‘Either we incur debt or someone is indebted to us or we’re in equilibrium. These are the three options. When someone has something that someone else wants, there is the potential for a transfer, but also an imbalance of power, which can be regulated by various means. What I’m saying is that you have extra-sensitive instruments for assessing this transposable power and how to regulate it.’
‘And what kind of instruments might they be?’ Olof asked, resting his elbows on the table and pushing aside his plate, where a lick of currant jelly was left along with the last of the cream sauce.
‘Because we are aren’t dealing with money – how awful would it be if this were a case of prostitution – only nobler means are at our disposal for regulating power and imbalances.’
‘And what means are they?’
‘Doubt, reassurance. Lack of definition, definition. Clarity, ambivalence. Honour, dishonour.’
Ester noticed Olof’s air of misgiving.
‘That sounds metaphysical.’
‘It is.’
‘I have to go home and think about this.’
‘It bears thinking about.’
‘Do you have an account inside you, too?’
‘Everyone does.’
‘Then why are you talking about my account as if it was something special?’
‘Because I’ve never met anyone with such an exceptional awareness of their balance. And as I’ve said, I’ve never met anyone who makes no effort to resist his awareness of IOUs, promissory notes, fees and cash flow. Most people don’t want it to be like this, and so their actions counter this awareness.’
‘So according to you, I’m wrong? I’m all wrong?’
He wasn’t succeeding in sounding injured. Ester attempted a reply but couldn’t come up with a decent formulation that was both conciliatory and true.
Soon they were out on the pedestrian street heading back to the hotel. It was, if possible, even more desolate now, the wind more harsh. They seem to have built Växjö in line with ancient Mediterranean ideas about architecture, where one built for maximum shade in the burning sun, Ester said to Olof. To fend off the cold, they held each other close. Ester thought that this might end up being a wonderful weekend after all. They’d just had a frank and in-depth conversation, and tomorrow they’d be going to the Kingdom of Crystal. In a moment of amnesia, she believed they already belonged to each other and could celebrate Easter together. This must have been why she with certain expectation said:
‘Easter’s coming up.’
To which Olof replied:
‘I’ll be in Rome over Easter.’
This fact had slipped Ester’s mind because it was incomprehensible. Incomprehensible facts never really make their way into the centre of cognition. You can learn to rattle them off, but they’ll never become real knowledge. Ester had assumed the trip had been cancelled simply because it should have been.
‘How can you go to Rome with Ebba now that you’ve met me?’
‘Because I live with her. People who live together take trips together, don’t they? Isn’t that what people do who live together?’
It sounded like he was actually wondering what people do when they live together. Ester thought that when you weren’t motivated by longing for your partner, then you resorted to mimicry. Conventions and templates existed so you didn’t have to work out what you wanted and needed, they stood in for this kind of examination. But if you were together because you couldn’t bear to be apart, then there was no need for mimicry. Modes of togetherness would arise spontaneously; you never had to think twice about them.
‘We should be the ones going to Rome.’
‘It is what it is.’
‘You make it sound like you’re a helpless victim of life and its progression. When you talk about your marriage to Ebba it’s like you’re talking about the changing of the seasons or the inevitability of death. Like you’re being afflicted by life at all times, and by your wife. You’re just along for the ride. You don’t have an accelerator, just brakes.’
‘And maybe I like being this way and just having brakes.’
‘So you’re content with your life?’
‘I would say so. Yes. In fact I am.’
Olof nodded thoughtfully at this statement, his contentedness, and his life.
Back in the hotel room, Ester lay down on the bed, waiting to be joined by Olof, who was drinking a glass of red wine in the armchair. It was just like in the hotel room in Arvidsjaur: her eagerness and him stalling with phrases like ‘we have all night’, which was closely related to the phrase ‘wait and see’. Ester found the whole thing mysterious. They did nothing but stall and wait and see. Was it the waiting itself that spurred him on, which also gave him the advantage of being the one to decide when she would get what she was thirsting for?
