The Sweet Indifference of the World

by Peter Stamm

  THIRTY

  I had read a newspaper review of the play with the fish. The reviewer was underwhelmed, but Lena was singled out as a highly promising newcomer. There was an accompanying photograph of her in one scene, indistinct but unmistakable. The photo brought out all my feelings of the time, and much more powerfully than if I had just been thinking of Magdalena. It was like having her in my hands. I clipped it carefully and pinned it to my fridge with a magnet.

  Weeks and months went by, and I thought about going to pick Magdalena up at the stage door, and wandering about with her half the night and talking, with the sole aim of stopping time and not having to go to sleep yet. Then came the day we had first made love. Even as I was getting up, I had to think that Lena would soon call Chris and tell him she was ill, and did he want to come and visit her. That day I wasn’t good for anything. I couldn’t concentrate, and the pupils monkeyed around till I shouted at them so loud that one of them stayed behind at the end of class and asked me in worried tones if I was all right.

  Weeks later, I saw the ad for Miss Julie, the play Magdalena was having her breakthrough in, put on by a young female director I hadn’t heard of. I dawdled, let the premiere go by, then one day I booked a ticket, got a room for the night, and on Friday after the end of classes traveled down from the mountains to see the play.

  I could barely remember the production sixteen years ago. I had only had eyes for Magdalena then, and remembered how jealous I felt of the actor playing Jean. Magdalena and I had even fought about him, because she claimed it wasn’t her kissing the actor, but Julie kissing Jean, and I called that sophistical nonsense.

  The new production was an overwrought farrago of various concepts, to begin with the actors appeared in historical costume, later on they stood around the stage in skimpy leather bondage gear. The relationship between Julie and Jean was depicted as a sadomasochistic power struggle; to crashing rock chords Julie hurt herself and let herself be handcuffed by Jean, only later to become a dominatrix and make him her toy and humiliate him. Somewhere I gave up trying to follow the crazy action and wasn’t even attending to the words anymore. I only saw Lena, who was self-assured and confident throughout, retaining her dignity even as she knelt down in front of Jean and unzipped his pants. I was astonished by her talent and force, which in the time I was in love with her had somehow escaped me. Suddenly she seemed very different from the Magdalena in my recollection, and I understood that she was completely independent, and needed neither me nor anyone else.

  I hadn’t noticed Chris in the theater, but when I was waiting by the stage door after the show, he suddenly appeared. He seemed nervous, chain-smoking, and dropped his cigarette on the pavement the instant Lena appeared. They kissed in the casual way of an established couple, exchanged a few words, and set off.

  I followed them at a distance up the hill through ever emptier precincts. Perhaps I was still under the impression of the play, but I had the sense of Lena leading Chris on a chain, like a dog. She always seemed to be a step ahead of him, and his posture had something eager, almost craven, about it.

  They headed for the zoo, and then made west along the wooded ridge at the top. From there you could have a splendid view across the city and the lake, but the two were so engrossed in their conversation that they seemed not even to be aware of it. I recalled a line I’d read somewhere about there being nothing more lonely than a pair of lovers. I looked down at the city and tried to remember what we’d spoken about back in the day. But when I turned back to the bench, Lena and Chris were gone.

  Some distance away, at the edge of the woods, was an old inn that had a tour bus parked in front of it. Next to the entrance stood a couple of men in dark suits smoking cigarettes. They seemed drunk, were talking at the same time, and kept bursting out laughing. I peered through a window, but the room I found myself looking into wasn’t the public bar but a small side room where a wedding group was celebrating, a colorful confusion of festively clad men and women. Their meal had been taken away, now the tables were littered with empty bottles and glasses and crumpled napkins. On a cart were the remnants of a gigantic wedding cake. The bridal couple sat alone at a table facing the window. It took me a second look to see who they were. It was Lena and Chris. They looked totally different from a moment ago. Lena had her hair pinned up in a complicated coiffure and was wearing white, Chris was in black tails. They both seemed tired and out of sorts.

  The guests had formed up into little groups, some of them standing, others seated at the various tables. They were leaning in, presumably to hear each other better in spite of the loud music that I could hear outside, a medley of old pop tunes. It was played by a lean man of sixty or so in a glittering purple jacket, whose face looked familiar to me. In fact, a lot of these faces looked familiar to me, and suddenly it dawned on me that these guests were actors whom I had seen that evening onstage and in the lobby, and some of whom had been in the troupe back in Magdalena’s day. I had had a conversation during the intermission with Ulrich, the man on keyboard, we had talked about old times, now I barely recognized him. No one was listening to the music and no one was dancing, but that didn’t seem to bother him. With a devilish grin on his face he was pounding on the keys as though accompanying a silent film, a burlesque comedy of mixed identities, in which Lena was playing the lead role. At that moment there was a guffaw from the smokers outside. I turned around but couldn’t see them from where I was standing. When the laughter died down, I looked into the room again. The lights had been turned out, and there was no one to be seen. The dirty plates and glasses were still on the tables.

