The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood ; Youth ; Dependency Read online

  4

  In the meantime, there exist certain facts. They are stiff and immovable, like the lampposts in the street, but at least they change in the evening when the lamplighter has touched them with his magic wand. Then they light up like big soft sunflowers in the narrow borderland between night and day, when all the people move so quietly and slowly, as if they were walking on the bottom of the green ocean. Facts never light up and they can’t soften hearts like Ditte menneskebarn, which is one of the first books that I read. ‘It’s a social novel,’ says my father pedantically, and that probably is a fact, but it doesn’t tell me anything, and I have no use for it. ‘Nonsense,’ says my mother, who doesn’t care for facts, either, but can more easily ignore them than I can. Whenever my father, on rare occasions, gets really mad at her, he says she’s full of lies, but I know that’s not so. I know every person has their own truth just as every child has their own childhood. My mother’s truth is completely different from my father’s truth, but it’s just as obvious as the fact that he has brown eyes while hers are blue. Fortunately, things are set up so that you can keep quiet about the truths in your heart; but the cruel, gray facts are written in the school records and in the history of the world and in the law and in the church books. No one can change them and no one dares to try, either – not even the Lord, whose image I can’t separate from Prime Minister Stauning’s, even though my father says that I shouldn’t believe in the Lord since the capitalists have always used Him against the poor.

  Therefore:

  I was born on December 14, 1918, in a little two-room apartment in Vesterbro in Copenhagen. We lived at Hedebygade 30A; the ‘A’ meant it was in the back building. In the front building, from the windows of which you could look down on the street, lived the finer people. Though the apartments were exactly the same as ours, they paid two kroner more a month in rent. It was the year that the World War ended and the eight-hour day was instituted. My brother Edvin was born when the World War began and when my father worked twelve-hour days. He was a stoker and his eyes were always bloodshot from the sparks from the furnace. He was thirty-seven years old when I was born, and my mother was ten years younger. My father was born in Nykøbing Mors. He was born out of wedlock and he never knew who his father was. When he was six years old, he was sent out as a shepherd boy, and at about the same time his mother married a potter named Floutrup. She had nine children by him, but I don’t know anything about all of these half brothers and half sisters because I’ve never met them, and my father has never talked about them. He cut off ties with everyone in his family when he went to Copenhagen at the age of sixteen. He had a dream of writing and it never really left him completely. He managed to get hired as an apprentice reporter with some newspaper or other, but, for unknown reasons, he gave it up again. I know nothing of how he spent the ten years in Copenhagen until, at twenty-six, he met my mother in a bakery on Tordenskjoldsgade. She was sixteen, a salesgirl in the front of the shop where my father was a baker’s assistant. It turned out to be an abnormally long engagement that my father broke off many times when he thought my mother was cheating on him. I think that most of the time it was completely innocent. Those two people were just so totally different, as if they each came from their own planet. My father was melancholy, serious, and unusually moralistic, while my mother, at least as a young girl, was lively and silly, irresponsible and vain. She worked as a maid at various places, and whenever something didn’t suit her, she would just leave. Then my father had to go and get the servant’s conduct book and the chest-of-drawers, which he would drive over on a delivery bicycle to the new place, where there would be something else that didn’t suit her. She herself once confided to me that she’d never been at any job long enough to have time to boil an egg.