‘Talking to you is so stimulating,’ said Olof, tucking in a portion of snus. ‘Our conversations are fantastic.’
‘I didn’t come all the way to Växjö to talk.’
‘No?’
His expression was lewd and amused. He thoroughly enjoyed being the object of her helpless desire.
‘You’re impenetrable,’ said Olof and leaned against the back of the chair, his legs comfortably outstretched.
‘Impenetrable? I’m wide open. What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. I just think of you as opaque. Hard to get close to. Averted.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me, Olof. How can you think I’m impenetrable?’
‘Do you want to be my mistress?’
His hand was moving up and down, fingers gently drumming the tabletop.
‘No, you know I don’t.’
‘Indeed. So you’ve said.’
The question was so bizarre Ester almost forgot it that instant.
The phone rang. Olof glanced at it and let it ring. As Ester digested what he’d said, the ringtone faded. It rang again within ten seconds.
‘It’s Ebba. I’ll get it now so I don’t have to later.’
It occurred to Ester that Olof might have asked Ebba to call after she finished her rounds in order to make a show of his innocence: how chaste and faithful he was, spending his Saturday night in a hotel room in a small town far away and wanting nothing more than to speak with his beloved wife. Was everything with him choreographed and calculated? Were they all actors in his play: Ester, Ebba, Barbro Fors, Max Fahlén, his children and whoever he needed to fill a supporting role? Was Olof Sten in fact a demonic director, not the anxious extra Ester thought him to be?
Olof put his index finger to his lips and the phone to his ear. Talking to Ebba while Ester was in the room: that was new. He’d always tucked himself away before. What did this imply? She couldn’t decide and soon had no idea what to think about any of it. All she knew was that she hoped and believed that her every suspicion was false. They couldn’t be true . . . weren’t allowed to be true.
He sounded normal and pleasant on the phone to his wife, hemming and hawing and saying mm-hm, chuckling and listening attentively. No, it did not sound like he was in the middle of a divorce at all. And Ester couldn’t believe her ears when he said:
‘I’m going to drive around the Kingdom of Crystal tomorrow.’
And then came more hemming and hawing, mm-hms and ha-has.
‘I’ll keep that in mind. I will. Yes, well, let’s leave it at that then. Lovely. Yes, and you. You, too.’
Ester was staring at the ceiling, hands clasped behind her head. Desire had fled. Now she had to keep her mouth shut or else her voice would betray her.
But even silence betrayed her.
Olof set the phone on the plastic surface of the desk and waited for Ester to guide them to the moods that lay beyond the thick mist that had rolled into the room.
‘Did that upset you?’
She didn’t reply. They had to look after their fragile eroticism and cherish these moments that were so few. When poison seeped in during these brief encounters, it imperilled their bond.
Was this why he’d asked Ebba to call? So Ester wouldn’t get any ideas? Or perhaps he hadn’t asked her to call; it was but a thought. And yet something made her sure this was in fact the case.
‘Wives who want to ruin things for husbands and their mistresses are clever to keep ringing their men,’ said Ester. ‘It’s effective. It creates a tiny tear, a slight wearing in the material. Break-ups and breaches are made up of many tiny tears and worn patches. So ring! wives, ring! if you want to undermine the relationship between your fickle husband and his mistress! Ring out the new and ring in the old!’
Olof took a gulp of wine and sieved it through his snus.
‘You sound bitter.’
‘Oh, I have such good reason to. What was it that you were supposed to keep in mind?’
‘Huh?’
‘You told Ebba you’d keep something in mind.’
‘I told her I was going to the Kingdom of Crystal.’
‘And what did she ask you to keep in mind?’
‘Her collection of Iittala glass.’
‘So you’re going to the Kingdom of Crystal with me, and there you’ll buy Iittala glass for your wife?’
‘I’m not buying glass for anybody.’
