Acts of Infidelity

by Lena Andersson

  Ester saw him sauntering across Charles XII Square – tanned, relaxed, stubbled and sloppily dressed for summer. Clearly, Olof had some funds in his account after all, otherwise he’d have shaved and dressed properly. But the sloppiness could also mean that this encounter was so important to him he had to regulate the pressure he felt by stymieing her assumptions. He had done that before. Interpretations were not easy to make if you wanted them to correspond with the truth.

  The Opera Bar was a dark and muted winter bistro with few patrons around this time in August. When it was still so light outside, people felt too summer-fresh for its dusky interior.

  Ester heard herself babbling, part nerves, part embarrassment. Among other things, she said that it was in this pub that the engineers Andrée and Knut Fraenckel met for a bite to plan their balloon expedition to the North Pole at the start of that P. O. Sundman novel. This introduction seemed to give Olof pause, and he said that he’d read the book ages ago but didn’t remember anything about it, especially that scene.

  ‘They ate lobster and after that, cream cake,’ Ester said and thought about the linguistic oddity of his words: if you didn’t remember a book, you couldn’t assert that you, above all, could not remember a particular scene; you couldn’t remember less than nothing.

  They took a seat, took no notice of their own self-conscious glances, took in their menus.

  ‘We can order appetizers, mains and dessert, and have wine and beer. My treat,’ said Ester, who had pictured an extravagant reunion meal.

  ‘No, I don’t want to.’

  Olof pushed his reading glasses to his forehead.

  ‘What don’t you want?’

  ‘A main and a small beer are enough for me.’

  She knew he wasn’t talking about food.

  ‘How was your summer?’ she asked even though they’d gone over all of that on the phone the other day.

  ‘Excellent.’

  How could it have been excellent? Is your heart made of stone? Ester screamed on the inside. On the phone he’d seemed needier, as though he had less in his account; then he’d said his summer had been ‘all right’.

  ‘And you?’ Olof asked, but only to be polite.

  She didn’t have to answer because the waiter arrived, and they each ordered salted salmon with dill potatoes and a medium-strong beer. They ate quickly and didn’t say much.

  An hour later, they left the restaurant and made their way towards the Opera, crossing the Parliament House Garden where once they’d kissed, and carried on to Old Town. They always followed the same path through the city. Ester had nothing against it, as long as they were walking together.

  ‘I’ve never seen you in a skirt,’ Olof said.

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Last time you saw me I was wearing a skirt. When we said goodbye at Stockholm Central before the summer. But you’ve never seen me in patterned tights. I thought this skirt was more autumnal. It’s a new season.’

  They went to the Café Sundberg on Järntorget; the same cafe they’d gone to shortly after their first carnal encounter and Olof had said: ‘I can’t hurt Ebba like this. I don’t want to.’

  As they sat there, Olof’s phone rang. It turned out that he had to dog-sit for his son in the evening and they were sorting out the details.

  Ester was so used to setbacks that they felt like that old sweater you do the cleaning in. This resignation gave her a cooler and slower, almost forestalled, mien and this shift made Olof more attentive. He became interested when she was resigned. She became resigned when he was uninterested. When he took a step closer and she did the same, he would push her away, and then she became cool and austere, which sharpened his attention. It was a closed circle.

  Ester looked out over the square instead of at Olof. It wasn’t her intention to capture his interest, it never was; she didn’t have the energy to be calculating, even though how to be was clear enough.

  ‘Shall we go to a museum?’ Olof asked.

  Always with the museum visits when he wanted to be close to her and yet not.

  ‘No. I think I’m going to go home. I’m a little tired of museums.’

  ‘You don’t want to?’

  He looked at her searchingly. It wouldn’t take much kindness for her to give in.

  ‘Nothing will come of it. Nothing comes of anything we do and you’ll leave as soon as it doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘What did you think was going to happen today?’

  ‘Nothing. I was just looking forward to seeing you.’

  Scrunching his forehead, he searched for the right words.

  ‘How’s the car?’

  Ester smiled sadly.

  ‘It runs well whenever I re-park it. Otherwise, it sits there.’

  They walked towards the subway. Outside the entrance he held her and she felt his body respond to hers. So she didn’t take the subway; they went to his place and to bed.

  Afternoon slipped into night. Olof called his son and told him to find another dog-sitter. They made potatoes au gratin and steak and talked about all of their shared interests, such as the hiking trip in the mountains the following week. He said the things she’d given him had been very useful.

  Around midnight when they’d been talking non-stop for eleven hours Olof asked if Ester could imagine writing a play. The amateur theatre group he’d directed off and on over the past few years wanted a play written just for them for their next season. He’d been considering Brecht but over the summer he’d thought they could perform something by Ester Nilsson instead. A one-act play for eight people was what was needed and soon; the start of rehearsals was imminent.

  A cautious jubilation was unleashed in her chest. She was right. He had regretted the Midsummer break-up and wanted to reconnect, he’d even come up with a sophisticated way to do it. A play implied a more enduring tie.

