The Polyglot Lovers E-Book

Lina Wolff

• Herausgeber: And Other Stories
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 358

Beschreibung

'Do you have to stare like that?' I asked. 'Think about the actors in porn. They've got no problem showing themselves off.' 'Think about when I broke your nose,' I replied. Ellinor is thirty-six. She wears soft black sweatpants and a Michelin Man jacket. She fights. Smart and unsentimental, she tries her hand at online dating, only to be stranded by a snowstorm with a literary critic. Cut to Max Lamas, an author who dreams of a polyglot lover, a woman who will understand him—in every tongue. His search takes him to Italy, where he befriends a marchesa whose old Roman family is on the brink of ruin. At the heart of this literary intrigue is a handwritten manuscript that leaves no one unaffected. The Polyglot Lovers is a fiercely witty and nuanced contribution to feminism in the #metoo era. Pleasure is an elusive thing, love even more so.

Leseprobe

Booksellers onThe Polyglot Lovers

“The Polyglot Lovers is electric—it crackles with wit, ferocity and intelligence. We are lucky to have Lina Wolff.”

Elizabeth Perry, City Books, Hove

“The Polyglot Lovers is a testament to the temperamental nature of love and power, and the complexities that come with asserting one’s own agency. This book is proof that irreverence and wit have a place in feminist theory. I was captivated from page one.”

Cristina Rodriguez, Deep Vellum Books, Dallas, TX

“Reading The Polyglot Lovers, I was struck once again by just how sharp a writer Wolff is. There are few writers out there capable of besting her. If she has a kindred spirit in contemporary fiction, it’s Ottessa Moshfegh, with whom she shares a darkly funny and unflinching sensibility.”

Gary Perry, Foyles, London

“The Polyglot Lovers is an audacious and often very funny reckoning with the ways men view women by a novelist of rare talents. Lina Wolff, equal parts ferocious and sly, has proven herself one of our indispensable writers with this uppercut of a book.”

Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books, Point Reyes, CA

“The Polyglot Lovers is a bracing and sharp exploration of identity, gender, and literature, told in prose and images that constantly unsettle the reader. It is also an exquisite act of literary revenge and should confirm Lina Wolff’s status as a major voice in world literature.”

Josh Cook, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA

“An exquisite and insightful dive into the delights and horrors of our constant search for human connection, and what happens when women decide to set fire to the literary male gaze.”

Emma Ramadan, Riffraff, Providence, RI

“I absolutely loved it. Wolff’s characters come to life with poignancy and dark humour. The Polyglot Lovers cuts to the heart.”

Tom Harris, Mr B’s Emporium, Bath

“Lina Wolff’s The Polyglot Lovers is a punch you in the face, grab you by the collar, and throw you across the room kind of novel. Brilliantly written, incisive and engaging, it is a stunning work. If you haven’t yet (and why haven’t you?) now would be a good time to add Wolff to your to-be-read pile.”

Tom Flynn, Volumes Bookcafe, Chicago, IL

First published in 2019 by And Other Stories Sheffield – London – New Yorkwww.andotherstories.org

Copyright © 2016 Lina Wolff

First published as De polyglotta älskarna in 2016 by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Stockholm. English-language translation © 2019 Saskia Vogel

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transported in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book. The rights of Lina Wolff to be identified as author of this work and Saskia Vogel as the translator of this work have been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or places is entirely coincidental. Changes to character names for the English translation are at the author’s request.

Acknowledgments:

The Stephen King epigraph is from Hearts in Atlantis; the quote on p. 110 is from Gerald’s Game; the Michel Houellebecq epigraph is from The Possibility of an Island, translated by Gavin Bowd; the Djuna Barnes quote is from Nightwood; the paraphrasing of Borges (‘Borges writes that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both cause the population to multiply’) is from ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ in Borges’ Fictions.

ISBN: 9781911508441 eBook ISBN: 9781911508458

Editor: Anna Glendenning; Copy-editor: Ellie Robins; Proofreader: Sarah Terry; Typesetting and eBook: Tetragon, London; Cover and Inserts Design: Lotta Kühlhorn.

