A Neverending Affair (3 page)

She he
ard him trying to say something, but she didn’t want to hear it. Back in her room, she cursed herself. She slapped herself in the face and let cold water flow over it. She knew rationally that it wasn’t such a big deal.
What does it matter? He was amused. He’ll tell the story to his buddies back in Sweden in the sauna drinking their beers,
she thought, but instead of calming her down, she started to fantasize about those guys in the sauna, all naked. One of the brutes asked Olaf, “So did you do her?” and Olaf would say, “Sure, I fucked her silly, there in the restaurant, stupid.”
What is happening to me?
she thought.
I just met this guy, and I’m already starting to hallucinate about making love to him? And in any case, I made such a fool out of myself tonight.

That night, she dreamed the most mixed up dreams she ever had. There were the women from the workshop, there was Olaf and there were plenty of well-built African men with big organs. Her alarm went off at five thirty as her plane was scheduled to depart early. She had packed the evening before. She did her morning toilet, a skimpy affair for being a woman, brushed her teeth, did a few stretches and showered. She didn’t wash her hair. She put on a tiny bit of deep red on her lips and deodorant and dressed for a long flight, loose pants, a t-shirt and a comfy blouse.

She went to the reception
desk and asked for her luggage to be picked up in the room, and asked them to confirm her transfer. Proceeding to the breakfast room, she was surprised that there were so many guests already there, but then she realized they were a group of Dutch tourists heading for the Arusha National Park.

She had ta
ken her coffee, her juice and a croissant, and was struggling to eat. She also felt hungover even though they hadn’t drunk the day before.

“I just had to see you off and make sure you don’t blame yourself anymore
,” he said, approaching the table.

S
he thought he was more formal than the day before. Many thoughts went through her head. Finally she said, “Can you promise me that you forget it?”

“I can promise you that I will never speak about it. It
’s hard to forget. For me, it will be a fun memory. The only pity is that can’t tell anyone. In the end, shared memories are a lot more fun than those that you have to keep for yourself. But I promise, if you promise me that you won’t hold this incident against me. And that you won’t avoid me because of this in the future. I mean, it’s quite OK if you avoid me because I am an idiot, or simply because I am boring or because I have strange opinions. But not because of this. Promise?”

“Deal
,” she said and stretched out her hand. He took it and they shook hands firmly to seal the agreement.

“Can I join you
?” he asked.

“Sure
, but I’m leaving any second.”

“So, will you participate in the seminar in Geneva in two months
?” he asked while taking the seat on her left side. 

“I guess I will
. After all, Geneva is only two hours from where I live. Where do you live, by the way?”

“I live in Gothenburg with my wife, or rather outside Gothenburg on one of the islands in the archipelago. Have you ever seen it? Sweden has th
e biggest archipelagoes in the world, you know. Tens of thousands of islands. Most of them are in the Baltic Sea, but the West Coast, where I live, is the most beautiful.”

He had not mentioned any wife yesterday evening
, she thought. She wondered why he hadn’t and why he mentioned her now. And then he said, “where I live” and not “where we live.” Weird. Anyway, she had to leave.

“See you in Geneva
,” he said.

“Guess so
,” she responded and looked at him. She knew Swedes didn’t exchange cheek kisses but instead hugged like many Americans. For her, hugs were too intimate, and he might be uncomfortable with kisses. They both rose. She raised her hand again for a greeting. He took it and shook it.

He and Sandra took the metro to the “representation of Padania” located in the Palatino area. It was an old im
posing building. The Padania flag, “the sun of the Alps,” hung in the middle with smaller Italian and EU flags on the side. They were shown into a meeting room. At the door, there was one officer from the Padanian police department. It was not clear to Olaf if he was one of the people they were supposed to meet or if he was just a guard of sorts. He cursed himself for failing to learn the codes of the various stripes and bars of soldiers and policemen.

Sandra would of course know
. She knew all these things; it was part of her job. When interviewing abused or tortured prisoners, it was essential to understand if the perpetrator was a person in command or a foot soldier. And the victims would remember how many stripes there were on their torturer’s uniform. Funnily enough, even if they wore Baklava hoods, they had their correct uniform under it. He remembered one case where the torturing officer had kept the hood on, but had worn his name tag visible. The stupidity of humans never ceased to surprise him.

