Shame

by Karin Alvtegen

  She looked around for something to cut open the envelope with. She couldn’t possibly wedge her finger into that tiny gap. But the claw on her picker-upper worked just fine, as usual.

  The letter was hand-written on lined paper with holes down one side and looked like it came from a college notebook.

  Hi Majsan!

  Majsan? That was a bit familiar.

  She swallowed hard. Deep in the convolutions of her brain a tiny scrap of memory detached itself.

  She instantly felt a desire to stuff something in her mouth, the need to swallow something. She looked around but there was nothing within reach.

  She resisted the temptation to turn over the sheet of paper to see who had written it; or maybe it was just the opposite, maybe she really preferred not to know.

  So many years since she had last heard that nickname.

  Who had travelled down through the years, uninvited, and forced themselves in through her letterbox?

  I know you must be wondering why I’m writing to you after all these years. To be honest, I have to admit I was a little hesitant to sit down and write this letter, but now at least I’ve decided to do it. The explanation will probably sound even more peculiar to you, but I might as well tell you the truth. I had such a strange dream a few nights ago. It made a big impression, and it was about you, and when I woke up there was something inside me that told me to write this letter. I have learned (at long last and after hard lessons) to listen to strong impulses. Well, so much for that …

  I don’t know how much you know about me and how my life has turned out. But I can imagine that people talked about it a good deal back home, and I understand perfectly if you don’t want to have any contact with me. I’m not in touch with anyone in my family or anyone else from back home. As you can tell, I have plenty of time to think about things here, and I think a lot about when we were growing up and everything we took with us from those years, and how much it affected us later in life. That’s why I’m so curious to hear how you’re doing these days! I sincerely hope that everything worked out and you’re doing well. Since I don’t know where you are now or what your married name is (for the life of me I can’t remember Göran’s last name!) I’m going to send this letter to your childhood home. If it’s meant to reach you I’m sure it will. Otherwise it will just circulate around for a while and keep the post office busy which I’m sure would be a good thing since I hear they’re having hard times.

  In any case …

  I hope with all my heart that in spite of your difficult years growing up your life has turned out well. I never fully understood until I was grown up what an awful time you must have had. I wish you all the best!

  Drop me a line if you feel like it.

  Your old best friend,

  Vanja Tyrén

  She heaved herself up out of the chair. The sudden burst of anger gave her an extra push. What sort of nonsense was this?

  In spite of your difficult years growing up?

  She’d rarely seen the like of such impudence. Who did she think she was, really, assuming she had the right to send her such condescending statements? She picked up the letter and read the address written at the bottom of the page, and her gaze fixed on the words: Vireberg Institution.

  She could hardly remember this person, who clearly was locked up in Vireberg, but who still thought she had the right to sit in judgement over her childhood and thus by extension her parents.

  She went to the kitchen and yanked open the refrigerator door. The cocoa package was already on the kitchen worktop, and she quickly cut off a chunk of butter and dipped it in the brown powder.

  She closed her eyes as the butter melted in her mouth, soothing her.

  Her parents had done everything for her. Loved her! Who knew that better than she did?

  She crumpled up the paper. It ought to be against the law to send letters to people who don’t want to get any mail. It was impossible to tell what that person was after, but to let her insult stand unchallenged was more than she could bear. She was going to have to reply in her parents’ defence. The mere thought of having to communicate with someone outside the walls of the flat without choosing to do so herself made her cut off another chunk of butter. The letter was an attack. A blatant assault. After all these years in voluntary isolation someone had suddenly clawed their way through her arduously erected barriers.

  Vanja.

  She could remember so little.

  If she made a real effort she could call up some scattered images. She recalled that they had hung out together a bit, but no real details surfaced. She could vaguely remember a messy house and the fact that sometimes the yard outside looked like a junkyard. Nowhere near as neat as her own home had been. She also thought she could recall that her parents hadn’t approved of their friendship; and there, you see, for once it turned out that they were right! How they had struggled. She got a huge lump in her throat when she thought about them. She hadn’t been an easy child but they refused to give up on her; they did their best to help her get on in life even though she was so difficult and caused them so much worry. And then this person comes along more than thirty years later, wondering how they had been affected by their upbringing, as if she were looking for an accomplice in her own failure, someone to blame for it. But who was the one sitting in prison? What nerve to come here with her veiled insinuations and accusations when she was the one who was locked up. She could only imagine the reason why.

  She braced herself against the worktop when the pain in her lower back started up again. A sudden stab that almost made her black out.

  Yet she really didn’t want to know anything. She wanted to let Vanja remain buried in the past and let the dust she was stirring up settle again.

