Hop in Then!

by Ulla Bolinder

Friday, 6 November 1964

  The last lesson E-L and I went to Café Regent (our home away from home!) and had tea with cheese sandwiches. It’s so cosy to sit there and smoke and listen to music. But E-L was down and sat and scraped the palm of her hand with her comb. I don’t understand why she needs to carry on like that. And I can’t really take her seriously. She sometimes implies that she wants to kill herself, but I find it so hard to believe it, because I always look on the bright side of things and assume that others do so as well. And I think that those who talk about suicide, deep down still hope that things will get better, and therefore, there isn’t a big risk that they will put their plans into action immediately. But you should not believe that those who talk about it never do it, because if nothing happens they finally give up.

  How long will this go on? Why doesn’t it ever end? When I’m asleep I never want to wake up again. I want to sleep or be drunk all the time. When Lasse and I were together I drank almost nothing, and I wouldn’t do it now either, if he came back. I wouldn’t even miss booze if we were together again, because now I know that it’s only him I want. But he won’t come.

  I wonder what it is like to be dead. If you are conscious and feel, or if everything is black, I mean.

  If that guy in the E-marked Volkswagen Beetle had wanted to see me again I could maybe have fallen in love with him and finally forgotten about Lasse. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t even ask my name.

  Kicki didn’t want to go out, so I went alone. I cruised with three guys in a two-toned Ford Fairlane all evening. They had Queen Anne and something else to drink and played “In Dreams” and “Oh, Pretty Woman” with Roy Orbison.

  I saw Lasse’s car in town. He and Leffe were sitting inside, and we happened to get behind them on Islandsbron.

  “Follow that bastard!” I said to the guy driving the Ford.

  “In the Cortina?”

  “Yes, follow him!”

  Then I stared at their skulls that stuck up in front, and at those three-piece rear lights, until I couldn’t do it any longer. When we had passed them, I turned around and held the bottle up towards Lasse in the rear window. It felt as if I won over him then.

  We went to Stockholm. I don’t remember very much about it, because I was so drunk. The headlights shone on the asphalt in front of the hood. Inside the car it was almost dark. I smoked and drank. The neck of the bottle bumped against my teeth when the car wobbled. The music rumbled. “I close my eyes, then I drift away...” They got into a fight with some other guys. The cops arrived. We had to wait in the car. The policeman at the entrance sang “Detroit City”. I got out and laid down with my head on his shoes. He didn’t care that I was drunk. When we were on our way home, the radiator water started to boil. We stopped in a field. It was dark and cold. One of the guys pissed on one of the hubcaps so it rattled.

  I met the guy from Linköping again. His name is Clas. When I saw his car pull over on the other side of the street, I went over and sat down beside him in the front seat without going around and talking with him first, because I knew that he had stopped for me.

  “How are you doing? he said. Are you feeling better now?”

  Then I told him about Lasse, that I’m sad because he has broken up with me and that I can’t forget him.

  “Do you hope that things will be fine again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did it end?”

  “Because he thought I was too childish and immature compared to him.”

  “Were you together for a long time?”

  “No, only for two months. But it feels like two years.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I became so addicted to him.”

  “In what way?”

  “In every way. Now it feels like I can’t live without him.”

  I looked at his hands that shown white below his coat sleeves and wondered what he was thinking. He perhaps thought I exaggerated and was silly. But I had to tell him like it was.

  “I saw you in town yesterday,” he said.

  “You did? Why didn’t you stop?”

  “Because you were just about to enter another car.”

  “Yes, I...”

  “Don’t you think there is a better way?”

  “Better than what?”

  “To try to escape.”

  “But I don’t know how to cope with it.”

  “Time heals all wounds, they say.”

  “Yes, but how do you stand it in the meantime?”

  Then he turned his head and looked at me.

  “Why do you take it so hard?”

  “Because I’m dumb.”

  We went to his place. He had a student’s room on Karlsrogatan. When we came in he helped me off with my coat and hung it up on a clothes hanger before he took off his coat. Underneath he had a gray, v-neck sweater, white shirt and tie.

  I sat down in an easy chair in the room, and he went to fetch something to drink. Then we sat there each with a bottle of Pomril and drank and played cards. I tried to imagine that it was liquor instead of lemonade, but it didn’t work.

  We played vingt-e-un. When I had won three times in a row, he reached over the table and touched me on my cheek. His hand smelled of soap.

  “You are good at this,” he said.

  “It’s only luck.”

  “Be lucky at cards and unlucky in love? Isn’t that what they say?”

  “Yes.”

  But then things changed and he was the one who won the whole time, instead.

  When we had played for a while he got up and came and sat on the armrest of my easy chair and started playing with my hair. He had thought about me, he said, and wondered how things were with me.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know… Because you seemed so unhappy, maybe. Yesterday when I was out, I was actually out looking for you.”

