None of this deceived me. With popularity spurious as a Vatican title, I was a transient fad, like Hare Krishna, Democracy without Taxes, Elvis for Pope.
Parties on any impulse were incessant as darkness lengthened: a Feldpartie to honour a Persian cat who received with boredom, exquisite and understandable, a black-pearled collar; a fiesta on the collier moored near the City Hall, for the Nobel Laureates Martinson and Johnson; a gala to applaud Mick Jagger’s lip imprint on linen; a motorboat rally to hear, though briefly, Concrete Poets; a costume-ball at Skansen, its colours under lamplight as if dripping from a Pollock canvas. Parties on skateboards, parties in royal parks and Tivoli towers or swirling on the helter-skelters, frolics in shirts stamped with such texts as India’s Smallpox Kills.
Anna Wilhemson, Professor of Advanced Literature, though more admired for her crème brûlée, entertained freely but enforced such penalties as nursery attire. Here I met Nadja, in dark-gold gown, with the éclat of an Alpine champion or French beautician, at first glance about twenty-five, at second, beneath very delicate make-up, some years older. She was soon sitting with a younger girl, very close. They ignored the rest of us, sometimes stroking each other’s arms, occasionally kissing, to my unreasonable resentment. The younger was beautiful, Nadja something more, though their collusion was broken by Anna’s ukase. We were all to play Mon Plaisir, no exceptions. Very severe, she arbitrarily paired off men and women to sit for five minutes in silence facing each other. I was allotted Nadja, who had already directed at the Professor a black stare that failed to stun her. I received only a fraction less.
Her ridged, serious face, its contours with that Asiatic hint, packaged between dark flops of hair, black eyes faintly shadowed, still regarded me with horror until, at the reluctant but submissive silence, loosening into sudden mischief. This completed an attraction I could define no more than I could a musical phrase, which it somewhat resembled. Other couples were showing mutual dissatisfaction, even hatred, not soothed by the arrival of the Texan, noisily apologizing for arriving late, at a party to which, we heard later, he had not been invited.
Nadja and I had been directed to chairs at a french window. Surrounded by embarrassed smiles, artificial intensities, we were forced to inspect each other, like fellow prisoners.
Her eyes, dark brown or black, beneath emphatic brows, iris and pupil barely distinguishable, were ominously reserved, unlikely to be irresolute, but were quickly merry. ‘Quel tedium!’ She spoke in what she must have assumed to be a whisper, though it made several look gratefully across at her. Not pausing to acknowledge them, she grabbed my hand, and while Anna dealt uncompromisingly with the Texan we slunk through the window into cold darkness.
‘We leave them to rebirth.’ Her rather hoarse accent made this sound obscene, and I chuckled, mightily relieved. Shadowed by damp, oblong leaves in the moonless night, she was imprecise, her earlier luminosity only an unreliable memory. The traitor, she had gone. I was deserted. But no. Already she was back, with our coats, and we were soon scuttling over the North Bridge towards the lemonish, floodlit City Hall. Traffic, brisk diners-out, chatting groups, revoked all twinges of Mon Plaisir. In our laughter, hers was humorously malicious, matching what I judged her: opinionated, resolute, with experiences as varied as my own, possibly similar.
Trams passed, flashy as liners. We were striding into the glitter of Djurgården, aiming at whatever she had already decided, to be accepted without protest.
‘Anna’s probably a dear.’ Her husky tone expressed doubt, as she might at a drawing bold but displeasing.
Above hoots and shrills from receding steamers, we flung each other sentences, mostly in French. Many small words she mispronounced or overstressed, so that her feelings, her intentions, were elusive. Like the impact of the darkness of her hair and eyes. Black can contain blue.
Anna, she considered, like many of life’s choicest gifts, was best avoided. Her swinging gait, determined chin, suggested that much else should also be avoided. This pleased me, I felt myself in the hush before curtain-rise, but, at the Hotel Luxor, she left me as abruptly as she had Anna’s apartment. ‘I have…’ she spoke as if settling an argument, ‘an invisible limp,’ clearly convinced that this explained all. I was ready to wait, prepared for a contest of challenging pitfalls, enthralling rebuffs, possibly, just possibly, a marvellous curtain line.
Nadja, student of mythology, was happy with instances of sacred kingship, sacrificial rites, mazes, water-horses, mysterious deaths, chroniclers’ euphemisms, tree-worship, widow-burning – Anna, she reflected, would have been gravely at risk – a Northern Trinity: High, Just as High, Third. ‘When I can positively unravel Third, I can complete a paragraph.’ She saw ancient swastikas of stylized suns, found drawings of a Swedish Isis, tales of Jesus dying in India of Mexican self-sacrificial gods.
She herself was protean: the dark hair could suddenly show golds; once she appeared in a grey wig; she would laugh, then go tearful at what I thought commonplace. Tiny wrinkles, now visible, now not, gave me confidence I never felt with the very young.
We dined at the Vasa, Gilded Elk, Top Gaudy, Richard Widmark. She had the self-preserving resilience of a hard-tested survivor, sometimes disappearing without warning, then, a few days later, seating herself opposite me as if we had parted that morning. Such waywardness gave us space to manoeuvre, though, more clock-bound, I had much nervous perplexity. A chance might have been missed, a crucial move overlooked. A dazzle of alternatives. A difficult moment could be arrested by a glance, stifled by a pause, inflamed by a chuckle unexpected, irreverent, explained by a silence. Chance meetings at parties enhanced our drama, with dialogue to mislead others and sometimes ourselves, while within bland deceits, social subterfuges our eyes, mouths, hands contained hints and jokes almost, but not quite, fully intimate. A tiny gesture could be retreat, rally, truce. Silences could be relaxed, almost sensual. The long Swedish winter passed in a shower of light, though already, her researches concluding, she was desiring the South.
We were not callow two-centers wanting our hotel half-hour, but experienced, expecting no-wonders; we proceeded unhurriedly, reaching a further stage when she invited me to dine, not in a restaurant but in her small flat, severely functional, hung not with paintings but diagrams, mostly tree-shaped, each branch a different colour, the variations and parallels stemming from a central ritual, custom, belief.
She moved unfussily, presenting salmon, salads, filling tall goblets which, candle-lit, glowed like green flame, reflected deep in the glass table. Afterwards, a wide mat between our chairs, we watched a Swedish movie in which the father of a boy raped then drowned, very eloquently and unconvincingly pleaded for mature understanding of the killer.
Nadja’s reserve, natural or acquired, broke harness. ‘Horse shit.’ She was near to tears, not weak but wrathful, the film concluding with a commercial for tinned reindeer. ‘Tell me, Erich. When you were little… did you often cry? You cannot have done so since.’
This might be rebuke. I explained that, while I seldom wept outright, my eyes had moistened at a dead badger, at a maid’s dismissal. Other incidents I did not declare: the Herr General’s promised arrival postponed; Danton, at the end, brooding on fields and rivers; Robespierre, shattered and bleeding, on a table. ‘Much later, cinemas taught me to weep.’
She nodded, satisfied. ‘As for me, mécontent. I seemed never to stop. My tears could fill the bath. Though I also found it necessary to be tough. Perhaps many murderers are weepers. But, outside cinemas, of course, you appear so often on the verge.’