  She glanced at the kitchen clock. Not because they ever bothered to be punctual, but they should be coming in an hour or two. She opened the refrigerator again. It was always stronger when something she didn’t want to acknowledge was attempting to intrude on her consciousness.

  The compulsion to stuff herself in order to shut up what was screaming inside.

  3

  He claimed that he loved her. In fact, everything he said and did indicated as much. And yet it was so hard to accept the words. That she was the one he loved.

  What he tried to get her to believe was that he found her unique, that she of all the people in the world was the one he valued most, the one who was most important to him. The one he would under no circumstances ever betray and would always protect.

  It was so hard to accept the words.

  Because why should she be the one that a man like Thomas would love? Eligible bachelors were scarce when you started pushing forty, and you only had to take one look at him to figure out that he must be a desirable catch. Yet it was probably his mind that had captivated her first. His self-deprecating sense of humour that made her laugh in the strangest situations. Only a man who was so completely sure of his masculinity could laugh so heartily at himself. And only a man who had dared acquire some knowledge of himself would realise what was worth laughing at. She had never met anyone like him before. He possessed a curiosity and a voracious appetite for learning something new, understanding more. Always ready to abandon his entrenched views; if someone else suddenly seemed more reasonable, he would always try to look at things from new angles. Maybe this was one of the reasons for his success as an industrial designer, or maybe it was a consequence. His unusual talents and liberal way of thinking took their conversations to unexplored heights, and sometimes she even had to make an effort to keep up with him. She found it incredibly stimulating.

  Intellectually he was fully her equal. Men like that were scarce.

  So why was she the one he happened to fall in love with?

  There had to be a catch somewhere. But no matter where she searched she couldn’t find it.

  Of course there had been other men. There were plenty of brief relationships in her past; other ambitions had guided her choices, and she had
n’t put energy into trying to extend them. The long years in medical school had demanded her full attention. Getting a B on an exam was a failure, getting an A was a must to feel satisfied, and sometimes even that didn’t help. She would prefer her professors to throw themselves across their desks out of sheer rapture over her marks and her brilliance, but she had been forced to realise that this was not at all easy to achieve. There were many talented students. That’s why she had always been filled with a sense of inadequacy, that she wasn’t good enough. And this made her work even harder.

  One by one all of her contemporaries had vanished into marriage and family life, while she, to her mother’s dismay, had maintained her single status. It didn’t happen so often anymore, now that it was almost too late, but for years her mother had assiduously informed her of her great disappointment that she would never have any grandchildren. And deep inside, in that place where neither her mother nor anyone else was ever allowed, Monika had shared that disappointment.

  It wasn’t always easy to live alone. Whether it was a cultural thing or not was impossible to say, but somewhere in the human mystery there still seemed to be a basic striving for connection. Her body spoke its unequivocal language. After months in solitude it begged to be touched. And she had no obligations to anyone. So she could initiate a little love affair just to brighten up her life for a while, but she never let her emotions take over. She permitted herself only restrained pleasure, and the relationship was never given the opportunity to become very important. Not on her part at least. A heart here or there had probably been hurt by her actions, but she had never allowed anyone to come anywhere near the core where little Monika lived, where she scrupulously concealed all her fears.

  And her secret.

  Sex was easy. It was genuine intimacy that was hard.

  Sooner or later the balance would always be upset. They would start ringing too often, wanting too much, revealing their expectations and long-term plans. And the greater the interest they showed, the cooler she became. She would observe suspiciously their growing enthusiasm and then cut off the relationship completely. Better to be alone than to be abandoned.

  Some of them had called her the Ice Queen, and she took it as a compliment.

  But then she met Thomas.

  It happened on a train, in the dining car. She had been to visit some friends at their familial idyll in the countryside one weekend, and took the train so she could use the extra time to read up on the new findings about fibromyalgia. On the trip home a gloom settled over her after having observed for forty-eight hours what was missing in her own life. How petty everything had become. She was the type of person who lived her life but who still hadn’t managed to make anything out of it. But on the other hand, how happy did someone like her have the right to be?

  She had gone to the dining car to have a glass of wine, and had ended up staying at one of the tables, on the seat nearest the window. He had sat down across from her. They didn’t say a word, scarcely exchanged a glance. They had both gazed out at the landscape rushing by. And yet her entire being had been aware of his presence. A peculiar sensation of not being alone, the feeling that in the silence they shared they were still keeping each other company. She couldn’t remember ever experiencing anything like this before.

  She stood up when she saw they were approaching the station where she had to get off, and gave him just a quick glance before she went back to her seat to get her bag. On the platform he suddenly came running to catch up with her.

  ‘Wait! You really have to excuse me, but…’

  She stopped in astonishment.

  ‘You probably think I’m crazy, but I just felt that I had to do this.’

