“I’m tired of this! I’m tired of having the whole village peeking around the corner. I’m tired of people grinning whenever I step out the front gate. I’m tired of people clustering together and whispering as soon as they see my bike on the road. I’m tired of being the forester’s whore!”
“Alice, has someone said that?”
“And you! You’re so stupid, you can’t see anything. If you were the least bit concerned about me you wouldn’t let me go through this! But you don’t give me the respect of a scroungy dog … you … you … you!”
By then the forester had wrapped his arms around her head. She had his shirt-sleeve in her mouth and once the words stopped coming she found herself frantically tired. And in that state she allowed herself to be led into his room. She lay on his bed, stroking the flowered bedspread with her fingers. It was raining outside. The running water blurred the windowpanes. Outside in the bower the rain was probably ruining her cakes, overflowing the cups and the cream dish, but she couldn’t bring herself to go down there. Instead she just lay on the bed listening to the forester, who had moved to his desk and sat fiddling with a pocket-knife.
He was telling her that of course he understood everything. He knew very well what it meant in a little hick town like this when people began to gossip about a married woman and another man. But really, it had only been that thing with the scarf that was stupid. He admitted it. Perhaps that could be thought of as proof of something. But otherwise hadn’t they always been careful? Had she ever been in his room when her husband returned from school? Had he ever so much as touched her when someone else was around? Had they ever been seen together on the road or in the park? And hadn’t they been very careful about their meetings? Think how she would mention to her husband that the forester was expected to be out in the woods the whole next day, and then how she would stand there in the kitchen the evening before, preparing his lunch to put all suspicions to rest. Hadn’t he always left the house early on those mornings, biding his time in the woods until he was sure that school had begun? Only then would he make his way back as discreetly as possible, always along the back roads and hidden paths, ready at any moment to dive into a nearby bush at the slightest hint of a sound.
“You seem to forget that Arne came home today,” said Alice. “We could just as well have been in your room then.”
“Arne came home,” he repeated calmly. “Maybe he saw the scarf on the hat shelf, wondered where it came from, drew his own conclusions. It must have put him at ease when he snuck up only to find us having coffee in the bower.”
“And Mrs. Mattsson,” said Alice. “What about her? It never occurred to her to use our yard as a shortcut before, and she’s been passing by here all her life.”
“Mrs. Mattsson,” the forester echoed. He began carving a ruler with his knife. “She probably passed Arne in the woods and got curious.”
“How could you be dumb enough to call out to me like that when you knew she was here!”
“I thought she was gone. Besides, there’s nothing strange about me calling out to you. I’ve been living here quite some time.”
“But you swore at me! And men only do that to their mistresses.”
“Alright, I’ve been a little careless,” said the forester calmly as he tried to look out through the tear-blinded window. “I admit it. Maybe we’ve both been a little careless. You didn’t have to wear my scarf into the store. But listen. There’s nothing that can’t be fixed — not even carelessness. You fix that by being twice as careful as before. We’re going to be so cautious that everyone will feel stupid about their suspicions. If we’ve ever looked at each other when we’re having our coffee at night with Arne, then from now on we’ll never give each other as much as another sidelong glance. Do you think you can control your eyes?”
“If you can, I can,” said Alice. Suddenly she felt very tired. She watched the rain as it ran down the window. A butcher’s shop window, she thought and laughed a little — just a small laugh, barely noticeable. Not that the forester noticed it anyway. He was busy unzipping his tobacco pouch. He took out a small pinch and crumpled it to separate the leaves.
“We’ll be polite to each other,” he said. “But no more. Definitely no more.”
“Definitely not,” she said. “Definitely not. Definitely not.”
The forester was surprised to hear her say it a third time. Sometimes she would tease him with her goddamned superiority by repeating his words in her voice, but with his tone. It was like looking at yourself in a broken mirror. “How long are you going to keep that up?” he would ask her. “As long as I damn well please,” was her usual reply. And she would damn well please for a very long while until at last he threw her violently to the bed, her lips, like charged magnets, dragging his own helplessly toward them.
The rain poured and poured. The forester had just lit his pipe and was drawing smoke in through his childishly rounded lips. On his desk ticked an alarm clock which usually rang at one in the afternoon when the blinds were drawn. “Definitely not,” thought Alice, though she couldn’t remember why. The forester took the pipe from his mouth.
“The trick is simply to wait,” he said, fingering its stem. “Do you think you can learn to wait?”
“For what?”
“For the right moment. Isn’t Arne going on some school trip?”
“June sixth,” said Alice. She was now sitting on the edge of the bed, looking out at the sky, which had begun to clear over the yard. Her eyes were fixed in the middle of a cloud, beyond the forester’s head. He had to stand up to compete for her attention. He paced back and forth in the room, each time stepping barely to the side for her feet, but never touching her.
“Two weeks,” he said, stopping in front of the window. “Can you wait that long?”
She was looking at his back as he said this. “Shake just a little,” she prayed. But the forester’s back was completely still. She rose from the bed and moved across the silent carpet toward the door, looking back over her shoulder to see if the mute back would notice her. But it was blind and noticed nothing.
Yet when her own back brushed against the door, the forester stirred and turned slowly. He sat back on the window sill.
“Alright,” he said. “For two weeks we’ll forget about each other. Do you think you can manage?”
But Alice didn’t exactly respond as he’d expected. Curtseying in the doorway with grace and mockery, she said, “Until we meet again, Herr Forester.”
When he was alone, the forester sat down again at his desk and began to leaf through a book about hunting. He decided to go out on a night hunt, so he wound up the alarm clock and set it for midnight. Then he stole to the door and turned the key. In one of his desk drawers was a small bottle of brandy, something he saved for special occasions, to help stiffen his resolve in difficult times. He took a glass down from the shelf and poured a little, very little, into it. He poured the exact amount that a man of character would pour. Holding the glass up to the light, he was pleased with himself that he had poured such a moderate amount. Then he tossed it back in one painful gulp. He poured out the same amount a few times more, and each time he was equally pleased by the strength of his character.
All at once the sun appeared and struck him in the eyes. As he leaned over the desk to pull the blinds down, he saw Alice coming out of the bower toward the house. She was carrying the remains of their interrupted meal on a red tray, which cast a friendly reflection on the grass where she was walking. Her shoulders looked tired and she appeared to be leaning on the tray for support, bearing her fatigue and the beginnings of despair before her as she kept her eyes desperately fixed on the tray, trying to keep it all from tumbling out of her grasp. As he saw her there, the forester was moved by a sudden feeling of tenderness for the teacher’s wife. Leaning over the desk, following her quiet path to the house with his eyes, he felt the pleasure of this tenderness awaken in his body.