A Neverending Affair (17 page)

She tried to
stay awake, but ultimately she fell asleep again. Before doing so, she had written in big letters, “Forgive me, my love,” and pinned it to the pillow.

He came in at around two, saw the
note and crept under the duvet, his back towards her.

She woke and felt his back. “Olaf, I
’m so sorry for falling asleep. It was so nice, and I was so relaxed.”

“Sure” he said, bitterly
. “I can’t even turn you on any longer. That’s why you want to split.”

“Don’t be
silly,” she said. “I don’t want to split. I just want you to sort out your relationship with Liv. It was truly wonderful what you did to me. I was so relaxed and fell asleep, to fall asleep in that way almost beats an orgasm. It was wonderful. For me, but I feel so sad that I didn’t do anything for you.”

“Are you sure? You
aren’t just saying it just to make me feel good? Did you like it?”

“Yes, I told you so
.”

He turned towards her, looked deep into her eyes, “
Is it true?”

“Yes, silly little boy, I told you so
. It was absolutely wonderful, and you know I love you so much.”

They kissed, slowly
becoming more and more energetic and deep.

“We didn’t even get to the dessert
,” he said.

“Ah, the famed strawberries and the chocolate sauce. We can
have them now.”

“I had planned something
a bit special. Wait and see.”

He collected a towel in the bathroom,
and put it under her. They both enjoyed the unusual way of serving strawberries and chocolate sauce and found inspired ways of application and ingestion, blending with bodily fluids and secrets and secretions of their bodies.

“I hope this will do as a mem
ory,” he finally said, exhausted, falling down on his back, panting. “Will it not?”

“Don’t ask
, silly boy. Don’t ask.

“I’m afraid the cleaning lady will never forget this morning either. We have to give her an enormous tip. It looks like a pigsty here.” She took a 100 franc bill and put in an envelope and wrote a short note and tucked it under the pillow. 

“Oh my, that’s
a hefty tip. What did you write?”

“S
omething that will make her understand.”

He opened the envelope
and read, in French: “Never in my life will I forget this night, and I am grateful not only to the man that rendered all this pleasure, but also to you that made it possible and have to clean up after us. I wish you too will experience such a night at least once in your life.”

“I wonder if she will understand that this brown stuff is chocolate and not…”
Olaf said.

“Yuck!”

  “Ronia, don’t leave me.”

“I
’m not leaving you. You need time to sort out your life.”

Olaf couldn’t see her logic
. He was filled with dread when he flew home.

Olaf thought back on the conversation.
What did it mean? What did it mean to him? What did it mean to her?
He took the train to Fumiccino Airport and pondered over this. Ronia had said that she thought the ending was inevitable, that their all-consuming love just wasn’t sustainable. Olaf still didn’t want to accept the idea that there could be too much love, that we can love too much.
Perhaps we can love in the wrong way, like with jealousy?
he thought.

He was due to be back in Rome
at the end of May for a conference,
Human Rights over 100 Years
. It was mainly something for scholars, and he wasn’t any scholar. Still it made sense for him to be there, to be visible, to be relevant, to interact with Academia and the press covering the event. After all, HRI was one of five main players in the Human Rights scene, and there was competition between the actors, even if they hade the same ultimate goals. Sometimes, he resented all the stuff he had to do for show. He wanted to focus on his job, and if he were to socialize, he’d prefer to socialize with his target group, people who had something to say, who had done something, rather than the cheerful crowd that stood aside and spoke about human rights, and worst of all, the politicians. He remembered a cocktail party at Downing Street 10 as a situation where he felt held ransom by Blair’s and Bush’s agenda. Admittedly, those two were rather different, and their agenda also was different, but when it came to hypocrisy about human rights, the difference was one of shade and not of direction.

On parting
, he had asked Ronia if they could meet again. She had been evasive and noncommittal. He asked for her email address, and she had given it to him somewhat reluctantly, her new email address, adding that she didn’t check it very often.

“Ronia, don’t fool me
. You have two children living in other parts of the world. I’m sure you are in contact with them regularly.”

“True, but it is mostly via the telephone
, and I read their postings on Dashboard.”  

He couldn’t say for sure why he wanted to meet Ronia. Part of him just longed for her, in the same way he longed for her
a long time ago. Other parts of him just wanted to figure out what went wrong. He still didn’t really understand why their relationship had to break down. Yet another part just wanted her as a friend. Finally, he also wanted to get rid of her, once and for all, feel that she meant little to him, that he could do well without her. But he felt that he needed to meet her again to close the chapter.

On take off, he thought about the words of Stig Dagerman:
“Our need for consolation is insatiable.”
  That author certainly knew all about distress and loneliness.