This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s PEN Translates programme. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org.

We gratefully acknowledge that the cost of this translation was defrayed by a subsidy from the Swedish Arts Council.

And Other Stories is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

‌

Contents

I. EllinorII. MaxIII. Lucrezia

‌

‌I. Ellinor

‌

Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t.

Stephen King

‌

When trying to find the one, I’d never thought the internet would be my thing. There was something commercial about it, not to mention I’d never written a personal ad, or anything else for that matter, and had no idea how to sell myself in writing. My boyfriends had always been regular guys from my village. The first one, for instance, was called “Johnny” and there was nothing special about him at all, at least not on the surface, at least not until it became clear that he was in fact sick. We were in the same class at school and it started with him saying:

“Is there anything you’ve always dreamed a man would do for you?”

I guess he’d heard it in a movie and, in all seriousness, already actually thought he was a man. And I suppose he wasn’t expecting the answer I gave him, but something more like: “Yes, I’ve always wished for a man who could make me lose my mind in bed.” Or a concrete wish that would help him along. But I said:

“I’ve always wanted to be taught how to fight.”

And when he didn’t look as surprised as I’d thought he would, I added:

“Fight like a motherfucker.”

Johnny nodded slowly, spat on the ground, and said:

“If that’s what you want, doll.”

That very night he took me to what he called his fight club. It was a bunch of people who’d seen and been inspired by the movie, but unlike the people in the film, they actually practiced various martial arts and met up three times a week to fight. Everyone went up against everyone else. You had to go into a basement beneath a school. It had tiles that faded from brown to orange; a strange matte tile that didn’t behave as tile usually does, but seemed to absorb every sound. From there, you went deep inside a series of corridors. Everyone was dead silent, barefoot, and had bags full of gym clothes slung over their shoulders. Only the fans made a noise. Then you entered the room and there they were, the people from our village who wanted to fight. A temporary captain was appointed, and we all warmed up together. Everyone was flexible, even the guys, and no one was ashamed of showing that they could do forward or side splits. People farted loudly, stretched out like that, but not laughing was an unwritten rule. Then we fought. I was the only beginner and had one thing going for me: I was scared to death. Being scared to death gives you an edge, Johnny said. Being really fucking afraid had some hidden benefits—the body was smarter than you thought, and when you let it run on autopilot, it was capable of almost anything. But then you had to take control.

“Most people aren’t angry because they get attacked, they’re angry because they can’t defend themselves,” Johnny said.

Johnny could do more than fight. He could shoot, too. We used to visit a firing range on the way from our village to the next. We walked around wearing orange earmuffs, watching the people shooting handguns and then the ones shooting rifles. Johnny showed me how to take a wide stance, lift the rifle, and nail a clay pigeon. First in a simulator and then in real life. One day he said I was ready—he could take me hunting now. He talked a lot about that hunt before we went, how you had to go out after dark, use your night vision, and keep real quiet the whole time.

Only one shot was fired the time I joined the hunters, at a wild boar. The shot cracked the silence, and you could hear the boar still running, not like before, but clumsily, branches breaking around it, and in the end limping and confused, as if it knew it was going to die and was pulling itself through the brushwood in a panic. As we came closer, Johnny swung the beam of his flashlight upward. I saw the beech’s bare branches, like long, dark bones reaching for the night sky. Johnny took my hand, clamped the flashlight between his legs, and started rubbing his buzz cut back and forth, and I wanted to ask him why but kept quiet. He was just about to whisper in my ear—I think it was going to be something big, about us—but one of the hunters interrupted, saying he’d found the pig. He shined a light on it. A clean shot to the shoulder, blood pumping out over the black bristles. It was a large sow, and we all had to help carry her on a pole to the pickup. The next day it was going to be cut up in Johnny’s friend’s yard. We headed over after breakfast, and by the time we arrived there was blood and bristles everywhere because no one actually knew anything about butchery. Everyone went at it as best they knew how, all the while saying it had to be fast. I never went poaching again.

