The Woman from Bratislava (3 page)

The leader of the delegation, Klaus Brandt by name, chivvied
us about as if we were a bunch of schoolkids on a class outing. He told us off if we were late for the bus and looked aggrieved if we did not go into raptures over his meticulously planned
schedule
. He had a way of looking like a mother who is not angry, but disappointed, if we skived off a meeting at which some
bureaucrat
was to deliver yet another deadly dull speech. As Lasse and I in fact did one afternoon, opting instead to take a walk around the city, past the monument to the gallant Polish soldier, through the streets and down to the Old Town, rather than having to hear about the in-fighting within the Polish government. The
ochre-coloured
buildings of the Old Town – which was in fact brand new, having been totally rebuilt after the war, and ought therefore to have been called the New Old Town – were bathed in sunlight and looked quite charming. Lots of pedestrians were unbuttoning their coats and doing as all we northeners do in the early days of spring: lifting their faces to the blessed sun.

We ate a hearty lunch at a small restaurant. That meal would have cost a Polish academic a day’s wages, but we consumed our roast wild boar with great relish and not a twinge of guilt; we drank Californian wine with the food and Czech Becherovka with the strong coffee, and I was smitten by Lasse’s sincere delight that everything had gone so well ten years earlier. That for the first time in history the Poles had the chance to be the masters of their own destiny. All of a sudden in 1989 a cat-flap had been opened and the Poles had realised, along with everyone else east of the
disarmed
Iron Curtain, that they had to seize this opportunity. Lasse had never flirted with socialism or Marxism. He had studied his Stalin too well for that. It had immunised him against any belief in a Utopia. And a year on a student exchange to the University of Moscow had dispelled any illusions regarding the possible
blessings
of the so-called Really Existing Socialism. Not that I had cherished any such illusions either, but I had leaned more to the Left in the seventies. It had simply been easier, even though I too had done my obligatory year in Moscow, living and working in
conditions that would have caused any Danish student to rebel. But in the long-ago seventies it had been less trouble just to go with the flow. Those years had not been so easy for Lasse. As a conservative he had found himself pushed out onto the sidelines and had for a spell been faced with half-empty classrooms when he was boycotted for having said in a newspaper interview that basically there was no difference between the aesthetics of
communism
and of Nazism. Such statements did not go unpunished twenty years ago. Now he was a highly respected lecturer and students were queueing up to have him as their guidance tutor. He was that rarity in the academic world: an honourable man with no hidden agenda. Unlike the rest of us, he did not need to keep getting his name on this and that scholarly article as a way of masking idleness and intellectual burnout. For many years I thought it was all an act, that he had chosen to play a part, but I had come to see that he was that most uncommon of creatures, a good person. I cherished him as my friend.

We ordered another round of Becherovka and coffee, savoured the cinnamon scented liqueur. There were not many people in the restaurant. The tourist season had not yet started, and the Poles could not afford it. Brisk little waitresses flitted about, sweeping crumbs off the blue-checked tablecloths. The place was redolent of the spirit of Central Europe, that and red cabbage. I leaned across the table and eyed my friend. Lasse wore his years well. He was tall, with a slight stoop, and as always he was wearing his drab grey tweed jacket. He had fine-drawn features and a full head of hair. Only now it was grey. He wore narrow-framed glasses and had a rather feminine mouth, wide and soft-looking. His teeth were very white. I lit a cigarette:

‘Shouldn’t you be giving that up,’ he remarked placidly.

‘Yes,’ I said, blowing smoke in his face and making him waft the air impatiently with slender hands marked by the first liver spots.

‘Why did you really come on this trip?’ I asked.

‘I had some time to spare. And I wanted to see how things had
been going here. Take my nose out of the archives. Look at real life instead of the relics of the past. Broaden my empirical horizons. Anyway, Lisbeth’s in New York.’

