The specialist was old, surly and hard of hearing. When the female assistant didn’t hand him the instruments he asked for immediately, he threw down whatever he was holding on the floor and yelled: Goddammit to hell, how am I supposed to work with such incompetent help? So, he said, looking in my ear, Falbe Hansen wouldn’t operate? Well, we’ll see about that. We’ll take some X-rays. It could be it’s reached the brain membrane. That’s what I thought, Carl said. I think she’s had a fever once in a while, too. Fever? I said, surprised. How high has it been? asked the doctor. We haven’t taken it, said Carl calmly. I didn’t want to worry my wife. But she often seems feverish and distracted. A few days later we were there again, and Carl and the doctor zealously studied the new X-rays. There’s a shadow there, said the doctor, motionless, without saying anything more. Then he tossed his bald head and said, Fine, we’ll operate. I can admit your wife tomorrow to a private room, and we can operate the same morning. When we got home I had a shot and thought, This is how I always want to live. I never want to return to reality again.
When I awoke from my anesthesia, my whole head was wrapped in gauze and then I finally learned what an earache was. I moaned in pain, rolling back and forth. The doctor came in and sat next to the bed. Try to smile, he said, and I formed my mouth into something resembling a smile. Why? I said, resuming my groaning and rolling. We touched the facial nerve, he explained, and that sometimes causes a paralysis, which we have luckily avoided. This hurts so much, I moaned. Can’t you give me something for the pain? Of course, he said. You can have aspirin. That’s the strongest medicine we give in this ward. We don’t turn people into addicts. Aspirin and something to help you sleep at night. Would you call my husband? I said, horrified. I need to talk to him. He’ll be here soon, said the doctor. In a little while. For now you need your rest. When Carl arrived he had his brown briefcase and inside it the blessed syringe. And when he gave me a shot in the open vein, I said, You have to come by all the time. I’ve never felt pain like this in my whole life, and here they only give you aspirin. They might as well give you sugar pills, he mumbled. You have to speak louder, I said. I can’t hear you. You’re deaf in that ear, he said. You will be for the rest of your life, but at least it won’t hurt anymore. When the shot took effect, my pain receded into the background, but it was still there. What am I going to do, I asked sluggishly, when it comes back and you’re not here? Try to stick it out, he said. They’ll get suspicious if I come too often. He came back in the evening and gave me a shot and chloral. That was after several hours of hell, and I realized that I had never before known what real physical pain was like. I felt like I had been caught in a terrible trap, and where and when it would snap shut on me I couldn’t predict. During the night I woke up. It felt as if flames were burning through my head. Help! I screamed out into the room, which was illuminated by the blue glow of the nightlight over the door. A nurse came running in. I’ll give you a couple of aspirin, she said. I’m sorry we can’t give you anything stronger. The doctor is so strict, she said apologetically. Both his ears were operated on, and he remembers how he endured the pain back then. After she left, I was gripped by wild panic. I couldn’t stay there a minute longer. I got up and dressed, making as little noise as possible. Oh, oh, I moaned quietly to myself, I’m dying, Mother, I’m dying, I can’t stand it. When I had put my coat on, I looked out carefully. Across from my room there was another door, which I hoped led to an exit. I ran across to it and soon found myself down on the deserted night street with my bandaged head. I waved for a taxi, and the driver asked me sympathetically if I had been in a car accident. When I got home, I ran up the garden walk and rang the bell like a madwoman. I didn’t have my keys. Jabbe came and opened the door. What happened? she asked in alarm, staring at me wide-eyed. Nothing, I said. I just didn’t want to be there anymore. I rushed into Carl’s room and woke him up. Demerol, I moaned, quick. This pain is making me crazy.
It lasted for fourteen days. Carl stayed home from work to give me shots whenever I asked for them. I lay motionless and limp in my bed and felt like I was being rocked to sleep in warm, green water. Nothing else in the world mattered to me but staying in this blissful state. Carl told me that lots of people are deaf in one ear, and that it doesn’t really matter. I didn’t care anyway, because it was worth it. No price was too high to be able to keep away intolerable real life. Jabbe came up and fed me. I almost couldn’t get the food down and I pleaded with her to leave me in peace. No way, she said adamantly, not as long as I have any say in it. You’re not going to starve to death. Things are bad enough as it is.
One night I woke up and realized that the pain was just about gone. But I was cold and shivering and I was so dehydrated that I had to use my fingers to pry apart my lips. Carl got up, drunk with sleep, and gave me a shot. I don’t know what we’re going to do, he said, when that vein clogs up too. Maybe we can find one in your foot.
