Betrayal

by Karin Alvtegen

  She was his and he was hers. That’s how it would always be. For two years and five months he had devoted all his time to making her well again. Trying to make everything all right. And now they wanted to get him to accept the fact that it had all been in vain.

  Nobody was going to take her away from him.

  Nobody.

  When he came outside it had started to rain. On the nights he spent at the hospital he always took public transport because the parking fees were so high. They charged round the clock, and he couldn’t afford it any more. He buttoned up his jacket and walked towards the subway.

  He was terrified of the night, well aware of what was waiting. It was in the loneliness of his apartment that the control took over. The constantly nagging feeling that there was something important he had forgotten. The tap in the bathroom, had he turned it off properly? And the gas rings on the cooker? And what about the door, did he really lock it? Then the temporary calm when he had checked that everything was as it should be. But what if he had bumped into the light switch in the bathroom when he walked past without noticing it? Maybe he had managed to turn on the cooker just as he was checking that it was off. And he was no longer sure that he had locked the door. Had to check again.

  The simplest thing was to stay away. Then he knew that everything was under control. Before he left the apartment he always turned off all the gas rings, unplugged the cords of all the electrical appliances and devices, and wiped the dust off the plugs. One never knew if a spark might start a fire. He stored the remote control for the TV in a drawer; it absolutely mustn’t be left out on the table so that a ray of sunlight through the window might strike the sensor and make it catch fire.

  And then going out the door. For the past six months the locking ritual had become so complicated that he had to write it down on a piece of paper he kept in his wallet to make sure he didn’t miss something.

  He stood down on the street looking up at the black windows of the flat. A man in his fifties he had never seen before came out the front door and gave him a suspicious look. He couldn’t bring himself to go up to the flat. Instead he took his keyring from his pocket and got into his car, turned the ignition and let the engine idle.

  Only with Anna was he left in peace. Only she was strong enough to vanquish the annihilating fear.

  And now they thought he would just let go and move on.

  Where to?

  Where was it they wanted him to go?

  She was all he had.

  It was after the accident that it started again. It came sneaking up, lying in wait for him, at first only as a diffuse need to create symmetry and restore balance. And later, when the gravity of her injuries had become more and more obvious, the pressure to perform the complicated rituals had intensified to an inescapable compulsion. The only way to neutralise the threat was to give in. If he didn’t obey the impulses properly, something horrible would happen. What, he didn’t know, only that the fear and pain grew intolerable if he tried to fight back.

  When he was a teenager it had been different. Then the pressure eased if he just avoided touching door handles with his hands or walked backwards down the stairs or touched all the lampposts he passed. Back then it had been easier to handle, when it was possible to hide behind the self-centredness of a teenager.

  No one knew, either now or then, and well aware of the insanity of what he was doing he had invented tricks and gestures to make the compulsory rituals look like a natural part of his behaviour.

  Every day a secret war.

  Only during the year with Anna had he been free.

  He loved Anna. He would never leave her.

  His mobile rang in his jacket pocket. He took it out and looked at the display. No number. Two rings. He had to answer after the fourth or forget it.

  It might be Karolinska Hospital.

  ‘Jonas.’

  ‘It’s Pappa.’

  Not now. Damn.

  ‘You’ve got to help me, Jonas.’

  He was drunk. Drunk and sad. And Jonas knew why he was calling. It had been eight months since the last time he called, and it had been the same story then. It always was. He probably didn’t call more often to plead with his son because he was seldom sober enough to remember the number.

  Jonas could hear the sound of people in the background. His father was drinking in some bar somewhere.

  ‘I don’t have time to talk right now.’

  ‘Damn it, Jonas, you’ve got to help me. I can’t go on living like this, I can’t stand it any more . . .’

  His voice broke and there was silence on the line. Only the murmur of voices.

  Jonas leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. His father had begun to use his tears as a last resort early on. And frightened by his father’s vulnerability, Jonas had tried to be loyal and thus was forced into betrayal.

  He was thirteen years old when it started.

  Just tell her I have to work late tonight. Damn it, Jonas, you know that this woman . . . well, shit, she gives a hell of a good ride.

  Thirteen years old and his father’s loyal coconspirator. The truth, whatever and wherever it was, had to be kept secret from his mother at all costs.

  To protect her.

  Year in and year out.

  And then the constant question inside him of why his pappa did what he did.

  There were plenty of people in town who knew. He remembered all the conversations that would suddenly stop when he and his mamma entered the grocer’s and that resumed again as soon as she turned her back. All the sympathetic smiles that were directed at her from neighbours and girlfriends, people she thought were her friends, but who year after year out of sheer cowardice held their tongues about the truth. And he, too, walking beside her and holding his tongue as well, he was the worst traitor of them all. He recalled a conversation he had heard once when she was sitting with a neighbour in the kitchen. His mother thought that he had gone out and didn’t hear, but he was lying in bed reading a comic book. He heard her in tears, talking about her suspicions that her husband had met someone else. Heard how she sat there at the kitchen table and overcame her own reservations enough to dare express her shameful misgivings. And the woman lied. Straight into his mamma’s face she lied as she accepted coffee and home-baked buns. Lied and said that his mamma was surely just imagining things and that every marriage had its ups and downs and that there was certainly nothing to worry about.

