While we’d been in the library, the skies had cleared, and it was even colder than before. Where shall we go? I asked. You must have a copy of your manuscript at home, said Lena. I shook my head. No, I was writing it by hand. Then you must go back to the bar and find it, she said. I’m sure it’s still there. Who would steal a manuscript? What about you? I asked. She said she was going on, she hated to retrace her steps. So do I, I said, let’s go on together.
The lights inside the building went out, and it took a while for my eyes to get used to the illumination of the lamps along the paths. Look at the stars, said Lena, pointing. Do you know the constellations? Only the Big Dipper, I said, and I can’t see it anywhere. There’s Orion, she said, and right next to it are the twins Castor and Pollux. Do you know the story? One was divine, the other mortal, and yet they were inseparable.
After a short pause, she said she and Chris had had a fight this morning. The dinner yesterday made me think. I told him he should leave the workshop. I don’t like the people, and I don’t like what they do to him. She laughed. I said pretty much what you said to your Magdalena that time. I’d rather be a cashier in a supermarket than play a part in one of these series. He worked out how much he stood to earn if a project took off. He could still write other, serious things on the side, he reckoned. Only he wouldn’t earn much money for them. But we’re doing all right, I said, we’ve enough to live on, and we do what we want and what we enjoy. It’s not worth selling your soul for some extra cash. They don’t want my soul, he said, and it’s a pile of cash. He went back to doing his sums, worked out the royalties for a second and a third series, speculated on repeats and syndications with other stations. We could retire on it, he said. At that, I left. I was off in the city when I turned up your message, which the porter had given me the night before, and which I’d stuffed in my handbag. I don’t know if I’d have taken you up on your invitation if Chris and I hadn’t had a fight. And are you sorry you came? I asked. I don’t think so, she said.
We wandered around the park on winding paths, but we didn’t care, we weren’t going anywhere, we didn’t even have a direction to go in. I had suggested looking for the Professorn, the pub I had been in sixteen years before with Elsa, but Lena didn’t want to. He’d probably show up there, she said, and just at the moment he’s the last person I’d like to run into. She said in the past months she had often felt alone when she was with Chris, in fact ever since their wedding she had had the sense of living with a stranger. Maybe a good ending is even harder for me than a bad one.
She asked me how my story ended. In the book I was writing then, the woman leaves and doesn’t come back. The story ends shortly after her departure. After that, everything is possible. No, said Lena, not everything. I can’t go back to him. I’m not even angry with him, but he’s even stranger to me than he was before we met. Did you write something about him in your diary? I asked. Yes, she said, nothing earth-shattering. Only that I’d met a nice man and had gone hiking with him, and that he had tried something on. At that time, I was in love with the author of the play, who was with us in the mountains. Only he was married and much older than me, it would never have worked out. Who knows, I said. Lena shook her head. I think the only reason I went hiking with Chris was to make that guy jealous. Was he in love with you then, the playwright? I asked. Lena shrugged. That’s another story.
We had left the campus, and were now walking along the highway, past the dark premises of the Museum of Natural History. I was in there the day before yesterday, said Lena, they’ve got an exhibition of Swedish fauna, with adorable old-fashioned dioramas with stuffed elks and reindeer and wolves. You do like your dead animals, I said. Funny, I never thought about that, said Lena. Maybe you’re right. There’s something very dependable about them. Plus, they don’t bite.
Our way led through a rather unbuilt-up area, and I was thinking we had left the city behind, when we crossed a bridge and walked into a residential neighborhood. We followed the bank to a second, narrower bridge. Only once we had crossed it did we realize that we were on a small wooded island.
You could have found a good ending for your book, said Lena, don’t you think most stories end well? It’s not up to me, I said, writing is more to do with what you find than what you make. You never know what you’ll find in advance. When I was writing the book for the second time, I discovered something different than the first time, a different set of possibilities. I’m not sure if it’s improved the story, but that’s not the point.
At the far end of the island was a restaurant, a whitewashed wooden building with a terrace that looked like a simple family dwelling. There were lights on, and through the window we could see a group of people in formal dress. A man in a dark suit seemed to be giving a speech. Look, said Lena, pointing to a corner where there stood a three-tiered wedding cake with a little bridal couple on top. The beginning of a new story.
We walked down to the water, where there was a pier. We leaned against a railing and looked across to the lights on the opposite shore. We were silent for a while, then I asked, Do you recognize something of him in me? I didn’t know what answer would come or what I even hoped to hear. Lena thought for a long time, then she said: You’re both too similar and too different. If I knew for a fact, if I was certain that he would one day be like you, then I could probably go back to him. But maybe the only way he would become like you is if I leave him, if his life is wrecked, the way yours was.
She asked if I saw anything of my Magdalena in her. Everything, I said, you are just exactly what she was, your movements, your laugh, your lightness, your seriousness. Did you never try to find out what happened to her? asked Lena. No, I said. But then I found out by accident. It was that evening I saw you act for the first time. When I was playing Miss Julie? Yes, I said. During the intermission I ran into a former colleague of Magdalena’s. Ulrich? asked Lena. Yes, I said. The man who played keyboard at her wedding. He recognized me, and we talked about old times for a bit, and he said he had run into Magdalena recently, and she was married and living in Engadin. She seemed content, thought Ulrich, and she was just as good-looking as she was before.
There are variations, said Lena. Yes, I said, but in the end, everything happens the way it must. And that would be the happy end? she asked. I don’t know, I said. In reality there is no ending, only death. And that’s rarely happy. Once Magdalena and I thought about how we’d like to die. I argued for freezing to death, maybe because they say that’s a good way to go. But Magdalena didn’t agree with that, she said she hated feeling cold. She would rather die in the bath with a glass of wine and some music. And of course not before she was good and old. I tried to imagine her as an old woman and myself as an old man and was surprised that the idea didn’t scare me, on the contrary it seemed attractive, as though from the beginning that had been the destination for our love. A house, they say, is only finished when it’s turned into a ruin.
Your Magdalena seems like a very sensible woman, said Lena. I had followed her up to the restaurant. We’re on an island, she said, and if we’re not to freeze to death we’ve no option but to go back the same way. I’m going to call us a taxi.
We stepped into the restaurant. While Lena was talking to a waiter, I looked into the private room, where they were celebrating the wedding. There was a musician playing on a keyboard, and people were dancing. Lena came up alongside me. The taxi’ll be here in a couple of minutes, she said, it’ll wait for us on the bridge. Aren’t weddings depressing? I asked. That depends on who you’re marrying, said Lena.
In the taxi she asked the driver to take us to the Best Western. As we were driving there, she was typing on her phone. When we arrived, I got out with her and followed her into the hotel. Just before the reception desk, she turned to me and said: I’m not playing anymore now. It’s very simple. I’m going to take a room, and tomorrow I’ll see if I can rebook the return flight. She asked the night porter for a single room. I heard him quote her the price, and tell her how to get there, and ask her if she needed the code for the Internet. No, said Lena, laughing, all I need now is a warm bed. With the key card in her hand, she walked back to me. That was an instructive afternoon, she said, I’m not sure whether I should thank you for it or not. She said she wished me all the luck. I do too, I said. Shall we exchange phone numbers? I don’t think so, said Lena. No offense, but I think it’s better if we don’t have any more contact. Who knows, I said, maybe fate has other ideas. Who knows, said Lena, and let me kiss her on the cheek.