Betrayal

He knew it the moment she came into the room. She had been following him through the house in recent months, trying to get a conversation started, but somehow he always managed to evade it. It would be so easy just to keep quiet, keep hiding in the everyday atrophy and avoid taking the step into the abyss.

Now it was too late. Now she was standing there blocking the way into his asylum in the office, and this time he didn’t stand a chance.

How could he ever tell her the truth? What words would he dare use to speak of it? And then that paralysing fear. Fear of what he knew, fear of what it would mean, and fear of her reaction. He wondered if she could hear his heart pounding, how it was trying to fight its way out and flee to avoid being forced to reveal what was hidden inside.

And then her question that started the ball rolling.

‘Do you mean that you’re actually questioning our future together?’

Yes! Yes! Yes!

‘I don’t know.’

He hated the fear, and he hated the fact that she was the one who provoked it. He couldn’t even look at her. He was suddenly struck by the realisation that she disgusted him. Disgusted him because she had stood like a rock by his side the past few years as he slowly sank deeper and deeper into despair. She made everything keep on rolling as usual, as if it made no difference that he scarcely participated any more. Yet all she succeeded in doing was to make him feel like a helpless little boy.

Always so fast. Everything finished and ready before he even managed to see that it needed to be done. Always ready to solve every problem, even those that were none of her concern, before he even had a chance to think about it. Like an impatient steam locomotive she charged ahead, trying to make everything right. But it was not possible to fix everything. The more he tried to demonstrate how distant he felt, the more zealously she made sure it wouldn’t be noticed. And with each day that passed he had grown more conscious that it really didn’t matter what he did. She didn’t need him any more.

Maybe she never had.

He was merely something that had been hooked onto the locomotive for the journey.

Not for one second had she understood how he really felt. That the boredom and predictability were slowly but surely suffocating him. Half his life was gone, and this was how the rest of it was going to look. There would never be anything more than this. The hour had arrived when it was impossible to postpone any longer everything he wanted to do. Everything he had always planned on doing someday. Well, someday was here now. All the dreams and expectations that he had obediently pushed aside were beginning to cry out, asking him more and more urgently what they should do. Should they leave him or did he want them to stay, and, if so, why? Why should they stick around when he didn’t intend to fulfil a single one of them?

He thought about his parents. They sat there in Katrineholm in their house that was all paid off. Everything finished and settled. One evening after another, side by side in their two well-used TV recliners. All conversation had long since stopped. All consideration, all expectation, all respect, everything had slowly but surely died a natural death years ago from lack of nourishment. The only thing remaining was a mutual reproach for all they had missed, all that had been lost to them. The fact that they hadn’t been able to give each other more and that many years ago it was already too late. Twenty metres from their easy chairs were the train tracks, and every hour, year after year, the trains had passed that could have taken them away from there. By now they had come to terms with the fact that their own trains had left long ago, although other trains would continue thundering past, rattling the always sparkling glass in their living-room window. They had never purchased a summer cabin, although the income from the sale of Father’s car dealership would easily have permitted it. They never took a trip. As if a purely physical displacement might pose some kind of threat to their lives. It was a long time since they had managed to get up and drive the hundred kilometres to Stockholm. They hadn’t even come on Axel’s sixth birthday; they just sent a belated birthday card with their signatures and a folded hundred-krona bill. Instead of participating in family gatherings they would stay at home and wallow in their feelings of inferiority, prompted by Eva’s well-to-do parents with their academic degrees and intellectual friends. Imprisoned in their own lives they stayed where they were, bitter and careworn.

As if they had each been permanently taken hostage by the other, terrified of being alone.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her standing motionless in the living room. The sound of the TV came intermittently, like a pulse in synch with his heartbeat.

He felt a desperate need to buy some time, cling to something that was still anchored in his old routines.

‘Did you buy milk on the way home?’

She didn’t answer. Fear throbbed in his stomach. Why hadn’t he just kept his mouth shut?

‘Can’t you turn off the TV?’

His index finger reacted automatically but pressed the wrong button. A second of hesitation and his reptilian brain decided not to try again. The feeling of suddenly not obeying pushed the fear aside. He was the one holding the control.

‘Have you met someone else?’

‘No.’

His lips formed his reply by themselves. Like a projecting rock ledge in the plunge towards the abyss. What was he going to do there? On a ledge halfway between being in one place or the other.

‘How long have you felt this way?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, approximately? Is it two weeks or two years?’

As long as I can remember, it seems like.

‘About a year, I suppose.’

How would he ever dare explain? How would he ever have the courage to take the words in his mouth? What would happen when he told her that for seven months he was somewhere else every second of the day?

With her.

She who had utterly unexpectedly come storming into his heart and given him a reason to want to get up in the morning. Who gave him back his desire and his will. She who opened up all the doors inside him that he had barred shut long ago and who managed to find keys to rooms he didn’t even know existed. Who saw him as he really was, made him want to laugh again, want to live. Who made him feel desirable, intelligent, energetic.

Worth loving.

‘But why? And how did you think we could work this out?’

He didn’t know, didn’t even need to lie. In the bedroom lay his six-year-old son. How could he ever do what he really wanted to do and still be able to look him in the eye again?

And how would he ever be able to look himself in the eye again if he stayed and said no to the enormous love he had found?

Hatred passed through him for a moment. If it weren’t for her standing there a few metres away from him in the living room, then he could . . .

Full of accusations she would succeed in turning all the joy he felt into shame and guilt. Defile it. Make it seem base and ugly.

All he wanted was to be able to feel what it was like to live again.

‘We don’t have fun any more.’

He could hear how stupid that sounded. Fucking shit. She always made him feel inferior.

Her gaze felt like a physical accusation. He couldn’t move.

An eternity passed before she finally gave up and went towards the bedroom.

He leaned back and closed his eyes.

One single thing he wanted.

Only one.

That she would be here with him, hold him tight and say that everything was going to be all right.

For the moment he was saved, but only temporarily.

Starting now, their home was a minefield.