After almost an hour in the slush, she reached Fridhemsplan. She rented a movie and bought pizza. She thought about Olof’s dinner with his wife. ‘Something tasty, I’m sure. It usually is.’ The words made her shudder.
The rehearsal started at noon, so at eleven Ester was waiting by the Karlberg Canal. Nothing had been arranged, but there really wasn’t any other way. She waited; Olof didn’t come. Eventually, she risked being late for rehearsal and called him. He had badly misjudged both the time and distance. Walking from Söder to Huvudsta took at least an hour and a half under normal conditions, but now the route was thick with slush and powdered with fresh snow. With each step forward, her feet slid backwards. She’d be over half an hour late if she waited for him, but they couldn’t do anything without the director anyway. And she wanted to walk with Olof, wanted to be with him as and when she could, and to set yesterday right.
Ester thought that the negligence Olof was showing towards the ensemble was precipitated by a self-loathing that came from living a lie. Negligence was his conscious’s way of inciting action. The pressure had finally found an outlet. Like all things in nature, the will followed the paths available to reach what it needed to reach, do what needed to be done. Sloppiness and a lack of concentration were ways for the psyche to trigger changes that otherwise would not be made. Olof’s life was quite simply falling apart at the seams, Ester thought.
To intercept him, she walked southward along the Karlberg Canal, but even his coordinates had been diffuse and imprecise when she’d called to hear how far he’d come:
‘I see a red-brick house on the left and a sign.’
She’d already passed Barnhus Bridge when they crossed paths. It was noon. He didn’t mention his delay or that the ensemble was being kept waiting. Wearing a dirty jacket and a nonchalant air, he stumbled forth in the slush, ill-tempered and hungover. They walked to Huvudsta in silence.
By the time they arrived, the actors were already in action. Apparently, he’d forewarned them about the forty-five-minute delay; they were restless but not surprised. He hadn’t called to forewarn her.
They worked for several hours straight. The parts were beginning to stick. Now all they needed was to be fused into a whole. They carried on until five, and when they were done, dinner awaited them all in Birkastan at the home of one of the actors. The group deliberated walking or riding the subway.
‘It would be nicest to go on foot,’ Ester said and looked at Olof without arranging her features so they would display something other than the hopeful ardour she had no reason to be emanating. Somehow, it had fixed itself into a habitual expression.
Olof glanced at her. To her dismay, the sediment of disgust lingered in his gaze, and the following line unleashed clouds of toxic spores, as from a deathcap mushroom:
‘You’re not the only one who wants to walk.’
Vera said:
‘What if you were faced with a starving person who was allowing themselves to be satisfied with a stale crust of bread once a fortnight? Stop holding out your hand, Ester. Get your own food, free yourself from bondage. People diminish those who ask to be diminished.
Fatima asked:
‘Where’s your self-respect?’
Ester explained that she was not a beggar, nor did she lack self-respect. Quite the contrary in fact, she had so much it allowed her to overlook the weaknesses of those who were afraid to love. She’d never play or be steered by their power games.
Shrill with vexation, Vera yelled that Ester was arrogant, did she think she was God?
Ester asked how this fitted with her being pitiful, pitiable. An arrogant beggar in divine guise? This made Vera yell even louder.
‘The more interesting question,’ Ester said, ‘is why Olof keeps stuffing that crust into my mouth. He could just stop, but he doesn’t. He wants something.’
‘But he doesn’t want enough!’ Vera shouted. ‘The world isn’t a mathematical equation.’
‘And yet no one is surer of what x and y represent than you.’
‘I can’t do this any more. I give up. I need some time away from you. I’m taking a break.’
And she did. They took a break from each other.
From rehearsal, the group braved the snow-slush; their route took them past Karlberg Palace, under the railway and up the hill towards Birkastan. Olof lagged behind Ester, conversing with one of the actresses. Though Ester was also talking, she could sense Olof’s mind as keenly as if it was her own; he was aware that he’d trodden too hard on her, and this was not good. But she also sensed this awareness was paired with a furious desire to trample her and cut her off once and for all, destroy what he harboured for her, crush her so he could find equanimity. His sensations were as clear as ice inside her: he couldn’t live without her love nor could he live with it; he wanted to have it but didn’t understand what it turned him into; he wanted to avoid it but didn’t dare relinquish it; she showed him that there was a better version of life out there and for this, he despised her.
Towards the end of the walk, her sense seemed confirmed. She saw his need to reel her in, to re-establish contact in order to neutralize his guilt. Meanwhile he wanted to keep their intimacy in check and was irritated by how flaccid her sullen severity made him seem. The sum of all this was a chipper yet contemptuous exclamation in which admiration was swaddled in caustic irony:
‘Or what does the poet and philosopher say to that?’
And then some of what had been discussed behind her was relayed. When she turned around, his expression was inviting. His response disarmed and appeased her.
