“I think she realizes how much we look alike,” Kaija said as she stood up and held her daughter close to her hip.
“Yes, it’s remarkable,” Samuel agreed quietly. Just looking at the two of them together, the traces of Salomé’s taste still lingering on his tongue, intensified his already horrible guilt.
“Shall I warm up your dinner?”
“No,” he stammered. “No thank you, I mean.” He tried to smile. “It’s just that I’m really not hungry.”
“But you look exhausted, sweetheart.” She smiled, her green eyes tranquil and full of affection for him.
“Don’t go to any trouble. You should save your strength.”
“No, really, Samuel, I am feeling much better today,” she insisted. “Let me reheat it for you.”
He couldn’t believe that, on this day, with all that had just happened with Salomé, he would return home to find his wife in such improved spirits. The irony of the situation overwhelmed him.
Kaija walked over to Samuel and placed Sabine in his arms. The little girl smelled like baby powder. He touched her softly rounded limbs and buried his nose in her freshly washed hair.
The whole familial scene made him feel sick with self-loathing. He couldn’t believe that Kaija had suddenly rebounded with so much energy. It was as if the woman he had courted years earlier had returned. Her face was full of color and her voice cheerful. She hadn’t been this way for several months.
He did not realize that Kaija had had an epiphany that afternoon. That she had picked herself up from her incessant moping and stared at herself hard in the mirror. “You have a beautiful daughter,” she told herself, “so consider yourself blessed. Not having another child isn’t the end of the world.” She tried to tidy up the house and to make herself look attractive by changing into a freshly starched dress and applying rouge to her otherwise pale cheeks. Above all, she tried to remain positive about her husband’s reaction to the news. Tonight, she promised herself, she would tell him of her condition.
That evening, as he sat at the kitchen table, pushing his food around the plate in a desperate attempt to mask his lack of appetite, Samuel’s anger at himself intensified.
How could he have betrayed his wife? And let alone with a patient! He shook his head in disgust.
“What’s the matter, Samuel?” Kaija asked him from behind. “You look just awful. Wasn’t your dinner all right?”
“Yes, yes. Of course it was, darling,” he said apologetically. He swung around the chair to face her, but could not look her straight in the eyes. In a strained voice he blurted out, “It was just a difficult day at the office, and the rain delayed me from coming home.”
She nodded and went to the sink, tying the apron strings around her waist. The water from the faucet hissed.
“I think I’m going to get to bed early,” Samuel suggested. “Has Sabine already been put to bed?”
“Yes, I did that while you were eating.”
“I’ll kiss her good night after I take my shower,” he murmured in a barely audible voice.
“Why not before?” Kaija asked, befuddled by her husband’s odd behavior and clearly disappointed that he had ruined the atmosphere she had tried to create for when she would inform him of her situation.
“I’m just a bit clammy from the rain, that’s all.” He stood up abruptly, slightly kicking the leg of the chair as he made his way upstairs. Kaija remained downstairs.
Samuel had hoped the shower would cleanse him. Erase the traces of his infidelity. Yet standing there naked in the shower, he could still smell the scent of marzipan rising off his body and fading into a thick cloud of steam. The same steam would permeate the terry towels and his cotton robe, so that even after his bathing, Salomé’s scent clung heavily to the cloth and navigated its way back again into his skin.
Fifty-five
VESTERÅS, SWEDEN
MARCH 1975
When Salomé returned home that same evening, she had tried to smooth out her dress and dry her hair with one of her linen handkerchiefs, but she realized soon after walking through the apartment’s corridor that no one was around to even notice that she was arriving home slightly disheveled.
The apartment seemed so crowded now. Her collections lined the bookshelves and handfuls of potpourri spilled out of dried papaya skins. But those were familiar and comforting things. It was the children’s toys and Octavio’s shoes that contributed to the clutter. However, now was not the time to say anything to them about it. She wanted time to herself, a few more moments to savor what had just transpired and to relish the memory of how Samuel had traveled through her. Even now, as she looked at the goose bumps on her arms, she wondered if it was his perspiration and not the rain that had caused it to glimmer as it now did.
She stood in front of her full-length mirror, hearing her husband snoring in the background. From the side of the glass, she could see he had once again gone another day without shaving, the thick black stubble spreading over his brown cheeks. She had learned from Samuel that all of this was a sign of Octavio’s depression—his incessant sleeping, his unwillingness to go to job interviews, his lack of grooming. All that opposite to what he had once prided himself on long ago.
Nevertheless, she refused to feel sorry for him. It did not occur to her that perhaps she was the reason that he had tumbled into a downward spiral of depression. That all he craved was her forgiveness and her affection. She had chosen not to think that way. She now had little sympathy for the man she had once sworn to be her eternal love.
Instead, as she slid her dress around her bare shoulders and over her hips, trying to simulate what Samuel’s fingers had just done to her, she was lost in the sensation of his kisses that had covered her breasts, her hipbones, her neck.
