“I think most people will be going there straight from work.”
“They don’t work in a hospital kitchen though, do they?” I mutter.
He looks at me, still wearing that lovely smile. He has never looked down on me. He doesn’t think I am revolting because I have a crap job. I love him for that. It’s not that I’m grateful, but I like it. It’s unusual, in my experience. I think about the fleeting expression of disgust on Niklas’s face when I told him about my job. Just as he is aware of the importance of women’s sexual liberation, but would never want a girlfriend who looked as if she was actually sexually liberated, he is aware of the concept of class. Even if he could discuss it at a party with a troubled expression on his face, it’s obvious that he would never want to be with someone who has a job he finds unpleasant. That’s the word he uses, unpleasant. Carl doesn’t worry about that kind of thing, nor does he judge a person by those criteria, he takes people as they are and values honesty and directness, I love him for that too. I love him for so many reasons.
He reaches inside his jacket and takes out his wallet, then hands me two five-hundred-kronor notes. I stare at them.
“Buy yourself something to wear,” he says.
“What?”
“Does it feel strange?”
“You giving me money?”
He laughs. “Yes.”
It ought to feel strange, but it doesn’t. No doubt other people would find it strange. Emelie. I see the women’s tribunal before me, what would they say? Whore, that’s what they would say. I laugh too.
“My other lovers pay better,” I say.
He smiles, then pretends to look worried.
“That’s all the cash I have on me.”
“I need to get myself a credit card reader.”
It is dark. I am waiting for him outside the museum, next to the huge illuminated sculpture of a spiral which has become a symbol in Norrköping and has given its name to one of the big department stores. People are beginning to arrive, they are mostly late middle age, chatting quietly. The lights of the museum are warm and welcoming. It’s not a place I particularly like. Even when I was little and we came here with the school, I didn’t think it was very impressive, it was just a box, a square building that could house absolutely anything. I wanted something magnificent: wide staircases, columns, a palace of art. These days I find both the building and the art inside pretty boring, but I’m still glad it exists, that someone devoted time and money and energy to building a museum in this cultural desert, then filled it with art.
I am wearing a new dress. It is a perfectly ordinary black dress from the boutique right at the top of Drottninggatan that sells Swedish designer labels, I know Emelie usually shops there, I bought it earlier today. I’ve never owned an item of clothing from there before. It is made of perfectly ordinary black jersey, but the fabric is thick and holds its shape, unlike the dresses from H & M that I am used to, it makes me stand up straight. With the rest of the money I bought a pair of perfectly ordinary earrings with imitation pearls, but if you don’t look too closely that doesn’t matter. I am thinking that as long as I look perfectly ordinary I can’t get it wrong. I have put up my hair and I am wearing my high-heeled boots. I feel elegant.
That’s the first thing Carl says when he arrives. He gives me a hug and plants a quick kiss on my cheek, then he takes a step back and looks me up and down.
“You look lovely,” he says, emphasizing every word. “So elegant.”
“Thank you.”
He smiles, I smile back. I feel successful, like someone who can walk into a private viewing beside him without anyone thinking that I don’t fit in.
“Carl Malmberg,” he says to the woman just inside the door, she ticks us off on her list and then we are in the foyer, we hand our coats to a boy in the coat check before moving into the main hall where there is to be an introductory talk. It is packed, a low murmur of voices filling the whole room. There are glasses of wine set out on a table, Carl picks up two. Then we stand there side by side, sipping our wine and listening as the curator gives a short talk about the Swedish expressionists whose work is being shown. I stay close to Carl, I can smell him. People who see us will assume we are a couple. It’s something I can barely handle, I close my eyes for a second and simply enjoy it, enjoy feeling as if I belong to him. I want things to be exactly like this forever.
We stroll around the exhibition, drinking more wine. Carl nods to several acquaintances, they smile and nod in return. I wonder what they think, perhaps that I am a friend of his daughter. A friend of the family. He stops in front of a large painting with bold colors, slightly attenuated human figures with 1920s hairstyles. I don’t really like any of the work on display, but Carl thinks it is wonderful. He says just that, his tone completely unguarded.
At that precise moment I know that I really love him, and I suppress the urge to say that this kind of art is hackneyed and overrated. I want him to keep thinking that this painting is wonderful, because he looks so happy as he gazes at it, and this is a new feeling for me, a new tenderness, it makes me lose the desire to assert myself, to come across as smart. He is aware that I know more about art than he does, he has no problem with that, no need to appear supercilious, nor to make a point of expressing his inferiority in this area, as I imagine Niklas would do, I’ve met men like that, men who have to point out that they don’t know anything about a particular topic, they seem to want praise because for once they are not pushing themselves forward, and by doing so they push themselves forward anyway, they drive me crazy.
Carl is never like that, on the contrary he seems curious, keen to learn more, and when I explain why I like a completely different painting in the museum’s collection, a sleeping boy from the end of the nineteenth century, he listens attentively, looks at me, he is engaged in what I have to say.
