Natasha Illum Berg

“I don’t know if it is true, but it is said that a baboon dying slowly from a bullet to the chest, will stick a finger into the hole, thinking it can get what is hurting its inside. There is a completely black nail on the sensitive finger it uses to dig in with, in the hope of finding and demolishing this evil thing that is pulling and sucking inside its torso. In the logic of a baboon, the perpetrator must be the thing that is moving in there, the swelling and shrinking object that is pushing against the finger in a quick, unsteady rhythm, as if cornered and afraid. But on trying to get it out, the baboon finds that it is stuck, it won’t budge. The baboon will then try to get two fingers inside, to enable it to get a better grip, but the hole is too small and the skin won’t stretch any further. The one black nail scratches desperately at the tip of the heart, until it stops beating.For one happy moment though, while the warm body was still optimistically waiting for the next heartbeat, not knowing it would never come, the baboon thought that the danger had passed and everything would be all right. For that evil thing, had finally stopped moving in there.No different is it when we, in an attempt to strangle the pain or the loneliness, wedge a finger in to the cracks of our own inner core and dig. Our understanding of what we find in there is muddled, as it would always be impossible to see or grasp the truth in our own destinies."

 - Excerpt from Abens Hjerte. Translated from Danish

Reviews

As translated from main daily newspapers in Denmark