A Neverending Affair

by Kopen Hagen

  In the hour of death just after lunch, she was supposed to make a presentation about the European market for art. She felt that it was OK, but she noticed that quite a lot of the people seemed uninterested. Some slept; probably it was a bit too far away, too distant for them. Even if they were supposed to serve the market, the divide between their reality and the reality of the European art market was just too big. She also felt, rightly, that she was no great performer or presenter.

  Olaf had a presentation about the organization of the marketing. He suggested that they should try to use the tourist hotels for marketing and perhaps even sales. He explained a bit how his fair trade business worked. He had picked up some of the African ways of speaking, such as making a statement by asking a question and supplying the answer. “And when the consumer in Europe sees the what?”—pause—“the fair trade market!”—pause—“they know they can trust that many shillings go to the ladies back in Africa.” She thought his presentation was good, perhaps a bit paternal. But she also realized that mostly she was looking at his mouth, following the movement of the lips but not really paying attention to the words. Afterward, she could remember almost nothing of what he said.

  After the workshop, they had a debriefing, the same group as the day before. Very few of the Africans stayed at the hotel. They got a nice per diem from the United Nations and preferred to stay somewhere else. That saved them some seventy dollars per night, which was perhaps a week, or even a month, of income.

  Ultimately she, Olaf and Selma had a bite at the Ethiopian restaurant. Selma and Olaf seemed quite familiar with Ethiopian food so she let them order. She was surprised when the waitress brought out a joint giant dish/bread/pancake, the injeera. And there were no utensils for eating. “Are you supposed to eat with your hands?” she asked.

  “Welcome to Africa,” Selma said.

  Olaf showed her how it was done and offered, “If you want to, we can ask for utensils. They have them, but it is less fun.”

  When she started to eat, he said, “Oh, no, no, wrong hand! You are not supposed to eat with your left hand. Use only the right.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think I want to explain that while we’re eating,” he said and Selma burst out, “No, don’t please.”

  She remembered feeling a bit stupid, but she did as she was told. Ronia was fascinated by the tall, thin women that were serving in the restaurant. Their skin looked so nice and their hairdos were quite special. She remembered how she had asked one of the participants in the workshop, Mildred from Uganda, if she could feel her hair. The young woman looked at her with a surprised smile and consented. Ronia tried to explain that she had never felt African hair before. In the end, most of the women from the workshop also wanted to touch her hair. They had never touched the hair of a Caucasian woman before either. African hair surely had a quite different feel than Caucasian hair.

  Selma was tired and withdrew after the meal. Olaf insisted that they should have Ethiopian coffee in the form of a coffee ceremony. “It is magic,” he said. “The coffee taste like shit, but they do it so well. It just proves the old saying that you can sell everything if the presentation is good enough.”

  She noted that he had a tendency to diminish the importance of many of his views by adding on something—often half jokingly—that negated or modified the initial statement. A bit like those people that give out an insecure laugh each time they speak. But he gave no impression of being insecure. Perhaps it was some Scandinavian modesty thing?

  It was indeed a lovely ceremony. The roasting of the coffee beans was done in a flat pan over a tiny charcoal stove, the pungent smell mingling with incense burned during the ceremony. When the coffee beans had turned black and shining, they were ground in a mortar. The ground coffee was slowly stirred into the black clay coffee pot, the jebena, which is round at the bottom with a straw lid. The coffee was strained through a fine sieve several times. The young lady finally poured a thin, golden stream of coffee into each little cup from a height of one foot without an interruption. Ronia liked the taste of it. It was similar to the coffee her father used to make.

  They exchanged some typical information about their interests. He loved movies, he said, and blues music. She said that she read a lot and that she loved being in nature. The latter was perhaps true, but the reality was that even if she lived on a farm, she spent little time there, always on the go for some job or exhibition. Even when she was at the farm, she worked with her paintings rather than enjoying the landscape in Savoy.

  He asked in more detail where she lived, and she had to explain it. She had a converted farmstead in the Alps where she also had her studio. She had gotten it as a present from her wealthy—but absent—father. Olaf had a good sense of the area, as he had been there a few times. She tried to speak about the work but he was a bit evasive as he preferred not to, and came back again and again to more private things. It made her feel uneasy. Not that she feared him. She just was very cautious about revealing things about her private life, and she thought it had no interest for anybody else. Not once did Olaf ask anything about her painting.

  She was due to fly back early the next day. When they parted in the lobby, he looked into her eyes and said, “You know, it has been a real pleasure to meet you. I’m sorry that I didn’t ask anything about your paintings. I understand they’re pretty much your life. I’m just such an idiot when it comes to art in the sophisticated sense. I know what people like and don’t like, what is demanded in the mass-markets and what sells. I guess I don’t want to expose my ignorance.”

  “No offense. As a matter of fact, all my friends, or the very few I have,” she corrected herself, ”tell me that I should relax more from work and painting. Now I can go back home and tell them that I spent a wonderful night with a man in Africa.”