It makes me think that we really could have a future together, but I realize that this is what people wouldn’t understand, the fact that there is a fundamental mutual respect between us. He isn’t interested in me just because I am younger than he is and he thinks I’m pretty and he likes going to bed with me, but because he enjoys spending time with me, because he believes in me, he thinks I’m smart, and that I am capable of achieving things. It wouldn’t be like a Pygmalion relationship with me as his Eliza, it would be horrible if he somehow felt sorry for me. And yet I know that I have the potential to grow, I have been striving to improve myself ever since I discovered that there is a whole history of art and literature to master: I have been striving upward, like a flower growing toward the light, toward what is true, what is good, what is beautiful.
To a certain extent Carl and I are equals, I am more like him than any guy my own age, or any girl for that matter, I just love being with him. We simply melt into each other.
And I think Carl feels the same, because only a week later he invites me over to his apartment. It is Thursday evening and he is alone; this afternoon his wife and children and his mother-in-law went off to London for a long weekend, but Carl has to work, so he stayed home. A long weekend in London must cost more than the annual vacation that was the highlight of the year when I was a child, a week in a rented cottage on Öland, Gotland, or somewhere in Denmark, and I have to fight my brain to stop the realization from devaluing the memory of those summers, that was the only time we ever went anywhere. This trip to London is just one of the many vacations the Malmberg family takes: in addition to spontaneous long weekends they go skiing every February, they spend at least three weeks in southern Europe in the summer, then they have another break in the fall if it fits in with Carl’s work, otherwise his wife and children go away, perhaps with a girlfriend and her children, they might go somewhere at Easter too, if only to visit friends in Österlen, this is a natural part of their annual cycle of events, just the same as celebrating Christmas or midsummer, I think about the beaches I went to when I was a kid, I think about the campsites. They were beautiful, the Baltic coast is beautifu
l. Just like everything else that happened when I was growing up, those vacations made me the person I am today.
But I don’t like the person I am today.
That’s not because of the vacations, my brain says, it’s because of you.
They live in an old building made of pale, coral-colored stone. The archway over the main door is adorned with Jugendstil tendrils of fruits and flowers, the door itself is big and heavy. Inside the light is soft, with small fossils inlaid in the marble floor.
The building has four stories, and they live right at the top. There are only two apartments up here, two sets of tall double doors with brass nameplates. Carl opens as soon as I ring the bell, he looks pleased to see me. He is wearing a shirt and sweater, just as he usually does when he comes to visit me, but somehow he seems more relaxed, completely at home, an extra shirt button is undone, his hair is a little messy. I follow him through the hallway and into the living room, it is light and airy. A Persian rug covers most of the floor, there is an elegant suite covered in brightly colored cushions, and a beautiful coffee table with a big vase full of tulips. The bookshelves are packed. A tiled stove, a bay window with a view over the rooftops, a round room that I realize must be the little tower on the gable. There is a grand piano in the center of the room.
It’s the most beautiful apartment I have ever been in. It looks like something from an interior design magazine, a home where beautiful, successful people live, which is exactly the case, of course. I stand in the tower room, distractedly pressing down a few keys on the piano. Carl smiles, moves behind me, plays a chord, continues into the introduction of a piece I know but can’t quite place. He plays with confidence, with focus. Then he suddenly stops, smiles at me again.
“It needs tuning.”
“Right.”
“Do you play?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
We go into the kitchen, which is also light and airy. Everything is so beautiful. Living like this must make you happy. This is what I want.
Carl opens a bottle of wine, pours me a glass, even the glass is lovely. Just imagine having enough money to choose the very best wineglasses, paying over a hundred kronor per glass for the finest Finnish design, just as you have already done with the tumblers and the day-to-day crockery and the best china and the cutlery and the coffee cups and the tea mugs.
He comes and stands behind me, slips his arm around my waist, kisses the back of my neck. Is this what he does with his wife? It feels cozy, intimate. That must make you happy too.
I wake beside him, it is the first time we have spent the night together. He is warm and his breathing is calm and regular, he looks secure and vulnerable at the same time, the whole thing is so wonderful that I feel a physical pain in my heart. He is bound to realize now, just as I have realized. He will understand that this is how things should be, that I am the one who should be part of his everyday life. That we can’t go on meeting in secret in my little apartment where we have sex and perhaps manage a quick cup of coffee before he has to go back to work, to his family, to the grocery store to buy the ingredients for the dinner he is going to cook for his wife and children in their light, airy kitchen. He needs to spend his life with me, because I make him happier than his wife does, I do everything better than her. It is more fun talking to me than to her. He hasn’t said that in so many words, but he has said, “It’s so much fun talking to you!” with an enthusiasm which means that conversations with me are quite different from what he is used to. It’s fun talking to him too, more than anyone else I know.
When he wakes up he blinks at me as usual, he looks slightly surprised at first, then happy that I am lying there in his wife’s place. Surely he must be thinking that I have to stay there. That he must greet his wife with a serious expression and a “We need to talk” when she gets back from London on Sunday, then she will grit her teeth and pick up her suitcase and get back in the car with the children and go to her mother or a friend and cry, if she’s the type of woman who cries, and she will hate me, and that’s okay because I hate her too.
