“I can’t stay very —” I begin, he interrupts me.
“Unbutton your blouse, please.”
“Sorry?”
“Your blouse. Unbutton your blouse, please.”
It is not a request, even if it is formulated that way; it is an instruction. Or an order. There are fluorescent tubes on the ceiling, the light is cold and flat, I will freeze if I get undressed. Nevertheless I start to undo my blouse, the buttons are large and awkward, imitation mother-of-pearl. Carl nods at me, at my breasts, I realize this means he wants me to unfasten my bra too, so I do. He gets up, comes and stands in front of me, looks straight at me.
“Good,” he says.
His voice sounds different, detached, it hardly even sounds like him, if I closed my eyes I would think someone else was talking to me, someone with a deeper, monotone voice.
He leans forward, slips his hand beneath my blouse and bra. Then he cups my breast, I hear him take a deep breath.
“Good,” he murmurs as he weighs my breast in his hand. “That feels good. They’re lovely.”
He opens my blouse and gazes at my breasts, nods.
“And your pants,” he says, taking a couple of steps back. “Unbutton your pants as well, please.”
I shift off the bed, the paper rustles. I unbutton my white pants. Carl clears his throat again.
“I think it’s best if you take them off,” he says.
I do as he says, I bend down and unfasten the indoor shoes I wear for work, kick them off, and remove my pants. Then I sit down again, feeling a little silly. Carl nods, moves to stand in front of me once more. He places one hand on my thigh, moving it gently in circles. It is warm, it feels nice against my skin, I close my eyes, I am aware of his scent, and immediately all the clinical smells in the room disappear. He moves his hand between my legs, slowly getting closer to my panties, then he pushes the fabric aside with his other hand, touches me. I keep my eyes closed.
“Good,” I hear him say in that same distant tone. “Excellent. What a good girl you are.”
He continues touching me, his fingers moving faster but still gently, my breathing quickens.
“Ssh,” he whispers. “You have to keep absolutely quiet.”
He keeps on stroking me, my breathing getting faster and faster, then suddenly he stops, steps back. He reaches for a paper towel and hands it to me.
“Good,” he says yet again as he sits down at the desk. “Everything seems to be in order.”
He watches me as I wipe between my legs with the paper towel, I pull on my pants and shoes. My cheeks are burning with arousal and something I can’t place, embarrassment perhaps, or discomfiture. Even though it was nice. I would like him to keep going, but he just sits there, looking at me.
“So …” I say.
At last he smiles, a very small smile.
“So,” he says. “I’ll be in touch before too long. It’s probably best if you get back to work now.”
I swallow, nod. I leave him sitting at the desk, go back to the cafeteria, start decanting salad dressing.
I tell Alex about it when we are drinking wine in the bar of a hotel that has just opened in the town center. It is perhaps the ultimate proof of Norrköping’s transformation, the fact that a hotel that wants to be hip and modern has opened, a hotel that wants to attract a clientele that appreciates good design. The very idea that someone interested in design would have traveled to Norrköping a few years ago was bizarre, but now there is clearly a client base for such a place, I try to imagine what kind of people might stay here: guest lecturers at the university, perhaps, guest musicians with the symphony orchestra, guest curators at the Museum of Art, visitors who are keen on culture, and perhaps the odd former Norrköping resident who has come back to attend a wedding or christening. They will say to one another, “Who would have thought there would be a hotel like this in Norrköping!” because that’s exactly right. Who would have thought it? Alex and I are sitting side by side on a sofa in a corner, with a good view of the rest of the bar and the lobby. The wine costs twice as much as in the student bar, but there is no doubt it’s worth it. I don’t know why I haven’t been to a place like this before, but maybe there wasn’t one, and anyway I wouldn’t have had anyone to go with.
Alex smiles at me over the rim of her glass.
“But he didn’t do anything else to you?”
“No. He just stroked me. And then he kept on texting me, all afternoon and all evening, telling me what he was going to do to me.”
“Have you ever been to his place?”
“No. I don’t know if I’d want to; I think it would feel weird.”
“Do you know what his wife looks like?”
“No, and I don’t want to know. I do know she’s blond and she’s younger than him. I bet she’s gorgeous.”
“She might have aged badly,” Alex says, grinning with her wide mouth, I have to laugh, and even if it’s much more likely that Carl’s wife has aged extremely well, with good food and exercise and expensive skincare products, I really like Alex for saying that.
Carl and I quickly establish unspoken rules for our topics of conversation: I make it clear that I don’t want to know anything about his home life, about what they do as a family, and when they go away for a weekend and I realize they’re probably going to visit his in-laws, I don’t ask any questions because it’s so unpleasant, picturing him in a situation where he is chatting and hanging out with his wife’s parents, who are naturally very fond of him, how could they be anything else, and the idea just seems grotesque, it almost makes me feel sick. I also realize there isn’t much wrong with his marriage, no major crisis or impending divorce, it’s just that he’s bored with the whole thing, mainly because he doesn’t feel desired, as far as I can tell.
