Acts of Infidelity Read online

  ‘I think you’ve pulled a Pygmalion.’

  Ester didn’t understand, but knew it was a dig. She went numb, silent, still and cold. This compelled Olof to clarify:

  ‘You’ve fallen in love with a character of your own creation.’

  She was deeply disheartened by the suggestion that she was unable to keep track of herself and her feelings.

  ‘You wrote that play and liked what I did with the role. Most of all you liked the role. You fell in love with your own character.’

  From inside her vacuum Ester noted that it took a not altogether attractive arrogance to suggest she liked what he’d done with the role. Although she’d often praised his performance that autumn, it didn’t mean that praise was based in fact and should be repeated as fact. There were reasons unrelated to fact for praise and criticism.

  ‘Why would I do something as strange as falling for a character I wrote? The role you played wasn’t even particularly sympathetic.’

  ‘You know “Pygmalion”?’ Olof asked.

  ‘I’ve read Shaw’s play, yes.’

  ‘I mean the Pygmalion myth. The Greek one. About the man who made a sculpture and fell in love with the sculpture.’

  ‘So you don’t think my feelings have anything to do with you?’

  ‘They have very little to do with me.’

  Olof began eating with delight unbefitting the situation. He had fulfilled his task and was now in better spirits. His lateness and the frequent mentions of his wife during the crossing, as well as his discordant arrival, were thereby explained. The weight had been lifted from Olof’s shoulders and placed on Ester’s.

  ‘Is it good?’ he asked her.

  ‘Not especially.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. I’ve lost my appetite.’

  ‘My, what a shame.’

  Olof thought for a moment and said:

  ‘I’m thinking we should meet up now and again in the future and see what happens. Decisions don’t always have to be made right away.’

  Not again, Ester thought, never again, I’m going to get right up and go.

  She stayed put and finished her meal. Soon they were walking from Djurgården towards the city along Strandvägen, arm-in-arm on Olof’s initiative. In line with Grevgatan, Ester stopped and embraced him, and he reciprocated, while saying he shouldn’t be doing this. They were approaching Dramaten National Theatre, their bodies close, when Olof stated:

  ‘Leaving my wife isn’t on the cards.’

  This was exactly what married people said when someone else had shaken their foundations, Ester thought. When people felt an intense desire, they might insist otherwise. The trick was knowing when they meant what they were saying and were saying it to be clear and honourable, and when they meant the opposite. The question demanded a far-reaching and risky act of interpretation, work to which Ester was always willing to subject herself.

  If Ester had taken him at his word here, she would have been spared considerable time and effort, likewise she would have missed out on many wondrous moments. Ester had a girlfriend called Lotta who often asserted that one should ‘Take people at their word. It’s simpler and more practical. Don’t interpret. Assume they mean what they say.’ Lotta was cautious and clever, but Ester believed that hardly anything would come of a budding romance if you were cautious, clever, and took people at their word because it was then that language was used deceptively in order to avoid making difficult decisions and to evade love. People feared love, as she’d read in the works of the great bards, because it bears the germ of supreme delight and so too the germ of the gravest losses.

  Olof and Ester crossed Raoul Wallenberg Square with its scattered sculpture group. Ester said she liked it and spoke of the controversy the choice of work had caused in the 1990s. They agreed on the life-affirming quality of a work that is able to offend through form alone, and that this often happened when the form, as here, was its content.

  ‘The artist must have thought Wallenberg had become a monument in himself,’ Ester said, ‘and so he didn’t want the monument for him to be monumental.’

  Olof asked how she had the energy to have ideas about everything all the time. She could tell that the question wasn’t a question at all, but a poison dart, if shot with a smile. She didn’t like that he wanted to shoot such things at her and answered dryly that it came naturally to her and was how she earned her living, she had to have the energy. It wasn’t any more unusual than him making a living by becoming someone else and having to summon the energy for that time and time again, night after night.

  ‘Which is a rather strange occupation,’ he said.

  ‘What’s strange?’

  ‘Acting: such a strange profession. It’s not really for me. For long stretches in my life, I’ve done other things, had respectable jobs, and actually, I’ve always wanted to get away from it.’

  He gripped her arm a little tighter so she would move even closer to him. She was of a mind to ask if he should really be taking her arm, for there was a risk she would begin to perceive a chasm between his words and his actions and would place her trust in actions. But because she wanted him to hold her arm, she held her tongue.

  They walked along Arsenalsgatan towards Kungsträdgården Park. Plenty of people, most in suits and dresses, were on the move. When they’d made it over the crossing at Kungsträdgårdsgatan Olof said that conversing with Ester was remarkably fun and stimulating, it was like talking to a man. Ester searched his face for something that would dignify such cruel words. Olof’s world couldn’t possibly be so banal as to have been entirely lacking in interesting conversations with women. It attested to something deficient in his relations with his wife, which was good, but also to a deficiency in perspective.

  ‘Is this some sort of Aristotelian deduction?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Everyone with whom you can have an exciting conversation is a man. I can have an exciting conversation with Ester Nilsson, therefore Ester Nilsson is a man.’

