A Neverending Affair (10 page)

Antoine had been quite enlivened by that story. Per
haps he fantasized about Ronia and the agent picking up guys for joint adventures in the agent’s flat. But somewhere it didn’t fit. He said, “Would you mind joining me for the festival in Chambery in two weeks time? It might be nice for you to see.”

She was about to say “no” but bit her tongue
. It was time for her to get out a bit, and Antoine was nice. There would be no harm. She said “yes.”

He came early to pick her up. She asked him in for a coffee. After the initial pleasantries, she asked, “Please don’t take it as an affront, but I wonder why a guy like you has a job like that. It seems to me that there would be many other opportunities for you, if not here at least somewhere else.”

“Perhaps there would,
” he said, “but I like it here. I was born and raised here. Most of my friends are here in the vicinity, or the half of them that didn’t move to Paris, Lyon or Grenoble.”

He went silent. After a while
, she poured them coffee.

“There
’s one more reason that I stay here. My mother is seriously ill and bound to bed. Since my father passed away five years ago, I simply feel I have to take care of her.”

“Oh, that
’s a noble thing to do,” she said, immediately regretting the word “noble,” but which word would be the right one? “Kind?” She remembered her own mother dying from cancer. Luckily, her father had been around and taken care of her. Her brother stayed away as much as possible, simply because he couldn’t cope with the fate of their mother. He felt betrayed, and in the end their mother had to comfort him instead of the other way round, but as her health deteriorated, she was not able to make the effort. Ronia went there once a month the last year, and the last two weeks she stayed with her parents. Her mother had been sent home from the hospital as there was nothing left to do. She got regular morphine injections and was slowly fading. Now and then, she had a bright and clear moment, but mostly she mumbled things or slept. Ronia was there more to support her father. She didn’t think that she would have had either the strength, or the will, to take care of her mother.

Fortunately
, her father was in good shape. Valerie, his lover, had discreetly moved into the apartment, even if she kept her own place, and when Ronia or George, her brother, came to visit, she stayed there. But nowadays, she didn’t bother to clear the clothes from the cupboards, and the main bathroom was full of her toiletries.

She looked at Antoine with a kind and appreciative expression. Caring men have a certain appeal, and they don’t come by the dozen.  In some way, despite all this equality stuff, women
were supposed to be more into caring—are more into caring, Ronia thought. No doubt it had to do with motherhood.

He put his eyes down
, not daring to meet hers any longer.

“Sorry
,” she said, “I was thinking about what a kind person you are and what a very caring son you must be. I wish my son would be like that—if I ever will have one, that is.” She rose, turned her back on him and started to do something with the percolator.

Antoine sensed a sudden change in mood and went towards he
r, “I’m sorry, Ronia. Am I distressing you? Should we skip it? Should I leave?”

“No, no, don’t. I was just thinking about children
. I often get sad when thinking about children.”

He waited silently for something more, some expla
nation, but it didn’t come.

After the festival
, they went for dinner, and after dinner, he drove her home. There she invited him in for a drink, and he accepted. After three drinks, she told him that he couldn’t drive home, that it wouldn’t be safe. He agreed. She made up the couch for him. In the end, they both slept in her bed together, but that was after vigorous love making on the kitchen table. She still smiled when thinking about it.

The following morning
, he said, “I have something to confess. I never thought you would like the idea of having tourists coming. The reason that I came here was because I’ve seen you a few times in passing and once a bit closer at the last country fair in Rumilly and I just fell—helplessly—for you. So I abused my position to have an excuse to see you.”

“Th
ere are worse things people do when they abuse their positions,” she said and pulled him close for a kiss.

That was Antoine
, and he lasted for half a year. Somewhere she lost interest, without really breaking up. He seemed to understand and made no scene about it. He just stopped calling. They met now and then in town, and when they did they often went for a coffee. She asked about his mother, and he asked about her paintings. They were cordial. He was clearly still in love with her, but not in that all-consuming passionate way that made any just-friends contacts impossible. Perhaps he never had been.

Coming back to Olaf, she knew that most women say that married men are bad business, but from her perspective
, it seemed like the opposite. If he was married, she didn’t have to be afraid of him wanting more, and he would not be much harmed if she lost interest, and she would not be much harmed if he stopped loving her. No love lasts forever, in any case. That was how she thought. Wishful thinking that was, but she didn’t know at the time.

