She likes the month of June. Has done ever since she was small, because her birthday is on the fifteenth. Most of the time that falls in the middle of flowering season, unless May has been extraordinarily warm, which has happened in the past. But usually the lilac and fruit trees are in full bloom right on her birthday, they emit fragrances, quiver in all their white, pink and violet, like in a painting, as she goes out through the gate. The evenings are bright, they can also be warm, and she likes walking the streets then. Joy is to be found somewhere, and she needs to get out of the apartment, because joy is a terrible thing to feel when she is indoors, it makes her almost want to take her life. Of course, meaning is not found out of doors either, but she can feel its echo, the brush of it, and outside she can still believe she is a part of everything. That her age is not obvious, because they do not know, nobody who sees her is aware of what she conceals within. She walks between people and enjoys the sight, many of them already tanned and lightly clothed, there is laughter and subdued voices. She can believe she is like them, the beautiful people. The lilac hangs over picket and wrought-iron fences, strewing leaves on the pavements, she steps on them in her light shoes and thinks that despite everything, none of them, not the children, not Mama, not Hartvig, knows who she is and where she is going. She thinks about the lost erotic escapade. She does not know where she got that term from, but it is apt, it is gone. She only remembers the briefest flashes of how it was. Like when she is walking along now lost in her own thoughts, she can suddenly become aware of a person nearby, one who is real and waiting, a man who is her equivalent. Just as shameless and forthright, equally daring, equally greedy. Marked by danger. What they call lascivious. She is not quite sure how she came up with the word, or if it is the right one. It is just like a stirring in the streets. And a certainty. Of something beyond. Like that husky laughter she hears over there. Like the gaze of the man on the bench by Frogner church. Yes, not that he is looking at her, God forbid, she is well over sixty, but he is past his prime himself, and it is unmistakable, how he is staring at the women walking past as he sits there on a bench in Bygdøy allé smoking his pipe. His eyes know, his body knows, sitting quite still, he is a mature, experienced animal and she walks by unseen, she is no sight to behold. At home, the warm floors await. The stuffy apartment which the evening sun has heated up to breaking point. The night will not end, she will not be free from it until the heat eases off, which will be late, and God willing it rains tomorrow, so she can get some rest and forget her sorrows. But tonight, tonight. She is still here.
The man remains seated on the bench, and she turns and walks back, passing in front of him. He looks at her this time, but with indifference, complete indifference. How strange things are. If it were twenty years ago and she was still Hartvig’s wife, in the midst of life with all its hustle and bustle and the pain and the nerves, then he would no doubt have given her a look. It was not uncommon then for men to do that. And she returned their looks, pretended to drop her handbag or her cigarette packet, oh dear, she might say, and it had happened, not very often, but certainly a few times, that a man had run over to help. Once, God help her, why had she not seized the chance that one time she had it? It was this very area she had been strolling around back then, spring was in the air and she had been to the theatre with Alice. She accompanied Alice to the bus afterwards, but decided to take a walk in Frognerparken before catching the tram home herself. To Hartvig, the house and her responsibilities. It was fine thinking about what was at home as long as she was away from it, but she knew how it would be as soon as she crossed the threshold. As though in a trap. And once home she would not be able to think of life beyond the four walls of the house, the roaring and the racket and her extraordinarily boring day-to-day life with Hartvig, she was a prisoner. So she dragged out her night for as long as she could, thinking she was not so old yet, there were still opportunities to be free. Oh yes, she would be free, but she did not know that then, the tragedy that was in store. It struck her now, how that might not have happened if she had seized her chance that evening.
She had made her way towards the Monolith, that tall granite structure rising towards the sky, among all the other people who had been enticed outside by the fine weather, had walked up the steps and, standing on the platform below it, she had looked out, the light was as though in Paris, she thought, exotic, dim and glimmering. Then someone had stopped and stood near her, a tall man in a light coat, he looked at her, and without a second thought, she took the cigarette packet from her handbag and made a show of searching for a lighter. He took it as the invitation it was and asked if she needed a light.
We must have both seen the same film, she said and laughed. He was no dimwit, because he took the hint and bent forward in an affected manner to light up her cigarette, and said, in English:
Can I help you, miss?
Oh, he was quick on the uptake and easy on the eye as well. She laughed again: Yes, Mr Gable.
