Betrayal

by Karin Alvtegen

  She forced a smile and went down the steps and over to her car. Through the windscreen she could see them standing on the porch and waving.

  Together.

  Pappa’s arm around Mamma’s shoulders. Forty years and they still stood there, side by side, content with their life and so proud of and grateful for their only daughter.

  She would like to stand like that someday herself. It was this childhood home that she wanted to recreate for Axel. The security. A total faith that no matter what happened it would be there.

  The family.

  Unwavering.

  It was what you could always fall back on if everything else went to hell. She had been privileged to grow up that way. With Mamma and Pappa always there if she needed them. Always ready to help out. And the older she got, the less she needed them, as long as she knew they would always be there.

  As long as she knew that.

  Their boundless faith in her, that she would make it, that she was capable. No matter what she chose to do.

  What was wrong with her own generation? Why were they never satisfied? Why did everything and everyone always have to be measured, compared, evaluated? What was this unresolved restlessness that kept driving them onward, forward, to the next goal? A total inability to stop and be happy about the goals they had already reached, a constant fear that someone might pass them by, that they had missed something that might have been slightly better, made them slightly happier. So many choices, but how could they manage all of them?

  The older generation had fought to realise their dreams: education, a home, children, and then the goal was attained. None of them had ever suspected that they might need so much more. No one accused them of lacking ambition if they stayed at a job more than a couple of years; on the contrary, loyalty was honourable. They had had the ability to sit down and feel content with their lives. They fought hard and then enjoyed their successes.

  She opened the front door as quietly as possible and sneaked into the kitchen, putting the champagne in the freezer. She didn’t see Henrik around; the door to his office was closed. A quick shower and then take out the new lacy lingerie she had bought at lunch-time. The nervousness came over her again when she looked at her face in the bathroom mirror. Maybe she ought to make an effort more often. But how would she manage? She took off the silver clasp at the nape of her neck and let her hair fall over her shoulders. He had always liked it best when her hair was down.

  For a moment she considered putting on only her robe over the black lingerie, but she didn’t dare. Good Lord. Here she was standing in her bathroom where she had stood naked with her family every morning and evening for almost eight years, and she was nervous about asking her husband to come to dinner.

  How had it come to this?

  She put on black jeans and a jumper.

  The door to the office was still closed when she came out. She listened but couldn’t hear his fingers on the keyboard. There was utter silence inside. But then suddenly the beep of an email being sent. Maybe he had finished working.

  She quickly set the table with the good dishes and was just about to light the candles when he was suddenly standing in the kitchen doorway. He glanced at the festive table setting, but there was no hint of joy in his face.

  She smiled at him.

  ‘Would you switch off the big light?’

  He hesitated an instant before he turned and did as she asked. She picked up the bottle of champagne, unscrewed the wire, and twisted out the cork. The champagne glasses they had received as a wedding present were already on the table. He was still standing in the doorway, didn’t make a move to approach her.

  She walked over and handed him a glass.

  ‘Here you are.’

  She had heart palpitations now. Why couldn’t he help her out? Did he have to make her look ridiculous because she was trying?

  She went back and sat down at the table. For a moment she thought he would go back into his office. But then he finally came and sat down.

  The silence was like an extra wall in the room. It cut right across the table, with each of them on one side of it.

  She looked down at her plate but couldn’t eat a bite. On the chair next to her lay the blue plastic folder with the tickets. She wondered if he saw her hand shaking when she handed it to him through the silence.

  ‘This is for you.’

  He regarded her outstretched hand suspiciously.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Could be something nice. You’ll have to look and see.’

  He opened the folder as she watched. She knew that he had always wanted to go to Iceland. An adventure holiday. It had never happened. She had preferred holidays in the sun where she could rest, and she was always the one who planned and arranged their holiday trips.

  ‘I thought that Axel could stay with Mamma and Pappa, and we could go alone, just the two of us, for a change.’

  He raised his eyes and looked at her, and his eyes frightened her. Never before had anyone looked at her with such an annihilating coldness. Then he put down the plastic folder on the table and stood up, looked her straight in the eye as if to ensure that each and every word would hit its mark.

  ‘There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that I want to do together with you.’

  Every syllable felt like a slap in the face.

  ‘If it weren’t for Axel and the house, I would have left long ago.’

  Psychotherapist Yvonne Palmgren had insisted that they have what she called ‘the first conversation’ in Anna’s room. Jonas had no objections; in there, at least, the compulsion would leave him in peace. Though he had a hard time understanding what good the conversation would do. But fearing that they might take away the nights he slept over if he didn’t cooperate, he had finally agreed to meet with her.

  She was sitting in a chair by one of the windows – maybe fifty or fifty-five. Her white smock unbuttoned over a pair of grey trousers and a red jumper. A childish necklace made of big, colourful plastic beads rested on her full bosom, and four felt-tip pens in garish neon colours stuck up from her breast pocket. Maybe all those cheerful colours were intended to outweigh all the blackness she confronted daily in her patients’ tormented souls.

