Caroline Eriksson - The Watcher

I take off my shoes and slip inside without turning on any lights. This is my home now and I’m entitled to be here, but I still feel like I’m trespassing. On a rational level, I’m aware of how lucky I am. This is a good house in a good neighborhood, and the terms of my sublet are almost painfully favorable. But as I move toward the kitchen, I feel like disapproving eyes stare at me from every direction, following me through the darkness.

The house doesn’t want me here. Neither of us feels comfortable with the other, but you can’t explain that kind of thing to your sister. She would blink uncomprehendingly at me, maybe shake her head and mutter something about nonsense. She would probably think I was being unappreciative, and if so, for good reason. My sister was the only one who knew of a place I could sublet on such short notice. Indeed, she was the only one I could even ask. I don’t have any close friends left, and it’s been several months since I’ve been in touch with any of the other freelancers I used to hang out with.

I stop in the kitchen doorway and peer into the room, which is also shrouded in darkness. The tabletop is empty apart from my computer. No one has made tea and put a cozy over the teapot to keep it warm until I came home. No one has made a couple of sandwiches or covered a slice of freshly baked pound cake with plastic wrap and set it on a plate in the fridge. And no one has left a note intended for me to read when I come home late from a trip to the library or maybe to hear an author read at some bookstore, a note with a loving greeting, words testifying to how much I mean to him.

I could boil a little water and make tea for myself. I could make some sandwiches or bake something, but it’s not the same. And no matter what else I do to fool myself, it doesn’t change the fact that no one leaves little notes for me, here, there, and everywhere—on the kitchen table, inside the bathroom cabinet, under the pillow. A puzzle with only two pieces.

I sit down on one of the two chairs, stare out the window, and try to keep my thoughts under control, try to prevent them from racing back in time. But looking forward isn’t an option, either. The paths that used to be possible are all closed. The world has shrunk. Existence consists only of what I see around myself. What I should do is stand up and head for the bedroom. I should at least attempt to sleep. If I don’t get up now, I may never do it. I may end up sitting here forever, a standing stone in the gloom. Perhaps I’ll eventually crumble to pieces and disintegrate. Or else I’ll be doomed to sit here staring out the kitchen window until one eternity ends and the next begins.

I become self-absorbed. The clock on the wall ticks, and the darkness deepens outside the window. It’s as if I fade into a trance and it lasts right up until a movement out in the yard catches my eye. There’s someone out there, a shadow figure at the fringes of the light cast by an old-fashioned streetlamp. An instant later, the light falls on a man on his way toward the house across the street. It must be the same man I saw in the kitchen over there earlier, the one who looked so elegant. But tonight his dark hair is disheveled, and the back of his suit jacket is wrinkly. He does something with his hands, straightens his pants or his shirt, maybe. His steps are hesitant, his feet drag on the ground. Suddenly he trips and looks like he’s going to fall, but then he regains his balance and takes the final steps up to the house.

A strip of light from the second-floor window illuminates the façade of the building across from me as he puts his key into the front door. A figure with long hair—a woman in a nightgown—pulls back a heavy curtain and peers down at him. It only lasts a second, then the curtain falls back into place. The man opens the door and disappears inside.

The window pane in front of me goes dark again. I can make out the outlines of my own form in it, the faint reflection of a woman at a table. There’s something uncanny about the image. I shiver and lean forward to lower the blinds. This motion gets me going, and I finally make it to my feet.

Enough of this, I think. Without really understanding what I mean by that.

It’s Friday night and I come home late, at a time when my wife will no doubt be asleep. Even so, I get it into my head that she’s sitting up, waiting in there, that she’s standing behind a curtain watching me. Maybe that’s why I don’t raise my face to look up at our bedroom window. I can’t handle having her look me in the eye just now.

I feel self-confident but tense, checking one more time that my shirt is properly tucked in. Just before I reach the door, I trip and almost fall, then I regain my balance but still don’t look up.

In the front hall, I hang up my jacket and put my shoes where they go. I move as quietly as I can and don’t turn on the hallway light. Sometimes I sneak into the bathroom and rinse off, but usually I shower before I come home, at her place. Yes, I’m sleeping with a woman who isn’t my wife. It’s not something I’m proud of, but there it is. One could say that there are many reasons for it, and one could say there is only one reason.

The bedroom door is almost completely shut. It’s only very slightly ajar. I cautiously push it open and then stand in the doorway for a couple of seconds until my eyes can see through the room’s shadows. The contours of a body in the bed, the blanket rising and falling in time to the faint sound of regular breathing. Exactly as though she’s sleeping. Why does it even occur to me that she isn’t? Why do I imagine she’s pretending? I tiptoe over to the bed, lift up the blanket, and slip in under it. The mattress complains under my weight, making me think of the body that moaned and groaned beneath me earlier. The blood pumps faster through my member as I remember.

I’m not going to lie. The sex is amazing, it is. A new body, with new lines and a new scent, new skin beneath my palms. The attraction is heady and raw. And yet what’s going on between us has astonishingly little to do with sex—that part, I could do without. I know that sounds strange, but it’s true.

It’s like this: When we shut the door behind us, it’s like leaving the world for a while. She touches me, and everything else disappears. For a while, I can forget. That’s the feeling I can’t do without.

Sometimes I feel pathetic. I am pathetic, if not even worse. That day when we got married, we were so sure then, so convinced that what we had was unique, that we weren’t like other people. We would never allow our love to be sullied, never betray each other the way men and women have done from time immemorial. We were different. Our love was of a different sort. That was before I found out my wife’s secret, before I cheated on her with someone else.

Now we lie here in the dark, each on our side of the mattress, breathing in time through the lies.

I close my eyes and wait for sleep to arrive. I occasionally dream that I tell my wife the truth. Everything feels so realistic in those dreams, just as if it were really happening, as if I were there and saying those actual words, unburdening myself. But then, when the dream gets to my wife’s reaction, everything is torn apart. Each time, the same thing happens. I never get to see her face after the revelation, never know what effect my words have on her.

I wake up from those dreams in a cold sweat, my pulse running rampant. I stare into the darkness for a while, then turn toward my wife, who is sleeping up against me, and feel the lines of her body under the blanket. How would she react if I told her, in reality?

I don’t even dare imagine.