They had sent their report a few days in advance. The report was no
t flattering reading, even for a regime as authoritarian as Padania’s. They bothered very little about the impression they made to the outside world. In a way, they might even enjoy having a reputation of being tough. Despite all the oratory, outside intervention didn’t take place against dictators; as long as they didn’t make problems for others than their own people. But Padania was not yet a fascist state, even if it rapidly moved in that direction. It was still important for the government to have the support of its own people. The people had strong democratic traditions. After all, modern democracy was born in the city-states of Northern Italy, and it would not accept a usurpation of more power or more totalitarian incidents at this stage. That could only be possible through an bigger crisis.

Olaf was sure that Pietro would deliver such a crisis in due time. A crisis that wo
uld allow the suspension of democracy for an undetermined time, a crisis that would trigger formal independence, a crisis that would open up expansion into parts of Slovenia, Austria and Switzerland, which they considered part of their homeland. Even the Cote d’Azur and the Provencal Alps were part of it, but to challenge France would be foolish—at least for a few decades to come. Exactly what would constitute such crisis wasn’t so important: it could be the collapse of the European Union, the influx of migrants from Albania or a flood in the foothills of the Alps.

Their report showed systematic abuse
by the police force. It also showed how five leading dissident judges had simply disappeared; four had been killed in what appeared to be common street crime, but at that rate, it meant judges were a thousand times more likely to be mugged than the normal citizen; and twenty resigned under strange circumstances. When they left the country, at least three of those resigning had gone public with stories of how they were forced out of office by threat of disclosing various scandals. The scandals were fabricated, but they all knew that in a country where the media is controlled by the government it is hard to defend yourself against sweeping allegations. Finally, four had been sacked on very dubious grounds, basically those that refused to resign voluntarily and for some reason it was hard to kill or get lost.

Media was also a target. All main media, TV, the press and many of the leading websites were controlled by
the government, and critical voices in those media channels had been silenced by intimidation. Again, they could not—yet—impose censorship of the internet or embargo newspapers, but they surely did everything else that was possible. Intimidation of individuals was the favored strategy. With the police force and the judiciary under the government’s command, it seemed like a winning strategy.

Sandra’s report was a good piece of work, as always. Five
people in Padania, among them one person in the police force itself, the other four journalists, had been instrumental in getting the pieces together. And the report was clearly one of the strongest condemnations of a democratically elected government’s human rights record in twenty years, possibly only beaten by Zimbabwe and Belorussia. And this in the middle of Europe.  Of course, “Europe” was in such trouble currently that people had little energy left for all the issues emerging here and there. The media was looking into the collapse of the Euro and the ultimate collapse of the European Union, and there wasn’t much attention to what really happened in the distinct parts of the union.

They thought they would meet the
Vice minister of the Interior and his underlings. They expected that the government representatives would like to “explain some misunderstandings” and “give a more complete picture,” basically things that would soften the “verdict” and possibly the presentation at the press conference. Olaf and Sandra even anticipated that they might have fabricated some counter-evidence to make HRI waver regarding the trustworthiness of their sources. No matter how good the work Sandra had done was, the fact that they were working against the government and that most people were afraid made it very hard to cross-check information. So there were almost inevitably some errors. 

It therefore came as a surprise to them that the
people to meet them were three officials with perplexing titles from clandestine—or nonexistent—agencies plus the police officer. When seated, they were asked to hand over electronic equipment, as there would be no recording of this meeting. Olaf and Sandra showed them their cell phones and a tape recorder, and were asked to switch them off, which they did. They had no intention handing them over, so they pulled the batteries out to reassure them that that they were really off. The goons looked at a screen of some undefined equipment and then one of them said, “Ms. Frost, you have yet another electronic device. Can you please hand it over?” Sandra hardly ever blushed, but now she did, as if somebody had caught with her hand in the candy jar, and handed over her EVoice. They switched it off.  

