We were at the Daily News when she
suggested that we separately try to pick up somebody, just for fun. She placed
herself by the dance floor and was quickly invited to dance. I began looking
for someone to ask, but the pretty girls were difficult, and the others didn't
interest me. I saw that she was dancing vigorously, which she had not done with
me for a long time. I danced a bit, but it was of no use and at half past one I
went up to the bar and had a beer. I drank it slowly, but time got longer and longer,
and when I finally went down to the dance floor again, I saw that she was with
the same guy who had first asked her to dance. I signaled her to come over, but
she shook her head defiantly, so I went out and freed my bicycle from hers and
sat down by a flower terrace and there I sat until she came out at three in the
morning accompanied by two men. She saw me and came over.
"Are you still here?"
"Yes, didn't you want
that?"
"I had so much fun."
"Do you want to break up?"
She did not answer but looked at me
with a pleading look.
"Is this what you mean by
freedom?"
"You were in on it," she
said.
"Yes, but how far do you want to
take it?"
"I'll call you tomorrow," she said and left with her new friends.
*
She called me in the morning and
sounded ashamed. He had followed her home and shared her bed.
"Why was I so mean to you," she said, assuring me that she had not slept with him.
June 24, Monday
I broke up with her, and then we took the train to Saltsjöbaden in the archipelago where we sat down by the sea. It was a wonderful Sunday in June, and two white swans were swimming in the bay while we were cried our hearts out. I have never cried so much for a girl. It was the bitter chalice of misery I emptied, this toxic mixture of hate and love.
*
I took a walk and followed my usual
route, along Västerlånggatan,
through Kungsträdgården and back across Riddarholmen. Sobbing, I stood on Evert
Taube's terrace, looking out over the water and the crescent moon in the
crystal blue night sky. The bay was almost silent, and you could hear the
clacking from the quay until a breaking subway train disturbed the idyll.
Why did I break up?
Because after eighteen months she insists I'm not the one, because my pride can't let it go on any longer, especially after what happened at the Daily News, when the game got bloody serious. I feel like I built a house only to find it burned down.
June 25, Tuesday
I called Carl who thought I had done the right thing, and said he never thought it would last. Then I called her, and her voice was sad. She had just written to her mother to tell her what had happened, and her emotions had unraveled. Myself, I felt calm and at peace.
June 26
She said she had been putting ice
cubes on her eyes for half an hour before going to work so that the swelling
from crying would go down. We agreed that she will come over tomorrow night. I’m
looking forward to it and hope to make love to her again.
Carl was very confident. He didn't
think we were suitable for each other.
“You
have to be able to talk politics with a girl if you are really interested in
this,” he said.
I hesitated but saw the strength of the argument. Perhaps I would eventually tire of her if she continued to reject all political discussions.
*
The first week of vacation has passed and my soul is as black as coal. The boredom of life sets in and I feel sick and ugly.
June 27, Thursday
She was here. I served white wine and
a Greek salad that I had made myself. For dessert we had strawberries, whipped
cream, coffee, sherry, and sex on the sofa. When I was done, I massaged her
until she came, and then we did it again.
How will I manage without these meetings?
*
Carl emphasized the intellectual
difference between me and Penny, but for marriage, the erotic connection is
perhaps the most important thing, given a certain minimum level of intellectual
exchange. She is intelligent and interested in culture and debate, but not in
politics.
She slept over at my place, but we
were too tired to make love again. She woke me up at 5:30 to say goodbye before
going to work. I looked at the face I love so much and looked into her eyes. I knew
I still loved and wanted to own those eyes as well as their owner sitting on
the floor by my bed. Yet something inside me told me that our paths were now
diverging, that she would never change because she had never been passionate
about me.
She told me yesterday, as we hugged
each other in the sadness of the split, that she had never met anyone as
generous and appreciative as me. For me, she is the angel of everyday life who
manages to make every encounter a small miracle even if she never reaches the
really high heights intellectually, emotionally, or erotically.
Her room is about safety.
*
She was a bit reserved when I spoke to her on the phone. I don't know why. Maybe she was not alone in the room. Of course, my hypersensitive self reacted by getting hurt like a thorn in the heart. My God, haven't I broken up with her?
