An extract from The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson

After a few days of the virus in my body I come down with a fever, which is followed by an urge to return to a particular novel. It’s only once I sit down in bed and open the book that I understand why. There’s an inscription on the title page, made in blue ballpoint and inimitable handwriting: 

May 29, 1996 

Get well soon. 
There are crêpes and cider at Fyra Knop. I’m waiting until we can go there again. 
Kisses (they would prefer to be on your lips), 
Johanna  

It was malaria back then; I’d been infected a couple of weeks prior by an East African mosquito in a tent outside of the Serengeti and fell sick once we were home again. I was admitted to Hudiksvall Hospital and nobody could understand why all my results were off the charts; when at last they gave me the diagnosis, the doctors lined up to get a look at the 

woman with the exotic affliction. A fire blazed behind my brow, and I woke at dawn every morning at the hospital from the sound of my own breathing and a headache unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. Following our trip to Tanzania, I’d gone straight to Hälsingland to visit my grandfather on his deathbed. Instead I fell ill and nearly died myself. I spent more than a week at the hospital, but by the time Johanna gave me this novel, I was curled up in our bedroom in Hägersten, where they had taken me by ambulance via a liver biopsy in Uppsala. I don’t remember the results – there’s not much I can recall from that summer – but I’ll never forget our apartment, the book, or her. The novel disappeared inside the fever and headache, fused with them, and somewhere in that mix is the line that runs all the way to today, a vein of emotion electrified by illness and fear, which is what propels me to the bookcase on this afternoon to find that specific novel. Ruthless fever and headache, fretful thoughts crowding behind the eyes, the whooshing of impending distress: I recognise it all because I’ve experienced it before – the boxes of useless painkillers on the floor by the bed, the bottles of sparkling water I guzzle without any reprieve to my thirst. The images start rolling the instant I shut my eyes: horses’ hooves in a dry desert, dank basements full of mute ghosts, big vowels screaming at me – it’s the full standard menu of nightmares I’ve had since I was a small child, only with the added sprinkling of death and annihilation that is the territory of illness. 

There’d be a notebook in front of me, paired with a carefully selected pen, but I rarely made use of these implements. I might have given the impression of being dedicated but I was not, and the book stack on my nightstand always included one or two titles I’d abandoned midway through. I preferred books with a pull so strong I couldn’t get out. It was the same way with most things in life and as a result my responsibilities were few, perhaps too few. In fact I’d rarely encountered a responsibility I didn’t reject. This general principle didn’t make for any ‘clean slates’, and I assume that Johanna could only view my inherent inertia as a challenge. There was something about her speed and enthusiasm that gave me a bit of velocity, made things happen. Maybe this characteristic was what made me feel so safe in our relationship: she had started on me and wouldn’t give up. She wasn’t going anywhere; she’d never yield to an impulse to leave. I relaxed and surrendered. She was so thorough, so affectionate and loyal. Would breaking up ever occur to someone like her? No, I thought. No, never.