The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency

by Tove Ditlevsen

  10

  Aunt Rosalia is in the hospital. One day when my mother went out to visit her, Aunt Rosalia said, laughing, ‘I’m young again, Alfrida.’ My mother said that she should go to the doctor, but my aunt wouldn’t. Like my mother, she only goes to the doctor under dire circumstances. My mother told me about it in the evening when I came home from the office. I didn’t understand what the mysterious remark meant, but my mother explained that my aunt had started to bleed after it had stopped many years ago. Although my mother has never informed me about anything regarding those matters, she always assumes that I know all about it. But there were obviously gaps in the trash-can corner’s sex education. It took my mother a long time to persuade my aunt to go to a doctor, and when she finally did, he put her in the hospital at once. Now she’s going to have an operation, and she talks about it as if it were a picnic. ‘It’s cancer,’ says my mother gloomily. ‘First her husband – now her. And just when she was going to have some good years, now that she’s gotten rid of that beast.’ My mother is sincerely worried and unhappy about it, because she’s much more fond of Aunt Rosalia than of Aunt Agnete. I visit her with my mother the day before the operation. She’s lying there eating oranges and talking cheerfully with the other patients in the ward. I can’t believe that my mother is right, because she doesn’t look sick and she’s not in pain. But when we’ve said goodbye and come out into the hallway, a nurse comes over and asks my mother who my aunt’s nearest relatives are. When she hears that we are, she asks my mother to come in and talk to the doctor. In the meantime, I wait outside on a bench. My mother comes back with red eyes. She blows her nose loudly and leans on my arm as we leave. ‘I thought so,’ she sniffs. ‘I was right. They don’t know whether she’ll survive the operation.’ On the way to the office, I call Nina and say that I can’t come over to her house that evening. I don’t feel that I can leave my mother, and Jytte is no help when you’re feeling bad about something. At the office, Miss Løngren says suspiciously, ‘Well, so how was your aunt?’ ‘She has cancer,’ I say solemnly, ‘and she might die.’ ‘Well, well,’ says Miss Løngren callously, ‘we’re all going to die, you know. Get to work now. Here are some letters.’ I type letters to the brothers, and I’ve taken them in shorthand myself from Master’s dictation. Carl Jensen comes in from the print shop and sits down in his revolving chair. He’s wearing a gray smock and has a yellow pencil behind his ear. As far as I can see, he never does any work, but with Miss Løngren he doesn’t have to pretend to do any, either. I can see that there’s something he wants to say to her and that my presence is embarrassing him, but I calmly keep tapping at the typewriter, and I’m beginning to get faster at it. ‘Løngren,’ he says, leaning back so his face is close to hers, ‘Sven Åge has his silver wedding anniversary in two weeks. Do you think it’d be possible to get someone to write a song for him?’ His shifty eyes pass over me for a moment, but I don’t look up. ‘Oh God, yes,’ says Miss Løngren, ‘Miss Ditlevsen could, couldn’t you?’ The last words come loudly and shrilly and I don’t dare pretend that I didn’t hear them. ‘Yes,’ I say, addressing myself to Miss Løngren, ‘sure I can.’ ‘Sure she can,’ she says to Carl Jensen. ‘She just needs some information, you know. What’s happened through the years, things like that.’ ‘She’ll have it,’ says Carl Jensen, relieved. ‘I’ll bring it tomorrow.’ I look at him sideways and suddenly I realize that it’s a strange form of shyness that makes him unable to speak to me directly. That makes it less uncomfortable and puts the problem on his shoulders. The next day, I write the song while people walk past outside in the sunshine – independent people who can move about freely in the world between nine and five and who all have some personal goal that they’ve determined themselves. I write the ridiculous song while my aunt is being operated on and no one knows whether she’ll survive. The telephone rings and Miss Løngren hands the receiver to me looking as if it’s burning her fingers. ‘It’s for you,’ she says sternly. ‘It’s a young woman.’ Bright red in the face, I go around the desk and take the telephone as I stand close to Carl Jensen and Miss Løngren, who are completely silent. It’s Nina, and I’ve forbidden her to call me. ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Just listen – I met a really sweet guy yesterday in the Heidelberg. He has a friend who’s cute too. Tall, dark, and everything. You’ll like him. I promised that we’d be there tonight. Then they’ll both be there.’ ‘No,’ I say in a low voice, ‘I can’t tonight. I have to be home.’ ‘Why?’ she asks and, embarrassed, I whisper that I’ll tell her some other time. I’m busy now. Nina is insulted and says that I’m strange. When she’s finally found a young man for me, and I don’t want to meet him. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I say. ‘I’m busy. Goodbye.’ Fumbling, I put down the receiver. ‘Thank you,’ I mumble, and go back to my place. ‘Was that your girlfriend?’ asks Miss Løngren after a long and oppressive silence. When I answer affirmatively, she says, ‘She sounded rather frivolous. At your age, you have to be careful about the kind of girlfriends you have.’ ‘That’s true,’ says Carl Jensen, adding philosophically, ‘In some ways, it’s better to have a boyfriend – at least you know what’s going on.’ I keep working on the song, annoyed that there’s nothing that rhymes with Sven Åge. Boa, Noah, protozoa, Balboa. Sven Åge is just as silent as his brother is talkative. He’s fat like his father and his head is always tilted slightly, as if one neck muscle were too short. It gives him an endearing look. The brothers practically don’t talk to each other at all because Sven Åge lives upstairs free of charge while Carl Jensen has to pay rent himself somewhere else. Furthermore, Sven Åge, as the oldest, is going to take over the press when Master dies. ‘Sad,’ says Miss Løngren sentimentally, ‘that blood ties aren’t stronger.’ When I’m through with the song, I type it up on the typewriter, and when Master suddenly appears, I tear it out and stuff it away in the drawer because I’m not getting paid to write poetry for special occasions. When the product is done, I give it to Miss Løngren, and she’s almost more enthusiastic than the time before. She stares at me as if I were a new Shakespeare and says, ‘It’s amazing – look here, Carl Jensen.’ He takes the song and reads through it and agrees with her and stares at me for a long time without saying a word. Then he says to Miss Løngren, ‘I wonder where she gets it from?’ ‘It’s a gift,’ determines Miss Løngren, ‘a gift you’re born with. I had an uncle who could do it, too. But it wore him out. It was as if all strength left him when he was done with a song. It’s the same with mediums – they’re completely exhausted by it, too. Aren’t you tired, Miss Ditlevsen?’ No, I’m not tired and my strength hasn’t left me. But I want so badly to have a place where I can practice writing real poems. I’d like to have a room with four walls and a closed door. A room with a bed, a table and a chair, with a typewriter, or a pad of paper and a pencil, nothing more. Well, yes – a door I could lock. All of this I can’t have until I’m eighteen and can move away from home. The attic with the metal boxes was the last place where I had peace. That and my childhood windowsill. I walk home, caressed by the soft May air. Now it stays light for a long time in the evening and I’m not cold in my brown suit. The jacket just reaches my waist and the skirt is pleated. I have a pleasant feeling of being well dressed when I wear it. Nina says I should have a bigger wardrobe, but I don’t have any money. I pay twenty kroner a month at home now that I get all my meals there; ten kroner goes in the bank; and then there’s twenty kroner left, a little less when medical insurance is paid for. Most of it I use for candy, because it’s an inner battle to pass unscathed by a chocolate store. I also need money for the soda pop that I drink when I go to dance halls with Nina. The young men who might pay for it unfortunately don’t show up until ten o’clock, when I have to say goodbye to the joys of nightlife. I think a little bit about what kind of young man Nina had chosen for me, and regret that I didn’t get to meet him. But if my aunt is dead, I can’t let my mother be alone. I always peek into baby buggies when I walk home, because I love to look at the little children who are lying
