Excerpts from
The Relentless Ones
By Jens-Martin Eriksen
The dickybird is calling, Monika Foss, Iīll wait a little while to tell my story, and you still donīt believe what I say, thereīs not enough there for you to say that itīs true, that this is a true story. But you can get up, you can go over and open the window, and then a little while later there isnīt any more. In half an hour youīll have asked about the same things you always do, and your friends standing outside, the dickybirds, they asked about the same things, itīs sort of a ritual, no one wants to know anything, they already know everything, while they drink and talk and smoke and laugh, and thatīs all that happens. Find out about whatever you want, Monika Foss, if you want to hear my story weīll come each other, after a while weīll come to each other. But you probably also want to know whether Iīm attracted to you, donīt you, thatīs what youīre asking me about, because if I wasnīt then I wouldnīt keep it up. All right, Monika Foss, but doubt your words when you use a sentence like that, that youīre attracted to me, you say I have to reply to that, I have to say why you want to hear my story. So doubt those words, and this sentence!
We get embarrassed, we donīt dare look, we get drunk, we flail around, we roll in the grass, we donīt dare look up, we act like kids, we say we arenīt ourselves, not right at the second when something is not yet decided, when we donīt know yet whether the world is the way we think it is: whether the person weīre asking has the same world we do. In short: we donīt know whether our reality is the true one, whether our story is the true, valid one, or whether the whole thing is some crazy, untrue story.
But youīre the one Iīm asking, I donīt mean your name, who you are, you, not your dream image either, I mean behind you, not just this dream image that you stand in front of the mirror for a while each morning just to get into focus, and not the one haunting you inside either, from way down deep, but behind your sin, this unsaid thing, there.
So, you go out to the bathroom and then you look at yourself in the mirror. And if itīs a moment like now, when Iīm asking you, Monika Foss, now itīs you Iīm asking, now itīs me doing it, then you stare, and then later you talk. Talk. Inside yourself. And you see someone in front of you, there in the mirror, and all that skin, right, and maybe little scars, they all tell a story, a kind of story. But whoīs the one thatīs asking? Itīs as if you have to stick your whole arm down your throat to catch yourself doing it! I donīt know. I donīt know any more who I am, I come her. Iīm saying this to you.
Are we tired of anecdotes? We canīt go on unless we are. Otherwise, let it be. Answer the dickybird and youīve never heard my questions, youīve never heard the begining of my story, I can cry, it doesnīt make any difference.
Translated by Steven T. Murray
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