  I was seven years old when disaster struck us. My mother had just knit me a green sweater. I put it on and thought it was pretty. Toward the end of the day we went over to pick up my father from work. He worked at Riedel & Lindegaard on Kingosgade. He had always worked there – that is, for as long as I’d been alive. We got there a little too early, and I went and kicked at the mounds of melting snow along the curb while my mother stood leaning against the green railing, waiting. Then my father strode out of the gate and my heart began to beat faster. His face was gray and funny and different. My mother quickly went up to him. ‘Ditlev,’ she said, ‘what’s happened?’ He looked down at the ground. ‘I’ve been fired,’ he said. I didn’t know the word but understood the irreparable damage. My father had lost his job. That which could only strike others, had hit us. Riedel & Lindegaard, from which everything good had come until now – even down to my Sunday five øre that I couldn’t spend – had become an evil and horrible dragon that had spewed out my father from its fiery jaws, indifferent to his fate, to us, to me and my new green sweater that he didn’t even notice. None of us said a word on the way home. I tried to slip my hand into my mother’s, but she knocked my arm away with a violent motion. When we got into the living room my father looked at her with an expression heavy with guilt. ‘Well, well,’ he said, stroking his black mustache with two fingers, ‘it’ll be a long time before the unemployment benefits give out.’ He was forty-three and too old to get a steady job anymore. Even so, I remember only one time when the union benefits ran out and welfare came under discussion. It happened in whispers and after my brother’s and my bedtime, because it was an indelible shame like lice and child support. If you went on welfare, you lost your right to vote. We never starved, either, at least my stomach was always full of something, but I got to know the half starvation you feel at the smell of dinner coming from the doors of the more well-to-do, when for days you’ve been living on coffee and stale pastry, which cost twenty-five øre for a whole school bag full.

  I was the one who bought it. Every Sunday morning at six o’clock my mother woke me up and issued her orders while well hidden under the comforter in the marriage bed next to my father, who was still sleeping. With fingers that were already stiff from the cold before I reached the street, I grabbed my school bag and flew down the stairs that were pitch-dark at that time of day. I opened the door to the street and looked around in every direction and up at the front building’s windows, because no one was supposed to see me perform this despicable task. It wasn’t proper to take part in the school meals at the Carlsbergvej School, the only social-service institution that existed in Vesterbro in the 1930s. The latter, Edvin and I were not allowed to do. For that matter, it wasn’t proper, either, to have a father who was unemployed, even though half of us did. So we covered up this disgrace with the craziest lies – the most common of which was that Father had fallen off a scaffold and was on sick leave. Over by the bakery on Tøndergade the line of children formed a winding snake along the street. They all had bags with them and they all jabbered on about how good the bread was at that particular bakery, especially when it was freshly baked. When it was my turn, I shoved the bag up on the counter, whispered my mission and added aloud, ‘Preferably cream puffs.’ My mother had expressly told me to ask for white bread. On the way home I stuffed myself with four or five sour cream puffs, wiped my mouth on my coat sleeve, and was never discovered when my mother rummaged in the depths of the bag. I was never, or rarely, punished for the crimes I committed. My mother hit me often and hard, but as a rule it was arbitrary and unjust, and during the punishment I felt something like a secret shame or a heavy sorrow that brought the tears to my eyes and increased the painful distance between us. My father never hit me. On the contrary – he was good to me. All of my childhood books were his, and on my fifth birthday he gave me a wonderful edition of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, without which my childhood would have been gray and dreary and impoverished. Still, I didn’t hold any strong feeling for him, which I often reproached myself for when, sitting on the sofa, he would look at me with his quiet, searching glance, as if he wanted to say or do something in my direction, something that he never managed to express. I was Mother’s girl and Edvin was F
ather’s boy – that law of nature couldn’t be changed. Once I said to him, ‘Lamentation – what does that mean, Father?’ I had found the expression in Gorky and loved it. He considered this for a long time while he stroked the turned-up ends of his mustache. ‘It’s a Russian term,’ he said then. ‘It means pain and misery and sorrow. Gorky was a great poet.’ I said happily, ‘I want to be a poet too!’ Immediately he frowned and said severely, ‘Don’t be a fool! A girl can’t be a poet.’ Offended and hurt, I withdrew into myself again while my mother and Edvin laughed at the crazy idea. I vowed never to reveal my dreams to anyone again, and I kept this vow throughout my childhood.