Now she knew. And now he was in Rome wanting to meet. I wonder where he lives? I know what he does. I see him in the news now and then. He’s still good looking. And he still looks kind. Why would I meet him? she asked herself. I was so hurt, and it was his fault, but after a while she corrected herself. It was actually also her fault. They had both been idiots, and they had both been far too stubborn to admit it. But still, she had managed—“well, haven’t I?”—without him for fourteen years, and he apparently managed well without her, as he has a wife and a daughter. 

After they met in Gent
, there was little contact between them. But they were both due for a mission to Nairobi, and they exchanged some messages oriented to the job. The messages were kept professional.

They stayed at the Peacock Garden hotel.
Ronia was already there when Olaf arrived. When she saw him in the lobby, from the café on the Mezzanine level, the flood broke loose, and she had to run to her room. Fifteen minutes later, he called.

“Hi, it
’s me, Olaf. Did you have a good trip?”

“Yes, it was good
. I arrived two hours ago,” she said.

“Have you eaten or do you feel like
taking a bite?”

“Oh, I
’m actually quite hungry. That airline food is not very edible. I hardly touched it. You have any idea where to go?”

“This hotel has some pretty nice restaurants, so we could eat here
.”

“I wouldn’t mind
taking a short walk and getting out a bit before eating.”

“Ok, let’s walk to the Ub
untu restaurant where we can get some African-style food. It is about a ten-minute walk.”

They met in the reception
area twenty minutes later. They were both a bit awkward and didn’t know how best to interact. He wanted to take her by the arm, but he wasn’t sure that she would like it very much. Ronia, on her side, felt the same. So in the end, they walked with a slight distance between them, not touching. At the Ubuntu, Olaf ordered a beer and Ronia ordered pineapple juice, specifically inquiring if the juice was fresh. Olaf looked skeptical, Ronia thought, but she didn’t ask, and he didn't say anything. When the juice arrived, it was unmistakably made of canned concentrate. Ronia wanted to complain, but Olaf told her there was very little point in complaining to the waiters.

“Here the waiters have no authority. I am sure
, to begin with, that the waiter didn’t understand when you asked if the juice was fresh. Probably she thought you meant ‘fresh’ as opposed to ‘rotten’ or ‘natural’ as opposed to ‘synthetic,’ something like that,” he said. “Also there’s no delegation of authority and very little communication between management and staff. So if you complain to the staff, first, I doubt they will understand you; second, there’s little chance that they will convey it to the management, and the manager is mostly not present in the first place. And there’s an even smaller chance that the management, which most likely is Indian, in any way will listen to a complaint from the staff. So if you really want to reach those who decide, you have to speak to the manager—which of course is reinforcing the lack of delegation.”

“Anyway
, I’m talking too much. Let’s order,” he concluded.

They ordered,
nyama choma
(grilled goat meat), fried bananas and rice with peanut sauce. After that, there was silence.

Ronia looked at him and said
, “I like to do things with you, Olaf.”

“Thanks, I appreciate your company very much too
,” he said and waited silently for a continuation.

He looked her into her eyes. She met his gaze for a sh
ort while and then looked down.

“Ronia, I
’m surprised that you’re alone. Not only are you a famous artist, you’re also good-looking, fun and have a great personality. I understand those paintings even fetch good prices, don’t they? There must be something wrong with those French guys. Perhaps they are afraid of a successful, independent woman.”

“You
’re very kind to flatter me like that.”

“It
’s not empty flattery. I do feel it. I enjoy being with you so much.” 

“Olaf
?”

“Yes?”

“I’m trying to tell you something.”

“Yes.”

“But it is so hard.”

There was a
pause.

“It is always hard to express feelings
,” she started again.

“Try.”

“In this case, it is also harder because you have a wife,” she blurted finally and blushed.

She felt stupid for saying this, instead of saying the right thing, that she was falling in love with him.

But that is how we humans are. The wrong thing often comes out of our mouths.

Olaf took her hand and looked at her. “I like you too…a lot
.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“There is something special between us
, Olaf.” She reached out and squeezed his left hand hard and put her other hand on top. She looked down at their joined hands, her lower lip trembling

Olaf looked at her, and finally bent over an
d stroked her hair with his right hand.

The magic was broken by the arrival of the food. They both looked a bit embarrassed
, and they ate in silence.

Once they finished
the meal, he looked at her and said, “There is a special connection between us. I can feel it strongly.”

“Yes
, there is.”

“Let’s pay and get out of here
.”

“Yes
!”

