We agreed to meet at a café. I got there first and took a seat furthest in with my back to the wall, to have a view of the room. That was the place where I always sat, it was in many ways my local, this café, I went there at least once a week. I had seen a picture of Schmidt and kept an eye out for someone who looked like her. The problem was that she looked a bit non-descript in the photo. There were a couple of times that I was unsure, when customers came in. Could that be her? Or her? I tried to make eye contact, but could tell from the women’s determined gaze at the pastries that none of them were Schmidt. When she did then tumble in the door in the flesh, I was so undoubtedly convinced that it was her that I wondered how I could have confused her with those other women. The bell over the door rang wildly and she slipped, covered in fresh snow which she laughingly shook off herself, quickly apologising to the passing waitress. She brightened up when she saw me as if she recognised me too, waved and mouthed a ‘hi’ before she zigzagged over to my table.
‘Have you already ordered? Or what would you like?’ she asked and pointed with her thumb over her shoulder.
‘Just coffee, I was thinking. With milk. But I can…’
‘I’ll do this,’ she said and motioned to me to stay seated.
She came back with a cup of filter coffee for each of us, hers black and mine white. A pastry, hers I guessed, was on a white plate between us. I sipped the coffee. She moved the pastry towards her and broke it into two parts. She stuck one half in her mouth and held the remaining half in a firm grip in her other hand.
‘I’m so hungry,’ she said. ‘Just come from the gym, the new one, have you been there?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ I said.
‘You have to go. If you do, then you have to try BB.’
‘BB?’
‘Body Balance.’
‘Right, is it good?’
‘It wipes you out. Like, completely wipes you out. What workouts do you normally do?’ The pastry muted all her consonants.
‘Nothing really. I go for a walk now and then,’ I said.
Schmidt smiled, as if I had made a joke. The question is never if you work out, it’s always what. What workouts do you do? She gave me a few more seconds to clarify that I was joking – that was what her blinking expression meant – but I didn’t take the opportunity, I didn’t have anything to add. She gave up and looked down at the empty plate.
‘Oh I could eat another one. No, that’s enough.’
She pushed the plate away from her, stood up and hung her coat on the chair back. Her blood sugar level had clearly recovered.
‘Great that you could come, Camilla. I’ve looked through your work samples. They look good.’
‘Thank you,’ I answered. ‘I have more in case you need them.’
Schmidt wasn’t listening, she seemed pre-occupied with something that was happening at another table. She leant forwards and whispered.
‘Did you see that artist? No, don’t look now. On your right, by the window. Turn round slowly.’
I turned around. There was a young guy in a beret. He was drinking coffee and reading a paperback. Now and then he looked out of the window. Schmidt carried on whispering:
‘I mean, what on earth? A beret? Talk about crying out for attention.’
She sniggered mischievously. I smiled.
‘I thought it was kind of stylish,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said and fanned her face with her hand, ‘now I’m getting the sweats. Phew!’
‘Oh dear.’ I tried to summon some form of interest in my voice.
‘Have you been here before?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I come here from time to time actually. I like this place. Unassuming, somehow.’
‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ She looked at the empty plate sadly, as if the now eaten pastry symbolised the transience of everything, as if she was thinking that all which is good must, sooner or later, come to an end. Life, pastries. But then a new thought seemed to give her expression its light back.
‘So, do you have children?’
‘No, no children.’
‘Husband? Boyfriend?’
‘Yes. Well… he died,’ I said. ‘It was three years ago.’
‘Oh dear.’ She looked away, back at the artist, held her mug to her mouth. Slurped meditatively.
‘Oh dear,’ she repeated.
I don’t know what I had expected. Maybe a ‘sorry’ or ‘that’s terrible to hear.’ But nothing like that. No follow-up questions either. Just a blank stare out into the ether. Not that I wanted to discuss the subject further. On the contrary, the boyfriend question was the one I was absolutely the least keen to answer, as my answer always led to a serious conversation with people I didn’t want to have serious conversations with. Oh, how horrible, oh, poor me and so on. But Schmidt’s reaction was worrying for the opposite reason; she was almost eerily apathetic.