One night I told Johnny that if he was ready, so was I. He smiled at me, and I was thinking this was the first time I’d ever really seen his teeth, and they were big and white like sugar cubes, perfectly set in his mouth, an odd contrast to his face, which was irregular and acne-scarred. We did it on the bed of his pickup, and the jacket he’d spread underneath me got covered in blood.

“Girls today don’t normally bleed their first time,” the school nurse told us during sex ed. “Because they go riding and biking, jump and bounce around, their hymens aren’t normally intact.”

I must’ve had an incredibly subdued childhood, because my hymen was absolutely still intact. The sight of all that blood didn’t disgust Johnny at all, in fact it only took him seconds to come. I didn’t know what to say when he was done. But I could already tell that Johnny was a person to watch out for. Of course, like most of the guys in my village, he had violent tendencies, was uneducated and horny and would be for the rest of his life. But there was more to him.

“I didn’t know you were a virgin,” he said.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Yeah. I was too.”

He looked at his stained jacket and said:

“I guess you gotta start somewhere.”

The next time was much better. Not to mention the third, fourth, and fifth times. Johnny said he thought the two of us, we fucked like porn stars.

When we were sixteen years old, I broke Johnny’s nose with the back of my hand. It wasn’t on purpose in the sense that I wanted it to happen, my arm just flew out by reflex, it had nothing to do with martial arts. Anyhow, it turned into a big thing, because we were in high school and everyone heard about it, the teachers and the nurse and Johnny’s parents and mine. Johnny’s mother said:

“I don’t want you seeing that girl anymore.”

We were in the schoolyard and his nose was bleeding. His mother had rushed over as soon as she found out and was standing there giving me dirty looks.

“Mom, Ellinor isn’t some little girl,” Johnny said. “She’s a lady. And what a lady she is.”

He smiled at me, hair falling over his eyes.

“And what a lady she is,” he repeated, smiling even wider with those sugar cubes of his.

I wanted to say, don’t stand there grinning, remember how hot my blood got you, you’re a sick fuck, Johnny, there’s no hiding that kind of thing. That’s what I wanted to say, but I suppose it was the bloody nose that made me feel differently, and so I went over and hugged him. The gesture was unusual for us. We did everything together. We helped each other with the repeating rifles and other weapons, we fought and we fucked, but we never hugged. And yet here we were, and I could feel his hot blood dripping down my neck.

“Now you’ve learned everything I wanted to teach you,” he said.

But he added that if I ever used what he’d taught me against him again, he wouldn’t think twice about killing me.

“Just you try,” I replied.

“Don’t piss me off,” he said, and his eyes went black.

Soon we fell into a sort of sexual routine, even if you couldn’t really call it a routine, the way we were back then.

“Let’s go to my place,” he’d declare, sliding his hand between my legs while driving.

Going to his place meant his dad’s hunting cabin outside the village, where you could be left alone. It was a small cabin with gnarled bead and butt paneling and bright yellow curtains with white stripes that his mother must have hung. The cabin had two small bedrooms plus a living room with a stove. We went into one of the bedrooms and he said:

“Take your clothes off and get on the bed.”

While I did that, he went to the kitchen and made coffee. He returned with his cup, dragged the chair over to the bed, and drank it as he looked at me lying there on my back, legs spread. It felt like he could see right into me, up and through my interior, if you can say that, as if there was a dark channel inside me, and if you followed that channel, you’d surface somewhere else entirely.

“Do you have to stare like that?” I asked.

“Think about the actors in porn. They’ve got no problem showing themselves off.”

“Think about when I broke your nose,” I replied.

“You’re like bread between my teeth,” he said and raised his cup, proposing a toast.

He went on sitting there, drinking his coffee. When he’d finished it, he put the cup on a shelf and started taking off his trousers.

“When are you going to let me do you in the butt?” he groaned once when we were getting it on.

I replied that if I was a truck driver and had access to a nice, comfortable garage, I’d never even consider parking my vehicle down in a ditch. Johnny laughed, but didn’t ask about it again.

A few years later I put on some weight. I never really got fat, but it was enough for Johnny to stop finding me attractive. We met up less and less, and eventually he stopped calling. Once I plucked up the courage to call him.

