Benny & Shrimp Read Free

was run over by a lorry early one morning, on his bike on his way to watch the mating display of the capercaillie . He was listening to a tape of birdcalls on his personal stereo – either he didn’t hear the lorry and veered out in front of it, or the driver fell asleep at the wheel.
    This sober little stone in front of me is all I’ve got left. And I’m furious with him for leaving me like that, without even discussing it first… Now I’ll never find out who he was.
    I got my notebook out of my bag. It’s a little blue book with stiff covers and a bright blue sailing boat on the front. And I wrote:
    Of course the edges of the wound struggle to close up and the clock wants to be set going
    I honestly don’t imagine that what I’m doing in my notebook is creating Poetry. I’m just trying to capture existence in images. I do that most days, rather as other people write to-do lists to impose some order on their daily lives. No one need ever read them – I don’t tell other people my dreams, either. Everyone has their own method for getting a grip on life.
    The Forest Owner was watching me furtively from the side. You stare if you like, I thought, and it’s fine by me if you think I’m an Organised Housewife doing her weekly budget.
    Just as I was unscrewing the top of my fountain pen (I’ve managed to get hold of one – when you’re putting your thoughts into words, it has to be in proper ink), a mother came along with a little girl of about three or four trotting beside her to the grave on the other side of the Forest Owner’s. The girl had a shiny little watering can, which was bright pink and looked brand new, and she was carrying it as if it were the crown jewels. The mother began to busy herself with tapering vases and bouquets in rustling paper, while the girl skipped around the gravestone pouring dribbles of water from her can. Suddenly she clapped her hand over her mouth; she looked petrified, her eyes as round as marbles: “Oh, Mummy! I watered the writing! Now Grandpa will be really cross, won’t he?”
    I felt the corners of my mouth twitch and threw a glance at the Forest Owner. And at the same instant, he looked at me.
    He smiled too. And…
    There’s no way of describing that smile without resorting to the wonderful world of cheesy song lyrics.
    It had sun and wild strawberries and birds singing and expanses of glittering water in it. And it was directed at me, trusting and proud as if he were a child presenting me with a misshapen birthday gift. The corners of my mouth were still stretched wide. And an arc of light flashed between us, I’d still swear it even today – a blue one like my physics teacher could produce with that special generator thing of his. Three hours passed, or maybe three seconds.
    Then we turned our heads to face the front, simultaneously , as if we were both being operated by the same string. The sun went behind the clouds and I just sat there, replaying his smile in slow motion inside my eyelids .
    If Märta, my best or possibly only friend Märta, had told me about a smile like the one the Forest Owner and I had just exchanged, I’d have thought she was showing her usual capacity for rewriting reality into something bigger and more beautiful.
    I envy her for it. My own tendency is to think that a baby’s smile is just wind; a falling star is very likely a TV satellite crashing out of orbit; birdsong is full of territorial threats; and Jesus probably never existed, at least not then and not there.
    “Love” is how a species answers the need for genetic variation, otherwise you could easily just take cuttings from the females.
    Of course I know there are strong forces operatingbetween men and women. Your egg is sloshing around in there wanting nothing better than to be fertilised by some suitable sperm. The whole machinery jolts into action whenever any of it comes within reach.
    But what I wasn’t prepared for was the sperm container smiling like that! The egg did