Betrayal

by Karin Alvtegen

  And to dare to let oneself be loved that way.

  She closed her eyes when she was forced to admit that what he was experiencing just now was what she had always dreamed of for herself. Real passion. The kind that could go straight through her and force her to let herself go completely, not be able to resist. The kind she had never ever experienced. To be able to love unconditionally and be loved in return without having to perform, be talented, be the best every second of her life. To be the one she really was behind the façade she had so successfully managed to construct, hiding her fear of failure. Of not being good enough. Of being abandoned.

  You’re so strong. How many times had she heard those words? She played her role so well that no one ever saw through her, no one ever got to see the other woman hiding in the background. She felt a longing to show all her weaknesses for once without losing everything. And not have to fight to deserve it, to dare to let someone all the way inside without being afraid.

  If only someone would say ‘I love you’ to her and mean every syllable of it, and wish there were even greater words because not even ‘I love you’ was sufficient.

  She took a breath and opened her eyes. The realisation had given her palpitations. She looked at her face in the black window-pane and was ashamed at her weakness. She was strong and independent and all the rest was nothing but romantic fancy.

  And yet.

  Was it possible that someone could love her that much?

  Out of a sense of duty and guilt, she had not allowed herself to express her secret wish even to herself. Bound by her vows and commitments she had repressed her longing in a shameful corner and barred the door.

  Out of loyalty to Henrik.

  He was the one she had selected to share her life, the one with whom she had experienced so much. She would never be able to do him such wrong. She had tried to fill her time with work and conversations with friends that might give her everything she knew Henrik couldn’t give her.

  All to hold the family together.

  Now she sat here, alone.

  He had found everything she had dreamed of finding.

  And he had lied to her as if their relationship had never existed, she and their life together had never existed, had never been worth a thing.

  She sat there for a long time, staring into her own eyes until the face around them was distorted and transformed into the face of a stranger.

  And then, suddenly, a movement outside. Something quite close out there passed like a shadow beyond her reflection. The terror came like an electric shock: there was someone standing on the balcony staring in at her. Quickly she turned off the lamp, got up and backed away. The pressure over her chest. It was pitch dark out there, only diffuse shadows from the branches of the trees against the dark sky. She stood with her back to the wall and didn’t dare move. Someone had sneaked round the house, carefully climbed up onto the balcony, and stood there protected by the darkness, looking in at her, standing only a few metres from her and looking straight into her most secret thoughts.

  A sudden longing for Henrik. For him to come home.

  Cautiously she moved towards the kitchen with her eyes fixed on the black window. She backed away and hurried over to the phone on the kitchen counter and quickly pushed the speed-dial number for his mobile. Two rings, three, four. And then silence, as he turned it off.

  Not even the voicemail went on.

  She was alone.

  Inside the house.

  And out there on the balcony, in the pitch-black darkness, stood someone who knew it.

  It was undeniably a lovely house she lived in, this woman who had lied to him. Probably a hundred years old with yellow wood panels and white gingerbread trim, surrounded by gnarled bare fruit trees waiting for spring. Two cars in the driveway, a Saab 9-5 combi and a white Golf. Both considerably newer models than his own old Mazda. Inside this well-to-do suburban idyll is where she lived, then, the woman who had misused his body and seduced his soul. She and the one who went under the designation ‘us’.

  He had parked the car a couple of blocks away and approached on foot. He had been in agony all morning before he left the flat, but when he finally ventured out on a foray it had gone surprisingly easily. Perhaps it was the new feeling inside him that helped him, the feeling that an injustice had been committed and that he was the victim; a need to defend himself against an external enemy instead of the inner one.

  He passed the house’s mailbox, a cobalt-blue metal contraption that required a key to be emptied, with a small opening that required two hands to stuff the mail inside. An object hated by all postmen and newspaper boys. And there they stood so beautifully, the names of the couple who shared the home he saw before him. Eva & Henrik Wirenström-Berg.

  Eva and Henrik.

  To the left of the house the lot extended into a wooded common, with only a low hedge in between. He looked around and, since there was not a soul in sight, he took his time as he stepped on to the common amongst the trees. He stood behind a tree trunk with his hands on the rough bark and looked in at the back side of the house. A balcony, a lawn, several fruit trees, flower beds, in the corner of the yard a yellow-painted shed. All well-tended and nicely laid out, someone’s cherished home. With his eyes still fixed on the house he leaned his cheek against the tree, feeling its roughness against his skin, and a shiver went through him. He wondered whether she was behind the windowpanes. And if he was there, the one called Henrik who was worthy, even though she had been unfaithful.

  A whore is what she was.

  He may have stood for half an hour behind the tree trunk when the balcony door opened. At first he couldn’t see who had opened it, but the next moment she stood before him. His reaction shocked him. He hated her, but suddenly having her right there before him aroused a desire unlike anything he had ever felt before. During all the years of longing, all the nights at the hospital with Anna’s mute body close to his, he had never desired anything as much as the woman he saw before him. But he hated her; she had seduced him, used him. These irreconcilable feelings fought for space inside him, forcing him to take a tighter grip on the tree in order to stay upright at all.