With a playful, wolfish smile, he joined her on the bed as if none of what had just been said or done had happened. Ester hugged him from behind, pulled up his shirt and pressed her palms to his skin. Desire came rushing back. It was in moments like these that she knew why she was here, and it was in moments like these that the thought of giving this up drove her mad.
The next day, they went from one glassworks to another, browsing but not buying. They travelled over one hundred kilometres that day. Ester drove, Olof sat next to her, his hand on her thigh. Ebba called once but then they were left in peace. By the afternoon, they were back in Växjö. Though not yet hungry, they planned dinner, the high point for secret couples and their clandestine encounters. Before returning to the hotel they reconnoitred a Greek restaurant on the other side of the railway tracks that Olof had spotted in the distance. Thought it was situated at the foot of a hill almost at the tracks, it went by the name ‘Acropolis’, the high city. It looked shabby. The soiled menu hung outside the squat, grimy house, white with blue trim.
‘The others would probably never come here,’ Olof said.
‘Can’t we just forget about where the others go and what they see?’
‘No, we cannot.’
‘How do you find the energy to always be thinking about not being found out?
Ester angrily kicked an empty plastic bucket littering the kitchen entrance. The label revealed that it had once contained crème fraiche.
‘They’d probably never come here,’ Olof repeated and walked ahead of her up the hill towards the car.
Ester’s hands were shaking as she slipped the key into the lock. On the way back to the hotel, she was so upset she drove over the kerb at a roundabout. Olof grabbed the handle above the door and asked her to cool it.
‘What’s the worst that can happen when your wife finds out about us?’
‘It would be a catastrophe,’ Olof said flatly. ‘An absolute catastrophe.’
‘What do you mean “catastrophe”?’
‘My life would be destroyed.’
‘But why?! You don’t love her! You don’t care about her!’
For a moment, it was quiet in the car. Then Olof said:
‘I’m not going to sacrifice Ebba for your sake, if that’s what you think.’
Ester took a long, slow breath. She must have misheard him. How could he say that? You couldn’t ask someone to drive over a thousand kilometres one weekend and then say that.
She drove onto the main square, parked, switched off the engine and waited; he offered no redaction. Then she asked why he kept inviting her to visit if he knew that nothing was going to change, knowing full well that change was all she wanted, that she was visiting him only because she hoped and believed that things would change.
Olof said that he’d explained what needed to be explained a number of times already.
‘How can you be so unsympathetic? You haven’t given me one reasonable explanation.’
‘There’s no giving you a reasonable explanation unless it aligns with your point of view and how you want things to be, is there?’
‘I’m sure there is. But it has to have some measure of internal consistency.’
He got out of the car and walked towards the pedestrian street, the one they’d strolled along the night before. Ester went up to the room and gathered her things, heavy-hearted. She was zipping up her bag when Olof returned. With a gentle laugh, he said that Ester was a bit nuts but funny. The sight of the packed bag made him earnest.
‘You’re leaving?’
He sank into a gloomy lump on the bed.
‘Now I really feel stupid,’ he said.
Ester felt sorry for him and wanted to ease his pain but she needed more if she was to stay another night. As slowly as she could, she put on her jacket and gloves, but slowness did not help; Olof was just lying there, saying nothing, and eventually she had to leave.
Even as she walked to the car, she was hoping he’d come after her. She waited a minute in the car with her head on the steering wheel, but no one came running after her. She drove off. She drove all the way to Stockholm in the dark without food or drink, without stopping, robotic and numb. Around Jönköping, her phone beeped. She had driven for over an hour and a half, but was prepared to turn right around at the first available exit.
The message was from a distant acquaintance who was wondering how she was doing these days.