Lisbeth worked within the broad field of IT. It was a gold mine. She had originally trained as a teacher, but the world of computers had got to her, rather like one of the viruses she was so skilled in combatting. For people like Lisbeth the advent of the new
millenium
was a licence to print money. IT specialists are the
crusaders
of our day, travelling the world, ridding worried businesses of heathen foes, real or imaginary, known as computer viruses. She earned at least twice as much as Lasse. Not even that seemed to bother him, I thought peevishly.

‘So – what have your archive-weary eyes observed?’ I asked.

‘Well, most of it’s positive. It’s very healthy to come to a country like Poland. People’s hands don’t shake here when they talk about democracy and freedom. They’re just so happy to have these things. It’s quite ridiculous, really. I mean we’re all free. That goes without saying, right. But not here. Here they don’t take it for granted.’

‘Not yet maybe, but they will.’

‘With any luck. That’s what it’s all about, after all,’ he said and took a sip of his Becherovka.

‘In any case, this is excellent, and I get to spend time with you,’ he said.

‘Daddy won’t be pleased,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well. That’s his problem. We’re grown men, aren’t we?’

‘Well, you are at any rate.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean, Teddy?’

I drew on my cigarette, considered him for a moment.

‘How many women have you actually slept with in your life?’ I asked.

Lasse stared at me in amazement. When he was baffled a
horizontal
crease appeared between his eyes. He must have gone through life in a constant state of bafflement because the crease
was now permanent, merely deepening when something took him by surprise.

‘That’s an odd question, I must say,’ he replied. ‘How many have you slept with?’

‘Other than my three wives I haven’t really kept score.’

‘And you’re proud of that? Sort of like a big-game hunter?’

‘Not really. It’s just that my dick has always been one step ahead of my brain,’ I said, making him smile. Then he grew serious.

‘Seven,’ he said.

‘You know the exact number?’

‘I remember every one of them. You don’t remember all of yours. What’s better? One unique experience or loads of
superficial
ones?’

‘Point taken, Lasse. I’m just amazed by you and Lisbeth. Your fidelity to one another. Over twenty-five years with the same woman. How the hell do you keep the spark alive? Can you really manage to keep your eyes off Lena’s tits? Never imagine her lying starkers on your big hotel bed?’

‘Numbers six and seven were after Lisbeth.’

Now it was my turn to be surprised.

‘Does she know?’

‘She knows about number seven. That lasted some months. Number six was just a one-off,’ he said quietly and drank his coffee, as if we were simply discussing how many millions Stalin had left to starve to death.

‘When was this?’

‘Fifteen years ago.’

‘And afterwards?’

He regarded me with his soft, brown eyes:

‘We never spoke of it again. And I made a decision. It was either Lisbeth and our kids or the other woman, or women. And I’ve never regretted the choice I made,’ he said.

‘Sounds like a pretty simple choice to me.’

‘Nobody says it was easy.’

‘You make it sound as though it was an existential choice,’ I said.

‘Spare me the sarcasm. It was not an easy decision to make, but I’ve never looked back. Maybe my sex-drive just isn’t that great.’

‘I never noticed a blind thing.’

‘Ah, well,’ he said with that soft smile that made his Ph.D.
students
go weak at the knees with gratitude. ‘I’m not as much of a talker as you. You could always smooth-talk your way to good grades, and into girls’ beds. I don’t have your gift of the gab.’

‘I wonder if Majken knew,’ I said, more to myself.

‘I think it was her who told Lisbeth.’

‘Bloody women, always sticking together.’

‘It all turned out okay, Teddy,’ was all he said.

‘What about Lisbeth?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Has she ever …’

‘Ever cheated on me? Is that what you’re asking?’

He was getting a little rankled, I could tell. We were friends and we talked about all sorts of things, but here I seemed to be getting a little too personal.

‘I don’t know. I’ve never asked her. I have no reason to.’

I stubbed out my cigarette, lit another and, wise man that he was, he asked:

‘I don’t suppose all of this could have anything to do with the fact that yet another marriage is on the rocks?’

‘I don’t have anything going on the side,’ I said.

‘Well, you usually do, but I’m not going to get into that,’ he said. ‘There are two sides to every story, you know.’

