How odd, said Lena, I didn’t see you in the museum yesterday. And the rest of the day I didn’t notice anyone following me either. I’d have every reason to be furious with you, she said, but I can’t manage to blame you for anything, I don’t know why. Sometimes it does feel to me as though we’d known each other for a long time. What was it that interested you about those hunting scenes? I asked. I don’t know, she said, maybe the feeling of peace they radiate. Quiet after the hunt. Or the quiet after death? I asked. She seemed to think about that. After a while she said, But how can that be? If he’s like you, and I’m like your Magdalena, and we’re leading the same life as you both, fifteen or twenty years before, then surely our parents would have to be the same and our friends and the buildings we live in, the productions in which Magdalena and I appeared, and the texts that you and Chris write. Then the whole world would be a kind of double world. And it’s not. No, I said, it’s not. There are distinctions, variations. Those are the mistakes, the asymmetries that make life possible in the first place. I once talked to a physicist who explained to me that the whole universe is based on a tiny mistake, a minute imbalance between matter and antimatter that must have occurred at the time of the big bang. But for that mistake, matter and antimatter would long since have canceled one another out, and there would be nothing. Wouldn’t any tiny asymmetry have to multiply, though, asked Lena, any decision that he or I made differently from you and Magdalena, wouldn’t it have to diverge more and more from your pattern? That’s what you’d think, I said, but you keep returning to the proper way. As though the things you do had no effect on what actually happens. It’s like having a play put on by several directors. The scenes look different, even the words can be changed or cut, but the action follows its unvarying course.
Lena stopped and pulled out her cellphone. I just need to message Chris, she said, typing out a text. I’m writing to tell him I’ve gone to the theater. That evening with those scriptwriters was so deadly. He won’t believe you, I said, he’ll be jealous. Is that what happened then? she asked, putting away her cellphone. We didn’t have those back then. Magdalena wasn’t there when I got back to the hotel. We had had an argument in the morning, and when she was angry with me, she would often withdraw. Then she would reappear, as though nothing had happened.
It’s true, said Lena, I played Miss Julie, and he helped me learn the part, and that was when we kissed for the first time. I turned to face her. She avoided looking at me, but in spite of the feeble light of the streetlamps, I could see that her face was flushed. It’s just occurred to me how much you must know about me if your story is true. I mean…not just where we went on holiday, what we talked about, what happened to us. But really personal, intimate things. The fact that you don’t squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube to the end. More personal than that, said Lena.
I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to embarrass her further. I was remembering how we had made love the first time, that afternoon. Magdalena was strangely awkward. Her lips were dry, perhaps on account of the fever, and she barely responded to my kisses, though she didn’t turn away either. When I pulled off her nightgown, she seemed indifferent, letting it happen as though it was a necessity. After a while, she said, let’s go on the bed, it’ll be easier.
After that we sometimes made love all night. It wasn’t so much about sex, it was more like a kind of unappeasable hunger, a need for proximity, a desire to merge into one another. We lay quite exhausted on the bed, Magdalena propped her head up on her hand and eyed me in bemusement. I drew her closer to me and kissed her, and we began all over again, till at some point one or other of us drifted off.