Chapter 5: A Tale of Three Cities, Part II

July 1979 — Falkenberg, Sweden

Our schedule for the week was intense. Our first language class would start at 8:15am and would run until 12:15am, we’d have 45 minutes for lunch, then an hour-long orientation class that would include Swedish history and culture, then another four-hour language class. After an hour for dinner, we’d have options for planned activities or time for ourselves to do as we pleased. There would be no bed checks and no wake-up calls. We were simply expected to show up on time.

I woke up early as usual and quietly donned my jogging shorts, t-shirt, and sneakers and let myself out of the room. I jogged around the campus and along the river until I figured I had gone about five kilometers. I wasn’t tired or winded and thought I should probably work my way up to five miles, or about eight kilometers. That would take roughly an hour at a constant pace and seemed about right. Swimming a mile was a lot more work than running five kilometers.

It dawned on me that I might have real trouble running during the Swedish Winter, especially if it was still dark at 8:00am with freezing temperatures, not to mention the potential of a meter of snow. Or more! I wondered what I’d do for exercise in that case. I’d have to think about it. I was never into lifting weights or doing exercise routines. I’d always just swum. Now I ran. But in a few months, I’d need something else. Ice skating would work, if there was a rink I could get to easily from Hovås. I’d learned to ice skate from Birgit. I wasn’t very good, but I figured I could improve with practice.

I managed to make the entire hour without overtaxing myself, though I was a bit winded. I walked around the campus a bit to cool down and then went to shower. Trevor was awake and was just heading for the shower as well. We showered, dressed, and went to breakfast at 7:30.

I was amused that the breakfast was more American style than Swedish. They did have the «filmjölk» and the what now seemed obligatory corn flakes, but they also had bacon, eggs, and American-style waffles. I decided to have some bacon, but otherwise went for the traditional Swedish breakfast that I was actually starting to enjoy rather than just tolerate.

The forty-two exchange students from the US and Canada trickled into the classroom from breakfast. Trevor chose a seat at the end of a row midway back and Maria sat next to him, with Pam next to her. I sat down next to Pam. At exactly 8:15am the instructor, a man who looked to be in his late 60s or early 70s, handed out language workbooks and several handouts and then began teaching.

We’d have a couple of dozen vocabulary words to learn each day, plus practice exercises in the books. The goal was to get us to at least basic conversational level. There would also be additional language courses once I started school. Instead of taking Swedish, which was the equivalent of taking English back home, I’d be taking a course in Swedish for Immigrants that over several months would help me become fluent.

I got the drift from most of the students the night before and at breakfast that they only wanted to learn enough to get by, but I wanted to become fluent. I’d have to work hard at it, but Melanie had taught me good study habits and tricks to learning a language. The Spanish tutoring was going to pay off with Swedish. I’d have to thank Melanie for that. I chuckled to myself that I couldn’t thank her the old way! She was like Mary now — off limits.

We began with basic sentence structure which was very similar to English. I sort of knew that from the phrases that Birgit, and more recently, Mary Anderberg, had taught me. Once we had covered that, we moved on to noun declension. Swedish, unlike English, added definite articles to the end of the noun. There were only two genders, masculine and neuter, but there was no particular rhyme or reason that I could discern for which nouns were which.

It was odd, for example, that an orange, «apelsin», was ‘masculine’ but an apple, «äpple», was ‘neuter’. There were few clues and so I’d just have to memorize whether to use ‘ett’ or ‘en’ as the indefinite article and whether to add a ‘t’ or an ‘n’ to the noun as the definite article. I decided to make flash cards to practice because they had worked so well with Spanish.

There were some tricky words that the instructor warned us about. For example, «glass» meant ‘ice cream’ while «glas» was a drinking glass. The first one was pronounced like it was in English, the second more like ‘glahs’. Another one, which was funny, was that «kyssa», pronounced ‘chyssa’, meant ‘kiss’, but «kissa», pronounced like you would in English, was a slang word for urinate. The biggest giggle came from «bra», which in Swedish meant good; «bh» or «bysthållare» was the word for the English ‘bra’.

