One chapter (somewhat abstract) from the book "Echo over the bridge" by Dénis Lindbohm.
The author was called "Nenne" when he was little. He is talking about himself in third person.

The Nice Rooms was forbidden territory for him. Not particularly surprising given that there were fragile objects. And dangerous. One day he was in the first of the rooms along with his grandmother. There was a skinny desktop. Nenne became curious about the things that lay on the table surface and when he gave up the right to watch as he seized hold of the edge of the table and heaved. Whereupon the table tipped - it was really a skinny and light construction. Nenne landed on his back. The table edge hit him in the chest. Had it hit his throat, it could have gone badly.

And the nice couch, with thick padding. He thought it was really fun to bounce on it. The adults did not like that.

In the inner parlour were fragile ornaments of glass, porcelain and plaster. A Jesus with outstretched arms. A discus thrower. Snow-white diagrams of the proper size for a boy UNABLE TO LET THINGS ALONE.

Tall, dark cabinets and agencies. A table with a cloth that was embroidered with raised patterns. In the middle of the table one rank glass vase. A high bookcase with interesting spines of books. Fine stools. Paintings on the walls. Sheer curtains as white as snow. Stillness and serious ceremony. It was very seldom that you were staying in these two rooms.

In that room crept little Nenne one day when he was left alone in the cottage. Bertha could not have been very far away, for if she went off on an errand into the community she brought Nenne with her. Assuming that she had gone to the shed so guess you're right. But the matter must have taken longer than a few minutes, for otherwise would be the little boy not kept pace with what he did. Perhaps the grandmother went chopping wood, giving pigs and chickens food, gather eggs?

Nenne was in the kitchen when Grandma went out. Shortly afterwards he was in the great hall with "the nice entrance" and where he opened the door to the first room. But he passed it on quick little feet and pushed the curtain over the door to the back room.

He looked around in the strict, pure silence. There was cold for the simple reason that it did not cost to heat up the rooms in winter. The chimney stack in the kitchen, beamed certain warmth to the rooms, but it was not very much.

He was alone in the Forbidden Room.

On the wall that had the stove on the other hand, there were paintings and framed photographs. A picture of a lady dressed. Beside it hung a photo in an oval frame of his wonderful mother that he craved. Was it to see the mother that he felt the draw to this place? It is impossible to answer that question. Nenne had felt a strong temptation to go into this room. Now he stood there, his gaze passed the image of mother and got stuck at a square photo to the right of it.

It sat high up, so high that he must put his head back strongly to take a look at it.

Actually sitting there not high, just so high that it was located just above the head of a seated person.

Nenne pushed a chair with cushion seat deal and took himself with difficulty up on it. Later placed a couch at that particular site, but the memory of the incident is quite clear: Nenne shoved a chair a little sideways in order to come up and examine the photo closely.

He looked. The picture was a little child asleep. The child was dressed in a white dress and lay on his back, with his head tilted to the right, towards the viewer. The bed was a box-shaped one. The white veil hung over the box's edges and the foot of the bed was somewhat drab dark with flowers and shiny strips of white cloth. Nenne looked straight at the sleeping girl's face.

And Esta returned from the land of the dead.

Just as quickly as when one turns on a switch and let a dark room get filled with light Esta's memory came to him.

It was not like a weak sense of recognizing the girl, or a fuzzy feeling that "this I have experienced before". There was no ambiguity in his experience.

Whatever Esta's eyes, ears and other senses had been perceived, all that her brain felt the sensations, thoughts and feelings - all of it was abruptly, suddenly, instantly in Nenne's consciousness.

This was accompanied by an emotional explosion.

To describe what Nenne felt in that moment is very difficult. How should we describe an emotional experience of a variety that is probably unique (for how many people may have experienced what Nenne experienced?).

How do you describe seeing to the one who is born blind?

Each description of an experience implies that the listener had anything like this, for him to understand. Feelings, we all have and they should be of a similar nature in each one of us. Mentions that "I came into the deepest sorrow" to know practically all the way this feels. And in cases where one wants to talk about that you became very angry or extremely happy so everyone knows how it feels. But let's say a person completely FRIGID of sexual respect and listen to an erotic experience spoken of by someone who has strong management and strong desire feel? A person of that sort, who does not know of operation strong cravings and lust intense explosion think it sounds exaggerated. And distasteful.

Nenne experienced something that could be called "spiritual orgasm". It was a bliss feeling, a whirling buzz, an exultant ecstasy. It came as a huge wave and walked quickly past.

He experienced a pure clarity - an absolutely clean clarity.

It was like lightning moved into a winter landscape white light. Snow-covered bushes and trees, the ground covered in the pristine snow gleaming cover. Clear whiteness to the horizon and a brilliant blue sky above, with the sun's mighty glory. So it felt. Not cold. The purity and clarity.

Or imagine a huge, translucent wave. A mountain of crystal clear water, sun translucent. Do not think of the wetness or danger, but on the overwhelming and transparent feeling.

Or to stand in the mists and sudden drops the straight down and there is an unobstructed view of infinity. And the light, lots of light.

