Acts of Infidelity

by Lena Andersson

  The Passport Office exit on Bergsgatan was near Ester’s apartment. When the errand was complete and they were walking towards the Hantverkargatan bus stop, she asked if they were going back to her place. She thought it seemed natural. It was four o’clock.

  ‘What would we do at yours?’

  ‘Something suited to a domestic environment.’

  ‘No. I’m not inclined.’

  ‘But I am.’

  ‘You’re always inclined.’

  ‘Because it so rarely happens with you, I am, yes.’

  ‘Rarely with me? Is it happening with someone else in between?’

  The somewhat troubled sharpness in his tone didn’t pass her by. Being reminded that he was replaceable always put him on the alert. Ester had no intention of exploiting this, she wanted no game-playing, and the truth was that he, for the time being, was irreplaceable.

  ‘No. It is not.’

  ‘I’m meeting my son tonight. We’re going out to eat.’

  The restaurant they were going to was on Rörstrandsgatan across the Karlberg canal, a kilometre or so away from Ester’s neighbourhood, and she said that if he wanted to, he could cross the bridge when he was finished and ring her bell.

  ‘But it might be late,’ he said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. If you end up ringing my bell at 3 a.m., then so be it.’

  His bus came rolling down the hill from Polhemsgatan and they parted with kisses. She walked home on Hantverkargatan filled with perplexing thoughts. He hadn’t said the weekend was a mistake or a one-off event, he hadn’t even suggested it or distanced himself from it. This was new, and this was good. He wasn’t taking anything back. Everything looked promising, but it didn’t feel promising. It was going too slowly. He was too inert. She wanted to get going with their life.

  People are always looking for an escape route, she’d read, even out of sweetness, especially out of sweetness. But why, then, didn’t she want to find a way out with Olof or anyone else she’d loved? Throughout her life, she’d fled confinement and coercion, but never romantic feelings. Those she rushed into each time. Why didn’t any of the people she fell in love with do the same?

  That night Ester attended a dinner meeting with fellow members of the editorial board of a magazine about politics, society and ideas. The meeting was held at Elverket on Östermalm where meticulous rustic food was served alongside dishes-in-miniature and foamed sauces.

  Ester liked these editorial meetings. Interesting conversations were always had, giving her new material to contemplate, and something always came up that she’d never before considered. They met four times a year, which was seldom enough for intrigues not to develop, in spite of the ideological tensions in the group.

  They decided that the next themed issue would be dedicated to philosophy of the mind and the problem of free will from a political and judicial perspective. Considering the latest research about the brain, how should a modern judicial system be shaped?

  They divided topics between them, to be further investigated, and discussed which articles they’d assign to other writers.

  By eleven o’clock, they’d wrapped up. Ester walked for a while with one of the other board members, an economist who was pragmatic in her moral perspective and for whom pragmatism was the only principle, and so they didn’t share many views, but Ester thought she was pleasant, not to mention well-read and conversant. They often kept each other company after the meetings and talked about modern tendencies. This time was different; Ester immediately started talking about the Olof situation. Because she wasn’t safely in the harbour, she had an urgent need to talk. She was still hoping that someone would be able to explain what she couldn’t understand: why the men she went out with couldn’t stay away from her and yet wanted so little and set so many boundaries. This behaviour was foreign to her, she who in romance either wanted or did not, never giving a second thought to the difference.

  The other woman responded with unexpected severity. She encouraged Ester to break up post-haste or to stop hoping that Olof would get divorced and resign herself to the crumbs being thrown her way. These were the only two options and she had to make a decision if she didn’t want to face even greater unhappiness.

  They walked up Kungsgatan, alone but for the odd night walker and dog owner. Ester said that for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine why you’d want to stay with a wife you weren’t happy with if you’d met someone you’d preferred.

  ‘It’s not a question of rather or more,’ said the economist. ‘He wants a little of both and to assure himself that the resources will never run out.’

  ‘But the sum gets diminished this way. Everything is halved and less complete than it would otherwise be.’

  ‘He doesn’t think so. From his perspective, it’s like a friendship. You prefer to have more than one friend, don’t you? Otherwise, it simply isn’t smart. You risk suddenly finding yourself very lonely. You have different friends for different functions and needs, right? He does, too, but the difference is that they’re secret and he’s sleeping with them.’

  ‘But I’m not as close with my friends as I am with a romantic partner; that relationship is more diluted, distanced and friendly, cordial even. I could never stand seeing them all the time precisely because it’s diluted and friendly, and it has to be that way so that I won’t feel invaded. Intimacy with a romantic partner must either be total so that you can live together, or as diluted as it is when it’s shared between several people, and then it’s impossible to live together. It’s the razed mental barrier to the beloved that makes the spatial proximity desirable and possible, where being with the other is like being with yourself, but better. When you unite, which literally happens during intercourse, the boundary between the lovers is erased, making it possible to be together all the time. When two individuals have no mental or physical barriers, you’re alone when you’re with the other. If the two of you keep the barrier intact, you have to police your borders and think about how you’re behaving, be obliging and careful. The alienation is greater and the friction less, but you can never really be at ease with the other person. It gets tiring and so you have to recuperate by being alone. Romantic relationships only work if the barrier is gone, when you slip in and out of each other’s mental and physical spaces without limitation, where you share everything without noticing, precisely because the barrier has been dissolved. Otherwise it’s as mentally taxing as constantly being around a person you revere but aren’t mentally intimate with and who makes you perpetually aware of your contours. That’s why children and parents can only stand living together until the child becomes its own person; then it’s impossible. And it soon follows that the child will seek a new barrier to destroy with another person. For only in a barrier-free existence does one feel whole.’

