Then they play games that spare their lips. She is his child, a little doll that he tenderly undresses for bed. They learn not to hurt each other. They pretend they’re made of porcelain and that they have to be delicate with each other if they don’t want to break. They are boundlessly imaginative. When they eat, they eat on the rug, lying on their stomachs like children on green grass. They close the shutters and play all night and throughout the thunder. They toast apples and roast potatoes in the crackling fire. They have wine, too, and they drink it but just a little. Because we never want to see the one we love drunk but only pure—pure, ardent, and beautiful. When they swim, they charge hand in hand into the highest swell, but the dog stays behind barking on the shore. When it finally does join them, they whirl around in the water, all three of them roaring with happiness. Sometimes he carries her under the water, and she is as light as a child. But he never dares carry her on land, because he’s afraid he isn’t strong enough and he’s afraid to look foolish. And nobody in love can afford to look foolish. The first few times she asks why she is so light in the water, he says it’s because she is a child or a bird that he is rescuing. But the day he responds with Archime-des’s principle, she is pensive, though still not afraid.
They don’t speak a lot about the future the first few days, perhaps not at all. Their bodies are so insatiable that no questions are needed, almost no thoughts either. Sometimes he wakes up at night. The ocean rushes through the night like an express train, and the dog snores in the kitchen. To avoid being alone, he delicately wakes her, and they lie in bed listening to the sea and the rain pecking like birds against the roof and the shutters. This may be when they are the happiest. They aren’t fully awake, and they have no memories of yesterday to startle them. They only have each other’s intimacy and warmth. In those moments, they are anonymous. There is no Bengt and no Gun, only one person next to the other, who could be anyone at all, and who is warm and in love. They even have to grope after each other’s faces like blind people to recognize each other. But this is only a game, because they don’t need to recognize each other. In fact, they shouldn’t recognize each other. The darkness as well as the tenderness and warmth of the flesh are enough.
This, among other things, is why they keep the shutters closed all day. And they lie naked with their eyes closed at the bottom of the boat because their clothes carry memories with them. And even though it’s harder for them, they can even be anonymous then— not for long periods of time but for a little while. But even in those moments they sense that the moment might be near, the moment when they are too familiar with each other, when their curiosity finally dies out. Then, every birthmark will be dangerously familiar; there won’t be a single gesture they can make that won’t remind the other of the gesture from yesterday or the day before. All of it is just a postponement.
One night, he wakes up and knows it is over. At the same time, he’s unable to fathom it. As usual, he first lies there listening to the marching of the ocean and the mendacious whistling of the wind. Somewhere, a shutter is banging and the rain is pouring down. He’s a little cold, has the urge to wake her, but suppresses it immediately without knowing why. Instead, he gets up very carefully. The floor is cold and damp. They were bathing in the dark just before they went to bed and their footprints haven’t had the chance to dry yet. Standing there, he hears Gun turn in bed and mumble something, and finally he hears her breathing peacefully again.
As he lights the lamp, he wonders what the word was. He thinks he heard a name, but he isn’t exactly sure. When he shines the light on her, she doesn’t react to it. She is lying on her back with her hair over her face. Nothing would have to happen if she woke up, but she doesn’t wake up. And he can’t wake her up, because he’s afraid she will recognize him. Instead, she just lies there, leaving him on his own. Yes, what he is feeling is loneliness. And her sleep is a shell that he cannot crack. He can only touch the shell and be terrified of its hardness. He tilts the lamp toward her and has the urge to twirl her hair around his finger. But he doesn’t submit to this urge either, because he suddenly remembers the last time he did this. It was like watching a film. His hand slowly makes its way to her hair. Then he coils a lock around his finger, and Gun smiles. He must have done it a thousand times. But he cannot do it for the thousand and first time.
The thousand and first time he can only watch. It’s the first time he has watched her while shining a light on her face. He sees that she is old. Then he realizes he will never be able to make her young, and this terrifies him. For the first time on the island, he sees for himself what he is doing and tears his eyes away. She has fine wrinkles under her eyes and her hair is dyed, with great care but not so well that he can’t notice. He lowers the light even more, of course, in the hope that she will wake up and defend them both against everything awakening inside him. Unfortunately, she does not wake up. She sleeps heavily and peacefully. But he burns himself on the lamp chimney.
He puts the lamp down by the open fireplace, where the embers are still faintly glowing. The dog comes pattering from the kitchen. He lies down on the rug and spreads the dog over him like a blanket, but the dog must think he’s going to hurt it and fiercely resists, clawing him on the shoulder. Then he has the overwhelming urge to be cruel to the dog, so he shoos it away. Of course, he is afraid to do any harm. He knows what it means. He knows how rotten people become when they hurt others. So he suffers alone and in silence, huddled up and musing in the glow of the fading embers.
Because when the desire within us starts to fade, we are struck with pangs of consciousness and a flood of questions. As long as our pleasure lasts, we can be happy—as long as we are also pure. But now he is lying there feeling filthy. It doesn’t last long, but long enough for it to sting. And once it has sufficiently burned, he is no longer lying there filthy but standing at the porch railing, simply hating. He hates Gun.
It is raining and starless. With an almost invisible light, the moon wanders behind the thick clouds. The waves hiss against the rocks and fizzle out. He is naked but doesn’t feel the cold. He grips the rail harder; he does this instead of hitting her. And he wants to hit her because she is able to sleep. It really is because she can sleep that he hates her, because she can sleep while he suffers. He simply cannot fathom such heartlessness. That she can be sleeping underneath warm blankets as he stands freezing in the dark rain.
So that’s what she’s like, his anger tells him, that’s what the one I love is like. When she’s had enough fun, she sleeps, and when she wakes up, she only does so to have more. This is why I, being pure, must hate her. Oh, purity is a terrible master and always wears a mask.
It is his passion and not his reason that hates her. His reason, which is now quite powerless, tells him he hates her because she is old and because he has just discovered it, not because she is any worse than he is. But what else is our reason but a young gazelle that comes down to drink at the watering hole? There, it suddenly sees the crystal clear surface darkened by a terrifying reflection. And the gazelle isn’t much in the tiger’s claws, a morsel at best. Its only salvation is that its flesh might be tough.