A Neverending Affair

by Kopen Hagen

  Not far from the café, there was a park. They found a secluded bench and discussed what to do. They thought they needed to get a warning through to the four mentioned informants. But they didn’t dare to call them. Even if their own phones weren’t tapped, there was a substantial risk their informants’ were. In the end, they would have to inform them in the same way they originally found them, through their contact in Rome, who was one of the members of the local chapter.

  Geneva, June 1996

  He arrived midday in Geneva. He stayed at La Belle. He called Selma and announced his arrival, and they agreed to meet early the next day for some preparatory discussions before the meeting.

  “And tonight, what are you doing?” Selma asked.

  “Oh, I have nothing planned,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’m pretty tired and plan to hit the sack early. I’ll just pick up a bit of food downstairs.”

  Selma offered to come and have dinner with him, just briefly, and they agreed to meet half an hour later in the hotel restaurant.

  She didn’t go out a lot.

  “It costs a fortune in Geneva, but also it’s worse to eat alone in a restaurant than eating alone at home. At home, at least there are no other people seeing you, and you don’t have to bother with to dress up and wear makeup or mind your manners.”

  “How come you live alone? If I may ask,” Olaf said. “I mean, you must be quite a catch. Good job at the UN, nice style and good looks.” He regretted the much-too-personal question and worried that she might think he was flirting. He quickly added, “Sorry, it’s none of my business.”

  “Oh, it’s fine,” she responded and took a deep breath. “Mr. Right never showed up, I guess. Perhaps I’m not the right one myself, or perhaps my standards are just too high,” she sighed. “You’re married, I understand,” she added, changing the focus from her to him.

  “Yes, four years. Liv is her name. She studies terribly complicated social and philosophical things at the university. She’s an assistant professor in cybernetic epistemology. And please don’t ask me to explain what it is in detail.”

  “Kids?” she asked.

  “No kids,” he said, a bit forced. She noticed and gave him a questioning look.

  “We should get our life in order more before having children. You know, have things more settled, good jobs, a house in the suburbs with a lawn for them to play in. Once you go for it, you have two or possibly three,” he said all too quickly.

  She said nothing but continued to study him.

  “To be frank, this is the one thing where my wife and I disagree. I think we should have children now, but she simply wouldn’t. Soon it will be too late.”

  “I’m sorry,” Selma said.

  They discussed work a bit. He asked her about Ronia, and how Selma came into contact with her. She explained that Ronia was the daughter of a distant friend of her father, and in some way they had got into contact.

  “She’s a frail one,” she observed, “like many artists.” But she didn’t explain further.

  “Is she coming?” he asked.

  “Oh yes, she’s here already, staying in this hotel. I booked her room so I should know.”

  He retired early.

  He stretched out on the bed and thought about his wife. Why was he now interested in other women? Was there something wrong in his relationship with his wife?

  He first saw Liv at a party at Bo’s. He was deeply engaged in a political discussion with the host. It was about the use of market measures to control pollution, cap-and-trade things. That was all new in the debate at that time, and Bo was firmly against it. Olaf took a more pragmatic approach and said that “if it works, it’s good. I don’t care much about ideologies. They’ve ruined a lot over the years. Now I’m interested in results, and cap-and-trade gives results.”

  “Hey, we are in too much of a hurry here, jumping to conclusions. How can you know they work? And even if they do work for a few years, what are the long-term effects? What about capitalization? What happens when emission rights are traded in auctions, sold to foreign countries? What happens when poor countries, poor people, have to sell their emissions rights to pay their debts? Not only have they sold off their ability for industrial development or electrification, they have also lost their moral rights because of this. It is a bit like ownership rights to land. If you have customary rights to land, people can’t use the land for collateral, but they also can’t lose their land. Once land can be privately owned, the process of accumulation in fewer hands starts as poor people first borrow just to keep going and ultimately have to sell. And now the land grabbing that earlier was both legally and morally unacceptable becomes perfectly acceptable, part of modernization, so to speak.”

  Olaf often felt that he came up short in arguments with Bo, who was an encyclopedia of knowledge and in particular an encyclopedia of knowledge that condemned capitalism in all its forms.

  Susanne, Bo’s partner, took him by his arm and said with a motherly tone, “The host is not supposed to get engaged in discussions of religious or political nature with his guests, and in particular, not at the beginning of the party. After midnight you will be excused for almost any bad manners, except for making love with one of the guests instead of with me.”

  Olaf heard a neighing laugh and looked for the first time carefully at Liv, standing behind Susanne. Their eyes met.

  Susanne said, “Liv, let me introduce you to one of the best catches in the Linköping bachelor market. At least, when it comes to manners and looks. I’m not so sure about his brains. And by the way, brains in a man are overrated. It’s enough if he can swing one club to defend his family. And that he has another club for that other thing....Financially, I fear that ol’ Olaf is a disaster, as he spends all his money helping African women to send their children to school. Of course, he is from a rich family. Only those who never had to worry about money can be so careless about how they spend it. But I think his family finally stopped paying for his expensive hobby, didn’t they, Olaf?”

