from Kolm\u00e5rden, not even Marcus. After graduating he had moved to Lund and I had come to Gothenburg, and we had stopped communicating. I googled him occasionally, he had already achieved a doctorate in theology. There was a small picture of him next to the presentation of his research on the university\u2019s home page, and he looked just the same, but older, more serious. He had written essays and articles with titles such as \u201cImagining the apocalypse\u2014revealing the revelations of Nordic folk tales,\u201d and \u201cDoes God live in the forest? Animalistic features in 20th-century Swedish literature.\u201d It all looked very highbrow, it made me feel inferior to him in a way that I found frustrating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout high school I had thought that I would make something special of my life. It had annoyed me that many of my classmates had such a casual attitude, bordering on indifference, to the future at the age of fifteen. Didn\u2019t they have any dreams? My grades were good, I was going to study, move far away, maybe overseas. I would live in a place where no one knew who I was, where my life was not tainted by my past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I often thought of the evening when Marcus and I were at The Burger King on Drottninggatan, when it felt as though we had sealed an unspoken pact. \u201cI\u2019m going to leave too,\u201d I had said, it was as if it became possible when I spoke those words. \u201cOf course you are,\u201d he\u2019d said, and we both did it, we left Kolm\u00e5rden, but for what purpose? Those who stayed probably had better lives than me, who couldn\u2019t get into a proper art school and spent the evenings asking people what brands of jelly they were familiar with. Not exactly something to boast about at a school reunion. I could imagine the surprise on their faces, the way they had to bite their tongues to stop themselves from saying what they were thinking: that they had expected me to be doing something considerably more impressive by this stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

I had started running in the evenings, and as the spring progressed, I ran more and more. Every evening when I wasn\u2019t working, because there was nothing I liked more than spring evenings, and at the same time nothing I liked less. I ran to be absorbed by the atmosphere, the shimmering magic of the blue hour along the quaysides of Eriksberg, then through the residential areas where everything was bursting into life, a suburbia with rhubarb leaves like ears directed at space, perhaps the rustle of a hedgehog moving through last year\u2019s brown leaves, it was like running straight back to my childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Running was a solitary pastime, anonymous in a way that appealed to me. It was one of the few situations where I felt as if I were no one. No one took any notice of a runner who was out when everyone else was out running too, and even though the quaysides and the shopping mall parking lots were busy in the evenings, I could run there without anyone paying attention to me, a body among other bodies, without a specific errand, with no goal other than to keep moving. I particularly liked mild, misty evenings, it was as if I became one with them, dissolved and became part of them, I turned up the volume in my earbuds and increased my speed, felt my heart pounding, felt the blood pumping through my veins, felt that I was alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time it was those spring evenings I was trying to run away from, because they were revolting, the misleading hope of the lighter evening, the false promise that everything would return. Sometimes the memory of Erik seemed so distant that I began to doubt whether it had really happened. Whether I had actually had a brother. Maybe it was just something I had dreamed, an intense dream full of details, but a dream nevertheless. I had absorbed the memory, just as a mussel places layer after layer of mother-of-pearl over a grain of sand, I had buried it inside me, turned it into a hard, shimmering sorrow deep, deep inside. It was like an echo from eternity, a myth from ancient times, a whisper from space: Once upon a time I was a part of something else, something bigger. Once upon a time I was whole. Once upon a time I had a brother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An excerpt from Mount Verity by Therese Bohman The sound in the large room was subdued, kind of muffled. 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