The Other Woman

by Therese Bohman

  “Are you sure it’s no trouble?”

  I am testing him. It won’t be any trouble.

  “No, no.” He smiles. “It’s no trouble at all.”

  “Well, in that case …,” I say, smiling back at him. We are entering into an agreement, I think. Nothing will be the same from now on. Whatever happens, something will have happened.

  “I’m over here,” he says, waving toward the western end of the parking lot, the area closest to Emergency. He strides away and I can only just keep up, he slows down a little.

  “You’ve been on duty quite a lot lately,” he remarks.

  “I guess I have.”

  “Are you full time now?”

  “No, I’m employed by the hour.”

  He nods. “Are you hoping for a full-time post?”

  “No … no way.”

  Carl Malmberg glances at me, smiling again.

  “How come?”

  “I don’t really want to work there at all.”

  I think about my fantasy, imagining him back in my apartment, and I have to smile to myself. He drives a Volvo, the latest model, he has kids of course, that hadn’t occurred to me before. The car is a deep, dark blue, it is a beautiful color, it sparkles like a starry sky. He takes out his keys and deactivates the alarm, then he opens the passenger door for me.

  “Madame.”

  It is a very clean car, there is no child seat, no discarded toys or candy wrappers or any other trace of children. There is an English paperback carelessly tossed on the back seat, nothing else.

  Carl Malmberg gets in and takes off his gloves. He has beautiful hands, well cared for, I think they are probably very sensitive, then I push away the thought, how stupid, where did I read that, in a story in some old magazine perhaps, doctors and their sensitive hands. I feel myself blushing slightly. He looks at me.

  “Down by the theater — is that Bråddgatan?”

  “No, Vattengränden … it cuts across.”

  “I know it.”

  He starts the car, it sounds muted. Then he makes a few adjustments to the heating before backing out of his parking space with an expression of great concentration on his face.

  We don’t say anything for a little while. I think I ought to ask him something, something about his job would be logical since he’s asked about mine, but everything that passes through my mind sounds childish. I’m sure he’s glancing at me, I sneak a glance at him when he’s looking the other way. He’s handsome, he looks younger than when he’s in the cafeteria, perhaps it’s his name badge with the title SENIOR CONSULTANT that makes him seem older. In the hospital he’s always busy, stressed, but now he’s more relaxed, he drums his fingers on the steering wheel, smiles at me.

  “Are you studying at the same time?”

  He looks at me, I meet his gaze.

  “Not at the moment,” I say. “I’m going to start in the fall.”

  “For a qualification in the restaurant industry?”

  I give a little laugh.

  “No,” I say. “This is just a temporary job. I’m not planning on a career in catering.”

  He nods. “So what do you want to do?”

  “I’m going to apply for an advanced course in literature.”

  It feels as if I am talking to an elderly relative.

  “Cool,” he says, sounding slightly distracted. He doesn’t seem surprised, and he’s definitely not impressed as I had hoped he would be, there is no indication that he wouldn’t have expected me to say such a thing, he just keeps nodding. Perhaps he comes from a world where everyone has taken advanced courses in college, where it’s nothing special, nothing to be impressed by, particularly when it comes to a useless subject like literature.

  Perhaps he’s boring, I think. Perhaps he plays golf, perhaps that’s his only hobby, perhaps he shares it with his wife. They go to their villa in Spain which is right by a golf course, they play golf all day every day, he’s not interested in culture or politics, he’s interested in golf. On the way to Spain he randomly picks up a couple of English crime novels at the airport, does a little reading on the plane, on the beach, never finishes a book. Suddenly it feels odd, sitting beside him. The spontaneous connection I thought we would have just isn’t there. We sit in silence. He drives along the avenue, turns off, stops outside my door.

  “There you go,” he says. “That was a bit quicker than the bus anyway.”

  “Absolutely,” I say. “It’s very kind of you. Thanks.”