  And then the slaps on the back from the men urging his father on to new conquests, and more overtime to keep alive his reputation as an irresistible ladykiller, while Jonas stayed at home covering for him. Constant lies that were compensated for by the growing pressure to perform his rituals to dull the sense of dread. And then new lies, to hide the compulsion.

  How he had wondered about all those women. Who were they, what were they thinking? Did they know that his father had a wife and a son somewhere, waiting for the man they were seducing? Did it mean anything to them? Did they care? What made them give their bodies to a man who only wanted to fuck them and then go home and deny them to his wife?

  He never could understand it.

  The only thing he knew was that he hated each and every one of them.

  Hated them all.

  The bubble burst a few months before his eighteenth birthday. Something as trivial as a little lipstick on a shirt collar. After five years of lies the constant betrayal was revealed, and his father had used Jonas’s knowledge like a scared rabbit to protect himself from her pain. To avoid bearing all the guilt himself.

  She had never been able to forgive either of them.

  She was doubly betrayed.

  The wound they gave her was so deep that it could never heal.

  He had remained in the house in silence after his father moved out, watched her from a distance in the destroyed home. It reeked of shame and hatred. She refused to talk to anyone. In the daytime she seldom left her bedroom, and if she did it was only to go to the toilet. Jona
s tried to make up for his betrayal by taking care of shopping for food and other errands, but she never came out to the table when he fixed their meals. Every night at two-thirty he set off on his moped to his job delivering newspapers, and when he came home at six he could see that she had taken something to eat from the refrigerator. The dishes she used stood carefully washed in the dish rack.

  But she never spoke a word to him.

  ‘I don’t have time to talk now.’

  He cut off the connection and leaned over the steering wheel.

  This is the third embolism she has had in two months. And each time her level of consciousness drops.

  How could she do this to him? What more did she want from him to convince her to stay?

  He wouldn’t be able to stand the loneliness in the flat. Not tonight.

  He looked over his shoulder and backed up. He didn’t know where he was going.

  Only one thing.

  If she didn’t touch him soon, he would go crazy.

  Eva had a hard time remembering the last time she had left work early, if ever. The biggest advantage of the fact that Henrik worked at home was that he could collect Axel from day-care or dash over there on short notice if the boy was sick. This went without saying ever since she became a partner and also contributed the major part of their common income. But she tried never to get home later than six.

  Today she was going to surprise him and come home earlier than usual.

  No one could claim that she got very much done that day. With her eyes on structural efficiencies and profitability calculations, the grinding anxiety had constantly intruded on her thoughts. She had a feeling of unreality. He had suddenly put in question the only thing she had never questioned.

  The family.

  Everything else was replaceable.

  She raised her eyes from the computer screen and looked out the window. The only thing she saw was the façade on the other side of Birger Jarlsgatan. Another office full of other people; she had no idea what they were working on, she didn’t know a single one of them. Most of the daylight hours, day after day, year after year, they spent thirty metres from each other and saw one another more than they saw their own families.

  A nine-hour workday, if she didn’t work through lunch, and half an hour’s travel time in rush-hour traffic. It gave her scarcely an hour and a half each day with Axel, an hour and a half when he was tired and cranky after eight hours with twenty other children at the day-care centre, and she was tired and cranky after nine hours of demands and stress at her job. And then at eight o’clock, after he went to bed, she and Henrik would have their time together. The grown-up hour. That was when they were supposed to sit in peace and quiet and see to it that their relationship was fantastic, talk about their day, take an interest in each other’s work, what had happened, share their thoughts. And then somehow manage to make heartfelt love with each other when they finally tumbled into bed. According to the Sunday supplements, that was how they should ensure their marriage would last. And then, of course, plan short romantic trips and get a babysitter so they could have their own gilt-edged time together. If there had been a slave available who could go grocery shopping, drive Axel to swimming lessons, get involved in the parents’ group at the day-care centre, prepare dinner, wash clothes, call the plumber and ask him to fix the leak underneath the kitchen counter, do the ironing, make sure all the bills got paid on time, clean the house, open all the window envelopes and take care of all the family’s social contacts, then it might have been possible. What she wanted most of all was to be able to sleep an entire weekend. Undisturbed. To see whether there was any possibility of getting rid of the exhaustion she felt, the weariness that permeated marrow and bone and longed only for things to get done without her participation.

  She thought about the seminar the company held last autumn. ‘Taking responsibility for your life.’ She had felt energised afterwards; many truths had been uttered that sounded so simple though she had never thought of them herself.