In the mirror, she stared at her naked image. She imagined she was Samuel gazing upon her body for the first time. She cupped her breasts and stood in profile to see if her abdomen seemed flat and firm. She placed her fingers around her waist and tried to see if her two thumbs could still meet in the small of her back.
Then she stepped closer to see her scars where the electric wires and nodules had been placed over her areolae, in the faint creases of her navel, and in the folds of her inner thighs.
In the faint light of her bedroom, she could see them clearly. She traced one of the lines on her breast with her forefinger. She felt none of the pain she had endured thirteen months before. That gripping, terrifying sensation of electricity going through her body, entering through her thinnest and most delicate pieces of skin. Now, all that was left of that experience were her memories and those thin, pink scars. They blended in with the breast itself, just as the ones by her navel and genitalia did, but still she could not deny the obvious: those men who had tortured her had left their hideous mark on her forever.
They had branded her in her most intimate places. Left her with these faint tattoos that basically told the world, “Yes, we have been here. We have touched this and destroyed this. And we will never be punished for any of it.”
She thought of how the two men who had truly ever made love to her did so in such different manners. While Samuel seemed to embrace every inch of her body, never shying away from a trace of something uncomely, Octavio had only ever gravitated to those features on her that he found the most beautiful. And perhaps that was part of the problem—perhaps that was just another reason why Salomé felt she couldn’t undress in front of her husband anymore. She didn’t think he could get over that she was no longer unblemished. That her most beautiful features—her breasts, her waist, even her insides—they all now had scars.
But, should a man make love differently to a woman after she has been abused? Should he hold her differently—more gently—to keep her from breaking? Should he address these remnants of her attacker and kiss them as if his lips had the power to heal? Salomé didn’t know the answer, for Samuel had never known her before her torture. He was seeing her for the first time the way she was now. Octavio h
ad known her both before and after her scars.
That was irrelevant now. After all, Octavio no longer tried to seduce her. He had given up. He no longer slept against her, nestled into her prominent hipbones, his fingers reaching to clasp hers.
Now, he slept with his back toward her, his face stuffed into his pounded pillow, one of his legs half out of the blanket.
She wondered if he would even show a shred of emotion when she packed up his things and asked him to leave. She wondered if he would beg her to take him back and let him try to make things anew.
But she didn’t care, one way or the other. For once in her life, she was ready to put herself first. However, she had to admit, she was curious. She wondered if he would see the irony in her decision.
Fifty-six
VESTERÅS, SWEDEN
MARCH 1975
Samuel awakened the next morning and got dressed in a hurry. His mind was racing, and his stomach was full of knots. All he could think about was getting to the office. He was desperate to meditate over the events of the previous evening—he needed a few hours before his first patient arrived and his day was spent listening to problems that were not his own. He took one quick glance in the mirror and noticed that, in his haste, he had buttoned his shirt incorrectly. I’m a mess, he thought to himself. I have to get ahold of myself. As he went to readjust his shirttails, he noticed that his fingers were still shaking.
“Just get yourself to the office as quickly as you can,” he told himself firmly. He slipped on his tweed blazer, threaded and straightened his tie, and bounded down the stairs. But the last person he wanted to see was already waiting for him at the base of the banister.
Kaija stood there, wrapped in her cotton robe with her eyelet nightgown peeking through, smiling up at him with coffee in hand.
“I’ve made you a cup of your favorite blend,” she said sweetly. Little Sabine was tugging at the hem of her mother’s robe.
“I’m sorry, darling,” he responded with great delicacy. “That’s really kind of you, but I’ve got a day full of appointments and some files I need to look over first. I just don’t have time.” He was already placing one of his arms in the sleeve of his coat.
“Will you be home for dinner on time?”
“I hope so, darling,” he murmured as, in one continuous motion, he mindlessly wrapped his scarf around his neck and bent down to retrieve his satchel. “I hope to be home by seven.”
“I’d like to talk to you about something,” she tried to tell him as he turned to say good-bye to her and Sabine. “It’s rather important, Samuel…” But she stopped midsentence. He was already halfway out the door.
She shook her head and picked up her daughter.
“Can you believe it, älskling?” she whispered as she kissed the child’s soft cheek. “I think we need to make an appointment with your daddy at the office. Otherwise he doesn’t have time to listen to us!” The little girl giggled. Kaija went back into the kitchen and poured the still warm mug of coffee down the drain.
Samuel hesitated as he reached deep into his pants pocket to retrieve the keys to his office. The events of yesterday evening still weighed heavily on his mind.
The room seemed strangely warm to him. He had left without straightening it, and as he scanned the furniture and the top of his desk, he could immediately see how things were displaced. His tall leather chair was not pushed neatly under the desktop, but rather was slightly off-angled in the direction of his bookshelves. His papers were amiss and his penholder had tipped to the side. And then there was the picture of his wife and daughter. That too had fallen over. It now lay flat, portrait side down, each of their delicate faces pressed against the mahogany wood.
Everything seemed strange to him now. Samuel could still not believe that, only a few hours before, he had sat in this very chair and passionately made love to a woman who was not his wife. Even worse, a patient of his. Someone who clearly needed his help, not his affection.
