The Swimmer Read Free

somewhat affected by it.
    The message was in Swedish:
    Shammosh,
    I’ll contact you in Brussels. We have to meet.
    Determination, courage, and endurance.
    Mahmoud felt his heart pound even harder. Surely only his adviser knew that he’d accepted an invitation to speak at a conference organized by the International Crisis Group a week from Thursday. Maybe it was still a joke after all? The Volvo was just in his imagination? Still… Somewhere inside he felt a familiar sense of excitement, a small, barely perceptible surge of adrenaline.
    He shook his head. Perhaps he should just wait and see if someone approached him in Brussels. But he had one more thing to do before he left the office, a message he had to write. Someone who’d been waiting a long time to hear from him.
    Klara Walldéen had appeared in his life suddenly and from a completely unexpected direction. One day she was just there with her arms around him, with her head on his shoulder, with her hands in his ever-longer hair. It had been such a tumultuous period in his life. He’d been empty and confused, exhausted and sleepless. Utterly, utterly alone. And then, one day, she was just there in the doorway of his bleak, unfurnished apartment.
    ‘I’ve seen you at lectures,’ she had said. ‘You’re the only one who looks even lonelier than I feel. So I followed you. Crazy, right?’
    Then, without saying another word, she’d stepped over his threshold and laid her loneliness down next to his. And Mahmoud left his loneliness there, until they began to merge, until they grew together. Until they were not lonely anymore. It was a relief that they often didn’t even need to talk. That they could just lie there on his Spartan mattress or in Klara’s narrow, hard bed on Rackarberget listening to her worn-out portable record player play one of those crackling soul singles she bought at flea markets.
    Not a day went by that he didn’t think about it. About how they used to breathe as lightly as they could to avoid injuring the fragile membrane that enveloped them, how their heartbeats would harmonize to the rhythm of Prince Phillip Mitchell’s ‘I’m So Happy.’
    Still, he’d known from the beginning it wasn’t going to work out. That there was something inside him that wasn’t enough, something inconsistent with what he and Klara were creating. Something he kept to himself, deep down in the most hidden corner of his heart. When Klara had been admitted to a master’s program at the London School of Economics at the end of law school, they solemnly swore that they’d commute, that they’d make it work, that distance was irrelevant to a relationship as strong as theirs. But Mahmoud had already known it was the end. Inside of him the light he’d struggled so long to stamp out blazed with a new, resolute flame.
    He would never forget Klara’s eyes as they stood at the airport, as he stammered through his memorized speech. That he thought it might be good to take a break. They’d be a burden to one another. They shouldn’t see this as an ending, but as an opportunity. All of which were good reasons, but not the truth. She said nothing. Not a single word. And she never looked away. When he was finished, or when words finally failed him, all love, all tenderness had left her eyes. She looked at him with a contempt so merciless that tears began to stream down his cheeks. Then she picked up her bags and walked to the check-in desk without turning around. That was three years ago. He hadn’t spoken to her since.
    Mahmoud bent over his computer and opened a new message. He drummed on the keyboard. It was the only thing he’d thought about since he’d been invited to that conference in Brussels: he should contact Klara. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to write to her.
    ‘Come on, man!’ he said out loud to himself. ‘Come on!’
    It took him almost a half hour to write a message of only five lines. It took yet another fifteen