— Please… Couldn’t I just buy some paraffin?

*

I am a writer, and my name is Åke… Åke Lundgren.

The story about Konrad is a short selection from one of my novels, called Kvacksalvarna in Swedish, a novel that was published in 1988 and is about my own ancestors, including my grandfather. He was a self-taught doctor, or a "nature-healer" of the kind that was found in the old days and in all reality it was he who just related the story; the words were Grandfather’s.

The story about Konrad really says all there is to say about life:

There are certain things one can’t do without!

Such as love …

As I said: my name is Åke, and if you think that Åke sounds difficult or strange — the letter Å isn’t found in all alphabets — you are welcome to call me OK. Not because I am completely OK, but because it sounds pretty close to the way it should.

Everything means something and Åke means little father. It so happens that I’m married to a woman by the name of Eva, which means the life giver, and after I had written my first novel, I said to her:

— We’re going to have one child per book!

Since then, I’ve written nineteen books…

You have to be careful about what you say and not imagine you are something special. I think I’ll settle for the three children we have, because that is quite an accomplishment in itself.

My oldest son, born in 1979, is named Eric Gösta Samuel, which means something along the lines of The sole ruling Geatish staff whose name is God. When he was little, he dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but now he only lives for music.

His younger brother, whose name is Hans (which is the same as Johannes), was born in 1982 and his name means He who helps God; that is to say his older brother. He has always lived for music.

And then of course we have our daughter Ylva, born in 1991, now ten years old. I of course have no idea what will become of her — you can’t know everything! — but her name means she-wolf, which is exactly what she is. When she was still small she talked constantly; there were very few moments when she was quiet, and sometimes, when it was at its worst, I would ask her:

— Please dear! Can’t you keep quiet for a little while? My ears are getting sore.

But she would just answer:

— No, I can’t manage that!

*

Such is my life. I live in a village called Malå in Lapland, approximately 120 kilometres in the interior of the country. But I haven’t always lived there. There are two areas I call home.

I was born, believe it or not, almost 50 years ago. It took place in a small village called Kusmark, not far from the outskirts of the town called Skellefteå. My parents were farmers, and on this particular day — it was in the autumn — the family was out digging up potatoes. This included my four sisters, my father and mother.

Yes, Mother was there too, even though she was pregnant and even though she was so far along.

Suddenly, according to Father, her leg began to hurt. That’s what they used to say when a woman was about to give birth:

Her leg began to hurt!

So Mother hurried home to the farm and gave birth to a little boy in the bed in the nursery. It was no more remarkable than that.

Father was so pleased that he finally had a boy that he placed an advertisement in the newspaper.

But my sisters were not nearly as pleased. Father hadn’t placed any advertisements about them; they were only "girls". But he probably never noticed, now he finally had a boy: the one who was going to take over the farm.

In the end, there were seven of us, five girls and two boys.

Need I add that it was one of the girls — my little sister — who took over the farm?

*

You have to be careful of what you say and also what you do, but perhaps Father should be forgiven, because I don’t think he could possibly imagine that the world would change one day and turn into something else. He was a farmer, lived as his ancestors had done, couldn’t anticipate what was to come.

I myself discovered the world from the birch tree out by the road. I sat there and looked out over the landscape and saw the meadows and the forest and the world was so small it could almost fit in my hand. I saw horses and cows, but seldom cars, since this was in the days before TV had made its appearance.

This was when preachers bicycled around with their colourful newspapers and proclaimed the coming of Paradise, but I couldn’t understand it, because I was already living in Paradise.

That was before computers and the Internet. Gagarin hadn’t gone up into space yet, no one had seen the backside of the moon and no one had ever heard of The Beatles.

But there was music and one-day Father came home with a radiogramophone. Mother would rather have had a washing machine, she felt we needed that more, but Father came home with a gramophone and after that day music was a constant inhabitant in our house, the house in which I experienced my childhood and that I called The House of Dreams.

It was a house full of life. My sisters bickered over who was better: Elvis or Tommy Steele. But I soon learned that they were both wrong because then The Beatles finally turned up and the world was no longer the same, and Mother shook her head and sighed:

— Dear Lord, the way they look! And the way they sound!

But I thought it was fantastic, something new, a revolution! Together with a few friends I started a pop band and perhaps we really believed we would change the world with our music. We stayed together for a few years during the 60’s and our name doesn’t really matter, for there probably aren’t too many who still remember us, but it was a time of dreams, and if there is one thing we need, it’s dreams.

I dreamed of getting the chance to sing.

*

But the truth be told, Grandfather was just as much a singer, he was a "lead singer" at the meetinghouse back home in the village, it was his job to lead the others in song. But he couldn’t help himself; he chose a key that was so high no one else could follow, and so he got to sing solo.

Which was the whole idea…

I was ten when grandfather died and I remember the way he sang his way through life. Without singing he would never have managed, since he didn’t have such an easy time of it, with Grandmother being sick so often. But it seemed as though singing brought him comfort.

There were probably plenty of others who were in the same sort of situation, now that I think about it. They sang or whistled their way through life. They sang and worked, because it made things easier that way.

They talked and told stories, used humour as a weapon against sorrow and hard times. They were all, to some extent, writers. But they didn’t put their stories down on paper because that would be going too far and putting on airs and people shouldn’t imagine they were anything special.

In the evenings, after work, Father sat with the other men out by the road and told stories, while I sat hidden in the birch tree and listened and committed them to memory. And without all those stories, I would hardly have become the person I am, since that is what I do: keep the stories alive.

And I can still remember how I would follow Father out into the forest, how he would stop work and say:

— Time to think things over!