  “It was a shame that you didn’t see me earlier, then.”

  “Yes, I think so too.”

  “Because there was a lot of booze. And the guys got into a fist fight and wound up with the police in Stockholm.”

  I looked at his tight pant legs and waited for him to ask me what else had happened, but he didn’t. Instead, he said:

  “How are things at home?”

  “Fine.”

  “What do your parents say about your way of having fun, then?”

  “They don’t know about it.”

  “But if you come home under the influence of alcohol they must surely notice it?”

  “They don’t say anything anyway.”

  “In other words, you don’t have very good contact with them?”

  “No, and that’s just as well.”

  “It’s strange,” he said and looked out the window, “how people who live under the same roof and belong to the same family can be like strangers to one another.”

  Then he asked about their occupations, and I said that pop is a construction worker and mom a house wife. His were a doctor and a curator.

  I can’t remember everything we talked about. Finally, he got up and drew me up from the easy chair and pressed his face against my hair.

  “You little honey,” he said.

  Why can’t I fall in love with him? Why can’t I think he is good enough the way he is? Why can’t I stop comparing him with Lasse? Why isn’t he Lasse?

  I called Lasse and forced him to come. At first he said that he couldn’t, but when I said that it was an important matter I needed to talk with him about, he went along with it. He was dead angry when he hung up.

  We were supposed to meet at the parking lot in front of YMCA, and when I arrived, he was already there. I went to the car, opened the door and sat down beside him without saying anything. I almost didn’t dare to look at him because I felt that he was still angry. There was light shining from some windows at the Fjellstedtska school and the water in the river glittered.

  “What do you want?” he said in a cold voice.

  “I can’t talk with you when
you sound like that.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to sound, then?”

  “As usual.”

  “Come to the point now! I don’t have all evening. That I even came is because I had another errand in town at the same time.”

  I felt sad and didn’t know how I should begin, but finally I said:

  “I only thought about asking if we can’t try one more time.”

  “Are you dumb? Haven’t you grasped that it’s over?”

  “But I have changed now!”

  “I sure as hell haven’t seen much of that!”

  “No, but let me show you then.”

  “If you had really changed you would leave me alone instead of carrying on like this.”

  “Why are you so angry?”

  “What the hell do you think?”

  “But I can’t go on like this any longer. Please! I will do anything, if you only come back!”

  “Stop acting like a damned little kid and try to realize that it’s over!

  “But I love you.”

  “Then you have a damn strange way of showing it!”

  “But what should I do then? I don’t know what I should do!”

  “That’s your headache.”

  “I can’t live any longer.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I can’t live any longer I said.”

  Then he groaned and hid his face in his hands.

  “I’m so damned tired of all this that I could spew!”

  “Tired of me, you mean.”

  “Yes, of you and of all this shit!”

  “But why do you think it feels that way?”

  “You are completely fucking unbelievable!”

  “But it might feel better for you too if we started being together again.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  But he didn’t change his mind.

  “Can you tell me what I must do so you will understand? I don’t want to! I won’t! I can’t! Why isn’t that enough?”

  “But it won’t be the way it was before. I promise! I know that everything was my fault. I know that I was too childish and demanded too much. But I won’t be that way anymore. Please! Can’t I at least get a chance to show it to you? I haven’t had a chance. I didn’t know you thought it was bad before you wanted us to be apart.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “But think of everything that was good! Because you surely didn’t think everything was just shit? And everything that was good we can get back, if we just want to.”

  “But I don’t want it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Stop it now, damn it! I regret that I went along with meeting you this evening. If I had known that it would be like this, I wouldn’t have come.”

  “Well, then I know,” I said and got as hard and cold as ice within me. “But it’s a shame when it comes to school.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I can’t care about it anymore, so I suppose everything will go to hell.”

  “Damn it all!”

  “That’s how it will be, anyway. But what I actually wanted to talk about was that...”

  “Yes?”

  That I think I’m pregnant, I wanted to say. But he knew that no rubber had come off or leaked, so how could I get him to believe that?

  “No, it wasn’t anything,” I said.

  “Well, come out with it now!”

  “No, but you’ll perhaps get to know about it soon enough. See you!”

  And then I was about to go.

  “What are you trying to imply?” he roared.

  “Nothing.”

  And so I left. I never got to know what he believed that I had meant.

  I can’t talk about what I did then. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now.

  Clas called and asked if he could see me, and I said yes even though I didn’t know if I wanted to. I was supposed to meet him at his home, and I took the bus there and arrived at 7 p.m.

  When I came in he hugged and kissed me and said that he had missed me. He had on a white shirt, blue tie and a dark blue club blazer. I had my red crimplene dress on.

