Acts of Infidelity

by Lena Andersson

  ‘It’s hard to put a finger on,’ Olof said.

  Because she was the one who’d chosen the play, he was ungenerous about that, too. He offered a didactic explanation during the interval that this was the type of theatre regular people like, people who hadn’t been to the theatre much.

  When the curtain came down, Olof had rushed to the bar with the thirst of one who is lost in the desert and guzzled his red wine, the foyer murmuring around them, carefree people who did not seem to be corroding inside. Exhausted and full of woe, Ester clutched her bottle of sparkling water.

  As they sat there across from each other, a high-spirited gaggle approached their table, old acquaintances of Olof’s and Ebba’s as it turned out, but Ester didn’t need to know this information to read Olof’s desperation over being seen with her.

  She empathized when she noticed his fear and left the table by pure reflex, disappearing into the crowd before the merry bunch had a chance to suspect that Olof and Ester were there together.

  Once, she turned around and saw him sitting there, trying to hold his life together, Ebba Silfversköld’s husband conversing with mutual friends.

  The journey home was as terse as the journey there. Around them, the plains of Uppsala were dark but for lingering patches of snow.

  Drip drop, love is drained, drop by drop. One day wear and tear will outpace the shine. One day the lack of change will be the same as stagnation. One day you’ll be done. One day even the invaluable will lose its value. Drip drop, joie de vivre, joy and trust drain away.

  Drip drop.

  Drop, drop.

  Drip.

  But it wasn’t quite that time yet for Ester Nilsson.

  It was April again, muddy and wet but the evenings were getting lighter and the trees’ branches were bare and accusatory. The morning after the Uppsala excursion, Ester received, for the umpteenth time, a slightly reproachful text from Olof declaring how it was wonderful in every way to be with her, but that he couldn’t have a sexual relationship with her and he’d ‘explained this a number of times already’.

  It was simple-minded to send yet another message like this – every variation of ‘I want to but can’t, and you’re forcing me to do what I shouldn’t be doing’; ‘I don’t want it enough to do it and you’re pressuring me into concessions I shouldn’t be making’; ‘I’m not allowed to want to and you have to stop in order for me to want to’.

  Ester was tired, tired.

  Within an hour, Olof called to ask why she hadn’t responded to his text. She said there was nothing to respond to. He wondered if they should go out to Hellas in this beautiful weather. Ester said she wasn’t inclined, because she was tired. And with this, the telephone line caught fire. Olof could sense something was about to break, that Ester Nilsson had been gnawed to the bone. Olof told her that he’d spent the past week rereading all of her books, ‘had really felt their power’, found patterns and themes that he hadn’t noticed before and ‘was impressed’.

  This made her feel even more tired. He was so transparent, it was disheartening.

  ‘A walk would be nice,’ said Olof.

  ‘I think I’ve walked enough,’ said Ester.

  ‘I’m not feeling good in my situation.’

  ‘You’ll pick yourself back up. You’ve done it before.’

  ‘I don’t know what I want.’

  ‘And yet it’s always gone your way.’

  ‘Are you free on Saturday?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Olof said that the amateur theatre group really wanted Ester to write next year’s play for them, too. This made her very happy and she decided on the spot to tackle an old idea she’d been carrying around, a comedy about the first Council of Nicaea in AD 325 and the Christian Trinity. Olof thought it sounded promising.

  On Saturday, they went to Hellas. Rarely had he been this insistent, so she wanted to see where it would lead.

  Nature’s perfume was pungent, its verdure writhed and strained. Snowdrifts and rays of sunlight were engaged in a battle that the sun would win. As happened this time of year. Everyone but the snow knew it. Though doomed to be eradicated, it fought to the very last snowflake, forming a protective crust so sharp it could cut human skin. But it was helpless against the sun.