  Ester’s monologue had lasted all the way up Kungsgatan, with the economist only interjecting small noises and comments.

  ‘I like your theory, Ester: a barrier to the beloved that disappears. That’s just how it feels, that’s what you’re looking for and what makes you want to be in the same room day in and day out, night after night, year after year. But people have conflicting emotions. Not everyone wants as much intimacy as you do. They want to live diluted lives. Intimacy frightens them. Intimacy is dangerous. You take a big risk getting close to someone. You risk being discarded or losing what you’ve had or hoped for. You risk really getting to know yourself and presenting your entire unguarded self to someone else. That’s why lots of people have two relationships or even more. Not because they’re particularly bored with their marriages and not because the more fun the better, but to cover themselves a little, insuring themselves against losses and vulnerability.’

  ‘Risking unhappiness is the cost of happiness,’ said Ester. ‘It’s the price of the sublime.’

  ‘You can’t always use yourself and your own understanding as a starting point. Your goals in life differ from those of the people we’re talking about. I lived like you
once, in involuntary surreptitiousness. For fifteen years, I hoped he’d get divorced, and each time I despaired, something would convince me that a divorce was imminent; there’d be a minor shift that made me sure he would end his marriage one day after all, out of exhaustion if nothing else. He just seemed to be waiting for the right moment. I thought we were on a spiral staircase turning towards the light, but it was one of those spiral staircases that stops at a locked gate. The right moment never came. One day, he had a stroke and died. I read about it in the paper. There was a notice of his death, including those who survived him.’

  They stopped by Hötorget, where their ways would part.

  ‘Were you ever able to get over that?’ asked Ester.

  ‘It took me a long time, and as far as that kind of relationship goes, I’m done for ever.’

  Ester nodded in sympathy but knew that the same was not necessarily true for her situation. No two relationships, or people, are the same.

  ‘Take care of yourself,’ said the economist. ‘Be careful. It’s easy to wreck your life for those moments of euphoria, they’re lethal. As well you know, the years go by.’

  From there, the walk home took twenty-five minutes. The air was cold and dry. Ice floes drifted in the canal, whitish grey on the dark water. Tomorrow, Friday, Olof would go on tour. However she behaved, he drifted away. If she wanted to live close to him she’d probably have to do so in obscurity; an existence of constant preliminaries and with no other choice than to let it go or let him decide. She couldn’t have that. She couldn’t have it any other way either. She’d rather have some of Olof than none. In the brief moments they were together, she felt the fullness of life. Then the hole in her closed up, the cry was silenced. She couldn’t let herself be guided by the disappointments of others.

  Around midnight, she arrived home and saw that Olof had called her landline a few hours earlier. The blood began to rush, her heart leapt from her chest. She understood that she’d finally got behind his bulwarks; he wanted something with her, he was approaching. Olof wouldn’t be able to resist her love in the long run. With a satisfaction that started deep in her marrow, she went to bed. She’d only just nodded off and begun to dream when the ringing phone drew her back.

  ‘Did I wake you?’ Olof asked.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I just wanted to hear how you’re doing. I’m about to go to bed.’

  He was hot and loose with alcohol and longing. This was when she liked him best.

  ‘Can’t you come here?’

  He fumbled with his surprise as you do when you hear what you were hoping for but didn’t dare suggest.

  ‘How do I get to yours, then?’

  No one but Olof could sound so helpless. She loved this clumsy timidity when it surfaced, and entertained no thoughts about Olof’s awareness of its viability.

  ‘Taxi,’ Ester said. ‘Take a taxi. My treat!’

  Fifteen minutes passed. Then Olof was standing outside Ester’s door wearing a pair of gleaming Italian loafers she hadn’t seen before. She’d never seen him in loafers or in anything polished. They were too thin for the season, but she was touched by the effort and the sacrifice implied in not playing it cool; he’d often dressed down, was uncombed and unkempt so that Ester wouldn’t get any ideas about him attaching any importance to their dates or that he was making an effort for her. Because there was something unusual about dressing down, the inversion of dressing up, she’d always taken this to mean that these dates did in fact mean so very much to Olof.

  Standing in the doorway, he was smiling bashfully and pleadingly. His desire and inability to resist it seemed to embarrass him. So Ester had to be extra-careful now. With people who are motivated by shame and self-loathing, great care had to be taken when they indulged their longing. When the pendulum swung, then it swung with considerable force into the one who provoked the shame. But in this case, the manifestation was mild. Olof did no more than comment on how remarkably ugly Ester’s pyjamas were.