At seven thirty the next morning, Ester Nilsson woke up in her bed on Kungsholmen and thought: I can stop caring about him; what a relief. His words from the day before were echoing in her head: ‘I’m not going to sacrifice Ebba for your sake, if that’s what you think.’ That’s precisely what she’d thought, it had been her basic assumption. She got up and ate a hearty breakfast that Hippocrates himself would have appreciated: rye porridge with chopped apple, freshly ground coffee and whole-grain bread with smoked salmon. Today marked the start of a new life. She was counting on never hearing from him again. But she couldn’t get rid of Olof Sten that easily. At ten past eight, he texted to say he was really sorry about what had happened, and he hadn’t meant to cause any pain.
‘I thought you understood,’ he said.
Understood what?
Ester tied herself to the mast and continued her solitary voyage. A new message arrived at eleven: ‘You forgot the earbuds for your phone. I’ll post them to you.’
When the package with the earbuds arrived two days later she spent a long time examining his handwriting, in which was written her name and address. She pressed it to her cheek and thought about him buying a padded envelope at the post office, taking pains for her, making an effort for her.
The days passed. She grew more tender. Within a week, she was receptive to any and every proposal. In other words, everything was back to normal. Easter arrived. She followed the weather in Rome on the international weather service online. Rain: 6 degrees, feels like 2. When did meteorology start reporting how the weather feels? Well, this bad weather felt mighty good to her. It was helping her endure Olof’s time in Rome with his wife. But nothing prevented the thoughts of what those two were doing in the warm indoors.
She spent all of Good Friday working, then she ran out of steam. She spent the rest of the weekend eating Swiss roll in bed, keeping an eye on their weather. It had stopped raining in Rome. It hadn’t rained in Stockholm for a while. At this point in the spring, the sunlight had whitened and motes of dust were dancing in the sunbeams, all the while the air receded like ageing gums.
Nature knew what month it was, like the body knew its age. Though it hardly seemed possible, the landscape of Ester’s soul became even more desolate in the bright, harsh light that arrived with spring, that was spring.
Olof had been back from Rome for one day wh
en he called. He told her how tired he was of travelling and now Skövde of all places awaited him at the weekend. When she didn’t suggest anything, he said:
‘If you happen to be in Västergötland, there’s space in a bed for you in Skövde on Saturday. Just so you know.’
They agreed on an arrival time. Ester offered to call the hotel and upgrade his room from a single to a double.
For the rest of the week, Ester was buoyed by the great calm that came from being longed for. Everything was light and easy again, no desolation, no angst; she cleaned the apartment feeling sweetly disposed to the world around.
On Saturday morning she was in her hall, about to switch off the last lamp before catching the train when Olof’s ringtone sounded; Ebba had announced that she had some sort of business at Tidaholm’s general hospital and intended to carry on to Skövde since she was already in the area. Ester listened, put down her bag and offered no reply in spite of Olof’s attempts to get her to help him palliate this thing that kept on happening. He sounded deeply troubled, especially by her unvoiced disappointment.
‘I have to call the railway before the train goes, or I won’t get a credit voucher for the ticket.’
At the time of purchase, she had hesitated but ultimately had chosen the flexible ticket option. She wondered why these clashes kept happening. Was it by chance, or did he get cold feet and ask Ebba to visit so he’d have an excuse to cancel on Ester?
Fatima thought Ester was being gullible. Maybe Ebba wasn’t visiting him when he said she was. He was probably making it up.
Ester swept this thought into the dustbin of her mind.
‘Do you think women have a sixth sense?’ Olof asked in the way he did when he wanted to connect.
‘No. I don’t. What I do know is that we’ve had this conversation about “women” before.’
‘But isn’t it strange?’
‘Not in the slightest. The only thing that’s strange is that you choose to be a pushover. You could’ve asked her not to come. I’ve got to go, I have to call the railway.’
‘But one starts to wonder.’
‘The women who are close to you have to be extremely vigilant of the atmospheric disruptions that announce your actions. But of course, you don’t think anyone notices your skidding and sheering. If you want to stop being plagued by “women’s” sixth sense, here’s a tip: stop cheating on your wife or divorce her.’
Acts of Infidelity Page 15