There must be something wrong with a woman who lives with Carl and doesn’t make him feel desired. How can you have a man like him in your home and not tell him every day that he’s wonderful, that he’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen when he’s falling asleep, that he’s so hot you could just die when he walks in, smelling of fresh air and fall and the warm scent of cinnamon, with his checked scarf wound around his neck and his hair a little mussed up by the wind, that he’s the sexiest guy you’ve ever seen when he steps out of the shower with just a towel around his waist, that gorgeous torso still tanned even though it’s late November, that you can’t stop looking at him, because he is like a work of art, like something you never thought you would get this close to. And when he gets into bed with me and I run my fingers along his arm, which is the most beautiful arm I have ever seen, I can see veins and muscles beneath soft skin, and I tell him exactly that, tell him I’ve never seen such a beautiful arm, and he looks at me in surprise. And I say surely he must know he has amazingly beautiful arms and he says no, because no one has ever told him that.
It’s unbelievable. There must be something wrong with her. She has only herself to blame. It’s such a waste, a man like Carl Malmberg being with a woman who doesn’t appreciate him, it makes me angry just to think about it, it’s like some kind of cosmic injustice which I am helping to put right.
In spite of the fact that I am so absorbed by him, by the relationship, the sex, the way he looks, his character, I also understand the mechanism behind the whole thing, I know that this is about an attraction based on a need for approval, on both our parts. Because it works both ways: I have never felt as desired as I do when I am with Carl, nothing has even come close to this. He can spend hours telling me what he likes about my body, the body I used to regard as little more than a vulgar container for my soul, it turns out he loves it, almost adores it. He thinks everything about it is perfect, he says surely I must realize that the first few times he saw me working in the cafeteria all he wanted to do was tear off my clothes and touch me. How could I possibly have known that? I felt disgusting in my ugly uniform, with a dishcloth in my hand and my face shiny with sweat from the heat and dampness of the utility room.
>
“It was obvious that you didn’t really belong there,” he says. “It was written all over you, you looked so elegant somehow, even though you were wearing the same uniform as everyone else, but I could see it in your eyes. There was intelligence there, I knew you were too intelligent to stay in that job for very long.”
I drink in every single word. That’s the best thing anyone has ever said to me. How have I gotten through life without someone who says things like that to me? I want to be the person he sees when he looks at me. I know I can be that person. Whatever happens, I have to make sure he doesn’t see me as I see myself.
On one occasion he says he will understand if I want to see other guys, that of course he can’t stop me, nor does he have the right to from a moral point of view, given his own situation, but the idea upsets him and he doesn’t want to know anything about it. I nod and say okay, although I’m not seeing anyone else and have no desire to do so. And even though it’s a reasonable thing for him to say, it makes me feel sad, because I’d really like to hear that he doesn’t want me to see anyone else. I’d really like him to say that what he and I have is a little too wonderful for him to cope with the rest of his life; that his other life, the life I don’t want to know anything about, seems intolerable now that he knows how things could be, that he can’t go on like this, and that if I promise not to see anyone else, then he promises to leave his wife as soon as possible. But he doesn’t say that.
Alex makes me tell her everything about Carl. At first I am embarrassed, but when she has plied me with enough wine, I notice that I enjoy talking about him. She listens attentively, as if my life were an exciting novel, and I love the feeling that gives me. She is also like a novel, or a film, bordering on overblown, but so skillfully balanced between the grand and the totally ordinary, the superficial and the profound that it just makes her more real. The depth I have encountered in most other people my age has almost always been contrived to some extent: predictable, based on a student’s perception of profundity, political commitment that has always involved the same options, an interest in literature that has always been centered on the same books. In comparison with all this Alex comes across as unworldly, sometimes almost naive in her lack of guile, her lack of interest in seeming to be something she is not, while at other times she is smart and cunning, shameless in a way I have never encountered before. All her qualities are rooted in exactly the kind of honesty I have searched for, and that honesty pervades everything about her, including her apartment, which is odd in a way that fascinates me, yet at the same time it is not in the least ostentatious. I have been in enough student accommodation to know that the way most places are decorated makes the person who lives there appear to be anything but interesting. In Alex’s apartment you have to pick your way through mismatched pieces of furniture, dusty, old-style potted plants on pedestals, tassels and fringes and crocheted mats. Persian rugs cover the floors in every room, so that the whole place is red and cozy, and all the sounds are muted. On top of a big dark armoire sits a stuffed barn owl, a male, glowing white, its huge dark eyes made of glass staring down at me, it looks ghostly. It was given to Alex by her mother, who inherited it from her mother.
She tells me that her mother is from Russia. She doesn’t really say much about herself, but she’s happy to talk about her mother, Elena from St. Petersburg, Alex is like her, she shows me pictures of Elena when she was young, and she looks like a 1970s version of Alex, the same dark eyes, the same wide, generous mouth. Elena lives in Linköping now, that’s where Alex grew up. She mentions her father only in passing.
Alex is in the same class as Emelie but doesn’t really hang out with her, she dismisses her fellow students as dull and boring.
“I think I want to sleep with my graphic design tutor,” she tells me one evening.
“How exciting. What’s stopping you?”
“He wears leather pants.”
I burst out laughing.
“Have you ever slept with anyone who wears leather pants?” she wonders.
