The others had already filled their plates by the time he was finished and stepped into the room where the food was laid out. About thirty people were there, those involved in arranging the evening and specially invited guests. Everyone was already in high spirits.
He noticed her immediately. A perfect work of art among a pile of rejected sketches.
‘Come and sit with us, Axel, we’ve saved you a seat.’
It was Torgny calling to him, a bit louder than necessary. He had always been keen on pointing out how well they knew each other, forcing his way in and taking advantage of the spotlight. The woman was sitting next to him, and the chair he was pointing to was facing her. Axel went over to the buffet and took a glass of red wine. His curiosity was aroused in a way that felt unfamiliar.
‘Axel, bring a bottle with you, we need a refill.’
The request was so loud that all conversation stopped, but when nothing more of interest occurred the chatter resumed. Axel took a bottle of red and went over to the place Torgny had saved for him. He tried to act less interested than he was. But a true aesthete could not ignore her beauty. She was staring at him intently, and his eyes swept past hers not daring to stop. Torgny grabbed the wine and filled their glasses.
‘Axel, this is Halina. She’s here with me but she didn’t want to come backstage to say hello before we started. She’s a bit shy that way.’
Torgny grinned.
‘I just didn’t want to bother you.’ She reached her hand across the table. ‘Halina.’
Axel took her hand. It was cool and dry and he felt that it might break if he squeezed too hard.
‘Axel.’
She gave him a little smile then lit a cigarette. He couldn’t help it, her touch had affected him. Shy as a schoolboy he sat down on the chair and tried to direct his attention elsewhere. His reaction surprised him; at forty-eight he thought that sort of response had been lost. So many years had passed since he’d last felt it.
Torgny babbled on. For once his torrent of words was welcome. Axel exchanged a few words with a man from the city’s bookshop, the whole time uncomfortably aware of her presence. Glasses were filled and emptied and the noise increased, chairs scraping on the marble floor as people moved around and changed places. Torgny stood up to get more food and fell into a conversation by the buffet table. She was the one who spoke.
‘We’ve met before. Do you remember?’
Axel was taken aback.
‘Really? I can’t believe I’d forget.’
The wine had given him courage. Her eyes were dark brown, her face framed by curly dark-brown hair. She was wearing an embroidered green jumper, and he had noticed straightaway that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her make-up was subtle, if she was wearing any at all, and on her left wrist she wore some thin silver bangles that clinked when she moved.
‘It was only a brief meeting, not particularly special, so it’s no wonder you don’t remember. At a writers’ demonstration in ’69.’
He certainly hadn’t forgotten the event, but he didn’t remember their meeting. In protest against the low payment they received for books borrowed from the libraries, the writers had gathered at the main branches of libraries in Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö and Umeå. Together with sympathetic librarians they had emptied the shelves and driven off the books in buses, and hadn’t returned them until a week later. He had felt invigorated, taken back to his working-class roots.
‘So you’re a writer too?’
She smiled and fingered her glass.
‘I do the best I can, but I haven’t had anything published yet. I’m struggling. What I’m working on feels like it could turn into something, but right now I’m stuck.’
Her voice was as pleasant as her appearance. Despite her foreign name he could hear no accent. Her fingers slid along the stem of the wine glass, and he couldn’t stop following the movement with his eyes. He wanted to reach out his hand and touch her again, see whether her skin was as soft as it looked. It was so long since he had felt the nearness of a woman. Sometimes he would ejaculate in his sleep. Like a teenage boy. The body’s desperate self-regulation when nothing else was available.
‘Since you’re the “master of good and evil”, I have to ask you something.’
‘Those are your words, remember.’
‘But that’s what people say about you.’
‘Oh, that’s something altogether different. But go ahead and ask, and I’ll do what I can.’
Suddenly she was eager. She stubbed out her cigarette and took a pen out of her handbag, looked for something to write on and pulled over an unused paper napkin. She drew two parallel lines across it and then drew small wavy lines between them.
‘This is a river full of crocodiles. No one can get across without a boat.’
She drew a square on one side of the river.
‘Per lives here. He loves Eva who lives on the other side of the river and Eva loves him. One day Per comes down with a serious illness and he rings Eva and asks her to come and help him. He explains how sick he is and asks her to hurry. But Eva has no boat, so she runs over to Erik, who lives on her side of the river and has a boat. She explains the situation and asks him to lend her the boat so she can row across and help Per.’
Axel was following her words with interest and looking at the little map taking shape on the napkin.
‘But Erik refuses to help Eva for free. He says that she has to have sex with him first, then he’ll row her over to the other side of the river.’
Axel raised his eyes and looked at her face, following the movement of her lips as she went on with her story.
‘Eva, of course, is broken-hearted, so she goes to Olof, who lives here…’
He forced himself to look at the napkin, where she drew another square between Eva’s and Erik’s houses.
‘… and tells him what Erik said. She asks him to come with her and talk some sense into Erik. But Olof doesn’t want to get involved and asks her to leave. So Eva sees no alternative but to do as Erik wants, and even though he’s a disgusting old man she goes there and has sex with him. Then he rows her across the river.’
Torgny came back and leaned across the table to look at the napkin.
‘Are you telling that one again?’
‘Don’t bother me, go away.’ Halina shooed him off.
Torgny sighed and left, stumbling a little as he went.
Halina continued filling in details on the napkin. Axel preferred looking at her rather than her drawing.
‘Is this the plot of the book you’re writing?’
‘No, it’s a moral dilemma. Shhh. Eva finally arrives at Per’s house and tells him what’s happened. Per is furious that Eva had sex with Erik and throws her out. Eva then goes to Sven and tells him that she was forced to have sex with Erik so she could help Per, who then threw her out. Sven flies into a rage and goes to Per and beats him up.’
Halina looked up.
‘Are you following this?’
‘I think so. People seem to be on neighbourly terms in this town.’
She put down the pen and took out a cigarette, lit it, and blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth.
‘What I want to know is which of them was most in the wrong. Grade them from one to five, with the one who was most in the wrong a five.’
‘Am I supposed to decide?’
‘Not decide. Just tell me what you think. This should be a topic that appeals to you.’
‘I generally focus on asking interesting questions rather than answering them.’
‘But you must have an opinion, don’t you? Here’s a taste of your own medicine.’
He pulled over the napkin and looked at her drawing. She had even drawn in a little crocodile, on the riverbank next to Erik’s house. He glanced up again and could see her nipples under her jumper.