Handling the Undead Read Online Free PDF

Japanese gadget that could translate the meaning of dogs' barks. Siamese twins separated. A man who had built a house of tin cans in Lubeck. There was no photograph of the Japanese machine, so he searched for a picture of a Labrador and attached that. Sent it ' to the paper.

    Then he read an email from one of his old sources in the police who wondered how things were going for him these days, it had been : a long time. He replied that things were hell, that his grandson had .: died two months ago and that he considered suicide daily. Deleted it without sending.

    The shadows on the floor had grown longer, it was past seven. He stood up out of the chair, massaging his temples. Went out into the kitchen and fetched a beer from the fridge, drank half of it standing up, wandered back to the living room. Ended up next to the couch.

    On the floor below the arm of the couch there was the Fortress.

    It had been a present to Elias on his sixth birthday four months earlier. The biggest Lego fortress. They had built it together and afterwards they had played with it in the afternoons, arranging knights in different places, making up stories, rebuilding and extending. Now it stood there just as they had left it.

    Every time Mahler saw it, it hurt. Each time he thought he should throw it away or at the very least take it to pieces, but he couldn't.

    Most likely it would stay there as long as he lived, just as he would take the necklace to the grave.

    Elias, Elias ...

    The abyss opened inside him. Panic came, the pressure on his chest. He hurried to the computer, logged into one of his porn sites. Sat and clicked for an hour, without so much as a movement in his groin. Only indifference, revulsion.

    Shortly after nine he logged out and shut down the computer. The screen wouldn't turn off. He couldn't be bothered with it. The headache had started to press on the insides of his eyes, making him agitated. He walked around the apartment a few times, drank another beer; finally stopped and crouched in front of the fortress.

    One of the Lego knights had leaned over the edge of the tower, exactly like he was shouting something to the enemy trying to break the door down.

    'Watch out or I'll pour out the contents of our toilet on you!' Mahler had said in a creaky voice and Elias had laughed until he lost his breath, shouting, 'More! More!' and Mahler had gone through all the terrible things that a knight could conceivably pour on someone else. Rotten yogurt.

    Mahler picked up the piece, turned it in his fingers. The knight had a silver helmet that partially concealed his resolute facial expression. The little sword he held in his hands was still shiny. The colour had flaked off the ones Elias had at home. Mahler looked at the shiny sword and two realisations dropped down through him like black stones.

    This sword will always remain shiny. I will never play, ever again.

    He replaced the knight, stared at the wall. I will never play, ever again.

    In the grief after Elias he had gone over all the things that he would never get to do again: walks in the forest, the playground,  juice and sweet rolls at the cafe, the zoo park and more and more and more. But there it was, in all its simplicity: he would never play again, and that was not restricted to Legos and hide-the-key. With Elias' death, he had lost not only his playmate but also his desire to play.

    That was why he couldn't write, that was why pornography no longer stirred him and why the minutes went by so slowly. He couldn't fantasise any longer, make things up. It should have been a blessed state, to live only in what is, what exists before one's eyes, not to refashion the world. Should have been. But it wasn't.

    Mahler fingered the scar from the operation on his chest. Life is what we choose to make it.

    He had lost his vigour, was chained to an overweight body that he would have to drag around joylessly in the days and years to come. He saw this, in a sudden realisation, and