Ignorance Read Free Page B

disconcerted a few weeks later when Gustaf proudly announced some good news: he had proposed that his firm open a Prague office. Since the Communist country had limited commercial appeal, the office would be a modest one; still, he would have occasion to spend time there now and then.
    "I'm thrilled to have a connection with your city," he said.
    Rather than delight, she felt some sort of vague threat.
    "My city? Prague isn't my city anymore," she answered.
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    "What?" He bristled.
    She had never disguised her views from him, so it was certainly possible for him to know her well, and yet he was seeing her exactly the way everyone else saw her: a young woman in pain, banished from her country. He himself comes from a Swedish town he wholeheartedly detests, and in which he refuses to set foot. But in his case it's taken for granted. Because everyone applauds him as a nice, very cosmopolitan Scandinavian who's already forgotten all about the place he comes from. Both of them are pigeonholed, labeled, and they will be judged by how true they are to their labels (of course, that and that alone is what's emphatically called "being true to oneself").
    "What are you saying!" he protested. "Then what is your city?"
    "Paris! This is where I met you, where I live with you."
    As if he hadn't heard her, he stroked her hand: "Accept this as my gift to you. You can't go there. So I'll be your link to your lost country. I'm happy to do it!"
    She did not doubt his goodness; she thanked
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    him; nonetheless she added, her tone even: "But please do understand that I don't need you to be my link with anything at all. I'm happy with you, cut off from everything and everyone."
    He responded just as soberly: "I understand what you're saying. And don't worry that I expect to involve myself in your old life there. The only one I'll see of the people you used to know will be your mother."
    What could she say? That her mother is exactly the person she doesn't want him spending time with? How could she tell him that—this man who remembers his own dead mother with such love?
    "I admire your mother. What vitality!"
    Irena has no doubt of that. Everyone admires her mother for her vitality. How can she explain to Gustaf that within the magic circle of maternal energy, Irena has never managed to rule over her own life? How can she explain that the constant proximity of the mother would throw her back, into her weaknesses, her immaturity? Oh, this insane idea of Gustaf s, wanting to connect with Prague!
    Only when she was alone, back in the house, did she calm down, telling herself: "The police
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    barrier between the Communist countries and the West is pretty solid, thank God. I don't have to worry that Gustaf 's contacts with Prague could be any threat to me."
    What? What was that she just said to herself? "The police barrier is pretty solid, thank God?" Did she really say, "Thank God?" Did she—an emigre everyone pities for losing her homeland— did she actually say, "Thank God?"
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    Gustaf had come to know Martin by chance, over a business negotiation. He met Irena much later, when she was already widowed. They liked each other, but they were shy. Whereupon the husband hurried in from the beyond to help them along by being a ready subject for conversation. When Gustaf learned from Irena that Martin had been born the same year he was, he heard the collapse of the wall that separated him from this much-younger woman, and he felt a grateful affection for the dead man whose age encouraged him to court the man's beautiful wife.
    Gustaf worshipped his deceased mother; he tolerated (without pleasure) two grown daughters; he was fleeing his wife. He would very much have liked to divorce if it could be done amicably. Since that was impossible, he did his best to stay away from Sweden. Like him, Irena had two daughters, who were also on the brink of living on their own. For the elder one Gustaf bought a studio apartment, and he arranged to send the younger