A Neverending Affair
Page 20
So they continued the planning in a good mood. The third day they would devote to art until they both flew out around five in the afternoon. Ronia wanted to visit the Galleria Lazzari.
They walked back to the hotel holding hands. They had drunk a bit too much, and when they came back to the hotel, they made love again. The following morning, they were both tired, but managed to get onto the tour bus. They saw all the sites and jumped off in via del Cappelari to find a place to eat.
“Olaf, you have organized this well,” Ronia said, taking his hand after finishing the meal. “Is this how it will be?”
“How what will be?”
“Us living together.”
“What do you mean? That I organize everything? Or that we travel to new places all the time? Or that we eat food in Italian restaurants? Or that we make love every night?”
“Olaf, I love when you are silly. It normally cheers me up. But I’m troubled by our failure to communicate in Chindrieux and since Chindrieux. I don’t even know if it is the communication itself that is the problem or if the problem is that we differ on all these issues.”
“Ronia, I really don’t know if we should discuss this anymore. Why can’t we just be happy, love each other and enjoy our great love?”
“It doesn’t work like that, you know it also. Even if I am the one that raises the problems this time, you do the same other times.”
“But I don’t know what there is that is wrong. I love you. I love you from the bottom of my heart, but then, now and then, things stall. The love gets side-tracked and there is just anger and frustration.”
“So what are the problems then? Should we list them? Make them visible so that we can rationally sort them out?” she said.
“OK, Ronia, if we really have to go there. I think that in itself is the major problem—perhaps the first problem in the list, in my list at least—your overanalyzing things. You want to turn every stone. You want to understand everything. You want to be so rational. It always surprised me how someone can be so rational, or want to be so rational, and still be a painter and paint things like you do.”
“What do you mean by that? What is the problem with being rational and painting?”
“No problem, but paintings speak to our emotions mainly and not to our rational mind, so a good painting is not based on rationality but on emotions, or in your case perhaps crude instinct—in any case not on rationality. “
“So now you made our problem into my problem,” Ronia said.
“That was not my intention; it was just something of a start. My point was that the issues where we differ, where we have problems, are difficult enough as they are, but then you make it worse by overanalyzing them.”
“In my view, you are the one who turns those issues into conflict, by refusing to discuss them in a rational way. Your belief in God is the most obvious example. You simply refuse to let that belief be challenged or discussed. It is a ‘feeling,’ a ‘belief,’ a ‘faith,’ an ‘insight,’ that can’t be rationally discussed. And through that you exclude me. And you apply the same kind of reasoning for other issues as well, such as the issue of children. “
“But Ronia, it is impossible to discuss those things with you in a rational way. Your mind is like a knife. You cut all my arguments into small pieces. You make me feel silly and primitive. You don’t try to understand my point of view. You just grind my view into dust.”
“You’ve said things like that before, Olaf, and I find it cruel. How can I refrain from using logic? It doesn’t mean I don’t respect you. On the contrary, it is because I respect you that I try to understand your view. If I didn’t respect you, I wouldn’t care less. Can’t you see that? Science is built upon falsifying theories. You can never prove what is right. You can make propositions and theories about what is right and then you gain knowledge by falsifying those theories. Some theories stand well against falsification, say like Darwin’s theory about natural selection. It is not beautiful or nice to have a critical mindset, but it is actually what moves humanity ahead.”
“I have heard you saying that before, but you should also see that by doing so you are rejecting my emotions. You are rejecting me. I am my feelings and my emotions much more than the rational thought, and if you can’t appreciate that, I don’t think you can appreciate me at all. The distinction between the person and the issue is an artificial one when it comes to fundamental beliefs. What does it really mean?” Olaf continued and now he was losing his calm. “And to apply the scientific critical approach to personal relationship issues is simply not right. Love doesn’t grow in an atmosphere of criticism. I wonder if you are able to really love anybody with that attitude? You are cold. You treat me—and our love—as a rational object, not as something of flesh and blood.”
“Olaf, you are being unfair now. Stop it, please stop it,” she cried out.
“You see, first you hurt me. You kick me in the groin, you punch me in the stomach, and when I finally try to give back just a little of your own treatment, you become sad and hurt, and I am swiftly the bad one, even if you started the whole thing.”
Silence. She wanted to say something, but she thought whatever she said would be wrong.