“Should we go shooting one of these days?” I asked. “Or fighting?”

He told me he’d met someone. After that I saw him in the village with her. She was thin and fit with long dark hair tied in a ponytail that hung all the way down her back. I wondered what it was like for them in bed, if he sat at its foot, drinking his coffee while taking her in and if so, what she thought about it.

I kept up the fighting over the years. Like other people play bridge, sing in a choir or dance a few nights a week, taking comfort in it as they get older—a pursuit, so to speak, that shores you up against old age, or at least lessens its effects—I kept going back to that basement and spent time with the people there. Fighting was good; you got better with age. Being young and good-looking didn’t buy you any cred, nothing came for free, and every last thing had to be fought for. Later, when I found friends who came from other places, they said they couldn’t understand why a person would choose to spend their time like that when they could be spending it with a good book, good company, or a glass of wine instead.

“Not much in life compares to fighting,” I’d reply.

I knew how it must have sounded to them, but I still think it’s true. I’ve never been as close to anyone as I have in that basement over the years. It has to do with concentration and how you read people’s eyes. Sex doesn’t work like that. There are people who close their eyes and jack off their whole lives, into their own hands or between someone’s legs, and nothing ever goes on in their brains. But when you face an opponent, there’s a moment when you can see right into them and understand exactly who they are. Not to mention, and this is what I told my friends, you’re not really old as long as you can kick someone taller than you in the head.

Sometimes I thought about Johnny and how he was a sick fuck. But sick or not, I’d come to understand that wasn’t what’s important. What’s important is not being alone.

‌

I ended up having a number of boyfriends over the years, pretty normal ones too, at least compared with what was to come. I never moved in with them. I was more the kind of person who just lived, took each day as it came, and didn’t get worked up for no reason. I wasn’t really serious about any of the men in my life before the thing with Ruben and the manuscript happened. And that began with me creating a profile on a dating site with the following introduction:

I’m thirty-six years old and seeking a tender, but not too tender, man.

I left “interests” blank, I left “favorite authors” blank. Same with “favorite food” and “favorite places in the world.” But in the space for your motto, I did write: Meeting the aforementioned man. Then it occurred to me that a motto is actually something else, a sentence or phrase that can act like a word of wisdom would in various situations. But I’ve never had that kind of motto, so I left the sentence there, even if it did say something about me, suggesting a laconic side some people might find off-putting. But on the other hand, I wasn’t after a verbal person. I also included a picture of myself. It’s a picture a friend of mine took where I’m lying on my stomach on his bed. The signs of my age aren’t visible because the only light source in that picture is a few candles, and like my friend says, most people look pretty decent in the glow of a few of those.

A week went by before I logged on again. I’d gotten a ton of replies. Surprised, I worked my way through them, one by one. I’ve never been the kind of girl who gets shown any appreciation. Once Johnny said I was like an onion, you had to peel away the layers to get inside. Most girls would have been insulted if you said something like that to them, but I could tell Johnny meant it as a compliment. And now when I opened my email in the mornings I had dozens of responses. An older man promised me “economic freedom” in exchange for “satisfying him” sexually three times a week. A twenty-year-old wondered if I could school him. I sat there, coffee in hand, laughing out loud. I was touched, but not so much because these men were showing me appreciation (the photo, when all was said and done, was a con) but because I understood that the people writing to me actually believed in love, in the sense that I’d be able to give them what they were looking for.

Some time passed before I next visited the site. Things came up, but when I finally logged back on I saw that several of the men who’d replied had kept writing to me. Some of them had written almost every day for weeks. The twenty-year-old who thought I could teach him something seemed to have become a little obsessed with me, and wrote in a message that I’ve always had girls who talk and talk, they never want to do anything but talk, but you seem wordless and genuine. Wordless and genuine. I thought that was nicely put. I wrote to him:

I guess you’re inviting them to have a conversation, plain and simple. Try inviting them to do something else. Kind regards, E

Some sounded threatening. Not that they were threatening me, but because they were telling me about other men who were threatening other women on the site.

This world is no exception to the real world, wrote one. Girls get threatened here, like anywhere else, you have to watch out here, too.

