—I’d love to.
With an almost gallant wave of the arm he gestured for her to lead the way. And she obeyed, if that’s the right word, she wasn’t one to take orders. But still. It felt as though he’d taken control, even though she’d been the one to invite him. She ran in front and could hear him coming up behind. It took time for her to find her own rhythm, it was as though she was somehow being run—my phrase, I’d used it once when I’d been on the treadmill in the gym. I came home and told her that I’d felt invaded upon by the exercise machines, it had felt like being run, rather than running for myself. Typical of me, she’d thought, that I could feel invaded upon even by a treadmill. Not that she thought of that now. She ran ahead on the path, in front of a man she didn’t know, and felt his gaze upon her.
She ran faster to take back control. She felt strong. He was certainly stronger than her, she knew that, she’d already noticed how fit he was. His thighs in those shorts were better than she’d imagined. Nonetheless she heard him start to breathe more heavily, and she upped her pace to give him something to work against. He must have noticed, and liked it, she thought. They were challenging one another. They ran for a long time without a word, without her even turning her head. But she knew that she had him close behind her. His trainers pounded the ground, she could hear his breath, could sense the volume of his upper body, the capacity of his lungs. He sounded well built, a little heavy. He was taller than me, she’d noticed that immediately. She ran with an easy stride, taking long leaps when she felt like it, jumping from side to side where it was rocky, but she started to tire, and that annoyed her, she didn’t want to let him pass her.
She was pretty certain he was looking at her arse, she felt his gaze like a warm hand, checking it out, first one buttock, then the other. She thought she could feel his eyes scan downward. She reached a clearing where the path got wider, and slowed down so he could run up beside her.
And instead, he ran right past her.
That was typical too. She knew that already. That was, of course, how things would be between them. Solid competition, honest rivalry, no sentimental niceties. They played, but there was always a serious challenge behind everything they did. He sped on, with no intention of making it easy for her. She was well behind him, the gap widening more than she liked. But then she gained more ground than she thought she’d manage. He must have relented a little, after all, because suddenly she was right behind him again. They were running uphill, his arse looked firm, tighter, harder than hers, just as it should be. But his thighs were strangely hairless, she could see his muscles working under his brown skin. His back was long, she observed the slender nape of his neck, the slightly strained sinews in his throat. He wore a wedding ring, somebody else was married to him and lay under him, put their hands on his back, touched him. She already disliked the idea that anybody else could do this.
But perhaps she wasn’t aware of that herself. After all, nothing was out in the open yet, she was still just in a state of suspense. Their attraction worked its way in secret, feeding itself on anything and everything. He ran with his palms open, and she felt a vague tenderness toward those hands, the way he held them out in front of him.
Suddenly he stopped and, turning toward her, said there was something he wanted to show her. He left the path and pushed aside some thin branches, holding them back long enough for her to pass. She followed him up a hill. He knew this forest, he told her later, like the back of his hand, and she stored this up, used the same expression when she told me about it. What an idiotic expression, the disproportionate comparison between a vast landscape and the back of a hand, such an illogical and worn-out expression was the best she could offer me then. She followed him uphill until there were no more trees, only shrubs and bare rock, and then further still where the rocks were loose and it was increasingly difficult to walk. He used the opportunity to take her hand and help her up the last little stretch; she accepted his hand and felt it close around hers and thought to herself, she must have, that this was the first time.
He took her hand and pulled her up toward him. They sat down on the top of the hill, on a flat boulder, and squinted over the forest in the fading sun. Not over the city, nor over the fjord, nor even a little lake. All they could see was mile upon mile of forest. Dark fir trees, slightly lighter pines, and the occasional belt of dazzling green deciduous forest. The patchwork shades of a mixed woodland. Hills, plateaus, ridges and dips, covered in an infinite number of trees in a multitude of greens.
This was what he had wanted to show her.
