The autumn passed, the days rambled by, the hours moving more quickly now that Ester Nilsson had given up hope again. Since the screening of the documentary there had been silence.

A few days before Christmas she went to a party, a big occasion to which everyone who had commented publicly on the cultural climate of the land was invited. She was idly stirring the almonds and raisins served with the glögg when she saw him standing over by the wall, without company. It had not occurred to her that he might have been invited — it was mainly journalists, academics and writers. He met her gaze and held it.

The floor space was crowded for they were many, the commentators on the society in which they lived, a multitude of like-minded anticonformists, most of them on their way to a more exciting party somewhere else. People came and joined him and exchanged a few words with him before sliding on to the next conversation. Ester tried to be discreet in her attention but noted that he was as aware of her position in the room as she was of his. Not wanting to let this show made him look shifty, his eyes never still.

It was one of those parties where you were expected to stand, your plate in your hand with the wineglass fixed in a plastic holder. Her insides had turned to shapeless softness within seconds. She was thankful for all those times lately when she had resisted the temptation to inform him of her utter contempt. Self-control was something one almost never had call to regret. Anger and outbursts were things one almost always wished undone. The tricky part was to know exactly where one stood in the segment between “almost never” and “almost always,” when the angry outburst was justified and produced the most favorable result.

Ester went across to him.

They did not embrace as others around them were doing. She thought that was a good sign; their bodies still had some kind of electric charge. She sensed in the furthest regions of her consciousness that the fact that she still thought in signs was not good, and had to be seen as symbolic of her lack of freedom. He was leaning back slightly and doing that glinting thing with his eyes. He popped an olive in his mouth.

“Nice olives they’ve got here,” he said. “Not out of a jar.”

“I didn’t think you came to this sort of event,” she said.

“I don’t. But they nagged.”

He looked away.

As a sign: not good.

“Did you think I’d be here?” she asked.

“The question didn’t cross my mind.”

As a sign: bad, but the indifference could equally well be feigned with some difficulty and mean the opposite.

“Do you like this sort of food?”

He surveyed his plate as if seeing it for the first time.

“Isn’t it just the same old oily antipasti as usual?”

He was making a joke: promising.

She laughed loudly and his face brightened: good. The guarded expression faded: very good. But he also shifted his weight to the other leg and looked around the room in a way that: less good, bore witness to his being uncomfortable and not wanting to stand there with her: terrible, he was looking for a reason to go, looking for an escape route: disaster.

The girlfriend chorus had taken up residence in her head and now said: But can’t you see he doesn’t want to, you’ve not been together for nearly a year. What are you doing?

She thought: I should walk away. But I don’t want to. I want to stand here with him. It’s the only place in the world I want to be.

The girlfriend chorus said: Where’s your pride?

She answered: I have no pride because pride is linked to shame and honor, and I’m shameless and have no concept of what others find honorable.

The chorus said: That’s what constitutes your pride, showing how free you are from the things that fetter more conformist souls. Deep inside you’re a snobbish intellectual.

There was a group of people standing a little way from them, talking about the USA’s latest war of aggression. Admittedly it was a dreadful regime over there, they said, but they would have done better to support the underground democracy movements instead. Hugo Rask was looking at them.

“Is it any nicer to be blown to smithereens by a bomb if the person dropping it has been sent by a democratically elected government?” said Ester Nilsson.

“What?”

“I think I’m a pacifist, actually. I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s for the best in the long run. Even if it means being invaded, occupied, deprived of one’s liberty, taken into slavery. One shouldn’t fight, just give in. Throw the hydrogen bombs into the sea, as Olof Lagercrantz wrote. Just decide violence is never permissible. Otherwise one’s stuck with endless assessments of potential consequences, and there’s no way of getting it right.”

He nodded, but in the wrong places. Even as a pacifist she was of no interest to him.

He drank his wine in embarrassed gulps. The group discussing the latest American war of aggression was hearing the opposing view put forward by a refugee from the country on the receiving end of the strikes, who had made his name as a leader writer and now said the only sensible course of action was to bomb his stupid countrymen to bits because they knew no better.

Hugo glanced sideways at Ester to see what she thought. But she also saw that he could not really be bothered to listen to what she thought, on that or any other subject. He was shifting jarringly from foot to foot.

“Refugee status doesn’t automatically confer reasonable opinions,” said Ester.

“There are lots of people here,” said Hugo.

“Yes.”

“The whole cultural mafia.”