  So close now, and yet so far away.

  Over there on the balcony she sat down; in one hand she held a phone and in the other a white sheet of notebook paper. A light-blue cardigan hung over her shoulders.

  At first she sat utterly still, looking out across the lawn. Then she straightened up, looked at the phone in her hand, and dialled a number. He couldn’t hear what she was saying; only a few words reached him behind the tree trunk.

  The conversation took perhaps five minutes, and as soon as she hung up she looked at the paper and dialled another number.

  The realisation that he could watch her without her knowledge made him excited. She was exposed to his eyes and utterly defenceless; he had power over her. Again and again she dialled a new number, and he wondered who she was calling and what she was saying. He wanted to know. She looked serious as she talked, didn’t smile once. Then she took off the light-blue cardigan and placed it beside her on the bench. He could see the contour of her breasts under her jumper, the breasts his hands had caressed only a couple of days ago. He wanted to have that cardigan that had just rested on her body, inhale the smell of it, put it on.

  The phone in her hand rang. She pressed the button and he could hear her answer with her name. The name that she didn’t want him to know. He had to hear what she was saying. Cautiously and with infinite slowness so that his movements wouldn’t attract her attention, he moved forward through the trees. Then he reached the last tree trunk, the one bordering the yard. A couple of metres ahead of him was the yellow shed.

  She looked down at the floor of the balcony.

  He didn’t hesitate but seized the moment and ran the short distance to the protective wall and slipped quickly behind it. Through the gap between the panels and the drainpipe he could see her with one eye, but her voice was still undetectable. He
was too far away.

  She made a few more calls before suddenly getting up and vanishing back through the balcony door. The light-blue cardigan still lay on the bench.

  He stood there for a while, unsure what to do. The sun had disappeared behind the treetops of the common, and he was suddenly aware that he was cold. As long as she was in front of him, no physical sensations were able to reach him, but she’d gone. He wondered whether it had something to do with her aura. Something about her body shielded him.

  He ran the short distance back into the trees, then he walked without hurrying out to the street to the front of the house and stopped. It was the other one he had come to have a look at. The one who evidently was named Henrik and who was included in the designation ‘us’. So far he hadn’t seen any sign of him. At a slow pace he again walked past the mailbox with their names on it. He realised that he couldn’t stand there without attracting attention, so he started walking in the direction of the street where he had parked. He was feeling quite cold now, and when he got back to the car he turned up the heat all the way.

  The thought of driving to his flat didn’t appeal to him. It was as though a magnet were drawing him towards the yellow house with the white gingerbread trim. He put the car in gear and let the force- field draw him to it. He drove slowly a short distance around the neighbourhood and then he was back. She was inside. Along with her, the other, the one who was worthy.

  Just as he passed the mailbox the front door opened.

  There he was.

  His foot hit the brake without being told to do so by his brain. The man outside the front door locked it after him and looked curiously in his direction. Jonas turned his face away. He had wanted to see more, look more closely, but he didn’t want to be seen. Not now. Not yet.

  A hundred metres farther along was a roundabout. When Jonas passed the house on the way back, his superior was sitting in the Golf and just backing out of the driveway. Jonas slowed down and let him back out. A hand in the side window waved to thank him; Jonas nodded slightly in acknowledgement.

  You’re welcome. I’ve fucked your woman too.

  He followed at a safe distance. From the irregular streets of the residential neighbourhood to the motorway leading towards the city. He kept a few cars in between them. No one must know that he was there, watching, checking, in control. Calm filled him. The compulsion was far away.

  After Danvikstull they turned off to the left towards the newly built-up area in Norra Hammarbyhamn, first to the right and then right again. He knew this part of Södermalm. He had filled in there for a week several years ago when half the city called in sick during a flu epidemic. The car in front of him turned right up Duvnäsgatan and vanished out of sight for a moment. Jonas slowed down when he saw it pull into a parking space but kept going straight ahead, parked and climbed out. He rounded the corner towards Duvnäsgatan and at the same moment the other man’s car door opened. A blonde woman about his age, maybe a couple of years older, came out of the building about ten metres farther down. Jonas pulled up his hood and started walking up the hill on the other side of the street, stopped by a shop window across from the parked Golf and stood there. He could see them in the reflection in the window, and nothing would ever surprise him again. The pieces didn’t fit together any more. For a brief second his eyes refocused and he suddenly read a sign inside the shop window: ‘To Let’. There was nothing else displayed in the empty window. But the reflection had even more to reveal. The woman who had just come out of the building and the man named Henrik who had just left his beautiful suburban home now stood embracing each other across the street. Quite still and almost convulsively they held on to each other, as if they might fall over if either of them let go.

  They stood there like that for a long time. Long enough for him to attract attention in front of the empty shop window if they were capable of noticing anything outside their own sphere.

  Who was this man? In the house he had just left, a woman was walking around who was everything a man could desire. And yet he stood here across the street in another’s embrace.

  Without turning round Jonas started walking down the hill, back to his car. He felt confused now, wondering about what he had seen, and whether everything was as it seemed. A husband and wife who satisfied their desires elsewhere, with other partners.

