How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

What Francis almost couldn't bear was Edu's flat aspect. The weariness in the eyes and voice, the depletion of effort to be his usual emotional, almost theatrical self. Of course he understood, and he also felt he understood, at least in part, Edu's insistence that he wanted to tell only a few of his closest friends, he didn't want people to know because he didn't want to be treated with kid gloves, he didn't want to become The Victim.

Francis wasn't sure how he himself would act in the same situation, perhaps he would revel in the attention, acting as people expected him to act, be brave and charming and self-effacing about it and accept what pity he could, take the leaway granted him. He suspected that would be the route he took if he himself were sick.

But Edu had balked at the sudden kindness of the nurse, of the secretary who let him use the phone to call the main hospital to make an appointment to have more bloodwork done. It was funny, in a way, to hear Edu complaining about such kindness when his complaint about Barcelona was that people were pigheaded, stupidly stubborn and mostly, they were blindly unkind, unkind as if being kind cost them money, and oh, how Catalans loved money, Edu said.

(from a Barcelona journal, 1998)

It is World AIDS Remembrance day. Think, and link.

The Swedish word for the day is ibland. It means sometimes.

- by Francis S.