‘What did you say?’ Linda said, staring at me.
‘We can wait a bit, see how things go. You can finish your course…’
She got up and slapped my face with the palm of her hand as hard as she could.
‘Never!’ she shouted.
‘What are you doing?’ I said. ‘Have you gone mad? Hitting me like that!’
My cheek stung. She had hit me really hard.
‘I’m off,’ I said. ‘And I’m never coming back. So you can forget that.’
I turned and went into the hall, took my coat from the hook.
Behind me she was crying, bitter tears.
‘Don’t go, Karl Ove,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me now.’
I turned.
‘Do you think you can do as you like? Is that what you think?’
‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘But stay. Just tonight.’
I stood motionless in the darkness by the door and looked at her, vacillating.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay here tonight. But then I’m going.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
At seven next morning I woke and left the flat without breakfast, went to my earlier flat, which I still had. Took a cup of coffee with me to the roof terrace, sat smoking and looking out over the town wondering what to do next.
I couldn’t stay with her. It was impossible.
I rang Geir on my mobile, did he feel like a trip to Djurgården, it was quite important, I had to talk to someone. Yes, he did, just had to finish off a few jobs first, we could meet by the bridge outside the Nordic Museum, and then walk right to the end, where there was a restaurant in which we could have lunch. And that was what we did, we walked under the masonry-grey sky, between the leafless trees, on a path gaily strewn with yellow, red and brown leaves. I said nothing about what had happened, it was too humiliating, I couldn’t tell anyone she had slapped me because what would that make me? I said only that we had quarrelled and that I didn’t know what to do any more. He said I should listen to my heart. I said I didn’t know what I felt. He said he was sure I did.
But I didn’t. I had two different sets of feelings for her. One said you have to get out, she wants too much from you, you’re going to lose all your freedom, waste all your time on her, and what will happen to all you hold dear, your independence and your writing? The other set said, you love her, she gives you something others can’t and she knows who you are. Exactly who you are. Both sets were equally right, but they were incompatible, one excluded the other.
On this day thoughts of leaving were uppermost in my mind.
When Geir and I were in the Metro carriage coming out of Västertorp, she rang. Asked if I wanted to eat with her in the evening, she had bought crabs, my favourite food. I said yes, we would have to talk anyway.
I rang the doorbell even though I had a key, she opened and studied me with a careful smile.
‘Hi,’ she said.
She was wearing the white blouse I liked so much.
‘Hi,’ I said.
One hand moved forward as though intending to embrace me, but it stopped and she took a step back instead.
‘Come in,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ I replied. Hung my jacket on the hook, body angled slightly away from her. As I turned she reached up and we gave each other a hug.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.
‘Yes, quite,’ I said.
‘Then let’s eat straight away.’
I followed her to the table, which was under the window on the other side of the room from the bed. She had laid a white cloth. Between the two plates and glasses, plus two bottles of beer, there was a candlestick with three candles, and three small flames flickered in the draught. A dish of crabs, a basket of white bread, butter, lemon and mayonnaise as well.
‘I’m not so skilled with crabs, it transpired,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know how to open them. Perhaps you do?’
‘Sort of,’ I said.
I broke off the legs, opened the shells and removed the stomachs while she flipped off the bottle tops.
‘What have you been doing today?’ I said, passing her a shell which was almost completely full.
‘I couldn’t even think of going to class, so I rang Mikaela and had lunch with her.’
‘Did you tell her what happened?’
She nodded.
‘That you slapped me?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Not much. She listened.’
She looked at me.
‘Can you forgive me?’
‘Of course. I just don’t understand why you did it. How can you lose control of yourself like that? I assume you hadn’t intended to do it? I mean, on reflection?’
‘Karl Ove,’ she said.
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘I’m very sorry. Terribly sorry. But it was what you said that hit me so hard. Before I met you I hadn’t even dared imagine that I might have children one day. I didn’t dare. Even when I fell in love with you I didn’t. And then you said what you said. It was you who brought up the subject, do you remember? The very first morning. I want to have children with you. And I was so happy. I was so utterly, insanely happy. Just the fact that there was a possibility. It was you who gave me that possibility. And then… yesterday… well, it was like you were withdrawing the possibility. You said perhaps we should put off having children. That hit me so hard, it was so crushing, and then… well… I completely lost control.’
Her eyes were moist as she held the crab shell over the slice of bread and tried to lever out the firm flesh along the edge with the knife.
‘Do you understand?’ she said.
I nodded.
‘Of course I do. But you can’t do as you please, however strong your emotions are. That’s no good. I mean, for Christ’s sake. That just won’t do. I can’t live like that. The feeling that you might turn on me and start slapping me. It won’t do, I can’t live with that. We’re supposed to be together, aren’t we. We can’t be enemies, I couldn’t stand that, I don’t have the energy. It’s no good, Linda.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ she said. ‘I’ll pull myself together. I promise you.’
We sat quietly for a while, eating. The moment one of us changed the topic of conversation to something more usual and humdrum, what had happened would also be over.
I wanted to and didn’t want to.
The crab meat on the bread was both smooth and uneven, reddish-brown like the leaves on the field, and the salty, almost bitter taste of sea, softened by the sweetness of the mayonnaise, yet sharpened by the lemon juice, overtook all my senses for a few seconds.
‘Is it good?’ she asked with a smile.
‘Yes, it’s really good,’ I replied.
What I had said to her on the first morning we had woken up together had not been just something I said but something I felt with all my heart and soul. I wanted to have children with her. I had never felt that before. And this feeling made me certain it was right, that this was right.
But at any price?
My mother came to Stockholm, I introduced her to Linda at a restaurant, it seemed to go well, Linda shone, shy and extrovert at the same time, while I watched mum and her reactions. She was staying in my flat, I said goodnight to her at the gate, she went in and I jogged back to Linda’s flat, which was ten minutes away. The next day, when I collected her to have breakfast at a café, mum told me she hadn’t been able to put the light on in the hallway and so it had taken her almost an hour to get into the flat.
‘The light turned itself off while I was on the stairs,’ she said. ‘Automatically. I couldn’t see a metre in front of me.’
‘That’s the Swedes saving energy,’ I said. ‘They never leave a room without switching off the light. And in communal areas there are automatic time switches. But why didn’t you turn it back on, if I might ask?’
‘It was too dark to see the switches.’