He thought about how, fifteen years earlier, he had left her in the restaurant and walked away in anger. He had drifted, he had cried a bit, but then composed himself and went into a bar. He sat down at the bar, asking for a whiskey, emptied it rapidly and asked for another one—a rare behavior for Olaf. A girl appeared next to him, and asked him if he was lonely. He assumed she was a prostitute and said, “Yes, I am desperately lonely. I have just left the woman I love more than anything else, so how can I be anything but lonely. But it suits me well to be lonely. I am a bloody idiot. She too is a bloody idiot. We’re just too proud and stubborn, but I don’t know how to get out of it.”

“Oops, that was a whole load
,” she said and sat silent. “I can make you feel good,” she continued after a while.

“I
doubt that.”

“You can try me out
.”

“No, seriously, don’t waste your time on me. I
’m bad business. I should drink myself senseless,” he said, “and then I should find somewhere to sleep. Or perhaps the other way round. Get yourself another client tonight.”

“Hey
, mister, do you think I’m a bloody whore?” she called out, startling the other patrons who had perhaps already been eavesdropping. She realized that she had been loud, looking around, embarrassed. She continued in a lower voice, “I just thought you looked lonely and miserable, and I wanted to be kind, and this is how you reward me,” she said.

“I
’m sorry if I jumped to conclusions. I’m just not used to being picked up by women like that.”

“I never approache
d a man like that either,” she admitted. “Lorena, Lorena is my name, by the way. You looked so sad, so vulnerable, your emotions so much on the surface that I just wanted to reach out to you. My boyfriend left me half a year ago, and this is the first time I’ve gone out alone since he left me. The first man I see is you. There must be a meaning in that. You can come with me, tell me your story. I’ll hug you. I can stroke your hair. You will kiss my forehead and my neck. I have something to drink, and you can stay overnight, but no sex, mister. I have an extra bed.”

Lorena was in her
late twenties. Long, dark curly hair. One of her parents was clearly of African decent; her skin was beautifully brown and her lips fuller and the nose wider than the typical Italian.

“I
t sounds like a tempting proposition,” Olaf said. “Let me pay for your drink and let’s go. Olaf is my name.”

“OK
, Olaf, but no sex,
capice
?”

“Capice!”

Lorena’s apartment was not far away. It was rather small. She was an assistant professor in psychology. She poured them a red drink, Campari perhaps, with ice, and slices of lemon. She sat down on the sofa, patting the cushions next to her and asked him to sit. He did, or rather he stretched out with his head in her lap. And he told his story. It took an hour or so. She asked a few questions, stroked his hair, made him feel good. He gradually became aware of her body, her scent, the musty smell from her groin, her hands now wandering from his head inside his collar, touching his chest and the fingers reaching his nipples. He turned around, buried his face in her belly, grabbing around her thigh with one hand and the other one around her waist.

Ronia had called him on his mobile phone the next afternoon. He was alone in Lorena’s apartment as she had gone to her university.

“Hi
.”

“Hi
.”

“Where are
you?”

“Hanging around in Rome
.”

“I
’m leaving tomorrow morning early. I rebooked my flight.”

“OK, the room is paid for already, so if you can please pay for any calls and the minibar
, that would be great. If not, I guess they’ll charge my card for it anyway. “

“Does it end like this
, Olaf?”

“Does it have to end like this
, Ronia?”

S
ilence.

“Good
-bye then.”

“Bye
.”

He h
ung up.

Ronia drove to Aix-les-Bains to pick him up. He had flown to Paris and taken the TGV and was due to arrive at two. She was looking forward to seeing him, but she was also nervous about it. The last month before his
visit, she had felt a new seriousness in their communications and an urgency.

Olaf called three m
onths after Geneva.

“Ronia, I left Liv, or rathe
r she left me.”

“So she moved out?”

“Yes, she did, or she is in the process of doing it. She doesn’t sleep here anymore, but most of her stuff is here. We’ve filed for a divorce. In Sweden, that’s a simple formality.”

“And?”

“And what?” Olaf said. “It means I’m free. I’m here for you, or there for you, wherever you want me.”

“Where does it leave us? Olaf, do you still want me?”

“Silly question, of course I want you.”

“I
’m sorry that I hurt you in Geneva. I just needed to be alone with my thoughts. And I thought you needed to sort out your relationship.”

“You said so
. I still think it would have been a lot better if you would have stood by my side in this process.”

“I see
. I understand your feelings. I’m not sure I agree though. Nevertheless, can you forgive me?”

“Ronia, I can forgive you a lot of things.”

“Also this.”

“Also this,” he responded, though she felt that it was reluctantly. He added, “I forgive, but I will not forget that easily.”

