Acts of Infidelity

by Lena Andersson

  ‘Hey’ was an easy-going word for innocent meetings, but it was also the word to use when one wished to set that tone precisely because nothing about the meeting was innocent.

  He put his hand on Ester’s shoulder. She nodded. She couldn’t have pretended to be easy-going even if she wanted to, and now she was tense, which would be silly to try and hide. She said he’d given a good performance, very good, really very good, and the show was excellent, the production creative and the play interesting.

  She already felt worn out, and not just because she’d had to come up with so many adjectives.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

  She was and they walked to a nearby pub. They sat all the way at the back in a dark corner illuminated by a lone candle that had stood in a draught for so long that the melted wax had formed a minor work of Renaissance architecture. Ester ordered pasta with a fillet of beef in cream sauce, which turned out to be a sticky beige mess. Olof had eaten before the performance and only ordered a glass of red wine. Ester drank sparkling water because she was planning to drive on to Stockholm. They spoke about the performance. Olof wondered if Ester thought he’d been good on stage. Using various formulations he wondered this several times and Ester kept replying that he had been more than perfect. Exceptional, wonderful. Then he asked for her thoughts on the play, the text itself, and Ester said that it had its merits but lacked depth and revealed the author’s coquettish sides. Olof said that he’d been trying to see the show through Ester’s eyes that night and couldn’t stop wondering what she was thinking. Olof also asked if she thought his friend Max Fahlén had been better than him, and Ester replied that Max Fahlén had been good but not as good as Olof, because Olof had been more than perfect. Exceptional, wonderful.

  She ordered another bottle of sparkling water, whereupon he muttered inaudibly. There was something specific he wanted to convey with the muttering that related to her water consumption; her first bottle had already given him pause. It didn’t occur to her that he was planning on her staying overnight. She didn’t think they’d built up to that and assumed she’d be driving home that night. Because she couldn’t tell what he was thinking, he was forced to say it out loud, to take the abhorrent initiative. It would cost him dearly but the bill would be passed on to Ester later to pay in another form.

  He regarded her incredulously, sitting there with her gravity and loftiness, qualities that Fatima had said were the pair’s biggest hurdles but also Ester’s salvation: never hiding the gravity of her longing was part of her attraction, but it frightened Olof (and everyone else) away, and dispersed any false interpretations of her intentions – interpretations that would only have added to Ester’s woes.

  So as not to be heard wanting – for wanting makes a person weak – he framed the question as an accusation:

  ‘Have you stopped fixating on me yet?’

  That blindsided her. Several seconds passed before she understood what Olof had said and could give a response more dignified than the question.

  ‘It’s not a fixation. You’re in my heart. I miss you.’

  Haplessly, he bit his lower lip.

  ‘On a night like this, I wish I could offer you my guest room. But that’s impossible if you’re going to think it’s an invitation.’

  ‘I don’t think anything any more. But I’m quite tired so it would be nice to not have to get back behind the wheel tonight.’

  The subtle way in which Olof unloaded the suggestion that he himself had made was masterful. Through minor dislocations of language he made it sound as if he wasn’t participating, had no preferences and bore no responsibility for what was taking place; that Ester’s inability to understand the rules of the game was what was complicating everything and tying his hands behind his back.

  ‘In that case, I’d love a glass of wine,’ Ester said.

  ‘I think I have wine at home.’

  And so they walked the short distance to Olof’s flat.

  The apartment at his disposal had three rooms, belonged to the theatre and lay in Norrköping’s Million Programme estate area. He showed her around and finally they arrived at the bedroom, the room furthest from the front door. It contained two beds which had barely a metre between them. Why were the beds separated? Ester wondered. Is this how he and the wife slept when she came to visit or had he pulled the beds apart before this visit so that Ester wouldn’t think that theirs was a marriage flaming with passion and she still had a chance? Or had he simply felt like getting her home with him tonight and in an ambivalent counter-manoeuvre separated the beds so as to confound any forbidden thoughts and to demonstrate that he absolutely was not thinking anything erotic in spite of the invitation?

  It was impossible to determine and from what she knew about Olof, both options were equally likely. All she did know was that no part of this was a coincidence or accidental, neither the beds’ positions nor tonight’s invitation. Olof operated in relation to Ester’s thoughts and he in relation to hers.

  On one bedside table lay a stiff silver necklace, on the floor a black bra. Both indicated a right to remain. And if the separated beds had been arranged, so too had the silver necklace and bra; alternatively, they had intentionally not been cleared away. The mighty ambivalence that this revealed was not second to the Rat Man’s. When his beloved’s equipage was to come riding by, he’d place a stone on the road so he could rush out and clear it from the path in the nick of time.

  The worst part for Ester and her pernicious hope was that after twelve years the Rat Man had married the woman he’d treated this way. Ester might not be able to wait a full twelve years.

  She regarded the bra and the necklace, wondering what Ebba would feel if she knew that she was standing here looking at them. She found it terrifying that it was possible to live alongside the person you thought was closest to you, but who inhabited a landscape of unknown events, enthusiasms and problems.

