Åke

Åke is Jeanette Kihlberg’s husband and Johan’s father, a painter whose rising public profile unfolds alongside the breakdown of his marriage. His confidence in his artistic prospects and his new relationship alter the balance between him and Jeanette: he leaves their home, arranges for Johan to stay with his parents, and eventually presents signed divorce papers. The separation is not only a change in their domestic life; for Jeanette, it becomes a contest over who will define its timing and terms.

Identity and Background

Åke is established through his place in Jeanette and Johan’s family and through his work as an artist. During a Sunday morning at their home in Gamla Enskede, Jeanette recalls a recent weekend that had passed without major conflict. Åke’s parents had visited, and even the small domestic irritations—the criticism that the pork was dry and that potato salad should not be bought from ICA—had not spoiled the visit. The family had watched television and played games. The calm matters as a contrast: the marriage is not depicted only through open conflict, and an ordinary, companionable household remains visible before its separation becomes definite.

That domestic ease is also set against Åke’s professional success. A newspaper review of his paintings praises them as the most important development in Swedish art in a decade and predicts that he will become a major cultural export. The reviewer places him above established artists such as Ernst Billgren and Max Book. Jeanette reads the article with him and finds herself dizzy at the realization that the praise concerns her own Åke. His work has suddenly acquired a public scale that changes the atmosphere around the couple, while his immediate response is practical: he wants to call Alex and go into the city.

Artistic Recognition and New Ambitions

The review marks a turning point in how Åke’s prospects are presented. Its praise is emphatic, not tentative: it forecasts a brilliant future and treats his rise as a matter of national cultural importance. The scene gives Jeanette access to this acclaim at close quarters, as she sits beside him reading about a success that belongs to someone she knows intimately. Yet the article does not establish that she shares his excitement. She is left unsure how to feel, while Åke moves quickly toward calling his representative and acting on the news.

Later, Åke speaks to Jeanette about his success and about the importance of Alexandra Kowalska as his agent. The professional account he gives at lunch is part of the couple’s final negotiations, not a separate triumph detached from their private life. His career and his new relationship occupy the same conversation in which he raises their divorce. The sequence shows how much of his life is now moving beyond the shared household: professional recognition, representation by Alexandra, and a new domestic arrangement with her all become facts Jeanette must absorb.

Marriage, Separation, and Johan

The rupture becomes explicit when Åke tells Jeanette that he thinks he is in love with another woman. Jeanette leaves without answering at length, goes outside to her car, and calls Sofia Zetterlund, but Sofia does not answer. Before Jeanette has driven far, Åke calls to say that he will take Johan to stay with his parents for the weekend, suggesting that a few days apart may help them think. Jeanette recognizes this explanation as an excuse. The call converts the emotional disclosure into an immediate practical separation, with Johan’s arrangements serving as part of the couple’s effort to live apart.

By the time Jeanette is at Johan’s side during a later period of uncertainty about their future, Åke has moved in with Alexandra. Jeanette thinks of Alexandra’s work as a restorer and bitterly associates it with trying to revive what is dead. She does not know whether Åke has left permanently, but she recognizes that he has taken the first step and considers whether she must push him—and perhaps herself—toward a clear break. Her response is not presented as uncomplicated relief: she weighs the possibility of his departure while acknowledging the loneliness and uncertainty it brings.

Åke’s continuing role as Johan’s father remains central even as the marriage ends. Before Johan leaves for London with Åke, Jeanette makes plans to see him. At lunch, Åke initially wants to discuss Johan and how he is living, before moving on to his own success and Alexandra’s contribution to it. The parenting conversation shows that the couple’s separation does not erase their shared responsibilities, even as their discussions increasingly concern separate lives.

The Divorce and Its Meaning for Jeanette

At their lunch, Åke takes out the divorce forms, already signed. Jeanette recognizes the signature he uses on his paintings. Her reaction is a brief but intense disappointment, and the source of that feeling is specific: she is not simply distressed that the marriage is about to end; she resents that Åke has initiated the decisive step and reached it before her. The signed forms turn a separation that had been unfolding through absence, new arrangements, and implication into an explicit act.

The papers are signed when they meet, before Åke and Johan leave for London. Later, Jeanette tells Sofia that the signing makes the situation feel definite. The change is also inward. If Jeanette had held back because she felt she owed Åke fidelity, that hesitation has now disappeared. The legal documents therefore have an immediate emotional consequence even though the evidence establishes the signing, not the final completion of the divorce: they release Jeanette from a lingering sense of obligation and make room for her to consider a future beyond the marriage.

Narrative Role and Retrospective

Åke’s story is conveyed mainly through the effects of his choices on Jeanette. The scenes give him decisive actions—confessing his love for someone else, arranging separate living, moving in with Alexandra, and producing the divorce papers—but Jeanette’s perceptions shape their significance. Her dizziness while reading the review, her recognition that his explanation about the weekend is an excuse, and her disappointment that he acted first make his success and separation part of one changing relationship rather than unrelated biographical facts.

A later retrospective passage attributes to him the thought that, had he understood the situation then, perhaps he could have helped her. It is a counterfactual acknowledgment of missed understanding, though the passage does not specify more in the cited material. Alongside the practical details of parenting and divorce, that note leaves a narrower, unresolved view of Åke: he can recognize that understanding might have mattered, but recognition arrives after the moment when help might have been possible.