They talked several times the following days and each day they came closer, converging in that they wanted to be together, to form a life together.

“When can we meet?”

“I can come to you in a month. I am busy with work, and also I want Liv to leave the house properly before I come.”

“You want to come to me?” Ronia as
ked hesitantly.

“Yes, I want to see your place
. You know, perhaps I can even move there sometime not too far ahead. I think I could manage my business from there as well. I would need to go to Sweden once a month perhaps. But I could rent a small overnight apartment in Linköping, Gothenburg or Stockholm.”

Ronia felt a certain resistance to the idea that he would come to Chindrieux, but in the end
, she had no good argument against it. Also, she did love her place, and she surely would much rather him move in there than her move somewhere else. She thought that they perhaps didn’t have to live together, but she also knew that for Olaf that didn’t seem to be an option. Sometimes she was afraid of him being too needy and too demanding on her attention. She also recognized that she was a bit afraid of the closeness of the relationship. “Is that because I don’t love him enough or just because of my personality? And is my personality as such a hindrance for unconditional love?” On the one hand, she wanted to be engulfed and submerged in love, in his love for her and her own love for him. But then she distrusted love as a separate force. “It is just something we make up in our head.” The thoughts passed rapidly through her mind.

“Olaf, it
would be nice if you can come,” she told him. “Come as soon as you can. The autumn colors are just starting to show, and it will be at its best in a couple of weeks. I want you to see when the mountain is on fire and those lovely colors reflect in Lac Bourget. It’s the best time to be here. If you come in November, snow might already fall. Also, I miss you so much that I’m mad. And I’m so horny that I may soon ask the bucks to do me.” 

“Oh, oh, take it easy
. Save some for me, honey.”

The ensuing communication more and more gave the visit a “make-or-break” status, where they were not only to reconcile, but also to draw up plans for their future together. The plan that emerged was that he would come to her in June. They had agreed that they would try to speak through the arrangements for cohabitation at that time.

The week before his arrival
, their communication had ground to a halt. It started when he asked her a month earlier if she knew if she could get broadband access or at least a quicker type of modem, to her email.

“Why?” she had asked.

“I need it for my work. A modem connection is just too slow. It’s fine for simple messages, but sometimes I need to send or receive files, drawings and pictures.”

Now he asked if she had made any progress.
When she said no, he was taken aback and asked why. She responded that there had been so many things, so many communications, that she didn’t think it was so important.

“For me
, it is important to know if I can manage my work from your place or not,” he said.

“Sure, I can understand that
,” she apologized. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to look it up.” 

He felt that she either didn’t really want him to move in or that she didn’t think his wishes were important.

She knew it was a fair request, but still she could not avoid also seeing it as an intrusion.

In addition, sh
e increasingly felt that she couldn’t envision sharing her life with somebody that believed in God. She understood his perspective, but at the same time, she thought that sharing your life and love with somebody so close, you have to have a common world view. She had tried to discuss religion with him a few times, but she felt that he was just seeking refuge behind his faith, behind his belief, and there was not much to discuss. Sometimes he tried to explain in a rational way what he meant, but as soon as she pressed ahead, he resorted to his belief, stating that you can’t prove or falsify the existence of God by logical reasoning. She felt he was excluding her by his way of reasoning.

She knew th
ere were many couples of mixed faith or where one believed and one didn't, and it could work well.
For them,
she thought.,
For me, it is really much more important.
Olaf had once said that it was weird that disproving his belief was much more important for her than it was for him that she believed in God. She thought that it was more a sign of the arrogance that comes with religion, that He is there regardless if we believe in him or not. Olaf once actually said, “He will be there when you need him, regardless if you believe in him or not.” Such a statement just provoked her anger.

Sitting on the train, Olaf thought about the farm. There was a big chunk of land to Ronia’s place, ten hectares of farm land and fifteen hectares of forest, or for a Swede, it was rather shrub land. Olaf didn’t have much of an idea of farming and forestry, but he saw an interesting challenge in trying to make the shrub land into a forest. The farm land was rented out to a goat farm, and would continue to be. The goats were also grazing the forest, and Olaf knew that cutting down the forest and the goats’ subsequent grazing were supposedly the reason why most of the Mediterranean area today was barren. He had done a bit of reading on the topic to be well prepared.

Ronia
wouldn’t agree to exclude those cute goats from her shrubs, which they apparently enjoyed so much, just because some Swedish goat-hater blamed them for the collapse of the Roman Empire or some other far-fetched ideas. To pave the ground, he brought her a copy of 
L'homme qui plantait des arbres
(The Man Who Planted Trees), the story of Elzéard Bouffier, a shepherd who single-handedly reforested a valley close to Chindrieux. He had come to understand that the story, which is told as if it is true, was just made up—but it is still a very nice story.

