Another Life Read online

  Now she didn’t say “mm” but prepared her breakfast with extraordinary care. It was by no means as simple an affair as mine: two slices of bread that I baked myself each Saturday, one with a little cheap Abba fish roe and the other with cheese and plum jelly, which I also made myself every summer on the island of Gotland. Naturally, I ate with the morning paper spread out in front of me, like a map to help me prepare for the day’s activities.

  I loved those mornings. So did my wife. But now we were both in the kitchen at the same time. She was wearing her red robe—the blue one that I thought suited her better was in the wash. She kissed the back of my neck and began the breakfast ceremony.

  First she broke an egg, and let out an exclamation of surprise. The egg—in spite of the fact that it was unusually small—had a double yolk. We normally bought eggs on Gotland from a nearby farm, simply taking as many as we wanted and placing the money in a box. We hardly ever saw anyone.

  We admired the double yolk for a while before it joined two strips of bacon in the frying pan. Then she cut a few slices of a red pepper, one slice of cheese, and a very thin piece of bread, which she placed on a plate next to the hob.

  My father was also fond of very thin slices of bread, and my mother, who took great pleasure in her food, used to tease him. I also teased my wife, because I liked to cut my bread very thick, but she ignored me and began to line up all her vitamins, a number of capsules that were supposed to strengthen her joints. Then she switched on the radio while boiling two gallons of water for her tea.

  This made me think about my friend Odysseas, who was in the habit of taking everything to the extreme. He stayed in my studio for a while with the aim of getting away from Greek food, because he wanted to lose some weight. For a whole month he followed a regime that he claimed had been invented by the Israeli army. He ate nothing but cucumber. However, one day he just couldn’t cope anymore. I caught him red-handed, eating an entire gâteau all by himself hidden behind the bushes on Mariatorget.

  In the evenings we played simple card games that required only luck. He kept on beating me, and boasted, “Good heavens, what a player I am!”

  I said nothing, because what was there to say?

  One Sunday Odysseas came to our house. He wanted to cook dinner for us in order to show off his skills. My wife was perfectly happy with the arrangement; they were both loud and loved their food. They clattered forks and spoons against plates and glasses, stirred the contents of various pans with passion and intensity, and fell on the food when it was ready.

  “Slow down!” I said to Gunilla.

  Odysseas sprang to her defense. “Let the girl enjoy her food, you sadist.”

  He too had been gone for a while. My dead companions were increasing in number.

  As far as my wife was concerned, one thing was certain: I would go first. She is exactly five years and five days younger than me, and much healthier. Seeing her eat made me happy. She had a way of tilting her head to the right—a habit left over from the time when she had long hair—and opening her mouth a fraction earlier than necessary before pushing in the food with an almost sardonic smile on her lips, as if she were saying, “Just you wait.”

  She took half the newspaper as well.

  * * *

  We had been married for forty-six years, but we weren’t a symbiotic couple. We didn’t dream of doing everything together, or at the same time. We both wanted to be independent, and we were. As long as we were working, it wasn’t a problem, nor when Gunilla retired at the age of sixty. I carried on going off to work every morning, and she could have her day exactly as she wished. For seventeen years she had had the entire house and the morning paper to herself.

  Now we were both at home. She was uncomfortable, walking back and forth in the kitchen without looking at me. I felt equally ill at ease. By now I should be sitting at my computer, I should be working.

  Suddenly her cell phone rang. It wasn’t even nine o’clock. Who the hell was calling her at this hour? Had this been going on all along, with the phone ringing as soon as I’d left the house? However, I didn’t say anything; I merely signaled to her that she could take the call in the living room.

  Meanwhile my mind continued to work overtime. She must have been seeing someone else during all those years of running around in forests and on the shore with other lively individuals who had taken early retirement. Not to mention all those meetings, evenings at the theater and the opera, women’s groups. In my youth I had been a real Othello. I had once seen my girlfriend in Athens smile at another man, and I had fainted with the pain.

  That was all over. These days I didn’t even have the energy to faint. One good thing about growing old is that you think more about the future of others than your own. Gunilla was still attractive even though she had turned seventy. That made me happy. It is one of life’s great mysteries that you can like the same face for forty-six years.

  At the same time, I felt as if I was intruding on her private life like an uninvited guest. Fortunately, as I said before, we each had our own room. But I went to my room only to sleep. I didn’t read, write, or smoke in there. I did all of those things in my studio in town. That was where I kept my books, my records, my pipes. My room at home felt alien, joyless and cramped.

  Was I really going to spend my days in this prison?

  Pain pierced my heart.

  What had I done? It was sheer idiocy to leave my nest.

