1967

SUMMER RIPENS SLOWLY. The radio on the sauna porch is always on, pouring out the newest song by those insects from Britain over and over. It starts with the familiar strains of revolution and then changes to tidings of joy. As July quickens people start to believe in the song little by little, coming together in droves. Girls don’t bother to put on undergarments anymore. Men’s hair and beards are longer than before. Someone has invented the idea that there’ll be no peace without love, and whispered it in someone’s ear on a street corner. Everyone’s consciousness expands, the heavens ascend to clear a path for new opinions—the earth doesn’t quake but hearts beat faster.

We don’t know about it.

We need the song’s reassurance more than anything, because love has suddenly disappeared from our days, sunk into the cracks in the floor.

He becomes more irritable from one day to the next, complaining about the light and how it changes all the time.

“Sit still.”

“I am sitting still. Just tell me how I should be and I’ll be it.”

“More to the left. Stop turning your head all the time.”

“I’m not turning my head. Maybe you are.”

“Quiet.”

There’s no tenderness in him. So different from how he is at night, curled up inside me. The sky refuses to stay put and I’m like a shadow.

“Your face,” he says. “It’s narrower today.”

“Same old face.”

“Are you sure you had breakfast? How am I supposed to get hold of you if you’re changing all the time? Tell me that.”

There’s a knife in his gaze.

“This light refuses to settle down. Goddamn light.”

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right composition. It’ll all start to go smoothly once you’ve found the right composition.”

“I’m starting to think I’ll never find it,” he says gloomily.

I get up and go to look at the piece. It’s unfinished, but it’s not bad.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know,” he says, not looking me in the eye, turning away. “I just can’t get hold of it.”

“I think it looks quite good.”

“You’re biased. Besides, you’re not a professional. You don’t acquire artistic vision by wandering around museums.”

Now I’m angry. “Well, what exactly are you trying to do? What are you driving at?”

He runs his hands through his hair the way he often does, sits down, lights a cigarette, takes a drag, looks at the lake, and sighs.

“I’d like there to be something old-fashioned about it. But something else, too. Something else. Some kind of angle.”

He spreads his arms helplessly, looks at the painting.

“This is just trivial somehow. Mediocre.”

He’s already got the eyes—they’re recognizably mine. My gaze pierces through, as in those strange portraits from the 1600s that I’ve seen in museums. I’m floating, like a head blossoming out of nothing.

“The eyes are good,” I say. “The expression is good.”

“Not good enough.”

SOME DAYS ARE different. On some days we forget his work, take the boat out and have a picnic. We have veal in waxed paper, a whole bottle of fresh milk, three kinds of cake, one that I’ve made and two from the neighbor lady. We have strawberry juice and chocolate melting in its foil wrapper. The little girl begs me for it the whole time; she’s allowed to have one piece. It won’t come out of its package, she licks it and smiles with smeared lips.

There’s a picture of this. In the picture she looks triumphant, with the sun behind her as if it will never set. Later she remembers this boating trip, although she remembers nothing else from the whole summer. She builds memories from the words of others, but she tells her own daughter about this trip, as if it’s a precious thing—the nicest part was Mom and Dad and I went out in the boat to the island. Mom usually rowed, but Dad did sometimes. The sun was a friendly fire in the sky, it felt like the world had always been nothing but light and water and melted Fazer chocolate in a blue wrapper and I could lick it off the foil to my heart’s content.

“Why don’t we stay on the island forever?” I whisper in his ear in the evening, after we’ve swum all day, made coffee on the campfire, roasted three fat fish that I caught with the rod, found little stones at the water’s edge and made a magic circle with them on the beach.

“Yes, let’s,” he says, and kisses me. “Let’s imagine that there’s no other world than this.”

“We can live here forever and ever,” the little girl says.

And I say, “Forever and ever.”

No one is thinking about the painting on the sauna porch; it’s trivial. No one is thinking about Elsa, not even the girl falling asleep in the tent with her hand in mine.

I carefully ease my hand away once she starts to breathe evenly.

The man is someone slightly different. There are two people inside him. The cruel, ruthless one who gives commands has disappeared without a trace now.

He gently moves the blanket, patiently, as if he’s removing layers worn out by the world, getting them out of the way.

He lowers himself, kisses my breasts. This is ours alone, and we can’t tell anyone about it.

We become each other and remain the same and I love his sigh when I open to him and invite him in and he comes.