Nor did we need to part over and over again because Johannes had to go home to his partner; I was his partner. We couldn’t move in together-that wasn’t allowed in the unit-but we could spend the night with each other as often as we wished, and I wasn’t “the other woman.” I was simply The Woman. And I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the fact that we could walk along openly holding hands, the fact that everyone knew we were a couple and accepted it. We even had mutual friends that we spent time with: Erik, Elsa, Alice, Lena and many others. Sometimes we would meet up with other couples. We would go out to dinner with couples. It was something completely new and fantastic, to be invited to dinner by a couple along with other couples, and to be part of a couple, not always the fifth wheel on the wagon, but regarded and treated as someone who belonged with someone else.

With Nils (as with a number of other men before him) everything had happened in secret. We never met up with other people together, no one in his family or circle of friends knew of my existence, and none of my friends knew about him. And that wasn’t only because he was someone else’s partner, but because much of what we were doing was taboo.

Nils was actually breaking the law. He could have gone to prison over and over again for both the oppression of a woman and the improper use of male physical strength. When we got together he would often spend time chopping wood for me, or mowing the lawn or cutting the hedge or pruning trees, while I was in the kitchen preparing lunch or dinner for us. He also sometimes changed the tires on my car, fixed a leak in the roof, put up new guttering and mended cracks in the facade of the house. And I showed my gratitude by dressing sexily and cooking something really delicious and making the table look particularly nice.

It was a very special feeling, standing there in the kitchen with an apron over my dress, which in turn hid my silky lingerie, cooking for myself and my big strong lover-my big strong man-as he stood out in the cold and the wind, swinging the hickory ax and splitting one log after another just as easily as if they had been made of wax, and at a speed I found hugely impressive. Nils could chop as much wood in an hour as I could in two. And whenever he changed over to winter or summer tires on my car, he did the whole job in the time it usually took me just to loosen the wheel nuts. Not having to do these heavy and often dirty jobs myself-not having to get sweaty, filthy, to end up with strains and pains in my arms, shoulders and back-and still to get the work done was of course very satisfying in itself. But it was much more than that. When Nils came in after his hard work I would get out a clean bath towel for him, and while he showered and changed into clean clothes (which he always brought with him from home in a briefcase) I would finish cooking and setting the table. And then, at the very moment when I could hear the splashing of the water and Nils singing in the shower, I would sometimes stop and kind of taste the whole scenario, drink it in, fill my mouth with it and hold it there, and at those times I felt so alive, so involved, almost as if we belonged together, Nils and I. Almost as if we were needed by each other.

There was also a sexual dimension, of course. I was seething with lust as I stood there busying myself in the kitchen with my apron knotted around my waist, like an obedient little housewife as I heard the logs being split against the chopping block outside, or the constant hum of the lawnmower or hedge clippers, the pounding of the hammer or the churning of the cement mixer. There was an infinite bubbling expectation in preparing food with housewifely care, not to mention the satisfaction of seeing Nils eat it later with the hearty appetite that comes from physical exertion. Yes, it was all sexual, it was sex, it was part of our foreplay. And it was-or it could have been-a lifestyle. If we had been a proper couple we would presumably have lived by this division of roles. Not openly, perhaps, but when we were alone. When we were alone we would have allowed our feelings and our bodies, not our thoughts, to decide who did what.

I think it’s beautiful when men show their physical strength openly without being ashamed of it or apologizing. And I think it’s beautiful when women dare to be physically weak and accept help with heavy jobs. I believe there’s a kind of courage in that, and courage is beautiful. If I can choose between mind and body, I choose body. If I can choose between brain and heart, I choose heart. With Johannes I could make that choice without being forced to hide it.

13

The exercise experiment was over. I had a few days off, then it was time for me to make my first organ donation: one of my kidneys was to go to a young medical student. I was very frightened.

The night before I was due to go in, Johannes stayed over with me. We made love, then I wept. He tried to calm and console me.

“I’ve only got one kidney,” he said. “It’s fine, I can’t tell the difference.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “I’m afraid I won’t wake up from the anesthesia. I’m afraid I’ll never see you again.”

He was quiet for a moment. He looked at me, his expression serious. Then he said:

“That day will come, you know. We both know that, and we have to live with it. But it won’t be now. It won’t be tomorrow.”

Not now. Not tomorrow. That thought calmed me, and I fell asleep straightaway.

When the morning came I walked on relatively steady legs to department 4 in the hospital, which was part of section K. On the lower ground floor were the nursing center, the pharmacy, massage therapists, the podiatry and physical therapy clinics, a hairdresser, restrooms, and the elevators to different departments. Department 4 was on the fourth floor. My room-to my surprise I had a single room-had a window looking out over the Atrium Walkway, and through the glass walls I could look down over Monet’s garden.

This was the first window I had seen in the unit, and I stood there entranced, gazing down at the people moving about in the Atrium Walkway, some walking, some jogging. And I looked up and gazed out through the glass wall and across the pond, at the bridges with their rose arbors and at the wisteria, the copper beech, the weeping willow, the bamboo grove and the narrow paths where people were walking. I recognized Lena by her short, tousled white hair. She was moving quickly, loose-limbed, she looked like a little troll in a hurry. She stopped and exchanged a few words with someone I didn’t recognize who was sitting on a bench by the pond reading a newspaper.

“Dorrit Weger?” I turned around; a nurse in white pants and a light blue shirt was standing in the doorway.

“I’m Nurse Ann,” she said, coming into the room and shaking my hand. “I’m the head of department here on 4.”

Nurse Ann started to tell me about what was going to happen and what I had to do over the next few hours: take a shower using Hibiscrub, put on a hospital gown, have a sedative injection, be taken down to the operating room on level K1 on a gurney, be anesthetized.

The operation went well. I came to, felt sick, and threw up via a tube in my nose. It was disgusting, but at least I was alive. The young medical student had received my kidney, and things seemed to be going well there too, I heard. After just a few days I was discharged. Johannes came to pick me up with flowers and a box of chocolates; he took me home and looked after me, cooked for me and served up my meals, made coffee and tea and fed me chocolates. He even read aloud to me: Somerset Maugham’s short story “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” among other things.

I needed a little while to recuperate, but I was strong and was soon more or less back to normal: working on my novel, going for walks, swimming and going to the sauna-the last often with Elsa and Alice, who had both recently had surgery as well. Elsa had donated part of her liver, Alice had donated a kidney, just like me.