An unbelievable sight for her, a view she had never imagined existed. They sat quite close, she was still breathing heavily from running. As was he, thankfully. She felt his skin against hers, their legs touching. He pulled his leg away. She followed him, letting her knee swing out so that her leg touched his again. This time he didn’t pull back. For a long time they sat like that as he talked about the places where he used to run. He pointed out landmarks, told her stories of how he’d got lost, about trips he’d taken. It was as if he owned everything he pointed at, as if he had laid claim to it all, made it his own.
Could she tell from his voice that it did something to him to sit so close to her? She drew back her leg so it wouldn’t be too obvious, so he wouldn’t misunderstand. She was a happily married woman, just enjoying the pleasure of getting to know a man who had shown her some interest. She looked at his arms, his forearms, they were brown and coarse like a leather belt. Perhaps she wanted to put her hand on his arm. Perhaps she already knew what it would feel like. She felt soft and lithe, and stronger than she had for a long time. She felt a faint tremor in her body and she wondered if it came from him. Large hands. He bit his nails, not a lot, but enough for each nail to be embedded in the flesh of his fingertips. She’d never have thought she could like that, but she did. She sat thinking about how she would come home and tell me about him. She was already looking forward to seeing my face, she knew I’d be surprised.
3
She was a mature woman when she took up running. She ran along dusty roads covered with a thin layer of sand, on tarmac darkened by rain, and on gravel paths in the little forest near the house. She ran long distances, ran until she reached the narrowest forest paths, where her steps pounded softly, vibrant, alive, almost echoing back at her from the forest floor, where thin roots spread skeletal in the dry sandy soil. She still wasn’t as fast as she wanted to be; too many people overtook her. And eventually her feet would grow heavy, her trainers would strike the ground with a dead thud. She’d want to lie down and never get up again. But she went on running. She ran up flights of stairs and steep hills, she began interval training, pushing herself until she gasped with exhaustion. She watched the others that ran, modeled herself on them, modeled herself on anyone who ran effortlessly through the world.
She wanted to achieve that too. She bought lighter trainers, trainers that didn’t hit the ground so heavily and with such resignation. She was already faster. She launched herself from the balls of her feet and thrust herself forward. She launched herself and started to sprint—no, not yet, she ran as though she was bursting, ran to distance herself from everything she had once been. She’d already forgotten that she’d ever been slow, sluggish and unfit. She overtook long-legged women in Lycra and super-fit men in shorts. She liked to pick out the fittest men, liked to position herself behind them and then tail them for a while before sprinting past, and finally upping her pace even more after she’d overtaken them. She made it obvious to everyone that she would never submit. And she loved it, this feeling that she could outdo anyone, well, not quite anyone, but almost anyone she pitted herself against. That she set the pace knowing they had to give way, had to adjust to her speed and settle behind her. That she ran at the front, and that anyone else, whoever they were, had to run behind. She’d always been the one who had to stand aside and watch others, now she was the one to be watched.
>
She ran to hold out, to keep the everyday despondency and despair at bay. And we undressed each other, touched each other, sucked and licked each other, in tender or violent sexual encounters to hold out, to get through the day’s boredom and chaos and exhaustion. We had children together to hold out, and to make our world richer and less predictable. We went on holiday, celebrated birthdays and Christmas, lay close together at night, helped each other get up in the morning, all to make life into more than just a case of holding out. We touched each other gently or greedily, we fantasized together about things that might bring unexpected intimate pleasures, we maintained a ceaseless flirtation with each other, all in order, if possible, to beautify life. What else should we have done?
When our windows were open in the evening we’d hear the sound of other runners, their rapid and rhythmic footsteps on the gravel path or tarmac outside. Sometimes she’d drift off to sleep listening to them. There was a quiet and gentle enthusiasm in the sound of those feet pushing so swiftly and lightly against the ground, the sound of purposeful and solitary pleasure; one by one they ran in the twilight, building their strength and ability to hold out.
She ran every day. At first she ran with music in her ears, but soon stopped. Now she heard only her own breath, gasping and eager. Her face reddened, her scalp grew hot, her hands ached. Why should her hands ache? She didn’t know, but they did. Her mouth gaped open as she ran. She ran for an hour at a time, she could have run all day, she was tireless, she could have run for the rest of her life.