  Olof looked at the clock. She could tell he was preparing to say something ambiguous about how she should leave, but preferably not. These were his words:

  ‘Are you off now?’

  ‘No. I’m not going home now. It’s the middle of the night.’

  He didn’t object to her staying, but neither did he invite her to. When they’d brushed their teeth and he’d crawled next to her quaking, longing body, he said:

  ‘You can’t ask a man to resist a naked woman lying next to him. A man has his urges.’

  Ester thought she could get him to make better and more loving analyses later. Everything in its time. Now it was their reunion that mattered.

  The next morning she took the bus home and started on the play. Spurred on by a fantastic energy, she wrote for a week, breaking only for meals, and then was finished. It was about a married couple and the third person in their relationship, as revealed in the presence of their friends during a melancholy crayfish party. Olof read it as soon as he came home from the fells, made it known that he was aware of her digs at the wife’s role and at the husband’s/ lover’s role, but said nothing more about it, accepted the play as it was and said he was very pleased.

  Autumn arrived. It grew darker, colder, barer, and Ester Nilsson’s one-act play Cog was in rehearsals one night a week under Olof’s direction and Ester’s supervision. He’d asked her to sit in on the rehearsals ‘as often as possible’. It was always possible. During these autumn months, Olof called her often to discuss aspects of the text and to hear if his portrayal was in line with her intentions. They kept things strictly professional; they were in a phase of recuperation and reconstruction, as happened in the autumn, so they could slowly move towards a new spring, yet another spring. The closer winter came, the more enticing his tone and language, the longer his gazes lingered; everything was vague and intimated, noncommittal but full of meaning for her to identify and interpret. When there was nothing to resist, he became more clear-cut.

  In January, rehearsals entered an intense final phase, and it was only natural that the director and playwright met to agree the
finishing touches and to deliberate. Each time their bodies sparked with memory and possibility. Olof seemed to like testing his capacity for restraint, to see how close he could get to the forbidden without giving in, approaching the fire and withdrawing. As winter progressed, the heat and tenderness in his gaze increased. They’d arrived at the date when they, as part of a reliable seasonal rhythm, had gone to bed together for the past two years in February. His inner atomic clock counting down to it again. Ester marvelled at its precision: meeting at the cusp of spring, leaving around Midsummer, repairing and rebuilding during the autumn and reuniting in the spring.

  According to cultural narratives, spring was for romance. In the summer, you were married and cleared out the cupboards. Olof heeded the accounts and schedules. They went to work on his psyche and he put them to work. These patterns gave structure to all that was loose and unclear inside him.

  Soon it would be spring again.

  After a theatre premiere, one eats and drinks. So too it went after this modest premiere one Thursday in March with an audience of fifty in a worse-for-wear basement theatre serving up sandwiches and red wine. Olof Sten wasn’t just performing that night, he was in overdrive. No provisos or conditions could be discerned. He was completely focused on Ester, forthcoming, attentive, lovelorn. His charge wasn’t only apparent in how he looked at her, but in his body’s position in relation to hers, in what he said and didn’t say, in the expressions he made and didn’t make, the direction the conversation was steered. In short it was one of those evenings when he didn’t mention his wife once, in fact actively avoided mentioning her. There was no duplicity or contradiction. If everything was a game and staged, then tonight he was playing at not playing. Pure and true, honest and vulnerable, he was meeting Ester halfway. That’s how it was each time Olof felt ready once again. They were on their third winter, only a few weeks delayed compared to the two years before, and his erotic light was shining brightly. Ester was familiar with it all, but her enjoyment was no less rapturous. With each passing year, his opportunity to say it was a mistake and all her doing diminished.

  Olof had invited an old friend to the premiere, a scenographer, but a scenographer without a stage and embittered by that fact. He introduced himself as Göran Berggren and had a suspicious countenance that seemed to be permanent rather than situational. His heavy head was set atop a short neck, and he had a disagreeable way of offering praise in the way people do who spend their lives in conflict with others: praise shrouding an ever-present scepticism. So after the performance, when the three of them were talking around one of the tables, Göran Berggren said to Ester:

  ‘Congratulations on the play. It was good.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, upon which Göran Berggren said:

  ‘This time we could even understand your writing.’

  Ester focused on Olof’s willing body next to hers instead of Göran Berggren’s comments. In honour of the occasion she’d worn a nice skirt and blouse with a matching waistcoat and leather boots. Olof said it was beautiful and suited her. Göran Berggren kept insinuating himself into their conversation, even when they were speaking in low voices, and because he was Olof’s friend, Ester wanted to be accommodating. That’s why she spent a while asking him about the essence, challenges and history of set design, which he expounded upon in an engaging way, though muttering and with offish reluctance. They might never be rid of him. Everyone else had gone home including Fatima and Lotta who’d come to see the performance and winked knowingly at her sitting there next to Olof. Only Ester, Olof and Göran Berggren remained. With a loud voice, Göran asked how Ebba was doing. Ester crumpled up, and her rippling desire and ease faded, but not for long because Olof said she was well last he’d heard and didn’t the subway go all the way to Göran’s place from here?

