Benny & Shrimp Read Online Free PDF

got a boyish fringe with a sprinkling of grey hairs, which falls down over his eyes when he gets enthusiastic about something, and long white hands with which he makes elegant gestures. I think it’s a habit he got into when he studied at the Sorbonne in his youth.
    We had kebabs, I drank wine and Olof had a cloudy Belgian beer that made him wax lyrical and toss his fringe. Then we discussed Lacan and Kristeva and Gregorian chants and after that we went back to my place and made love. It was quite okay, really; I’d gone without for so long.
    But my ovaries didn’t sit up and take notice that time, either.
    When we’d got up and showered and finished off my Pernod, he showed me photos of his two children and told me in great detail about the brace his daughter had on her teeth. Then he cried. I think we were both relieved when he left.
    This was followed by several days when I didn’t think about the Forest Owner. That’s obviously what you haveto do to put your ovaries in their place. You take an occasional lover at bedtime to keep the system ticking over. My interest in the Forest Owner was just a symptom of some deficiency, a bit like brittle nails indicating a shortage of vitamin B. A few yeast tablets, and everything’s in trim again.

 

     
    I’m a Saddo, in fact, the Prize Saddo of all Sweden. I shall end up in the Folk Museum in Stockholm, stuffed. I’m aware of it every time I go into town, and pretty often in between as well, like when I’m watching telly. I’ve got no business being in the twentieth century, at least, not this end of it. And that applies to my image as well as to my way of thinking.
    I’m from the country and go around dressed in a random selection of gear I ordered from the Halén’s catalogue. Thirty-six, that means I’m on the shelf by our village’s standards. The women seldom spare me an extra glance. Things have gone downhill in a big way since I was the best javelin thrower in the school… twenty years ago! My God, where did those years go? Aquarter of my life’s passed me by while my nose has been buried in the milking records!
    But it’s not just my clothes that make me a saddo; there are plenty of people here in the country who dress like me, and are quite happy looking like that. It’s more a case of feeling increasingly often that I must be a bit dim, to put it mildly. No common sense. Suppose I’ve spent too long with just the cows for company.
    Take the day before yesterday, for example. It was All Saints’ Day. Every All Saints’ Day since Dad died, when I was seventeen, Mum and I would go to the cemetery to light a little grave light. Mum always bought a wreath with plastic pine cones or lilies, so it would stay looking nice, because we were too busy to get to the cemetery very often. Now she was lying there, and I wanted her to have a wreath like that, too.
    At the cemetery gates I ran into the beige woman. I thought she’d be looking at me warily, afraid Smarmy Benny might fire off his lunatic smile at her again, so I knitted my brow and gave a curt nod as I passed her.
    And then.
    It was as if someone had punched me between the eyes.
    I felt disappointed she was going! For several weeks I’d been telling myself it was nice to have the bench to myself and sit there meditating. But now I wanted her there beside me. I wanted to know where she went when she wasn’t in the cemetery.
    I turned round and followed her at a distance. People looked startled to see me lumbering along clutching awreath and a grave light, especially as I crouched down behind parked vehicles every now and then, afraid she was about to turn round.
    But she didn’t. She walked briskly halfway across town and into the library.
    Didn’t I just know it! She looked like somebody who reads books all the time, voluntarily. Long ones, with small print and no pictures.
    I hovered indecisively at the entrance. Even the Prize Saddo of all Sweden realised you don’t just waltz into the library