  Bloody hell.

  He’d never put up with that.

  The day he got married and someone really loved him for the person he was, the day someone truly saw him, he would never again look at anyone else. He would drag out all the passion inside him and make his woman a queen. He would worship her, do everything she asked, be there loving her every second. He would never fail. His love could work miracles if someone would only let it. If anyone would only accept it. Why could no woman see his capacity, see the inherent power in him? Why was there no one who wanted to accept all that he had to give?

  Anna had known. And yet he wasn’t good enough for her.

  A great longing came over him again, a longing for a way out of his loneliness. And then he thought of the man named Henrik, whom he had just seen in the other woman’s arms. A man who had everything anyone could ever want but was still not satisfied.

  And Lind . . . Eva.

  Eva.

  What was it she had wanted of him when she went home with him?

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a car pass by his side window, but not until it was gone did he realise it was the Golf. The woman was sitting in the passenger seat.

  He turned the key in the ignition and almost automatically rather than by making a conscious decision, he followed. Renstiernas Gata on the left and then Ringvägen to the turn-off at Nynäsvägen. He didn’t care about keeping his distance any more, he might as well drive where he liked.

  In fact he ended up driving all the way to a little out-of-the-way pizzeria halfway to Nynäshamn. A hundred metres ahead he saw the Golf turn in and park. The restaurant didn’t look particularly luxurious or cosy, so he assumed it had been chosen because of its safe distance from the house in Nacka. Infidelity apparently required a certain caution. He knew that better than most. He felt his disgust grow when he saw them walk inside. His arm around her shoulders, protective, attentive. How could a woman be so stupid as to trust a man who at that very moment was betraying another woman?

  It was all so incomprehensible.

  He waited a while before he left his car, in no hurry as he read the laminated menu beside the door. They were seated facing each other at a table in the corner, and a man with a foreign appearance was taking their order. There didn’t seem to be much of a rush at the place, because only two other tables were occupied. At one table sat three teenage boys barely old enough to be drinking the beer they held. At the other sat a family with children who had just finished eating. And yet it wouldn’t seem too odd if he picked the table right next to them. He took a few steps to the table and just as he pulled out the chair he saw out of the corner of his eye the man named Henrik who was being unfaithful give back the menu. Jonas sat down and a second later he had the same menu in his hands.

  His hands.

  The hands that had caressed the same woman.

  His own in unconditional love, the other man’s in unconditional betrayal.

  And yet it was he, the other man, who had the right to touch her.

  He pushed aside the menu on the table, not wanting to touch it. He tried to remember the name of some type of pizza from the text he had read on the placard outside the front door.

  Then the man with the foreign appearance went back to the kitchen and the others started talking to each other. Without straining he could hear every word of their conversation even though they lowered their voices. And suddenly it was all so clear. Why everything had happened. Why it was predestined that he should catch sight of her when she was sitting under the red awning the evening before last, why the two of them should meet.

  He had been given a task to perform.

 
He who believed that she had been sent to save him. It was precisely the opposite! He was sent to save her. Their deceitful, merciless judgement over two mediocre Quattro Stagioni pizzas. She, who wasn’t even here to speak for herself.

  He couldn’t eat the pizza he had ordered. He left it untouched and asked for the check.

  Their voices echoed in his head during the trip back towards Nacka.

  ‘When do you intend to tell her about us? I just can’t stand to go on like this much longer.’

  ‘I know. But there’s also Axel to consider. I have to arrange for a flat first so he can live with me as well.’

  And that was when he had understood that some-where in the midst of all this self-absorption there was a son.

  There was a son.

  And here at a suburban pizzeria, hidden away in fear that someone might see him, sat his father with a whore eating pizza.

  It was dark by the time he turned onto the street where he knew she lived. He stood outside the car and watched in fascination the play of lights from the top of the Nacka Masts a few hundred metres off. The sweeping lights that branched like straight streets through the cloud cover to vanish softly into infinity. Of course she lived underneath a searchlight, but all she had to do was head towards the light.

  This time he walked straight onto the property, stopping at each window to peer cautiously through the darkened panes on his way round the house. He didn’t see her anywhere. Then he reached the back yard and saw the glow of a lamp through the big window next to the balcony door. He walked out onto the lawn so he wouldn’t come too close, not wanting to risk her catching sight of him. Not yet. Not until he was ready.

  Then he finally saw her. With only a reading lamp lit she was sitting in an easy chair right next to the window. For a second or two he thought she was staring straight at him, but then he realised that her eyes were staring into the darkness surrounding him. He couldn’t resist moving closer. Step by step, with infinite slowness, he approached the balcony. Three steps up the stairs and then he was close to her. Right up close. Only a window-pane prevented him from reaching out and touching her. A book lay unopened on her lap, and he looked at her hands lying folded on top of it. The same hands that had caressed him and made him come alive. He had only one wish: to feel those hands against his skin once more. He had to subdue his desire, give her a chance to try and understand. He raised his gaze to her face. It was utterly devoid of expression, but then he saw that tears were running down her cheeks like white tracks against her skin.