  Ice floes were still drifting on Källtorp Lake, and a few young men were skinny-dipping by the pier. Ester and Olof sat on the rocks, from where they could see the youths howling as they took the plunge with dangling delight. Olof playfully covered Ester’s eyes, proprietary, protective, as if she were his. But Ester was not amused, she was drained. Because he always reacted with vigour when her interest seemed to wane, the relationship began to accelerate. With his incredible sensitivity for the fluctuation of capital, Olof could tell how close to the breaking point she was. He started visiting her in the evenings after rehearsal, he called and asked for her opinion on things he’d read in the newspaper, they spoke nearly every day and there was no friction.

  Moreover, Olof wouldn’t be in Skåne this summer; he’d be working at the open-air theatre in Stockholm, while the wife was recuperating at her parents’ country home on Yxlan. She was exhausted, unhappy and out of sorts after a tough year at work, Olof said. Ester thought that she’d be exhausted, unhappy and out of sorts, too, if she was Ebba Silfversköld. Maybe they were suffering the same ailment.

  But she also thought, mostly out of an old reflex, that there was no way back for a couple who didn’t spend the summer together.

  Unfortunately, Barbro Fors would be in Olof’s open-air theatre production this summer; she’d even been the one to ask the director if he could give Olof a part in the play, he told Ester.

  Then it was June and they continued to meet often and intensely, just like at this time the year before. For the first time in years, Ester wasn’t dreading the summer. She wasn’t happy exactly, but sufficiently satisfied and pleased to be able to give in to whims like buying expensive salt ‘from the Dead Sea’ when its beauty and health benefits were demonstrated at a pop-up stall in the Västermalm mall.

  With this salt, she scrubbed away dead skin over the Midsummer holiday and thought about the bright nights stretching out before them, theirs for the taking.

  The Monday after Midsummer, Olof called Ester to break up with her.

  ‘My regret and guilt are getting to be too much,’ as he said.

  Well, it just keeps going, Ester dryly told Vera. This year he called, last year he texted. Vera explained that Olof was just closed for the summer. Didn’t Ester know by now that he shut up shop in June and opened again in the autumn? Mistresses had to tolerate locked shops.

  Ester asked Fatima if she thought that Olof would be with her if Ebba died or left him in some other way. Fatima didn’t think so: he’d find new excuses, new hurdles, new women. She forbade Ester to go to Olof’s summer performances, that would be beneath her.

  Ester spent her days reading early Church history and the doctrine of the Trinity while she was writing the play. In the middle of the summer, she was commissioned by Swedish public radio to write a short essay on the ‘orienteer’s soul’, which would be broadcast during the world championship in Falun in August.

  An hour after it was broadcast, Olof called and asked which way the needle was pointing. South, she said.

  He cautiously enquired about how the playwriting was going; that’s why he was calling. He needed to start preparing the direction. She hadn’t sent him any drafts over the summer. It sounded like he thought that was strange.

  ‘No. I haven’t sent any drafts.’

  He suggested they go for a swim in this beautiful weather, then she could tell him about the play and share her thoughts about its staging.

  Because Ester didn’t have anything better to do and, moreover, was not burdened by pride, but rather a teeming loneliness, she agreed to go for a swim.

  After swimming for a while, they returned to shore and Olof unfolded the blanket he’d brought for them to lie on. It was quite
a narrow blanket, and they had to lie close together so as to both fit on top of it. The sun was scorching. Soon they took another dip, swam out to the islet and back. And then they took another rest on the blanket, shut their eyes against the sun and didn’t say a word about Ester’s play. She felt his skin against hers even though she wasn’t allowed to touch him. Olof said he hadn’t seen her at any of his performances. He’d looked for her each night.

  ‘No, I didn’t go. You left me again at Midsummer.’

  ‘Yes. This isn’t easy for me.’

  ‘I thought we’d be seeing each other every night this summer. I’d so been looking forward to it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have been able to, in any case. It would have filled me with too much regret.’

  ‘Regret? Do you suppose Ebba thinks it’s better if you betray her every other rather than every night?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Maybe you’ve been seeing Barbro Fors this summer instead? Maybe that was more practical and comfortable since you two were sharing a stage every night anyway?’