‘Cancer,’ I said. A little brashly, I must admit, to make her uncomfortable, to test her.
‘Uh-huh.’ She nodded. It was the kind of nod of the head you get when you say that you live in the suburbs, or that you’ve started playing golf. ‘Uh-huh, yep. I see.’ Then she broke into a big smile.
‘Well, I’ve got two kids, it’s hard work, you know. Girls. Four and two.’
‘I understand,’ I said.
‘Here!’ she said and opened her purse out on the table and pointed. ‘Alice. She’s the lively one. Full speed ahead. And Siri. She just smiles. Loves cookies. “Cookies,” she shouts, “cooookies!”’
The pictures had place of honour in her purse, inside a see-through pocket. Schmidt laughed and shook her head. She still held her purse under my nose. I nodded and smiled. She still held it there.
‘Lovely. Must be fantastic,’ I said.
‘Fantastic? You said it. Fantastic is what it is. That’s life, Camilla. Life. We have to find someone for you too!’
‘It’s not my top priority right now,’ I said.
She folded her purse away and leaned forward. Tenderly, slowly, with a serious expression.
‘I’m worried about you Milla. Of course you have to meet someone. Live a little. Fall in love. You can’t go around dwelling on the past.’
Milla. Nobody, as far as I could remember, had ever called me that before.
‘You don’t need to worry,’ I said. ‘I like being on my own. At least for now. It wasn’t something I wished for, being alone. But someone new… it isn’t particularly urgent. It’s been a while since he died, but still. I talk to him occasionally, you know, about everyday things.’
‘Whoo, spooky,’ she said and shook her hands in front of me. She laughed.
‘Yes, no, not like that,’ I said. ‘I’m not holding séances or anything.’
She continued to laugh, now even louder. Something about the word séance was clearly hysterically amusing.
‘You are too fun, Milla. Séances! I’m dying! More coffee?’
She sprung up and snatched our mugs away with her. A chance to change subject, I hoped. I just wanted to cut to the chase, talk about the translation work, the salary. She came back and theatrically handed me my mug, in the manner of an obsequious servant and exclaimed:
‘Pour madame!’
She sat down. ‘Yep, French then,’ she said. ‘Are you quick?’
‘At translating?’
‘Yes. How long does a page take?’
‘Oh, well it really depends on what the text is. And how much text is on the page and so on. But if I was translating a tourist brochure then I’d maybe manage five hundred words an hour.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Schmidt absently. She leaned her head on one side, it seemed as if she did it every time she came to think of her children, and smiled a little.
‘So, yesterday I had to go several rounds with Alice when it was her bedtime. I was forced to wrestle her to the floor in the end.’
I thought that Schmidt would be a tough opponent in a wrestling match. Slippery somehow, you’d never be able
to get hold of her. Low centre of gravity. I imagined us in a wrestling ring, her in blue and I in red. She was rounded, but in a fit sense. I guessed that if she took off her clothes, everything would be in the right place. No wobbling, no hanging. She had a firm body, quite simply, gym-solid. No visible fat but no visible muscles either, just an indefinable mass fixed in a tight skin. High density. Her face was narrow. She was beautiful, beautiful but deadly on the wrestling mat, that was clear. I was glad that I would probably never need to feel her strength, her meaty chest in my face, crushed by her unbendable will and equally unbendable arms.
‘I understand that it can be tough,’ I said, still with an image of myself being choked in her cleavage.
‘What’s that?’ she said.
‘Children.’
‘Ah, they’re wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Yesterday they did drawings for daddy. Siri just doodles, but Alice, well, it was really impressive. She’s only four, but paints like a six year-old.’
She buried her fingers in her handbag. ‘Wonder if I didn’t bring a drawing with me. No, it must still be at home. Yep, yes.’