Oh, he said, oh, I’m not sure which film we’re in, do you know?
They continued speaking English for a while, it was such fun, she completely forgot herself.
Your English is really terrific, he said eventually, so much so I am beginning to wonder where I am. Shall we walk a little in order to find our bearings? And he offered her his arm. Fortunately she was wearing gloves so her wedding ring was not visible. I must still look like a housewife, she thought, or even worse, an old spinster. Alice said she had a lively face, but what good was that, she was over forty after all, and it was almost unbelievable that such a handsome man would walk here alongside her. Perhaps he wanted to swindle some money from her, was that what this was about?
She pushed the thought from her mind, because the chat flowed so freely, the laughter too, no, they did not speak of serious things, but neither of foolish matters, he was in point of fact no simple-minded man. His sense of humour was neither embarrassing nor boring like Hartvig’s, his remarks were intelligent and sarcastic, his observations about people very apt. They strolled slowly around the park, it was growing dark now, they kept bumping into each other, walking arm in arm, and he no longer laughed all the time, and she was so aware of his proximity, of something dark coming from him, that pulled and was no laughing matter. Just before they reached the main gate he came to a halt and looked her right in the eye. Now it is going to happen, she thought, now it is going to happen.
May I invite you to accompany me home, miss? May I?
Then she ruined it. She has gone through it in her mind, and spoken to Alice, countless times over the years: did she ruin the best experience she could have had, or was she actually about to be duped?
She thought so, as she stood there, that he was a swindler. No, not at first, at the beginning she was filled with great happiness: she was worth something after all, she was not just mean and angry and ugly, and if she was, it was only because everyone at home had made her so. Because here was somebody who saw her for how she really was. But the next moment realisation washed over her, how easily fooled she was, how ridiculous, she had heard of his sort, what were they called, gigolos? It was probably written across her face, her yearning, and besides she was middle-aged, easy prey.
Are you trying to fool me, mister? Are you?
She tried to maintain the same jocular tone, but it was no good, he could undoubtedly see by looking at her that she meant it.
Well, I mean really, Alice would later say, one cannot suddenly invite a strange lady home and not expect her to be suspicious?
But Cessi knew it could be done, was possible for them, there and then, because they had hit it off, there was a rapport, she told Alice.
A rapport, Alice said, he might have been taking you in, if he was that type of professional, then he could probably make any woman believe that he and she were birds of a feather.
But be that as it may. Cessi would have put up with him being a professional too, just to experience something else for once in her life. It could not therefore under any circumstances have been rape if she had gone with him. Christ, why had she not just gone with him?
He could have killed you, Alice said.
Be that as it may. Anyway, that was not how it was, and she knew it, even though she agreed that Alice was right. But she only did so in order to be able to live with it. For allowing the opportunity to pass her by. They had stood there, and she could still have saved the situation, steered it in the right direction, because now he was quite serious and she could rest assured, he was not trying to deceive her in any way, because this, he said, was something quite special, surely she had also noticed that?
I’m married, she said, and his face closed.
It may well be the case, he said, that you are married, but I have already considered that, and it is neither here nor there. It does not matter. Surely we can enjoy ourselves for a short while.
Well, I never, Alice said, one cannot simply stick one’s head in the sand like that, no, just be happy you saw sense, you would have had problems with him, he didn’t respect you. After all, you did say you were married …
Yes, it was the fact that she said it, not the fact that she was, she realised that afterwards, that was why his face closed, because he saw the way things were heading.
She had stood there thinking you have to do the right thing, Cecilie, because the images flew through her mind, and that horrid feeling swept through her body. Do not behave like the harlot you were, the hussy, the one the boys laughed at, you little whore. They lifted up her skirt and held her arms behind her back while they took turns rubbing her breasts and sticking their hands between her legs. She would never go there again, nowhere near it, never. She could not, was not able.
No, I mean really, she said. It was very nice to meet you.
She put out her hand, but he just bowed, wrapped his coat around himself and walked off.
Nothing would have been horrid or nasty with him.
Perhaps she did the right thing all the same, because no situation should be so abruptly either or, now or never.
Maybe it was both things, Alice said, to console her. Maybe he really was an opportunist, you know, but at the same time was particularly taken by you.
But in those kinds of cases it cannot be both. She knows that. It has to be one or the other, true or untrue.