The Other Woman

by Therese Bohman

  I go for a walk almost every evening. It is a compulsion, a restlessness within my soul that makes me go out after lying on my bed for hours with a book, when the town has grown dark and suddenly everything feels too constricted: my life, my apartment, my brain. I try to get away from my own thoughts. I listen to loud music as I walk, it frees me completely from the rest of the world, enclosed in a bubble.

  When I reach the harbor I switch off the music, I have to be on guard down there, always prepared for something to happen, for the possibility that I may encounter someone who wants to do me harm: to rob me, rape me, kill me. It is a fear bordering on nausea, yet at the same time there is a hint of erotic tension, I remember feeling the same way as a child when I once watched a film that was too violent for me: simultaneously wanting to look and not look, to know and not know, to open myself to the horror and to cover my eyes.

  These walks evoke a state that is almost an out-of-body experience, there is only me and the town and the smell of fall, the music and my own chain of consciousness, which is like a seismograph reacting to every shadow and scent and shift in the atmosphere. I wonder what kind of music writers usually listen to, what music all those who have written the books I love were listening to when they wrote them. Particularly the men who wrote about boys who traveled around Europe and met girls and got drunk and dreamed and read and talked; I want to write like that, not like a man, but like a woman who writes like a man. Other girls who think of themselves as intellectual have completely different ideals, which are often based on that feeling of inferiority and an anger directed toward it. I have never felt that way. I have thought that I would like to live the myth of the male artist: sitting in cafés and bars, smoking and drinking and discussing, traveling the world, reading all the books, seeing all the works of art, listening to all the music, feeling at home with the sense of not feeling at home, being a flâneur. There are no female flâneurs. I don’t agree with that. I cannot accept a more boring existence simply because I am a woman, and because men have laid claim to everything that is enjoyable over the years.

  A while ago I saw an advertisement for some kind of feminist cheerleading group on a notice board outside the university library. No doubt the concept was weighed down with theories explaining that feminist cheerleading does in fact have the potential to overthrow society, that’s what happens when we get the idea that what men have promoted is always wrong, I think to myself: meaningless activities that we suddenly decide to take seriously. What a sad way to accept the limitations imposed by the female sex, while at the same time being convinced that we are doing the exact opposite. I would never be able to put up with filling my life with that kind of thing, or with reading what these supposedly feminist women read, at least not as far as I can see from what I have read, because it is regarded as typically male, self-obsessed, normative, I have always wondered why I have never met another woman who thinks the books I love are good, that the life they describe sounds cool, desirable.

  I am a failure as a feminist woman. I am a failure as a perfectly ordinary woman as well, I am too clever — I said that to Emelie once when I was drunk, she got angry with me, really angry, she looked at me as if I was a traitor. I have always felt like a traitor. I am a traitor in every camp, because I don’t really need other people. That is the greatest betrayal of the sisterhood, an awareness that you have no need for it.

  I have searched in my books for others who are like me. Or for those who are the way I want to be: those who lay themselves open to life, who love and lose, who do not distance themselves from life with theories and ideologies. But things do not go well for them, these women writers, young, lyrical modernists who reveal so much about themselves, these nineties authors who write from the perspective of a completely unguarded love for one man. They never get the man they love. That makes me sad, because I feel as if they are writing about me, and that I am therefore doomed to failure. Is that the lesson we are supposed to learn from women who do not hide the fact that they want to please men — that they are doomed to failure? I want to please men too. It says in the feminist journals to which Emelie subscribes that it is disgusting to have rosebuds on our underwear, that we should cut them off because they symbolize little girls, that men who are turned on by rosebuds on underwear are basically pedophiles, it is somehow imprinted in them, being turned on by girls who are inferior to them. I have no doubt that most of the boys in the student bar like girls who are inferior to them, but it has nothing to do with rosebuds on their panties.

  By chance I started listening to eighties music during the fall, electro-pop, the New Romantics, then Italo disco, overdubbed, synthetic, with banal lyrics that are somehow so honest and moving that I am captivated, and the sound of the synthesizer, always warm, like a dark night on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, I have been there only once but the music captures the feeling perfectly: bittersweet. I listen to Italo disco as I walk along the avenues, through the linden leaves, I set one of the songs on repeat, it sounds almost military to begin with, but the song is naked, desperate: You took my love, and left me helpless, it makes me think about the books by women who loved and lost and ended up with nothing but a great sense of loneliness. I listen to it over and over again, I am almost hypnotized by it, I turn up the bass and lose myself in the music. It is the mixture of the superficial and the deeply felt that touches me, the melancholy and the joy of life, these are the very qualities that I value in other people. It is just that I have never met anyone with those qualities. Virtually nothing is honest, I think. If you are looking for honesty, then you had better be prepared to be alone.

  He isn’t there on Monday, it is raining on Monday. Siv and Magdalena chat about what they did during the weekend, about their families and relatives in the suburbs of Norrköping where houses and apartment blocks sprawl in endless, identical developments. They talk about a dog show, about Rottweilers and how they ought to be put down, they talk about TV shows I haven’t seen.

