Shame

in, not this time. She would show him that she could control her desire and that she wasn’t a slave to lust.
    ‘Stop it.’
    Göran kept on caressing her.
    ‘Göran, please stop it.’
    His hands disappeared. And she heard the front door slam.
    It took her almost an hour to get over the desire he had awakened.

    Her belly kept growing. Signs of life from Vanja came less and less often, and Göran’s days at school never seemed to end. Sometimes he didn’t come home before eight in the evening. There were extra rehearsals and choir practice and all sorts of things that kept him at school and were obligatory for all students. Her belly was big and heavy and she convinced herself that that was why they never touched each other anymore.
    That it was the reason she had pulled away.
    Over time he had stopped even trying.

    She had plenty of time to worry in her solitude. Her thoughts raced around wildly in circles and never met any counter-arguments since they were never spoken. She had thought that everything would be so much easier once she got away from all those watching eyes. That she would finally feel complete after she freed herself from all the pressure and was able to take part in the world that had been revealed to her only in glimpses over the years, partly through Vanja, but above all through Göran. She had thought it would be much better if she had to take responsibility for her own life and her own decisions, instead of merely accommodating Him, who still never answered or showed what He thought. But that’s not the way it had turned out. Instead she now understood how uncomplicated her old life had been, when she could simply surrender to the Congregation’s common outlook and guidelines. How simple it had been when she didn’t have to think for herself. Out here she stood utterly alone.
    A poisonous root that was banished so it wouldn’t spread its infection.
    And she had chosen it of her own free will.
    She had been so sure that their love and everything it implied was natural and healthy. That it was her father and mother and the Congregation who had been wrong. Now she realised how selfishly she had behaved. She had only been thinking of herself and her own satisfaction. Now that the anger had subsided and the sorrow caught up, she realised in what despair she must have left her parents, what shame they must have felt. There was no compassion in what she had done, only a huge, detestable egotism. She had believed that she could trade her fear of God for the love she felt for Göran, that it would heal her; she had accused them of forcing her to choose. But now the suspicion had arisen that she might simply have given in, that her choice was really only based on her inability to keep her desire in check. The pastor’s words haunted her.
    The purpose of sexuality is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to nourish the body. If we ate whenever we felt like it and ate as much as we wanted, some of us would inevitably eat too much. Virtue demands control of the body and virtue brings light. There is no conflict between God and nature, but if we mean by nature our natural desire, then we must learn to keep it in check, if we do not want to destroy our lives .
    And he quoted from Romans: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells .
    With each day that she wandered around in those closed circles she began to be more and more convinced that he had been correct. Because what they had done wasn’t right, she could sense that now. They had conceived a child almost within the bonds of marriage and that was fine, but to continue to do it was indefensible. It wasn’t because of her parents’ attitude that she had changed, but because she herself had come to a realisation. She had suddenly begun to feel dirty. Impure. And because she knew that it came from what they were doing, then it couldn’t be right, since it caused her so much anguish.
    Impure.
    The nature of the flesh is enmity towards God.

    It was hard to wash herself clean enough at the kitchen sink, but buses passed by on the main road twice a day, and from the bus station in town it was only a few hundred metres to the bathhouse. She began going there daily but never said anything about it to Göran. She was always back by the time he came home. They would eat dinner and exchange a few words, but the conversations became more and more trivial and her thoughts more and more suffocating. She thought that