  THIRTY-ONE

  If it was up to me, I don’t think I would have had a reception, said Lena, it was all so hurried, but Chris insisted he wanted a proper wedding with all the trimmings, as though our vows wouldn’t have meant anything without. That morning we’d been in church, me all in white, him in his dark suit. We even paid for a photographer, who took pictures of us down by the lake. We spent the afternoon on a steamship on the lake, and then a yellow postbus with flowers on the hood took us to the reception. There was roast pork with mashed potatoes and a three-tier wedding cake with a marzipan bride and groom on top. Lots of our friends from the theater were there, there were long, emotional speeches, indiscretions, a director who by afternoon had had too much to drink and was telling off-color jokes, the whole wretchedness of a middle-class wedding. Everything came to an end in a drunken chaos. Chris and I got into an argument, I can’t remember why, and by the time we were finally home, and he was carrying me across the threshold, he was so clumsy about it he hit my head against the doorframe and gave me a bump. So much for the happiest day of my life.

  That can’t be, I said, I never married Magdalena. It never occurred to us. There are deviations, Lena said softly, so softly I wasn’t sure if it was sorrow in her voice or merriment.

  We were sitting at a small table in the library hall, drinking thin machine coffee. It was madness, Lena was saying, when Chris asked me to be his wife we had barely been together for a month. I was completely unprepared for it. And it probably sounds funny, but I had the sense he wasn’t sure about it either, as if he had the idea from someone else.

  I was completely confused and wondered what difference Chris and Lena’s wedding made to anything. He’s on his way here, I finally ended up saying. He decided in favor of writing, proper writing, and he’s run away from the workshop and his secure existence as a hack. Now he’s blundering around the city just as we are now, just as I did then.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Back in the hotel, I racked my brains over what I was going to tell Magdalena; how I was going to break it to her that her nice dream of our twin careers in TV was over, that I would rather stack shelves in a supermarket than write texts I despised. That morning already we’d had a quarrel when I had poked fun at the American and those American films that always offered an audience what it expected and wanted. I had been puzzle
d how passionately Magdalena had stood up for films she hadn’t in some cases even seen; I couldn’t shake the suspicion that what was at issue between us was more than a few mediocre Hollywood productions. Even now I wasn’t sure whether what I was running away from was being a TV wage slave or Magdalena and her notion of a happy and fulfilled life.

  I could no longer bear to wait for her. The hotel room felt like a prison, I needed to get out, walk around, breathe the air, and think.

  It was dark outside. The shops were still open, it was the sale season, and lots of people were out and about, their hands full of shopping bags and parcels. I avoided the big, lit-up avenues, and after a while found myself wandering through residential streets, deserted commercial districts, large shopping centers, anonymous office blocks, factories, and warehouses. All I had on was a thin raincoat, and I felt hungry and cold. There were no restaurants where I was, but on a corner I saw a pub with a selection of bar food.

  It was gloomy in there. A few of the tables were occupied by men on their own, drinking beer and staring into space. I ordered a beer and something to eat. As I was eating, I was forcibly reminded of the early days with Magdalena, that now, in retrospect, struck me as the happiest time of my life. At some point we must have mislaid our happiness, I couldn’t say how or when it had come about. I had decided on a different path for myself. The notion of middle-class contentment that Magdalena had devised for us was not mine, and in my story, there was, to be brutally honest, no room for her.

  After I’d eaten and warmed up a little, I set out again, walked on, and found myself in more welcoming areas. Between tenement buildings there was an ice rink that was lit up by powerful lights on poles, a white square, cut out of the dark world by dazzling brightness. For a while I stood and watched the skaters slide effortlessly over the surface and trace their circles. I could still have gone back, Magdalena surely wasn’t expecting me before midnight. But I walked on. My agitation eased a little, and at the same time my certainty grew that there was no way back. It was too late, too late to be happy.

  I had no idea where I was going, even so I felt somehow liberated. I got to a lake, and then a broad landscaped expanse full of large buildings. One entrance was lit up, and when I approached, I saw that it was the university library. There was almost no one inside. I walked up to the top floor, where there were a few chairs and tables and cubicles, pulled a book off the shelf at random, and sat down at one of the tables, which were partitioned in the middle. Facing me was a woman, neither young nor especially striking-looking, with a stack of books and notebooks. I browsed in my book, a Norton poetry anthology, and read some of the poems in it. After some time, the woman asked me a question in Swedish. I replied in English that I didn’t understand. The time, she said, now in English, tapping her wrist with a finger. I forgot my watch. Damn, she said, when I told her, they’re about to close. Would you happen to know if there’s a hotel anywhere near? I asked. I don’t think so, she said, there’s no shortage of student accommodation, but you can’t get into that unless you’re registered with the university, and there’s a long waiting list. Are you a student? No, I said, I’m just looking for somewhere to stay the night. You’re leaving it a bit late, she said, laughing. I asked if she was a student. She said she was a postgraduate. I’m working at the Karolinska Institut, across the lake from here. There’s a Best Western there, I think. She said her name was Elsa. Something was announced over the public-address system. They’re closing, said Elsa, we’d better go. She packed her things, and we headed for the exit together. Outside, I lit a cigarette, and she asked me for one. I’ve given up, she said, it’s not something you do if you’re a med student, but when there’s one going…She asked me what I was doing in Stockholm. It’s complicated, I said. As we set off, I told her I was attending a screenwriters’ workshop. I didn’t say anything about Magdalena. And they didn’t book a hotel for you? asked Elsa. No, they did, I said, but I ran away. I don’t feel like writing to order. Skipping school then, she said, tsk, tsk. And now you’re scared to go back, because you think you’ll be punished. Something like that, I said. Do you feel like a drink? There’s a bar called the Professorn, she said, that’s just five minutes from here. They don’t shut till one.