After some initial pleasantries, Olaf and Sandra were told that most of the report was flawed, that they had been se
t up by known troublemakers, people who had failed professionally and were now trying to become famous by spreading lies. They responded that they trusted their sources and that the information had been cross-checked for accuracy (which was only partly truthful). Quite soon Olaf realized that the real—and only—intention of their hosts was to get the names of the informants. They casually flashed some names to see what reactions they would get. What was terrifying was that of the eight names mentioned, four of them were their informants. Sandra also understood the game and both of them remained tight-lipped and said almost nothing. Towards the end of the meeting, the leader of the gang, Colonel Bardi, told them that they were not really welcome in Padania.

“
There are no guarded border crossings to Padania. Anybody that can enter Italy can also enter Padania, but once there, it is jurisdiction of Padania that counts.” A not-so-subtle warning. Finally, they were told that from their perspective the meeting never happened. The government would vehemently deny any knowledge of it. They were given their things and ushered out of the building through a back door on the opposite side from the entrance. 

They quickly found a café where they could sit. Olaf asked Sandra what they could do about their informants. Sandra put a finger across her lips and wrote “later” on the napkin. Olaf looked around and could see nobody that looked as if they were shadows or informants from Padania, but he decided to trust Sandra on this. They
drank their coffees—Olaf, an espresso and Sandra, a cappuccino—and discussed the morning’s experience. Both of them were convinced that the people they had met were intelligence officers.

Not far from the café
, there was a park. They found a secluded bench and discussed what to do. They thought they needed to get a warning through to the four mentioned informants. But they didn’t dare to call them. Even if their own phones weren’t tapped, there was a substantial risk their informants’ were. In the end, they would have to inform them in the same way they originally found them, through their contact in Rome, who was one of the members of the local chapter.

He arrived midday in Geneva. He stayed at
La Belle.  He called Selma and announced his arrival, and they agreed to meet early the next day for some preparatory discussions before the meeting.

             
“And tonight, what are you doing?” Selma asked.

             
“Oh, I have nothing planned,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’m pretty tired and plan to hit the sack early. I’ll just pick up a bit of food downstairs.”

             
Selma offered to come and have dinner with him, just briefly, and they agreed to meet half an hour later in the hotel restaurant.

She didn’t go out a lot
.

“It cost
s a fortune in Geneva, but also it’s worse to eat alone in a restaurant than eating alone at home. At home, at least there are no other people seeing you, and you don’t have to bother with to dress up and wear makeup or mind your manners.”

“How come you live alone? If I may as
k,” Olaf said. “I mean, you must be quite a catch. Good job at the UN, nice style and good looks.” He regretted the much-too-personal question and worried that she might think he was flirting. He quickly added, “Sorry, it’s none of my business.”

“Oh
, it’s fine,” she responded and took a deep breath. “Mr. Right never showed up, I guess. Perhaps I’m not the right one myself, or perhaps my standards are just too high,” she sighed. “You’re married, I understand,” she added, changing the focus from her to him.

“Yes, four years. Liv is her name
. She studies terribly complicated social and philosophical things at the university. She’s an assistant professor in cybernetic epistemology. And please don’t ask me to explain what it is in detail.”

“Kids?” she asked.

“No kids,” he said, a bit forced. She noticed and gave him a questioning look.

“We should get our life in order more before having children. You know, hav
e things more settled, good jobs, a house in the suburbs with a lawn for them to play in. Once you go for it, you have two or possibly three,” he said all too quickly.

She said nothing but
continued to study him.

“To be frank
, this is the one thing where my wife and I disagree. I think we should have children now, but she simply wouldn’t. Soon it will be too late.” 

“I
’m sorry,” Selma said.

They discussed work a bit. He asked her about Ronia, and how
Selma came into contact with her. She explained that Ronia was the daughter of a distant friend of her father, and in some way they had got into contact.

“
She’s a frail one,” she observed, “like many artists.” But she didn’t explain further.

“Is she coming?” he asked.

“Oh yes, she’s here already, staying in this hotel. I booked her room so I should know.”

He retired early.

He stretched out on the bed and thought about his wife. Why was he
now interested in other women? Was there something wrong in his relationship with his wife?

