A Neverending Affair

by Kopen Hagen

  Do you want me to arrange for a hotel in Gent? I have a friend there that can look around for something nice.

  Yours,

  Olaf

  1996-06-23

  roniadavla@hotmail.com wrote:

  Dear Olaf,

  Thanks for your message. I am still new with this email thing. I don’t know if I should handle it like a letter or if it’s another kind of communication altogether? How do you see it? It sounds like you did great work in Milano. I admire your constant effort to make the world a better place to live in. Sometimes I feel that painting is a bit asocial, not enough in this world, not making it a better place. But then I love my paintings and some people really love my work, and that can’t be a bad thing to do, can it?

  Mais oui, book me a room for Gent. That would be nice. If possible, an old hotel with a nice view. I plan to arrive Wednesday afternoon. I will go by train from Paris, where I will spend a few days with my father. If I leave Paris at around ten, I will be in Gent around four, I believe.

  I started a new painting, inspired by Arusha, by African colors and smells. It will be a large thing with strong, but still earthy, colors. There are masks and fantasy creatures—very different from the stuff I normally paint. I am not sure it will become a good painting, but I got inspired one night and just let it flow. I am not sure it will ever be completed.

  I wish you all the best,

  Ronia

  1996-06-23

  olaf@rattvisarevarld.se wrote:

  Hi Ronia,

  Just got your message. Yes, email is its own kind of communication channel. Can’t say I reflected a lot over it, I just use it. Mainly for business communication, where it gives a good track record to follow, especially if you keep the old messages in the body. But after your asking, I started to reflect on it a bit more. Almost instant as a phone call, written as a letter, but much less formal and heavy, more like a post card perhaps?

  I will book us something nice, hopefully in the old parts of Gent. I look forward to seeing your paintings someday. I did see one on the internet, at www.art-inmotion.com. It was an Alpine landscape but with colors that reminded me more of a desert. Perhaps Nevada? Did you ever think about putting your art on the net?

  Thanks for your kind words about my work. I think very highly of you and your work, Ronia. For me, art or music or other cultural expressions are the essence of humanity. Simple souls like myself can only be grateful that there are others that can bring it out. And that I can be there to help with the practicalities.

  I often think about you and our conversations in Geneva. I feel we came rather close and I value that a lot.

  Hugs,

  Olaf

  1996-06-24

  roniadavla@hotmail.com wrote:

  Dear Olaf,

  Thanks for your kind words. I also value that we came close. As I told you, I am not spoiled with a lot of social interaction, and it is even rarer I meet somebody with whom I have so many things in common. And who is both charming and still straight-forward. Also, great thanks for organizing Gent.

  I have not at all considered putting my art on the net. The whole internet thing is for me somewhat unreal, and its use seems to be mainly for games and pornography (If I should believe what I read). I must admit that I am a bit of a Luddite and basically conservative in those matters, even if I claim to be a social and political radical. Also, where I live, the internet is painstakingly slow, and I can’t see how anybody would like to look at pictures emerging slowly on the screen and then when you’re almost there, the whole thing crashes and you have to start all over again.

  Chaleureusement,

  Ronia

  They also exchanged ideas about things happening in the world and their respective world views:

  1996-07-10

  roniadavla@hotmail.com wrote:

  Dear Olaf,

  I was horrified when I heard about Dolly. Why would we try to clone animals and, even worse, humans? It is a bit hard for me to describe my motivations, but I certainly object strongly to cloning in that way. Probably it has something to do with the idea that we can manipulate and select our children. And this is bad already on the personal level, but think if we end up with a situation where society decides who is going to reproduce, whose genes should be mixed and who could just simply be cloned. I mean, how fun would it be to have four Ronias, ten or even hundred? Not that I really think society will favor my genetic makeup. They wouldn’t want more wacko artists, would they? And perhaps I am even more afraid that I would never have existed if cloning was already widespread some forty years ago. I do admit that I hope that miserable sheep will die. I want them to fail, because once we humans of today know how to do something we seem to have to do it.

  Bien à toi,

  Ronia

  When she wrote this, the thought of two Olafs came to her mind. If there were two of them, it didn’t matter that he was married. She added:

  PS. I must admit that it wouldn’t be a bad thing if there were two of you, though. DS

  She almost pressed the send button, but in the end she deleted the PS and sent it off without it.

  Olaf responded that he agreed with her in principle but added that “sometimes I wouldn’t mind if there were two of me, if I could be in two places at the same time, though.”

  The communication went on. Often witty, often emotional. Many small signals, and a lot of appreciation, was visible in and between the lines, but it was left at that. Neither of them seemed to dare, or want, to take another step.

  Rome, April 2013

  He had not heard anything from Diana, so he called and asked her if she wanted to meet, and she agreed. It was a bit too early for dinner, very early by Italian standards, so they went to a café. They ordered some coffee. He started the discussion.

