Youth Read online

  18

  He has on a green suit and green tie. He has thick, curly gray hair and a gray mustache, the ends of which he often twists between his fingers. He has an old-fashioned wing collar, and his double chin hangs over it a bit. His eyes are bright blue like little babies’ eyes, and his complexion is pink and white and transparent like a child’s. He makes wide, sweeping movements with his small, fine hands that have dimples at the knuckles. He is warm and friendly, and I quickly forget my shyness in his company. He doesn’t resemble Mr Krogh in appearance and yet he reminds me of him a little. He studies the menu for a long time before he chooses what to have and, without knowing what it is, I ask for the same. He says that he’s very fond of food, and that you can probably tell by looking at him. I say politely no. I admit that I never notice what I’m eating and he says, laughingly, that you can certainly tell by looking at me. I’m much too thin, he says. We drink red wine with our meal and I make a face because it’s sour. He says that’s because I’m so young. When I get older, I’ll learn to appreciate good wine. He asks me to tell him a little about myself, about how I found my way to him. I’m nervous and light-hearted and want to tell everything at once. I also mention Albert, and he shrugs his shoulders as if he’s no one in particular. ‘You never can tell with young people,’ he says, twisting his mustache. ‘You believe in some of them, and then they don’t amount to anything. Others you don’t believe in, and it turns out that they’re good after all.’ I ask him whether he thinks I’m any good, and he says that you can’t tell. He says that those who don’t amount to much are those young men who come with a poem and say, ‘I wrote this in ten minutes.’ If they say that, he knows that they’re not any good. ‘And what then?’ I ask. ‘Then I advise them to be streetcar conductors or something else sensible,’ he says, wiping his mouth with his napkin. I’m glad that I didn’t write anything about how many minutes it took me to write ‘To My Dead Child’. I don’t even know myself. I think the editor is a magnificent man and I think he’s handsome. Maybe others don’t think he’s handsome, and Nina would think that he’s too old and fat, but I don’t care. He gives me the menu so that I can order dessert, and I ask for ice cream because everything else looks much too complicated. The editor wants fruit with whipped cream. ‘I have a sweet tooth,’ he says, ‘because I don’t smoke.’ The waiter treats him very respectfully and calls him ‘the Editor’ the whole time. He calls me ‘the young lady’. ‘May I pour for the young lady?’ I bravely drink the sour wine and grow warm and relaxed from it. It’s getting to be dusk outside and the wind is blowing softly in the trees on the boulevard. They’re already in blossom, and soon Tivoli will open. Viggo F. Møller says that he loves spring and summer in the city. The trees and the flowers bloom, and the young girls blossom too, like beautiful flowers out of the cobblestones. Mr Krogh said something similar, and he wasn’t married. That’s probably something that married men have no sense for at all. Finally I have the courage to ask him if he’s married, and he says no with a little laugh. ‘No one,’ he says gesturing with his hand apologetically, ‘has ever wanted to have me.’ ‘I was formally engaged once,’ I say, ‘but then he broke it off.’ ‘And now?’ he asks. ‘Aren’t you engaged now?’ ‘No,’ I say, ‘I’m waiting for the right one to come along.’ I try to look him deep in the eyes, but he doesn’t see the meaning behind it. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to the fact that everything is urgent, and I almost expect that he’ll propose to me right then and there. You never know where a person will be tomorrow. He could get a letter from another young girl who writes poems – Hulda Lütken, for example – invite her out, and forget me completely. He must be the kind of man who can have whomever he chooses. With growing jealousy I ask how Hulda Lütken is, and he laughs loudly at the thought of her. ‘She wouldn’t like you,’ he says. ‘She’s insanely jealous of other women poets, especially if they’re younger than her. She’s temperamental enough for ten. Once in a while she calls me and says, “Møller, am I a genius?” “Yes, yes,” I say, “yes, you are, Hulda.” Then she’s satisfied for a while.’ Then he asks me if I’d like to come to a Wild Wheat party next month. It’s a party where the ‘Top Wheat’ and the ‘Top Rusk’ are chosen. Those are the poet and the illustrator who, during the year, have had the most contributions in the journal. I ask what I should wear, and he says a long dress. When he hears that I don’t have one, he says that I can borrow one from a girlfriend. That makes me think of Nina, who got herself a long, backless dress for the dance at Stjernekroen. I say that I would love to go to that party. We have coffee in very thin cups and the editor looks at his watch, as if it’s time to go. I would have liked to sit there for a lot longer. Outside, my daily life is waiting for me with its urgent matters at the office, the evenings at the taverns, the young men who accompany me home, and my cold room with the Nazi landlady. My only consolation in this existence is a handful of poems, of which there are still not enough for a collection. And I don’t know, either, how to go about publishing a poetry collection. When the bill is paid, Mr Møller suddenly places his hand over mine on the colorful tablecloth. ‘You have beautiful hands,’ he says, ‘long and slender.’ He pats my hand a couple of times, as if he knows very well that I’m sorry to leave and wants to assure me that he won’t disappear from my life right away. I notice that I’m about to cry, and don’t know why. I feel like putting my arms around his neck, as if I’m very tired after a long, long trip and now have finally found home. It’s a crazy feeling and I blink my eyes a little to hide that they’ve grown moist. Outside we stand together for a while and look at the traffic. He’s shorter than me, and that surprises me because you couldn’t tell when he was sitting down. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I guess we’re going different ways. Stop by some day. You know the address.’ He swings his green, wide-brimmed hat in an elegant arc, puts it on his head, and walks quickly down the boulevard. I stand there and watch him for as long as my eyes can follow him. I think that I’m always having to say goodbye to men – staring at their backs and hearing their steps disappear in the darkness. And they seldom turn around to wave at me.

  19

  I’ve been moved over to the State Grain Office on the other side of the street, and I like it much better. There are just the two of us women in the office. I take care of the switchboard and I write letters for the office manager, Mr Hjelm. He’s a tall, gaunt man with a long, grim face that is never softened by anything resembling a smile. Whenever there’s a pause in the dictation, he stares at me as if he suspects that I have something other than grain in my head. The other girl is named Kate. She’s quick to laugh and childish and we have a lot of fun together when we’re alone. I’m waiting for my poem to be published in the journal, because then I’ll visit Viggo F. Møller – not before. I’m going to have summer vacation soon, and that’s always been a problem for me. Nina wants us to join the Danish Youth Hostel group and go hiking in the country and stay at youth hostels. But I don’t like people in groups and I’m not interested in it. But if my poem comes out soon, maybe I can stay with the editor during my vacation. While I wait, I still look at the little children and the lovers who are driven out of the buildings by the heat. I look at the dogs too, the dogs and their masters. Some of the dogs have a short leash that’s jerked impatiently every time they stop. Others have a long leash and their masters wait patiently whenever an exciting smell detains the dog. That’s the kind of master I want. That’s the kind of life I could thrive in. There are also the masterless dogs that run around confused between people’s legs, apparently without enjoying their freedom. I’m like that kind of masterless dog – scruffy, confused, and alone. I go out in the evening less often than before, and Nina says I’m getting to be downright boring. I stay in my room now that the cold doesn’t chase me out anymore. I read my poems over and over again, and sometimes I write a new one. The two that were, to put it mildly, not good, I’ve long ago removed from my collection. I think they were hideous, but if the editor had written that
they were good, I would have believed him. Sometimes I go home for a visit. My father is unemployed again and there’s a cool atmosphere between him and my mother. Usually he’s lying on the sofa, sleeping or dozing, and my mother sits knitting with a disapproving look on her face. She thinks it’s about time I visit the editor because she’s more and more convinced that he wants to marry me. ‘Fat people,’ she says, ‘are happy and good-natured. It’s the lean ones that are grumpy.’ She asks how old he is, and I say that he’s about fifty. That too she thinks is fine because then he’s sown his wild oats and will make a faithful husband. She says that soon I can probably quit my job and be provided for. I say nothing because all of this has to wait. ‘We’ll hold the wedding,’ says my mother, and I think about what my editor will say about his mother-in-law. He’s older than she is, I’m pretty sure; but that doesn’t bother my mother. I always leave soon because now my mother is demanding something of me. My father says that there’s no rush and that it’s up to me whom I want to marry. ‘You’ve never cared much about it,’ says my mother, ‘but now you can see what’s happened to Edvin. That’s what you get for your indifference.’ Then the battle has turned away from me and I have no qualms about leaving them. One day when I come home from my parents’, I find a written eviction notice from Mrs Suhr. ‘Since it has become known to me,’ she writes, to my astonishment, ‘that you have participated in conspiratorial activities, I no longer wish to live under the same roof with you.’ I remember the political letter that I received and my unwillingness to take part in her Nazi meetings. Then I find another room on Amager, not far from the editor’s residence, and ride out there with my suitcase and my alarm clock in my hand. It’s with a family that has grown children. A daughter has gotten married and it’s her room that I move into. It’s nicer and bigger than the other one and only ten kroner more. And on top of that, there’s a stove. I immediately call Viggo F. Møller to tell him my new address, and he says it’s good that I called because the journal has come out and he was just about to send it to me. He says it as if it were quite an everyday thing, as if I’d had dozens of poems published and this was just one of them. He says it in a friendly, ordinary tone, as if journals and books with my works were flooding the world so that it didn’t matter so much whether such a trivial thing as a single poem got lost. But he is, of course, used to being around people like Hulda Lütken, people he’s on a first-name basis with. Every time I think of her, I feel a stab of jealousy in my heart. I wonder whether Viggo F. Møller will ever tell peculiar things about me to other people? Will he say, ‘Tove called recently, by the way, and said such and such. Ha, ha.’ And twist his mustache and smile. The next day two copies of Wild Wheat arrive in the mail and my poem is in both of them. I read it many times and get an apprehensive feeling in my stomach. It looks completely different in print than typewritten or in longhand. I can’t correct it anymore and it’s no longer mine alone. It’s in many hundreds or thousands of copies of the journal, and strange people will read it and may think that it’s good. It’s spread out over the whole country, and people I meet on the street may have read it. They may be walking about with a copy of the journal in their inside pocket or purse. If I ride in the streetcar, there may be a man sitting across from me reading it. It’s completely overwhelming and there’s not a person I can share this wonderful experience with. I rush home to show it to my father and mother. ‘I think it’s good,’ says my mother, ‘but you should have a pen name. The one you have isn’t good. You should take my maiden name. Tove Mundus – that sounds much better.’ ‘Her name is good enough,’ says my father, ‘but the poem is much too modern. It doesn’t rhyme in the right way. You could learn a lot from Johannes Jørgensen.’ I’m not offended by my father’s criticism because he has always wanted to protect us from disappointments. According to his experience, you should never expect anything from life, then you’ll avoid disappointments. Still, he asks to be allowed to keep the journal, and he holds it in the same careful way as he does his books. On the way home, I go into a bookstore and ask for the latest edition of Wild Wheat. They don’t have it but they can order one. ‘We don’t sell any of them as single copies,’ the man explains to me, ‘it’s mostly by subscription.’ ‘That’s too bad,’ I say, ‘you see, I’ve heard there’s an excellent poem in it.’ He takes down my name so I can get it in a couple of days. ‘It’s a very little journal, you know,’ he explains talkatively. ‘I think there are only five hundred copies printed. Strange that it can make a go of it.’ Insulted, I go out of the store again. But I’m not the same as before. My name is in print. I’m not anonymous any longer. And soon I’ll visit my editor, even though he didn’t repeat his invitation on the phone. He has, of course, many other things to occupy him besides talking to young poets. A week after the journal came out, I’m called into Mr Hjelm’s office. His long face is, if possible, even crabbier than usual and on the desk in front of him is Wild Wheat open to the page where my poem is. The thought flashes through my mind that he’s going to praise me for it. ‘I bought this journal,’ he says, ‘because I thought that it had something to do with grain. And then I see’ – he strikes my poem with a ruler – ‘that you apparently have other interests than the State Grain Office. I’m sorry, but unfortunately we can’t use you here any longer.’ He looks at me with his fish eyes and I don’t know what to say. I feel bad because I was happy here, but there’s also something comical about it that will make Kate and Nina laugh when I tell them. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘there’s nothing to be done about it.’ I edge my way out of the office and go in and tell Kate about being fired. She laughs that Mr Hjelm thought Wild Wheat was an agricultural journal, and I laugh too, but I’m still a girl who has lost her job and will now have the trouble of finding a new one. Kate says that I should report to the union and have them find a new position for me, and I think that’s a good idea. The same evening I call Viggo F. Møller and he says that he would be happy to see me the following evening. Then it doesn’t matter so much that I’ve been thrown out of the grain office. Maybe the editor can find a solution that is better than Kate’s. I have so many expenses now that I can’t allow myself to be unemployed.

