‘Aha. Yes. Good.’
‘Does next Sunday work for you?’
‘It’s far off. Over a week.’
‘The tour is going by fast and so is the spring.’
‘You think? I think it’s creeping along.’
‘No, it’s going fast. I’ll be home soon.’
‘And what will happen then?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
There was that expression again. Did he remember he’d used it that first time at the wine bar under the Katarina Lift exactly a year ago today?
‘Then we’ll see each other Sunday in nine days, as soon as Ebba has gone.’
‘Do we always have to be governed by her?’
‘We have all the time in the world, you and I.’
‘Do we?’
He rummaged through his things and cleared his throat as if preparing to confess. She didn’t recognize this throat-clearing. When he finally spoke it was halting:
‘I spent a while talking to Barbro Fors, a colleague in the ensemble. We talked about writing something together. A variety show maybe. Take it to a summer stage somewhere. Or get a small theatre together. Barbro’s nice.’
She heard something off-kilter in his tone and in the transition, something he felt obliged to report, that was weighing on his conscious. His voice had that odd vibrato.
‘Are you and Barbro Fors close?’
‘We talk a lot. I think she has a thing for me.’
‘And you see each other every day and work together every night and travel around in a travelling theatre company. That doesn’t sound good. Do you have a thing for her?’
He chuckled, with a little too much clucking pleasure for being the only one who knew where they stood.
‘Oh. She’s not my type.’
These words drove a spear of ice through Ester. He had used the same formulation when answering his wife’s jealous question about her. She’s not my type.
‘Hello?’
‘I’m pretty tired. I want to sleep now.’
‘Talk to you later,’ Olof entreated. ‘Sleep well.’
But Ester didn’t sleep a wink. She worried. That woman he’d been so close to once, the one who’d died of cancer, Eszter with a ‘z’, was it possible that it ‘fizzled out’ because Olof’s wife had left him because of his relationship with Eszter? Was it possible that when the woman who had been his mistress became Olof’s only woman, she was no longer exciting, no matter who she was or what she was like? To Olof Sten, were women merely functions, chess pieces on a board locked in predetermined relationships to each other? If what was secret became official, did he have to find another secret to regain equilibrium and to maintain the balance and distance between the both of them? If he only had one in an equal reciprocal arrangement where both were equally vulnerable and naked before the other, did he feel weak and resigned? By starting a regular relationship with her, had Ester taken the place inside him of the demanding, boring wife, whereupon he had to immediately start something with Barbro Fors to balance Ester out, like he’d acquired Ester in order to balance out Ebba?
Impossible. It had to be impossible. Early the next morning, she called Fatima, who knew about these things. While the phone rang, she thought dreadful thoughts about Olof, that he had a slavish nature but fought against it by being defiant and with infantile authoritarian uprisings, but he never truly sought freedom, hence the obsessive oscillation between devotion and contempt. For appearance’s sake, he jangled his chain so the audience would feel sorry for him and not see it was a slave he wanted to be.
Ester Nilsson knew that a slave seeks his own slave to push around. Was that her? She who patiently waited for him to display greater maturity, who wanted to free him from his shackles and show him the way into reciprocal love, no, that couldn’t be described as slavery, unless all self-appointed liberators sooner or later end up subjugated to the object of their reforms and rescue measures.
Or was she the fly, pinned down by the cowed child, wings torn off and haplessly gunning its engine, not knowing why it can’t take flight? All the while the child marvels at the stupidity of the insect which allows itself to be dominated by such an unimportant little person.
When Fatima answered her phone, she was on her way to work. She listened with concern. Unfortunately, it isn’t impossible, she said. Nothing suggested that Olof wanted to cut himself loose, or that he was planning on it, because it didn’t interest him. Fatima thought Ester’s concerns about Barbro Fors were credible.
By the time they’d hung up, Ester felt like she was suffocating. Was it because he’d started sleeping with Barbro Fors too that he, on the phone from Falkenberg, spoke of her with the guilty-party-in-love’s awkwardness and warmth? Was it because things with Barbro Fors were developing that he had disappeared for several days only to then reach out with fresh, delicate intimacy: ‘Of course I want to see you, spend time with you, meet you. But it’s complicated.’ Had he come straight from her bed and felt the need to compensate Ester, always the servant to his swings? And had he sounded exactly like this when he’d come home to his wife, guilt-ridden and sticky with regret after his and Ester’s trysts, while displaying a new determined vitality? ‘Darling Ebba, of course we’re going to Rome. I love you and want to be with you, travel with you, encounter you.’
It was so vile she could only bear to graze the thought. It had to be pushed away if she were to continue oxygenating her blood, and being able to see him. All of this was but speculation that arose when despair was whirring at its worst. If she could only see Olof again, this delusion would be proven to be as grotesque as it had to be. But even Fatima was speculating. No one knew for sure. Of course he wasn’t also in a relationship with Barbro Fors! It would be madness, it was impossible.
So they were to see each other the following Sunday when his wife had left for Borlänge after their weekend together. He’d spent the previous week touring small towns and villages in Skåne and Småland. They were in touch sporadically and only to the extent that she was checking in. Olof wasn’t interested in having contact between their encounters, other than when he felt insecure about her devotion.