  Olof grimaced.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s how I’ve been conditioned, even though it sounds skewed when put so plainly.’

  ‘You need to do something about that. With me, you could have the whole package.’

  This bold act of courtship seemed to delight him. It was two thirty. Olof had made sure to be otherwise engaged at three. The first thing he’d said when they’d met at quarter past twelve was:

  ‘I don’t have all day.’

  Ester had thought they had all day as well as the rest of their lives now that they’d finally had the chance to see each other properly, and this is precisely what he sensed and wished to stave off, that much was clear. The boundary to intimacy is asserted by industry. Scheduling an appointment after a date was the best fortification against the person who always wanted more.

  But when they’d reached Tegelbacken, he was more relaxed about this scheduled meeting. Rolling in from the town hall, the bus was under the viaduct when he took Ester’s hand and said:

  ‘Should I catch the next one instead?’

  ‘I don’t know. Should you?’

  Ester just wanted to go home and get on with dying. Today’s conversation had to mean farewell. She had no interest in meeting up ‘now and again in the future’ and seeing ‘what happens’. The bus came and went. Olof stayed at the bus stop and ran his stubble across her cheek, his lips searched for her closed mouth.

  ‘Talking to you is so much fun.’

  As their ‘talking’ had just been defined in opposition to erotic love, these words did not sit well with Ester. He gave her a peck on the lips and took the next bus to Södermalm.

  Walking home along Vasagatan, Kungsbron and Fleminggatan up towards Fridhemsplan, Ester felt weary. It wasn’t the scenic route. Though it would have been shorter from Tegelbacken, she didn’t take the picturesque walk along the Karlberg Canal or Hantverkargatan. She didn’t want to see anything beautiful today, not even beauty nestled in a sodden-grey Novem
ber.

  As she walked, she thought her problem was that she always pawned her life’s meaning for the man she’d chosen. As long as he existed, everything else was cast in shadow. It was never a question of a diffuse and tempered searchlight, no, she directed her slim, harsh light beam with appalling precision only to burn a hole in the object with the full destructive power of her longing.

  Now the light had to be put out. Olof didn’t want the same thing she did. Deliberating by the bus and pressing his lips to hers in parting were nothing to cling to. She must not let herself begin the process of interpretation. This was only fleeting lust and a result of his fear of losing the attention of a lover. That which disappears can’t help but seem a little attractive once it has loosed its grip on you.

  Olof had given her a clear answer. Ester accepted it.

  She came home, got under a blanket, and stared at the ceiling. After a while she started to call around in an attempt to stem the flood of pain. All her girlfriends were at the ready to hear the results of that day’s encounter. Ester told the story from beginning to end and they shared their opinions.

  ‘Run, Ester, run!’ said Lotta. ‘And do it now while there’s still time.’

  ‘He’s married,’ said Fatima, ‘and as a married man, he’s far too willing to see you again and again and not tell his wife. Be happy you found out now before you got too involved. It won’t be that hard; in a month or so you’ll be free.’

  ‘Chill,’ said Elin. ‘Ask yourself what you want out of this, not what he wants. Then do what you want no matter what the rest of us say – and that includes Olof.’

  ‘He’ll get in touch again,’ said Lotta, ‘but make sure you tie yourself to the mast and cover your ears.’

  ‘If he had said that he was ready for a divorce, but that it was a lot to take in right now,’ said Fatima, ‘then I would’ve said “hold on”. But this, sneaking around with you when he knows how you feel, putting the brakes on your hopes while being open to maybe starting something in secret soon. No way. Leave him right now if you can and leave yourself open for someone who can’t live without you.’

  ‘He wanted to catch the next bus?’ Vera mused. ‘He kissed you at the bus stop and didn’t really feel like going home? This’ll take time, but it’s not over. It’s all about how long you can hold on.’

  ‘Is it?’ Ester asked. In her chest, hope bloomed like a rose.

  ‘You need to be patient, but one day he’ll be yours.’

  ‘You think?’ Ester gasped. ‘Do you really think so, Vera?’

  ‘He’s a slow one.’

  Elin said:

  ‘This doesn’t sound good, but you were the one who was there and you’re the only one who can know how much you can take. What are you hoping I’ll say most?’

  ‘The truth about what he’s really feeling.’

  ‘Unfortunately that’s a mystery to us all.’

  ‘Do you think he knows it himself?’

  ‘That depends on who he is.’

  After a day of considering the girlfriend chorus’s opinions, Ester made a decision. She deleted his number and decided to never expect to hear from or see him again. She wasn’t about to wade back into the bog of uncertainty. She emptied herself of hope and longing and reconciled the idea of a new order. She hadn’t got anything sensible done since she’d returned from their date, and it was high time she put Olof behind her and got a grip on her own life.

  And right then, a text message arrived:

  I think I’ve been unclear and caused you to believe something I didn’t mean. Of course I’m flattered by your feelings for me but I can only reciprocate with friendship. I like you! Your wicked sense of humour. Your slightly misbuttoned self. Your thoughts entice me. You’re great! Let’s leave it at that. Otherwise it’ll get too complicated. At least it will for me. Olof.

