The Trio

If I'd been a different type of person I would have stayed. I pictured another life, a Stockholm life with the water and the changing of the seasons as the backdrop, a life where I was a person who didn't recoil before everything that was bigger and stronger than me. When we locked eyes it felt like he'd had the same thought.

The first time I realized that I loved Thora and August it was shortly after that conversation. There was nothing special about the day, aside from my realization. We were drinking coffee at a sidewalk café on Swedenborgsgatan, watching the pedestrians and talking about things without ever reaching a conclusion - we were just putting words to our thoughts to see if they had wings. I didn't know anyone else I could have these kinds of conversations with; they were the closest you could get to actually inhibiting someone else's mind, with all its associative webs and riddles. So much of what I did, heard and read each day filled me with a sense of futility that was sometimes intense enough to be paralyzing. It wasn't that those feelings went away when I was with Thora and August - but they became bearable, less lonely. Listening to them talk that afternoon, I realized that I cared more about them than myself. It was the first time I'd understood my own well-being as dependent on the well-being of someone else.

She can feel the sun pressing on her face. August takes her hand in his, pressing it, and she smiles and presses back without opening her eyes. Everything is beautiful for a short moment. When she lets go she can still feel the warmth of his hand.

The table between them is the size of an ocean. She smiles an impersonal smile and Hugo smiles back, just as impersonally. It stings. She thinks of the person she was when he knew her, when she, Hugo and August were a trio. She conjures an image of the three of them in winter jackets, boots, scarves and hats, with library books in tote bags and laptops weighing down messenger bags and backpacks, and she can picture their silhouettes so clearly it's as if they're shuffling past outside the window, somewhere in between the fluttering lights. Then they disappear, engulfed by the lights, the people they once were, dissolved.

Handing August one of the cups, she decides that nothing bad can happen to him. This resolution feels like grabbing hold of a shaking object in order to make it stop. She can feel it resisting between her palms, feel the reverberations, but she doesn't loosen her hold. Finally it quivers, almost as if despondent, and when it stops it goes cold too, like she's strangled it.

It was a beautiful day. Children played in the park. Cars and buses drove down the road and people were wearing sunglasses and light jackets and drinking coffee outside the cafes. It seemed to me that everything should have stopped, that some of what was happening inside me should have an effect on my surroundings - even just a cold breeze, or a dark cloud passing across the sun. But the world would not be moved.

I found it increasingly difficult to shake the suspicion that work was all about pretending to care about pointless stuff, and that success hinged on your ability to trick even yourself.

It feels like I have to enact violence upon myself to love him in a way he's comfortable with. And I can't. I care too much about myself to do that.

We were just putting words to our thoughts to see if they had wings.

I switched up my study routines, from the National Library to the Government Library in the Old Town. I knew I wouldn't run into anyone I knew there. Stepping into silence was like wrapping myself in a thick duvet. That's where I wrote my dissertation, my applications, my emails. That's where I began to dismantle my Stockholm life without telling anyone from my seat I looked out the window that the tourists and the narrow alleys, at Stockholm cathedral poking out from behind the chimneys, thinking that by next winter I'd be somewhere else, far from here.

Cuando nos quedábamos a solas, el mundo privado que existía entre nosotros volvía a emerger, como si el silencio estuviera abriendo las cortinas de algo íntimo que permanecía velado en presencia de otras personas.

Cada vez más a menudo descubría en mí mismo una sed de confirmación por parte de ella, la seguridad de que yo le agradaba, de que le gustaba estar conmigo. Esa sed, me llenaba de desazón, sobre todo porque si ella me hubiera colmado de pruebas de amor, yo habría sacudido la cabeza y, molesto, las habría alejado de mí.

Cuando Thora y August miraban hacia otro lado, los miraba, como si tratara de robarles algo íntimo en sus caras. Me preguntaba si así, a través de ese tipo de demostración de cortesía impersonal, era como se asfixiaba todo lo que importaba y se convertía en nada.