Around lunchtime two days before their date, Olof texted her: ‘See you Sunday night. Be well. O.’ Ester was talking on the phone with Vera when the message arrived, and Vera said:
‘He’s so eager to see you, Ester. I’m glad it’s turning out the way you’ve been hoping it to. Finally. You’ve fought so hard for this and for him.’
Vera was in many ways fantastic. Ester could call her round the clock without her being irritated or distant, and she was often ready with a sympathetic interpretation. But she had a malicious talent for slipping what she actually wanted to say between the lines, leaving you defenceless and her impervious because her words were ostensibly full of praise and encouragement.
‘I don’t know about “fought”,’ Ester said wanly. ‘But I’ve trusted my judgement and the testimony of my senses, that he was saying one thing but meant another.’
‘One might think you trust yourself too much sometimes. You can get a bit overbearing. I wish I had your self-esteem. I almost want to say it makes you brazen.’
Vera was like glass wool to Ester. Ester sought her out in order to be swaddled in the soft warmth of being listened to, but lo and behold, she got cut.
So as not to seem brazen, she said:
‘Well, it might be that he got in touch today not because he can’t wait to see me, but because he wants to make sure I won’t bother him while he’s with Ebba.’
‘Oh, let’s not think like that. But if we did, it’s because he’s still handling his situation. He’ll be yours one day, Ester.’
‘You really think so?!’
‘Depends on how long you can hold on.’
‘I can hold on for as long as it takes. What makes you think that?’
‘How should I know?’ Vera interrupted. ‘I’m no oracle.’
There would be no dinner o
n Sunday after all. Olof’s wife decided to stay in Stockholm until Monday morning, which he called to say on Saturday afternoon. By then, Ester had perused cookbooks for a couple of hours in the morning, scrubbed the apartment with soapy water and had already returned from the Hötorg market hall where she’d bought everything she needed for the meal. This included, but was not limited to, a shoulder of lamb to be stuffed with fresh spices and string to tie it all together.
‘You haven’t started making preparations, have you?’ Olof asked.
‘No.’
‘I really did want to see you.’
Ester heard cars around him and a siren in the distance. Maybe a dying person was on their way to the Söder Hospital. In the hour of her death many years from now perhaps another similarly sad conversation would be playing itself about between two other lovers while her death siren interleaved their unfinished affairs. She wished those two better luck than she was having.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing,’ said Ester. ‘Where are you? It’s noisy.’
‘On Folkungagatan.’
‘Did you go out to buy snus?’
‘Yes.’
They laughed, the one resigned, the other self-conscious. Ester wanted to be with him there on Folkungagatan. If only he could be less important to her, so everything else in her life could feel like more than mere filler.
‘Can’t you catch up with me on tour instead?’ Olof said and his tone, which had been weak and flat, brightened. ‘In Växjö next weekend. Then you can spend two nights with me, all the way to Monday.’
Ester thought she was living in an echo chamber. Go there instead, at another time, to another place – not now but later. But with each repetition came a tiny development that fed her belief in change, a change that was being made by taking one small step at a time. Those steps were worth noting. Olof’s echoes gave rise to other echoes inside Ester: Now something is happening. Now a decisive step is being taken. Now he’s coming. Now.
And then it was March. Spring awaited as did Växjö. For the trip, Ester bought spring clothes and shoes in pale colours. The Saturday she was to travel she was so filled with uneasy hopes that she didn’t get anything sensible done in the morning. Instead, she distracted herself with a seven-kilometre run. Being physical was automatic, it demanded no discipline, no character, no great act of will-power, it was pure habit. And just as habitually, the endorphins started their shift right after. Just as she was stepping out of the shower, Olof called and said:
‘About tonight . . . You do understand that you can’t wait for me in the lobby, OK?’
He sounded like he was speaking to someone who was coming to Växjö in order to insinuate themselves against his will and without his having had a say in the matter.
Ester heard only his usual floundering, as fleeting as any other sensation passing through him. She was the bedrock and he the butterfly. Sometimes the butterfly landed on the bedrock and stopped fluttering.
‘No, I shan’t sit in the lobby, and I shall hide as soon as we see someone, and I shall pretend as if I don’t know you.’
‘We have to be careful. The whole ensemble is staying in the same hotel.’
How was this different to Arvidsjaur, where he hadn’t been at all careful around the ensemble, but had introduced Ester to them and hadn’t seen the issue when she’d brought it up? Was the difference Barbro Fors?
If Ester didn’t go to Växjö, she didn’t really have any other plans. Staying at home with only emptiness and the rest of her life ahead of her wasn’t appealing. Moreover there was no evidence, he hadn’t said that he didn’t want her there, and her thoughts about Barbro Fors were unreasonable and bizarre. And now she could hear how Olof was pulling himself back together. He had aired his anxiety, the pendulum swung back; he was no longer torn nor wavering when he said:
‘It’ll be lovely having you here. I’ll be waiting in the room.’