But making love to her had been a powerful experience for him. She was such a passionate woman, and if he closed his eyes again, he could imagine her calves locking around his knees, her bottom sealed against his thighs. He was afraid even to reflect on the memory, for he feared that, if he recalled the events of yesterday evening, it would unleash his desire to do it again.
Samuel had been with only a handful of other women before Kaija, and none of them had brought out this hungry and lustful side of him. He would never have believed before last night’s incident that he was capable of such a thing. Clearly he was, but with Kaija he often felt that she was so fragile that his attraction to her was tempered by his yearning to protect her. With Salomé, it was different. It was as if she had refused to let herself be coddled or merit sympathy; she just wanted to feel like a beautiful and sensual woman again.
Samuel tried self-diagnosis. “You need to stop seeing your wife as your mother. You need to work on your marriage and make sure that you can communicate with your wife. You don’t want to lose what you have with Kaija just because Salomé has awakened something inside you that you didn’t before know existed.”
Samuel wanted to make things better between Kaija and himself. He wanted to be able to love her in every way he was capable of. Tenderly, passionately, and completely. He did not want to sneak around cheating on his wife, fulfilling fantasies to satiate his libido at the expense of his family.
He wanted to be good. He wanted to be devoted. He had spent his entire life trying to be a trustworthy, compassionate husband and a loving father. He had always aspired to be the type of man that his own mother had never had. He wanted to take care of those who were in pain.
But now, he realized he had another side to him. He had almost been wolfish when he’d made love to Salomé. He had been so hungry to have her. To make love to her and grasp her tightly, slipping himself in so that he was completely enveloped by her. And he knew, if he was truly honest with himself, that he wished he could have both Kaija and Salomé.
He withdrew one of his pens from the canister and nervously tapped it on his desk. His eyes met those of Kaija and Sabine, framed within a matted border of paper and lacquered wood.
He placed the pen down on his desk and reached for the photograph, bringing it closer to view. He smiled as he thought about the day it was taken, on Midsummer’s eve last year when he and Kaija had taken Sabine to see the city’s maypole. Kaija had made matching white dresses for her and Sabine and woven garlands from wild daisies for their hair. Samuel took the photograph just as his two girls had finished dancing. They had rushed toward him, their cheeks flushed and rosy, their eyes sparkling in the crisp, summer light.
Until yesterday evening, Kaija had seemed so unlike that bundle of joy and energy that the photograph had captured.
He would not let himself indulge in the obvious excuse and blame her for pushing him away over the past few months. For making him feel vulnerable and empty, for craving someone who could satisfy his need to be appreciated and loved. He was too honest with himself to take the easy way out. He realized that no one was to blame for his infidelity except himself. Even Salomé could not be judged as harshly as he deserved to be. After all, she was a patient with traumas he would never personally experience. A wounded woman, trapped in a strained marriage, in need of his guidance and expertise.
She was in a fragile state of mind, but he had allowed himself to believe she was his equal. How selfishly he had acted! Salomé was obviously aching for someone to see and embrace her as a complete woman. Samuel should have been focusing on her treatment, so that she realized that she had to embrace herself before anyone else—her husband or any other man—could make her feel whole again.
But he knew how tempting such a situation could be. All he had to do was close his eyes and think of Salomé mounting him as she had done only hours before, and all reason and ethics seemed to vanish from his head.
Samuel stood up and fumbled for the small radio he kept in a drawer for moments like these
when he was under stress. He plugged it in and readjusted the antenna, and the sound of classical music floated through the air. It was already 9 A.M., and in nearly an hour, his first patient would arrive. Samuel placed his head between his palms and balanced his elbows on the table. He had to get a grip on himself. He had to put things in perspective. He cared about Salomé. She was his patient and he wanted her to heal. He was also deeply attracted to her, but not enough to leave his wife and child. The result was obvious then. He would inform Salomé when she came to her appointment on Thursday that they had each made a terrible mistake. He would apologize as her doctor for his poor judgment and suggest that she find another therapist who was more objective. He would never tell his wife of his indiscretion, as it would only hurt her, possibly even destroy her, and he would rededicate himself to his marriage and his family.
If it were only that easy. Even if Kaija were never to discover his betrayal, he would have to live with it. And he knew no one would judge him harder than Samuel Rudin himself.
Fifty-seven
VESTERÅS, SWEDEN
MARCH 1975
Samuel returned home later that evening, exhausted. The emotional intensity of the past day and a half was wearing him down. He wanted to lock himself in his office forever and never face any of the women he had wronged. He especially dreaded facing the warm, soft eyes of his wife.
The low, golden lights of his doorstep finally beckoned him. He slowly trudged down the pathway and rummaged for his house keys.
He walked through the door and discovered Kaija standing patiently in front of the banister, just as he had found her that morning. Obviously, by the look on her face, she had been waiting for him for some time.
“It’s half past eight, Samuel. I’ve been waiting for you since seven o’clock.”
He tried to muster an apology, but his fatigue betrayed him. He unbuttoned his coat and hung it on the hook by the door.