Katya worked out back at school that romance and she were simply incompatible. Katya was far too logical, far too correct for that. All those miniskirts, plunging necklines, lipstick trials in the girls' toilets, pink pompoms on pencils and pouting lips — none of it was for her. She watched it the way a scientist watches some new bug, without ever thinking of trying it herself. School is for studying, not for making eyes at boys!
Have you ever noticed that identical events sometimes happen at opposite ends of the earth? That in different countries we meet exactly the same people? That love stories of a kind of archetypal shape repeat themselves in life with a striking similarity of detail?
Larisa knew how to make an impression. Calm and level-headed, very intelligent but not in the least vain about it, an excellent listener with a superb feel for the person in front of her. And a very fine feel for style, too. She was a pleasure to talk to, and she answered the test questions honestly and with humour, sometimes drifting aloud into dreams and fantasies, sometimes, on the contrary, pinning down a situation in life with great precision. Interviews like that are the least like work of anything; they are more of a pleasant conversation with a fascinating person.
Sometimes, matching people with their ideal partners, you catch yourself wondering what exactly is so ideal about it. There are features of such relationships you would not wish on your worst enemy. And yet the two people involved are happy and keep playing their game with relish, because it answers everything they are asking for. Couples like this are far less rare than they seem; more than that, they walk into our favourite films almost as archetypes and give them a flavour of their own. You meet them in your own stairwell, among your friends, on the underground or in a shopping centre.
Grabmayrgasse 2, 1210 Vienna, Austria