This was existential, shifting, fragile. On certain days she would suddenly feel heavy again, and find herself sinking through the multiple layers of herself, in a downward spiral toward the bottom of everything thinkable. She’d want to sit down, to lie down and never get up. Her feet met the ground heavy and flat, her breath grew painful, exhaustion gripped her again and wrapped itself over everything she knew. She saw no other way but to give up. Existence wore so thin that it tore. She had believed she was strong but found herself weaker than the feeblest fifteen-year-old running through the park for the very first time. She wanted to lie down and die. But she didn’t, she wasn’t one to die, not like that, not yet; she ran through the nausea, through the self-loathing, the despair and exhaustion. She touched on the thinnest stratum of her being, the very weakest, which nobody else knew about, which even she did not want to know about.
The thinnest stratum of her instinct to survive, she thought to herself. Although the word instinct implied an absence of conscious decision. Perhaps the will to survive, the will to hold out, was a more precise description. Perhaps what she had reached, as so many others before, was her will’s last membrane before the abyss, where we can no longer help ourselves? Taut and transparent, like a thinly worn layer of fat stretched over bare bone, like the skin of a drum, a little white drum that no one likes to hear? But something struck that drum, rubbed against that membrane, far below the surface of her life, beneath everything that had become her.
She ran, and she felt something beating repeatedly on a thin, tightly stretched, translucent membrane, and from there she sank no further. From there she would build herself up. She ran in the morning before work. She ran before anyone else was out of bed. She created herself, she built herself up fiber by fiber, she built muscles and determination and the ability to hold out and survive whatever happened. For anything can happen, anything can happen at any moment, in anyone’s life. It’s a fact.
4
Once, long ago, she had decided who she would be. It had happened early in her life, and she could still feel it in her body for years afterward, a decision that fixed itself deep in her flesh like a preserving salt. The decision that she would manage, survive. She would be a person that others could lean on.
When she was twelve or thirteen, someone had described her as “solid.” A slightly odd word rarely used now, but the dictionary (she liked dictionaries) offered a meaning that approximated her own understanding of it: reliable, sober-minded, practical, of sound principle. She wanted to be all those things. She wanted to be someone on whom others could count. She wanted to help, never to need help. Her voice should be heard in a room, loud and clear, sincere and totally Norwegian. She would manage for herself. And manage for others too. It wasn’t difficult, just a matter of deciding. Her face was shaped by that decision. Her eyes grew large and scrutinizing. Her lips closed gently above a neat chin. There was a naked candor about her long, pale neck. And the way she turned her head. Her back too was long and graceful; she’d often heard that, at least from me.
She was slim, quite short, and often looked rather too skinny and lightweight. This annoyed her, it made her overly feminine, she thought, sweet and harmless. This troubled her from an early age, she’d have preferred to be strong. She’d gone to the gym, lifted weights and worked to build her muscles. Her hands gained a firmness and became more defined in a way that pleased her, as did her upper arms. And then she’d taken up running. She had started to be the person she’d always wanted to be; grown-up and strong, a success professionally. And then she met him.
His first name was Gunnar. Eventually I’d call him Gloveman. In those first few weeks after meeting him, she called him by his full name, Gunnar Gunnarsson, whenever she mentioned him, to distinguish him from another Gunnar we knew, from a family whose kids were the same age as ours. She’d tell me that Gunnar Gunnarsson had sent her a text, that Gunnar Gunnarsson had asked if she wanted to come for a run, or that she’d arranged with Gunnar Gunnarsson to go to the climbing center. She stopped using his surname eventually, the inflection of her voice was enough for it to be clear who she meant. At first I followed suit, and also referred to him as Gunnar whenever we talked about him, and I enunciated his name with teasing intimacy. It was a kind of joke between us, we made his presence into something we shared, something that involved us both. But then, when it started to get difficult for me, I no longer wanted his name on my tongue. (Typical of me to formulate it like that, not wanting his name on my tongue, I sexualized my jealousy to make it easier for myself, and perhaps for her too, but it bothered her more than she could find words for.)