So I guess I’ll block you now, you psycho, I wrote back, and that was the end of that.

Sometimes I thought: Why did you leave, Johnny? Why couldn’t you just take care of me? Now I’m swimming out in this cold water and God knows if I’ll survive.

But I survived, otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this.

My next boyfriend was called Klaus Bjerre and came from Copenhagen. He liked that I called him my “boyfriend,” it made him feel young, he said. In Danish you say kæreste: dearest. He lived in an apartment not far from one of the areas where you could score heroin. At that time, there were still whole areas where you could score in Copenhagen, and you could see people standing around and sleeping on street corners in the December fog. Klaus Bjerre said they were harmless, and they were. I mostly stayed at home, since Bjerre used to say that “anything can happen in Copenhagen,” gesturing at the window. On the other side was a red brick facade. I’ve always liked Copenhagen, but I wondered why Bjerre was looking for a partner in Sweden. I thought there might be something about him that Danes saw at once, but that he hoped Swedes wouldn’t figure out. Danes think Swedes are dumb. Being from Skåne is no exception; same shit, they think. We’re good for selling food, building a bridge, and tending our forests so they can come over on the weekend and go for walks. Maybe we were even good enough to be wives or at least lovers. I guess that’s what Bjerre was trying to find out.

“I only have one small flaw,” he said the first time we met, “and that’s that I drink quite a lot.”

It didn’t worry me then, because I didn’t know anything about drinking and thought it wouldn’t change anything at all, at least not to begin with. But then he touched me and later I still stank of his hands. The bed we slept in also smelled of him, and sometimes when he got up I buried my nose in his pillow, thinking I might vomit. It smelled of liquor and dirt, a physical dirt, like his body didn’t know what to do with all that poison and so had started to produce its own musty antidote. In the beginning he made me feel sick, but I got used to it. I liked the apartment he lived in. It was in Frederiksberg and was warm and had a heater under the kitchen table that you could press your leg against while drinking your coffee.

Nothing special happened between us, nothing that doesn’t happen between normal couples. The biggest thing that happened was Bjerre talking about our future. He sketched it out before him like some sort of castle, and as he did a look of happiness would appear in his eyes, and he’d even forget to drink while he was talking. He said I could come live with him, and he’d buy a bigger bed and other things I might want. We’d have friends that we could invite over, and he’d make sure there was money in the bank and a year’s salary of savings in case anything happened.

“I’m going to make sure of it,” he said. “This is my responsibility, you should be able to relax with me and know that I’m behind you, taking care of everything.”

I replied that if he wanted to get his life in order, the first thing he had to do was stop drinking. He nodded and took a sip from his glass.

“True,” he said. “You’re not telling me what I want to hear, you’re telling me what I need to hear. And that’s why you’re a true friend, Ellinor.”

He looked at me with those bloodshot eyes of his when he said it. They had a shine to them, as though he were always on the verge of tears. He took my hand; his fingers were long and his nails chewed off. He leaned in for a kiss, but the smell coming from him was so nauseating I turned my head away. He took another sip and blinked away the shine.

“When I think about the life I want,” he said, “the calm, warm, cozy life I want to have with you, Ellinor, I feel like I can do anything. I’m prepared to do anything. Tomorrow we’ll take out all the bottles I’ve hidden, and we’ll pour them down the drain. It’ll be like a fresh start.”

He gave me another smile, and his hand gripped mine.

“Should we get a car?” he asked. “Then we can drive all around Skåne on the weekends. Walk in the forest and buy cheap food in Malmö.”

I said that we didn’t need a car; one of the nice things about Copenhagen was that you could borrow bicycles everywhere, and if you wanted to go to Skåne there was a train. Bjerre looked worried, as though the car were a prerequisite for all the rest.

“What about a dog?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“We have it good as it is,” I said. “All you have to do is stop drinking.”

The next day we were supposed to throw away all the bottles. Pour the liquor out, throw away all the bottles and start that new, stable life. Klaus Bjerre got up early that morning, showered and put on aftershave, and drank coffee, but without touching any of the bottles in the kitchen. When he looked at me, the whites of his eyes seemed less bloodshot.