He first saw
Liv at a party at Bo’s. He was deeply engaged in a political discussion with the host. It was about the use of market measures to control pollution, cap-and-trade things. That was all new in the debate at that time, and Bo was firmly against it. Olaf took a more pragmatic approach and said that “if it works, it’s good. I don’t care much about ideologies. They’ve ruined a lot over the years. Now I’m interested in results, and cap-and-trade gives results.”

“Hey, we
are in too much of a hurry here, jumping to conclusions. How can you know they work? And even if they do work for a few years, what are the long-term effects? What about capitalization? What happens when emission rights are traded in auctions, sold to foreign countries? What happens when poor countries, poor people, have to sell their emissions rights to pay their debts? Not only have they sold off their ability for industrial development or electrification, they have also lost their moral rights because of this. It is a bit like ownership rights to land. If you have customary rights to land, people can’t use the land for collateral, but they also can’t lose their land. Once land can be privately owned, the process of accumulation in fewer hands starts as poor people first borrow just to keep going and ultimately have to sell. And now the land grabbing that earlier was both legally and morally unacceptable becomes perfectly acceptable, part of modernization, so to speak.”

Olaf often felt that he came
up short in arguments with Bo, who was an encyclopedia of knowledge and in particular an encyclopedia of knowledge that condemned capitalism in all its forms.

Susanne,
Bo’s partner, took him by his arm and said with a motherly tone, “The host is not supposed to get engaged in discussions of religious or political nature with his guests, and in particular, not at the beginning of the party. After midnight you will be excused for almost any bad manners, except for making love with one of the guests instead of with me.”

Olaf heard a neighing laugh and looked for the first time c
arefully at Liv, standing behind Susanne. Their eyes met.

Susanne said
,  “Liv, let me introduce you to one of the best catches in the Linköping bachelor market. At least, when it comes to manners and looks. I’m not so sure about his brains. And by the way, brains in a man are overrated. It’s enough if he can swing one club to defend his family. And that he has another club for that other thing....Financially, I fear that ol’ Olaf is a disaster, as he spends all his money helping African women to send their children to school. Of course, he is from a rich family. Only those who never had to worry about money can be so careless about how they spend it. But I think his family finally stopped paying for his expensive hobby, didn’t they, Olaf?”

Without waiting fo
r his response, Susanne, who saw introduction as an art indeed, introduced Liv: “Olaf, I think you thought you knew all my friends, and that is mostly correct. Liv is from the branch of my family that lives in Gothenburg.  We are somewhere beyond cousins. Her family is currently making loads of money on the upcoming winter Olympics in Lillehammer. The good reason to know her is that she is so kind and sweet, but don’t let yourself be fooled by her looks and appearances. Her mind is sharp as a razorblade, and she studies something that I don’t even know how to pronounce, even less what it means.”

“Modest as always
, aren’t we,” Liv chipped in. “Don’t let me disturb you guys. Go on with your politics. I can catch up with you later—once you’ve solved all the problems of the world. In an hour or so I guess?”

He remembered staring at her mouth, t
he glossy lips moving as she spoke. He saw a glimpse of her tongue and teeth. Her chin. A mole on her upper lip. “Sure, nice meeting you,” he said, a bit perplexed, and didn’t know what more to say. He turned back to Bo and continued the debate. But several times, he caught himself lost in his own thoughts.

Not much later
, the music was switched from background lounge music to frantic rock. That effectively closed the debate, and Olaf looked around. It was a small group, less than twenty. He knew most of them. A few couples were already dancing. He looked at Liv. She had medium length blond hair and a confident stature. She was no model, but she was good looking. Her eyes were questioning, and her mouth had the expression of a determined person. Even without knowing her, he would have guessed that she was in science of some sort. She turned her head and looked at him, then she zeroed in on him. He rose and met her, and without a word they started to dance. They continued dancing for four or five tunes, the last one a soft ballad. She crossed her hands behind his neck and stepped closer. He put his arms around her waist, and that was it.
I don’t want to let go,
he said to himself. Then bravely, perhaps foolishly, he whispered in her ear, “I will not let you go.”

“No hurry
, my friend. No hurry to make that kind of commitment. And no need trying to stop me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here with you. And besides that, I’m staying in this house tonight, so it is probably I who will stay and you who will leave.”

“Let’s go for a walk
,” she said when the ballad ended. 

