I haven’t mentioned it here, but I take evening classes in Swedish.
The reason I’m bringing this up is that I took my written exam for this
year earlier this week, and I had to write a short story for one of the
main assignments. Before I share that with you (in translation, of
course), let me warn you that my skills in Swedish are nowhere near
decent, and any story I write in that language is going to contain
numerous grammatical mistakes and clumsy paraphrases.

You’re all wondering, of course, how this could possibly tie in with the title of this piece, so I’ll tell you that first.

In
the course of writing my story, which involved a brilliant but jealous
Danish scientist, an invidious oil Sheik and a helpful Palestinian, I
wanted to use the sentence The taxi driver honked twice. The problem was, I didn’t know the verb to honk
in Swedish. Actually, I knew that I had learned it at some point, but I
had completely forgotten what it was. I thought it over for a bit, and
the word that popped up was tuta, pronounced roughly as [‘ty:wta]. But that was too close to the Swedish word tuttar “tits”, which is pronounced roughly like [‘tut:ar]. Furthermore, I suspected that tuta was merely an interference from the Dutch word toeteren, which is pronounced [‘tutƏrƏ]
and which does mean “honk” (or, to use a cognate word, “toot”). That
left me stuck. The simplest paraphrase that I could come up with was trumpetera
“to trumpet”, and I knew that that was a pretty silly attempt. But
since this was a mere detail, and also because I was running out of
time, I went with trumpetera for the time being. I decided to
leave a blank space on my exam sheet and ask the teacher when I handed
in: she might be kind enough to help me out.

I completed the
story, copied it out on my exam sheet and read it over one last time.
Then I went down to her desk to hand everything in.

“Excuse
me,” I said, “But there’s just one word here that’s giving me trouble.
What is the word for someone making their car trumpet?”

She
chuckled a little at this awkward attempt at paraphrasing. “Have you
forgotten?” she asked, “It’s simple, really. But I’m afraid I can’t
tell you what it is; this is an exam. Sorry!”

“Oh come on,” I
said, “This is not core vocabulary; it’s not the point of the exercise,
and it’s not even part of the vocab we had to study for today. I merely
want to use the correct word here in a story. Trumpet isn’t a
very good substitute, is it?” I then suggested a couple of other words,
but they were more appropriate for the sound of a car engine, and I
finally repeated that I was at a loss for the verb meaning “making your
car make a sound using a button on the steering wheel”. But she still
refused to provide me with the correct word, claiming that this was an
exam and that she couldn’t assist me in any way, fashion or manner. So
I sighed, scribbled “trumpeted” where I had left a blank space, and lay
my exam on the pile in front of her. “Well then, can you now tell me what it is?”

“Of course I can. It’s tuta.”

“Is
it really that easy?” I said. So it wasn’t interference from Dutch
after all. I repeated the word, just to commit it to memory: “Han tutar,
“he honks his horn”… You know, I suspected it had to be something
like that, but I got it confused with Dutch and with the word tuttar. Those are “breasts”, right?”

She snorted and stifled a laugh. “Yes, tuttar is slang for “breasts”, yes. But not att tuta: that’s just a regular verb.”

“Ok,” I said, “Thank you for clarifying that. Now I know how to say honk in Swedish. And I’m pretty sure I won’t ever forget that again.”

“Well, there you go, then!”

So there. Now you know why I decided not to fit the taxi in my story with a pair of breasts.

That
said, I had a lot of fun writing that story. It wasn’t a very good one
— I only had two hours to complete my exam, and to be honest, the
initial situation we were given wasn’t all that interesting, either.
But I made the most of it, and I enjoyed myself. Given that, I don’t
think I did such a bad job, actually. Below is the beginning to the
story (in italics, as best as I can remember it), and my continuation
of it, translated into English. I’ve only made a few adjustments where
I covered up an unlucky lexical choice in Swedish, but I’ve preserved
much of the awkwardness of formulation. And finally: I changed the
first “he” to “Mats”. (And yes, the original beginning was this
 staccato.)