  Realizing her mistake and seeing his startled and amused look she said, “Merde, I didn’t say that. I DID NOT say that. You did not hear me saying that. Merde, I am so embarrassed. I meant evening. I meant an Ethiopian coffee ceremony.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He just smiled, and she grew increasingly alarmed.

  “I don’t think I can ever meet you again without being so ashamed that I will sink through the ground. Good night,” she said and rushed away.

  She heard him trying to say something, but she didn’t want to hear it. Back in her room, she cursed herself. She slapped herself in the face and let cold water flow over it. She knew rationally that it wasn’t such a big deal. What does it matter? He was amused. He’ll tell the story to his buddies back in Sweden in the sauna drinking their beers, she thought, but instead of calming her down, she started to fantasize about those guys in the sauna, all naked. One of the brutes asked Olaf, “So did you do her?” and Olaf would say, “Sure, I fucked her silly, there in the restaurant, stupid.” What is happening to me? she thought. I just met this guy, and I’m already starting to hallucinate about making love to him? And in any case, I made such a fool out of myself tonight.

  That night, she dreamed the most mixed up dreams she ever had. There were the women from the workshop, there was Olaf and there were plenty of well-built African men with big organs. Her alarm went off at five thirty as her plane was scheduled to depart early. She had packed the evening before. She did her morning toilet, a skimpy affair for being a woman, brushed her teeth, did a few stretches and showered. She didn’t wash her hair. She put on a tiny bit of deep red on her lips and deodorant and dressed for a long flight, loose pants, a t-shirt and a comfy blouse.

  She went to the reception desk and asked for her luggage to be picked up in the room, and asked them to confirm her transfer. Proceeding to the breakfast room, she was surprised that there were so many guests already there, but then she realized they were a group of Dutch tourists heading for the Arusha National Park.

  She had taken her coffee, her juice and a croissant, and was struggling to eat. She also felt hungover even though they hadn’t drunk the day before.


  “I just had to see you off and make sure you don’t blame yourself anymore,” he said, approaching the table.

  She thought he was more formal than the day before. Many thoughts went through her head. Finally she said, “Can you promise me that you forget it?”

  “I can promise you that I will never speak about it. It’s hard to forget. For me, it will be a fun memory. The only pity is that can’t tell anyone. In the end, shared memories are a lot more fun than those that you have to keep for yourself. But I promise, if you promise me that you won’t hold this incident against me. And that you won’t avoid me because of this in the future. I mean, it’s quite OK if you avoid me because I am an idiot, or simply because I am boring or because I have strange opinions. But not because of this. Promise?”

  “Deal,” she said and stretched out her hand. He took it and they shook hands firmly to seal the agreement.

  “Can I join you?” he asked.

  “Sure, but I’m leaving any second.”

  “So, will you participate in the seminar in Geneva in two months?” he asked while taking the seat on her left side.

  “I guess I will. After all, Geneva is only two hours from where I live. Where do you live, by the way?”

  “I live in Gothenburg with my wife, or rather outside Gothenburg on one of the islands in the archipelago. Have you ever seen it? Sweden has the biggest archipelagoes in the world, you know. Tens of thousands of islands. Most of them are in the Baltic Sea, but the West Coast, where I live, is the most beautiful.”

  He had not mentioned any wife yesterday evening, she thought. She wondered why he hadn’t and why he mentioned her now. And then he said, “where I live” and not “where we live.” Weird. Anyway, she had to leave.

  “See you in Geneva,” he said.

  “Guess so,” she responded and looked at him. She knew Swedes didn’t exchange cheek kisses but instead hugged like many Americans. For her, hugs were too intimate, and he might be uncomfortable with kisses. They both rose. She raised her hand again for a greeting. He took it and shook it.

  Rome, April 2013

  He and Sandra took the metro to the “representation of Padania” located in the Palatino area. It was an old imposing building. The Padania flag, “the sun of the Alps,” hung in the middle with smaller Italian and EU flags on the side. They were shown into a meeting room. At the door, there was one officer from the Padanian police department. It was not clear to Olaf if he was one of the people they were supposed to meet or if he was just a guard of sorts. He cursed himself for failing to learn the codes of the various stripes and bars of soldiers and policemen.

  Sandra would of course know. She knew all these things; it was part of her job. When interviewing abused or tortured prisoners, it was essential to understand if the perpetrator was a person in command or a foot soldier. And the victims would remember how many stripes there were on their torturer’s uniform. Funnily enough, even if they wore Baklava hoods, they had their correct uniform under it. He remembered one case where the torturing officer had kept the hood on, but had worn his name tag visible. The stupidity of humans never ceased to surprise him.