After paying, Olaf took her by the hand and led her out of the restaurant. Just outside the entry, Ronia stopp
ed him, “Come here,” pulling him towards a dark corner. She stood with her back against the wall and took his head between her hands and pulled him towards her. The first encounter, their lips met like butterflies lightly touching. Soon enough, the kiss deepened to reveal their real hunger and desire. They drank their love in big gulps. Ronia took the lead, with Olaf just reacting, but then the roles shifted. Finally, they both poked, licked, sucked and bit at the same time.

Lips and tongue were not enough
. Their hands explored what they had longed to touch for so long, their bodies pressing against each other, their limbs entangled, their lust rising, rising up to levels soon unbearable without release.

A M
asaai guardsman, passing closely in his red cloth and carrying a spear, brutally brought them back into the dirty alley, where under normal circumstances they hardly would even have dared to walk, in Nairobi, a city also called “Nairobbery”.

They walked towards the hotel, not letting the
ir hands leave each other, their hips glued together. Every fifty meters or so, they stopped, kissed and embraced tightly.  Finally Olaf said, “Come on, let’s run,” and they ran, laughing, hand in hand, jumping over the potholes in the pavement, the trash, the odd sleeping dog and the dog poo. A little dog followed them, barking and tail wagging. At the entrance of the hotel, Ronia knelt down and patted the puppy and told him to go home. In the end, the steward had to chase him off with a broom.

The next morning, Ronia woke up early. She thought about the night before, about how their bodies had met, how love had fired both of them. For her, it was the most amazing love making she ever experienced.

At
face value, there was perhaps nothing special. They hadn’t exactly done things she had never done before. But the feeling of total union was entirely new. What had amazed her was how many parts of her body seemed to be erogenous zones in a way she had never experienced before. The thought of being licked in the ear had been a turn off for Ronia since a boy tried that at school. It made her think about dogs. When Olaf started to bite her ear lobe, she had first tried to steer him away, until she relaxed and was shocked to feel a sensation from her ear all the way down to her vagina with a flick of his tongue. Her whole skin was like a sexual organ, and his hands were the most amazing tools of love she had ever experienced. It was like the orgasm wasn’t that important. The rest of the love making was so good that it made little difference for her.

Ronia wanted to feel his body against her and crept close to him
, pushing her back towards his body, lifting his arm to embrace her. He was still asleep. She took his hand, one of his amazing hands, the right one, and pressed its palm towards her breast. A shock went through her body, and now his fingers woke up, first sleepily moving around her areola, and teasing her nipples languidly to start with. She felt them harden and his movements and breathing shifted from morning drowsiness to alertness. She let him in and asked him to be still, she wanted to stay like that forever.

“You are a force of nature
,” she said afterwards. There was some truth in that statement. Ronia also knew that praise for sexual capacity has a direct line into the heart of most males and that it certainly was self-reinforcing. Olaf didn’t seem to be an exception.

“It
’s thanks to you,” he responded. “You bring it out of me.”

Most people believe there is a difference between sex and love. And there is, but there is also a union of sex and love, a union of loving, being in love and making love, all of them at once. And then, a look, a word, even a scent can become acts of making love, all adding to the feeling of fullness. We often mistakenly mix this feeling up with sexual satisfaction. But it is perhaps like drinking water to still your hunger. It does fill your stomach, but it doesn’t still your hunger for more than a short moment. And it is the loss of this union that leaves us wounded forever when it is broken. That loss can never be undone. It can never be compensated for. True, in a few cases, luckily few, it can be turned into a passionate all-consuming anger, hatred, but more often it fades away slowly, slowly, like a galaxy in the expanding universe. It is the same as last year, but it is a bit further away than last year, which means that you don’t see it as well, that its gravity doesn’t affect you in the same way. But it is still there, as much as it ever was. 

They ordered room service. After a rich breakfast, Ronia wanted to make love again, but Olaf clearly was at his limit, and they were going to be late for their meetings. The day was spent on three different meetings. They pushed through, made a good show, and all the goals for the day were attained. But frankly, neither of them really remembered what their goals were, and neither of them would afterward be able to account for what had passed during the day.

At three
, the last meeting was over, and they took a taxi to the hotel. In the taxi, they could not keep their hands off each other. Ronia let her head rest in his lap. When she felt him harden, she unzipped his fly. Quite soon, he pulled her away, and his rolling eyes made her understand that he was on the brink. She smiled naughtily, licked her lips and zipped him up.