  He had borrowed a tape recorder, and while he was tinkering with it I went to his desk and looked at some of the books laying there. I opened one, and on the inside cover there was a name written.

  “Is this yours?” I asked and held up the book.

  “Yes, it is,” he said.

  “Who is Torkel, then?”

  “Torkel?”

  “Yes, it says so here.”

  “Well, that’s me.”

  “But didn’t you say that your name was Clas?”

  “I’m named Clas as well.”

  “But you are called Torkel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you say that your name is Clas, then?”

  “I don’t know. It just happened that way.”

  “Then maybe nothing else you have said is true, either.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “How can I know that?”

  “You just have to believe it.”

  He’s fooled me the whole time. While I have trusted him and talked about a lot of personal matters, he hasn’t even told me his right name.

  “I promise that it doesn’t mean anything,” he said.

  “It does for me.”

  “But I had not reckoned that we would meet again.”

  “So you tell a false name to all the girls you don’t think you’ll see again?”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I only mean that I didn’t think it made any difference at that moment what I was called.”

  “You didn’t want anyone to know that you had picked up a raggarbrud off the street?”

  “Stop it now. I admit that it was dumb. But there was no conscious thought behind it as you seem to think.”

  “No, I don’t think you did it deliberately. But the unconscious reveals the truth. You were ashamed that you picked me up in town. You couldn’t answer for it. You thought it was below your dignity.”

  “Where have you read all this?” he said and smiled.

  “And when the truth comes out, you take on a superior tone and try to joke everything away,” I said.

  “Yes, I admit I did the wrong thing. But as coarse and provoking as you were the first time we met, perhaps it wasn’t that surprising that I didn’t want to introduce myself.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me later?”

  “I don’t know. It just didn’t come off. But now you know.”

  Then he got out a bottle of red wine that he had thought we would share. We sat in the easy chairs, each with a glass, and there was music coming from the tape recorder and everything was so delightful. He asked what I’m going to do during Christmas vacation.

  “Nothing special,” I said.

  “Come with me to Austria, then.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “But I want you to come with me.”

  I don’t know if he was serious, or if he was just talking. He perhaps knew that I wouldn’t be able to. Because, why would he want me to come with him?

  After that he lifted me up and carried me to the bed and took my clothes off. I didn’t care about anything. So while the Supremes were singing “Where Did Our Love Go?”, and I lay there and watched the lights from the street that appeared in the ceiling and on the wall, I let him lay me. I tried to imagine that he was Lasse, but it didn’t work, because he felt different. Then it occurred to me that Torkel didn’t have any protection on, and I thought that if he made me pregnant, I could go to Lasse later and say it was his baby and get him back. But when he was close to coming, he pulled out. I couldn’t hold him in place, and he squirted on my stomach.

  Afterwards, when I had fetched the wine bottle and lit a cigarette, I said:

  “I met Lasse on Wednesday.”

  “You did?”
/>
  “Yes, I forced him to come.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

  “How did it go?”

  “To hell.”

  “He didn’t want to?”

  “No. I pleaded on my bended knees, but he didn’t change his mind.”

  I took a swig out of the bottle and a drag on my cigarette without revealing that I noticed him watching me.

  “Why do you humiliate yourself like that?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do know he isn’t worth it.”

  “No, you’re the one who says that.”

  “What do you think yourself?”

  “That he is worth everything.”

  The bed and the floor wobbled so I needed to press myself against the wall to keep from falling. Torkel took away my cigarette and put it out in the ash tray.

  “How do you feel?” he said.

  “You’re just wasting your time with me,” I said.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, because I will never forget him.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “But it may take a very long time.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “And in the meantime you will wait faithfully?”

  “It probably won’t take a very long time.”

  “But I will not forget him. I will have him back.”

  “Do you believe that yourself?”

  “No, but it has to be that way, because otherwise...”

  “Otherwise, what?”

  “Why do you meet me?” I said.

  “Because I’m interested in you.”

  “Interested?”

  “Yes, and I may also want to see the end of this tragedy.”

  “You don’t think he will change his mind, do you?”

  “No, honestly I don’t.”

  “But he must. Otherwise I won’t be able to ...”

  “What?”

  “Ah, we’ll just blow it off! Time heals all wounds! There are plenty of fish in the sea! A bird in a hand is worth two in the bush!”

  Why the hell did I let him fuck me?

  Sunday, 15 November 1964

  I haven’t heard anything from Jörgen, and Lasse has broken up with E-L. But she has already met a new boy. He belongs to a different category of boys than we usually meet, because he’s studying at the university (and could possibly be someone for her to invest in). But she isn’t especially interested in him, she says. Trotz-dem she laid him yesterday evening. She is probably so down because Lasse has broken up that she doesn’t care what she does. But shouldn’t she think a little about the risks she is taking, anyway?