‘That’s a shame,’ I said, but felt relieved to not have to pretend to be impressed by some children’s drawings that doubtless looked like any other children’s drawings. Even though Schmidt’s kids were of course really special, not at all like every other child whose parents think that their child is special. That was certainly how it was, I thought, her children were certainly geniuses, they were presumably the renaissance personified.
Unlike children themselves – who, at a certain age, realise that their parents are not superheroes – parents never stop believing that their children are extraordinary. It’s a lifelong delusion. Some manage to keep it a secret, but all parents genuinely believe that they have given birth to da Vinci. Schmidt was visibly convinced of it and not ashamed of the fact.
‘Let me see if I have any pictures on my phone,’ she said and took her phone out.
She refused to give up. I leant politely over the table to see as she quickly swiped through picture after picture. I caught glimpses of cocktails with sparklers, suntanned faces, feet pointing at an ocean horizon, feet on a sandy beach, footsteps in the sand, sunsets, mountaintops reflected in ski goggles, victory signs and losers’ pouts, children in a pool, children with superhero outfits, children on tricycles, more children, perhaps the neighbours’ children.
‘Here,’ she said at last and turned the mobile towards me.
It was a stickman, drawn by a kid who halfway through seemed to have thought ‘oh, bollocks to it’ and scribbled over everything with a red crayon.
‘Wow!’ I said. ‘Did you say she was four? Just four?’
‘Isn’t it incredible?’
‘Yes, incredible,’ I said.
Schmidt lapped up the praise. She turned the phone back towards herself and admired the drawing. For quite a while in fact. She emitted small, cute sighs.
‘What kind of commissions do you mainly need help with?’ I asked, when I decided that she was ready.
She cleared her throat. ‘You’ll see that there’s someone out there for you too. So that you can experience this,’ she said.
‘Yes. I’m sure there is,’ I said. ‘So, I was just wondering what kind of translations were involved?’
‘It’s mainly… brochures. Instruction manuals and such.’ She started playing with her hair.
‘Are there lots of technical descriptions then?’ I asked.
‘Look!’ said Schmidt and tapped me on the hand. ‘He’s got a pocket watch. He can’t be serious.’ She was looking over at the artist again.
I decided to not turn around. ‘Well, there you go,’ I said.
‘I’ve been wondering whether I should let Alice start going to dance lessons. I think it’s a good idea that she does some activities. Anyway. Enough babbling about my children,’ she said and smiled apologetically. Judging by her expression and tone however, she was full of conviction that her children genuinely, completely objectively, were one of the most interesting subjects for conversation two people could find and that Alice and Siri formed a basis for discussion that was every bit as inexhaustible as the theodicy dilemma or the meaning of life. That someone could honestly show a lack of interest in the subject was no doubt a thought that had never crossed her mind and so her apology was a formal courtesy, to which I was expected to respond with the words ‘no, you’re not babbling at all, it’s fascinating.’ And so I did.
‘No, you’re not babbling at all, it’s fascinating.’
‘Do you think so?’ she asked.
‘Yes, really.’ I couldn’t look her in the eye.
‘Because it is a balancing act,’ she said. ‘You want to encourage your children, but not to stress them out. Give them the opportunity to develop.’
‘Yes, I can imagine…’
‘I can hardly remember what it was like before I had children. What is it actually like to be childless? What do you do with all the time you have?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t have anything to compare it with…’
‘Don’t tell me! You crochet or knit, right?’
‘I do actually, occasionally. Crochet.’
Schmidt clapped her hands with excessive enthusiasm. ‘I knew it! Jumpers? Hats?’
‘Well, a bit of everything,’ I said and tried to get back to talking about the job.
‘What is the extent of it?’
‘What’s that, how do you mean?’
‘The job.’
‘Ah yes,’ Schmidt said and ran her finger along the rim of her coffee cup, as if to try and get a musical note out of it.
‘It’s quite variable, it can change from month to month. But you are interested?’
‘I am, but I’m anxious that it may not be consistent enough that I would be able to rely on an income.’