*
I don't know if my heart is shaking and my fingers are trembling because I am sick, or if it is the shock of the breakdown.
June 28, Friday
I haven't spoken to her today and I
don't think I will. I am waiting for her to call me. I can't do it myself.
My pride forbids me.
*
I was reading my diary from the fall
of 1983 and found the pages about my first meeting with Penny, that wonderful
time when every action tasted of passion, and it was so easy to push aside the
premonitions of what was to come. Reading it opened up fresh wounds and I
finally had to put it aside. It is too painful to watch the beginning of
another painful defeat. My self-confidence is again in turmoil. The tension
between security and insecurity makes me oscillate between the extremes.
Doubtful one moment, despairing the next. I've been shaking inside all evening.
It feels like an iron spear has been sunk into my heart and is now forcing me
to the ground. I am tired, stressed, and sad. Life is no longer appealing. I
want to hide inside myself and just cry. I want to write a poem about my fate.
I want to write and receive compassion. I want to recreate my lost love. It
hurts so much to have been so thoroughly tested and so sympathetically
rejected.
For the moment I don't believe in love. I am burnt and pessimistic. Sometimes I think it's crazy to keep hoping for a lasting love relationship. All my experience speaks against this. People get married either because they are in love and therefore unreasonable, or because they are reasonable and have given up on love.
June 29, Saturday.
I can't imagine what the girl I want will be like. Don't have the faintest.
July 1, Monday
What a night! I went to Café
Opera where I was given the phone numbers to two lovely ladies. The depression
was gone. I was attracted to Mariana, but she was mostly there to dance. Sofia was
more interested, and we danced for a long time. When we parted at two, Mariana
smiled, but it was difficult to interpret the meaning. Sofia was more direct.
"You have my phone number."
*
Slept at Penny’s place last night. We made love in the evening and again in the morning. We lay half-naked in bed, and I read to her about my flirtation at the Café Opera. From time to time, she had little outbursts of jealousy and we wrestled playfully a little, a game that soon became erotic. I entered her in a mixture of love and erotic aggression. We struggled, but the power was mine and she enjoyed being defeated.
Öland.
July 2, Tuesday
Georg and I started at six in the morning and the trip went smoothly. We are here to repair the summer house. There's a lot to be done, rot that forces us to replace the wood planks and the whole house must be washed and repainted. I called her from the car. She told me that her brother was in hospital. The tumor had come back.
*
In the evening we drove to Byxelkrok and had a beer in the bar overlooking the Kalmar sound. He asked why Penny wasn't there. I told him that it was over. He said he got that impression when he called her last night to get hold of me, and she didn't know where I was. We talked about women and relationships. He said that you should never cling to a broken love. Both should go their own way in the first six months. Then maybe you can become friends. There's something to it, and like all good advice, it's not followed!
July 4, Thursday
Georg said that he usually asks
people he knows well what they think they’ll be doing in five years. We had a
late dinner at Hotel Borgholm. He would never have asked five years ago,
because from his point of view it would have been pointless. I responded by
telling him what I told Ville Lapri and Christer Hurtig at Data Sweden when
they asked me about my future plans:
"Poet!"
"I think you should focus on
business instead. Now is the right time to do so. You are unmarried, have no
children and know a lot. In five years, you won't be as interesting."
"It's just that business does
not attract me, not because there is anything wrong with such jobs, but simply
because culture and journalism interest me more," I said.
He said that he will have his own
company in five years.
"I pull in thirteen, fourteen million kr a year for my company. It would be better if I could capture the money myself."
*
She is having a hard time now. Her
brother lies in a coma and the doctors have given up hope. I called her at
lunch and then again just after ten. She had just spoken to her father who said
that her brother had woken up and tried to eat, even though he can't eat
anything. He said he wanted to go home. Her father suggested she should hold
off coming home. It's expensive, and she was home last spring. She said that
she might come down to see me on Monday, and that she was glad that I care about
her.
"You know I still love
you," I said.
And I do, although not in the same way as before. I don't really know what the difference is. There was one piece of good news. She was accepted to the school of computer programming at Stockholm University.
July 7, Sunday
It’s raining. We have finished the paint job. Last night we slept in the car after going to Hotel Borgholm. We were too tired to drive home.
