Stig Dagerman - Sleet - Selected Stories

Alice, on the other hand, lay awake for a long time, the scenes of the day replaying themselves over and over in her mind. Very cautiously she freed her hair from her husband’s mouth and moved away from him. When she lay down again on the cold sheets of her own bed, she wanted to scream from the pain of those fourteen days that separated her from happiness — that sweet, dangerous happiness, the happiness that bites. She did not cry out, but she did lie awake most of the night.

At dawn the forester came home from his night hunt. Alice awoke when she heard some sounds from the porch below, and she sat up quickly in bed. The room was very warm, so she got up and opened a window. She heard a heavy bang on the porch and not long afterwards some hard steps on the stairway. She remembered then how the forester had gone on the night hunt.

She went out to the porch in her bare feet anyway, just to see what had caused the loud noise. A large white bundle was thrown on the floor. Startled, she stopped short before a stiff white wing with blood on its tips, a frozen mangled block of blood and feathers. The dead bird, the raw morning mist creeping through the yard, the threatening silence that hovered over the village, all of it flung her back inside the house, where she stopped before the mirror. She stood there looking into it, massaging the color back into her cheeks and feeling rather sorry for herself, so frightened, so alone.

Suddenly she thought, ‘I have to talk with him. Right now. He has to help me. He can’t leave me alone like this.’

She took the scarf down from the shelf and wrapped it around her head. Then she listened for a moment, and when she heard no sign of her husband stirring in the bedroom, she ran lightly up the stairs. She barely dared to touch the steps, she was so afraid of getting caught. And she didn’t knock on the forester’s door, because a knock would almost certainly wake her husband if he was still sleeping. So instead she just opened it, very slowly.

She opened it so slowly, in fact, that the forester was caught completely off guard. Standing there on the threshold, Alice felt a chill run through her body. Her first impulse was to turn and run back down the stairs, since what she saw filled her with a disgust so complete that she could not endure it without screaming. Or so she thought at first. There are certain situations we do not wish to see our loved ones in, as the unworthiness of their behavior damages our own pride. Their very pitifulness becomes in every sense our own. And in such situations, it is only by breaking from them that we can salvage some part of our own dignity.

The silence drew out to an exasperating length, but the forester did not yet notice Alice standing there in the doorway. Her eyes filled slowly with warm tears. Offended, abandoned, she absorbed every detail of the scene before her. The glass in the forester’s right hand was nearly full. What indulgence! “When he’s had enough of me,” she thought, “he switches to brandy.” She took in his profile, his swollen, red, drunken, sated profile. How could she have ever loved it? Or had she never really seen it before? And then the left hand. She stared particularly long at what he was doing with that hand, for this was what held her captive and filled her with such disgust.

In his lap rested a dead squirrel, a large splendid creature that he’d shot while out on the hunt. With his left hand he was caressing it, not so much tenderly as amiably, as one might do to a pet. His expression was not at all cruel, but rather pleased. “Just like he looks when women give themselves to him,” thought Alice. “A caresser who can only love with his hands.”

Of course, he was bound to notice her eventually. No one can be the object of such intense thoughts without somehow sensing it. A sharp thought scratched his cheek. He turned slowly toward the door, his caressing hand clenched in defense. The moment he set eyes on Alice he tried to stand up to put his dignity back on its feet, but with a motion of her hand she enjoined him to remain seated.

To be caught sitting! If only he’d been standing then at least he could have looked down at her. He felt himself diminishing before her eyes until his shoulders were little more than a hanger for his forester’s coat to dangle on.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in a dark voice. He tried to get rid of the glass as discreetly as possible.

“You don’t normally ask me that,” replied Alice. She could feel the rough wood of the threshold pressing against her bare feet. It hurt them, but right now that pleased her. It was all right for something to hurt as long as it reminded her of the obligations she had to her hate. Gently she untied the forester’s colored scarf and took it from her hair.

The forester maintained his calm, making no attempt to stop her. He didn’t jump up with a lover’s entreaties: “How could you be so cold? How could you reject something I gave from the heart?” No. And he made no move to charge forward, grasp her in his arms and conquer her, though he recognized this as one possible way of dealing with the situation. Instead he just sat there, calmly formulating his defense. She had caught him sitting down — caught him. And that’s just what he felt like, a captive. It was like being hauled before a judge, though she had accused him of nothing. He sat there devising a defense in any event, and what defense is more effective than that of toppling the very moral base on which your accuser stands?

The forester slowly turned away from her. He looked at his glass. There wasn’t much in it. As befits a man of character, it was almost fully empty. So he lifted it from the desk pad, and holding it up as an argument for his own excellence he turned to her again with vehemence. There was an ominous shine to his eyes. “ I !” he thought with an exclamation mark. “ I cannot even sit in my rented room and have a few drops of brandy in solitude! And as for my prey, why can’t I take it up to my expensive room without you being scandalized? And that you — you, of all people — should say it!” (though she had, in fact, said nothing). “You! … So attached to hypocrisy that you force others to be hypocritical! Force them to swear to you that they never touch a drop! Coerce promises that they will never kill for pleasure! You’re trying to drag me down, that’s what you’re doing. Down to your own level. Do you think I can’t see that?”

But he was not about to give her the pleasure. Now he would be the one to set the trap, as if he couldn’t figure out why she chose to intrude on him at this time of day. He raised the glass to his lips and took a drink, a little nip to clear his throat.

“Didn’t we agree not to see each other like this for a couple of weeks?”

His voice was thick with suppressed emotion. This sudden attack on his dignity nearly brought tears to his eyes, or at least a misty haze. The steam of the fury boiling within him dampened the windows of his soul.

Then at last it happened. The scene. The Big Scene. Enough to make him want to shade his eyes, something he would gladly have done if decorum did not prohibit it. Alice’s bare white feet now crossed that threshold of pain and stood on the soft rug inside the room. They were trembling, both from a desire to kick him and a longing to run away. And yet, contrary to his expectations, she did not yell. Her voice was a tightly stretched wire onto which her words stepped delicately. If one single word were too heavy the entire wire would snap.

“You have it good,” she said to him. “You have your rifle and your brandy. You don’t have to lie awake all night. No one talks about you in the stores. No one gossips about you in their kitchens. No one thinks you’re ridiculous. No one finds you shameful, because you’re not cheating on anyone — no one but me. Who doesn’t cheer when someone deceives a deceiver? Two weeks is easy for you. A nice little holiday. Imagine, fourteen days that you don’t have to kiss and caress me. How wonderful! Imagine not having to be in love for fourteen whole days. What an enviable position you’re in.”