The air was crisp
. It was one of those early autumn evenings, cool, not yet frost, but close to it. They were hot from dancing. They kissed for the first time as soon as they closed the front door. She tasted a bit spicy in a nondescript way. Their lips hungrily searched each other, their tongues more and more active. Their hands moved over each other’s body intensely. When he stroked down the length of her hip to her butt, she moaned, pressing her body hard against him. After a few minutes, they took off for a walk. They walked for an hour, talking incessantly, both of them.

Then she suddenly stopped and said
, “Olaf, I believe you and I are a good match.  But let’s stop here, now. We have plenty of time to get to know each other. I’m overwhelmed, and I’m a person who likes to be in control of my life. I want us to go home alone and sleep well, perhaps dream of each other and then we can meet again.”

He was quite put off by this sudden shift and wanted
to argue, to scream, “Our bodies crave each other, our souls are so close, why would we delay the further union? Why would we say no to pleasure? Why do we negate our desires?” In the end he just said, “I guess you’re right. When can we see each other again?”

H
is look must have betrayed him. She said, “Please don’t be sad. I like you. I think I’m falling in love with you. I think you like me, that you perhaps can love me in the future. I just need to cool down a bit, to get a bit of distance. I’m like that. I’m not easily carried away. I want to meet you soon, but I don’t know exactly when. Let’s talk tomorrow afternoon, can’t we? I’ll call you.”

He gave her his number. He walk
ed her back. The party was still going on, but he didn’t want to go back in and asked her to give his greetings to the hosts.

They met again the next day, and the day after and the next and the next. She was genuinely interested in his work, and he made his best effort to understand the essence of cybernetic epistemology and the thinking of Bateson, which was what occupied Liv, even if he could never fully see the value of spending energy on those kinds of theoretical constructions. Her family was wealthy to start with, owned a lot of property in Gothenburg and around the Mjösa Lake in Norway. They also owned a construction company. With the upcoming Olympic games, their fortunes were more or less guaranteed. They earned money from selling or leasing land, from constructing things on those plots and ultimately, they would also earn money from tearing down some of the stuff afterward, or selling module buildings or stadiums to some other event, things that already were fully paid for by the Olympic organizers. Probably they would also buy back the land they had earlier sold, for half the price.

Her two brothers and one sister, father, mother
, uncles, etc., all of them were engaged in the Jörgenson empire. She was the only one who wasn’t. She was also the youngest of four siblings. Her father had been more relaxed and lenient towards her than with the others. Even if he mocked her for her academic career in public, she knew she had his support, and he had supported her financially all through her studies.

Olaf
was surprised at the energy that such a composed little person could master when it came to love making. But he also felt that she didn’t let go. It was more like a work towards the release. A concentrated effort, result-orientated like Liv herself. For her love making, orgasm was the result. She seemed to focus on that result so much that the rest became insignificant, just a transport stretch.

The times she reached
climax, she was happy, even cried a few tears. Other times, she was less gracious. Not that she blamed him, but she didn’t sleep, and Olaf could hear her helping herself to orgasm in the bathroom. He wanted to tell her that she could do it next to him, or that he could help her if she just gave him some time to recover after his coming, but somehow he couldn’t get himself to say it. He wasn’t exactly prudish, but some things were hard to speak about. Non-pregnancy seemed to be the other dominating desired outcome of love making. At that early time in their relationship, Olaf reflected little on that. He had no immediate desire for a child, and he also understood that it was plain stupid and irresponsible to start the relationship with a pregnancy.

After six months, Olaf took her with him for a business trip to a group of female artisans in Kenya, making decorated calabashes. It was located north of Nairobi, and they stayed the first two nights in a hotel in Nanyuki and then two nights in the Sweetwater safari lodge.

Liv had been to Mallorca and Thailand and a few other “civilized places” but never to Africa. She was bewitched by the African landscape and the
people. Simultaneously, she was appalled by the living conditions of the people, by the environmental degradation, by the beggars in Nairobi, the Kabira slum that they just passed.

“I can understand why you like to work here
,” she said. “It’s clearly needed, and I do think what you do can make a difference. It’s very rewarding to come here and see all this, smell it, feel it.