The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood ; Youth ; Dependency Read online

  People with such a visible, flagrant childhood both inside and out are called children, and you can treat them any way you like because there’s nothing to fear from them. They have no weapons and no masks unless they are very cunning. I am that kind of cunning child, and my mask is stupidity, which I’m always careful not to let anyone tear away from me. I let my mouth fall open a little and make my eyes completely blank, as if they’re always just staring off into the blue. Whenever it starts singing inside me, I’m especially careful not to let my mask show any holes. None of the grownups can stand the song in my heart or the garlands of words in my soul. But they know about them because bits seep out of me through a secret channel I don’t recognize and therefore can’t stop up. ‘You’re not putting on airs?’ they say, suspiciously, and I assure them that it wouldn’t even occur to me to put on airs. In school they ask, ‘What are you thinking about? What was the last sentence I said?’ But they never really see through me. Only the children in the courtyard or in the street do. ‘You’re going around playing dumb,’ a big girl says menacingly and comes up close to me, ‘but you’re not dumb at all.’ Then she starts to cross-examine me, and a lot of other girls gather silently around me, forming a circle I can’t slip through until I’ve proved I really am stupid. At last it seems clear to them after all of my idiotic replies, and reluctantly they make a little hole in the circle so I can just squeeze through and escape to safety. ‘Because you shouldn’t pretend to be something you’re not,’ one of them yells after me, moralistic and admonishing.

  Childhood is dark and it’s always moaning like a little animal that’s locked in a cellar and forgotten. It comes out of your throat like your breath in the cold, and sometimes it’s too little, other times too big. It never fits exactly. It’s only when it has been cast off that you can look at it calmly and talk about it like an illness you’ve survived. Most grownups say that they’ve had a happy childhood and maybe they really believe it themselves, but I don’t think so. I think they’ve just managed to forget it. My mother didn’t have a happy childhood, and it’s not as hidden away in her as it is in other people. She tells me how terrible it was when her father had the D.T.’s and they all had to stand holding up the wall so that it wouldn’t fall on him. When I say that I feel sorry for him, she yells, ‘Sorry! It was his own fault, the drunken pig! He drank a whole bottle of schnapps every day, and in spite of everything, things were a lot better for us when he finally pulled himself together and hanged himself.’ She also says, ‘He murdered my five little brothers. He took them out of the cradle and crushed their heads against the wall.’ Once I ask my aunt Rosalia, who is Mother’s sister, whether this is true, and she says, ‘Of course it’s not true. They just died. Our father was an unhappy person, but your mother was only four years old when he died. She has inherited Granny’s hatred of him.’ Granny is their mother, and even though she’s old now, I can imagine that her soul can hold a lot of hatred. Granny lives on the island of Amager. Her hair is completely white and she’s always dressed in black. Just as with my father and mother, I may only address her in an indirect way, which makes all conversations very difficult and full of repetitions. She makes the sign of the cross before she cuts the bread, and whenever she clips her fingernails, she burns the clippings in the stove. I ask her why she does this, but she says that she doesn’t know. It was something her mother did. Like all grownups, she doesn’t like it when children ask about something, so she gives short answers. Wherever you turn, you run up against your childhood and hurt yourself because it’s sharp-edged and hard, and stops only when it has torn you completely apart. It seems that everyone has their own and each is totally different. My brother’s childhood is very noisy, for example, while mine is quiet and furtive and watchful. No one likes it and no one has any use for it. Suddenly it’s much too tall and I can look into my mother’s eyes when we both get up. ‘You grow while you’re asleep,’ she says. Then I try to stay awake at night, but sleep overpowers me and in the morning I feel quite dizzy looking down at my feet, the distance has grown so great. ‘You big cow,’ the boys on the street yell after me, and if it keeps on like this, I’ll have to go to Stormogulen where all the giants grow. Now childhood hurts. It’s called growing pains and doesn’t stop until you’re twenty. That’s what Edvin says, who knows everything – about the world and society, too – like my father, who takes him along to political meetings; my mother thinks it will end in both of them being arrested by the police. They don’t listen when she says things like that because she knows as little about politics as I do. She also says that my father can’t find work because he’s a socialist and belongs to the union, and that Stauning, whose picture my father has hung up on the wall next to the sailor’s wife, will lead us into trouble one day. I like Stauning, whom I’ve seen and heard many times in Fælled Park. I like him because his long beard waves so gaily in the wind and because he says ‘comrades’ to the workers even though he’s Prime Minister and could allow himself to be more stuck-up. When it comes to politics, I think my mother is wrong, but no one is interested in what girls think or don’t think about such things.