And to think further on a tone of absolute purity, a crystalline tone, something of incredible beauty clarity. A tone of purity through everything.

But all this is still just the backdrop to the main feeling, a feeling of oneness with everything, a complete fusion of the physical, mental, intellective and emotional fullness. A feeling of being in the middle of everything, to be enclosed, completely united with everyone and everything. As the sap in the trees, the blood in all cells.

It came like an eruption, as a geyser whose outbreaks roars straight up in the endless, bottomless sky.
Swallowing the sun and become one with the ...

The one who crawled up on the chair was a little kid with an age of approximately 18 months. It has stood there for a short while later, another creature. Sure, it was still Nenne - but more than just Nenne. You could say that Nenne was part of his new-born, awake.

He was dizzy. Of course, he was dizzy. Dazed as if he whirled around in a carousel. Confused and drunk with happiness. When Bertha came into the kitchen from the outside and did not hear the slightest sound from Nenne suspect she is of course that he found on mischief. She went on to the hall and saw the open room door. Then it was off to her!

She saw no Nenne in the first place, but found him standing on a chair in the back room, rigidly staring at the photo of the little Esta, who lay dead in her coffin.

But when Bertha lifted Nenne and began to chide him little by little because he entered the parlour, he was quite wild. He began to babble excitedly in so fast that she did not understand what he wanted, but when his hand pointed at the picture of the dead, she explained:

- That is Esta. She is grandma's little girl.

He chattered on like a little maniac and she thought that he wanted to know where Esta was, for she said:

- But Esta is dead, little Nenne. Esta is with God.

That was when he uttered the terrible to her.

He clung to her and looked laughing straight into her eyes and claimed he was her Esta.

She was also deeply affected and carried him quickly to the kitchen, where she was severely admonished him never to go into rooms alone. If he wanted to go there again as he asked nicely and then maybe he could be allowed to go there, but only in adult companionship.

He was not listening. In retrospect, all the wilder tone, he continued to say that he was her little Esta, who had come back.

She was beside himself. Esta had been her sweetheart, who has been separated from her ten years earlier. The grief would have been horrible. Still a soft spot inside the wound in the soul, as she remembered the wonderful little, who was so calm and wise. When she got Nenne in his care, she loved him very much and hoped that Gunborg would allow him to remain with her. And then this cruel game came. Nenne played Esta!

Sharp said she assumed that now he would quit. He did not listen. She shook him and yelled at him to shut up. Then he wept with fear, but did not give up the crazy game, but cried tears that he was her Esta and he called her "mother".

She grabbed the gold shimmering mass of hair and piled him.

- Shut up you kid! For God's sake stop!

Bertha had not heard of rebirth. When Gunborg experienced such thoughts at Håkansson's, she had not given them to Bertha, having noticed how bad the mother came back in from the fact that just hearing about that Håkansson's considered Jesus as a prophet, among others.

Bertha's full knowledge of the spiritual came from the Bible.

She could not imagine that a dead person can return from the shadow land and become reborn in a new body.

The dead rest in the tomb in anticipation of the Last Judgement.

A deceased spirit can become restless and haunting, but then something wrong happened and the whole thing is evil. Priests can sometimes summon a ghost to leave the place that haunt and return to the grave's peace. There, the dead sleep until the last trump sounds of the world.

To think that a dead person's spirit can roam restless was possible for Bertha, but not to the dead man's spirit could go into a dead body. It was obsession, and only the evil spirits do so.

It is eerily close to hand that Bertha could have got the idea that Nenne had become obsessed.

That it was Esta's soul in a new body, she could just not imagine. It was for her an equally unreasonable to think that a materialist, who does not believe in any immortality at all.

If she could have imagined such a thing, if she had not been so completely stuck in the Biblical faith, so she should have been thoughtful and plain curiosity asked the child was given his knowledge from. For Nenne would mention things that only Esta might have experienced and that he might have learned from Gunborg.

But Bertha's outrage prevented her from wondering. Emotions have some ability to prevent the level-headed thinking.

When Axel came home he found both the Bertha and Nenne completely destroyed and in miserable condition. Astonishment, he wondered what was going on and Bertha told Nenne nasty play. Then the shaft cracking down and talked hard and firm.

He gave him stern-friendly puffs, shook him a little and ruffled his hair. And then something happened that Axel would be to name many years later when he lived alone and was visited by Gunborg. He was drunk at the time and could talk about things that he normally did not want to deal with: religion, supernatural things, and ghosts.

Nenne could hardly speak, because so much he had been crying his eyes out. But he was heaving up that he was their Esta. And when Axel had lifted his hand and shaking him shrank the little and shouted:

- Don't hit me, father!

The choice of words, like the voice and eyes, had paralyzed the shaft.

Deep within himself he perhaps understood, just then?

But at the time, when it was played out, he raised his voice and bellowed that now it was enough to damn fabrications and now you are silent, damned kid, because otherwise you will get a real beating in just the day!

And it worked quietly, eventually.

Mikael Lillieros