“Here is my share of the meal. I will look for another place to sleep. I can’t go on like this,” he said throwing a wad of liras on the table and walking out.
Dover, May 2013
There was a letter with a stamp from Rome among the bills and commercial mail. People rarely wrote letters these days, unless it was for Christmas, anniversaries, etc. Monika had noted the handwriting. “Met someone in Rome, did you?”
“I meant to tell you,” he said hesitantly.
“Oh, the fabulous Ronia, was it?”
Olaf consented by lowering his gaze.
“So why didn’t you tell me?”
“Guess I forgot.”
“Olaf, don’t give me that crap. I know how strong your feelings were for her. I know you left Liv for her. I know you were madly in love. I know that when we met you were still like a wounded bird, trying to fly, but the wings were not working properly. Do you think I was blind? Do you think I am blind? How do you think I feel living a whole life in the shadow of your great love, knowing I am just a substitute for something you always long for—but will never have? I remember a few years ago when we met this Selma. When she mentioned Ronia, you blushed, stumbled and fumbled in a very awkward way. There is no way you ‘forgot’ to tell me. I would say it is the opposite, the spell of that witch, or bitch is still over you. Was it nice fucking her in romantic Rome?”
“Monika, don’t call her a bitch.”
“You are trying to evade the core of the topic.”
“I did not fuck her in Rome,” Olaf said, addressing the immediate challenge first. “You have to trust me on that. What can I say? She meant an awful lot to me. I know you are jealous, even if you never said it like this before. I met her in Rome, that is true. It was also in Rome we broke up in 1999. This was the first time I saw her since. We only exchanged the French style of cheek kisses and shook hands. We spent a few hours talking before I flew home. There is nothing between us. There has been nothing between us since we left each other in Rome in 1999, for heaven’s sake, and there is nothing between us now.”
“Ah, now I see, that is why you ‘missed your plane’ and had to take a later one. You blamed the traffic. Oh God, I thought I could trust you.”
“You can,” he said. He took the letter and put it in fire without reading it to prove his point. He saw her handwriting disappear in the flames.
Epilogue: Omsk, September 2013
Monika put down her pen. She looked out the window. The immense Siberian landscape passed by. Birch trees with brown-orange leaves, larch trees in yellow and vast expanses of fields. Desolated industries, small houses with a little vegetable patch within the perimeter of a boarded fence, only the cabbage still growing, the rest of the soil looking black and rich. It probably looked much the same now
as hundred years ago, she thought. It was a good idea to take this trip to get closure. Writing down the story had helped her understand how little she could have done, in any case.
Rebecka, her daughter of thirteen, sat opposite her and looked at her with a sad expression.
“Mum, why are you writing this? I like that you write. I think you are a great story teller, but why do you write about someone that hurt you so much. You know I love Dad, I always will, but I also know he really hurt you. Not willingly, I know, but certainly he understood, or he would have if he tried. I don’t know what is worse: that he understood and still did it, or that he simply didn’t understand? Anyway, I don’t think you should write about him.”
“My child, people like your dad and that bitch—I know I am unfair here. I have no basis for calling her bad things, or anything, I don't know her. At any rate, people like them make the world spin; they create all the miracles of the world. They also make all disasters. They are the makers, so to speak. They have passion. If they don’t spend it on messing up their own lives and the lives of others, they can do a lot of good. Some of them do both—like your father—some of them do only good, and some of them only make a mess. But there are people like me that bring them into existence. If we didn’t write about them, if we didn’t tell their stories, if we didn’t admire them, even when they hurt us, if we didn’t follow them, even when they don’t want us, they would not exist.”
Table of Contents
Rome, April 2013
Paris, February 1998
Rome, April 2013
Arusha, April 1996
Rome, April 2013
Geneva, June 1996
Rome, April 2013
Geneva, June 1996
Rome, April 2013
June to September 1996
Rome, April 2013
Gent, September 1996
Rome, April 2013
Nairobi, November 1996
Rome, April 2013
Ngorongoro, February 1997
Rome, April 2013
Arusha, February 1997
Rome, April 2013
Geneva, May 1997
Rome, April 2013
Dar es Salaam, October 1997
Rome, 2013
Geneva, May 1998
Rome, April 2013
Chindrieux, October 1998
Rome, April 2013
Chindrieux, October 1998
Chindrieux, May 2013
Rome, June 1999
Dover, May 2013
Epilogue: Omsk, September 2013