  They sat in Olof’s kitchen, drank red wine and talked, mostly Olof for a change; Ester listened and interjected. She tempered herself because she could keenly sense his hesitation and didn’t want to risk being hurt by the cruelty it engendered.

  When they had sat a while and a certain charge and fellowship had emerged, Olof said that he and Ebba had been thinking about going to Rome for a long weekend this month. But because they couldn’t get tickets for November, the trip had been moved to Easter.

  Ester regretted not driving home right after the performance instead of once again being dragged into his hellish void of indecision where she and the wife were being used to regulate his anxiety.

  ‘Easter is a long way off,’ she said.

  ‘Not that far, just a few months.’

  ‘I’ve never planned or booked a trip so far in advance. You two must be getting on better since the winter.’

  ‘What do you mean, better?’

  ‘In the winter when you and I met in Arvidsjaur you had nothing to talk about and Ebba was keeping tabs on you and standing guard so you couldn’t go out and see me. And everything between you was mute. “Completely mute”, even.’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘Word for word.’

  ‘Ebba and I have never had a bad stretch.’

  Ester had to catch her breath.

  ‘Believe what you want. The reason I can’t tell Ebba about you is that she’d never believe that we’re just friends.’

  ‘In that way, we’re the same, Ebba and I. I don’t believe that either. My friendships don’t look like this, I can assure you.

  Olof thought for a moment and said:

  ‘All relationships have their ups and downs, don’t they?’

  ‘That’s what they say. And their entrances and exits, too. Except yours.’ Ester drank more wine even though her tongue was rough and thick and it didn’t taste good.

  ‘So things are going well, then?’

  ‘Yes. Very.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  Olof fingered the rim of the wine glas
s. A fan was on in the apartment. Ester said:

  ‘When you’re not resisting it, the heat between us could replace nuclear power in this country. What do you think Ebba would have to say about that? This devastating physical attraction that’s always between us combined with our appetite for conversation.’

  A familiar look of amused mischief came over him and his eyes glinted with desire.

  ‘Maybe I’m not attracted to you, Ester. Maybe it’s just in your imagination. Maybe that heat is only coming from you.’

  Three sentences, three ‘maybes’. She could see and hear how he relished this precarious situation, and being the only one who knew the answer.

  Ester went to the sink and poured out what was left of her wine, and from the guest room, she retrieved her toilet bag.

  As she brushed her teeth, she heard Olof behind her. He lingered in the bathroom doorway looking meek; he’d pushed too hard and now had to reel her back in. He commented on how she had her foot on the toilet seat:

  ‘You did that in Arvidsjaur, too.’

  His precision in recalling a location, an event and their togetherness exactly when it was needed – but only ever then – must have been intuitive, some sort of biological instinct, Ester thought when she examined the situation later so as to see it in the context of a whole. He couldn’t have calculated how to behave through analysis alone, of that he was incapable. Olof followed her into the guest room, put his arms around her, found her lips. When he’d planted a kiss, he said:

  ‘Sleep well, Ester. If you get lonely, you can join me.’

  He went to the bedroom. She stayed in the guest room and watched him leave.

  ‘What did you say?’

  She followed him. He’d already managed to slip under the covers.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do you mean, mean?’

  ‘By me joining you if I feel lonely.’

  ‘Nothing in particular.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘Come on then, lie down,’ he said with an impatient wave, rankled by being made to articulate the sin.

  He lifted the covers and invited her into the bed.

  Nude and shaking she lay next to the only one of the world’s many billion bodies that she wanted to touch with hers. He embraced her. All parts of their bodies met and hands caressed backs. The ecstasy couldn’t be understood as anything but mutual. A few exceptional minutes of Ester’s life went by before Olof, like an axe dropping, grew distant, abandoning their union mentally though his body remained. Ester compensated with extra intensity, whispering sweet nothings, showing him everything she felt, but he had become mechanical. Then he pulled out, lay on his back and said:

  ‘Eh. I don’t have the energy.’

  And rolled over to sleep.

  Ester touched his neck, tenderness still surging, a lag that came from not understanding. Olof’s bed was narrow and his wife’s bed was a metre away, it was crowded. After a moment, Olof said:

  ‘I’m going to lie down in the other room.’

  ‘No, I’ll go,’ Ester said. ‘I’ll go.’

  Why didn’t Ester Nilsson leave and check into a hotel for the night? She didn’t even consider it. In her realm of experience, you simply didn’t afford yourself nights at hotels, and because of her lack of pride there was no reason to. More importantly she wasn’t sure how to take the incident. The largely positive can leave negative stains and vice versa. What was a background colour and what were the stains in her history with Olof and this latest episode? Should she focus on the fact that he’d invited her to his place and couldn’t resist her, or on the interrupted sex act? After a lull that had lasted months, he’d taken two sensational initiatives in the space of a few hours. So a minor recoil wasn’t unexpected.

