Wilful Disregard (18 page)
Authors: Lena Andersson
There’s no point talking. Honest answers are never forthcoming, to show consideration. One betrays and is betrayed and there’s nothing to talk about because there are no obligations when the will is not to hand. What is done out of compassion is worth little if the other party hopes it is done out of love.
Ester did not have time to say what she had planned, but she made a start:
‘I thought we could . . .’
Then she registered the expression on his face. It was the expression of someone who has just swallowed a snake.
Hugo was expecting someone. But not her. The words that came out of his mouth were tactless with panic and dismay, or whatever it was he was now feeling.
‘Someone else . . . is coming . . . Eva-Stina’s . . . coming.’
Ester slammed the door and ran down the stairs, all but sliding down the banisters to avoid a meeting in the stairwell with the second woman, who was the first. She must still be in the studio, seeing to something. Perhaps she was putting the final touch of paint to a set piece.
Definitive answers are easier to deal with than diffuse ones. This is to do with Hope and its nature. Hope is a parasite on the human body, which lives in full-scale symbiosis with the human heart. It is not enough to put it in a strait-jacket and lock it up in dark corners. Starvation rations do not help either; a parasite cannot be put on a diet of bread and water. The supply of nourishment must be completely cut off. If Hope can find oxygen, it will. There can be oxygen in a poorly directed adjective, a rash adverb, a compensatory sympathetic gesture, a bodily movement, a smile, a gleam in an eye. The hopeful party will choose to remain oblivious to the fact that empathy is a mechanical force. The indifferent party automatically shows care, for self-protection and to shield the person in distress.
Hope has to be starved to death if it is not to beguile and bedazzle its host. Hope can only be killed by the brutality of clarity. Hope is cruel because it binds and entraps.
When the parasite Hope is taken from its carrier the Host, the carrier either dies or is set free.
Hope and its symbiosis, it must be said, do not believe in a change in the innermost will of the beloved. The hope that inhabits the human heart believes that this will is already present; that the beloved really – actually – wants what he pretends not to want, or does not want what he pretends to want, but has been misled by the evil world around him into wanting; in short, that things are not as they seem. That the tiny glimpse of something else is the truth.
That is what Hope is.
When Ester got home that night she went through her normal pre-bedtime routine. It was a year since Hugo had come round for dinner. They had eaten a reddish dish and he had gone to the window once an hour to smoke. In a week’s time she would have endured a year of suffering. It would intensify and become more concentrated for a few days now, but it was purer and less unclear.
There was nothing left to understand.
‘Love, famously, is blind. People in love can lose even the most basic critical faculties and become capable of monumental self-deception. Hardly a new story, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this particular myopia as astutely and entertainingly explored as in this stunning novel . . . every word packs a punch; every other sentence is so wise and funny that it begs to be quoted. Andersson’s gift for conjuring atmosphere and emotion out of small quotidian mishaps is extraordinary’
Julie Myerson,
Guardian
‘Dry wit and sharp insight . . . If she sees an intellectual pretension, she pricks it’
The Economist
‘Brilliant and unflinching on obsession, on desperation, on the stuff of how people are capable of being to each other. Andersson writes smart, sharp-eyed and often witheringly funny prose; nobody gets out of this situation with their pride, or their public persona, intact. Which is what makes it such addictive reading’
Belinda McKeon, author of
Tender
‘
Wilful Disregard
is cruel but also cruelly funny, a crystal clear statement of hope and its desire and the soul’s incurable loneliness’
Svenska Dagbladet
‘A brilliant, razor-sharp novel about love’
Aftonbladet
‘A creepy, lucid dissection of the tangled psychology of love’
M Magazine
Wilful Disregard
Lena Andersson
(b.1970) is a novelist and columnist for
Dagens Nyheter
, Sweden’s largest morning paper. She lives in Stockholm where she is considered one of the country’s sharpest contemporary analysts.
Wilful Disregard
is her fifth novel and won Sweden’s prestigious August Prize.
First published 2015 by Picador
First published in paperback 2016 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2016 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-4472-6895-6
Copyright © Lena Andersson 2013
English translation copyright © Macmillan Publishers International Limited 2015
Cover Images © Kumi Yamashita, 2015.
Cover Design by Justine Anweiler, Picador Art Department
The right of Lena Andersson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Originally published in 2013 as
Egenmäktigt förfarande – en roman om kärlek
by Natur & Kultur, Stockholm.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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