This led him to his belief in
God.
Is that also just a nice story that I want to believe in?
He realized that as the belief in God was the centerpiece of the story, it was just not possible to make the belief itself into something made up.

He was still upset about
Ronia’s lack of engagement in checking the internet connection. Of course, it was a technicality, but a technicality that made a lot of difference to him. While he loved Ronia, there were parts of her psyche that he really didn't understand and that sometimes frightened him. Not many things were sacred for her. He didn't think that she loved him in the same way he loved her. “Sure, she likes me, and she says she loves me. But how could she leave me alone in my hard times with Liv? She takes very rational positions and leaves little space for love.”

Looking back at his time with Liv, he admitted that he had loved her immensely when they first met, but gradu
ally the love had waned, and differences over life and children had taken over as being more defining than the love. He would never, ever have believed that, when he stood at the altar with Liv. “Perhaps Ronia's view of love is the right one—but I don't like it and I don't want it to be right.”

When he saw her standing there waiting for him, his fears and sorrows just blew away, and he smiled, rushing towards her. She ushered him to the car, a Renault Espace. Ronia had that kind of car for ease of transport with the bigger paintings. She used it rarely though. She went by bicycle to the shop and by bus and train to Lyon, Grenoble or further afield. She said that she had bought the supplies they needed. He planned to stay for a week. Now she wanted to make a smaller diversion to roads up into the mountains, so that he would see how beautiful it was.

He said,
“Whatever, I have just eyes for you, my love.”

“That was the perfect answer most of the time, Olaf
. You are improving your courting skills,” she said with a laugh, “but at this very moment, I actually want you to look at the landscape. See it as a part of me, if that helps.”

T
he landscape was indeed spectacular. They drove over Saint Germaine la Chambote and on winding roads to La Chambote where the view over Lac Bourget was stunning. They got out of the car and stood at the edge of the cliff, looking out. Autumn colors had started, and the lake reflected the sky and the forest in a remarkable way. The sky had scattered clouds in such a way that it enhanced the blue of the sky, and the reflection of the clouds in the water added to the panorama. A couple of hawks circled not far above them. In the distance, the bells of cows were chiming

“This is indeed beautiful,” Olaf said. “I can under
stand why you like it here. In a way, it’s hard to understand why places like this are depopulated and people move to cities. The quality of life must be superior here compared to Grenoble or Paris.”

“Well
, that’s why I live here. For others, I don’t know. I’m never sure if people move to the cities because they have to get jobs or education or because they actually prefer to live in the big cities. I guess it’s a bit mix of both. In a few years, half of the world’s population will live in cities, and a lot of them in mega cities with more than 10 million inhabitants. But then, I didn't bring you here to discuss demographics or migration,” she smiled.

They kissed long
. They ran smiling, holding hands, towards a big tree that could give them support.

Back in the car, Olaf asked her about the broadband access, and Ronia admitted that she had forgotten it again.

“Don’t you understand it
’s important for me?” he said in a very sullen tone.

“You said so
. I’m sorry I didn’t do it.”

“So why didn’t you do it then, when I asked you, asked you twice actually?”

“There were so many things to do and organize. Also I don’t understand these technical things. I was afraid of asking the wrong question, then telling you that it will work, or that it wouldn’t work, even if it’s not right. I’m sorry. Let’s call together tomorrow.”

Th
e magic between them was gone.
It’s amazing how small things can affect our mood,
Ronia thought. Here is a man in the most perfect mood, whistling while walking in the park, seeing the birds and the beautiful flowers under the canopy of lush green trees. And, oops, he steps into some dog poo. He swears. He breaks a stick from a bush to try to scrape it away. He thinks about the meeting he will have in ten minutes time. “Now my shoes will stink when I get there. It will be so embarrassing. The whole meeting will be a failure.” And there is the woman meeting her beloved. She had look forward to it, full of warmth and expectations. She is a bit late as she spent time on making herself attractive to him and his greeting is, “Why are you so late? I was about to leave.” In that moment, all her cheerfulness is blown away like the seeds of a dandelion. Sure, they will land somewhere else and on somebody else, and that somebody will be happy for a short while until she forgets her glasses on the train, or breaks a nail. 

The d
escent to the lake was scary, Olaf thought. The road was narrow, curved and steep, but the view remained spectacular. They sat in silence for the rest of the ride until Ronia pulled over to the side after a bend. One could see across a valley, and on the opposite side there was a hamlet.

“There, the brownish house on the left si
de with the white silo, with the trees around. That is
la Fournier
, my home.”

“Oh, it looks lovely and the surroundings as well. So where is the land?”