  I am often quiet at work, perhaps they think I am shy, and sometimes I really do feel that way, but mostly I am quiet because I find it difficult to join in with the conversation. It is not because I think I am above the topics they discuss, I like talking about ordinary things, but there is something about the situation that feels odd. To them I am someone who has been to college, unlike them, and that creates a distance. The fact that I am interested in reading and writing creates yet more distance — they seem to regard such activities as a punishment, the kind of thing they did in school and have been happy to avoid ever since, and I understand that, it’s not that I believe everyone should be interested in reading and writing, but it does create a distance. Another problem is that I don’t have a love life that I am willing to share with them, no boyfriend to talk about, no dates to report back on, that is a conscious choice on my part, I have no wish to confide in them. As a result an imbalance arises when they confide in me, which they sometimes do, but they usually confide in each other when we are all sitting around the table at break time and I just listen, like a silent witness, without giving them anything of myself in return.

  He isn’t there on Tuesday, it is raining on Tuesday too. I meet up with Emelie for coffee in the evening, there is a boy I can’t place sitting at her table. Emelie seems proud to have him there.

  “This is Niklas — you two know each other, don’t you?” she says with a big smile, I realize he is the boy from her party, the one who was sitting on the sofa and walked away without speaking to me.

  “We met at the party,” I say.

  He nods, says a reserved hello. He has a 1960s haircut which is simultaneously attractive and unreal, as if someone has dumped a hairpiece from another decade on top of his head, but he manages to carry it off because he is very good-looking, with well-defined features, he probably plays in a band, Emelie likes guys who play in a band.

  “So how are you?” Emelie says.

  “Fine.”

  “Have you been working today?” />
  “Yes.”

  “Where do you work?” Niklas asks.

  “At the hospital … in the cafeteria.”

  Niklas looks disgusted for a second before he manages a slightly strained smile. He has very white teeth.

  “Emelie and I are studying together,” he says.

  I nod. On the table between them is a pile of books by French philosophers on photography and cinema. Emelie is drinking her coffee out of a tall glass, she makes a slurping noise as she sucks up the very last drops through a straw, she looks happy, her cheeks are glowing.

  “Do you want to come out with us tonight?” she asks.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just to the student bar, but we’re all meeting up at Niklas’s place first. It would be awesome if you came. Wouldn’t it be awesome?”

  She looks encouragingly at Niklas, who nods. “Awesome,” he confirms.

  He lives in a two-room apartment on Östra promenaden. Perhaps the people who live on the avenues are meant for one another, I think as I walk up the stairs in the beautifully decorated stairwell, I admire the paintings on the ceiling, run my finger over the smooth surface of the dark wood paneling. Niklas has furnished his turn-of-the-century apartment, which is protected from the threat of demolition, with pieces from the sixties, expensive kitchen chairs and ceiling lights, it is a long way from the usual student bedsit, full of junk from flea markets and garage sales. Emelie says she loves his apartment, I mumble that it’s great. She leaves me in the kitchen to open my bottle of wine.

  “Hi,” says a girl sitting in the dark at the kitchen table, I return her greeting.

  “You’re not in our class,” she states.

  “No. Is this some kind of class party?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought it was, but now you’re here.” She smiles. “I’m Alex.”

  The way she pronounces her name sounds exotic, Russian perhaps, although to be honest I have no idea, I just think it sounds exciting. As I move closer and look at her in the glow of the candles on the table, it seems to me that she looks Russian too, or French perhaps, there is something about the way she holds herself; she looks self-assured. Beautiful, but most of all self-assured, with dark hair and a wide, friendly mouth.

  “Who do you know?” she asks.

  “Emelie.”

  She nods. “I know everyone. I have to see them every day at the university, and in the evenings I have to party with them.”

  I laugh. “Don’t you like them?”

  She shrugs again. “It wouldn’t be very nice of me to sit here criticizing them to someone I don’t even know,” she says with a smile and a challenging look.

  “Right.”

  “So we’d better hurry up and get to know one another so that I can start badmouthing them.”

  I laugh, she laughs too, her mouth seems incredibly wide, it takes up half her face in a way that I find captivating, I can’t stop looking at her. I am still laughing when Emelie comes back into the kitchen wanting to know what we are laughing at.

  It’s not just because I am drunk that I find Alex fascinating, but in my intoxicated state it seems to me that she is verging on unreal: her appearance, the way she acts. I wouldn’t expect someone like her to exist in Norrköping, then I tell her what I’m thinking and she laughs and says that’s because she’s from Linköping, then we both laugh and pretend to argue about which town is best. It is a completely meaningless discussion, the kind you only have with someone you don’t really know because you have no idea what else to talk about, you just know you want to talk to them, and I drink in every word she says even on such a banal topic, it’s like love at first sight, the kind of discussion that only feels meaningful if the person you are talking to means something to you.