  The next morning Ester had determined that what had transpired was a largely positive development with a small backlash, not the other way around. She woke to the smell of coffee and the hissing percolator. The sound was irreconcilable with a negative atmosphere and animosity, as was Olof lolling on the sofa reading the newspaper. Sure of the strength of their bond, she cautiously lay down on what space was left on the sofa. He didn’t stop her. Then she touched his thighs in a way that made his bathrobe slide open. He didn’t pull it closed. Ester’s hand took its liberties. She saw that he was reading the obituaries. He pushed his reading glasses to his forehead, put the newspaper on his chest and said he felt uncomfortable. Ester halted her activities.

  ‘What happened yesterday was no good. I don’t want to have that kind of relationship with you.’

  She went back to the guest room, packed and pulled on her coat. She gave herself permission to stop for breakfast at the petrol station at the edge of town and satisfy her ravenous hunger there, for she had to get away.

  She was in the hall when she heard his voice behind her, unbothered, relaxed.

  ‘Wait. I’ll come to town with you. I’ve got to get something from the theatre.’

  She watched him dress in haste and wondered how it was possible for a person to lack all sense of what could be said and done not three minutes after they’d said and done something else. With his profession, he should be an expert, hypersensitive to the inner dynamics of any scene or situation. Instead he kept putting the wrong foot forward.

  How she could find herself driving him to town was already clear to her: she felt guilty whenever she saw how the slightest rejection rumpled him. If she’d treated him like he treated her, it wouldn’t be long until she’d regret her brusqueness and reach out in order to explain herself.

  A cold, hard November rain was drumming on her car. Next to her, Olof commented on the rain. Ester said he was treating her like rubbish. He said it really was a shame she felt that way but he’d been crystal clear from the start about what he did and did not want and if she took a right here and then a left they’d be at the stage door.

  She stopped outside the theatre. Her reflection in the rear-view mirror was like the grey clouds hanging over the town.

  On the pavement, Olof leaned into the car, hand on the open door, hesitation in his eyes, a pleading tone.

  ‘Talk to you . . . and see you later, Ester.’

  ‘Will we? Why?’

  ‘Don’t you want to?’

  ‘Do you see any point in it? It seems so terribly hard all the time.’

  Rain lashed the ground; the drops broke and splashed back up in new formations, inevitable and predictable. Everything followed its path. Maybe Olof couldn’t help himself any more than the rain could help ricocheting off the tarmac, Ester thought. And perhaps she couldn’t control her emotional life and the resulting action any more than the tarmac could stay dry in the rain.

  Had she become a fatalist like him? Wasn’t determinism by necessity a fatalism?

  She watched him cross the street, hunching in the rain, happily greet a colleague with a wave and then vanish behind a heavy door.

  Through fog and damp, she drove home from Norrköping, unspeakably sombre.

  The air was grey water. The country’s entire worm population was on the march inside Ester. They perforated her heart, lungs and stomach with anxiety and pain. The girlfriend chorus said surely she’d give up now. You simply don’t treat people the way he’d just treated her. Cryptically, Vera added that she felt sorry for her.

  So Ester gave up, again. But what was the point of living if there wasn’t any hope for intoxication or vivacity? There was no point. You could only grind away because life had been bestowed upon you without you having any say in the matter.

  Christmas and New Year came and went. On the second day of the year, in the evening, Olof called. She picked up her phone, saw the number and felt her blood vessels dilate. She worshipped these very numbers and the sight of them made her body hot, as did the simple fact of seeing his name in writing. Ester answered with a hushed tone. Olof didn’t open with a ‘Hi’ or ‘It’s Olof,’ but by asking if Lukas Bauer was doping. Lukas Bau
er was the Czech who was leading the Tour de Ski, which was on over the holidays. Going by the quotidian nature of such an introduction no one could suggest that Olof had a hard time keeping away from Ester nor that their last meeting was something that needed to be resolved. They were but two old pals catching up.

  At first they talked in general but then Olof said something interesting. He’d made a new year’s resolution about forming healthier habits.

  ‘I have to take charge of my life. The way I’m going, it isn’t good.’

  How far did his bid for health extend? Ester wondered after they’d hung up, because he’d also said that they could (or did he say ‘should’?) meet next week when he was home in Stockholm. Did the new year mean the hour of the break-up had arrived?

  In anticipation of the planned encounter, she became happy and productive, but on the day they were supposed to see each other, he’d already given up on his new year’s resolution. Hungover and muddled, he rejected Ester’s suggestion for lunch because they didn’t serve strong beer there. They met at noon and spent the next five hours together. Their previous failures weren’t mentioned and his resolutions were not addressed. He took her arm as they wandered the streets; in this way their bodies stayed close. Towards the afternoon, they went into a cafe on Västerlånggatan and each had a pastry. He sampled hers and she his. He said that Ester should come to see the other play he was in, the one in Linköping which was running parallel to the one she’d already seen. No mention was made of how poorly that had gone.

  ‘It would be fun to hear what you think,’ Olof said.

  They parted with a peck. Ester went home and her walls closed around her like a cell. Her skin hurt. She whimpered on the floor. The absence of physical contact was worst when they had come so close to it.

  The low raw chill that had Stockholm in its vice yielded to brisk, glittering air and hard snow. For a few short hours each day, the sun revealed its cold eye, set in the centre of a deep-blue face, smooth and plain, no furrowed hesitation, no veils of clouds, no shifting colours.