  20

  ‘Wouldn’t you like,’ says Viggo F. Møller, ‘to have a collection of poems published?’ He says this as if it were nothing special. He says this as if it were quite common for me to publish poetry collections; as if it weren’t what I’ve wished for, most fervently of all, for as long as I can remember. And I say with a thin, ordinary voice that yes, I would rather like that. I’ve just never thought of it before. But now that he mentions it, it would be great fun. I hope he can’t tell how joyfully and excitedly my heart is pounding. It’s pounding as if I were in love, and I look closely at this man who has caused such joy in my soul. He’s sitting on the other side of the table, which is covered with a bottle-green tablecloth. We’re drinking tea from green cups. The curtains are green, the vases and the pots are green, and the editor is wearing a green suit like before. The bookshelves reach almost up to the ceiling and the wall is completely hidden by paintings and drawings. It all reminds me of Mr Krogh’s living room, but Viggo F. Møller doesn’t remind me much of Mr Krogh. He’s much less secretive and I’m welcome to ask him about anything I want to know. The sun is about to go down and there’s a soft twilight in the living room that sets an intimate mood. I help my new friend carry the cups out to the kitchen and he asks me if I’d like a glass of wine. I say yes, thank you, and he pours wine into green glasses, lifts his and says, ‘Skål.’ Then I ask him how you go about getting a poetry collection published, and he says that you send it to a publisher. Then they take care of the rest, if they accept the poems. It’s very simple. I’m to show him all of the poems that I have so he can see if there are enough and if they’re good enough. I don’t care for the wine, but I like the effect. I’m very taken with the editor’s soft, round arm movements, with his silver-gray hair and his voice, which wraps itself soothingly and refreshingly aro
und my soul. I’m already fond of him, but I don’t know what his feelings are for me. He doesn’t touch me and doesn’t try to kiss me. Maybe he thinks that I’m too young for him. I ask him why he’s not married and he says gravely that no one wanted him. It’s sad, he says, but now he figures that it’s too late. He has a smile in his eyes when he says this, and I frown because he doesn’t take me seriously. I tell him about my life, about my parents, about Edvin, and about how I’ve just lost my job because of the poem in Wild Wheat. The latter amuses him greatly and he says that it will amuse his friends too, when he tells them about it. His friends are celebrities, and some of them have asked him who the poor young girl is who wrote so beautifully about her dead child. So it’s not just my family who thinks everything you write is true. ‘Oh,’ he says, slapping his forehead, ‘I almost forgot. Did you see Valdemar Koppel’s review of the journal in Politiken recently? He writes very positively about your poem.’ He takes out the clipping and shows it to me. It says: ‘A single poem, “To My Dead Child”, by Tove Ditlevsen is justification enough for the little journal’s existence.’ ‘Oh,’ I say overwhelmed, ‘how happy that makes me. May I keep it?’ He gives it to me and he pours more wine into the green glasses. Then he says, ‘It makes a strong impression on a young person to see their name in print for the first time.’ ‘I’m so glad that I met you,’ I say. ‘It’s as if nothing bad can happen when I’m with you. When I’m here, I don’t believe there’ll be a world war.’ Viggo F. Møller grows suddenly serious. ‘It looks very bleak otherwise,’ he says. ‘I can probably do something or other for you, my dear, but I can’t prevent the world war.’ It’s the wine that makes me say such things. All the grownups withdraw from me whenever they start thinking about the world situation. In comparison, my poems and I are just specks of dust that the smallest puff of wind can blow away. ‘No,’ I say, ‘but you’re not going to suddenly die and this building isn’t going to be torn down.’ I tell him about Editor Brochmann and Mr Krogh. The former he knew, but not the latter. ‘No,’ he says seriously, ‘in that sense you can rely on me. Why don’t we use our first names?’ We toast our friendship and he turns on the lights in the green-shaded lamps. ‘Call me Viggo F.,’ he says then. ‘Everyone calls me Viggo F. or Møller – no one calls me Viggo except my family.’ His parents, he says, are dead, but he has a brother and a sister whom he rarely sees. ‘Families,’ he says, ‘never understand artists. Artists only have each other to rely on.’ He asks me if I’d like to sit next to him on the sofa, and I sit down by him. I sit close to him so that our legs are touching each other, but it apparently doesn’t make any impression on him. Maybe I’m not pretty enough; maybe I’m not old enough. He tells me that he’s fifty-three years old, and I say politely that he doesn’t look it. He doesn’t either, aside from the fact that he’s fat. His skin is pink and white and totally free of wrinkles. I think my father looks much older. But for that matter I don’t care a bit about how old people are. Viggo F.’s father was a bank director and his brother is, too. He himself works for a fire insurance company, which he doesn’t care for, but you’ve got to earn a living somehow. He has also written books, and I’m embarrassed that I haven’t read them. I haven’t even run across his name in the library. My ignorance irritates me and I tell my new friend that I was supposed to go to high school but I wasn’t allowed to. We couldn’t afford it. Gently he puts his arm around my waist and a hot stream races through me. Is this love? I’m so tired of my long search for this person that I feel like crying with relief, now that I’ve reached my goal. I’m so tired that I can’t return his tender, cautious caresses, but just sit passively and let him stroke my hair and pat my cheeks. ‘You’re like a child,’ he says kindly, ‘a child who can’t really manage the adult world.’ ‘I once knew someone,’ I say, ‘who said that all people want to use each other for something. I want to use you to get my poems published.’ ‘Yes,’ he says, continuing to caress me, ‘but I don’t have as much influence as you think. If the publishers don’t want your poems, I can’t do anything. But we’ll take a look at them. I can advise you and support you, at any rate.’ When I go out to the bathroom, I see that Viggo F. has a shower, and it overwhelms me. I ask him if I can take a shower, and he says yes, laughing. Otherwise I go once in a while to the public baths on Lyrskovgade, but it costs money, of course, so it’s never been very often. Now I stand delighted under the shower, twisting and turning, and thinking that if we really get married, I’ll take a shower every single day. When I come out of the bathroom, Viggo F. says, ‘You have nice legs. Lift up your dress so I can see them properly.’ ‘No,’ I say, blushing, because I have a run in one stocking. ‘No, they’re only nice from the knees down.’ It’s gotten to be twelve o’clock and I have to go home to my wretched room. Viggo F. offers to pay for a cab home, but I say that I can certainly walk the short distance. And I add, ‘I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to give the cabbie as a tip, anyway.’ ‘Remember to call him “driver”, not “cabbie”. That sounds too colloquial.’ The remark hurts me and I get furious at my whole upbringing, at my ignorance, my language, my complete lack of sophistication and culture, words I hardly understand. He kisses me on the mouth when he says goodbye, and I walk through the mild summer night and recall all of his words and movements. I am not alone anymore.