  It did me good to talk to Elsa. She laughed and joked a lot. She had grown up in a mining town way up in the north called Kiruna. Her father and mother had both worked in the mines. She was a year older than me. I put in a few detours, she said, but it’s a long way from Kiruna to here.

  The Professorn was a pretty funky bar, where you could order pizza and kebab. It was situated in a large complex of student accommodations just north of the actual campus. A couple of thousand students live there, said Elsa, myself included.

  You don’t need to tell me the rest, said Lena, getting up, I can perfectly well imagine it. She headed quickly for the way out. When I caught up to her, she suddenly stopped and looked at me with shining eyes. I thought she was about to start crying. He’s almost finished the book, she said. That can’t be, I said. I didn’t marry Magdalena, and I only wrote the book later, after we split up. He can’t write it yet because he hasn’t felt what I felt then, the pain at our breakup, the loss, the solitude. Your pain can’t have been that great if you hop into bed with the first Swede you meet, said Lena furiously. I never slept with her, I said. It’s true, she invited me back, but nothing happened.

  THIRTY-THREE

  After the third or fourth round of drinks, Elsa did indeed offer to put me up. You don’t look like a maniac, she said, why not, I’ve got enough room.

  I tried to explain it to Magdalena the next morning. When I walked into our room, I found her lying on the bed, completely dressed. She looked exhausted and puffy from crying. In a dull voice, she asked me where I’d been all night, but when I started to tell her, she interrupted me to say how she’d got back to the hotel a little before midnight, and had seen the editor and the director down at the bar. They had told her I’d run out of the restaurant, they couldn’t say where to or why. When Magdalena didn’t find me up in the room, she had gone back downstairs, but by now they’d closed the bar, and there was no one around. She hadn’t slept a wink all night, had stayed up waiting for me, worried about me. I just needed to get away, I said, I’m sorry, I was drunk. That’s not the point, said Magdalena, crying. You should just admit you don’t want to be with me anymore. Or has your courage deserted you already? I don’t know what’s more contemptible. She watched in silence as I packed my suitcase. I hesitated briefly in the doorway, but, not knowing what to say, I left without any further words of explanation or goodbye. I spent the next two nights in a room in a cheap pension. I saw Magdalena for the last time at the airport.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I didn’t cheat on Magdalena, I said again. What difference does it make? said Lena. I thought, if you and Chris met up here, everything could turn out differently, I said. He would come to his senses, you would have your conversation, go back to the hotel together, everything would turn out for the best. And he wouldn’t write his novel, said Lena. That’s what you’re about, isn’t it? Her voice still sounded angry. I think we’re capable of resolving our differences ourselves. Or do you think you can sort out your own life by interfering in ours? The past is past, I said. The question is, are you prepared to allow him a better life, said Lena, or do you want to wreck it just like you wrecked your own? I didn’t wreck my life, I said, I decided in favor of literature, and made certain sacrifices. Well? said Lena, and was it worth it?

  There was an announcement on the p.a., and a few young people with rucksacks and cases filed past us and out into the night. I watched them go, perhaps I was expecting to see Elsa, but I didn’t think she would recognize me after such a long time. Chris won’t come, said Lena. He’s got no reason to run away. He’s found a publisher for his book, it’s coming out next spring. You told him the story. I read a draft, it’s a good plot.

  I had been inte
nding to show Lena my manuscript, had brought it with me to let her see it, and leave its fate in her hands. But my rucksack was gone. I must have left it in the bar. The blood shot to my face, and I felt faint. How does he end his story? I asked. It’s a happy ending, said Lena. The woman gets pregnant, she loses the baby, but the loss brings the two of them together. In the end, they decide to move away and begin a new life somewhere else.

  I had to laugh, a mean, ugly laugh. How can he know? I asked. How can he know it’ll end well? The story I told him doesn’t have a good ending. Lena smiled sympathetically. In that case, he changed it. I think his editor may have suggested it. You can’t change an ending just like that, I said. The publisher thinks the novel will be a big hit, said Lena. Yes, I said, could well be.

  A man in uniform came up to us, and said—in English, as though he’d immediately known we were foreigners—we had to leave, the library was closing. Lena’s phone had been ringing for a while now, and she took it out of her pocket, looked at the display, and put it away again. He says the dinner’s over now, and he’s on his way back to the hotel. Don’t you want to write back? I asked. She dismissed my question with a gesture. You’ve taken advantage of me, both of you in your different ways, she said. Her voice didn’t sound livid anymore, just tired. Perhaps he more than you, he did everything right and thus everything wrong.