  Without waiting for his response, Susanne, who saw introduction as an art indeed, introduced Liv: “Olaf, I think you thought you knew all my friends, and that is mostly correct. Liv is from the branch of my family that lives in Gothenburg. We are somewhere beyond cousins. Her family is currently making loads of money on the upcoming winter Olympics in Lillehammer. The good reason to know her is that she is so kind and sweet, but don’t let yourself be fooled by her looks and appearances. Her mind is sharp as a razorblade, and she studies something that I don’t even know how to pronounce, even less what it means.”

  “Modest as always, aren’t we,” Liv chipped in. “Don’t let me disturb you guys. Go on with your politics. I can catch up with you later—once you’ve solved all the problems of the world. In an hour or so I guess?”

  He remembered staring at her mouth, the glossy lips moving as she spoke. He saw a glimpse of her tongue and teeth. Her chin. A mole on her upper lip. “Sure, nice meeting you,” he said, a bit perplexed, and didn’t know what more to say. He turned back to Bo and continued the debate. But several times, he caught himself lost in his own thoughts.

  Not much later, the music was switched from background lounge music to frantic rock. That effectively closed the debate, and Olaf looked around. It was a small group, less than twenty. He knew most of them. A few couples were already dancing. He looked at Liv. She had medium length blond hair and a confident stature. She was no model, but she was good looking. Her eyes were questioning, and her mouth had the expression of a determined person. Even without knowing her, he would have guessed that she was in science of some sort. She turned her head and looked at him, then she zeroed in on him. He rose and met her, and without a word they started to dance. They continued dancing for four or five tunes, the last one a soft ballad. She crossed her hands behind his neck and stepped closer. He put his arms around her waist, and that was it. I don’t want to let go, he said to himself. Then bravely, perhaps foolishly, he whispered in h
er ear, “I will not let you go.”

  “No hurry, my friend. No hurry to make that kind of commitment. And no need trying to stop me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here with you. And besides that, I’m staying in this house tonight, so it is probably I who will stay and you who will leave.”

  “Let’s go for a walk,” she said when the ballad ended.

  The air was crisp. It was one of those early autumn evenings, cool, not yet frost, but close to it. They were hot from dancing. They kissed for the first time as soon as they closed the front door. She tasted a bit spicy in a nondescript way. Their lips hungrily searched each other, their tongues more and more active. Their hands moved over each other’s body intensely. When he stroked down the length of her hip to her butt, she moaned, pressing her body hard against him. After a few minutes, they took off for a walk. They walked for an hour, talking incessantly, both of them.

  Then she suddenly stopped and said, “Olaf, I believe you and I are a good match. But let’s stop here, now. We have plenty of time to get to know each other. I’m overwhelmed, and I’m a person who likes to be in control of my life. I want us to go home alone and sleep well, perhaps dream of each other and then we can meet again.”

  He was quite put off by this sudden shift and wanted to argue, to scream, “Our bodies crave each other, our souls are so close, why would we delay the further union? Why would we say no to pleasure? Why do we negate our desires?” In the end he just said, “I guess you’re right. When can we see each other again?”

  His look must have betrayed him. She said, “Please don’t be sad. I like you. I think I’m falling in love with you. I think you like me, that you perhaps can love me in the future. I just need to cool down a bit, to get a bit of distance. I’m like that. I’m not easily carried away. I want to meet you soon, but I don’t know exactly when. Let’s talk tomorrow afternoon, can’t we? I’ll call you.”

  He gave her his number. He walked her back. The party was still going on, but he didn’t want to go back in and asked her to give his greetings to the hosts.

  They met again the next day, and the day after and the next and the next. She was genuinely interested in his work, and he made his best effort to understand the essence of cybernetic epistemology and the thinking of Bateson, which was what occupied Liv, even if he could never fully see the value of spending energy on those kinds of theoretical constructions. Her family was wealthy to start with, owned a lot of property in Gothenburg and around the Mjösa Lake in Norway. They also owned a construction company. With the upcoming Olympic games, their fortunes were more or less guaranteed. They earned money from selling or leasing land, from constructing things on those plots and ultimately, they would also earn money from tearing down some of the stuff afterward, or selling module buildings or stadiums to some other event, things that already were fully paid for by the Olympic organizers. Probably they would also buy back the land they had earlier sold, for half the price.

  Her two brothers and one sister, father, mother, uncles, etc., all of them were engaged in the Jörgenson empire. She was the only one who wasn’t. She was also the youngest of four siblings. Her father had been more relaxed and lenient towards her than with the others. Even if he mocked her for her academic career in public, she knew she had his support, and he had supported her financially all through her studies.

  Olaf was surprised at the energy that such a composed little person could master when it came to love making. But he also felt that she didn’t let go. It was more like a work towards the release. A concentrated effort, result-orientated like Liv herself. For her love making, orgasm was the result. She seemed to focus on that result so much that the rest became insignificant, just a transport stretch.