‘About that!’ said Schmidt and suddenly slapped both her knees in a rocking chair motion. ‘I met a girl the other week who insisted that she earned at least forty thousand kronor a month. Do you know what she does?’
‘No.’
‘She sells adverts. On the internet. Quite incredible!’
‘Yes.’
‘I think that the internet is the future.’ She said it as if she was sitting on something explosive. She lowered her voice. ‘Everything is on the internet. Everything.’
It was as if she wanted me to remember where was when I first heard it. ‘The internet is the future.’ I wanted to scream.
‘How many hours do you think it would involve per month? Roughly?’ I asked carefully.
She smiled fawningly and almost sweetly.
‘You’re funny! I recognise myself in you. We’re the type that wants to be in control, right? I’ve really had to teach myself to chill out a bit, you can’t control everything. If there is one thing this life has taught me, it’s that there is no instruction manual, not even if you’re a translator. Relax Milla, it’ll be fine!’ She took hold of my hand.
I smiled. ‘You’re right,’ I said. I couldn’t disagree, I couldn’t. And I couldn’t pull my hand away either.
‘You and I, we are twin souls. I can feel it strongly. Just now, in here.’ Schmidt beat twice on her own chest.
I scratched my face. ‘Right, wow.’
She broke into a big smile. ‘You feel it too? I can see it on you!’
I tipped my head as if to neither say yes or no. But my confirmatory smile was grist to her mill.
‘Twin souls!’ said Schmidt. ‘Right? We think the same. I remember what it was like. I’ve been to interviews as well. The uncertainty, but at the same time the ambition. That inner voice that says “Go for it.” Go, go, go. Out into the unknown.’
‘Exactly,’ I said.
I wanted to get away from this discussion about twin souls but my politeness stopped me from putting up a fight. ‘Go for it, just go,’ I echoed and hated myself for it.
She looked at my coffee mug. ‘I know what you’re thinking
. “Will she suggest another refill?” That’s exactly what I’m going to do! Coffee with milk, Milla always has milk in her coffee,’ she said and winked at me. She took both mugs with her to the counter. The artist was stood in the queue for coffee, Schmidt stood behind him. She looked at me, nodded discreetly at him behind his back. ‘Beret,’ she mimed and laughed silently with her mouth wide open.
I grinned back. She had turned this poor youth into a projection screen for our common humour. She and I, we now were twin souls. We were the kind of friends who could look at a person and both think the same thing, see the same hilarity in all of the everyday trivialities, where others didn’t get it. It was true friendship, a shared view of the world, we danced completely in time with one another. Schmidt came back with the refilled mugs and sat down.
‘I mean, your face when you saw that I was stuck behind that artist guy! I love your humour,’ she said.
‘The beret,’ I laughed.
Why was I doing it? Why was I encouraging this lunacy? Why could I not just shake my head or ask her to cut it out? What was it within me that was seeking friendship with this person, what was it in my soul, that sought out its own downfall?
Schmidt simply enjoyed it, she understood that she had gained a new admirer. Now she could go full throttle. A kind of mischievous look crossed her face, the kind that only a girlfriend can have when they have something really funny to recount.
‘A while ago I was asked if I had any German in me, as I’m called Schmidt,’ she said. ‘And I answered: “Sometimes I do. My husband is from Hamburg.” Haha!’ She laughed loudly. ‘Get it? Any German in me! Like, a juicy bratwurst, right up in the bajingo!’
I didn’t know where to look. It felt as if everyone’s stares were drawn to her raucous laughter. Many of them must have heard her joke and, in their eyes, I was this vulgar woman’s best friend, presumably just as debauched, if not worse. No! I don’t know her, I wanted to shout, I came here for a job interview, I thought we were going to talk about translation work, I swear! I’ve never seen her before, this little powerhouse of a woman. Schmidt was sweating, fanning herself with her hand, the whole time just millimetres from a new laughing fit.
‘How about, do you have any…’ she started to shake, ‘…French in you?’ She burst out laughing again.
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