Elisabeth Rynell - To Mervas

Both of us started glowing as we talked. Everything we mentioned immediately became warm and alive, a hot fluid metal, which we shaped and melted down and reshaped again.

“Yes, and even you have to understand this,” I suddenly heard myself say. “In a place like that you just have to conceive a baby. I mean that’s where you make love to become pregnant!”

Kosti quickly seemed to sober up. He sighed, and his expression became harsh and edgy.

“Dearest Mart, not now. Not again. We decided not to discuss this until after the Orkney Islands. You promised, remember? Right? You promised to wait until I was ready.”

It happened so fast. The Orkney Islands drifted away from us and disappeared somewhere far out at sea. And there we were, Kosti and I, sitting opposite each other in the sudden calm, interrupted and lost. It was terribly quiet. The ticking of the battery-powered clock could be heard through the whole apartment: ticktock, ticktock.

I could have done something. For example, I could have gone and fetched the book about the Orkney Islands that we had just bought and said: Okay, let’s forget about that for now, let’s look at this instead. Or I could have spread the big detailed map on the floor for the hundredth time and said: I’m sorry, we should let it go, it just came out of me, I don’t know why. Come here!

Or I could’ve said that he was right, we had actually decided not to talk about it, we could discuss having children when we returned, and I wouldn’t nag about it anymore.

But inside my head, a small voice said: You have decided, not the two of us. You want to wait; I don’t. And I sat there silent, caught up in a strange, eerily quiet anger, which slowly spread inside me and filled me with its shadowy gray demons. I sat completely still and allowed thoughts to rise that I couldn’t reverse and didn’t want to have. A cruelty was coming from inside me that I couldn’t defend myself from.

Kosti didn’t do anything to change the gloomy atmosphere that had taken over the room either. An unpleasant smell seemed to have found its way in through the cracks in the windows. The very air between us had changed, but we didn’t know what to do to get rid of it. Kosti also remained silent, as if he were waiting for something. It was as if there were a secret director waiting in the wings, manuscript in hand, anticipating the next line. As if everything had already been entered into the great book of life, already decided. All we had to do was fill in the blanks with our voices.

I cleared my throat. The words had to come now, before they killed me; I could feel them inside, insisting I let them out. They had to come out into the light and be destroyed like vampires. Perhaps then they’d be gone forever.

“It’s a pity, really, that we’re not Catholic,” I began, noticing at once that my suppressed anger made my voice vibrate slightly.

Kosti gave me a stern look.

“If we were, we wouldn’t even have to discuss the subject of children, we wouldn’t have to. We’d just let the children arrive.”

“Come on, give it up,” I heard Kosti cry out, from somewhere far away, from the other side of the sea.

But I kept going, I had to get into it, it was an old dry wound that I had to scratch and tear at now, until it bled.

“Catholics are really the only ones who dare to speak the truth,” I said. “They come right out and say that contraceptives are a sin. That it is a crime, a crime to prevent conception! You have to agree with this at least; they come out and say it and even though I don’t think it’s a crime against God, it’s a crime against nature. It’s a crime against mankind, against women, yes, especially women. Oh, I don’t think you understand anything at all, we’ve spoken about this so many times but you’ve never heard the truth, you’ve never gotten to hear what I truly think and feel. You know why? Because you wouldn’t understand it. You’re lost inside your pretty little world where everyone’s just friends and the notion of men and women, instinct and differences almost doesn’t exist!”

I was aware of how agitated I sounded, half screaming, as if I were being attacked or held down by someone. As if I were afraid.

“That’s why I’ve never told you what I’ve felt when we’ve made love using contraception, without a thought of having children. You wouldn’t understand, you who live in your own sweet little fairy-tale world. But I want you to know that I’ve felt like a whore, like a cheap fucking whore every time you slept with me. And it’s you, Kosti — no one else — who’s defiled me, who’s made me dirty, who’s made me feel disgusted with myself, simply because you’ve denied me the right to be a woman. Do you get it? You’ve denied me my womanhood!”

Kosti had now demonstratively turned away from me, letting his gaze disappear into the darkness outside the window. It was actually quite odd that he didn’t leave the room or at least growl at me to shut up. But this was a one-person show and my words could not be stopped. I was a ditch full of sewage and the messy words gushed out of me.

“Your greatest flaw is that you don’t know what a woman is. No, you don’t, and you probably don’t know what a real man is either. You’d probably shit your pants if you met a real woman; she’d scare you, Kosti, because she’s not part of your worldview, she doesn’t exist in your pathetic, friendly teddy-bear world where every damned person is so smart and kind it makes me want to throw up. You know, a real woman, she is a mother, first and foremost a mother, and even if men can run around spreading their seed here and there — yes, spread it into the storm on the Orkney Islands, by all means, do that — women are made to carry, you understand, she wants to carry the heavy fruits, she wants to be fertilized and carry, fertilized and carry. You get what I’m saying? She simply doesn’t want to be some kind of fuck-buddy and have a good time between the sheets because that’s not what it’s about! No, she doesn’t want to be a worthless tramp, which you seem to want to reduce me to. That’s what you make me into when you humiliate me like this; you deny me the right to become a mother, you won’t make me feel like a real woman and give me a child even though I’ve asked for one. It’s the most revolting, cruel thing you can do to a woman, and that’s what I want you to understand, that’s what you have done to me with all your talk about contraceptives and wait until later and all that. That’s what you’ve done to me, that’s what you’ve done — ”

Finally, I ran out of words. There was simply nothing more to say and I remember that I felt emptier than I ever had in my entire life. It was as if an army had passed through me, an army that had plundered and burned everything and left nothing behind but bare, scorched earth. The room was once again quiet. It was quiet for a long time. Until Kosti turned to me and looked at me with those eyes in which no love was left.

“Leave,” he said. “I want you to leave. I don’t want to look at you. I no longer know you.”

Feeling completely numb and blank inside, I went out to the hallway and put on my coat. Then, without a word, I left the apartment. All night, I lay folded in the backseat of the car with my eyes open. I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t cry. And I remember that it felt terrible that I didn’t cry, that I couldn’t even cry.

It is a Saturday evening in the apartment we call the Exception. Mom, my older sister, my twin brothers, and I are in the big sitting room drinking tea and listening to the radio. My little sister is asleep in the smaller room, where Mom’s bed is.

When someone rings the doorbell around eight-thirty, Mom’s eyes get empty and distant. She buttons the lowest button on her muumuu and pulls her hand through her hair.