“I’ve never even known anyone who wears leather pants.”
“I’m not sure whether he’s a synth pop fan or whether he rides a motorcycle, and to be honest they’re both as bad, particularly since he must be forty-five, but the worst-case scenario would be if he listens to synth pop and rides a motorbike.”
“What’s wrong with listening to synth pop?”
She waves her hand in the air as if she is trying to get rid of an unpleasant smell.
“There’s something wrong with a middle-aged man who still dresses to match the music he listens to,” she mutters, before taking a swig of her wine and looking at me with a satisfied smile. “But I think I’m going to have to try to sleep with him anyway.”
I like everything about her, I like the fact that she laughs a lot and has big breasts, which makes her look voluptuous. None of the other girls I have met at the university look like her, they are pale and skinny, as the girls in humanities classes usually are. I realize it’s unreasonable to assume that humanities students always look the same, not just in what they wear but in their body type, but I can’t help it. Perhaps I am so self-obsessed that I like Alex mainly because she reminds me of myself. Or she reminds me of how I want to be. Carefree. What wouldn’t I give to be carefree.
When I talk about Carl she asks for more details about what he does to me, what I let him do. I blush as I tell her, and she gives me that big smile and tells me I’m sweet, and that it all sounds very sexy. Talking to her about it feels sexy too, I like Alex’s smile because it is hungry and inviting, not in terms of eroticism perhaps, but in terms of life, or adventure, something that is more exciting than my life has been so far, but on the other hand: maybe there is an element of eroticism too, so I smile back and make a little more effort so that she will keep on smiling in my company.
I manage to lift the lid of the drain underneath the dishwasher, it is full of little holes that let the water through but trap food waste, today it is covered with peas and diced carrots. Magdalena dropped a canteen of boiled vegetables on the floor, they’ve ended up in the drain filter along with solidified lumps of mashed potato. I think about Carl as I lift the lid with a hooked metal rod, I think about Carl as I tip the vegetables into the waste disposal unit, I think about Carl as I use the jet wash to sluice dried-up mashed potato off the inside of the dishwasher, the bottom is covered in a thin white film that also has to be rinsed away, there is a pile of salmon baking trays that someone rinsed in water that was too hot, which made the protein coagulate so now they have to go in the granule dishwasher where little hard bright blue plastic balls whisk them clean in an intense hailstorm, in the dampness and the dirt and the clatter of sticky trays I think about Carl. He always looks so clean. He always smells so clean, and it is infectious, that feeling of cleanliness, I become a different person when I am with him, within his smell. I become more like the person I want to be.
I feel lonely in the evenings, it starts at twilight. My heart reaches out toward the horizon like an empty bowl; fill me up, I think, fill me up with anything at all. I look out the window, see people walking past, men on their way home from work, heading for the bus or the train, going home to their families, they are dressed for winter, slightly stressed, any one of them would do, I think, I could open the window, stick my head out and ask one of them to come inside. Just hold me for a little while, you can touch me, do almost anything you like, as long as you hold me afterward.
There isn’t a soul in sight when I go for my walks, they are all at home with their families. All the men are sitting on a sofa with a wife; they may not be in love with her anymore, but they still won’t leave her. They are happy to cheat on her forever and a day, but they can’t imagine leaving her. They prefer to stay in a relationship without honesty. That’s what adults do, I think. Then I wonder about the wives. Are they happy? Do they suspect anything? I think about this as I walk from the harbor to the bus station, it’s not very safe arou
nd here this time of night. This is the red light district, if such a thing exists nowadays.
I read in a book that female prostitutes are the modern city’s equivalent of the male flâneur; they make the city their own at night in the same way, strolling past strangers and meeting their eyes. But while the flâneur merely thinks that he could have loved the person who has just walked by, the prostitute offers to do it for real, for a while at any rate. The book didn’t say anything about female flâneurs. Women who walk the streets are whores. I’ve never seen one, but cars sometimes slow down alongside me, hoping I will turn out to be someone else. Perhaps I am someone else.
I would like to text Carl but I’m not allowed; I’m not allowed to contact him unless he contacts me first in case his wife sees it, he is with his wife tonight. He is at a parent-teacher conference, or maybe they’ve been to the movies, or they’re sitting on the sofa drinking tea and watching a film right now, the whole family, like some glossy American Christmas card. I can’t compete against someone who has given birth to his children, I think, I get angry with myself, angry with my own childish thoughts. I’ve been through it all, imagined us traveling somewhere, he takes me out into the world, to southern Europe, we can be seen out and about together, he can hold my hand and take me out to dinner and see other men glancing enviously at him because I am young and beautiful, perhaps they imagine us going home and making love, perhaps they think how lucky he is. But he doesn’t want to be lucky, he wants his Christmas card family. Someone like me can never be a part of a life like that.
“I’ve bought you a present,” Carl says.
He is holding out a bag from a lingerie chain, there is a package inside, a white box tied with a silk ribbon. It’s very pretty.
“Wow — but why?” I say.
He gives a little smile.
“I guess it’s a present for me, really,” he says quietly. “You don’t have to … but I think you’d look lovely.”
The Other Woman Page 7
