The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency

by Tove Ditlevsen

  I never heard your little voice.

  Your pale lips never smiled at me.

  And the kick of your tiny feet

  is something I will never see.

  He looks thoughtfully at the verse for a long time and asks me what the poem is about. ‘A child,’ I say, ‘stillborn.’ He asks whether I’ve ever had a stillborn child, and I say no. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he says then, regarding me with great curiosity. Nina is dancing with a young man and she winks at me encouragingly as they dance past the table. She thinks that I should make something of the situation, and I will too, in my own way. Albert follows my glance. ‘Your girlfriend,’ he says, ‘is very pretty.’ ‘Yes,’ I say, thinking that he wishes it were her he had chosen and not me. But I don’t care about that side of the matter now. ‘Do you know,’ I say stubbornly, ‘where you can send a poem like this to be published?’ ‘Oh, sure,’ he says, as if I’d asked about something perfectly ordinary. ‘Do you know a journal called Wild Wheat?’ I don’t, and he tells me that it’s where young, unknown people can get their poems and drawings published. It’s edited by a man named Viggo F. Møller, and he writes the name and address down on another napkin. ‘I was out to see him recently,’ he says so casually that it’s clear that he’s proud of it. ‘He’s very nice and he has a great understanding of young art.’ I ask cautiously if he writes himself, and he says just as casually that in his spare time he has committed some verses to paper and a number of them have already been published in Wild Wheat. The news makes me totally speechless. I’m sitting next to a poet. It was more than I’ve ever dreamed of. I’m still silent when Nina returns. She lifts her fine eyebrows and thinks that Albert and I haven’t gotten any further. ‘In Heidelberg I lost my heart to the magic of a pair of eyes…’ Everyone stands up and sings, as they swing the full beer steins back and forth. Albert has stood up too, and all of a sudden his posture expresses a certain impatience. I follow the direction of his glance and see, on the other side of the dance floor, a slight young girl, who’s sitting alone and is very serious. When the music starts, Albert pays the bill, bows a little awkwardly to both of us, and asks the serious girl to dance. ‘It was your own fault,’ says Nina annoyed. ‘He was really cute.’ But actually I don’t care. I’ve gotten hold of a corner of the world that I long for and I don’t intend to let that corner go. I put the napkin in my purse and smile mysteriously at my girlfriend. ‘I’m going home to type,’ I say. ‘If only the witch doesn’t wake up.’ ‘You’ve gone from the frying pan into the fire,’ Nina says. ‘She’s not a bit better than your mother.’ I work my way to the cloakroom and get hold of my coat. I walk the whole way home even though it’s bitter frost, and I feel very happy. A name and an address – how many years it can take to get that far. And maybe that’s not even enough. Maybe this man won’t want my poems. Maybe he’ll die before they reach him. Maybe he’s already dead. I should have asked Albert how old Viggo F. Møller is. I turn the name over and over and wonder what the ‘F’ stands for. Frants? Frederik? Finn? What if my letter never arrives because the postal service loses it? What if Albert has given me a totally wrong name and was putting one over on me? Some people think that kind of thing is so funny. Yet – deep inside I believe that this will work out. It’s two in the morning when I tiptoe into my room. I fold the sofa blanket over several times and put it under the typewriter to dull the sound of it, and then I choose three poems that I send with a short, formal letter, so that the man won’t think it’s very important to me. ‘Editor Viggo F. Møller,’ I write, ‘I am enclosing three poems in the hope that you will publish them in your journal, Wild Wheat. Respectfully and sincerely yours, T. D.’ I run out to the nearest mailbox with the letter and look to see when it will be picked up. I want to figure out when the editor will get it and when he’ll be able to answer it. Then I go home to bed, after first setting the alarm clock. I put all of my clothes on top of the comforter, but I still lie shaking from the cold for a long time before I fall asleep.