asleep with upstretched hands on a ruffled pillowcase. I also like to look at people who in one way or another give expression to their feelings. I like to look at mothers caressing their children, and I willingly go a little out of my way in order to follow a young couple who are walking hand in hand and are openly in love. It gives me a wistful feeling of happiness and an indefinable hope for the future. Up in the living room my mother is sitting waiting for me. She’s very pale and she has recently been crying. I’m fond of my mother, too, whenever she’s prey to a simple and sincere emotion. ‘She didn’t die,’ she says solemnly, ‘but the doctor said that it’s only a reprieve. The important thing now is that she doesn’t find out what’s wrong with her. Don’t ever tell her.’ ‘I won’t,’ I say. My mother goes out to make coffee, and I look at my sleeping father’s back. Suddenly I see that he is aged and tired. There’s nothing definite to point to, it’s just an impression that I get. My father is fifty-five years old, and I’ve never known him as young. My mother was first young, and then youthful, and she’s still standing at that shaky stage. She lies without compunction that she’s a couple of years younger, even to us, who know very well how old she is. She still gets her hair dyed and goes to the steambath once a week; these exertions fill me with a kind of compassion because they’re an expression of a fear in her that I don’t understand. I just observe it. When she puts the cups on the table, my father wakes up, rubs his eyes, and sits up. ‘Have you told her?’ he says grimly. ‘No,’ says my mother calmly, ‘you can do it.’ ‘We’ve gotten a new apartment,’ he says bitterly, ‘over on Westend. It costs sixty kroner a month and I don’t know where the money’s going to come from when I’m unemployed again.’ ‘Nonsense,’ says my mother harshly. ‘Tove pays twenty, you know.’ I’m horrified, because they shouldn’t plan their future around my contribution. They shouldn’t count on me in any way when they make plans behind my back. I ask them why they haven’t told me before, and my mother says that they wanted to surprise me. There are three rooms and I’m to have one of them. And it looks out on the street so you can see what’s going on. I feel a little happy after all, because I’ve always dreamed of having my own room. ‘What the hell,’ snaps my father, ‘is she going to do in that room? Sit and bite her fingernails or pick her nose? Huh?’ I get mad because he doesn’t know anything about his own children. And whenever I get mad I always say something that I regret. ‘I want to read,’ I say, ‘and write.’ He asks what in hell I want to write. ‘Poems,’ I yell. ‘I’ve written lots of poems and once there was an editor who said they were excellent.’ ‘There, you see,’ says my father, rubbing his face with his big hand, ‘she’s crazy, too. Did you know that she was fooling around with things like that?’ ‘No,’ says my mother curtly, ‘but that’s her own business. If she wants to write, it’s clear that she has to have her own room.’ In offended silence, my father takes his lunchbox and puts on his jacket to go to work. When he puts on his cap, he stands there a little, looking uncomfortable. ‘Tove,’ he says with a tender voice, ‘can I see your … uh … poems sometime? I know something about that kind of thing.’ My anger disappears completely. ‘Yes, you can,’ I say and he nods at me awkwardly before he leaves. My father can regret and repent – an ability that my mother doesn’t possess. When he’s left, she tells me about the new apartment that we’re going to move into on the first. ‘Three enormous rooms,’ she says, ‘that are almost like ballrooms. It’ll be nice to get away from this proletarian neighborhood.’ When she’s gone into the bedroom, I look around at our little living room. I look at the old dusty puppet theater that we were once so happy with when my father made it. It will probably not survive a move. I look at the wallpaper that bears various spots, many of whose origins I remember. I look at the sailor’s wife on the wall, at the brass coffee service on the buffet, at the door handle that broke one time when my mother slammed the door after her and that has never been repaired. I look out the window over at the courtyard with the gas pump and the gypsy wagon. I look at all this, which has remained unchanged, and I realize that I detest changes. It’s difficult to keep a grasp on yourself when things around you change.