Read Online The Spring Tide by Cilla Börjlind, Rolf Börjlind - Free Book Online Page A

all normal concepts of time. He found himself in a timeless nothing. He fetched magazines, sold magazines, ate sometimes, looked for reasonably safe places to sleep. Places where he would be left in peace. Where nobody would be fighting or singing or dreaming noisily horrendous nightmares. Some time ago he had found an old wooden shack, with part of the roof caved in, it was off the beaten track some way outside the city.
    It was a place he could die, when the time came.
    Now he was on his way there.
    * * *
    The TV screen was on the wall in a sparsely furnished room. A rather large screen. Now you could get hold of a forty-two-inch screen for next to nothing. Especially if you weren’t fussy about where you bought it. That was how this TV had been obtained, the TV which was now being watched by two youths with hoods on their jackets. One of them zapped a bit feverishly between different channels. Suddenly the other one reacted.
    ‘Hey! Look!’
    The zapper had tuned in to a channel where a man was being bombarded with kicks.
    ‘Hell man, it’s that bloke in the park! It’s our fucking film!’
    A couple of seconds later, a female presenter appeared on the screen and introduced a current affairs programme that had replaced something else at short notice.
    ‘That was a short excerpt from one of the controversial film clips showing extreme violence on the Trashkick site. We shall shortly be discussing this.’
    She made a gesture with her arm towards the wings.
    ‘Here is a well-known journalist who has written about major social problems for many years: drugs, escort activities, trafficking… Now she is working on a series of articles about violence and youth – Eva Carlsén!’
    The woman who entered the studio was dressed in black jeans and a black jacket with a white T-shirt underneath. Her blonde hair was worn up and her reasonably high heels carried a body in good physical shape. She was approaching fifty and knew what she was doing. She made her presence felt without any effort.
    Carlsén sat down on a studio armchair.
    ‘Welcome. A few years ago you wrote a book that attracted a lot of attention; it was a report on so-called escort services in Sweden, escort being a euphemism for luxury prostitution, but now you are concentrating on juvenile violence. This is how you introduce your series of articles…’
    The presenter held up a newspaper.
    ‘A feeling of anxiety is the mother of evil, and violence is a cry of help from a child who has gone astray. Anxiety is the breeding ground for the meaningless juvenile violence we see today. Anxiety is growing up in a society where you are not needed.’
    The presenter lowered the newspaper and looked at Carlsén.
    ‘Strong words. Is the situation really that serious?’
    ‘Yes and no. When I write “the meaningless juvenile violence” I am, of course, referring to a specific violence, the perpetrators are specific individuals, in a limited degree. It is not the case that all young people engage in violence, in general; on the contrary, this is about a fairly small group.’
    ‘But, nevertheless, we have all been shocked by the films that have been posted online, where homeless people have been brutally beaten up. Who are they, the people that do this?’
    ‘They are damaged children, deep down, abused children, children who have never had an opportunity to develop empathy – because they have been let down by the adult world. Now they react to their experience of having been abused and vent their anger on people who they think are even more worthless then they themselves are, in this case the homeless.’
    ‘Hell, that’s fucking rubbish!’
    It was the guy in the dark green jacket who reacted. His mate reached out for the remote.
    ‘Hang on! I want to hear this.’
    On the screen, the presenter shook her head a little.
    ‘So who is to blame?’
she asked.
    ‘We are all to blame. Every one of us who has created a society where young people can end up so far