  He sat down on the edge of Anna’s bed and held her right hand that was still normal. He could feel the woman in the chair looking at him. He knew full well what she was thinking.

  ‘Where do you think we should start?’

  He turned his head and looked at her.

  ‘No idea.’

  He had shown up as agreed; the rest wasn’t his problem, she would have to take care of that. He wasn’t the one who needed this conversation, it was the County Council, so that they could terminate Anna’s rehabilitation in good conscience and slowly but surely allow her brain to atrophy so that they were spared any more trouble. But they could forget about winning him over to their side.

  ‘Do you think it’s annoying to have this conversation?’

  He sighed.

  ‘No, not particularly. I just don’t understand what the point is.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s because you’re afraid that you might have negative feelings about it?’

  He couldn’t even manage to answer that. What the hell did she know about fear? Just asking the question meant that she had never even been close to it. Never felt that wild terror of losing everything. To have no power over one’s own thoughts, no control of one’s own life.

  Or Anna’s.

  ‘How long had you been together? I mean before the accident.’

  ‘A year.’

  ‘But you weren’t actually living together?’

  ‘No. We were just about to get married when . . . when . . .’

  He broke off and looked at Anna’s closed eyelids.

  The woman in the chair shifted position. Braced herself on the armrests and then folded her hands over the open plastic folder on her lap.

  ‘Anna is a bit older than you.’

  ‘Ye
s.’

  Yvonne Palmgren glanced down at her papers.

  ‘Almost twelve years older.’

  He sat in silence. Why should he say anything when she could satisfy her sick curiosity by reading it all from the file?

  ‘Can you tell me a little about your relationship? What your life was like before all this happened? You can describe a normal day if you like.’

  He stood up and walked over to the window. He hated this. Why should he have to divulge his and Anna’s life to a stranger? What right did she have to come trampling into their memories?

  ‘Did you talk about moving in together?’

  ‘We live in the same building. Anna has a studio at the top of the stairs. She’s an artist.’

  ‘I see.’

  He remembered their first meeting so well. He had distributed the day’s mail, gone home and slept for a few hours, and was on his way to Konsum to buy groceries. She was standing in the stairwell on the ground floor, busy loading cartons into the lift. They said hello to each other and he held the door when she went out to the car to fetch the last box. The similarity was striking. How was it possible for anyone to be so similar? He stood there, not wanting to leave before he had a chance to talk with her. Afterwards it was so natural that he had stayed. That he overcame his hesitation and asked whether he could help her. He didn’t recall what she replied. He only remembered her smile. A candid, warm smile that made her eyes narrow to slits and made him feel chosen, unique, handsome in someone else’s eyes.

  He had helped her with the boxes and then she asked him in to her new studio, and she had shown him round, happy and proud. He had mostly looked at her. There was a kind of radiance about her. A genuine naturalness so attractive that he became quite bewildered. After only five minutes he had known that she was the one he had always been waiting for. That his whole life had been merely leading up to their meeting.

  ‘What did you use to do together?’

  The psychotherapist’s question dragged him back to the present. He turned towards her.

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Can you give me an example?’

  They started eating their meals together. He would come home from work just in time for lunch, and she worked at home, so after a while it became a habit. One day at her place, the next at his. She was the first person he had allowed in his flat in several years. He had never been able to overcome the distaste he felt at how messy things were after someone visited. She had laughed at his systematic order and claimed that all the right angles made her nervous, finally convincing him to redecorate. She had even run up to her studio and fetched a big oil painting that they hung up in the room. It was after she left that night that he fully realised how much he loved her. He had wandered about in confusion, and yet the compulsion could not reach him. Completely unaware of her improbable feat, she had used her mere presence to neutralise the danger that threatened him.

  That night he stood naked in front of the painting and traced her brush-strokes with his finger. The grooved canvas aroused a desire so strong in him that it was painful, but he would not let it go. He would save it and give it to her when she was ready.

  ‘Did you have a lot of friends?’

  He turned back to the window and stuffed one hand in his pocket. His memory had revived the wild longing. The hunger of his skin that would drive him crazy if she didn’t touch him soon.

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Relatives, then?’

  ‘Her parents died in a car crash when she was fourteen. She was one of those children who’s like a dandelion and succeeds in life in spite of everything. Strong and stubborn.’

  ‘Does she have any siblings?’

  ‘A brother, but he lives in Australia.’

  ‘And you?’

  He turned his head and looked at her.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your parents?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tell me.’

  ‘We have no contact. I moved down to Stockholm when I was eighteen, thought it was good to get away from there.’

  ‘Get away from what?’

  ‘I lived up north of Gävle.’

  ‘Yes, but most people stay in contact with their family even if they move away.’