  “Are you working tomorrow?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “In that case I might see you.”

  I get out of the car, he gives me a little wave as I close the door and I wave back, I feel confused. Maybe he regretted offering me a lift the second he spoke, realized it was a strange thing to do. Or it might have been some kind of test, and I’ve failed. Maybe I shouldn’t have said yes. Maybe he thinks I’m boring.

  Sometimes the smell of sulfur blows in from the paper factory and settles over the town, it penetrates everything. In the areas where no effort has been made to renovate and bring in a new freshness, the town is decaying; back alleys stinking of urine, parking lots clumsily hidden behind wooden fencing covered in graffiti, dilapidated old buildings down by the harbor, the Virginia creeper that has wrapped them in a blanket of dark green. I think about the earwigs that live there in the cool darkness, finding cracks and holes around windows and doors, they always manage to get inside, just like the smell of sulfur.

  The trees lining the avenues are beautiful for a short while, glowing yellow. It is like a cathedral, with the dark, damp trunks forming tall columns supporting a ceiling of gold mosaic, shimmering high above Östra promenaden, while Södra promenaden is like a long golden hall, but with a lower ceiling this time, it is like a gilded grotto, the linden trees are younger and haven’t yet grown as tall. Then they drop their leaves in a final exhalation before winter, and the leaves look beautiful on the ground for a moment before pedestrians and cyclists and dogs trample them to a slushy mess, the sweet smell of decay, of earth and dampness. And they gather in the gutters, in the tramlines, the claw marks leading down to the harbor. All roads lead down to the harbor, where the waters of Strömmen begin their journey to the sea, away from this backwater, this inlet off an inlet off an inlet, this appendix to the Baltic Sea.

  Some years ago a large vessel was anchored out in the bay for several months, a ship from Russia carrying workers who were laying a cable on the seabed. They were welders, laboring away under the water, I liked to picture the scene: like a fireworks display in slow motion, sparks slowly flaring into life only to disappear immediately, fading away in the dark water. At night the whole ship was lit up, it had strings of lights around the railings and the funnel, it glittered like a deserted funfair on the black surface of the sea, the extended reflections forming a halo of light around the outline of the ship.

  People said that the Russian welders came ashore at night. They rarely ventured into town, but kept to the areas on either side of the inlet; the number of break-ins allegedly went up, everyone blamed the welders. All the bicycles that were stolen were going to be transported to Russia and sold, apparently.

  In a bar in a small community on the northern side of the inlet, the welders met two local girls, one of them went to my high school, the rumor spread like wildfire that Monday morning: the girls had gone back to the ship with the welders in the little motorboat they used to get ashore, they had gone to bed with them, all of them, all those Russian men who spent their days underwater. The numbers increased as the rumor was passed on: it was five men to start with, then ten, twenty.

  I imagined that it had taken place up on deck, naked bodies beneath the glimmering lights on a dark, mild, late summer’s night, perhaps the slow bobbing of a dying swell, carried into the inlet from the sea beyond, the sound of passion drifting ashore. People were upset, disgusted, I thought it was a beautiful image.

  It was a long time since I had enjoyed meeti
ng up with Emelie. It hadn’t really bothered me very much until now, the endless rounds of coffee drinking had seemed a little distant but still pleasant, reassuring in its predictability, as if we were an old married couple. When we first got to know one another in high school, I already knew that in a way we weren’t really compatible, and that we had just become friends in order to avoid having lunch with someone even more boring.

  I would like to be able to tell her about Carl, tell her exactly how I feel: that I am attracted, really attracted to a married man, that it’s exciting, that it could be an adventure. That it feels like fun. But as soon as I mention him I notice she has to make a real effort to be on my side. Perhaps she actually wants to tell me off, to shout and get angry, bawl me out on behalf of all the women whose men cheat on them, blame me for a whole history full of men who left their partners for other women, women with low morals who ruin things for everyone else. I think that’s how people would regard someone like me: a woman who wants to sleep with a married man could also be a woman who wants to sleep with your boyfriend. Not to be trusted, that’s what I am. That is how Emelie is beginning to regard me.