Mats He held
the report in his hand. It had taken him years to prepare. Now, all it
needed were a few minor adjustments and then it would be finished. But
he would get to those in the morning. He lay the report in the back
seat and drove his car through the city. He ‘d promised the kids that
he’d bring them candy, so he parked in front of a shop. There was a
queue inside. He had to wait a long time. Then he saw his car drive
away. He …

He already knew that he wouldn’t make it as he
rushed towards the door and ran towards the parking space. He arrived
just in time to see the car speed towards a bend and disappear around
it. The sound of screeching tyres was soon lost in the night-silence.

Behind
him, the customers in the night shop were looking at him. Two had left
the queue and were standing in the door. Then a strong, brown arm
appeared between them and the owner, a big Palestinian, pushed them
aside and stepped outside. “Was that your car? I’ll cal the police”.

Mats
stood looking down the street. “No,” he said then. “That won’t be
necessary. Not now, at least. But you can do me a favour by calling a
taxi.” The Palestinian looked confused, then shrugged and went inside
again. Mats was slower to follow. Inside the customers were looking at
him, but he didn’t pay them much attention.

Several possible
explanations presented themselves to him. A regular thief? A panic
reaction from Thorkild’s gang? Somehow he knew that Copenhagen’s most
important scientist would take care of things much less subtly. This
also seemed much too amateuristic for one of Sheik Al’Ajawaal’s plans.
Still, even at this stage, now everything was practically finished, he
wanted to be cautious and not discard even an unlikely explanation.

But
who exactly the thief was, or even their motif or intentions were
irrelevant now. Whoever it was that was in possession of the report
now, he, she or they only had a watermarked and therefore unscannable
printout, and an encrypted digital copy in a secure laptop. Thorkild
would need several days to have the sheaf of papers retyped, and even
the supercomputer in his faculty would need at least as much time to
crack a password of sixteen characters with lower- and uppercase
letters and numbers — even with a so-called brute force attack. Abdul
Al’Ajawaal had enough resources to try every possibility, but even so,
they could not make use of the report sooner than he himself, if he
could drive a cab to the office and finish the copy that was stored on
the server. They couldn’t really hope to delay his work, or even to put
an end to it, could they?

It had to be a warning then. Give up. Quit while you can, or else…

Another
thought presented itself. He whipped out his cell phone and called his
fixed line. Helen picked up the phone at the third tone; she sounded
 tense.

“Helen Östergren. Who is this?”

“Helen? It’s me. I’m just calling to check if everything’s ok.”

“What? Why shouldn’t everything be ok? When are you coming home?”

“In a couple of hours. Listen, the car got stolen, just a couple of minutes ago.”

“What? Stolen? Who —”

“Take it easy, Helen. I don’t have the time to explain right now,
honey. The Oil Replacement Project, you see. I really got to finish it
 tonight.”

“And Tina, Björn and I come second place. As bloody usual.”

He
heaved a deep sigh, but made sure she couldn’t hear him. Some day, in
the not too distant future, he’d try, really try, to make it up to her
and to heal this rift. But not now. “You know full well that that isn’t
the case. This is emotional blackmail.”

“True. But even so, that doesn’t mean I’m lying.”

“You’re right. I’ll come home as soon as I can, ok? Love you.”

He
then rang his daughter, who he found out was partying hard, and his
son, who was reading in his room. Finally he rang the Head of Security
at the office, who was on duty tonight. “Olle? This is Mats Östergren.
Say, could you go up to my office and have a look around? Just to see
if you notice something strange or unusual. Of course you can call me
back. Yes, I’ll wait.” He ended the call and walked impatiently up and
down the aisle until his cell phone rang.

“Olle here. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

For
the second time that night Mats heaved a deep sigh. He felt a lot
better now, relieved even, and he finally dared believe that all of
this had been a coincidence. Just a regular thief. Nothing more.

“Thank
you so much, Olle”, he said. “I’m coming over to the office. I’ll see
you in a couple of minutes.” When he put the phone back into his
pocket, he saw a dark yellow taxi pull up in front of the shop. It
honked twice.

Mats was already on his way out when the
Palestinian’s voice called him back. He was pointing his big, brown arm
at him and at the little plastic bag of candy he was still clutching.

“Hey you! You don’t want to leave without paying, do you?”

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