While I was lying there alone in my bed, I realized that it had been a long time since I had seen my children. I walked down the stairs and into their room. I was so weak I had to lean against the wall to keep from falling. I turned on the light and looked at them. Helle was lying with her thumb in her mouth and her curls like a halo around her head. Michael was sleeping with his kitten in his arms; he couldn’t sleep without it. And Trine was lying with her eyes open, watching me soberly with a child’s inscrutable face. I fumbled my way to her bed and stroked her hair. She still had long blonde eyelashes, which she slowly lowered beneath my caresses. Toys were spread out all over the floor, and there was a playpen in the middle of the room. I almost didn’t recognize these children anymore; I wasn’t a part of their daily routine. Just like when an old woman thinks back on her youth, I thought how just a few years prior I was a happy and healthy young woman full of vitality and with lots of friends. But the thought was fleeting; I turned off the light and shut the door quietly behind me. It took me a long time to make it back upstairs to my bed. I left the light on, and I lay there, looking at my bony white hands, and I let my fingers move as if they were typing. Then I had a clear thought for the first time in a long while. If things get really bad, I thought, I’ll call Geert Jørgensen and tell him everything. I wouldn’t do it just for the sake of my children, but also for the sake of the books that I had yet to write.
5
Then time ceases to be relevant. An hour could be a year, and a year could be an hour. It all depends on how much is in the syringe. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, and I tell Carl, who is always nearby: There wasn’t enough in it. He rubs his chin with a pained look in his eyes. We have to scale back, he says, otherwise you’ll end up getting sick. I get sick if there’s not enough in it, I say. Why do you let me suffer like this? Fine, fine, he mumbles, with a helpless shrug of his shoulders, I’ll give you a little more.
I lie in bed continuously, and I need Jabbe’s help to make it to the bathroom. When she sits down to feed me, her big face is all damp, as if someone spilled something on it. I brush her cheek with my finger and then stick it in my mouth. It tastes salty. Imagine that, I think enviously, to be able to feel sympathy for someone. I pay no attention to the seasons passing. The curtains are always closed, because the light hurts my eyes, so there’s no difference between day and night. I sleep; I wake up; I’m sick or I’m well. I see my typewriter in the distance, as if I were looking backwards through binoculars. From the ground floor, where life is actually being lived, the children’s voices reach me as through multiple layers of woolen blankets. Faces appear at my side and then vanish again. The telephone rings and Carl takes it. No, I’m sorry, he says, my wife isn’t feeling well right now. He eats upstairs in my room, and I watch in wonder, and with a kind of distant envy, at his healthy appetite. Try to get a bite down, he says earnestly. It tastes really good. Jabbe made it just for you. He sticks a small piece of meat in my mouth with his fork, and I vomit it up again. I watch him wipe the spot off the sheet with a wet cloth. His face is close to mine. His skin is
smooth and fine, and his eyelids are shiny and damp like a child’s. You’re so healthy, I say. You will be too, he says, if you could just bear to be a little sick for a while, if you would just let me cut back a little bit. Am I a real addict now? I ask. Yes, he says, with his shy, tentative smile, now you are a real addict. He tiptoes across the floor, pulls the curtain aside and looks at the weather. Won’t it be nice, he says, when you can come down into the yard again? The fruit trees are in full bloom. How about having a look? He supports me while I stagger over to the window. Don’t you cut the grass anymore? I ask, just to make conversation. Our grass is higher than our neighbor’s. It’s neglected and full of dandelions, whose tufts are blowing around in the wind. Well, he says, I have more important things to think about. One day he sits down next to me on the bed and asks if I’m feeling good. I am, because there was plenty in the last shot. He says, I have to talk to you about something. At the institute there’s a specialist who took 40,000 kroner that he received for scientific studies and spent it on narcotics. I discovered it by chance. I say, I didn’t know you even went there anymore. Well I do, he says, when you’re sleeping, and he picks up some invisible fuzz from the floor – a new habit of his. So, I say, uninterested, so what do you have to do with that? I was thinking, he says, bending over again and picking up something, of going to a lawyer. At first I was going to go to the police, but don’t you think it would be better to get advice from a lawyer first? I guess, I say, indifferently, that’s probably better. But don’t stay out too long. I need you here when I call you.
My mother comes by and sits by my bed. She takes my hand and pats it. Your father and I, she says, drying her eyes with the back of her hand, are of the opinion that Carl is making you sick. We can’t say how exactly, but I don’t think he’s right in the head. He sounds so strange on the telephone, and he’s never here when we come to visit. Jabbe says that he’s become quite strange too. Recently he asked her to wash the soles of his shoes so they wouldn’t carry germs. She says he frightens her. He’s not making me sick, I say calmly. On the contrary, he’s trying to make me well. Can you please leave? Talking makes me so tired. But once in a while I myself wonder if Carl’s become a bit strange with his fuzz-picking, his tiptoeing and his locking himself in his room when I’m not calling for him. Once in a while I wonder, without any real fear, if I’m dying, and if I should pull myself together and call Geert Jørgensen. But if I do that, I won’t get any more shots, that’s for sure. If I do that, he’ll admit me to the hospital, where they’ll only give me aspirin. That’s why I keep postponing, and I’m in a state where clear thoughts don’t last for very long. Lise visits me and brings her face in close, and her cheek touches mine. I pull my face back with a start, because touching hurts. I can’t bear the feel of other people’s skin against mine, and it’s been a long time since Carl went to bed with me. What’s wrong with you, Tove? she asks soberly. You’re hiding something, something terrible. Whenever anyone asks Carl, he answers with some nonsense. It’s a blood illness, I say, because that’s what Carl told me to say, but the worst is over. Now it’s going to get better. Would you mind leaving? I’m so tired. Don’t you ever write anymore? she says. Don’t you remember, how you loved it when you were working on a book? Of course I do, I say, glancing at my dusty typewriter. I remember. It’ll come back. Leave now.
