Sleet: Selected Stories

The fear of discovery had been but a game, for until now she had not been alone for a single moment. But now she realized at last that discovery would strand her, alone — so terribly alone that nothing could possibly help her, least of all this man who stood in her room stuffing his pipe with his short, stunted lover’s movements. She found herself standing on one of those bridges again, but it was a bridge connected to nothing. She was surrounded by water. Whichever way she turned only fog and darkness lay before her. And discovery no longer seemed a game. It was no help that she was once strong. It made no difference that she had once been able to slip into his arms and build a wall of his flesh. Because discovery wasn’t like a flash of light, blinding one moment, gone the next. No. Discovery was a state of monotonous suffering. It was the endless gossip of a few hundred hicks, farmers, lumber workers, local hot-shots, not to mention all of their wives. That’s what frightened Alice the most. The air was filled with Mrs. Mattsson’s eyes. And it was this thought that made her suddenly cry out.

“I’m tired of this! I’m tired of having the whole village peeking around the corner. I’m tired of people grinning whenever I step out the front gate. I’m tired of people clustering together and whispering as soon as they see my bike on the road. I’m tired of being the forester’s whore!”

“Alice, has someone said that?”

“And you! You’re so stupid, you can’t see anything. If you were the least bit concerned about me you wouldn’t let me go through this! But you don’t give me the respect of a scroungy dog … you … you … you!”

By then the forester had wrapped his arms around her head. She had his shirt-sleeve in her mouth and once the words stopped coming she found herself frantically tired. And in that state she allowed herself to be led into his room. She lay on his bed, stroking the flowered bedspread with her fingers. It was raining outside. The running water blurred the windowpanes. Outside in the bower the rain was probably ruining her cakes, overflowing the cups and the cream dish, but she couldn’t bring herself to go down there. Instead she just lay on the bed listening to the forester, who had moved to his desk and sat fiddling with a pocket-knife.

He was telling her that of course he understood everything. He knew very well what it meant in a little hick town like this when people began to gossip about a married woman and another man. But really, it had only been that thing with the scarf that was stupid. He admitted it. Perhaps that could be thought of as proof of something. But otherwise hadn’t they always been careful? Had she ever been in his room when her husband returned from school? Had he ever so much as touched her when someone else was around? Had they ever been seen together on the road or in the park? And hadn’t they been very careful about their meetings? Think how she would mention to her husband that the forester was expected to be out in the woods the whole next day, and then how she would stand there in the kitchen the evening before, preparing his lunch to put all suspicions to rest. Hadn’t he always left the house early on those mornings, biding his time in the woods until he was sure that school had begun? Only then would he make his way back as discreetly as possible, always along the back roads and hidden paths, ready at any moment to dive into a nearby bush at the slightest hint of a sound.

“You seem to forget that Arne came home today,” said Alice. “We could just as well have been in your room then.”

“Arne came home,” he repeated calmly. “Maybe he saw the scarf on the hat shelf, wondered where it came from, drew his own conclusions. It must have put him at ease when he snuck up only to find us having coffee in the bower.”

“And Mrs. Mattsson,” said Alice. “What about her? It never occurred to her to use our yard as a shortcut before, and she’s been passing by here all her life.”

“Mrs. Mattsson,” the forester echoed. He began carving a ruler with his knife. “She probably passed Arne in the woods and got curious.”

“How could you be dumb enough to call out to me like that when you knew she was here!”

“I thought she was gone. Besides, there’s nothing strange about me calling out to you. I’ve been living here quite some time.”

“But you swore at me! And men only do that to their mistresses.”