‘May I have the honor?’ asked Peter, looking into Vera’s eyes and bowing slightly from the waist like a stiff toy prince in some make-believe Disney saga.
‘Thank you, but I’ll pass,’ said Vera, and left.
Vera’s shoes had almost no heels at all, but her entire right side ached after an evening of favoring it to protect her left. She was forced to sit down and rest on a chair by the stairs. Over on the dark parquet dance floor she saw how Cissi took Peter by the arm and led him forward. In the midst of the billowing crowd, they began to dance – happily, almost flirting. Vera wondered how much longer she had to stay. When, according to all these unwritten rules, was it legitimate to go home? And through the dull pain, spied an irrepressible glimmer of hope – soon it would be the fifth of November.
17
That we need a radically new economic rationality is, at this stage of history, overwhelmingly self-evident. A Green economics – or ecological economics, as I prefer to call it – transforms our destructive economic logic because it subordinates economics to the process of life, rather than, as has been the rule so far, placing life at the service of economics.
Manfred Max-Neef, ‘The Gaia Atlas of Green Economics’
For the first time in his 24-year life, Peter had been rejected by a girl. The unknown feeling was unexpectedly hard to take, and when Cissi appeared and invited him to dance to the big-band classic Just A Gigolo, his mind was still reeling from Vera’s wounding words: ‘Thank you, but I’ll pass.’ Why wouldn’t she even dance with him? What had he ever done to her? Maybe she hated Just A Gigolo? If so, that was something he could sympathize with.
‘How is Vera, really?’ Peter nodded to where Vera was sitting as he guided Cissi out to the dance floor.
‘The City hotel’s Jooohn Travolta,’ sang Renhornen’s vocalist, in a pitch-perfect voice.
‘I actually don’t know. She seems so bitter and strange tonight,’ said Cissi. ‘I wonder if it has anything to do with her…’ She broke off.
‘What?’
‘No, I don’t know. It’s none of my business, but I have a feeling she and her husband are separating. I’ve heard that can make you really unstable.’
‘Ah! No, it probably isn’t easy.’ It was a relief, and Peter struggled not to look pleased. Something else came to mind, making him feel a little ashamed.
‘Yes, and maybe she’s in pain; have you seen how she’s still limping?’ That must be why she didn’t want to! How could he have failed to see that? Maybe because he had been so preoccupied by the fact that he had suddenly realized what she reminded him of: the hair with the flowers, the small, sticking-out ears and the lovely dress made her look like an Elf – the wisest, most just, beautiful and capable mythical being in Tolkien’s world, which had enchanted his boyhood room. A creature that was above human frailties, one that did not fall for simple flirtations, but instead faithfully committed herself for life. Peter’s heart pounded harder, as if he were close to answering his most important question.
‘Well, just because your knee hurts it doesn’t mean you have to be negative about the successes of the welfare project, does it? That’s nuts!’ said Cissi. She felt a vague worry: Was I wrong to choose Vera? She glanced at Peter and wondered what he would say if she asked the question out loud.
The singer in the peppermint-striped skirt and tailcoat could really sing: ‘I ain’t got nobody – nobody cares for me, nobody, nobody…’
Cissi shook off her dour thoughts and focused on the moment, the experience of a party and the glamor of being in the arms of a good-looking man who, surprisingly, knew how to lead a woman on the dance floor, despite the fact that he wasn’t from Norrland. Things could be worse, she thought, and saw the party lights reflecting in her gold dress.
After the rewarding dance with Cissi, Peter returned to Vera, who sat over by the stairs, distractedly watching the half-moon behind the naked birch trees outside.
He knew more now and wanted to talk about the future. ‘Does your leg hurt?’ he asked.
Vera started and looked at him. ‘Yes, you could say that.’
‘Yes, otherwise you would be expected to do your duty as Woman on the project,’ he emphasized with what he thought was a charming, teasing twinkle in his eye. ‘We’re going to have to see how this pans out, us working together and everything…’ He took a step closer.
Vera looked at him as if he were behaving threateningly. She got up smoothly using just one leg. Light and strong, thought Peter. No surprise that an Elf can get up like that.
She looked at him briefly before firmly grabbing the stair rail, turning her back to the party and hobbling down the stairs: ‘Yes, I’m going to have to see how it pans out for me.’
He recognized an unfathomable determination.
And once again, she had turned her back on him and left.
Peter didn’t understand. Every other time when he, uncharacteristically, had been the one to make the advance, he had immediately been victorious. But with Vera… His usual way of making contact didn’t work, exactly when it was important that it did work, just when he had actually met an Elf in real life.
Of course he knew she was a real person – a nurse in her late twenties from inner Västerbotten. But there were several puzzle pieces that pointed directly at something that he longed for, something completely unique. She was beautiful in a hard-to-discover, secret way; she was petite yet strong, wildly curly-haired yet disciplined, superior yet good-hearted, stubborn yet evasive. She was completely unlike all the other women he had known and he sensed instinctively, without really knowing why, that she had something he needed.
When Peter realized that Vera had actually rejected him numerous times, he understood that he had approached things all wrong. The definition of idiocy is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different outcome, as his Uncle Ernst used to say.
She was completely different from all the other women he had met. Obviously, he would have to use a completely different approach to get close to her. But different how? There were endless ways to be and do things. How could he get Vera to change her mind? How could he get her to see him the way young women usually did?
A wave of understanding washed over him, and he realized that he needed to get to know his opponent, something his jujutsu instructor had been nagging him about for years. Luckily, Peter, who sometimes had trouble even remembering women’s first names, recalled masses of seemingly unimportant details about Vera. Thus, he had no difficulty remembering that Vera thought books like The Gaia Atlas of Green Economics, Global Women, and State of the World were worth reading. He went to the library and looked for them. The only one that wasn’t out on loan was Green Economics. Peter realized that Vera probably still had the library’s only copy of the other two. In a fit of uncharacteristic ambition, he borrowed other books on welfare and economic development instead.
He called his father and said he couldn’t come to the board meeting next week, because he had too much work to do on the project. Lennart had sounded unexpectedly negative. When Charlie couldn’t come to board meetings it was usually accepted with considerable understanding. And Peter had thought that Lennart must have been a driving force behind him even being asked to join Future Wealth and Welfare. Perhaps Lennart had not realized that the project would take time away from Escape, and maybe even from his usual studies? If so, that was typical of his father. He always wants to have his cake and eat it too, thought Peter, with