  17

  Every evening I rush home from the office and ask Mrs Suhr if there’s a letter for me. There isn’t, and Mrs Suhr is very curious. She asks if someone in my family is sick. She asks if I’m waiting for money in the mail, and reminds me of the five kroner that I owe her for the ruined chair. Once in a while she also asks me if I’m hungry, but I never am, even though I seldom eat dinner. Sometimes I eat at Berlingske Tidende’s canteen with Nina. It’s cheap, but it’s only for employees. My landlady also says that I’m getting thinner and thinner and if I were her daughter she’d fatten me up all right. When I notice the smell from the dinner that she’s cooking, I get hungry after all, but then, of course, it’s too late. Usually I drink a cup of coffee at Østerport station before going home, and I eat a piece of pastry with it. But that’s a luxury that I really can’t afford because I’m on a very strict budget. So are all of the girls in the office, even though most of them live at home. Toward the end of the month, they all borrow from each other, and they’d borrow from me too if I had anything to lend them. They’re not hurt if you refuse. Their poverty isn’t oppressive or sad because they all have something to look forward to; they all dream of a better life. I do too. Poverty is temporary and bearable. It’s not any real problem. Nina has her mother to borrow from and she has The Shrub. Nina’s mother is a fat and friendly woman who doesn’t take anything too much to heart. She makes a living cleaning for people and she lives with a man who is the father of Nina’s twelve- or thirteen-year-old half brother. You can tell immediately that Nina didn’t grow up in that home but is only visiting. She’s also only visiting in Copenhagen, and it’s incomprehensible to me that she really wants to live in the country. While I’m waiting for the letter, I don’t go out in the evening, but sit freezing in my room, listening for sounds from the hallway. I know that express letters can be delivered outside of the normal delivery times. There’s no reason whatsoever why I should receive an express letter, but I listen for the doorbell just the same. One evening there’s a political meeting at Mrs Suhr’s, and a bunch of boot-clad men swarm into the living room where there is soon a terrible uproar. In the living room they click their heels together and shout ‘Heil!’ at the picture of Hitler. There are also a number of women present. Their voices are shrill like Mrs Suhr’s, and as usual I hope that none of them will catch sight of me. They sing the Horst Wessel song and stamp on the floor so that the wall shakes from it. Mrs Suhr comes into my room, her cheeks red and her hair sticking out in all directions. She’s still wearing her kimono and looks as if she’s come running out of a burning house. ‘Oh,’ she gasps, ‘won’t you drink a toast to the Führer with us? Come in and say hello to all of these splendid fellows. Join us in fighting for our great cause.’ ‘No,’ I say terrified, ‘I have something I have to finish. Overtime work from the office.’ I set myself to tapping at the typewriter so that they’ll think I’m working, while I think with sorrow and uneasiness about the darkness that is about to descend over the whole world. But I don’t forget to keep an ear tuned toward the hallway. Express letter, telegram – you never know … Several days later Mrs Suhr is standing in the hallway with a letter in her hand when I let myself in. ‘Well,’ she says with sensation-hungry eyes, ‘here’s that letter you’ve been waiting for.’ I grab it out of her hand and want to go into my room but she blocks the way. ‘Open it now,’ she says breathlessly, ‘I’m just as excited as you are.’ ‘No,’ I say with a pounding heart, ‘it’s strictly private, confidential. It’s a secret message, I must tell you.’ ‘Oh God!’ She puts her hand to her heart and whispers, ‘Something political?’ ‘Yes,’ I say desperately, ‘something political. Let me get by.’ She looks at me as if I were a modern-day Mata Hari and finally backs away, deeply impressed. At last I’m alone with my letter. It’s much too thick, and I grow weak in the knees with fear that the editor is sending it all back. I sit down by the window and look down at the little courtyard. The dusk wraps itself around the trash cans and the lights are be
ing turned on in the building opposite. I open the envelope with an effort, take the letter out, and read, ‘Dear Tove Ditlevsen: Two of your poems are, to put it mildly, not good, but the third, “To My Dead Child”, I can use. Sincerely, Viggo F. Møller.’ I immediately tear up the two poems that, to put it mildly, are not good, and then read the letter once again. He wants to publish my poem in his journal. He is the person that I’ve waited for all my life. I have a copy of Wild Wheat that I bought with money I borrowed from Nina. In it there’s a poem by a woman – Hulda Lütken – and I’ve read it many times because I can’t forget that my father once said that a girl can’t be a poet. Even though I didn’t believe him, his words made a deep impression on me. I have to share my joy with someone. I don’t feel like talking about it at home, and Nina wouldn’t understand what it means to me. The only one who might is Edvin. He was the first to say that my poems were good, after he made fun of them. But that doesn’t matter; we were only children then. I take the streetcar out to Sydhavnen. Grete opens the door and smiles, surprised at seeing me. ‘Come in,’ she says hospitably, and then runs in and sits down on Edvin’s lap, which apparently is her main occupation as a newlywed. I think he looks completely defenseless in the deep armchair. ‘Hi,’ he says happily, ‘how are you?’ He has to move Grete’s head in order to look at me. ‘How are Mummy and Daddy?’ asks Grete between two kisses. My mother can’t stand this affectionate form of address, but Grete is completely insensitive to the coldness my mother exudes. I don’t care much for Grete either, because I had always imagined that Edvin would have a beautiful, proud, and intelligent wife and not a little, smiling housewife of the Rubenesque type. But that doesn’t really matter because my feelings aren’t nearly as strong or as passionate as my mother’s. I tell Edvin what has happened and show him the letter. He asks Grete to make coffee while he reads it. ‘Wow,’ he says impressed, ‘you should get paid for this. He doesn’t write a damn word about that. Be careful he doesn’t cheat you.’ I haven’t thought about that at all, not for a moment. ‘He earns money selling the journal, you know,’ explains Edvin, ‘so he shouldn’t have unpaid contributors.’ ‘No,’ I say. Not even Edvin understands what a miracle has occurred – no one understands it. ‘Now listen here,’ he says. ‘You call him up and ask him what you’re going to get for it.’ ‘Yes,’ I say because I would like to call him up. I would like to hear his voice, and this is an excellent excuse. Grete sets the table and chatters on about nothing, and Edvin tells her about the letter. ‘Oh,’ she says happily, ‘then I’m related to a poet. I’ll write that to my parents. Would you like a couple of slices of bread?’ ‘Yes, thank you,’ I say and ask how Edvin’s cough is. The doctor said that he’ll cough as long as he is spraying cellulose lacquer. He’ll cough until he finds some other occupation. The doctor also says that it sounds worse than it is. He won’t die from it, not even get really sick. His lungs are just black and irritated. While we drink coffee, I look at my brother. He doesn’t seem happy, and maybe marriage isn’t what he had expected. Maybe he had imagined a wife that he could talk to about something other than love and the evening meal. Maybe he had imagined that they could do something else in the evening other than sit on each other’s lap and declare how much they love each other. I think, at any rate, that it must be just terribly boring. ‘Don’t you need a new dress soon?’ says Grete. ‘I’ve never seen you in anything except that cossack dress. You should get a permanent,’ she says, ‘like mine.’ Grete’s hair sits on top of her head in lots of little curls, and she wears big hoop earrings that clink when she shakes her head. ‘Isn’t it strange to have such a handsome brother?’ she says. ‘I think it must be very strange for you.’ Edvin gets tired of her conversation and quickly sits down in the armchair again. After the cups are carried out, Grete settles herself on his lap once more and twists his black curls in her fingers. I think my brother has married her in order to escape sitting in his rented room with the stern landlady, because what other way out did he have? I don’t intend to live at Mrs Suhr’s for the rest of my life either. Being young is itself temporary, fragile, and ephemeral. You have to get through it – it has no other meaning. Edvin asks me whether I’ve told them the news at home, and I say that I want to wait until the poem appears in the journal. Then I’ll show it to them, not before. Edvin reads the poem and is deeply impressed. ‘But you’re still full of lies,’ he says with wonder in his voice. ‘You’ve never had any dead child.’ He says that Thorvald has gotten engaged to a very ugly girl, and it annoys me a little. I could have had him but I didn’t want him. Still, I liked it that he wasn’t attached to anyone else. Before I leave, I borrow ten øre from my brother to make a call. I have to let myself out because Grete is in the middle of a long whispering in Edvin’s ear. In the telephone booth on Enghavevej, I look up Viggo F. Møller’s number and ask for it with my heart in my throat from excitement. ‘Hello,’ I say, ‘you are speaking with Tove Ditlevsen.’ He repeats my name inquiringly and then he remembers it. ‘Your poem will come out in a month,’ he says. ‘It’s excellent.’ ‘Will I get any money for it?’ I ask, very embarrassed. But he doesn’t get angry. He just explains to me that no one gets an honorarium because the journal runs on a deficit, which he pays for out of his own pocket. I hurry to assure him that it doesn’t matter, it was just something my brother said. Then he asks me how old I am. ‘Eighteen,’ I say. ‘Good God – not more?’ he says with a little laugh. Then he asks me whether I would like to meet him and I say that I would. He’ll meet me the day after tomorrow, six o’clock, in the Glyptotek café, so we can eat dinner together. I thank him, overwhelmed, and then he says goodbye. I’m going to meet him. I’m going to talk to him. He undoubtedly wants to do something for me. Mr Krogh said that people always wanted to use each other for something, and that there was nothing wrong with that. It’s quite clear what I want to use the editor for, but what does he want to use me for? Next evening I go home anyway and tell everything. My mother is home alone. She’s very happy to see me, and I have a guilty conscience because I come over so seldom. My mother has grown very lonely since Aunt Rosalia’s death. The building is just ‘fine’ enough that you don’t simply go running over to visit other people, and my mother doesn’t have a single girlfriend she can talk to and laugh with. She only has us, and we deserted her as soon as she and the law would permit it. We drink coffee together and I can see that her imagination is hard at work. ‘You know what,’ she says, ‘that editor – he probably wants to marry you.’ I laugh and say that she never thinks of anything except getting me married. I laugh, but when I get home and into bed, I think about whether he’s married or not. If he’s single, I have nothing against marrying him. Entirely sight unseen.

  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.