  “So tell me what the secret is with how you manage the finances, Diana. I’m really impressed from what I see and hear. Most chapters are in dire straits financially, and they come to me all the time with their needs. But as you probably know, we have very little money to assist local chapters. Ten percent of the budget is allocated to chapters and that’s actually supposed to be seed money for new chapters and not money to help those that have been running for twenty years. Most of that ten percent has been used for our chapter in Russia, as you probably know.”

  “I don’t have any secret trick,” she said, “but I guess it’s a combination of the bazaars, some targeted donation campaigns, facilitated a lot by my—or rather my husband’s—contacts in certain wealthy segments of the population and finally just good management, reporting and follow up, the kind of things that I am sure you are very well versed in. These are hard times, but it appears to me that in hard times people are more willing to give than in good times.”

  “True. I have noticed many times that hospitality is much greater in poor countries and that the willingness to help one another is greater among the poor than the rich,” he reflected, “and also other chapters report that people’s willingness to contribute is as good or better than before the financial crash. I remember visiting dirt-poor people in Africa and they were more generous than any wealthy people I’ve met. They would gladly slaughter their only remaining chicken to offer you a meal....Your husband. What trade is he in?”

  “He’s in publishing, mainly magazines, but also a smaller book publishing arm and some internet-based publishing, a print-on-demand service and a news broadcast on Tablets of Testimony. ’It's a newspaper-like product that’s automatically updated once a day, via mobile broadband, and you can choose your content profile as you wish. The name is apparently ironic. I can’t imagine something further away from Tablets of Testimony. A marketing wizard must have come up with that one.”

  He nodded, confirming that he knew about it and continued, “I am perhaps more concerned by your immigration motion than I let you know earlier. I mean, don’t misunderstand me, nobody would support this more than me as a person, as an individual. And I must also admit that it fits
very well with the mission of HRI. It’s not that—it’s more the strategy of it, or perhaps the tactics. It will, of course, put us in the limelight, which is good. It may even attract a nice little crowd of new, hopefully young, supporters. But I’m afraid that it will turn out that we lose a lot of supporters who see our job more limited to the traditional freedom of speech, freedom of opinion issues. And in the end, not only supporters in general but also those contributing to our finances, perhaps even our major donor, Norway. You saw that today how our current policies are easily twisted against us.”

  “Olaf,” she said and looked firmly into his eyes, “I hear you, and I do understand you from your position as the Secretary General. But this is an issue of global significance, and it appears to me that HRI is absolutely the best vehicle to move it ahead. The freedom to move is such a fundamental human right, and it is relevant for billions of people. How can we deny them that right?”

  After a pause, she continued. “I have some very personal experiences that made me engage in this issue. I am from Lebanon, from the Maronite part of the population—those are the Christians. My father, who was in publishing, was not in favor of the politics of the ruling party towards Hezbollah, the militant Islamist party. This was in the late 1990s, and he was outspoken about it, wrote articles in the press. One day in December 1999, he just disappeared, and we never heard from him again. Three masked, armed men came to our home the day after his disappearance. They told us at gunpoint—my mother, me and my brother—that we should ask no questions about my father. I wouldn’t just accept it like that but cried to them, ‘Who are you? Where is he? What have you done to him? We have money! We can pay for him!’ My brother tried to calm me down. The leader said, ‘I think this bitch didn’t understand the message. I believe we will have to give her a private lesson.’”

  She bit her lip. He could see tears in her eyes when she continued. “I don’t think I have to go into details. They forced my mother and brother to watch. My brother went wild, and they hit him again and again with the butt of their guns and threatened to shoot him. My mother was frozen, like she’d been petrified. In the end, I believe both of them were more hurt than I was. I think sexual assaults are bad as they are, and I refuse the idea that the victims should take up the burden of shame.

  “My brother never got over it. You know, in our culture, men are supposed to protect their women, and when he failed, he just couldn’t bear it. He didn’t even want to see me afterward. He drank himself to death, ultimately, for him it was either that or to kill those men. But he knew he could never do it. My mother sort of blamed me for what occurred. ‘If you had just shut up, this would never had happened,’ she said the only time she ever mentioned it, a week after the event, when I had started crying. Of course, the death of my father also overshadowed my fate.”

  “I am so sorry,” he said after a rather long silence. Even if he was used to bad stories from his work, it was not often he got them directly from the victim. He felt a very strong connection to Diana, so the personal effect was bigger than normal.

  “Ultimately, I went to the Italian Embassy to apply for asylum in Italy. They plainly refused. They didn’t believe in my story. They asked for a medical certificate that I had been raped. I told them that I couldn’t find a doctor who was willing to sign any such statement, that they even refused to examine me when they heard the story, that they were afraid of reprisal from the thugs. To sign a statement would equal signing their own death sentence.

