Berta could now either die or take part in a study of a new experimental cancer drug. No sooner said than done. The cancer disappeared. But unfortunately Berta’s brain was also affected, which led to her racing into a bridge piling in the family Ford. Which in turn led to her being paralyzed from the neck down. Henry picked her up from the hospital two days after the accident because the costs there would have exceeded his nonexistent budget. His two daughters walked next to their father, who carried his wrecked wife over his shoulder like a rolled-up carpet. At home he laid his wife in bed and became an expert at patient care in the period that followed. Washing, feeding, exercise, speech therapy. Henry lost his job as a night watchman. Because he kept falling asleep. He was exhausted, he had to cook, shop, wait at the social services department, clean the flat, pack (household and children and broken-down wife) in order to relocate to the outskirts of town. The children had obviously suffered a bit under the circumstances; they wet the bed, stopped reading, stopped playing, they sat next to the broken-down mother’s bed and were afraid. At some point, after his wife slipped from his arms in the shower and lay on the floor like a heavy slice of sausage, Henry began to cry and could no longer stop. The children grew more afraid. Henry told his wife every night that he wanted to kill her, the children, and himself, and his wife said nothing, but her eyes filled with tears and she smiled. The euphoria surrounding knowing a way out didn’t last long. There was a fear of the end, and how could you get rid of the hope that things would be nice again, that there would be another spring or autumn, you’d see the children grow up, everything that is implanted in humans, implanted even in a man, this hope for a so-called fulfilled life, which ended at some stage with the singing of a hymn. And then his wife vomited, and shat in bed and moaned, and the air was stuffy, and at the social services department Henry screamed because he hadn’t received his basic income because he hadn’t been in touch because he showed up an hour late because his wife had shat the bed again and now he had to wait until Monday, and he went home and placed a pillow over his wife’s head. Then on to the two children. He suffocated the first but the second refused, she tried to hide, she screamed, defended herself, then Henry hit the child on the head with a frying pan until it was finally quiet, and then he sat next to the corpse in the kitchen and couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t cry, nothing.

On the screen