  Every moment I choose whether I want to be a victim or the creator of my own destiny.

  Full of inspiration she had hurried home to tell Henrik about her experience. He had sat silently and listened, but when she offered to get tickets for the next lecture the man would be giving, he wasn’t interested.

  What would you do if you were told you had six months left to live?

  That was the question he opened the seminar with.

  When it was over it hung in the air unanswered.

  She still had done nothing about finding an answer.

  On the way home she took a detour past Östermalms Market Hall, bought two lobsters at Elmqvist’s Fish Shop and then continued on to the wine shop on Birger Jarlsgatan.

  She had booked the trip during lunch and had the tickets sent by courier to the office.

  Everything was going to be fine again.

  It was only four thirty when she got home. Axel’s jacket lay flung on the floor inside the front door, and she hung it up on the elephant-shaped hook that she had put up for him at the proper height.

  She heard Henrik’s voice from the kitchen.

  ‘I have to go now. I’ll try to ring you a bit later.’

  She took off her coat, hiding the bags with the lobsters and champagne inside the closet, and went up the stairs.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table reading Dagens Nyheter. Next to him lay the cordless phone.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  He kept looking at the newspaper. She closed her eyes. Why couldn’t he even make an effort? Why did he always leave the responsibility to her?

  She tried to push aside her annoyance.

  ‘I came home a little earlier today.’

  He raised his head and glanced at the digital clock on the microwave oven.

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘I thought I’d drive Axel over to Mamma and Pappa’s and let him sleep there tonight.’

  This time he looked up at her. A quick, embarrassed look.

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  She tried to smile.

  ‘I’m not telling. You’ll see.’

  For an instant she thought he looked almost scared.

  ‘Axel!’

  ‘I have to work tonight.’

  ‘Axel! Do you want to stay at Grandma and Grandpa’s tonight?’

  Quick steps came running from the living room.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Come on then, let’s get you packed.’

  The familiar drive out to Saltsjöbaden took only fifteen minutes. Axel sat quietly and expectantly in the back seat, and the temporary calm was enough for her to realise that she was nervous. She and Henrik hadn’t slept together since they were in London, and that was almost ten months ago. She actually hadn’t thought about it before now. Neither of them had taken the initiative and so neither of them had been rejected. They probably just hadn’t felt like it, it was no worse than that. And of course Axel always slept between them.

  She drove up and parked on the paved driveway. Axel jumped out of the car and ran the short distance up to the porch.

  She looked at her childhood home through the windscreen. Large and secure, the yellow turn-of-the-century house with its white gingerbread trim stood where it had always stood, surrounded by gnarled, well-pruned apple trees. In a couple of months they would be covered with white blossoms.

  In a couple of months.

  By then everything would be back to normal.

  All she had to do was muster enough energy to fight a little harder.

  Suddenly it occurred to her that she had to ring up the garage and make an appointment to have the winter tyres removed.

  The front door opened and Axel disappeared inside. Eva climbed out of the car, took Axel’s bag from the back seat and went towards the house.

  Her mother came out on the porch.

  ‘Hi, have you got time for a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No, I have to get back right away. Thanks fo
r being able to take him on such short notice.’

  She set the bag on the floor of the entryway and gave her mother a quick hug.

  ‘His toothbrush is in the outside pocket.’

  ‘Did something come up?’

  ‘Yes. Henrik got a new client, so we thought we should celebrate a little.’

  ‘Oh, how nice. Who’s the client?’

  ‘It’s some kind of series of articles for a big magazine, I don’t know exactly. Axel! I’m leaving now.’

  ‘I’ll pick him up in the morning. We have to leave by seven thirty if we’re going to make it.’

  Axel popped up in the doorway, followed by her father.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart. You’re not leaving already, are you?’

  ‘Yes, otherwise I won’t make it.’

  Her mother filled in the lie for her this time.

  ‘Henrik apparently got a great new job that they’re going to celebrate.’

  ‘There, you see. You’ll have to tell him congratulations from me. And what about you? How did it go with that merger you were having such problems with?’

  ‘Oh, that worked out fine. We managed to push it through at last.’

  He stood in silence, smiling. Then he reached out his hand and put it on Axel’s head.

  ‘You know, Axel, you have a very talented mamma. When you grow up she’ll probably be just as proud of you as we’ve been of her.’

  She suddenly felt like crying. Crawling into his lap and being little again. Not thirty-five and a management consultant and a mother responsible for saving her family. She had always been able to rely on them. A solid foundation. They had always believed in her, supported her, made her believe in her own abilities and that nothing was impossible.

  This time there was nothing they could do.

  This time she stood utterly alone.

  How could she ever admit to them that Henrik might not want to live with their daughter any more. The one they were so proud of, the one who was so talented and strong and successful.

  She squatted down in front of Axel and pulled him close to hide her uncertainty.

  ‘I’ll pick him up in the morning. Have a great time tonight.’