  They had sent their report a few days in advance. The report was not flattering reading, even for a regime as authoritarian as Padania’s. They bothered very little about the impression they made to the outside world. In a way, they might even enjoy having a reputation of being tough. Despite all the oratory, outside intervention didn’t take place against dictators; as long as they didn’t make problems for others than their own people. But Padania was not yet a fascist state, even if it rapidly moved in that direction. It was still important for the government to have the support of its own people. The people had strong democratic traditions. After all, modern democracy was born in the city-states of Northern Italy, and it would not accept a usurpation of more power or more totalitarian incidents at this stage. That could only be possible through an bigger crisis.

  Olaf was sure that Pietro would deliver such a crisis in due time. A crisis that would allow the suspension of democracy for an undetermined time, a crisis that would trigger formal independence, a crisis that would open up expansion into parts of Slovenia, Austria and Switzerland, which they considered part of their homeland. Even the Cote d’Azur and the Provencal Alps were part of it, but to challenge France would be foolish—at least for a few decades to come. Exactly what would constitute such crisis wasn’t so important: it could be the collapse of the European Union, the influx of migrants from Albania or a flood in the foothills of the Alps.

  Their report showed systematic abuse by the police force. It also showed how five leading dissident judges had simply disappeared; four had been killed in what appeared to be common street crime, but at that rate, it meant judges were a thousand times more likely to be mugged than the normal citizen; and twenty resigned under strange circumstances. When they left the country, at least three of those resigning had gone public with stories of how they were forced out of office by threat of disclosing various scandals. The scandals were fabricated, but they all knew that in a country where the media is controlled by the government it is hard to defend yourself against sweeping allegations. Finally, four had been sacked on very dubious grounds, basically those that refused to resign voluntarily and for some reason it was hard to kill or get lost.

  Media was also a target. All main media, TV, the press and many of the leading websites were controlled by the government, and critical voices in those media channels had been silenced by intimidation. Again, they could not—yet—impose censorship of the internet or embargo newspapers, but they surely did everything else that was possible. Intimidation of individuals was the favored strategy. With the police force and the judiciary under the government’s command, it seemed like a winning strategy.

  Sandra’s report was a good piece of work, as always. Five people in Padania, among them one person in the police force itself, the other four journalists, had been instrumental in getting the pieces together. And the report was clearly one of the strongest condemnations of a democratically elected government’s human rights record in twenty years, possibly only beaten by Zimbabwe and Belorussia. And this in the middle of Europe. Of course, “Europe” was in such trouble currently that people had little energy left for all the issues emerging here and there. The media was looking into the collapse of the Euro and the ultimate collapse of the European Union, and there wasn’t much attention to what really happened in the distinct parts of the union.

  They thought they would meet the Vice minister of the Interior and his underlings. They expected that the government representatives would like to “explain some misunderstandings” and “give a more complete picture,” basically things that would soften the “verdict” and possibly the presentation at the press conference. Olaf and Sandra even anticipated that they might have fabricated some counter-evidence to make HRI waver regarding the trustworthiness of their sources. No matter how good the work Sandra had done was, the fact that they were working against the government and that most people were afraid made it very hard to cross-check information. So there were almost inevitably some errors.

  It therefore came as a surprise to them that the people to meet them were three officials with perplexing titles from clandestine—or nonexistent—agencies plus the police officer. When seated, they were asked to hand over electronic equipment, as there would be no recording of this meeting. Olaf and Sandra showed them their cell phones and a tape recorder, and were asked to switch them off, which they did. They had no intention handing them over, so they pulled the batteries out to reassure them that that they were really off. The goons looked at a screen of some undefined equipment and then one of them said, “Ms. Frost, you have yet another electronic device. Can you please hand it over?” Sandra hardly ever blushed, but now she did, as if somebody had caught with her hand in the candy jar, and handed over her EVoice. They switched it off.

  After some initial pleasantries, Olaf and Sandra were told that most of the
report was flawed, that they had been set up by known troublemakers, people who had failed professionally and were now trying to become famous by spreading lies. They responded that they trusted their sources and that the information had been cross-checked for accuracy (which was only partly truthful). Quite soon Olaf realized that the real—and only—intention of their hosts was to get the names of the informants. They casually flashed some names to see what reactions they would get. What was terrifying was that of the eight names mentioned, four of them were their informants. Sandra also understood the game and both of them remained tight-lipped and said almost nothing. Towards the end of the meeting, the leader of the gang, Colonel Bardi, told them that they were not really welcome in Padania.

  “There are no guarded border crossings to Padania. Anybody that can enter Italy can also enter Padania, but once there, it is jurisdiction of Padania that counts.” A not-so-subtle warning. Finally, they were told that from their perspective the meeting never happened. The government would vehemently deny any knowledge of it. They were given their things and ushered out of the building through a back door on the opposite side from the entrance.

  They quickly found a café where they could sit. Olaf asked Sandra what they could do about their informants. Sandra put a finger across her lips and wrote “later” on the napkin. Olaf looked around and could see nobody that looked as if they were shadows or informants from Padania, but he decided to trust Sandra on this. They drank their coffees—Olaf, an espresso and Sandra, a cappuccino—and discussed the morning’s experience. Both of them were convinced that the people they had met were intelligence officers.