There were a few more giggles at the end of class when the instructor asked if anyone had any words we wanted to learn, and one of the guys in the back listed several swear words. The instructor wrote the Swedish versions on the board and I copied them down. I figured it would be good to at least know what they were! It seemed that most cursing in Swedish had to do with the devil, and the usual English epithets didn’t have direct translations that were in common use.

The rest of the day progressed, and I noticed Maria and Trevor holding hands, not only when walking to lunch, but occasionally during class. Trevor, Maria, Pam, and I had more or less become a group and so almost by default Pam and I were together most of the time. After dinner, Trevor suggested we walk into the small village about two kilometers from the school and check it out.

We discovered an important thing on that walk. In Sweden, at least in small towns, almost everything closed at 5:00pm. None of the small shops were open. Even the gas station was unattended, though there was a way you could pump gas by putting currency into a machine by the pumps. We turned around and walked back to the campus and went into the rec room. We sat down on some couches and watched the TV where there was an episode of Soap running. After that, the news came on, but it was fully in Swedish so we didn’t pay attention to it.

Trevor and Maria were necking pretty heavily, so I asked Pam if she wanted to play pool. She agreed, and we got up and played a couple of games. She wasn’t very good, so I won both games. At that point, Pam and I walked back to the dorms and went to our separate rooms. About ten minutes later, Trevor came in.

“Steve, do you think you could do me a huge favor?”

I had an idea what he wanted. I could certainly go for a long walk or go back to the rec room so he could be with Maria!

“Sure!”

“Would you mind sleeping in Maria’s room? I’d like to have Maria in here tonight.”

“Won’t Pam have a problem with having a strange guy in her room?” I asked.

“Maria thinks she’ll say ‘yes’. You can just sleep in Maria’s bed. Nobody will care. I actually asked one of the YFU counselors, the younger one, if it was a problem.”

The younger counselor was an eighteen-year-old Swedish guy and was the person we were supposed to go to if we had any trouble in the middle of the night. He’d decide how to handle things and wake someone senior if it was serious.

“I’m pretty flexible,” I said. “If you need the room to get laid, just say the word and I’ll disappear for a while!”

“Maria’s going to spend the night, but I’m not sure beyond that, actually. It could just be a serious make-out session and nothing more. Of course, it depends on her talking Pam into the arrangement.”

I chuckled, “Go find out. I’ll be here.”

I pulled out some of my loose leaf paper and wrote half of a page in my journal. About ten minutes later, Trevor came back with Maria and a smile on his face.

“Pam said ‘OK’,” Trevor said happily, grinning widely.

“I hope you don’t mind if I check first. I’ll be back in a few minutes, OK?”

“She said yes,” Maria said.

“I’ll be right back, Maria. I’d rather confirm for myself before I just show up at her door with my bag.”

I walked down the hall and knocked on Pam’s door. She opened it and let me in.

“Pam, Maria tells me that you’re OK with me sleeping in her bed. I wanted to check to make sure you’re actually OK with it.”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Maria really wants to be with Trevor.”

“I can probably find another room to sleep in, even if it’s on the floor,” I said.

“It’s fine. I hope you don’t snore!”

I chuckled, “Nobody’s ever told me I did.”

I left and went back to my room. I tossed my stuff back into my bag and left Trevor and Maria in the room.

I went to Pam’s room and dropped my bag. I grabbed some shorts and a clean t-shirt and my toothbrush and toothpaste and walked down the hall to the bathroom. I changed and brushed my teeth and went back to the room. I got into the bed and turned out the light on the table next to it and turned and went to sleep.

In the morning, I woke up as usual and went out to run, coming back to find Pam just getting out of bed. I went to shower and change and when I got back to the room, Pam was gone. I assumed she was showering as well. I waited for her to come back and when she did, we went to breakfast. About ten minutes later, Trevor and Maria showed up and sat with us.

Trevor smiled and said, “Thanks, guys.”

“It was no problem,” I started chuckling; “Pam didn’t bother me at all.”

Pam shoved me gently to reprimand me for the comment, but she was smiling, so I knew I hadn’t offended her.