That meant that we sat down and took a break. We listened to the wind and the birds, and pondered over our time here on Earth.

Or else there was something Father wanted to tell me about.

*

When I was little I read a fairytale, or maybe someone read the fairytale to me. It was a fairytale about a rabbit that lived in a world without colour. I don’t know who wrote it, perhaps it’s very old and perhaps it has been around for a long time and been told in many countries. It was a fairytale about a lonely rabbit.

Lonely — until he found Love.

He met a girl rabbit and you know how rabbits are: when they get together it doesn’t take long before there are a lot of them.

That’s what happened this time, too. Out of that one family there grew an entire village and then a town, and in order for all of these rabbits to have something to do, the father rabbit put them to work.

They painted stones and trees and everything they could find and they all took great pleasure in bringing colour into the world.

Finally, the rabbit was so old he was grandfather.

Grandfather Long-ears.

He then gathered all the rabbit children around him and told them that he was about to embark on a long journey, that he wouldn’t return. The children were of course saddened and didn’t want to hear of it, but Father Long-ears told them not to be sad. Instead, they should all come out of their houses after he’d gone, they should look up into the sky and he would send them one last message.

That night, the sky — which up until then had been colourless — was filled with all the colours in the world.

And I wonder if that’s not the reason we’re here:

To bring colour into the world!

*

It was a time for dreams and The Beatles sang:

All you need is love …

But it wasn’t really true, because we also need a lot more. For example, Friendship.

When I was a little boy I had a friend that we can call Rikard, even if that wasn’t his real name.

Everything means something and Rikard means powerful and strong. He lived down in the church village; I lived a little ways outside. We got along well and became best friends and together we discovered the world, bit for bit.

I was frail, maybe also a bit afraid, but Rikard gave me strength.

But then I found out there was something about him, something I didn’t understand. And there was something about his mother. Rikard didn’t have a father and his mother didn’t have a husband and therefore they were not quite as good as the rest of us, but I couldn’t understand it, because I liked them so much.

One summer, Rikard disappeared out of my life, he was taken away from me, and it was as if the world lost all its colour.

Since then, I have been trying to bring colour back into the world and I imagine that was why I became a writer.

I have written about alienated people, children and adults. I have written about those who are different, real and imaginary. But it could be that I’ve been writing about Rikard and his mother the whole time, because I still can’t understand it:

That certain people aren’t quite as good as others…

*

There are many writers from Västerbotten, where I am at the moment, many of them from the area around Skelleteå. Among the best known are Sara Lidman, Torgny Lindgren and P O Enquist, but they aren’t the only ones. Västerbotten abounds with writers.

It may seem surprising, but then again, maybe not.

In a village called Kågeträsk, a dozen or so miles from here, there was a man named Zackrisson who lived several hundred years ago. We are all his descendants; he is our common point of origin.

Or is it a legacy?

Yes, perhaps in many ways. We share a world that I used to think was the only one. We share the forests, the meadows, the water, the memories, the stories…

And the language.

We have a dialect here called bondska, the language of farmers. It is a language filled with colour and translating it is hardly possible because then those colours would be hopelessly lost.

A language doomed to disappear? Possibly. Now that English is becoming so dominant it’s more a question of whether or not the three final letters in the Swedish alphabet — Å, Ä and Ö — will survive in the future.

And then boys will no longer be named Åke.

Ake or Aake (which is the way my name is spelled on airline tickets) is not quite the same.

*

But naturally the world should change; it should be in constant change. We’re meant to change it, and that’s the reason for our being here: to bring colour into the world!

In my most recently published book, En tid av drömmar, I write:

It happened in another time, a world that no longer exists — and perhaps never has existed…

*

We live in a new world, a different world. It has grown — and at the same time become smaller. We know so much more, yet have so much left to learn.

This is where I believe that literature, music, art and everything that grants us comfort is needed. In order to grow closer to each other and recognize each other’s value. In order to acquaint ourselves with each other’s worlds.

I have written a novel, Polykarpus dröm. It’s a story about a man who sings more beautifully than anyone else, who lives for his dream and who does everything to realize it.

This book may be my greatest lie, but I believe it contains a certain element of truth:

And without that substance, no person is truly alive.

*

To love and to create. Those things that I cannot live without…

But at times it just doesn’t work. I can’t write. That’s what happened when I wrote Polykarpus dröm; I came to a certain point and hit a dead end. I couldn’t get past it.

Then two angels appeared in my workroom, two angels each weighing one hundred kilos, my neighbours and friends, who are truck drivers. They looked at me and said:

— Now Åke, stop this business! Writing isn’t anything for a man. Let’s go fishing up in the mountains. That’s what men do!

You don’t argue with someone who weighs twice as much as you, so we went off fishing for a few days. During the nights we lived in a little ark, a kind of house-trailer on runners of the sort found everywhere in the mountains. The ark was cramped and the "angels" immediately decided that one of them would sleep on the left side, the other on the right. I was to lay like a boundary line down the middle. I didn’t understand why.

The angels slept like small children and one of them immediately began to snore. This proved to be contagious, for the other joined in straight away. I lay there in an ark in the mountains and heard it all in stereo.

Then one of the angels began to talk in his sleep and it was interesting. I tried to remember what he said, but then he started to sing instead.

Still, I didn’t get really worried until the same angel started mumbling mmmmmmmm as he lay there and then lifted up his left leg and was in the process of rolling over on top of me, but by then I’d had enough.

I went out and stood alone in the night. There were stars shining everywhere over my head. It was extremely beautiful. I was almost certain I heard a voice say:

— Isn’t it marvellous!

And I knew exactly what I was going to write…

Colour my world with love!