  One day my childhood smells of blood, and I can’t avoid noticing and knowing it. ‘Now you can have children,’ says my mother. ‘It’s much too soon, you’re not even thirteen yet.’ I know how you have children because I sleep with my parents, and in other ways you can’t help knowing it, either. But even so, somehow I still don’t understand, and I imagine that at any time I can wake up with a little child beside me. Her name will be Baby Maria, because it will be a girl. I don’t like boys and I’m not allowed to play with them, either. Edvin is the only one I love and admire, and he’s the only one I can imagine myself marrying. But you can’t marry your brother and even if you could, he wouldn’t have me. He’s said that often enough. Everyone loves my brother, and I often think his childhood suits him better than mine suits me. He has a custom-made childhood that expands in tune with his growth, while mine is made for a completely different girl. Whenever I think such thoughts, my mask becomes even more stupid, because you can’t talk to anyone about these kinds of things, and I always dream about meeting some mysterious person who will listen to me and understand me. I know from books that such people exist, but you can’t find any of them on my childhood street.

  7

  Istedgade is my childhood street – its rhythm will always pound in my blood and its voice will always reach me and be the same as in those distant times when we swore to be true to each other. It’s always warm and light, festive and exciting, and it envelops me completely, as if it were created to satisfy my personal need for self-expression. Here I walked as a child holding my mother’s hand, and learned important things like an egg in Irma costs six øre, a pound of margarine forty-three øre, and a pound of horse meat fifty-eight øre. My mother haggles over everything except food, so that the shopkeepers wring their hands in despair, declaring she’ll drive them to wrack and ruin if this keeps up. She’s so wonderfully audacious, too, that she dares to exchange shirts that my father has worn as if they were brand new. And she can go right in the door of a store, stand at the end of the line and yell in a shrill voice, ‘Hey, it’s my turn now. I’ve certainly waited long enough.’ I have fun with her and I admire her Copenhagen boldness and quick-wittedness. The unemployed hang around outside the small cafés. They whistle through their fingers at my mother, but she doesn’t give them the time of day. ‘They could at least stay at home,’ she says, ‘like your father.’ But it’s so depressing to see him sitting idly on the sofa whenever he’s not out looking for work. In a magazine, I read this line: ‘To sit and stare at two fists that our Lord has made so magnificently skilled.’ It’s a poem about the unemployed and it makes me think of my father.

  It’s only after I meet Ruth that Istedgade becomes a playground and permanent hangout for me after school until dinner time. At that time I’m nine years old and Ruth is seven. We notice each other one Sunday morning when all of the chil
dren in the building are chased out into the street to play so the parents can sleep late after the week’s drudgery or dreariness. As usual, the big girls stand gossiping in the trash-can corner while the little ones play hopscotch, a game I always make a mess of because I either step on the line or touch the ground with my swinging leg. I never understand what the point is and find the game terribly boring. Somebody or other has said that I’m out, and resignedly I’m leaning against the wall. Then quick footsteps pound down the front building’s kitchen stairway, which leads out into the courtyard, and a little girl emerges with red hair, green eyes, and light brown freckles across the bridge of her nose. ‘Hi,’ she says to me and grins from ear to ear, ‘my name is Ruth.’ I introduce myself shyly and awkwardly, because no one is used to new children making such a cool entrance. Everyone is staring at Ruth, who doesn’t seem to notice it. ‘Want to run and play?’ she says to me, and after a hesitating glance up at our window I follow her, as I will follow her for many years, right up until we’ve both finished school and our profound differences have become apparent.