“You’ll see, everything will be fine,” I said. “With enough determination, you can make anything work.”

“Yes,” said Klaus. “I’m going to the office now. Then I’ll come home, and we’ll eat dinner and drink water with it. Then we’ll deal with the bottles.”

I lingered in the doorway as he made his way out. He turned around when he got to the banister, waved at me, and smiled.

I went back into the apartment, sat in the kitchen, and had breakfast. Maybe half an hour after Klaus had left, there came a knock at the door. It was a hard, firm knock. I hadn’t heard any footsteps on the stairs, so I thought the person knocking must have been standing outside the door for a while. Mustering the courage, then lifting their hand and delivering three determined knocks. I stopped chewing and set my cup on the table. It must be a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness, I thought. But I knew that a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness would never knock like that. With their very first knock, they’d make sure the person in the apartment perceived them as a friend, as someone who could improve your life. When I didn’t respond, there was another knock. Hard and insistent, as though the person knew for sure there was someone inside and wanted to let them know they weren’t about to give up. I got up and stood in the middle of the room. I stood there in my nightgown and stared at the door, unable to make myself open it. They knocked even harder, and I heard someone say:

“Open up, Mrs. Bjerre, please Mrs. Bjerre, open up!”

I opened the door a crack. It was one of Klaus’s neighbors. I’d never spoken with her, but I knew she lived on the seventh floor together with her daughter. Klaus called her “that nutjob.” She was as poorly dressed as I was, or maybe even worse, because the bib of her nightgown was stained with coffee, or maybe it was marmalade.

“Yes?” I asked through the crack.

“You have to come with me,” she said. “Regina’s locked herself in the bathroom and is saying swear words.”

“Regina?” I said.

“My daughter.”

“I don’t think I can be of any help,” I said.

“But you have to,” she insisted. “Regina might die in there.”

I wanted to say that I had a lot to think about, today in particular, and besides I don’t usually go out this early in the morning. So I did, while trying to shut the door. But then the woman began to panic.

“No, no,” she shouted. “You don’t understand, Mrs. Bjerre, Regina might die in there, you have to come out and help me, otherwise she might die in there!”

I don’t know why, but I opened the door and joined her on the landing. All was silent. It was like we’d been completely cut off from Copenhagen’s hustle and bustle, like the two of us, without knowing it and in separate apartments, had cultivated something all our own, something unpleasant and frightening. Our own vacuum, or our own sick universe. That’s what I thought, and then I thought that I shouldn’t have to know anything about vacuums or sick universes.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“You have to help get her out of the bathroom,” the woman replied.

“I’m sick,” I said, not knowing why.

“What kind of sick?” she asked.

I tried to come up with a disease and said the most contagious one I could think of, that I’d caught some sort of pox.

“But I don’t see any spots,” she said. “What kind of pox is it? Impetigo?”

“No,” I said. “Regular pox.”

“Regular pox?” she wondered aloud.

“What do you want me to do?” I repeated.

“Help us,” she said. “We have to help each other.”

“Isn’t there anyone else you can ask?”

“You’re the only one who’s free around this time.”

She was right. I was the only resident of that building who wasn’t busy. The rest of the doors were shut and locked, and would be until six or seven, when people started coming home from work. I was the only one free around this time.

“I guess I’m coming, then,” I said.

I went into the apartment, got my key, went out, and followed her.

Her place was stuffy and messy. There was almost no daylight, and the rooms were lit up with lamps. There was a small shaft in the center of the building, probably an old garbage chute, that now served to let light into the apartments that didn’t have windows facing the courtyard or street. So from certain rooms in her apartment, you could see into other rooms, and from the kitchen you could see into the bathroom. I stood there, looking through the shaft at a woman staring out of an open window. She was motionless, sitting just a few meters away from me. A pair of thick glasses distorted her eyes, and her expression was hard to read. Her mouth was set in a thin line, and she too was wearing a baggy nightgown through which you could see two oblong, sagging breasts.

“Can you show me the door?” I asked.