There are 460 kilometres between Stockholm and Växjö. Ester drove the final stretch through twilight and when she parked on the main square near the City Hotel, it was dark. Hesitantly, she ascended the steps that led to the entrance and cautiously navigated the lobby, a quiet space that had a distinguished character and features preserved from the 1950s. Everything in this hotel was soft: the music, the wall-to-wall carpets, the armchairs, the receptionists, the facial expressions and hairstyles. With soft steps, she glided up the stairs and because her arm was limp with nerves, she knocked on Olof’s door softly. He greeted her with a soft smile and said:
‘That was a discreet knock.’
‘I’m a discreet person.’
They sat down in the armchairs, he poured the red wine and they drank. Soon they were both sitting in the same armchair but agreed that they would eat before they went to bed. Ester suggested a restaurant she’d found on the web that looked like it had a good kitchen. It was a few hundred metres away on Storgatan. They decided to go there.
‘You go ahead, I’ll follow behind,’ Olof said. ‘I’ll see you on the corner.’
This hurt Ester deeply. She found the insouciance with which he asked her to help him sneak around both offensive and cruel, because he knew full well that Ester didn’t want it to be this way. But they couldn’t afford to be fighting now that they were finally together, so she held her tongue and contained herself. But one question managed to slip out:
‘Is there someone in particular who you don’t want to see us together?
Olof turned his back to her, arranging something.
‘I’ll be down soon.’
So she went down and stood on the corner. After two minutes, he came strolling along.
‘Look who’s here,’ he said, face lit up with a smile.
‘What a coincidence,’ she said dully and then he took her arm and they walked down Storgatan. It was a pedestrian street; all the shops were closed at this hour. The wind whined. It was just the two of them. Even the restaurant was empty. They were shown to a table and then discussed the various dishes before they ordered, he a saddle of venison, she the house hamburger with potato wedges.
As they waited for the food, they made small talk. How pleasant, sweet and wonderful it was. Ester’s rippling contentment returned, the quiet joy of togetherness. The food arrived and it was good. After a few bites, Olof looked at Ester and said:
‘Why did you come all the way here to see me? I don’t understand, because I’m not worth it. I have nothing to offer you. Nothing to bring to the table.’
He paused. Ester thought of the echo chamber.
‘I should be the one teaching you things. Instead you’re teaching me. Why have you come all this way to see me?’
Ester put down her cutlery and wiped her mouth so she could reply with the care this serious question deserved.
‘If you want to know the truth, your actions often give me pause, your awful ambivalence and the cruelty that it causes. You use these two things as rudder and keel to stay your course and keep from capsizing.’
‘Am I really that bad?’
‘Occasionally, yes. But when I think of your essence, your presence in a room, the way you receive me sometimes, not to mention everything that radiates from you – inside and out – and all the things that just have to be right between two people, because they can’t be engineered . . . when I think of all this, I never hesitate.’
He looked puzzled, but happy to hear her words.
Since Ester had met Olof, she’d vacuumed up the world’s stories of couples where the one misfired at the start but after a long time decided that it was indeed love, and then devoted himself fully. She searched through weeklies, Hollywood movies and anecdotes about people who’d got each other after three years or seven, of imbroglios, misunderstandings and circumlocutions that occurred because the feeling was so immense it was frightening, that the decision was a life decision and therefore not to be made lightly.
‘The most difficult thing about you,’ Ester said, ‘what pains
me most, is your far too keen and quite astounding sense of your assets.’
‘What assets?’
‘Fluctuations of capital. Relationship capital.’
He encouraged her to elaborate.
‘Inside you, there’s an account from which you make automatic transactions. You, more than anyone else I have known, have a sense of your balance down to the last öre, and you base your behaviour towards me on that. Do you need to make a deposit, perhaps by being considerate, or can you afford to make a withdrawal by being scornful, cold and indifferent, or do you even have to touch your balance at all? Everyone has an account like this inside them, all people keep track of when they should make an effort and when they can sit back, when to make a withdrawal or a deposit. But your capital calibrator is much more finely tuned than most, and far less impacted by moral judgements. You don’t seem to want to adjust it based on outside or competing perspectives, for example the well-being of your fellow man or partner. And it doesn’t seem to occur to you to simply disregard it – which you can, you know. You only ever do as much as you have to. I’m sorry to say it’s unsettling to watch.’
Olof was silent. Ester felt she’d said too much, but knew it had to be said at some point. Maybe he felt exposed and monitored, but what did it matter? What was said was said, and they had to be able to talk about these things if they were going to live together one day.
When Olof finally opened his mouth, several minutes had passed, during which time they’d finished their main course. Wasn’t she expressing an objectionable economic world view, he wondered, one that he, with his politics, didn’t feel he could stand by?
She shook her head gently and said that Olof was thinking about it backwards, the order was in fact the reverse. Economics was nothing in and of itself, it merely reflected nature’s most inescapable structures of debt and repayment, mine and yours. Economics was but a deeply seeded insight about what things demanded, cost and corresponded to in the form of investments. Pay and be paid was how it went, if not with money then with something else.
Acts of Infidelity Page 14