Soon they were at the home of the couple who was hosting the dinner, and the stew was simmering on the stove. They drank wine and ate snacks; in the living room, the group split in two to chat. Ester sat in Olof’s group and sensed how clingy he thought it was that she had joined his group and not the other one, which would have been the strategic choice, but she rejected strategy and the fight. She’d sat with his group because that’s where she wanted to be, in hopes he’d reach an insight about his humanity. Ever in sensory contact with his consciousness, Ester was aware that he couldn’t stop feeling irritated with her, for their relationship had once again ended for him and one-sided love is a leech on the beloved’s neck.
She was silent and encumbered. The others spoke all the more, and Olof in particular. They talked about the EU’s expansion and Russia’s superpower ambitions; never at a level higher than what the headlines and decks of daily newspapers offered. Skimming the surface fatigued Ester, and she found it uninspiring.
And then the conversation got interesting. Someone in the group told a story about a man he knew whose wife had recently left him for another woman. A comment was made about how it probably wasn’t as bad being rejected for a person of the opposite sex, because then you didn’t have to think it was a personal failing, but a category of physical desire, which was probably easier to accept.
That’s when Olof chimed in.
‘No. I don’t feel that way. I really don’t. In fact I think it would be worse. If Ebba left me for a woman it would be awful. Unbearable. I’d be devastated and feel like I wasn’t good enough at all.’
Ester stared at Olof, stared to see if there was any subtext, perhaps a confused admission of this monumental hypocrisy.
But there was none. He looked sincere, as though he honestly loved his wife and truly dreaded being left by her.
So as not to make a scene, Ester resisted the impulse to go home. Instead, her shaky legs took her to the kitchen where their hosts were putting the finishing touches on the food. She was hiding that she was drowning inside, but could hear the strain in her voice when she said it smelled fantastic.
The stew was served, and everyone gathered around the kitchen table.
Over dinner, Olof desperately bestowed recompense. As they helped themselves to the food, lamb with vegetables and couscous, he sang Ester’s praises, quoting from an article she’d written for one of the morning papers
a week ago and complimenting the idea behind it. He linked a line in the play they were rehearsing with a stanza from one of her poems, which apparently he knew by heart. Throughout the dinner, he referenced things she’d said – ‘as Ester usually says’, ‘as you once wrote, Ester’.
And for the first time, she lost respect for him. The compensatory subservience he staged when he had to was among the more deplorable things she’d witnessed. She was as disgusted by the aggressive flattery as by his hostile rejections, but most of all by the pathological oscillation between the two.
When they’d finished the main course, Ester excused herself, saying she needed to go home, a difficult day’s work awaited her tomorrow. She thanked her hosts for dinner. The couple tried to entice her with dessert, chocolate mousse cake, but she declined.
As she was putting on her shoes in the hall, Olof came after her.
‘Are you leaving?’
‘Yes. I am.’
‘But why?’
Ester looked at him, his wine-stained shirt, his drooping body and cheeks, bottle-like shoulders and his saggy neck. She’d never considered them – these body parts – as parts before, she’d loved him as a whole, intensely and indulgently, loved him in waking and in slumber, while eating and working, while reading the paper and taking walks, while on the toilet and while showering, in scorn and in disappointment, loving him in every moment without pause.
Before her stood a pathetic figure with awkward arms dangling from his slack frame and a clumsy incompetence that no longer warmed her heart.
‘You know precisely why. Never in your half-lived life of slack ambiguities have you ever known anything so precisely.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
A ray of hatred punctured Ester Nilsson’s membrane. Previously, when hatred had appeared in moments of despair, it had been on the other side of red-hot yearning. Now the hatred was cold and spoke through her when she said:
‘You’ve done what you wanted to do, Olof. You’ve achieved the desired effect. You’ve never quite managed to hold back your disdain for the only person who has overlooked that you allow yourself to be a remarkably small person. Only in fleeting moments have you managed to not look down on me because I’ve persisted in loving you in spite of this.’
What she said was met with far too great understanding, and Olof stayed silent. Then he rejoined the others.
She’d been home a little while when Olof called. He must have left the dinner shortly after she had and was now in a taxi home, his voice soft.
‘What happened there?’
Ester’s ire halted, like a gushing tap being turned off. But the washer was leaky. It continued to drip.
‘What happened there?’
She was surprised by the harshness in her tone. She had always helped him in these situations, helped him in order to help their cause, but ossified disappointment caused her to refrain.
‘You got really angry,’ he said.
‘Yeah. I got really angry.’
‘I did something wrong as usual, of course.’
Ester waited a few seconds so as not to be rash.
‘Do you have any idea how you’ve been treating me since I met you at the station yesterday?’
‘Actually, no.’
‘Do you want to know?’
‘I guess not, because you’re so mad. But go on, so we can get past it.’
‘We probably won’t.’
‘Aha. No. I guess not.’
‘Why would you be “extremely sad” if Ebba left you? It’s incomprehensible considering our escapades for the past three, almost three and a half years.’
‘Of course one would be sad. We’re married.’
‘Yeah, you are. Wouldn’t it, then, be extraordinary if the wife you’ve failed, deceived and betrayed fell in love and left you, if she was allowed to be happy?’
