Read Online Broken by Karin Fossum - Free Book Online Page B

exaggerated his breathing, making it deep and even, and felt how tired he was. Of course, it was naive to think that nothing would ever happen to him. Something happened to most people, and surely he was no exception. But what would happen to him? He sensed unease, a touch of dread. But he could see nothing in his future to fear. He sat upright in bed, then went out into the bathroom and drank a glass of water. That was it, he thought. It was thirst, nothing more. He returned to his bed and lay down, closed his eyes. Certainly there was an interference in the silence that he had never been aware of before. Why had he suddenly started noticing things? Perhaps there’s something missing in my life? A distraction. He kept thinking about the cat. He wanted a gray one. He wanted a tom. He could put an ad in the paper, or he could think about it, at any rate. Again he turned over in his bed. It was strange. Something in his life was upsetting him; he had a premonition of upheaval. And he could not understand it.
    However, the next morning everything was as it always had been.
He contemplated the previous night and remembered his uneasiness, but it had passed. He shaved in front of the mirror in the bathroom. The growth of his beard was exceedingly modest, but he enjoyed the ritual even though strictly speaking he could get away with shaving every other day. He used a razor. He liked going out into the fresh air and feeling the unique sensation that newly shaved skin always gave him. The weather was a little overcast, and he walked along easily and contentedly. A steady flow of people was heading for the town center. Big wheels turning, he thought. We keep this machine in motion, we don’t give up. It’s touching. What if we all were to lie down and give up? It was inconceivable. It was a question of keeping death at arm’s length. It will come to us, but we pretend it won’t, because it’s obviously not going to happen today, and probably not tomorrow either, and definitely not next week. That too is touching, he thought. He was not scared of dying. But on one occasion he had articulated the following thought to himself: The last thing you lose is your hearing. So it was possible that he could be lying in a bed and someone would be sitting by his side checking that his breathing and heartbeat had ceased, someone who would then say: He’s gone. That he might, in fact, lie there for several seconds knowing that he had just died. What would that be like? Was it the case that some people experienced such a moment? A moment they could never tell anyone about? As far as his own death was concerned he had few wishes, but he hoped that he would be lying in his own bed when it happened. It was less important to him whether he was alone or might have a caretaker sitting beside his bed. Many died alone.
    He walked on and began to wonder why he was so preoccupied with death. Perhaps it was the previous day’s uneasiness manifesting itself after all? No, he was in the midst of life and that was the time when such thoughts arose. Children and the young are immortal, he thought, and that is their privilege, but in the end it comes to us all. I’m of an age when I start to reflect, and it is a good age. I’m better off now as an adult than I was as a child. Not that I had a bad childhood, not at all. My parents were kind and loving. True, they were shy bordering on awkward. He could find nothing to reproach them for, yet something had been missing. A sense of belonging. He remembered Magnus, a friend from his childhood, who had moved away the summer they both turned thirteen and whom he had never seen again. After Magnus he never made another friend. But he managed fine on his own. Again he thought about other people and how they sought each other out. Not to mention men and women and their eternal search for love. He did not comprehend that either. Did they consider themselves incomplete without a partner? And then there was sex. He