The other side in this case being that of my present wife, Janne. She was an assistant lecturer at the Institute and I had fallen head over heels in love with her five years earlier, when she started as a Ph.D. student and I was growing tired of living alone. She had been married at the time, only in her early thirties; she left her husband and brought two small children into my life from that first
marriage
. It had not exactly been plain sailing. I felt I had had my share
of small children. They took over the whole flat. They robbed me of my freedom, but if I wanted her I had to take her offspring too. And I was in love. Or at least: in love with the thought of being in love again. Of experiencing the grand passion. Although it was probably also a symptom of a midlife crisis. It’s not easy when the magic five-oh is looming on the horizon. Part of me did still love her, of course, but there was no passion to speak of. Our days
followed
a routine pattern punctuated by fights and icy silences. So it had actually been good to get away on this trip, even though Janne had gone on about the kids and who was supposed to see to them? And how she always got stuck with all the household chores. She had her work too. I had expected her to complain. But I had not expected her to give in so quickly, saying only that she supposed I’d better go then. I immediately began to wonder whether she had met someone else. To be honest I couldn’t have blamed her. Our marriage, if you could call it that, was stuck in a rut.

‘Did you hear what I said, Teddy?’ Lasse asked.

‘I don’t know whether it’s going to last between Janne and me,’ was all I said, and I could see that this did not surprise him. It was no secret between us that Janne and Lisbeth did not get on well. They were civil to one another, but no more than that. My
previous
wife, Majken, and Lisbeth were the same age and still saw a lot of one another. They were friends. My first wife and I had been teenage sweethearts, we married in order to get a flat. Five years and two children later it was over. Our divorce had been a relatively painless, amicable affair. These days we could run into one another, pass the time of day, without feeling any emotion, great or small. I think we both wonder what we saw in the other. The children had been a bond of sorts between us. Now they were grown up, married themselves, had provided us with grandchildren whom we saw separately. We very rarely met. Majken and I were married for almost twelve years, but the divorce was a nasty business. She had had one child from her first marriage and together we had three in rapid succession before it all fell apart. I cheated on her
and she eventually found out. Both she and the children went
ballistic
and I don’t think any of them has ever really forgiven me. We imagine that we live in an age when our hearts cannot be broken, but betrayal and broken promises hurt as much as they ever did. Our youngest was eighteen now, we could have a polite
conversation
, but I was still not very popular. What annoyed me most was that it bothered me and affected me more than I was prepared to admit. Majken had remarried. She had had another child, late on. Her new husband already had two of his own. Just as well Majken was a mathematician. Because it took a mathematician’s brain and methodical mindset as well as a hefty diary to keep track of all the birthdays, the Christmas and New Year holidays, when you had to allow not only for your own offspring but also for all the various step-children. We belonged to a generation which had not gone through life quietly and unremarked. To be honest I don’t think we had ever thought about anybody but ourselves.

‘Do you even want it to last?’ Lasse asked.

‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘But let’s talk about something sensible, like Poland or NATO…’

He laughed.

‘You started it. Lunch is on me, seeing as you’re paying all that child maintenance.’

‘Thank heavens my own two are over eighteen now,’ I mumbled morosely and we both laughed again, possibly as a way of covering up a growing awkwardness, and I felt better.

We strolled along the narrow streets like two gentlemen, coats open and arms swinging. All we needed was a couple of top hats and somebody to tip them at and we could have been in a
Hollywood
musical. Horses’ hooves clip-clopped over the cobbles, but as yet there were few passengers behind the drivers in the
carriages
they drew. Down by the old Town Hall, where a hot-dog stall emblazoned with the evocative name ‘Dania’ struck a strangely tasteless note, Lasse suddenly stopped short and put a hand on my arm.

‘Don’t look now. Remember the old days in Moscow …’

I knew what he was getting at. I bent down, pretended to be tying my shoelaces. I glanced back. There were about a dozen people behind me.

‘There’s a woman, d’you see her?’ Lasse said. ‘Blue coat,
chest-nut-brown
hair, sensible shoes. Good-looking woman in her early sixties. Maybe a bit younger. Well-preserved, but still …’