  ‘I see.’

  Nine words his mother had said to him after the betrayal was revealed. Nine words. It was on his eighteenth birthday. He was sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast, had just come home from his paper round. For three months he had done what he could to win her forgiveness, but she had not been receptive. And his father had holed up in a one-room apartment in Gävle to get away from the shame that her boundless sorrow and disappointment had created. He took his clothes and one of the twin beds from the bedroom and disappeared.

  Suddenly she was standing there in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing the flowered robe that he knew smelled so good, smelled of Mamma. And he had been filled with joy and thought that maybe, maybe she was ready to forgive him now. Now that it was his birthday and she was standing there in the kitchen doorway.

  Nine words she had said.

  I don’t want you to live here any more.

  Yvonne Palmgren shifted position in her chair once again. A couple of papers from her folder started to slip, and she caught them just as they were about to fall to the floor.

  He lowered his gaze and went to sit with Anna again.

  ‘Why don’t you have any contact with your parents?’

  ‘Because I don’t feel like it.’

  ‘Doesn’t that ever make you feel empty?’

  ‘No.’

  She cleared her throat and closed the folder in her lap.

  ‘I think that will be enough for now, but I would like to continue our conversation this afternoon.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. It annoyed him that he was forced to do as they said. That he couldn’t just tell them all to go to hell.

  ‘Shall we say two o’clock?’

  She got up and went over to the bed, looked at Anna and then at him, and moved towards the door.

  ‘I’ll see you then. Goodbye for now.’

  He didn’t reply.

  He saw the door close behind her and took Anna’s hand, placed it on his crotch, and closed his eyes.

  Never in her life had she felt so alone.

  He had slept on the sofa. Took his pillow and quilt and without saying a word he had left her with all the unanswered questions that she couldn’t bring herself to ask. His last words at the kitchen table had struck her dumb.

  Anxiety like a cramp in her guts.

  Why was he so angry? Where did his rage come from? What could she possibly have done to deserve being treated like this?

  Alone in the double bed she was sorry that she had let Axel sleep over at her parents’ house. She would have given anything to have him here now, hear his breathing, reach out her hand and feel the warm back of his pyjamas.

  At four o’clock she couldn’t stand it any more. With her face red and swollen and her eyes watering, she pulled on her robe and went out to the living room. It was still dark outside, but in the pale moonlight she could see that he was lying on his back with his arms behind his head. His knees a bit bent, the sofa too short to permit him to stretch out his legs. She wondered briefly why he didn’t go and sleep in Axel’s bed. A kid’s bed, of course, but surely better than the sofa.

  She sat down in the armchair, at the very edge.

  ‘Are you asleep?’

  He didn’t answer.

  She pulled her robe tighter around her and shivered. The mullioned windows in the room needed to be puttied again. The electric heater couldn’t keep the room warm when most of the heat went straight out through the draughty cracks. It would be a time-consuming job, eight small panes in each window. Maybe they could hire someone and avoid wasting their time during their badly needed holiday. But maybe that was no longer so important.

  She swallowed.

 
‘Henrik?’

  Not a sound.

  ‘Henrik, dear, can’t we just talk a little? Can’t you explain to me what’s happening?’

  He didn’t stir.

  ‘Can’t you at least explain why you’re so angry? What is it I’ve done?’

  He turned over on his side and pulled up the covers. He must have heard from her voice that she had been sad, that she was still sad, but she realised that he was not going to answer even if he did hear her. He intended to shut her out and her questions as if she had never uttered them. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, trying to stifle the sound of desperation that was lodged like a scream in her throat, demanding to be released. A cornered animal whose every instinct was signalling her to fight, but she didn’t know what to defend herself against. For a good while she sat there, unable to get up, but finally she managed to persuade her legs to take her back to the empty double bed.

  She had just lain down when she heard him go into the bathroom.

  He left her alone.

  She didn’t fall asleep until after five o’clock. At seven she woke up when the front door closed. She presumed he was going to collect Axel and take him to the day-care centre.

  She lay there staring at the second-hand on her wristwatch, unable to move. Step by step it was leading her farther away from reason. How was she going to resolve this?

  The sudden ring of the telephone made her gasp. The only reason she decided to pick it up was that it might be him.

  ‘Eva speaking.’

  ‘Hi, it’s me.’

  ‘Oh, hi Mamma.’

  She lay back down.

  ‘How did it go yesterday?’

  ‘Oh, fine, thanks. Was it all right with Axel?’

  ‘Yes, but he woke up at half past one and was sad and absolutely wanted to ring you even though we told him it was much too late. We tried your mobiles but they were turned off, and your home phone kept giving a busy signal. Were you having a good time?’

  Kept giving a busy signal?

  ‘Yes, it was very nice.’

  Who had he called so late? Because she hadn’t heard the phone ring. And if he was on the line, the call waiting signals should still have gone through.