  5

  It’s evening and I’m sitting as usual up on the cold windowsill in the bedroom and looking down at the courtyard. It’s the happiest hour of my day. The first wave of fear has subsided. My father has said good night and has gone back to the warm living room, and the clothes behind the door have stopped frightening me. I look up at my evening star that’s like God’s benevolent eye; it follows me vigilantly and seems closer to me than during the day. Someday I’ll write down all of the words that flow through me. Someday other people will read them in a book and marvel that a girl could be a poet, after all. My father and mother will be prouder of me than of Edvin, and a sharp-sighted teacher at school (one that I haven’t had yet) will say, ‘I saw it already when she was a child. There was something special about her!’ I want so badly to write down the words, but where in the world would I hide such papers? Even my parents don’t have a drawer that can be locked. I’m in the second grade and I want to write hymns because they’re the most beautiful things that I know. On my first day of school we sang: ‘God be thanked and praised, we slept so peacefully’; and when we got to ‘now lively like the bird, briskly like the fish of the sea, the morning sun shines through the pane’, I was so happy and moved that I burst out crying, at which all the children laughed in the same way as my mother and Edvin laugh whenever my ‘oddness’ brings forth my tears. My classmates find me unceasingly, overwhelmingly comical, and I’ve gotten used to the clown role and even find a sad comfort in it, because together with my confirmed stupidity, it protects me against their peculiar meanness toward anyone who is different.

  A shadow creeps out from the arched doorway like a rat from its hole. In spite of the dark, I can see that it’s the pervert. When he’s certain that the way is clear, he pushes his hat down on his forehead and runs over to the pissoir, leaving the door ajar. I can’t see in, but I know what he’s doing. The time is past when I was afraid of him, but my mother still is. A little while ago, she took me to the Svendsgade Police Station and, indignant and trembling with rage, told the officer that women and children in the building weren’t safe from his filthiness. ‘He scared my little girl here out of her wits,’ she said. Then the officer asked me whether the pervert had bared himself, and I said no with great conviction. I only knew the word from the line ‘thus we bare our heads each time the flag is raised’. He had really never taken off his hat. When we got home, my mother said to my father, ‘The police won’t do anything. There’s no law or justice left in this country.’

  The door opens on its screeching hinges and the laughter and songs and curses break through the solemn silence in the room and inside of me. I crane my neck to get a better look at who’s coming. It’s Rapunzel, her father, and Tin Snout, one of her parents’ drinking companions. The girl is walking between the two men, each with an arm around her neck. Her golden hair shines as if reflecting the glow from some invisible streetlamp. Roaring, they stagger across the courtyard, and a little later I can hear their ruckus out on the stairway. Rapunzel’s real name is Gerda, and she is almost grown-up, at least thirteen years old. Last summer, when she went with Scabie Hans and Pretty Lili in the gypsy wagon to mind the smallest children, my mother said, ‘I guess Gerda has got herself more than just scabies on this trip.’ The big girls said something similar in the trash-can corner in the courtyard, where I often find myself on the outskirts. They said it in a low voice, giggling, and I didn’t understand any more than that it was something shameless and dirty and obscene, something about Scabie Hans and Rapunzel. So I got up my courage and asked my mother what really had happened to Gerda. Angrily and impatiently she said, ‘Oh, you goose! She’s not innocent anymore, that’s all.’ And I wasn’t any the wiser.

  I look up at the cloudless, silken sky and open the window in order to be even closer to it. It’s as if God slowly lowers His gentle face over the earth and His great heart beats softly and calmly, very close to mine. I feel very happy, and long, melancholy lines of verse pass through my soul. They separate me, unwillingly, from those I should be closest to. My parents don’t like the fact that I believe in God and they don’t like the language I use. On the other hand, I’m repelled by their use of language because they always employ the same vulgar, coarse words and expressions, the meanings of which never cover what they want to say. My mother starts almost all of her orders to me by saying, ‘God help you, if you don’t…’ My father curses God in his Jylland dialect, which is perhaps not as bad, but not any nicer to listen to. On Christmas Eve we sing social democratic battle songs as we walk around the tree, and my heart aches with anguish and shame because we can hear the beautiful hymns being sung all around in the building, even in the most drunken and ungodly homes. You should respect your father and mother, and I tell myself that I do, but it’s harder now than when I was little.

