– I’ve got a confession to make, Axel, she answered after a pause. – It was no accident that I got my practical at your clinic. I swapped with someone else. When you lectured us before the summer, I came to see you in the breaks every day. I thought about you afterwards. I was stupid enough to suppose you were thinking about me too. But when I came into your office that first day, you didn’t even remember me.
– What did you want from me? he asked.
– I had to talk to you again.
– Talk?
He touched her shoulder. She leaned in towards him.
– I think that’s what I wanted.
Her lower lip protruded slightly. He bent down and kissed it.
– I have to go now.
He pulled her up out of the chair. The trousers she was wearing were made of some smooth stuff and were tight across her hips. His hand slid down across the waistband. She stretched up and pressed her lips against his neck.
– This mustn’t happen, Miriam.
– All right then, she murmured, – it mustn’t happen.
13
FATHER RAYMOND STAYED behind in church after evening prayers. He had to take confession and left the candles burning. The time he sat there waiting and listening in that large space eased his mind. He could approach silence. The sounds of the traffic outside barely penetrated the walls. Then the main door opened. He recognised the figure walking up the central aisle at once.
– Good evening, he said, jocularly formal. – What a pleasant surprise.
The young woman took his outstretched hand.
– I won’t take too much of your time, Father Raymond.
He brushed this away.
– Dear Miriam, if you only knew what a pleasure it is to see you. It’s been months.
He escorted her to a small room next to the sacristy, offered her a seat on the bench beside the door, and sat on a chair opposite her.
– I think of you so often, he said. – Just very recently, in fact.
He remembered at once that it was the day before, in the morning, as he was on his way to the office. He’d thought of her as he was putting the key into the door. He thought of her because she had appeared in his dream the previous night. He didn’t tell her this. Instead he asked her how her studies were going. Miriam answered vaguely, and that surprised him, because usually she would respond to such a question in a very detailed manner.
He crossed his legs and sat back, observing her. Her face was what fascinated him most. The sight of a pretty face had always had a stimulating effect on him. Like a good wine, or a well-turned piece of prose. But there was something about Miriam’s face. It reminded him of a thought he often returned to. Something by a philosopher who, oddly enough, came from her native country, and whose work he had studied for years: The trace of Him in the Other’s face.
– I’ve met someone, she said.
He nodded once or twice, sustaining his silence long enough for her to have no choice but to go on.
– A man.
That much he had gathered. Very slightly he began rocking back and forth in his chair, as though this movement would enable him to put aside everything else that was on his mind and direct his full attention towards her.
– You say this as though it were a problem.
Gone was that slight feeling of dissatisfaction that had taken hold of him earlier in the evening. In its place he felt a quiet joy spreading through him. She was troubled in some way. She had come to him. On another occasion, some time ago now, she had visited him in order to talk about a man. She wanted to end it, but felt sorry for the man and didn’t want to cause him any more hurt.
– Have you known him a long time… this new one? Father Raymond asked discreetly.
– A week ago tomorrow.
He opened his mouth to say something.
– I know it doesn’t sound like long, she added quickly. – But it’s as though I’ve always known him. I can’t explain it.
– You are good at explaining, the priest said encouragingly.
She gave him a long look.
– We can’t go on meeting… He’s seventeen years older than me.
– I see.
– He’s married with three children. Now I’ve said it. If you want me to leave, I’ll understand.
A smile flitted across Father Raymond’s lips.
– I don’t believe you can have such a low opinion of me.
She told him more. And yet he still had the feeling she was holding something back. She was troubled, seemed almost afraid, but he didn’t push her. When she fell silent, he asked:
– Can people find happiness together knowing that their happiness is built on the destruction of the lives of others?
– I don’t think so, Father.
He cleared his throat.
– How involved are you?
– I spoke to him when he lectured us before the holidays. I thought about him all summer. I thought it would pass if I met him again, but it only got worse.
– So you’re not being… the priest began. – He isn’t pressuring you in any way?
– I’m the one who’s chased after him, she answered firmly. – I planned it all out beforehand.
Father Raymond had known her for the six years she had lived in Oslo. Even since her first visit to him he had had a soft spot for her, but in a way he felt this was permissible. The weakness was a reminder, an opening back to the man he had once been; in sacrificing the passion that had dominated him formerly, he had rediscovered it at a new level, one where it was ruled not by compulsion but by joy.
– I’ll never forget how you helped me that other time, she said suddenly. – It was those conversations with you that gave me the strength to break away from that relationship. It would have destroyed me.
– All I did was pull a few loose ends together for you, he demurred. He didn’t want to dwell on this; what she had come to talk to him about now was more important. And, he had to admit to himself, his curiosity was piqued.
– And how far has this relationship gone?
– I haven’t been with him in that sense. He kissed me. Then he left.
Father Raymond leaned in towards her.
– There are two questions I want you to consider before you leave here. In the first place, what does he want from you?
When she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer, he asked her to tell him what she knew about the man. Afterwards he summarised her reply.
– The picture you paint is of an attractive man, sympathetic and capable, one who does a lot for others. He was a wife and children, and a twin brother whom he hasn’t seen for many years. You still haven’t answered my question, Miriam, but don’t forget it. My second question is the more important: What do you want from him?
– I want to be with him, she answered without a moment’s hesitation. – In every conceivable way.
Father Raymond lowered his gaze. She went on:
– Only my thoughts tell me it’s wrong. Everything else in me wants it. I’ll lose everything and be left with nothing. And when I think about it, it’s a relief. But he’ll never leave his family for my sake. He isn’t like that.
– Are you sure that isn’t precisely why you want to be with him? Because he is not free to imprison you? Might this be an attempt to gain control of something painful, Miriam?
She looked as though she was thinking over the question but could find no answer. He knew the grief she had been carrying since she was a little girl. But now he was approaching the limits of what he could understand. I know people better than I know men and women, he thought once again.
– I do know something about what you’ve been through, Miriam. Don’t exclude the possibility that I can help you this time too.
The question she was wrestling with had an unambiguous answer. She knew what the right thing to do was, and she had not come to him to hear him say it. He thought he saw in her something of what he himself had once struggled with. And yet she was better equipped to deal with the world than he had been. Or was he judging her wrongly? The way she connected so strongly with others, and connected others so strongly to herself, was that really all to the good? He thought he could see her so clearly. But maybe the shadow was deeper than he realised. Was there something there he didn’t want to know about? He had met people who carried around with them a chasm of grief, seen how it trapped and held them like a passion. And how, perhaps even without wanting to, they could turn others into prisoners along with them.