“Yes, all of them, and then us,” she said with dry self-deprecation and took her eyes off him for the first time, which immediately made him more alert and attentive.

“But don’t you think some people count themselves part of it as a matter of course? We are a bit odd, you and I, when all’s said and done.”

The furthest regions of her consciousness: a kinship comment, generated by the suggestion of her resignation. He had reacted immediately to the distancing. That was the way it had been all along, she thought in some stab at self-defense, and that was why she was caught in his net.

“Everyone likes swimming against the tide,” said Ester. “That’s what the tide is.”

“Perhaps it’s the human condition,” he said.

“Presumably. Or one of them.”

She prepared to move off round the room.

“I saw a book I thought of buying for you,” he said.

For fear that he might regret it, she rendered her face immobile.

“Where?”

“In a bookshop. But it was shut. I saw it in the window. And thought of you. Thought I’d buy it for you.”

The fizzing in her blood had started once more. It turned on so fast, so incredibly fast and then everything was ruined again, for so long.

“What book was it?”

“I don’t remember the title. It was about one of your special subjects. One of all those things you criticize.”

He regarded her expectantly. The corners of his mouth widened disarmingly. He was not dismissing her now, but inviting her in with his dubious charm.

“Do you think I’m critical?”

“Yes.”

“Too critical?”

“Sometimes.”

“Don’t you mercilessly condemn people’s morality?” she said.

“Only those with power. You’re critical regardless of whether people have power or not.”

“Yes, I try not to draw distinctions between people but look instead to actions, when it’s actions that are relevant.”

“Pharmaceutical companies, Western regimes, top public officials and so on, they’re the ones to be critical of. Not the innocent little people,” he said.

“People aren’t as little as one thinks. Nor as big. The trouble with making power the basis of your judgment, rather than actions, is that virtually everyone has a let-out; they can all claim lack of power when they need to. Because everybody’s powerless in the face of someone and something. Everybody’s got a seam of powerlessness in them, in their perception of themselves vis-à-vis existence as a whole, which they then deploy. And that’s why the world looks the way it does. Everybody’s got a chink in their power, even when they know they’ve got power and responsibility, which they are aware they can exploit in order to understand why they have to act as they do. Morality starts with the individual. One must demand it of everybody. Those who have power are born powerless and that’s the feeling that stays with them all their lives, especially at times when they are acting wrongly. Then they remember that they were bullied in the school playground and beaten by their father and realize it’s all somebody else’s fault this time, too.”

She wondered to what extent he was aware that she was talking about them. Presumably not at all. He looked at her, amused yet skeptical, or was it skeptically amused? She couldn’t decide.

“So the starving person who steals food and money ought to study his moral philosophy a bit better?”

“Well, that person has already engaged in some moral deliberation and concluded that the best way out just then is to steal food from someone who can spare it.”

“Then I don’t understand what you mean. Aren’t we both saying the same thing?”

“No. According to you, everybody who is formally powerless also lacks responsibility for their actions. But in my approach, there are extra-compelling reasons for having an equal society in freedom. Because we can’t expect the same actions from the hungry, the starving and those unjustly deprived of everything as we can from those who have enough, but we can demand moral insight, moral deliberation and that each individual acts in a way that causes the least harm to others.”

“What’s the difference between that and what I’m saying?”

She could date the moment when she had last seen him with that intense but simultaneously unguarded expression. It was in February, just before the problems started, when they were standing among his trompe-l’œil sets and she expressed her appreciation of him. When he smiled at her that time there was nothing in his face but gratitude. She glimpsed it again now for a few brief seconds.

“Aren’t we basically in agreement that it’s power that’s the deciding factor in moral responsibility, it’s just that we don’t agree on when one is powerless, that is, where the boundary should run?”

Ester picked up a paper napkin that he had dropped on the floor in his brief flaring of interest in the discussion, and pushed it into his trouser pocket. It was an intimate thing to do and when he did not protest in the slightest she was in raptures: the two of them belonged together in spite of everything.

“I think I actually said something different but just now I don’t care what it was,” she said.

The group that had been talking about American wars of aggression had dispersed, perhaps while awaiting new ones.

She saw that Hugo’s face was in thoughtful agreement and felt vindicated, and that she had been right to hold out. They were not through with each other.

He touched her arm softly, excusing himself. He had to go and talk to an old acquaintance on the other side of the room, nodded and went. Her eyes followed his back. He turned and raised a hand.

Through festively decked December streets, Ester walked home afterward. The snow had been whirling down all day. Regular, hexagonal crystal formations, all the same, none like any other.