No reply.
‘Wouldn’t it be a perfect solution to our problems if she met someone who cared about her, so that she could leave you and your wretched marriage? You should let your wife have that.’
Olof was quiet for a long while before he said:
‘You probably don’t understand. I like Ebba. I really like living with her.’
The words struck Ester like rivets. Actually, it was the rivets holding her together that were being pulled out, but it was hard to tell the difference.
‘You’ve got a strange way of showing it.’
‘I can see how it might seem so. But I’ve never wanted to leave Ebba, and I’ve been clear about that from the start.’
And that was it. Only curiosity spurred Ester on to the next line; she was sitting beside herself, studying the course of events.
‘I have to ask, Olof. Your behaviour towards me is often hurtful and damaging. Why do you enjoy tormenting me?’
‘That’s not true. It’s not like that. You’re with me always. Always, you’re inside me.’
Ester held the handset out in front of her, as though seeing the apparatus would help her understand. She heard Olof shout, ‘Hello.’ The conversation stood out as one of their most absurd, which was no small statement, and it seemed even more so when he said:
‘You’re always on my mind.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, Olof. Then why do you act the way you do?’
‘I have to pay the cabbie. I’ll call you in a minute.’
Ester lay in bed and thought about Olof paying, getting out and shutting the door behind him, feeling the moist but not-too-crisp January air on his cheeks as he hurried over the dark road, gleaming with the streetlights’ silver streaks. He probably didn’t want to call when he was in the building, it added to his guilt, so he’d do it out on the street, outside his front door.
She held the phone and awaited the call. It didn’t come. After ten minutes, he sent a text. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow. Hugs.’
These dazzling mid-January mornings. It had snowed again. Since the beginning of December the ground had been covered in snow. When she woke up, she saw that two identical texts had come in during the night. They’d arrived within minutes of each other, as though Olof wanted to make sure the message would reach her.
They read: ‘You r sexy,’ nothing more. It was the first time he’d written anything that could link him to an active relationship with Ester Nilsson. An unremarkable formulation and not an unexpected thing to say to one’s mistress, but the content wasn’t open to interpretation or denial. The duplicate messages had been sent at one in the morning. Olof’s and Ester’s conversation had ended at ten thirty. When he came home, he must have sat up drinking alone. Was he remorseful? Did he have a guilty conscience? Was he hoping that Ester was awake too and with one reply would neutralize the debt, as always? The wife must have been sleeping in the next room when he reached for his phone and wrote his message, writing to stop Ester from doing anything nasty, a diffuse premonition, to save the current state of affairs and his self-image, and he said what lovers say to their mistresses, according to the cultural guidelines (better known as clichés) which had rewired his poor synapses.
On any other of the one thousand or more mornings that had gone by, this text would have delighted her. But now his inability to rise above baseness made her rueful. Still she waited the whole day for him to call as promised.
The hours passed. Late in the afternoon, a text message arrived. ‘I don’t understand your sour display yesterday and your whining. I thought we had a nice walk, a good rehearsal and a pleasant dinner. You should write a handbook on how to make Ester Nilsson happy so that one can be clear on the instructions. All those rules and prohibitions aren’t exactly simple. Later.’
She read the text several times. Then she called Elin and Elin said:
‘Enough already. Isn’t it time to take the tap out of the keg?’
She knew Elin was right. And she had to act in the next few hours while the adrenalin was still high, and hesitation – for the first time – was hesitatin
g.
They talked the matter over and made a plan. Ester promptly ended the call to do what needed to be done. It had to happen tonight while there was still a clear connection to the weekend’s events, so that Olof could see the part he’d played and not blame Ester or dismiss her as unpredictable and crazy. Women and madness were so closely linked – where madness was all that compromised life’s usual rhythms.
Ester Nilsson looked up Ebba Silfversköld’s number and called her. She would have preferred to write but Elin thought that it was fairer to call. The wife should have the chance to ask follow-up questions. Ester certainly had no desire to speak with Olof’s wife and couldn’t predict how a conversation like this would end or where it could lead.
The wife didn’t pick up.
Ester set the phone aside, closed her eyes. She shouldn’t take this as a sign. It had to be done tonight, otherwise the misery would never end. She waited two minutes and called again. No answer. She composed a text. When she was about to send the message, her finger slipped and it didn’t send. Ester’s heartbeat pulsed throughout her body. She had been given one last chance to change her mind and stay with the old, to continue as before.
She thought it through again. If she didn’t flip the board over, she wouldn’t have it in her to put a stop to it by discreetly slipping away, that was clear. The slightest enticement or response from Olof pulled her back in, every time. She could make the cut and even tell him about it, but in a few weeks or months she’d try again, putting out feelers, exploring the level of interest, finding an innocent reason to contact him, forgetting the negatives and only remembering the delights, and regardless of what it was like before, determine that it was better than the void he left behind.
The only path to freedom was to force Olof to take a stand by getting the wife involved. She sent the message. This time she didn’t slip.
Acts of Infidelity Page 21