He’d given her a pair of cycling gloves, soft, black gloves that only reached the middle joint of the fingers, leaving the tips exposed. Small oval holes at the knuckles and an oblong opening on the back of the hand, giving them a carefully crafted, exclusive appearance. They were undoubtedly expensive. But more importantly they were practical, the kind of gift she loved to receive, no matter from whom. (The joy she got from such little gifts—how had he guessed that?) That they were from him gave them special significance. They marked an unspoken, yet obvious shift in their relationship. This gift was a clear invitation that she could neither refuse nor leave without a response. She received them from him one morning just as they were setting off on a long bike ride together, which was to last from early in the morning until late at night. They’d both taken time off from work, going midweek so as not to impact on family time. I was perhaps alone in knowing they were going, she still shared all their conversations with me, but she wasn’t sure he was equally open at home. She suspected he kept their friendship a secret, and she liked that. But the gloves were a problem. On her return home that night, she shoved them into her pocket, before wheeling her bicycle through the gate. Then when she’d carried it down to the basement, she was careful to leave the gloves down there too. The following day she brought them up, cramming them hastily into her bag so I wouldn’t see them, keen to keep their existence to herself. She didn’t notice that she’d dropped one on the stairs. It lay there until I found it. I asked if it was hers. Her face went red. She regretted it later, it would have been so easy to say she’d bought them herself. But everything had always been so open between us, right from the start, and she’d only tried to hide them because she didn’t want to start lying.
After that I began calling him Gloveman. A nickname that upset her
, on his behalf, when she first heard it. But when I’d said it a few times it took on a different feel, it sounded softer, somehow affectionate and even deferential, as though Gloveman’s entrance into her life was something in which I was not only involved, but also found a certain submissive pleasure. I would put my hand on her arm and say:
—Are you going out with Gloveman tonight? Or do you fancy doing something with me?
Hearing me say it nearly always gave her little shock, a shudder of excitement that she felt sure I shared. We’d been together so long and become so entwined, that we could share everything and anything—or so we believed.
* * *
—
How did the two of us get together? Once I’d been a young father, I had a young child in my arms, she leaned forward to talk to this child before looking at me. She was a medical student, studying to be a doctor, and was on a clinical placement at the surgery where I’d taken my daughter. She was sitting in my GP’s consulting room. She called us in from the waiting room, greeting us as we came in, my child first, and then me. My daughter sat on my lap and smiled shyly at the grown-up lady, who was actually still a very young woman, a few years my junior. My daughter must have noticed that I felt relaxed, that I leaned back in my chair. She released my hand and stretched out across the table to investigate something that was being shown to her. A worn-out plastic toy, a yellow duck, or no, a red sausage dog. The sort of object you might find in any GP surgery that welcomes small children. It made a thin, ingratiating squeak when you squeezed it. She remembers my daughter’s hands clutching this red dog. Of course, it is me who remembers it. But we talked about it so often, during all those conversations when we analyzed our first meeting, it became a shared memory. My daughter was small, she knew nothing of the adult world, it was easy for her to trust a stranger. And I, her father, also put my trust in the woman who sat opposite. I gave more than trust, I gave myself, without thought, holding nothing back, I had already seen something in her, or opened myself to the possibility of seeing something that I wasn’t meant to see, that was the feeling. But what happened? Was it just that our gazes met, and that we held them a little longer than we ought? Did something happen between us without our either wanting or knowing it? Or was I already on the lookout for someone? And did she become that someone just because she was nice enough to talk to my child? Was it because her eyes were so large and empathic, because her voice was so gentle when she spoke to my child? I remember the easy weight of my daughter on my lap, how safely, comfortably and heavily she sat there. The dog had long black ears, my daughter’s hands were fat and chubby, and always slightly moist.
The Story of a Marriage Page 3