  Ester’s tone was not snide, but neutral, as though she was saying something ordinary. She’d said this so he would object.

  ‘Ebba wondered that, too.’

  ‘And what did you say? She isn’t your type?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  After walking for a few minutes through the greenery along the water Olof said that it would be nice to stay in the green grass until evening, with Ester and some grilled chicken. Ester could recall the date of each instance he’d expressed his longing for communion with that exact content and analogous phrasing. It struck her that Olof Sten was a sort of automaton, the same thoughts, actions and language where one thing led to the next in a loop in which he was stuck and in which she for some reason was stuck with him.

  Why did she love an automaton?

  Why didn’t it help that she knew he was an automaton?

  Why did nothing help?

  A month passed. Ester finished her Nicaea play and rehearsals began. She didn’t attend them, the inclination and ardour were lacking. One early autumn day when the sun was still hot but the leaves were dry, Ester and Elin were sitting at the Eldkvarn outdoor cafe next to the town hall. Elin commented on how perpetually low Ester was lately. Because Elin knew it was fruitless to state the obvious about moving on and forgetting, they discussed strategies for inciting action instead. Would it be worth it to anonymously inform the wife? Elin wondered.

  ‘I’ve written at least ten of those letters and never sent them,’ said Ester. ‘Remind me why?’

  ‘Bringing the situation to a head. Breaking the cycle and the deadlock.’

  They took out paper and pen. For instance a letter could arrive from someone who had been sitting at a cafe, recognized Ester or Olof, and had seen and heard things that they thought the wife should know. They wrote a few preliminary lines.

  ‘He won’t choose me when Ebba’s read this letter.’

  ‘We don’t know that.’

  ‘We probably do, I’m afraid.’

  ‘She might not choose him. And then he can choose you. Eventually. But it might take time.’

  ‘How much time?’

  ‘You have to figure out if you want to be chosen in this way.’

  Ester put down the pen and considered this while taking in the sparkle of Riddarfjärden’s rippling waves and the jagged silhouette of Söder Mälarstrand.

  ‘Of course I don’t. But that’s nothing I need to take a stand on because Ebba will never let him go. A rival only makes him more interesting.’

  ‘Have you ever thought that this might be precisely what Olof knows, and he’s using you to make himself interesting to her?’

  ‘No. Because using each other like that is a crime against a person’s humanity.’

  She glared defiantly at the town hall’s golden crowns, crowns that someone risked their life polishing until they gleamed.

  Mostly to entertain themselves, they kept drafting the letter to Ebba Silfversköld. Ester was reluctant. She wasn’t ready to find out who he’d choose if he had to.

  ‘We can’t, Elin. I can’t.’

  ‘I understand.’

  The letter was half-finished. Ester folded it up and kept it.

  Vera suggested that Ester wasn’t actually afraid of finding out who Olof would choose if he had to, but wanted to avoid finding out what living with Olof was like. This was also what a number of acquaintances, long befuddled by Ester’s behaviour, thought: she didn’t actually want what she was fighting for.

  Ester found this reliably recurring thought about a lover’s capacity for self-deception tiresome, not to mention tainted by its own simplicity. Via sunken Freudian cultural goods, people had come to understood that beneath the longing for love was a more genuine misery, hidden from the unhappy one herself but not from the spectators, and therefore she should first contend with this more genuine lack that she was fleeing through the romance.

  When Ester was presented with submissive ideas about the unconscious, she asked herself why they were making love so complicated. There was no doubt an encounter with another person could spell the difference between misery and well-being. That this existential fact was an unfortunate biological vagary, one of the horrors of existence, didn’t make it any less true.

  Nature was dressed in all its finery. The trees were adorned in deep red and yellow, spots and speckles. At the mouth of the Djurgård Canal, the leaves looked like marzipan treats, but the earth, grass and stones stuck to a more sober palette. Ester’s walks took her out there sometimes. It was the middle of October. The theatre company was rehearsing her play one night a week under Olof’s direction. The troupe had decided to go out for a drink together after rehearsal and one of the actors called to see if Ester wanted to join them for both. The invitation made her happy and she accepted. It was a weekday, and they had dispersed by ten. Olof wanted to walk a while with Ester and have another round so they went from the centre of town to Old Town, where they found somewhere that was open.

