A Neverending Affair (11 page)

He waited for her all that evening. He tried to do some work, but he couldn’t concentrate
. He watched the news, which for the hundredth time in the last years was about the gradual dissolution of the European Union. The Commission chairperson, Carl Bildt, had just resigned after only ten months in office.

It all started with the financial crisis
in 2008. Initially, the political leaders took actions to curb the crisis, but increasing austerity as well as deteriorating state finances among some of the EU members lead things into a vicious cycle of crisis. In 2012, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Greece, and France left the Euro. Most of the others accepted a situation where the Euro was basically a German currency, but Poland left the EU officially in a rage. The three Baltic states, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, were developing a parallel institution, some said as a direct competition to the EU; others said it is more like a back-up. The EU President, Tony Blair, finally elected after a big delay, spoke a lot about values and common ground, but moved few new proposals to the table, and even the table itself was less interesting. The two last meetings of the head of states, France and the UK, sent their foreign ministers instead of their heads of state. The EU was still there, with twenty-six members, but it was de facto falling apart.

Also in the USA there
was an increased regionalism. First there was nationalism as a response to the global crisis. When that, combined with three sets of giant stimulus packages, didn’t work—and brought the USA to the brink of bankruptcy—or most would say far beyond bankruptcy, it was just that nobody dared to say it out loud—some of the states thought they could do it better than the federal government, most notably Texas and California.

Ten minutes after switching it off
, he would not be able to tell what it was all about. At ten, he realized that she would not come and then he took a beer from the minibar, and then another one. After that, he went to the hotel bar and had two more. He rarely drank much. He went to bed at midnight. The flight was at nine, so he had to leave the hotel by seven at the latest.

She called at six the following morning. “Hi, it
’s me,” she said and waited for him to confirm that he knew who was on the other end of the line, but that didn’t happen. “Did I wake you up? Can we meet now?”

“Ronia, I waited for yo
u all night yesterday!” he exclaimed, immediately regretting that the first thing he said was a critical remark. 

“I
’m sorry, but I had something else planned,” she lied.

“Now I have to leave in forty minutes.”

“I’m down at reception if you want to meet.”

“Sure, give me five minutes
. I’m not dressed. No, give me ten.”

He hung up and then called the 24
-hour travel agent service and asked them to find him a later flight and call back. He dressed and started to pack his stuff. They called and confirmed a flight for 14:30. Down in the lobby, he saw her from the back.
I’m sure she placed herself with the back to the stairs purposely,
he thought. Why, he didn’t know.

“Ronia, long time no see,” he said
.

“Olaf, strange that we would meet in Rome again
of all places. Or perhaps it is not strange at all, especially not considering that I live here.”

They hugged the Swedish way and kissed the French way.

Olaf just looked at her, dumbfounded. He had looked forward to meeting her and now he didn’t know what to do. He just wanted to see her. He had not thought further ahead than that. He had also concluded that she would not come and was therefore thrown off guard, which was surely the reason she came now and not yesterday evening.

“You look
great,” she said, “and I mean it. I’ve seen you now and then in the news, and I see that you’re aging with dignity.”

“Oh, please don’t use the
‘a-word,’” he responded. “I’m one of those vain males that thinks he can be forever young. You also look great,” he said. “That silver in your hair suits you well, and your skin is almost as smooth as ever.” (The first was clearly true, but the second was more doubtful. Ronia’s hands were rough from paint and cleaning agents, and the rest of her skin showed signs of aging, wrinkles and cracks.) “I rescheduled my flight so I have one at 14:30 instead. Do you have time to spend an hour or two with me? We have a lot of catching up to do.”

“And do we want to catch up?”

“Of course we want to, or at least I want to, and as you came, I think you are also a bit curious.”

“Sure
, Olaf,” she relented. “I can spend the whole morning with you. I have a thing scheduled at ten-thirty, but I will call it off if we haven’t started to argue before ten.”

“Why would we argue
?” he asked. She just looked at him with a surprised look. “I guess you think we’ll just pick up where we left off?”

“Olaf, I don’t think I really remember
.” This was partly true and partly false. Of course, she remembered the feelings she had in their final days of splitting up, what kind of feelings, how she felt about him, etc. But she had quite faint memories of the details. She surely would not be able to pick up that discussion as if it had just been waiting for them to come back to it. “I did not come here to revive old arguments, but I must be frank enough to say that I kind of expect it to happen. You were never able to let go.” 

He wanted to respond “neither were you
,” but just before that popped out of his mouth, he realized that they were about to wreck their first encounter in so many years. Instead he said, “Ronia, I still have very warm feelings about you, and I treasure the memories of our relationship, even if it was stormy. For the few hour we have now, I want us to meet as good, old friends and not as a humiliated ex-lovers seeking vengeance.”

She sat silent for a while
, looking at him. “You’re right. So you start. Tell me all about your life.”

He related the main
points of his life. He started off where they parted. He said that it had taken him some time to get over her, over the failure, that he had taken time for some soul-searching to see where he could improve. He even contacted Liv to see if they could pick up their relationship again. She declined, not very politely, and Olaf realized that she was right.

After ha
lf a year, he met Monika at a friend’s party. At that time, she was working as a social worker, although after having the baby she had gone into publishing. Her desired vocation was writing. She had had a few short stories published, and at the moment she was working on a romance novel. She had not let him see it.  Monika was younger than Olaf—a few years. It was almost love at first sight when they met. They moved in together at the end of 2000, and in 2001, their daughter Rebecka was borne. They had a normal family life, with an apartment in Dover since he started working in Brussels.