  Now I’ve got a friend and it makes me much less dependent on my mother, who of course doesn’t like Ruth. ‘She’s an adopted child and nothing good ever comes of that,’ my mother says darkly, but she doesn’t forbid me to play with her. Ruth’s parents are a pair of big, ugly people who themselves could never have brought something as lovely as Ruth into the world. The father is a waiter and drinks like a fish. The mother is obese and asthmatic and hits Ruth for the slightest reason. Ruth doesn’t care. She shakes off the claws, roars down the kitchen stairs, shows all of her shining white teeth in a smile, and says gaily, ‘That bitch, I wish she’d go to hell.’ When Ruth swears it isn’t ugly or offensive because her voice is so crisp and fine, like the little Billy Goat Gruff. Her mouth is red and heart-shaped with a narrow, upturned upper lip, and her expression is as strong as that of the man who knew no fear. She is everything that I’m not, and I do everything she wants me to do. She cares as little as I do for real games. She never touches her dolls and she uses her doll buggy as a springboard when we put a plank on it. But we don’t do that very often because the landlady comes running after us or we’re told to stop it by our watchful mothers who have much too good a view from the windows. Only on Istedgade are we away from any supervision, and that’s where my criminal path begins. Ruth accepts sweetly and good-humoredly that I’m not prepared to steal. But then I have to distract the clerk’s attention from her tiny, quick figure that indiscriminately grabs things while I stand there asking when they expect to get bubblegum in the store. We go into the nearest doorway and share the plunder. Sometimes we go to stores and endlessly try on shoes or dresses. We select the most expensive one and politely say that our mother will come in to pay for it if they would kindly put the goods aside for the time being. Even before we get out the door, our delighted giggles break loose.

  Throughout the whole long friendship, I’m always afraid of revealing myself to Ruth. I’m afraid that she’ll discover how I really am. I make myself into her echo because I love her and because she’s the strongest, but deep inside I am still me. I have my dreams about a future beyond the street, but Ruth is intimately tied to it and will never be torn away from it. I feel as if I’m deceiving her by pretending that we’re of the same blood. In a mysterious way I am indebted to her; together with fear and a vague guilty feeling, this burdens my heart and colors our relationship in the same way it will color all close and lasting relationships later in my life.

  The shoplifting comes to an abrupt end. One day Ruth has pulled off a coup by swiping a whole jar of orange marmalade inside her coat. Afterwards, we eat ourselves sick on it. Completely stuffed, we throw the rest into one of the garbage cans, which is so full that it can’t be closed. So we jump up and sit on the lid. Suddenly Ruth says, ‘Why the hell does it always have to be me?’ ‘The receiver is as bad as the thief,’ I say, terrified. ‘Yes, but still…’ grumbles Ruth, ‘you could do it once in a while.’ I can see the reasonableness in her demand and promise uneasily to do it next time. But I insist it has to be very far away, so on Søndre Boulevard I pick out a dairy store that looks suitably deserted. Ruth cautiously opens the door and sails in, followed by her long shadow, which could very well be her own slumbering conscience. The shop is empty and there’s no window in the door out to the back room. On the counter there’s a bowl full of twenty-five-øre chocolate sticks in red and green foil. I stare at them, pale with excitement and fear. I lift my hand, but it’s held back by invisible powers. I shake all the way down to my feet. ‘Hurry up,’ whispers Ruth, who is keeping an eye on the back room. Then the hand-that-can’t-steal reaches up to the bowl, grabs some of the red and green dancing before my eyes, and knocks the whole pile over behind the counter. ‘Idiot,’ hisses Ruth, and races off just as the back door bangs open. A pale woman comes rushing out and stops, astonished, when she sees me standing there like a pillar of salt with a piece of chocolate in one upraised hand. ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ she says. ‘What are you doing here? Oh, look, now the bowl is broken!’ And she bends down and picks up the pieces, and I don’t know what to do, since the world hasn’t crashed around me after all. I wish that it would happen now, right there. All I feel is a boundless, burning shame. The excitement and the adventure are gone; I’m just an ordinary thief, caught in the act. ‘You could at least say you’re sorry,’ says the woman as she goes out with the shards of glass. ‘Such a big, clumsy oaf.’