  What was it I missed? Above all my morning walk of about a mile from home to the train station, even if it was sometimes a pain—particularly in the winter. My legs had gotten used to it. As had my soul. I would join up with a neighbor, exchange a few words with a dog owner, especially the very pleasant former bank manager who was out with his little dachshund. She was curious about everything and kept on stopping and sniffing at the ground. “She’s reading the morning paper,” the bank manager said cheerfully. I also met children on their way to school. Some of them saw me as a familiar uncle; they would say hello and we would chat for a while. Two sisters called me “Luther,” according to their mother, who laughed as she told me without explaining the reason behind this nickname. Presumably it was because the girls saw me heading off to work at the same time every morning with my rucksack on my back, and the Swedes talk of “carrying Luther on your back.”

  I kept myself informed about what was going on in the area. Who had bought the latest Volvo model, who was away on vacation, who was replacing the roof, who was thinking of selling their house, and sometimes even the reason why. Divorce and old age were the most common triggers.

  I followed the seasons in the gardens. Spring, summer, fall, and winter. Apple, cherry, and pear blossom. Lilac and bird cherry. The scent of the flowers, the smell of fruit that had fallen from the trees. The changing light. One spring afternoon in 1968 I had walked along this same route with no idea that my life was about to take a different turn.

  The girl who became my wife was waiting for me at the gate of her family home. I was to meet her parents. A few years later we built our house on the plot next door.

  That was the kind of thing that drifted through my mind on the way to the station. Sometimes, during periods of intense work, I took a different route to avoid everyone and everything.

  From Södra station, where I got off the train, I had another walk of just over a mile to my studio. Each day I met the same people. We recognized one another without knowing anything about one another. We exchanged a brief smile, like an affirmation of our pleasure at the fact that we were still alive, and went on our way.

  In the city, simply switching sidewalks was enough to step into a new adventure. There were days, especially in the early spring, when I didn’t want to go straight to work. I would head for the graveyard at Katarina Church instead. Among many others, there lay a man I knew and liked: Johan Bergenstråhle. He had made the film of my novel Foreigners. We wrote the script
together, while one of the liveliest, most imaginative and multitalented individuals I have ever met wandered around the apartment with a glass of wine mixed with water, one ass cheek bare because she had cut a big hole in her jeans. That was Marie-Louise Ekman.

  Johan had died suddenly and relatively young.

  I liked to sit in the graveyard, a little intoxicated by the spring and by death and by all those diffuse feelings and thoughts, utterly convinced that everything had a meaning even though I was unable to write it down.

  By the time I reached my studio, I was already sated with life. I don’t know how else to express it. I needed nothing more. Or whatever I might need, I could find it in my writing.

  Those were my thoughts as I sat down at the computer in my room at home. I couldn’t settle. I had ants in my pants, as they say. Instead of writing, I picked up an old Gotland newspaper and came across a couple of words I hadn’t seen before: ostor—unbig!—and fingå—to go for a fine walk. A wave of happiness swept over me. Some words are irresistible. You have to taste them right away.

  “I’m going out for a fine walk in this unbig sun,” I called out to my wife. She was absorbed in her emails and didn’t hear me.

  Out in the street I wasn’t sure what to do. Where should I go now that I didn’t have to catch the train? Should I wander around aimlessly? And if I wasn’t writing anymore, what should I think about?

  I strolled along for a while with an empty mind, but I was soon joined by my friend Kostas. He used to be my shield, and now he was dead.

  He was the one who protected me when we demonstrated against the junta in Greece, in both Sweden and Iceland, where the police officers were tall, strong, and ready for a fight. He took many a blow, but I didn’t. Kostas, who used to be a builder’s laborer and had a back like a barn door, always positioned himself in front of me, like a wall. He was always ahead of me, always first.

  He left in the same way. First. A serious illness took its toll on him and he refused to tolerate it. Death would not humiliate him. I imagine he died alone in his sickroom at three o’clock in the morning. We remained behind to remember him.

  By now I had strayed far from my local area and had ended up in a place that had been a small village a hundred years or so ago. There were a few buildings left from those days, and plenty of new houses with expensive cars parked outside. There was also a ruin; the council had put up a sign in front of it. These tumbledown walls had been the village school. However, it was not this information that moved me so much, but the fact that the path leading to the ruin had its own sign: THE OLD SCHOOL TRACK. It took my breath away for a moment.

  I followed it through open fields and meadows until it disappeared into the forest like a frightened snake. This track had been created by children’s footsteps. No one drove them to school back then. They had to get there under their own steam six times a week, on sunny or overcast days, in the rain and the wind and the cold. Week after week. Year after year. Back and forth.

  These were the children who would one day transform Sweden from an almost feudal society into Social Democracy’s modern welfare state.

  Their track was still here.

  * * *

  What would those early Social Democrats say about the refugee crisis? I wondered. Society was divided. Some people wanted nothing to do with the refugees. Others thought that Sweden ought to uphold the rights of asylum seekers without reservation. I thought so too. But the stream of refugees kept on coming. One hundred and sixty thousand people sought asylum within a very short period. The authorities concerned couldn’t cope, because their hands were tied by outdated rules and regulations aimed at making life easier for the officials rather than addressing the needs of the refugees. Panic wasn’t far away. At that point the Social Democratic government decided to close the border, more or less. The move was described as unavoidable.