  The times she reached climax, she was happy, even cried a few tears. Other times, she was less gracious. Not that she blamed him, but she didn’t sleep, and Olaf could hear her helping herself to orgasm in the bathroom. He wanted to tell her that she could do it next to him, or that he could help her if she just gave him some time to recover after his coming, but somehow he couldn’t get himself to say it. He wasn’t exactly prudish, but some things were hard to speak about. Non-pregnancy seemed to be the other dominating desired outcome of love making. At that early time in their relationship, Olaf reflected little on that. He had no immediate desire for a child, and he also understood that it was plain stupid and irresponsible to start the relationship with a pregnancy.

  After six months, Olaf took her with him for a business trip to a group of female artisans in Kenya, making decorated calabashes. It was located north of Nairobi, and they stayed the first two nights in a hotel in Nanyuki and then two nights in the Sweetwater safari lodge.

  Liv had been to Mallorca and Thailand and a few other “civilized places” but never to Africa. She was bewitched by the African landscape and the people. Simultaneously, she was appalled by the living conditions of the people, by the environmental degradation, by the beggars in Nairobi, the Kabira slum that they just passed.

  “I can understand why you like to work here,” she said. “It’s clearly needed, and I do think what you do can make a difference. It’s very rewarding to come here and see all this, smell it, feel it.

  “On the other hand, the poverty is appalling and the upkeep of roads and other infrastructure is paltry. What really makes the difference is the people, though. Not that I should pretend to understand them—hell, I don't even understand people in Sweden—but still I associate and relate to these smiles. And those women painting the calabashes, they had a very nice way to see their opportunities. On the one hand, they seemed to have an unbound optimism that this will make them escape their poverty trap. On the other hand, they seem to be much aware of their existing predicament and how it compares with us, with the rich. And it didn't seem to make them bitter or envious. One of them, Gladys, told me she had had nine children, of which three are still alive. 'But now I closed my shop for the Mister,' she said with a playful smile.”

  After a majestic sunset where they had been spellbound by the noises of the African night and the sight of the zebras and warthogs seeking the waterhole, he asked her to marry him. “Liv, from the first time we met, there was this connection between us, this attraction, this love. Marry me, Liv.”

  She said, “Yes.”

  He was disappointed that she had tied her “yes” to a number of conditions for the marriage. He thought a Yes was a Yes, and any other things should be discussed based on that underlying Yes. But perhaps he was just a romantic fool? Liv was in all regards the more grown-up, more mature. One condition she had was that she could continue with her studies and feel no pressure to get a job. Implicitly that meant Olaf should take over her financial support from her father, although the burden was rather small, as education was free in Sweden and students, even those from rich families, get a stipend.

  Another condition was that she didn’t want any children. He hadn’t thought a lot about children and was taken by surprise when she raised it. He had agreed. Later he regretted that. He probably thought that she would change her mind. But there and then, with the cry of the hyena in the background; with Liv’s beautiful face in front of him, he just accepted it.

  They married, and she moved to Gothenburg where she could continue her studies. She was climbing the academic ladder, passed her Masters and could now call herself an assistant professor. Most of her attention was on her academic career, even though she also jogged, or if the weather was bad, aerobics.

  What was originally seen as just one streak in her personality, the seriousness and result-orientation, seemed to dominate it more and more, and therefore their relationship. He was the more playful one. He was spontaneous and got carried away by emotions. She held back, she planned, she organized. He felt that instead of converging, they actually increased the difference. So every single time he wanted to do something spontaneous, even if it was a small thing like rearranging the furniture, she came up with more and more objections, and in his opinion, r
igid objections. He realized that he reacted with exaggerated opposition. When she wanted to plan something, he got less and less interested in planning and waited until the final moment to engage in the planning, a behavior that drove her nuts.

  They had tried to talk about it a few times, but not very successfully. A few months earlier, Liv, always the systematic and rational one, booked an appointment with a therapist. They went. Olaf found it hard to engage himself in the process. In some way, he felt it was again on Liv’s terms. “We have a problem. Let’s make a plan for solving the problem. Let’s execute the plan. Once we have done that, the problem will be solved” or something like that. Or “if the plan doesn’t work, we will revise the plan. Plan. Do. Check. Act. Plan. Do. Check. Act. Plan. Do. Check. Act,” as the mantra of the ISO 9000 standards was—a pet of hers.

  He just wanted her to love him as he was and him to love her as she was. So far the whole thing had failed, and a week earlier, he abruptly had come down hard on her for her consistent refusal to have a child. “Everything is on your terms all the time. I know I agreed to it when we married, but I thought it meant for then, for a year, for a few years, but now it is more than four years and you still don’t want a child,” he had burst out at the therapist’s. For him, the child itself was perhaps not the most important thing, but it was the symbol for her commitment to them, to him and to life as opposed to the commitment to her study and work. For Liv, that was exactly the problem.

  They had agreed to continue with the therapist, but in his mind and heart, he didn’t have a lot of faith in the therapist or the process. He wasn’t against therapists in principle; he just doubted that they could do much for some conditions and situation. “If Liv and I don’t fit together, what is the value of a therapist? Could they make even incompatible people love each other?” he reasoned.