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Authors: Jonas Karlsson
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Each thought that one of the others was liable.
“Typical,” Roger said when he finally got me to call him. “Now no one wants to pay. It’s going to cost me tens of thousands of kronor.”
He spent all winter going on about how many tens of thousands of kronor it was going to cost him. Eventually the insurance company agreed that it was their responsibility and that Roger would get full compensation for the damage. When the hull was being repaired, it turned out that it made more sense to replace a good part of the deck as well. A highly professional boat company did the work very thoroughly, and in plenty of time before the sailing season began. To smooth things over, the marina offered to waive the rent for the following year. So when it came down to it, Roger had actually gained from the whole business. But he still went on referring to it as a huge disaster, and took it as proof that only bad things ever happened to him. “Do you know,” he would often say, even years later, “the whole thing cost tens of thousands of kronor.”
—
For the first time in a long time I missed having a girlfriend. I found myself thinking about Sunita, and felt a tug at my heart. I thought about the evenings we spent in her beautiful apartment in Vasastan. It was really her father’s, but because he worked in Mexico and the rest of the family lived in India it was basically hers. When we were together it had almost felt like mine. Even though I always knew that our relationship was finite.
We met at the film club at the university where she was studying. The members were mostly foreign students, and the club organized a program of screenings of Swedish classics on Monday evenings. Bergman, Sjöberg, and so on. I was invited to come and run the sessions. The film club offered wine, and I would give a short talk about that week’s director, explaining recurrent themes, showing stills and short clips, and on the whole I enjoyed doing it. Each Monday evening after the movie, Sunita and I would stand there looking at one another, and in the end I asked her where she was from, and she told me, not without a degree of pride and in surprisingly broken English, that she was from the holy city of Varanasi, but had grown up in Bombay. That pride, combined with a very fetching degree of shyness, made an indelible impression on me. She seemed so incredibly exotic. Maybe I seemed the same to her. We never spoke anything but English, but I think she knew a bit of Swedish, even if she pretended she didn’t. She loved films, and Bergman in particular. I managed to get hold of special editions with extra material, and we spent hour after hour in front of the television in her big living room, on an enormous soft white sofa.
—
Sunita’s father was a diplomat. He had recently been transferred from Sweden to Mexico, but for some reason he didn’t want Sunita to go with him. Maybe he thought she should finish her education first. It was probably also to do with the fact that she had an uncle who lived in Sweden who could act as a combination of guardian and chaperone, albeit from a distance. And presumably they also reasoned that it was safer for Sunita here. They hadn’t counted on me.
Sunita was the apple of her father’s eye, and the affection was mutual. Time and time again I heard about how great this father of hers was. That all Indians only wanted sons, but that her mother and father had been happy when they had a daughter. That it was extremely unusual for a daughter to be allowed to travel and study. Sunita always said she loved her father above everything and everyone else, and because he was such a distant presence I had no problem with that.
Her relationship with me had to be kept secret, under all circumstances. No one must know anything. Not our families, and not our friends. I wasn’t allowed to breathe a word about our relationship to my friends or anyone else I knew. She had been granted a few years to study and see the
“Typical,” Roger said when he finally got me to call him. “Now no one wants to pay. It’s going to cost me tens of thousands of kronor.”
He spent all winter going on about how many tens of thousands of kronor it was going to cost him. Eventually the insurance company agreed that it was their responsibility and that Roger would get full compensation for the damage. When the hull was being repaired, it turned out that it made more sense to replace a good part of the deck as well. A highly professional boat company did the work very thoroughly, and in plenty of time before the sailing season began. To smooth things over, the marina offered to waive the rent for the following year. So when it came down to it, Roger had actually gained from the whole business. But he still went on referring to it as a huge disaster, and took it as proof that only bad things ever happened to him. “Do you know,” he would often say, even years later, “the whole thing cost tens of thousands of kronor.”
—
For the first time in a long time I missed having a girlfriend. I found myself thinking about Sunita, and felt a tug at my heart. I thought about the evenings we spent in her beautiful apartment in Vasastan. It was really her father’s, but because he worked in Mexico and the rest of the family lived in India it was basically hers. When we were together it had almost felt like mine. Even though I always knew that our relationship was finite.
We met at the film club at the university where she was studying. The members were mostly foreign students, and the club organized a program of screenings of Swedish classics on Monday evenings. Bergman, Sjöberg, and so on. I was invited to come and run the sessions. The film club offered wine, and I would give a short talk about that week’s director, explaining recurrent themes, showing stills and short clips, and on the whole I enjoyed doing it. Each Monday evening after the movie, Sunita and I would stand there looking at one another, and in the end I asked her where she was from, and she told me, not without a degree of pride and in surprisingly broken English, that she was from the holy city of Varanasi, but had grown up in Bombay. That pride, combined with a very fetching degree of shyness, made an indelible impression on me. She seemed so incredibly exotic. Maybe I seemed the same to her. We never spoke anything but English, but I think she knew a bit of Swedish, even if she pretended she didn’t. She loved films, and Bergman in particular. I managed to get hold of special editions with extra material, and we spent hour after hour in front of the television in her big living room, on an enormous soft white sofa.
—
Sunita’s father was a diplomat. He had recently been transferred from Sweden to Mexico, but for some reason he didn’t want Sunita to go with him. Maybe he thought she should finish her education first. It was probably also to do with the fact that she had an uncle who lived in Sweden who could act as a combination of guardian and chaperone, albeit from a distance. And presumably they also reasoned that it was safer for Sunita here. They hadn’t counted on me.
Sunita was the apple of her father’s eye, and the affection was mutual. Time and time again I heard about how great this father of hers was. That all Indians only wanted sons, but that her mother and father had been happy when they had a daughter. That it was extremely unusual for a daughter to be allowed to travel and study. Sunita always said she loved her father above everything and everyone else, and because he was such a distant presence I had no problem with that.
Her relationship with me had to be kept secret, under all circumstances. No one must know anything. Not our families, and not our friends. I wasn’t allowed to breathe a word about our relationship to my friends or anyone else I knew. She had been granted a few years to study and see the
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