  I didn’t share this view, and I said so. Partly because human rights cannot be negotiable on a case-by-case basis, and partly because in the near future Sweden would need these people in order to maintain a healthy demographic balance and a functioning employment market.

  My words did not fall on fertile ground.

  I had already raised my head above the parapet on a previous occasion. After the terrible attack on the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, a debate on the freedom of expression blew up. Sweden’s traditions in this area are formidable. The prevailing view was that there should be no boundaries when it came to what a person could say, as long as there was no harassment of particular ethnic or religious groups.

  Voltaire was quoted over and over again. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” I don’t know if Voltaire had said this before or after the cheese, but I’m sure he didn’t mean it in the way in which it is often interpreted—namely, as the right to offend.

  I was tormented. For a start, I don’t believe that all statements are “opinions.” For example, it is not an opinion if you say that all Greeks are lazy, or that Jews are subhuman. It is an exhortation to treat these people differently from others, and not just the people but also their faith, their beliefs, their system of values, their standards, their aesthetics, their way of life. It involves assuming the authority to attack these people’s right to exist. That’s how Nazism began. The Jews became subhuman, their existence was compromised to the point where there appeared to be no other solution but to eliminate them.

  Boundless freedom of expression was also about both resources and power. If you were outside the mass media system, you had virtually no opportunity to express yourself.

  It is one thing to comment on general matters and quite another to comment on your neighbors. All freedoms have a natural limit: the other person. Whatever you do, whatever you say must take into account the other person’s existence. You can ignore this, of course, but there are consequences. Bitterness, hatred, and terrorism arise, even out-and-out war. And by that stage hiding behind Voltaire is of no help at all.

  If we want to understand each other, we must first accept that the other person exists, and may have different principles. Only in equal relationships can there be genuine understanding, mutual obligations and rights. When I was a high school student in Athens, we read a famous account of a quarrel between the leaders of ancient Athens and Sparta. The latter became angry and raised his hand to deliver a blow, but the Athenian said calmly, “Strike me, but listen first!” That was what happened, and the Athenian won the argument.

  It was time to listen to what the weak in society had to say.

  No one stops being a Christian because Christ is mocked. No one stops being a Muslim because Muhammad is mocked. Quite the reverse, in fact. The Christians become more Christian, the Muslims more Muslim.

  Almost everyone grasped these simple points, apart from a number of editors, journalists, and artists. They believed they were entitled to a freedom with no boundaries, they defended their sacred and exclusive right to despise, insult, and make fun of others and their beliefs. They behaved like drill sergeants toward people who were not under their command.

  I became more and more infuriated by this arrogance.

  It is said that only man can commit suicide. There is one exception: the scorpion. I have seen them with my own eyes in my Greek village. When they are caught in a grass fire, they search for a way out. When they realize there is no escape, they calm down and sting themselves to death before the fire reaches them.

  Certain democratic freedoms resemble scorpions in that they can destroy themselves. It is possible to introduce tyranny or a dictatorship by democratic means. In a democratic election it is possible to vote in a party whose aim is to bring down democracy. It is possible to strangle freedom of expression with the help of freedom of expression. We have the freedom to put forward opinions aimed at totally or partly strangling the opinions of others.

  This
situation is not news to anyone. It is usually referred to as “the dilemma of democracy.” The tragic events in Paris were largely interpreted as an attack on the freedom of expression and opinion.

  Regardless of whether this view is correct—personally, I don’t agree—it may be appropriate to discuss the extent of these freedoms. There could well be values that are greater, such as peace, dialogue between different cultures and people, or the equal value of people.

  Freedom of opinion is a typical scorpion idea when it also allows the view that it should be forbidden. An individual or an organization has the right to express this, to hand out leaflets, to organize meetings, sometimes to give its opponents a bloody nose, at which point they can be condemned for the violence, but not for the opinion.

  Society does not want to and cannot forbid opinions, but it does want to and can forbid actions, or so they say. A clear line is drawn between opinions and actions according to the traditional dualism and the difference between body and soul.

  Opinions are somehow seen as having a presence which is not physical. In that way they are unreal. They occur within time and space without actually existing. Words are compressed air. There is nothing there to grab hold of.

  If you move a chair in the dining room, you can see the change, even if no one mentions it. Something has happened. Actions, unlike opinions, have a physical reality.

  I wonder if we’re getting it wrong here.

  My maternal grandmother was not a philosopher, and she used to say that “words have no bones, but they can break bones.” She knew what we all know: a word can cause more pain, more damage than the sharpest knife. As far as she was concerned, saying something and doing something were exactly the same.