  All the way down by Enghavevej, Ruth is standing laughing so hard she has tears in her eyes. ‘You’re such a blithering idiot,’ she manages to say. ‘Did she say anything? Why didn’t you get out of there? Hey, do you still have the chocolate? Let’s go to the park and eat it.’ ‘Do you really want to eat it?’ I ask in disbelief. ‘I think we should throw it under a tree.’ ‘Are you crazy?’ Ruth says. ‘Good chocolate?’ ‘But Ruth,’ I say, ‘we’ll never do it again, will we?’ Then my little friend asks me whether I’m becoming a goody-goody, and in the park she stuffs the chocolate in her mouth right before my eyes. After that the stealing expeditions stop. Ruth doesn’t want to do it alone. And whenever my mother sends me out shopping, I always barge into the store with unnecessary noise. If, after that, it still takes a while for the clerk to come, I stand far away from the counter with my eyes on the ceiling. But my cheeks still flush red when the woman appears, and I have to control myself to keep from desperately turning my pockets inside out in front of her so she can see they’re not full of stolen goods. The episode increases my guilty feeling toward Ruth, and also makes me afraid of losing her prized friendship. So I show even greater daring in our other forbidden games, such as trying to be the last one to run over the tracks in front of the train under the viaduct on Enghavevej. Sometimes I’m toppled over by the air pressure from the locomotive, and I lie on the grass embankment for a long time, gasping for breath. It’s reward enough when Ruth says, ‘Good God! That time you just about kicked the bucket!’

  8

  It’s fall and the storm rattles the butcher’s signs. The trees on Enghavevej have lost nearly all of their leaves, which almost cover the ground with their yellow and reddish-brown carpet that looks like my mother’s hair when the sun plays in it, and you suddenly discover it’s not totally black. The unemployed are freezing, but still standing erect with their hands deep in their pockets and a burned-out pipe between their teeth. The streetlamps have just been lit, and now and then the moon peeks out between racing, shifting clouds. I always think there is a mystical understanding between the moon and the street, like between two sisters who have grown old together and no longer need any language to communicate with each other. We’re walking in the fleeting dusk, Ruth and I, and soon we’ll have to leave the street, which makes us eager for something to happen before the day is over. When we reach Gasværksvej, where we usually turn around, Ruth says, ‘Let’s go down and look at the whores. There are probably some who have started.’ A whore is a woma
n who does it for money, which seems to me much more understandable than to do it for free. Ruth told me about it, and since I think the word is ugly, I’ve found another in a book: ‘Lady-of-the-evening’. It sounds much nicer and more romantic. Ruth tells me everything about those kinds of things; for her, the adults have no secrets. She has also told me about Scabie Hans and Rapunzel, and I can’t comprehend it, since I think Scabie Hans is a very old man. And he has Pretty Lili, besides. I wonder whether men can love two women at once. For me the grownups’ world is still just as mysterious. I always picture Istedgade as a beautiful woman who’s lying on her back with her hair near Enghaveplads. At Gasværksvej, which forms the boundary between decent people and the depraved, her legs part, and sprinkled over them like freckles are the welcoming hotels and the bright, noisy taverns, where later in the night the police cars drive by to pick up their scandalously intoxicated and quarrelsome victims. That I know from Edvin, who is four years older than me, and is allowed to be out until ten o’clock at night. I admire Edvin greatly when he comes home in his blue Danish Youth shirt and talks politics with my father. Lately they’re both very outraged over Sacco and Vanzetti, whose pictures stare out from the poster displays and the newspaper. They look so handsome with their dark foreign faces, and I also think it’s too bad they’re going to be executed for something they didn’t do. But I just can’t get as excited about it as my father, who yells and pounds the table whenever he discusses it with Uncle Peter. He’s a Social Democrat like my father and Edvin, but he doesn’t think that Sacco and Vanzetti deserve a better fate since they’re anarchists. ‘I don’t care,’ yells my father furiously and pounds the table. ‘Miscarriage of justice is miscarriage of justice, even if it concerns a conservative!’ I know that’s the worst thing you can be. Recently, when I asked whether I could join the Ping Club because all the other girls in my class were members, my father looked at my mother sternly, as if I were a victim of her subversive influence in political matters, and said, ‘There, you see, Mutter. Now she’s becoming a reactionary. It will probably end with us subscribing to Berlingske Tidende!’