She sold the car. She published a suite of demi-sec verses entitled Mistress Elegies 1–49 and The Duties of Marriage 50–99, which were received by the public with certain interest.
One afternoon in late summer, Ester was reading on the Mosebacke terrace when, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she recognized someone approaching in the distance. It was how he held his large head, jutting slightly forward, the defined, heavy face and short neck that made her remember him, but not where she’d met him, as well as the baggy clothing covering his unshapely body. Altogether it made the man’s contours indistinct. With increasingly assured steps, he strode towards Ester’s table and when he reached her, she remembered who he was. It was that friend of Olof’s who’d sat with them at the premiere party that March evening when Olof and she had resumed their carnal encounters, the year before everything crashed. Göran Berggren. The scenographer without a project. Ester hadn’t forgotten the knowing look he’d given Olof, a congenital gaze that said one was not enough but the result of being too greedy was zero – and such solitude was an abyss. ‘Handle it with care,’ the look had said. ‘Whatever you’re doing, handle it with care.’
Göran Berggren asked Ester if she remembered him.
‘The scenographer,’ she said and offered her hand in greeting.
‘May I sit?’ he asked and sat down without waiting for her reply. ‘So here you are, reading.’
She put her book down. Admonition quivered in those words.
‘Must be nice.’
Ester waited. What he wanted to say was deep inside him, but one thing was clear, he wasn’t here to make small talk.
‘Olof isn’t having a good time.’
Ester held his gaze until he looked away.
‘He’s not doing particularly well.’
Göran Berggren seemed to want Ester to fill in the blanks and spill, but against all habits, she managed to quietly await the continuation.
‘The last time I ran into him, it was at the off-licence. He’d started buying box wine.’
‘Maybe he wanted to put the wine in a lovely meat stew on a Friday night surrounded by good friends,’ said Ester.
She remembered one such dinner that he and Ebba had around St Lucy’s Day, when he’d bought beef over the counter in Söderhallarna and had seemed giddy with the joy of being twice desired and burdened by none.
‘It’s not looking like there’ll be any lovely stews over at theirs,’ said Göran Berggren.
‘Ah.’
‘Surely you understand what it’s like for them now.’
As is the way with insinuation, his half-lyrical, aggressive confidences couldn’t be countered with questions or clarifications, so Ester held her tongue. Göran Berggren made himself comfortable and picked up the book she had been reading as if it was public property, eyed the jacket copy, put it on the table, whereupon Ester put it in her bag.
Then Göran Berggren said that Olof had looked him up a while ago. He’d wanted to confide in someone about him and Ebba and about how Ester Nilsson pursued him and the harm it had caused him, how deeply he regretted giving in to her that one single time.
Mosebacke was full of people milling about, a number of them tourists from far away admiring the view. Ester rested her eyes on them.
‘Did you believe him?’ she asked. ‘You, who saw us together.’
Göran Berggren’s eyes darted, and he shrugged.
‘He has his reasons. What is he supposed to say? But something else Olof said was even stranger, and that’s what I wanted to ask you about, with your writing on the human psyche and all, granted it’s way over most people’s heads, but still.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He talked about his relationship with Ebba; he said he’d realized it was like two . . . well, accounts. Two accounts. Did he ever say that to you? And Ebba had learned to control him and their marriage using these accounts, because somehow she always knew her balance and credit down to the last öre. She always kept him short, he said, and never shelled out unless she had to, to keep from losing him or going into the red.’
‘He said that?’
Göran nodded and observed Ester as if he were conducting research.
‘He used the words “balance” and “credit”. I reacted to it because those are such sad words to use when describing a relationship, but so typical for our time. Not even love can escape money nowadays.’
Ester looked out at the water. The waves continued their carefree clucking. It was getting too cold to be sitting outside.
‘And between the two of them there was constant balancing. When Olof wanted to come close, Ebba pushed him away and when he pulled back, “sad and crushed by her hardness” as he said, then she met him halfway, was thoughtful, intimate. Each time it happened he thought it was permanent, but nothing ever changed at the core, they were always balancing on edge, because that’s the only way she could live, swinging between two extremes, that’s how she gained her power and her lust for life, and all Olof wanted was to be standing on solid ground.’
Ester hoped the prickling in her skin wasn’t visible. To be sure, she put her hands to her cheeks.
‘He said it was like trying to catch his own shadow. When he took a step forward the shadow stepped back and when he stepped back, it followed. Only after being together for years did he notice this, and then it was too late. I’ve never heard Olof talk or think like that before. Do you recognize this about him?’
She noted that Göran Berggren was assuming that she and Olof had been extremely close and knew each other well.
‘And when you betrayed Olof and did what you did . . . well you can imagine what it’s been like for him since. After this, Ebba will never have an empty account again. It’s filled to the brim for ever. She can treat him any which way she likes, ask anything of him. It goes without saying that Olof can never fill up his own account. Anything he amasses goes straight to her.’
When Ester finally spoke, her voice was raspy and she had to clear her throat.
‘But that’s when Olof feels best,’ she said, ‘when the lead is short and he gets clear commands, inside and out. It’s to his advantage when he lacks means. Olof can’t handle assets, they make him cruel and he wants the world to remove his potential for cruelty, because he doesn’t like how he enjoys it. So it probably did him good to have his account emptied for ever and to lose his tiny window of freedom and space with Ebba. I’d even say that’s what he was after. He used the people available to achieve it. Using his agency to force castigation, to do away with everything and become a slave, never again having to make a decision using his own judgement or feeling. Nothing frightened him as much as his abuse of freedom. Thank you, Göran. You’ve helped me find the last piece of the puzzle.’
Göran Berggren gave Ester Nilsson a curious look; it appeared that he found her exposition as unseemly as the growing relief with which it was expressed. He said:
‘I’ll have you know, Olof and Ebba have never got over what you did. Her using it against him is human. Her hardness is just paralysed despair. You knowingly introduced a poison to their relationship that will never stop seeping. Olof isn’t one to complain, but everyone can see he’s been a wreck since then.’
‘What I did? What are you thinking about exactly?’
‘You ruined their marriage. That just isn’t done, meddling in people’s lives. You don’t do that. Sending messages and whatnot. What people don’t know can’t hurt them.’
Göran Berggren stood up, nodded, and went his way.
The sun was sharp, the light harsh. Ester Nilsson was left alone.
Footnote
* St Lucy’s Day is celebrated on 13 December, and involves solemn processions of children with candles in their hair and hands.
LENA ANDERSSON (b. 1970) is a novelist and columnist for Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s largest morning paper. She lives in Stockholm, where she is considered one of the country’s sharpest contemporary analysts. Wilful Disregar
d, her first novel about Ester Nilsson, won Sweden’s prestigious August Prize.
SASKIA VOGEL is from Los Angeles and lives in Berlin, where she works as a novelist and literary translator.
Also by Lena Andersson
Wilful Disregard
First published 2018 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2018 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-4111-0
Copyright © Lena Andersson 2014
Translation copyright © Saskia Vogel 2018
Cover design STUART WILSON, PAN MACMILLAN ART DEPARTMENT
Cover artwork © TINA BERNING
Author photo © ULLA MONTAN
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge The Swedish Arts Council as sponsor of the translation costs.
The right of Lena Andersson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Visit www.picador.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.
Acts of Infidelity Page 24