  A fine, cool rain strikes my face and I close the window again. But I can still hear the soft sound of the hallway door as it’s opened and closed far below. Then a lovely creature slips across the courtyard as if held upright by a delicate, transparent umbrella. It’s Ketty, the beautiful, spiritlike woman from the apartment next to ours. She has on silver high-heel shoes under a long yellow silk dress. Over it she has a white fur that makes you think of Snow White. Ketty’s hair is black as ebony, too. It takes only a minute before the arched doorway hides the beautiful sight that cheers my heart night after night. Ketty goes out every evening at this time, and my father says that it’s scandalous when there are children around, and I don’t understand what he means. My mother doesn’t say anything, because during the day she and I are often over in Ketty’s living room drinking coffee or hot chocolate. It’s a wonderful room, where all the furniture is red plush. The lampshades are red, too, and Ketty herself is pink and white like my mother, although Ketty is younger. They laugh a lot, those two, and I laugh with them even though I seldom understand what’s so funny. But whenever Ketty starts to talk to me, my mother sends me away because she doesn’t approve of that. It’s the same with Aunt Rosalia, who also likes to talk to me. ‘Women who don’t have children,’ says my mother, ‘are always so busy with other people’s.’ Afterwards she puts Ketty down because she makes her old mother live in the unheated room overlooking the courtyard and never lets her come into the living room. The mother is called Mrs Andersen; and, according to my mother, that’s ‘the blackest lie’, since she’s never been married. It’s a great sin then to have a child – I know that. And when I ask my mother why Ketty treats her mother so badly, she says it’s because the mother won’t tell her who her father is. When you think about something that terrible, you really have to be grateful you have the proper relationships in your own family.

  When Ketty has disappeared, the door to the pissoir opens cautiously, and the pervert edges sideways like a crab along the wall of the front building and out the door. I had completely forgotten about him.

  6

  Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own. It’s there all the time and everyone can see it just as clearly as you can see Pretty Ludvig’s harelip. It’s the same with him as with Pretty Lili, who’s so ugly you can’t imagine she ever had a mother. Everything that is ugly or unfortunate is called beautiful, and no one knows why. You can’t get out of childhood, and it clings to you like a bad smell. You notice it in other children �
�� each childhood has its own smell. You don’t recognize your own and sometimes you’re afraid that it’s worse than others’. You’re standing talking to another girl whose childhood smells of coal and ashes, and suddenly she takes a step back because she has noticed the terrible stink of your childhood. On the sly, you observe the adults whose childhood lies inside them, torn and full of holes like a used and moth-eaten rug no one thinks about anymore or has any use for. You can’t tell by looking at them that they’ve had a childhood, and you don’t dare ask how they managed to make it through without their faces getting deeply scarred and marked by it. You suspect that they’ve used some secret shortcut and donned their adult form many years ahead of time. They did it one day when they were home alone and their childhood lay like three bands of iron around their heart, like Iron Hans in Grimms’ fairy tale, whose bands broke only when his master was freed. But if you don’t know such a shortcut, childhood must be endured and trudged through hour by hour, through an absolutely interminable number of years. Only death can free you from it, so you think a lot about death, and picture it as a white-robed, friendly angel who some night will kiss your eyelids so that they never will open again. I always think that when I’m grown-up my mother will finally like me the way she likes Edvin now. Because my childhood irritates her just as much as it irritates me, and we are only happy together whenever she suddenly forgets about its existence. Then she talks to me the way she talks to her friends or to Aunt Rosalia, and I’m very careful to make my answers so short that she won’t suddenly remember I’m only a child. I let go of her hand and keep a slight distance between us so she won’t be able to smell my childhood, either. It almost always happens when I go shopping with her on Istedgade. She tells me how much fun she had as a young girl. She went out dancing every night and was never off the dance floor. ‘I had a new boyfriend every night,’ she says and laughs loudly, ‘but that had to stop when I met Ditlev.’ That’s my father and otherwise she always calls him ‘Father’, just as he calls her ‘Mother’ or ‘Mutter’. I get the impression there was a time when she was happy and different, but that it all came to an abrupt end when she met Ditlev. When she talks about him it’s as if he’s someone other than my father, a dark spirit who crushes and destroys everything that is beautiful and light and lively. And I wish that this Ditlev had never come into her life. When she gets to his name, she usually catches sight of my childhood and looks at it angrily and threateningly, while the dark rim around her blue iris grows even darker. This childhood then shivers with fear and despairingly tries to slip away on tiptoe, but it’s still far too little and can’t be discarded yet for several hundred years.