  He looked embarrassed but then he gathered up his courage and continued.

  ‘I just wanted to thank you for keeping me company.’

  She didn’t say a word, and he looked even more self-conscious.

  ‘I mean, we sat across from each other in the dining car.’

  ‘I know. Thank you too.’

  His face broke into a big smile when he realised that she recognised him. He sounded almost excited when he went on.

  ‘Excuse me again, but I just had to find out whether you felt it too?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, sort of… I don’t really know how to say it.’

  He looked embarrassed again and she hesitated a bit, but then she nodded slightly and the smile he gave her should have made her run a thousand miles away out of sheer self-preservation. But she just stood there, unable to do anything else.

  ‘Wow!’ he said.

  He looked at her as if she had suddenly popped right up out of the platform, and then he started digging around in his pockets. He pulled out a wrinkled receipt and looked around, grabbing the first person who came by.

  ‘Excuse me, do you have a pen?’

  The woman stopped, set down her briefcase, opened her handbag, and took out a ballpoint pen which looked quite expensive. He quickly scrawled something on the receipt and held it out to Monika.

  ‘Here’s my name and number. I really ought to ask for yours but I don’t dare.’

  The woman with the briefcase had a smile on her lips when she got her pen back and walked away.

  Monika read the note.

  Thomas. And a mobile number.

  ‘And if you don’t call I’ll never go to another Hugh Grant movie for the rest of my life.’

  She couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘So don’t forget, you’re carrying his entire acting career on your shoulders.’

  She had hesitated for a few days. Followed her usual pattern, not wanting to look too eager, but to tell the truth he had been in her thoughts the whole time. Finally she managed to convince herself that it really couldn’t hurt to contact him. They only had to see each other once. The fact that her body was hungering to be touched also made it easier to press those ten numbers on the phone.

  On the third day she sent him a text message.

  ‘Guilt feelings about Hugh becoming intolerable. Can’t stand the responsibility.’

  Her phone rang a minute after she sent the message.

  That same evening they had their first dinner together.

  ‘Columba livia. Do you know what that is?’

  He smiled and filled her glass.

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s what carrier pigeons are called in Latin.’

  ‘Animals aren’t my strong point, but if you have some body part you’re not sure about, I’m sure I can help you.’

  She could hear how it sounded the instant the words came out.

  ‘I mean, tell you what it’s called in Latin.’

  She could feel herself blushing, and that was certainly something out of the ordinary for her. She could see that he noticed it too and that it put him at ease.

  ‘My grandfather had a pigeon roost when I was little; he kept carrier pigeons. I used to stay with him and Grandma in the summertime, and I was always allowed to help out in the pigeon roost. Feed them, let them out when they had flight training, band them, everything really. It was a whole little science in itself.’

  He seemed to sink into pleasant memories, and she took a moment to study him. He really was a beautiful person.

  ‘When I say that Grandpa had a pigeon roost, I mean that he really lived for those birds. Grandma may not always have thought it was so great, but she let him keep them. You know how a carrier pigeon finds its way home?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘They follow the magnetic fields.’

  ‘Oh really? I thought they navigated by the stars, I read that somewhere.’

  ‘Then how do they find their way in the daytime?’

  ‘Well… I haven’t stayed up nights thinking about it.’

  The waiter cleared the table, and they assured him that the food had been delicious and that they didn’t want dessert but would like a cup of coffee. Monika had almost forgotten the pigeon lesson when he suddenly brought
it up again.

  ‘Do you know why they always fly home and don’t fly off somewhere else?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Homesickness.’

  He leaned forward.

  ‘They stay together for life, a pair of pigeons. They’re faithful to each other the whole time, so no matter where you let one of them loose, it will always fly back home. One of Grandpa’s pigeons had apparently flown into a high-tension wire, because its legs were gone when it returned, but it still came home, by God, home to its life partner.’

  She pondered his story. ‘I almost wish I were a pigeon instead, at least if you ignore the part about the legs.’

  He smiled.

  ‘I know. When I was little I used to think that when I grew up one day in some terribly distant future and met my wife, it would feel just like that, like a sort of magnetic field. That was how I would know I had chosen the right one.’

  She brushed away some invisible crumbs from the tablecloth, because she felt like she wanted to ask but at the same time she didn’t for the life of her want to seem too pushy.

  ‘So was that how it was?’

  ‘What?’

  She hesitated a bit, because she realised that she didn’t really want an answer. Then she fidgeted with her napkin a bit.

  ‘When you met your wife.’

  He took a gulp of wine.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She could feel the disappointment in her stomach. The way it contracted when she realised that he was married. One of those cowards without a wedding ring. She never got involved with married men.

  ‘I felt the magnetic field, I really did. But the part about the wife is too soon to say.’