  We sit side by side at the counter in the student bar everyone always goes to after every student party. I ask her why this is the case and she considers the question as if it were a vital issue, she comes up with the theory that students only want to hang out with other students because they think that the world they inhabit is the most important of all worlds, and cannot imagine lowering themselves to hang out with perfectly ordinary people who have perfectly ordinary jobs.

  “I’m one of them,” I say, realizing that the wine has made me dramatic in a way that will be a source of embarrassment in the morning. “I’m a perfectly ordinary person.”

  Alex locks her eyes onto mine.

  “You’re not ordinary,” she says, and I knew that was what she was going to say, perhaps I set a trap for her and she willingly walked into it, and I feel pleased that she has done exactly what I wanted her to do.

  “Nor are you,” I say.

  “I know.”

  We are in silent agreement that we have paid each other the finest compliment it is possible to receive from anyone in this town, and Alex waves to the bartender, who as usual is a student who doesn’t look entirely comfortable in his role.

  “Two glasses of champagne, please!” Alex calls out.

  The bartender looks confused. “I don’t even know if we have champagne,” he says in a broad Östergötland accent.

  “Maybe you could check?” Alex says, and the bartender nods and disappears into a storeroom, and Alex and I look at one another and neither of us needs to say that we ought to be somewhere else, that this dump is beneath our dignity, we should be sitting in a bar in Paris or Berlin, and there too we would be the most elegant customers in the place.

  “We’ve got sparkling wine?” the bartender says, holding up a bottle.

  “That will have to do,” Alex replies.

  When the bartender opens the bottle and the cork shoots up to the ceiling with a pop that is heard above the music, and everyone turns around and looks as he pours the foaming wine into two champagne glasses, it really does feel as if we are not ordinary, not among the students or those who are not students or anyone else in this town, it feels as if together we can make life a little closer to the way we both want it to be.

  He isn’t there on Wednesday, it has stopped raining. It’s a long time since I’ve seen him. His colleague has been in, cheerfully commenting on the well-spiced tandoori chicken that is the dish of the day. In the utility room the spices turn the pools of water red, making them difficult to distinguish from the red mold that spreads where the dampness never goes away, in the nooks and crannies both inside and around the huge dishwasher. It is unhygienic and must be dealt with by following strict instructions from the manager of the main kitchen. I am liberal in my use of an antibacterial spray until the entire utility room has a sharp, acrid smell. Disinfected.

  It is windy outside when I finish work, the damp chill penetrates my clothes, I press myself right into the corner of the bus shelter. The tips of my fingers are still wrinkled from washing up, I have given up wearing gloves because I think they smell so horrible, rubbery and medicinal, but it means my nails always look ugly, I hate not being able to wear nail polish at work. It could chip and fall into the food or onto the dishes, it would be unhygienic — a perfectly reasonable rule, but it still gets on my nerves. Even if they would be ruined every afternoon when I do the dishes, perhaps I should at least have nice nails during the lunchtime rush.

  It will be fifteen minutes before the bus comes, I must have just missed one. I am just about to head back to the hospital foyer to read my Baudelaire book while I’m waiting when I see Carl Malmberg coming toward me. I recognize him as he enters the revolving doors, he is tall, taller than most of the other doctors, he strides past the low concrete planters with their withered asters, his scarf fluttering in the wind. As he passes the bus shelter I catch his eye and give him a little smile.

  “Hi,” I say.

  He stops.

  “Hi yourself,” he says, sounding slightly surprised but friendly, as if I seem familiar but he can’t quite place me.

  He is wearing dark blue jeans and a dark jacket, he looks very stylish. I realize I have never seen him in anything but
his white hospital coat. Perhaps he is thinking the same about me, I speculate, as I notice him glance at my boots, then up my legs.

  “Finished for the day?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  He smiles at me. “I didn’t have time for lunch today. It was chicken, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  Now we are both nodding.

  “The chicken is usually pretty good,” he says.

  He doesn’t seem to want to end the conversation. I can almost see him searching for something to talk about, ransacking his brain, his eyes darting from side to side. Eventually they settle on the electronic display inside the shelter.

  “Which bus are you catching?” he asks.

  His smile is warm, he doesn’t look anywhere near as stern as he sometimes does in the cafeteria, he has cute laughter lines around his eyes.

  “The one-sixteen,” I say.

  “Twelve minutes …,” he says.

  “I just missed one.”

  “Do you live in town?” he asks.

  Vapor emerges from his mouth as he speaks, it must have got colder, below freezing after several mild, rainy weeks. His checked scarf is made of wool, in muted colors, it’s smart, all his clothes are smart.

  “Yes, down by the theater.”

  “In that case … I mean it’s on my way home, so I can give you a ride if you like.”

  I knew he was going to ask me, I think. Maybe not just like this, but I knew something was going to happen. Something is going to happen now, that’s very clear. At last something is going to happen.