We walked through a narrow hall.

“Here it is,” she said, showing me the bathroom door. “She’s in there.”

I grabbed the handle and rattled the door. Yes, it was locked. I knocked.

“Hello?” I said.

“Is that Mrs. Bjerre?” Regina asked.

“Yes,” I replied, even though I thought this Mrs. Bjerre business sounded silly.

“You’ll have to kick down the door,” the mother said.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to kick down the door now.”

I bunched my nightgown up around my waist, tucked it in the waistband of my underwear, and stood there for a few seconds. The neighbor’s eyes wandered up and down my body slowly, with displeasure.

“I’m going to kick down the door now!” I shouted to Regina on the other side. “Stand as far away from it as you can! Got it? Watch out!”

I backed up. Then I kicked. It was the first time I’d ever kicked down a door, and I didn’t hold back like you do with a sparring partner. I put my weight on my left leg, lifted the right, and kicked straight ahead so the sole of my foot would meet the door. But right then, as I’m about to kick, I hear the mother say in a quick, weak chirp, like a little bird:

Think of someone you hate.

And before I had a chance to think, before I could process what she’d said, I saw Klaus Bjerre’s face in front of me. I saw his face, his bloodshot eyes, and I caught a whiff of his sick breath. That face smiled crookedly at me as the full force of my foot hit the door. My heel landed right in Klaus Bjerre’s mug. The hinge was exposed, the door swayed back and forth. Finally, part of the frame fell to the floor. And inside, on the toilet, sat Regina. Cross-eyed, heavy-breasted, and scared stiff. The woman beside me let out a whoop of joy:

“Mrs. Bjerre opened the door!” she shouted. “There you have it, Regina, no need for a man!”

Regina got up from the toilet seat, came over to me, and draped herself around my neck, and soon the mother did the same thing. There we were, enveloped in the soft smell of their armpit sweat, and maybe mine, too—I don’t think you smell your own sweat in the same way. They dragged me into the kitchen, offering me liqueur and cookies.

“Come now, Mrs. Bjerre, sit down and let us show you our appreciation.”

Their bare feet shuffled beneath their nightgowns, back and forth across the linoleum. Their heels were dry and cracked, their toenails long, and their feet left prints on the floor, which seemed to be slick with grease.

“I have to go back down to my place,” I said. “Mr. Bjerre will be home soon.”

They nodded. As I went down, they waved goodbye to me in the stairwell. I opened the door to the apartment, walked in, and was confronted with Klaus Bjerre’s odor of despair. I stood there for a while, looking around. The breakfast table. The heater. The brick wall across the way. The bottles we were supposed to pour out that night. Our little life, the existence we’d managed to create.

Then I went into the bedroom, took out my bag, and packed my things. I walked out of the apartment, through the side streets toward Hovedbanegården. I spent a while watching the flurry of people under the glass roof and someone selling flowers nearby. A few minutes later I was on the train home to Skåne.

‌

People on the site liked sending pictures of themselves. Some had cars and sailboats, big fancy TVs facing their living-room couches. Some sent pictures of their genitals. All of them said something nice about my picture. I wasn’t used to flattery and it’s true, people who aren’t, people like me, really are the most easily flattered. So I sat there and smiled, thinking that maybe I wasn’t so bad after all. Then I thought there was no reason to feel flattered. This was about something else, something that had nothing to do with me. I responded to one of the people who’d reached out:

Thank you for your reply, but don’t have any illusions about me. I’m thirty-six years old, the picture is taken by candlelight… Here’s a real photo.

I sent a photo of myself as I was right then, wearing panties and a bra in plain daylight (I edited out my head). Without going into detail, I can only say that the picture wasn’t as flattering, and I cracked up thinking about the cooling effect it would have on the man in question. But he responded within a minute:

Other than the fact that your age suggests you and I will be able to engage in many interesting conversations and you in all likelihood can cook a very good dinner (I will, however, choose the wine), I’m convinced that your body, which I assume has already been enjoyed by many, contains a wealth of possibility. And your sex must be a cache of dirty acts in which I too can enjoy.

You devil! I wrote back immediately.