  And then it was just the two of them. It was midnight. Olof had the keys to the venue, a little basement theatre on Västmannagatan. They emerged on the gleaming-wet tarmac, Olof locked the door and they became one with the dark. They walked one block down to Odengatan. Nothing had been articulated and yet it had been agreed. Olof looked at Ester and simply said:

  ‘Your place or mine?’

  ‘Mine.’

  He flagged down a taxi with one hand and took her hand with the other. Ester wondered to herself how many times a person could come back before he understood that every return to the other devalued the marriage he claimed to prize so highly. Because their encounters were equal to their atmosphere, she couldn’t ask.

  They arrived at her flat. She put the premiere flowers in a vase. Olof’s touch was hungry and urgent. They undressed, got under the covers. Clasping her hotly, he said in that absurd way that only Olof Sten in his ambivalence could:

  ‘We’ll just lie here next to each other, nothing more.’

  ‘Will we?’

  ‘Yes, let’s just sleep next to each other.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Neither can I.’

  ‘I’ll explode if all we do is lie here.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  He brushed the hair from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.

  ‘But you can’t have such high expectations of me this time around. I can’t live up to everything you want from me.’

  ‘I don’t have any expectations other than wanting to be with you always and never letting you go.’

  He pressed his finger to the tip of her nose.

  ‘No. That’s just it.’

  And so the night began.

  Ester could see she was running inside a wheel, but believed the two of them would soon veer onto the same path; they were people, not hamsters, after all.

  Early the next morning, she drove Olof home like so many times before and dropped him at his door.

  ‘My body is completely satisfied and at ease now,’ she said.

  He held her hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb.

  ‘Good, that’s good.’

  ‘If you want to aid public health, you should visit me regularly.’

  ‘Are you “the public” in this case?’

  His eyes narrowed into coin slots when he smiled; Ester never had her fill of seeing those coin slots, feeding in a coin of bliss and watching him liven up.

  ‘Everything is its parts,’ she said. ‘If one person’s health improves, public heath improves, as long as it doesn’t occur at another’s expense. And it doesn’t.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

  ‘No, I know. And that’s unfortunate.’

  They were silent.

  ‘Shouldn’t you have a word with her anyway? You’re drawing out the suffering of three people. You’d be doing her a favour if you left her.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re wrong,’ Olof said. ‘But I’d probably be doing you a favour if I left you.’

  He got out of the car and went through the front door, waving.

  Caresses from the one who wishes to be loved or needed should come as surprises, should not be given out too generously. They should be offered in a way that seems arbitrary, like an unpredictable yet regular exception. Then the recipient counts them ten-fold and they bind her tightly. Just look at how God holds people’s interest. No one understands the psychology of dependency and double binds better than him. He knows how to chain people to him with the perfect dosage of love and aloofness so that they can never be free, so that he will never be left. And people know to arrange themselves so that they never have to stop loving and needing their saviour.

  After what happened, it seemed natural for Ester to ask Olof the following week if he wanted to see a play in Uppsala, a play for which she had already procured two tickets. He didn’t reply, but when she sent a slightly barbed text a day later asking for a decision so she could know if she should ask someone else, he immediately accepted. Like so many, he couldn’t bear losing what he did not in fact want to have.

  On the night of the play, Ester knew within seconds that this date had been agreed to out of a reac
tionary impulse. She waited in the car outside his door and the moment he sat in the passenger seat he cast a scornful glance at her pleated skirt draping across the seat. It was the kind of look that a schoolchild gets when the other children notice that an effort was made to look nice, but that effort had misfired.

  After Olof had complimented the previous week’s skirt, the one she wore to the premiere, she’d gone and bought another, and now it was clear that it wasn’t her style; it looked ridiculous. She’d hesitated but bought it anyway, emboldened by his praise.

  They hadn’t even turned onto Folkungagatan when his next jibe came. He stated that spring was in the air and it had a special light, distinctive and ethereal. When Ester agreed and took it upon herself to describe the magnificent violet glow of a clear early-spring evening and how it persuaded the senses, Olof said:

  ‘And no one has captured the spring in oil-on-canvas quite like Ebba’s father, Gustaf Silfversköld. His paintings are still unparalleled.’

  The manoeuvre was so subtle she couldn’t adduce it without seeming oversensitive, but he might as well have said:

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up about tonight. Just so you know.’

  Their mutual understanding had been slain, and he’d made it clear to whom he belonged without having to get sticky with intimacy. He even got Ester to see how plebeian her last name was compared with Ebba’s.

  It was a terse trip. Ester was silent at the wheel. This made Olof wonder if his message had been received, so as they drove into Uppsala he told her a joke from the theatre world that Ester didn’t understand or in any case, didn’t laugh at, whereupon he said it was a joke that probably only actors would find funny. Tonight, he was one with his craft. He added that Ebba had always felt at home among actors, and there was something about a doctor’s job that was like an actor’s.

  ‘I wonder what that might be,’ Ester said.