  For a while, they sat at the kitchen table talking, but soon they went to bed. The fires of tenderness and lust burned in the hours that followed, crackled and burned.

  The next morning, Ester drove Olof home through a hot, humid haze that made Rosenbad, the Parliament House, and the town hall look like a romantic stage set. She rolled across the Central Bridge at a good speed, through Old Town and up over Slussen, rosy-cheeked and with that dreamy look in the eyes that follows a successful dalliance. She soon stopped outside his door, turned off the engine and put her hand on his thigh. Once again the time had come for them to part. These partings seemed to come far too often. Did he feel the same way, too? She didn’t know, and he didn’t address it. Maybe he was happy to see her sometimes rather than unhappy about always having to say goodbye.

  Their kiss over the gear stick was witnessed by one or two passers-by. Then he crossed the street and waved from the entryway. In a few hours he’d travel to Göteborg where the tour was to begin. She didn’t know when they’d see each other next, but for the first time it felt like they would definitely see each other again.

  She went back home and tended to her day. It wasn’t long before Olof called. He said he’d had a nap and a cold shower but was still completely drained after last night’s exertions. They shared a knowing laugh. He geared up to deliver his statement.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should lie low with the phones over the weekend.’

  Ester waited to hear the rest.

  ‘Because Ebba’s coming to Göteborg.’

  He was using the same turn of phrase as he had before Christmas a year and two months ago, when they were to ‘lie low with the texting over the holidays’. And like the first Christians thought that the kingdom of heaven was close, truly believed it, and lived and acted accordingly, and like so many socialists believed that only revolution could be waiting behind the next stock-market crash, Ester truly believed, now and on all future occasions, this one included, that a break-up really was imminent, and she behaved in accordance with this dream. Should she now do what St Paul’s and Lenin’s followers had been forced to do: realize that there was no kingdom come?

  How was it possible for him to receive his wife in Göteborg the following weekend after what had recently changed and happened? How could he even consider it? And how was he going to leave her if he didn’t even dare say that this weekend wasn’t the right time for her to visit? He had to begin his break-up! Averting Ebba’s visit would be a reasonable start, a way to signal that nothing would be as before. Surely he didn’t need any more time to think or prepare?

  ‘Hello?’ she heard Olof say. ‘Are you still there?’

  Or maybe he had a plan? Maybe he had to keep his wife in good spirits until they’d been to Rome! When that trip was out of the way, he’d surely tell Ebba and leave her. That must be it.

  ‘You won’t hear from me until the coast is clear.’

  ‘Thank you, Ester. We’ll be in touch soon. Talk to you later.’

  He sounded intimate; rarely had she felt him so close to her. Soon he’d announce his divorce and that he was free to meet without restriction. He simply didn’t want to involve her in the dirty details of the split. An honourable move, she thought.

  Olof toured southern Sweden. With each passing day, Ester wanted to consolidate their alliance, be reassured that the two of them were a couple who in a couple’s way wanted to see each other as soon as possible. For a couple they were, if as yet an odd pair.

  So Ester wrote to Olof about an idea she’d had. If she drove down to Halmstad where he was performing next week, the two of them could go to Copenhagen over the weekend and then she could drive him to Hässleholm before Tuesday’s performance. She did have a lot of work on, she wrote, but it could be done anywhere.

  As far as she could tell, the plan was flawless. She could picture them rambling through Copenhagen, the bedroom, suppers and breakfasts. The idea should fly and she eagerly awaited his response.

  It di
dn’t come. Twenty hours passed. Twenty hours without an answer were equal to a ‘no’. It was also equal to abuse. That’s not how a loving, longing person behaved towards the person he’d just entered into a romantic relationship with, this Ester Nilsson understood. What she didn’t understand was what he wanted with her and what he was feeling. Entering into a romantic relationship with someone while keeping a distance seemed irrational to her, but it must serve some purpose that made the behaviour seem rational to him.

  After twenty hours, Olof wrote that he and his friend from the ensemble Max Fahlén had decided to spend their free days in the house in Skåne.

  Twenty wasted hours. One and a half wasted years. Ester felt tired of life and of allowing Olof to steal it. She didn’t reply. There was too much to say to say anything at all.

  After a few days of silence, Olof called her at home at one in the morning. The ringing woke her, and Olof sounded embarrassed and said he’d sent a text fifteen minutes ago and hadn’t received a reply.

  Ester had taken to turning her phone off at night to keep herself from constantly checking it. It took a while for it to get going.

  ‘I thought you might be at a party,’ he said.

  ‘No. I’m sleeping.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  Anxiously, he reminded her of his text message, he seemed to be wondering why she hadn’t answered yet. Ester didn’t mention the twenty hours she’d endured without reply. When she pulled up the message she read it just loud enough for him to hear:

  ‘Ester. Of course I want to see you, spend time with you, meet you. But it’s complicated. We can see each other next Sunday evening after Ebba goes back to Borlänge.’

  He opened his balcony door by the sea in Falkenberg and asked her to listen to the waves breaking.

  ‘Of course I want to be with you,’ he said.

  Had he been thinking otherwise lately? Why else was he insisting on something Ester thought they’d already agreed on?