But I stayed at the computer. And in all honesty, I was curious. Curious about the man, but also the masculinity. Masculinity works like this: the more you find out about it, the less you understand, and your fascination keeps on growing. I don’t just mean sex. For whatever reason, I definitely thought I’d keep emailing this man. What he wrote was a testament of sorts, an ugly realness that he was unashamed of. Maybe I could arrange a date with him. During the dark season we were now in, this kind of adventure would be beneficial. I always feel down when it’s dark out.

When can we see each other? I wrote.

In three weeks, he replied.

What’s your name and where do you live? I wrote.

My name is Ruben and I live in Stockholm, he replied.

OK, I wrote. So I’ll book train tickets and a hotel.

You’re welcome to stay with me, he wrote, but I said no.

The day I was supposed to go see Ruben was in early January. Two days before I was meant to travel, the TV said there was going to be a snowstorm. It was going to come in from the south, and then sweep up over the country like a broom, dragging everything along with it, and the spruce trees would rain down on the power lines like pick-up sticks. That’s what the TV said. People out in their cabins would be without electricity for days, maybe weeks. I compared my train’s timetable with the forecast. If I traveled north around lunchtime, which was when my train was supposed to depart, I could get there before the storm. When it finally rolled in across Stockholm, I’d be sitting at some bar. Probably a little tipsy, probably with Ruben.

I took the train as planned. First I took the bus from my village to Malmö. I’ve always liked getting away, as soon as the bus starts driving through the fields toward Lund it feels like anything can happen, like I’m some sort of funnel and things are about to start pouring in. The train left the station and traveled up through Skåne. The deciduous forest ended, and after that we traveled through spruce and pine forests, which parted for the long, dark lakes that flanked the rails. Everything in the train was peaceful. I sat in my seat and wondered what it would be like when I arrived. How Ruben would look, what his job was, if we were going to have sex and if so, how. I was nervous, but I was going to do what I always do when I don’t feel at home: keep quiet until I understand what’s what. I’ve always thought the man should take the initiative. I’m not one to walk on over and fan the flames. I’ve always thought that the hardest part is just before you take off your clothes. After that I usually feel completely calm, actually.

I fell asleep and only woke up when we were passing through the tunnels south of Stockholm. My ears were blocked and outside the window, a wall of granite flew by with dizzying speed, only a few decimeters away. Suddenly we rolled out of the hills and into the city. I’d never been to Stockholm before so I wasn’t prepared. It was dead silent in the carriage, and when I looked around I saw that everybody was gazing out the windows. In the twilight, the sky was orange fading into blue. We traveled over bridges surrounded by water, cliff faces, and buildings with copper roofs. Bodies of water part-covered in ice wove through the city, and in the distance was the open sea. Everybody here must be happy, I thought. Healthy people. Generations of ice skating and jumping off the rocks for a swim. They must be drinking good coffee behind those large windows. Over a mix of hills, city, and sea that would be surreal for the rest of the world. When I’d finally gotten off the train I felt that the people looked hard-set and perfect, a little like they’d been cloned from a film. I felt uneasy. I longed to go home, if not to my village then at least to Copenhagen. In Copenhagen the Ferris wheel spins right next to the train station and everything has a whiff of urine, smoke, and waffles.

I’d booked a hotel in the center of town, and I checked in. It turned out that my room was in the basement and didn’t have any windows, but there was a sauna out in the hall. I sat in it for a long time and then showered, switching between hot and cold, went back to my room, crawled into bed, and fell asleep. When I woke up it was nine in the evening and inside the windowless room it was pitch-black. I got up and put my makeup on in the bathroom, where the floor was still wet. I was doing quite a heavy face until I realized that women who wear a lot of makeup often look insecure, so I wiped most of it off with a piece of toilet paper. Then I texted Ruben saying that I’d arrived and showered and was now ready to meet him.

See you at Pharmarium, he replied after barely a minute. Take a seat in the bar and look like you’re for sale. That’s how I’ll find you.

I asked the hotel receptionist what this Pharmarium place was. Directions in hand, I wrapped my scarf around my head and went out.