“Sometimes we spend time in my parents
’ cottage. Well, you certainly know the place, where we spent the secret, and sacred, canoe weekend,” he said.

This was the first time he referred to something they done together. When he said it
, he looked intensely at her to seek her reaction.

Ronia smiled and said
, “That was a kayak and not a canoe. I tried to teach you the difference, but I failed…But I do remember that cute little cottage, the
sommarstuga,
as you call it. And it’s hard not to remember what we did there,” she said with a faint blush.

It was between the adorable meeting in Paris, the meeting when she said it could never get better, and that weekend that Olaf left Liv. They had stolen a day and a half at Olaf’s parents’ cottage. He told Liv and his parents that he needed a retreat to work on an important paper. She had flown into Copenhagen, and he picked her up in a rental car. They stopped and made love two times on the drive up to Sommen, a drive that could take four hours, but took them seven as they also worked up a good appetite from the love making. They stopped in Gränna at a nice inn and had a heavy meal. The view over Lake Vättern was stunning. “Olaf, you told me about the islands of Sweden, but not all the lakes.”

“Well
, they’re part of the same game. The giants were angry and grabbed the dirt here and there and threw it, and where they made a hole, a lake appeared, and where the dirt landed, an island was formed.”

“So in addition to
your belief in God and Jesus, the Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary, you also believe in giants and trolls.”

“Whatever pleases yo
u, my dearest of dears, but for the sake of clarity, Lutherans don’t worship the Virgin Mary.”

“Perhaps
not, but they believe she was the mother of Jesus.”

The temperature didn’t allow swimming
. The ice had just broken in the lake and it was absolutely freezing. The cottage was cold and Olaf made a fire from birch and oak wood. Soon it was nice and toasty and they made love slowly and tenderly in front of the fire. The next day, they went out kayaking, Olaf in a red one and Ronia in a blue one. Ronia smiled at the memory.

He continued to relate his work. How he had handed over the fair trade company to the employees in 2002, taken a half year time off with his daughter—a luxury the Swedish parental leave system supports.

“It is really something very speci
al to be able to spend all that time with your child. I wish all people could do that.”

“Sure, but let's find them fo
od to eat, shelter and freedom from violence first,” Ronia injected with a slightly ironic tone. “But forgive me, I didn't mean to make you look bad or diminish the value of that experience.”

“Well, OK. Then in 2003 I got
a job as the manager for the British Society for Fair Trade in the UK, a campaign organization. I saw it as a chance to try something new. We stayed in Gothenburg the first two years, but after that, I got quite tired of commuting, and I stayed in London. Also I found it a bit irresponsible—you know, for the environment—to fly twice a week between Gothenburg and London. Monika agreed to look for a job in the UK, and we were lucky. This was when things were really easy and she got a part-time job with a media house. Because of her writing and Rebecka and my travel, part time is just enough—even if she sometimes lets me know that we are falling in a typical gender role trap in our carrier development.

“After a while
, we bought a nice apartment in Dover. Five years ago, I felt I had done what I could do in the Fair Trade movement, and started to look for a new challenge. I like public campaigning, and they say I’m good at it, media darling and all that. Finally, I got head hunted by Human Rights International. Our office is in Brussels, so I am again commuting internationally, this time by train, though. It takes five hours from my home to the office. I normally stay three nights a week in Brussels, and work from home or am on the road somewhere else the rest of the time.”

He paused
.

“And you
?” 

“I will tell you, but tell me first how it is to have a child and a wife.”

“You remember how much I wanted a child, don’t you?” She nodded. He continued. “And it’s really great. I sometimes wish I had more of them, a full soccer team. I told you I stayed at home for half a year with her. That was magic,” he said. “I mean, there are an awful lot of mundane things to do with a small baby, and there is sleep deprivation and there were anxiety attacks when she was ill, but overall, it is the magic of that little life and of the bond between that little life and yourself. I loved it.  I bonded so well with my daughter that Monika got a bit jealous. Rebecka, my daughter, is twelve, starting to develop the attributes of a woman, but still a child in her thinking.

“She had her first crush last month
—a boy next door. He’s two years older, and I doubt he ever saw her, but she was sitting there, longing by the window. Then she overheard him saying something bad about immigrants and now she says he’s a jerk. She has very firm ideas about the world. Even more of an idealist than I am, and that says a lot, doesn’t it?  She boycotts products from China because of the regime. She refuses to eat meat unless it’s from organic farms. She comes down on me hard for not sorting the garbage properly enough. She is sweet. Here!” he said, producing a photo of the daughter.

“And that is your wife
,” Ronia said pointing at the other photo.

“Yes, Mo
nika, that is. I already told you about her. What more do you want to know?”

“Are you happy
?” she asked.

“Is that the right question to ask?” he said and fell si
lent, looking at her quizzically. “How do we really know if we are happy or not? Is it the number of times we laugh, that we don’t cry, that we are healthy, that we love our close ones? Is it the absence of fear, the absence of suffering, the satisfaction of our need for companionship, sex and care or the indulgences, the passion and enormous pleasures that makes up a good life?” he asked rhetorically. “I have a good life. I adore my daughter, and I love my wife.”

“Very Buddhist
,” she responded.