"I was the love of his life"
By: Lisa Röstlund • published
[in Aftonbladet, Sweden] : 14 August 2012
Swedish Chris tells for the first time about his forbidden love affair with Mitterrand.
She: Swedish journalist.
He: President of France.
Chris Forsne, 64, tells Aftonbladet for the first time about his 15-year long forbidden love affair with François Mitterrand.
- "He said over and over again that I was the love of his life," she says.
It started with an argument.
The year was 1979 and the place was Bommersvik outside Södertälje, where the giants of the European labour movement were holding a conference. Chris Forsne was introduced by Olof Palme to the then 63-year-old French Socialist Party leader, who had not yet become president.
She was given an interview.
- We got into Palestine. He was pro-Israel. We immediately started arguing and probably went on for two hours. When we were saying goodbye, he said that if I ever came to Paris, we would have to have lunch.
Was married with two children
It was already clear that Chris Forsne would be a correspondent in Paris after the Swedish election, as she told me.
- Then he said: "Do you only talk politics, mademoiselle? Don't you love life?".
That last sentence became the title of her acclaimed biography of François Mitterrand, published after his death in 1996, in which Forsne describes him as "a close friend".
She is currently working on her first novel, Our Man in the World, which centres on a protagonist inspired by Carl Bildt, where the French President Leo is actually Mitterrand.
Mitterrand was married since 1944 to Danielle Gouze, with whom he had two sons. He had a daughter with his mistress Anne Pingeot in 1974. The international press has speculated about his relationship with the Swedish journalist.
Found out the number
Chris Forsne no longer has any reason to hold anything back, she says, even though, with her hands over her mouth, she retracts a host of anecdotes bursting with big politics and romance, immediately after revealing them. "No. It's not possible! It's not publishable!".
Here's what she can tell you, though:
- "At 8 o'clock on a Sunday morning in July 1980 the phone rang at my house, when I was still living in Sweden. It was him. He had found out my number.
- He said again and again, right from the start, that I was the love of his life. He was the one who courted me and he didn't give up.
She also felt a strong personal chemistry.
- 'Sometimes you come across people with whom you get along very well. You have the same outlook on life. He was not president when we met. Even though he was a party leader, he was a person I got to know.
Discussing crayfish
After the first dinner in Paris, the relationship began.
- There was also love on my part. It was all about the little things. We talked about how crayfish should be cooked. "What's better, raspberry or gooseberry jam?" He wanted to take me to a farm in Charente to eat extra-salted butter, which he loved. He wanted to hear me talk about morning walks down to the sea.
On the morning of the presidential election in May 1981, Forsne says Mitterrand called.
- 'He was in his bed and I was in mine, on different sides. We talked for 20 minutes and he joked: "I guess I'll be retired tonight".
But he won. The next morning he called again.
- He asked where I had been. He had tried to get hold of me. But I was busy with work reporting his victory all evening.
Sneaking out of the garden
-
The circle of people around people in his position become adoring yes-men. I was the only one around him who wasn't dependent on him, who wasn't part of the French hierarchy. I spoke my mind, and I think he needed me as a window to normality.
Mitterrand shared with her his sense of unreality about the office. When, soon after taking office, the World Bank announced that the franc was under attack and the government asked him how France would respond, he called Chris:
- "How do they expect me to know?" he asked.
She recalls a security gate that happened to be open during one of the couple's walks in the garden of the Elysée Palace.
- We slipped out when the security guards weren't looking, and ran out into the city. We dreamed of being able to live like everyone else. Today, people are different everywhere. But back then it was not the same.
Saving his voice
Forsne recalls that it all took place before the age of mobile phones.
- "For 15 years he called me daily and we met about three times a week, either at his home or mine. With all his travelling, there was a lot of waiting. I have hours of cassette tapes with recorded messages from him on my answering machine. "Hello, it's me again". I've wanted to save his voice.
She was torn between her feelings for him and her view of herself.
- "I was building my career as a journalist and knew the gossip among my colleagues. I was struggling with my journalistic integrity. How could I cover him and his politics? But I haven't gained anything professionally from our relationship, quite the opposite.
- What I gained was an insight into the political world - how the game at this level works.
The wife knew
The President took Chris as his private entourage on several official state visits to Africa, South America and India.
- His wife had found out that I was going to the Congo, so she stayed home. At the airport they welcomed us with 'Mama & Papa Mitterrand' banners. Mobutu was furious that his wife didn't show up.
Reporter: What was your relationship with his wife like?
- We saw each other from time to time. It was desensitised, you could say. She was fully aware of us. His marriage was lousy. She was a naive left-wing activist who flew around in Concorde planes and handed out Evian bottles to earthquake victims. She did the ground service, that's all.
Reporter: In 1988 you gave birth to a son. Is Mitterrand his father?
- I am willing to talk about my relationship with François Mitterrand. I don't involve other people who are close to me.
The age difference of 32 years became more and more apparent as time went on. Towards the end, the President was so ill with cancer that his health care prevented them from seeing each other.
Couldn't see each other
- I moved back to Sweden in his last year. Just before he died, I called him and asked if he wanted me to come. He did. But his secretary prevented me from getting in to see him. I don't know if he ever learnt that I was trying to reach him. The idea that he might have thought I was abandoning him is horrible.
At the funeral, television images were broadcast of the wife grieving alongside her lover. Chris Forsne followed the ceremony from Sweden.
- Because his daughter had gone public, they brought in the other woman, even though their relationship was long over. But they couldn't "bring in another one". The fact that those two women he didn't love were sitting there was the worst thing. It was such hypocrisy. It was very, very heavy.
Reporter: Would you have liked to have been able to grieve openly?
- No, not with those people. But I still haven't finished grieving.
"A great sorrow"
Reporter: Would you have liked him to be an "ordinary" man?
- Of course it is a sadness that we could never live together. It is both a happy and unhappy love. But no. If he had been an ordinary man, he would not have been who he was.
About the aggravating circumstances that made their relationship an impossible Romeo and Juliet story, she says:
- Maybe that's what made it last so long.
Reporter: Was he passionate?
- We stop there, she laughs, but adds:
- "When you get so little time together, you have to make the most of what you have.
Facts: François Mitterrand
• Former French President François Mitterrand was born on 26 October 1916 and died on 8 January 1996 at the age of 79. Mitterrand is described as France's second most important statesman after World War II, after Charles de Gaulle.
• The trained lawyer crowned his political career when he served as president from 1981-95. He was a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II.
Source: NE