Tuesday went just like Monday, with a focus on counting, days of the week, months of the year, telling time, giving directions, and so on. One key difference in telling time was that in Swedish you would say it was “half six” for 5:30pm instead of ‘half-past five’ as we did in the US. Counting was straightforward and the months and days were almost identical, although Saturday was the dissimilar «lördag».

That evening after dinner, the four of us played Hearts for a couple of hours and then Trevor and Maria left us. Pam and I went back to what had become our room and Pam wrote letters. I studied my flash cards and read for about an hour, then pulled out my journal to write a bit. I’d been thinking about the baby and wanted to get my thoughts on paper.

“You keep a diary?” Pam asked.

“A journal; it’s the same thing, I guess.”

“Cool. I kept one when I was younger, but stopped a few years ago.”

“I started about two years ago and with all the stuff that’s happened to me, it’s been a tremendous help in making sense of my life.”

“What’s happened that you need to make sense of things?”

I chuckled, “How much time do you have?”

“It sounds like there’s a long story there.”

I didn’t really want to get into everything with someone I didn’t know very well.

“There is,” I said and went back to writing.

I finished up, went to the bathroom to change and brush my teeth, and came back and got in bed. I turned off the light, said ‘good night’ and went to sleep.

Wednesday was a repeat of Tuesday until afternoon break. Trevor pulled me aside.

“Are you upset about being in the room with Pam?” Trevor asked.

“What makes you think that?”

“Pam told Maria that you pretty much ignore her and don’t talk much to her. Pam thinks you might be upset.”

“I’m not upset,” I said, “just careful. I’ll talk to Pam and make sure she knows.”

“Thanks. Maria was talking about switching back and I’d rather that didn’t happen. I haven’t hit a home run yet.”

“Keep to yourself whether you have or haven’t. It’s just not cool to talk about. And word gets around if you do.”

“You’d tell?”

“No. I would never do that, but you don’t know that for sure.”

“Good point. Thanks.”

He walked away, and I sighed. In trying to make sure Pam wasn’t uncomfortable with me being in the room, I had made her uncomfortable. I was trying to avoid saying anything at all that might make her uneasy, and was just more or less minding my own business. I decided to talk to her after dinner.

My old self would have tried to seek her approval and given her control of the situation and done anything she had asked. Jennifer had driven a stake into that self, and helped me understand why I used to do things. I hadn’t yet fully come up with a way to decide what to do and what not to do, but I was working on it.

Part of me wondered whose approval I was seeking. Jennifer’s? Stephanie’s? My own? Not my mom’s at this point, that was for sure. Society’s? God’s? No, certainly not God’s. Thinking about Stephanie reminded me that I hadn’t told her about Becky. I’d have to do that soon, and if Becky’s dad was going to call my parents, I needed to make sure Stephanie knew beforehand.

That was a conversation I did not relish having. I’d take my medicine and, unlike I had with my mom, I’d accept it without argument. I’d accept it because Stephanie had been right from the beginning. She had warned me about Becky and she had told me to break it off cleanly, and a ‘clean break’ in her mind certainly didn’t include breakup-sex.

I’d stepped up and taken control of the situation. Once again, the old self would simply have done what Becky wanted and my sense of right and wrong would have told me to marry her. I still had that thought, but Jennifer had awoken something in me that balanced right and wrong with results. I didn’t believe that the ends justified the means, but I had started looking at the longer-term consequences of my actions.

I also didn’t make commitments as lightly as I had before and considered them to be a little less binding. It wasn’t that I would go back on my word, but the commitments were no longer absolute and inviolable, but were contingent on circumstances. Well, that wasn’t quite true. My commitment to care for my unborn child was permanent and unchanging. I was sure that nothing could change my mind about that.

I pushed that out of the front of my mind and went back to class. We finished the day’s studies and had dinner. After dinner, I asked Pam to take a walk with me. We walked down towards the river and along the path that ran next to it.

“I think I might owe you an apology,” I said. “I’m not upset with you. On the contrary, I was trying to avoid upsetting you.”

“Upsetting me?”

“Think about the situation. A strange guy, one you barely know, is sleeping in the same room as you. He’s here because your roommate and his roommate want to be together. There hasn’t been much interaction between you and me other than talking on the plane and then sitting near each other here.