“Okay,” she said. “We’ll sell our shares, rent out the house, prepare Evita for a long-distance trip, and set off.”
He stared at her. He could hardly believe his ears.
“We’ll be able to scrape together a decent amount, especially now when it looks as if the Hausmann deal will go through. I don’t need any of this,” she continued and made a sweeping gesture.
“Then what is it you want?” he whispered.
“Don’t you think I have dreams too? I have been struggling like an animal to build up our life, you know that. We have done it together so I’m not complaining. I saw it as our project. Now you’re getting off because Laura…”
“This isn’t just about her. We aren’t really living. All our so-called friends at all our respective dinner parties whine about not having enough time and that they should really devote themselves to living instead.”
With each word he raised his voice. By the end he was snarling.
“Look around you! No one we see lives a dignified life. I don’t want to be like this anymore.”
“I’m not letting you go,” Jessica said calmly. “Not to a completely deranged lunatic. I care about you more than that.”
It wasn’t her self-possession that frightened him but the very fact that she was speaking to him.
“She’s not crazy.”
Stig sank down onto the bed. He felt Jessica’s gaze on the back of his neck. It felt as if a giant glacier was forming in his insides and freezing his internal functions.
Jessica inched herself closer and put her hand on his shoulder. He flinched and became terrified that she was going to hug him. But instead she stood up, crawled clumsily out of the bed, and left the room.
He heard her in the living room. It sounded as if she was moving objects around, picking up.
“Come out here and look,” she called out, but he did not stir from his spot, disturbed by her calm. It would have been easier if she had screamed and yelled.
The sound of her bare feet on the floor as she approached the bedroom reminded him of their Åland vacation the first summer they had spent together.
She appeared in the doorway.
“Come,” she said and vanished again.
He got to his feet and followed her. She had placed herself at the window. The Italian glass vase that they had bought in London, the eighteenth-century goblet they had bought at an auction in Helsinki- a real find-were both placed on the couch, and several paintings were leaning against the back of it.
He looked bewildered around the room.
“These are worth at least four hundred thousand, perhaps half a million. You know what we paid for Liljefors alone.”
“Take it,” he said. “I don’t want anything.”
He stared at a grotesque painting by Lindström. A distorted face in red and yellow with thick layers of paint. He hated it.
“We’ll sell this,” she said.
“But you love the paintings.”
She shook her head.
“We’ll sell them and start over. I want to. Do you remember what we talked about in the cottage at Kökar?”
Something in her voice made him look at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. Maybe it was because Jessica was also thinking about that summer. Afterward they seemed like the happiest weeks of his life.
“We can sail there,” she said.
She’s tricking me, he thought, but there was nothing of the calculating expression in her light face that he recognized so well from when she wanted to tempt him into an argument from which she would emerge the victor. There was no aggression, but also no submissive pleading. It was as if her features were smoothed out, milder. She suddenly resembled a young girl, unscathed by years of tiring fights.
“Do you really want that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Why this turnaround? All this,” he said and held out his arm, “that was so important.”
“I have also been thinking,” was the only explanation she gave him.
He tried to evaluate her metamorphosis. Jessica was not the one who threw out claims without first having worked them out carefully. The fact that the old Jessica never bared herself in this way convinced him she was being genuine, and he was suddenly touched by her courage. He knew what it must have cost her in self-esteem and pride.
“I need a beer,” he said and went to the kitchen.
He took down the bottle opener that was hanging above the counter but dropped it into the sink. It hit a glass that broke. It was not a valuable glass but the sight of the shards made him cry. He leaned his forehead against the cupboard and tried to be clear about what was happening. Jessica’s suggestion of leaving the company and setting out on the boat was too big. Even his own wild plans seemed harmless in comparison with a life reorganization on that scale. What had she been thinking? It remained a riddle to him.
He picked up the opener and managed to get the bottle cap off, took a few sips, and then went back to the living room where Jessica was waiting in the same position as when he had left.
“Why?” he asked again.
“Because I love you,” she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“And you tell me this now? First now, after years of coldness? You mentioned Åland but do you remember what that was like? How we made love and talked. Talked! About everything and nothing. Do you remember the old graveyard with the crosses that stood piled up against the wall? The scent of thyme from the sand dunes and tar from the church roof?”
“Of course,” Jessica said.
“How moved we were by the simple crosses and the inscriptions. You said something about that fisherman’s wife.”
She nodded. Stig couldn’t continue.
“Of course I remember,” she said. “That’s why I want to go back there. Maybe we’ll recapture that feeling and find our way back to those words.”
He looked dumbfounded at her. She was crying. He saw that she didn’t want to, but she couldn’t stop the tears.
“Jessica,” he whispered, paralyzed by a mixture of guilt, bitterness, and tenderness.
Lindström’s grotesque face on the couch grimaced at him. The anxiety communicated by the picture became his own and suddenly it struck him that he never wanted to sell it.
Jessica advanced several steps. Stig fled to the bathroom.
Jessica had scrubbed it. It smelled of lemon. He stood in front of the mirror and for several minutes he studied his image. His anxiety felt like a pole thrust into his stomach. He knew he had to make a decision. A decision that would influence the rest of his life.
He took off his clothes. The overalls and the shirt landed in a heap at his feet. He pulled off his socks and his underpants.
“Who is Stig Franklin?” he asked the mirror.
He heard Jessica walk past, how she put on the kettle for tea and took milk out of the refrigerator. He sank down onto the toilet lid and held his head in his hands.
“How is it going?” Jessica asked through the door.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he said.
“Would you like some tea?”
“No thank you,” he replied and stepped into the shower stall.
When he stepped out of the shower a quarter of an hour later there was a suitcase in the hall.
Jessica was sitting in the living room with a cup of tea and a few rusks.
“Have you packed?”
“Only the essentials,” she said, picking up a rusk. She spread marmalade on it, looked at him, and smiled.
Stig had only slipped on a bathrobe and regretted that he had not dressed properly. Now it seemed like she was the one who was leaving him and not the other way around. First she was going to drink a cup of tea, then stand up, take her bag with “the essentials”-whatever that was-and leave the house.
He walked to the bedroom and quickly pulled on a pair of pants and a shirt. When he returned she had finished her tea.
“I want you to unpack,” he said.