*
On Tuesday she arrives. Her brother is back on his feet, but according to her father, it’s only temporary.
July 14, Sunday
We've been watching the Band Aid gala since one in the morning. It's a big deal and for a good cause, but the commentators brought it all down. There was, of course, one 'progressive' music writer in attendance, and he was skeptical of the effort which, in his view, was excessively humanitarian. The Swedish music movement was much more radical, he explained, pointing to alternatives such as actions for Chile and Nicaragua. The German entries to the gala followed the same line. They played boring rock and read out long declamations about the threat of war. It's as if they don't care about the children in Africa because they know so damn well how everything is connected. I recognize this from my time on the far left. We despised humanitarian actions that only alleviated hardship. All they did was provide bread for the day, while we aimed at the structures of power, and could therefore turn a blind eye to the suffering here and now.
*
I’m on Öland making love to Penny, whom I no longer love as I used to, but still depend on and care for. I am reading Strindberg's The Son of A Servant and feel like a failure when I think of his literary debut at the age of twenty-one. Middle age is scary. I thought I had read the book in high school, but now doubt my memory. Some sections feel familiar, but not the novel as a whole. The two volumes hit home, and I recognize much of myself in the book's Johan.
*
I had hoped — one of my eternal hopes
that all end in nothing — to start writing my novel here, but the work on the
house took over a week and then Penny came. She helped me paint, but deprived
me of solitude, for which I am both happy and worried.
Today is Sunday. The vacation is
almost over, and I am going back to the city. The time with Penny is sweet, but
it is over, and we know that these days are just a pause in the separation.
I dread the idea of new relationships and feel like my life is going nowhere. Everything is going well for me, except for when it comes to what I really want. My career is in my hands, but I don't want it. Only art and its freedom attract me. Only there pride.
*
I am tired of the soul-searching. I
want to speak again, but from what position?
Humanity's .... and my own, as part of it.
July 15, Monday
The doctors say that her brother will never wake up again.
July 16
She left today and I am sitting here crying. I love her and feel so sorry for her.
July 17
We are together again. I realized it the day before yesterday, and she wanted it. I love her and she needs me. I'm bad at breaking up.
Stockholm. July 19, Friday
She flew home today. Her brother died
Wednesday morning. I came home yesterday and spent the night with her. She is
composed, almost too composed. Is she emotionless, I ask myself. No, but grief
forces us to be strong. If we give in, we can't cope. The reaction comes later.
We made love this night too.
"It feels like you opened a
crack in my heart," she said in the morning.
This is the first time she has
indicated that she loves me, that she wants to marry me. She has tried me out
in both joy and sorrow and found that I hold up.
But do I want to? I think so.
I bought John Gardner's The Art of Fiction - Notes on Craft for Young Writers and have read just over half of it. It is exactly what I need. Now all that remains is to resume the daily practice in the art of writing.
July 20, Saturday
Almost done with Gardner. Wandered around in the city for several hours. Restless, as usual. Frustrating. Thinking of Penny. Just tried to write a letter to her but failed. She would receive it a few days after the funeral. What mood will she be in then? How do I write? Compassionate and sharing the grief, or about love? I tried to imagine myself in her situation, but I couldn't.
August 7, Wednesday
Another article written on my laptop
computer. Well, it's not mine, but I have it at home for a few weeks. I sit
with it on my lap and silently type on the keyboard. When I have finished a
text and made any changes, I save it and copy it to a 5.25-inch floppy disk
which I take to work and put into the PC XT I have there. Finally, I let a
dot-matrix printer put the text on paper.
By the way, it's 00.00 and I have to crash.
August 18, Sunday
I left her at half past eleven. On Götgatan
I see a boy and a beautiful girl walking along. She is slim, has long hair, and
a white jacket with a knee-length, slit skirt.
Suddenly a passer-by explodes.
"Fucking immigrant," he
yells at them.
He is dressed in an old denim suit,
has long and dirty blond hair. He has an almost empty backpack on his back and
is swinging a red Tempo shopping bag with his hand. He continues a few meters,
turns around and shouts:
"Go back to Congo!"
He then waits to see if the guy, who seems to be from southern Europe, will answer, but he gets no answer, and disappears into the subway.
August 21
It is seventeen years since Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia.
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