  At the same time, I don’t know why I need her approval. She obviously doesn’t need mine, she’s always doing stuff I would never do. She goes to the feminist cheerleading group, and not only does she think it’s fun, she finds it rewarding and energizing. What she is doing shows loyalty toward women. I am disloyal.

  I don’t know why I think everything I do needs the approval of other women. It feels like I will be brought before a women’s tribunal to justify every decision I make, while at the same time I have no interest whatsoever in the approval of other women. I sometimes wonder if I’m a misogynist, but I’ve never heard of a female misogynist, and in any case I don’t really hate women, I just find it difficult to empathize with them, and I admire some women: perfectly ordinary women who struggle to make ends meet, bringing up children and running a home under difficult circumstances, or women in history who were pioneers in traditionally male fields, doctors, lawyers, all those ambitious women who did the kind of thing I would never have the courage or the energy to take on a hundred years later, two hundred even. And I am fascinated by other women simply because they are beautiful, some have faces and bodies that are like works of art, I can lose myself in them, gaze at them for an eternity, until it becomes inappropriate. It is an aesthetic admiration, possibly erotic to a certain extent, I have always been drawn to beauty.

  I also hate men who hate women, and I hate women who hate men, to be honest — no, you’re right, hate is a strong word, it’s more that I despise them.

  “Not much meets with your approval, does it?” Emelie once said to me when I was talking about some people who were annoying me at a party, her tone was acid but she said it with a smile, and afterward I thought it was a perceptive comment, even amusing and perfectly correct: not much meets with my approval.

  I decide to tell her about Carl Malmberg anyway, tell her he offered me a lift and I accepted. Emelie stares at me.

  “Seriously?” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he come on to you?”

  “Not at all.”

  That’s not a lie, he didn’t come on to me. Perhaps offering me a lift constitutes coming on to me, it probably does, but nothing else happened. I tell her the whole thing felt a bit weird, I didn’t really know what to say to him, I ended up feeling confused more than anything.

  “Just watch out,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Watch out for married men.”

  I laugh. “What do you know about married men?”

  She looks offended, sips her coffee.

  “Enough,” she says. “I know you need to watch out.”

  In a way she is right, of course. Boring, but right. I realize it’s not a good idea to sleep with a married man, not to mention falling in love with a married man, which is a risk that must be taken into account, but I also think it’s a risk he has to take into account, that in some ways it would be worse for him if that’s how things turned out: he would have to leave his wife if he fell so deeply in love with me that he could no longer stand his other life, while I would be the beautiful younger woman for whom men leave their wives.

  “Alex was asking about you,” Emelie says instead of continuing the discussion about Carl.

  “Was she?”

  “She said she thought you were cool.”

  “Did she? Is that exactly what she said?”

  I ignore Emelie’s expression, which is suspicious and annoyed at the same time, I really want to know what Alex said about me.

  “I think so,” Emelie says patiently. “We’re working on a group project together, so she came over yesterday.”

  “She came over to your place?” I can hear a hint of jealousy in my voice, which makes Emelie’s expression change from irritation to satisfaction.

  “She’s pretty elusive,” she says.

  “What do you mean, elusive?”

  She shrugs.

  “Kind of hard to get a handle on.”

  “I like that,” I say.

  “I’m sure.”

  I don’t know what kind of smile she is wearing now, it is friendly yet at the same time slightly supercilious, as if she thinks that Alex is elusive, but so am I, and that she knew we would get along. It makes me feel proud, because it means she thinks I am like Alex, and there is no one in this whole town that I would rather be like.