  With that, her equilibrium and the foundation for all wise decisions were dashed, for it did not escape Ester’s philological mind that his message was not in the text itself, but rather in the action of sending it. If it had been about the content, he wouldn’t have needed to text her because everything had already been said.

  She could tell he’d taken great care with the text. He wasn’t a man of words, and it must have cost him dearly to formulate the message. There were four parts to it. The first was about her (great, funny, slightly misbuttoned). The second was about how he still couldn’t reciprocate her love but that in truth, he was tempted; only the consequences were stopping him (‘too complicated’), that is, there was no lack of lust or desire. That was enough for Ester, the loam was there and Olof was writing to let her know it was. The third part was apparently an excuse (‘I’ve been unclear’). But the writing underscored that he wanted to, but shouldn’t, because he’d been unclear for a reason, namely the forbidden temptation she presented to him.

  The fourth was the most important part. The act of sending the message could not be read as anything other than a wish to stay in contact, with all that this implied.

  Ester understood that he wasn’t finished and hadn’t arrived at a decision. A spinnaker of love was hoisted inside her. His clumsy effort to let her know he wanted to see her without him having to come right out and say it made her heart swell and pulse with tenderness.

  Vera said that Ester’s interpretation of the text message came from an overheated brain. What he was writing, she said, was that he wanted to keep her as a friend, not fall in love with her. This also explained why he sent the message even though everything had been said.

  But their connection, Ester protested, never had anything to do with friendship; right from the start it had been something else. You didn’t get that kind of thing wrong and Olof was old enough and experienced enough to know you can’t be friends with a person you’ve just met who’s said they want to share their life with you.

  Ester was quite sure she hadn’t misjudged this series of events but needed an active sign to be certain. And on the Monday night on her way home from the grocer’s shop she saw Olof from afar at the entrance to her building, his face pressed to the entryphone. The lighting was dim but more than bright enough for her to discern his silhouette. She stopped, unsure if she should make herself known. And then he hurried off, disappearing around the corner. It didn’t occur to her to call out to him. Up in her apartment, her telephone showed that someone had buzzed for her.

  Forty-five minutes later, Olof called her from his landline. It corresponded with the time it took to wait for the bus, travel the five kilometres to his and gather himself for a call. He spoke with a devout, pleading tone that she hadn’t heard before. He asked how she was doing and if she’d received his text on Friday. He mentioned that he’d visited the mall in her neighbourhood in the afternoon and had been hoping to run into her.

  Ester’s heart stopped and turned. They decided to meet the following day, take in a matinée and then go for dinner.

  Olof could be quite a sensible man at times. He wasn’t especially interested in the cinema, but he understood that he needed to oblige Ester because he was running out of capital with her. And yet, having to make these large withdrawals from his account for her benefit – sending long text messages, calling her, standing at her door and admitting to his doings in the mall – necessitated one minor act of resistance: arriving at the cinema slightly after the agreed time. After all, one can’t let on just how eager one is.

  Ester on the other hand was punctual and waited for Olof at Söderhallarna. The film was about to start. She worried he might not turn up or arrive so late they’d miss the beginning. She’d rather skip the film than miss the first few minutes.

  Medborgarplatsen was covered in banks of slush and preparations for the Christmas festivities were in full swing. The usual addicts and alcoholics were hanging about. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Olof strolling across the square, again nearly fifteen minutes late. They bought tickets.

  During the film, Ester was acutely aware of his body next to hers
and wanted to pounce on him. Judging by his deep breathing, the feeling was mutual. From her cinema seat, she slipped inside his mind and gathered that he was focusing not on the film, but on erotic self-restraint. Afterwards, he said he couldn’t remember anything about the film and asked what it had been about. What this meant for the future made Ester a little dizzy.

  They went straight from the cinema to a bar at the top of Götgatsbacken. On this evening, Olof didn’t have anywhere else to be; he was attentive and present and they parted at two in the morning. They’d ended up wandering from one place to the next and had spent eleven hours together. The staff had already started putting chairs on tables by the time they managed to get rid of the pair of would-be lovers furtively holding hands. Out on the street, Olof said he was insulted that they’d been shooed off, but the way he said it gave Ester her first fleeting sense, both obvious and odd, that he didn’t in fact feel offended but thought he should because that’s what people felt in these situations. He seemed to be conjuring a well-considered emotion. She let it slide. It had been a fantastic evening, and she was as good as happy.

  During the evening Olof had introduced her to the Italian drink Strega, a yellow liqueur in which three coffee beans are placed. The waiter had told them that once upon a time in Sicily, the coffee beans were used to signal if there were enemies in the venue. Three beans meant all was well, two meant head for the back door and one meant run for it. According to another story, the waiter said, the three beans represented faith, hope and love.

  Ester said it sounded like one and the same story.

  When Olof announced at Blå Porten that Ester shouldn’t harbour any expectations, it had freed him up to be with her. Because he’d so clearly articulated his intentions, he thought she should understand the deal, no matter what they’d go on to do. And Ester thought that because she had so clearly articulated her feelings and desires, he should understand that everything they’d go on to do would impact her on-going interpretation of the encounter’s trajectory.