You can ask me anything you like, I said. Not just what’s in the book, but also what actually happened. Why should I? asked Lena. You’ve got your life, and I’ve got mine. And I’ve no intention of letting you tell me mine.
We were walking on, now in the old town, whose crowded streets made it difficult to talk. Lena looked at the window displays and saw a plain blue dress she liked and was desperate to try on. I went into the shop with her and told her how lovely she looked, as though she wouldn’t have been lovely to me in any other dress. I offered to buy it for her, but she insisted on paying for it herself. For the first time she seemed seriously annoyed. Just because I’m listening to you doesn’t mean you can take liberties with me. I’m not your Magdalena and don’t intend to become it either. I apologized and said I hadn’t meant any harm. She walked out of the shop and briefly stopped. I was already half-afraid she wanted to run off and had no idea what I could do to stop her. Finally, she walked on, and I followed her in silence, so as not to make her angry a second time.
Only when we had left the city center did we start talking again. We were walking through a section of characterless gray tenements. There were lights on in many of the windows, and in some of the lower stories you could see people going about their domestic tasks. One man who was standing on a balcony smoking gave us a wave and called out something I couldn’t understand.
Whenever I look into an apartment, I imagine what it would be like to live in it, said Lena. She was back to sounding like before. A new life in a new city. I would have a different job, maybe a husband and children, a dog, I’d play tennis, or take courses at a local technical college. Don’t you always slip into the skin of your characters when you play a part? I asked. I don’t mean it in that way, said Lena, I mean a completely different life, a different history. Tell me about being in love, said Lena, how did you fall in love with her? Love isn’t really the word, I said. I liked Magdalena, she fascinated me and challenged me, but it took me some time to fall in love with her. You see, said Lena, Chris fell in love with me right away. It really was love at first sight.
Maybe I believed that to begin with, but after everything that happened later, I had a different sense of the story. In writing, I was cautious with big words and sentiments, questioning them not only in others, but also in myself. I had liked Magdalena from the first, but that was hardly surprising, she was young and beautiful, and she had a lightness that straightaway charmed everyone and won them over. On our walk, it was usually her going on ahead, and I had plenty of opportunities to watch her. Her movements were swift, as though she was in a lighter atmosphere or somewhere almost without gravity. She was wearing climbing boots, but her footfall was light, almost skipping. She kept turning around to face me and smiling and calling out words of encouragement, but when she felt my eyes weren’t on her, her expression was serious, almost dismissive. Sometimes it felt like seeing the face of the old woman she would one day become.
Love at first sight, I said. Looking back, you believe that kind of thing, when you find your narrative, settle on a version, a creation myth for your relationship. Because that’s always the easiest thing to believe, and the pleasantest. That you were destined for each other, that there was no other possibility. But if I hadn’t happened to see a poster for the play two months later, in all probability I’d have forgotten the whole thing, just like I’ve forgotten lots of other beginnings.
When I saw Magdalena again, this time on the stage, first I didn’t recognize her. She was playing a rather foolish young woman who senses that her boyfriend is still in love with his ex, and who is then seduced by the ex’s husband. I couldn’t really remember the play, all I knew for sure was that there was a fish on the poster.
That figures into the play as well, said Lena, it’s a carp that slowly asphyxiates. It’s night. The middle of a lake. I am floating on the water. It’s snowing, and the snowflakes fall into the water and dissolve. I have to be naked, but I don’t feel cold. There is no greater feeling of abandon. Then suddenly I see that underneath me, facing me like a shadow, is a gigantic fish in the water. Is that in the play? I asked, I can’t remember.
He paid me, said Lena. In the play, I mean. The man didn’t seduce me, he offered me money to sleep with him. Not like a prostitute, though. He said that was the purest form of love, when you own someone. Because that way love isn’t based on reciprocity, loving someone just to be loved in return. Do you think that’s right? I asked. Nonsense, she said. I don’t want to possess anyone or be possessed by them. What about being obsessed by them, then? It’s more like having someone obsessed with me, said Lena. That’s what I said to Chris right off the bat, when he was waiting for me at the stage door. I don’t like that. But you stayed and had a glass of wine with him anyway? Why shouldn’t I? said Lena.