  It is raining on Thursday, he’s not there. I am usually free on Fridays, because the cafeteria is quiet on Fridays and they don’t need to bring in any extra staff, and a feeling of indolence pervades the afternoon, almost a sense of warmth and coziness. This is proof of man’s ability to adapt to anything, I think, the facility to survive anywhere, the fact that I have started to see a warm coziness in this ugly cafeteria in this ugly hospital. Then I think perhaps it’s actually proof that I feel at home here, and on some level that doesn’t match the image of who I want to be. This makes me simultaneously happy and sad: I have no plans to continue doing this kind of job, everything I have done over the past few years has been with the aim of getting out. But in my darkest hours I have thought that this kind of work is what I am genetically destined to do, programmed by generation after generation of workers. In that same fundamental way I sometimes feel out of place in university corridors and seminars, afraid of opening my mouth in case I give myself away, exposing the fact that I don’t fit, that I’ve hustled my way in. Writing saves me from those thoughts, because if I really was meant for a life in a catering kitchen, I wouldn’t have that impulse, I tell myself, that need to put all my ideas into words. Some time ago I printed out a picture of Harry Martinson and stuck it on the door of my refrigerator and kept it there for ages. It’s the one where he’s so handsome, young, leaning forward, with lovely thick hair, wearing an expression that is both sensitive and challenging, as if he was looking at me, just me, and saying, If I could do it, you can do it.

  The cleaning is soon dealt with and we can relax at the table by the window with a cup of coffee and a chocolate cookie, we haven’t bothered putting any money into the kitty. Siv and Magdalena are gossiping about someone I don’t know, I am only half listening as I watch dusk fall over the parking lot. Then we say our goodbyes, they take the elevator down to the windowless underground corridors to attend the weekly meeting in the main kitchen, I don’t have to go. I get changed in the empty changing room, lock up the cafeteria, and set the alarm. The whole hospital has a sleepy feeling today, noises are somehow muted, it’s dark outside, the rain is hammering on the windows.

  The rain reaches almost right into the bus shelter. In spite of the darkness I see him from a long way off this time too, coming through the big revolving door that is like a carousel of light. I have time to watch him as he hunches his shoulders against the weather and hurries through the parking lot. Then he catches sight of me.

  “Hi there,” he says in just
the same way as before when he reaches the bus shelter. He is wearing the same clothes as last time too, jeans, coat, scarf. His hair is a little ruffled from the wind.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “I didn’t get around to lunch today either,” he says, sounding almost embarrassed. I smile. He smiles back.

  “Did you have any lunch?”

  “I usually buy a sandwich from the kiosk.”

  He shakes his head as if to indicate that he should know better, and that the sandwiches from the kiosk are horrible. The conversation already feels more intimate than last time in spite of the fact that we’ve hardly said anything, there’s something about the atmosphere, it’s more relaxed today. He steps inside the bus shelter to get out of the rain, and suddenly he is standing very close to me. He looks up at the display.

  “Four minutes until the bus comes?”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “I enjoyed your company the other day.”

  His expression is friendly, he really does know how to look kind, I’ve never noticed that in the cafeteria.

  “Me too,” I say.

  He smiles, tilts his head in the direction of his car.

  “Let’s go.”

  We talk more this time, both of us. He seems to be in a better mood, he tells me about working as a kitchen hand when he was in medical school. Not in a hospital but in top restaurants in Stockholm, and as he speaks I realize that his voice has no trace of the clumsy dialect everyone speaks around here. His pronunciation is neutral, clear, pleasant. Now and again he had to help out in the bar, just doing simple tasks. He once mixed a gin and tonic for Bryan Ferry, he tells me; he looks delighted when it’s clear I enjoy the story.

  “We used to get really good tips sometimes,” he says. “I don’t suppose you get much in the way of tips?”

  “Well no — almost everyone pays with their lunch voucher.”

  He laughs, his laugh is short and loud, it sounds honest. I think that he probably doesn’t laugh at things out of politeness, but I also think he laughs easily, it’s a sympathetic laugh. Uncompromising in a sympathetic way.