But he just says that this is lovely, he pulls me close and kisses my forehead, then says he has to go to work soon, maybe it’s best if I leave first so that the neighbors won’t be suspicious, in fact maybe it’s best if I leave as soon as possible.
I can’t live like this, I say to Alex. It’s unreasonable. She nods, it certainly is unreasonable, it is unreasonable for him to toss me scraps of what I could have, it’s like torture. As if I were a dwarf at his royal court, with him occasionally throwing me scraps of the finest food from his table, leaving me to eat with the dogs the rest of the time.
“Do you think you might be exaggerating just a little?” Alex says calmly, perhaps I am. I don’t know. That’s how it feels. If I can’t have him, then no one should have him. I say this to Alex. I tell her I fantasize about his wife dying.
“I do understand,” she says. She doesn’t judge me. She puts her arms around me and I can feel a whole ocean of pent-up tears inside me.
I hate the days when the difference between inside and outside is too great, the cold blue light from the snow that has fallen on Drottninggatan and the warm, dry air inside the department store, the flickering fluorescent lighting and the hum of electricity, singing like a thousand crickets above evening shoppers in their winter clothes as they move across the slushy floors, they take off their scarves and the static makes their hair stand on end and their noses run and no one is beautiful, it’s a day like that when I see them. The scene is so far from anything I could have imagined that at first I don’t react to the fact that there is something wrong with it, it’s like when you see someone you recognize in a crowd and your impulse is to say hi, but then you realize it’s not someone you know at all, it’s someone you’ve seen on TV. I see two people who look familiar, I’m about to wave to them but they’re not looking in my direction, and then, half a second later when the pathways in my brain have managed to put together the fragments of information I am seeing, I realize that it is impossible, unimaginable: Carl Malmberg is sitting at a table in Lindahl’s café, and sitting opposite him is Alex.
The sight sends a shock wave through my entire body. They are cheating on me, I think. They are both cheating on me, with each other, I have to lean against a wall, my body is suddenly heavy, exhausted, I think I am going to faint.
Are they talking about me? Is she telling him about me and vice versa, are they laughing at me? Is he saying, You’ll never believe what she lets me do to her … Do they think I will never find out, that I will never suspect that she invites him back to her cozy little apartment where he feels so much more at home than at my place, so much more at ease in her company, with her self-confidence and her straightforward way of taking whatever she wants from life.
I quickly slip behind a pillar at the entrance to the café, I watch them. They seem close, they make an attractive picture, like something from a French film, she is beautiful in the way that women in French films are beautiful, women who have a stylish older lover, I can see the whole movie in my head. They almost have an inner glow of their own in this town, it was obvious that they were going to bump into each other eventually, that they would hit it off, get on well together. As if by magic all the thoughts I had about his wife become thoughts about Alex, about his hands on her body, his thoughtful text messages to her in the evenings, his kisses, his caresses, his confidences.
It is snowing outside on Drottninggatan, big flakes of sticky wet snow, and I have to suppress the urge to throw up with every step I take, I cannot turn my head when I cross the street because my head is aching, exploding, my body feels almost apathetic, the blackness is spreading through my bloodstream like thick liquid tar. When it reaches my heart I will die, I think, and I can feel that moment approaching.
I spend all evening lying in bed, I can’t even be bothered to switch on a light. When darkness falls the room is lit up by the streetlamps outside, a flickering light t
hat makes me realize it is still snowing. Then my cell phone rings. “Alex,” it says on the display. The shrill ringtone sounds grotesque, it reverberates through the room, I switch it to silent, I hold the vibrating phone in my hand. The glowing screen stares at me, challenging me to answer. I have to answer. I have to tell her that I know, I have to get the black tar out of my body.
My “Hello” is faint, she immediately asks how I am.
“I saw you,” I say.
“What?”
“I saw you. You and Carl. I saw you in Lindahl’s café.”
She is silent for a few long seconds. It’s over now, I think. Everything is over, with her and with Carl, it’s over. Now I am completely alone.
Then she starts to laugh. Her laughter is beautiful, sparkling and honest, it seems to me that someone who laughs in a situation like this is crazy. Sadistic and crazy. You can almost see it in her, there is a wildness in her eyes, something unpredictable.
She falls silent.
“So you’ve realized?” she says after a few seconds.
I swallow. “Yes.” My voice is weak.
“Are you angry with me?” she says.
“I just don’t understand how you could do it,” I say.
She is silent again, a brief, confused silence.
“You mean why I didn’t tell you?” she says.
I shake my head, lying there in bed. This is what it feels like to be empty inside.
“I don’t understand how you could do it at all.”
“Do what?” she says. “You mean how could I have coffee with him?”
“Have coffee with him?” I raise my voice. “I have no idea what you’ve done with him, but I assume it’s more than having coffee. How could you sleep with him?”
This time I think she’s never going to stop laughing.
“Sleep with him?” she manages at last. “I’m not sleeping with him. He’s my father.”
The Other Woman Page 10