  “However, my mother called an Italian business contact of my father and explained the story to him. Not completely truthfully I understood afterward, but anyway the essence was that I was under threat in Lebanon and that the Italian Embassy refused me a visa or asylum, both of which were true. This meant that I was now in the database of people who would be denied even a tourist visa. She pleaded for this man, who had met her twice very briefly, to agree to keep me for at least a couple of months if she arranged to get me to Italy.

  “He agreed very reluctantly, not because he didn’t want to help, or because he was afraid of repercussions in Italy, but mainly because he was afraid of my safety. Every week there were new horror stories of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean on their way to Greece, Italy or Spain.

  “To make a long story short, he smuggled me himself on a friend’s yacht. Later he said that this was because I was the girl of his dreams, but I know that is an after-construction. He was actually pretty awkward when we met, and I was as well. I feared that he had expectations of me. It took only half a year before he asked me to marry him. Of course, then we still had a lot of work to actually get the permits and all that. The fact that I was once denied a visa was a real problem. Here as everywhere else, a bit of money speaks—I must admit it even if I hate it.”

  Olaf was stunned over this story, over Diana, her husband and everything. “Diana, I hope you understand how much I appreciate that you told me this.” He fought a tear in the corner of his right eye.

  “Thanks.”

  Gent, September 1996

  Olaf had booked them in a small hotel at the Augusteijenkaai, three blocks away from Gravensteen, the castle. It was a pricy place with a very nice view over a channel, and it was a genuine fourteenth century building. Well, the facade was genuine, even if the interior looked like it had been totally refurbished. Ronia had indicated her approximate arrival time at the railway station, and Olaf went there to meet her. The train arrived twenty minutes earlier than she’d estimated, and she looked around and realized that she was early. She hung around at the exit and soon saw Olaf crossing the station square. She was filled with warmth, and she felt butterflies in her tummy and a pulse between her legs at the sight of him.

  Oh, I am silly, she said to herself. I’m like a teenager, filled with hormones. The guy is married. Perhaps he likes me, but he’s already in a relationship. Maybe he only sees me as a good friend. Next he’ll start to share his marital problems with me, seeking my advice on how to make his wife happy. “Just fuck her silly,” I will tell him. “In the end that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? But is it really? she thought.

  They met, hugging and kissing on the cheek as a greeting.

  “Let me take your bag,” Olaf offered. “It’s a bit of a walk. You know, most of the Belgian cities built the railway station outside the city walls. In a way, it’s nice, as it means that they maintained the old city centers, but it does mean that the train is a bit far.”

  She handed her bag to him. She felt shy, and didn’t know what to say. Her excitement over meeting him was rapidly turning into embarrassment. Was it perhaps the same with Olaf? He was quiet and thoughtful. They walked in silence for a while. After a while, Olaf started to tell her stories about Gent, its history, etc. He was speaking rapidly and a bit forced. She didn’t want to tell him that she actually knew most of the stuff that he was telling her, that what he said sounded like he had just lifted it from a tourist brochure, but she couldn’t contain her amused expression.

  Suddenly he stopped and asked, “You know all this, don’t you?”

  Now don’t blow it, Ronia. Guys want to be admired for their wits and knowledge and their potency, and any blow to their self-esteem in that regard is likely to be unproductive, she told herself, but still it slipped out of her: “not all of it.” When she saw his sad look, she tried to make it better by stating that she had “never known exactly which year the Gravensteen was built.” In the end, that made it even worse. She cursed herself.

  Silence again. “So how is the hotel?” she asked. That turned him into a better mood.

  He knew she would love it. “Nothing special, but I hope you will like it,” he said with deliberate understatement.

  And she was indeed delighted when she saw the hotel. He had the key to her room, which was next to his. When he opened the door, he realized that he had made a mistake not checking it beforehand. Because of the location of the room next to his, he had assumed that it would have the same view,
but it didn’t. Its window was facing the other side of the house with a firewall half a meter away.

  “Sorry, I should have checked the room,” he apologized. “We should switch. The room itself is nice, but there’s no view, and I know you want a view. You even specifically asked for it. Mine has a very nice view. Please take it.”

  “I couldn’t do that. You keep your room.”

  “Please, Ronia, I beg you. Accept my offer.”

  She looked at him and then laughed.

  “What?”

  She continued laughing.

  “What? Please tell me what’s funny!”

  “Did you ever see that movie Room with a View? It’s one of those sweet English romantic dramas.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “In the beginning, the main character and her chaperone have checked in into this Italian pension. And the chaperone is making a lot of fuss over the fact that there’s no view; they had been promised view and so forth. She goes on and on about it. And then this old chap offers his and his son’s room instead. Of course, they decline first, but in the end they accept. The son and the girl fall madly in love. But ultimately, she goes back to England, and there she meets the chosen one. Very sweet, very romantic, etc. etc.”