  ‘Where are you tonight?’ Ester wondered.

  She’d just found out that Ebba was at home on Bondegatan, on sick leave for occupational burnout.

  ‘I said we were all going out together.’

  ‘And she was OK with that?’

  ‘Of course. I’m not . . .’

  He didn’t finish his sentence.

  ‘Does she at least know if I’m at rehearsals or not?’

  ‘She doesn’t worry about it.’

  ‘She should.’

  ‘But you and I, we’re not in a relationship.’

  ‘No. But we have been.’

  Olof had to take the number 3 from Mälartorget up Katarinavägen. Ester was going in the other direction on the same bus. According to the passenger information display, her bus would arrive a few minutes after his. They went to his bus shelter. It was cold in the small hours of the night and Olof was shivering, hands stuffed in his pockets. He was only wearing a light jacket. Ester rubbed his back to keep him warm, and he wrapped his arms around her. Then his bus arrived. He kissed her goodbye with the same tender, hot desire as during their very first kiss one winter night up on Folkungagatan, the snowflakes settling in their eyelashes. She remembered it as if it was yesterday.

  During the weeks that followed, they often spoke on the phone about the realization of the play and the state of the world; Olof liked discussing politics with Ester. She started turning up at rehearsals. They went for coffee and talked about a scene that was particularly challenging to perform. Soon Ester invited him to dinner.

  Elin pointed out there was a chance that Olof was reading the situation the same way as Ester was, but to the opposite effect: each time she let him back in, even though he was clear about never leaving his wife, it strengthened his belief that she approved of the arrangement. By returning to him time after time even though he’d stated that he didn’t want what Ester wanted, she was agreeing to be his mistress.


  The thought knocked the wind out of Ester, and it would not be dismissed. With as much rightness as her, he could indeed assert: You say one thing but do another, and actions are more important than words. You say you don’t want to be a mistress, and yet you keep agreeing to be one. Of course I take this as proof that your words have no value.

  Olof wanted very much to meet at Ester’s for dinner, he said, but only to talk because they couldn’t continue as before, no matter how glorious she was in bed.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Ester. ‘We can’t carry on as before. But I don’t just want to talk. And if you only want to talk, then there’s no point in you coming.’

  ‘Are you giving me an ultimatum?’

  ‘Yes. I can’t guarantee that there will just be talk.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  He sounded as though he was tired of himself and his meagre attempts to stem the onrush of desire. So he came over once more and their romantic relationship began anew, a little over three years after the first time they met. It was a rain-slicked black October evening. They ate chicken casserole with rice and after talking and eating, they went to bed; two familiar bodies, unabashed.

  From now on, she had to be able to trust him, she said, because she couldn’t bear another backlash. This time couldn’t be like the other times. Their communication had to improve, and he couldn’t just up and leave when he got anxious.

  ‘I agree with both the description and the analysis,’ Olof said. ‘We’ll do things differently now.’

  Olof hadn’t admitted anything like this before, Ester thought, and big changes are a result of many small shifts in existing patterns. Wasn’t that how the Soviet Union fell? Even that fall was preceded by minor reforms and greater openness.

  Fatima suggested Ester shouldn’t think so hard about Olof’s life and should focus on her own. Ester tried, but found she wasn’t particularly interested in her own life.

  They carried on into winter, which arrived early, and through the new year. Never before had they been lovers in the autumn, which suggested the pattern really was broken. They met up and they made love, they talked and strolled, exchanged ideas and reflections, they ate and drank and enjoyed each other’s company and bodies. She gave him lifts, they drove to exhibitions and went places. Once when she’d come to collect him and he called her car a ‘pick-up mobile’ while smiling mischievously, the distancing effect was so mild and playful and his eyes so alive with amicable joy that it could only be seen as part of their connection.