Later I think about what she said. Will I ever write again? I remember that time long ago when sentences and lines of verse were always flying around my brain when the Demerol started working; but that doesn’t happen anymore. That old blissfulness never comes back, and I know that Carl puts water in the syringe sometimes. One day or night while he’s kneeling by my feet and sticking the syringe in a vein down there, I can see that his eyes are filled with tears. Why are you crying? I ask, surprised. I don’t know, he says. But I want you to know that if I’ve done anything wrong I will be punished for it. That’s the only confession he ever made. I think you’re putting water in it, I say, because I don’t care about anything else. Eventually you’re going to feel pretty sick, he says, but afterwards you’ll feel better, and in the end you’ll be healthy again. But you have to stop pestering me, because I have never been able to bear to see you suffer. Everything I’m doing, I’m doing for you, for you to get better, so you can work again and be there for your children. His words fill me with terror. I will not live without Demerol, I shout at him. I can’t live without it. You started this and you have to keep it up. No, he says quietly. I’m slowly cutting back.
Hell on earth. I’m freezing, I’m shaking, I’m sweating, I’m crying and yelling his name into the empty room. Jabbe comes in and sits by me. She is crying in despair. He’s locked himself in his room, she says, and I’m afraid of him. I put his food outside his door and he takes it inside after I’ve gone. Can’t you call another doctor? You’re so sick, and I can’t do anything. When your friends come by, he tells me not to let them in. He won’t even see his own mother. He might be going crazy, I say. I know that happened once before. Then I throw up, and Jabbe gets a bowl and dries my face with a washcloth. I ask her to find Geert Jørgensen’s number in the telephone book and to write it down on a piece of paper. She does, and I put the note under my pillow. Now I’m unable to sleep, even with chloral. When I close my eyes I see horrible scenes on the insides of my eyelids. A little girl is walking down a dark street, and suddenly a man jumps out behind her. He has a black hood over his head, and he’s carrying a long knife. He rushes at her and sticks the knife in her back. She screams, as I do too, and I open my eyes again. Carl comes tiptoeing in. Did you have another bad dream? he says, bending down, picking up fuzz from the floor. We’re out of Demerol, he says. I must have forgotten to pay the last bill, but you can have an extra dose of chloral. He pours it into the measuring cup, and I plead with him to give me two. What the hell, he says, it won’t hurt you, and he does what I ask. I feel a little bit better, and he pats my hand, which is only half as big as his. It’s a question of nutrition, he says with a dopey grin. If you put on twenty pounds, things will be okay. He sits staring into space for a while. Then he starts to sing in a falsetto: We screw our women whenever we want to. That’s from Regensen, he says. When I lived there I was a vegetarian. Sometimes I imagine that you’re my sister, he mumbles, bending down to the floor again. Incest is more common than people think. Then he tries to go to bed with me, and for the first time I feel afraid of him. No, I say, pushing him away feebly. Leave me alone. I have to sleep. After he leaves, I’m immediately wide awake. He is crazy, I say to the empty air, and I’m dying. I try to focus on those two thoughts, which appear like two vertical strings inside my head, but they get pulled away like seaweed in stormy water. I don’t dare close my eyes because of my visions. I wonder if it’s night or day. I lift myself up on my elbow, and let myself slide out of bed. I realize that I don’t have the strength to stand up. So I crawl on all fours across the floor and pull myself up onto my desk chair. It takes so much effort that I have to lay my head down on the typewriter keys and rest. My breathing wheezes in the silence. I have to take action before the chloral stops working. In my hand I’m clutching the note with Geert Jørgensen’s telephone number. I turn on the desk lamp, dial the number, and wait for an answer. Hello, says a calm voice, this is Geert Jørgensen. I say my name. Oh, you! he says. This is quite a time to call and wake me up. Is something wrong? I’m sick, I say. He’s putting water in the syringe. What syringe? Demerol, I say. I’m incapable of explaining anymore. Is he giving you Demerol? he says sharply. How long has this been going on? I don’t know, I whisper. A few years, I guess, but now he doesn’t want to do it anymore. I’m dying. Help me. He asks if I can come and see him the next day and I say no. Then he asks if he can speak to Carl, and I yell Carl’s name as loud as I can, while I lay the phone down on the desk. He appears in the doorway in his striped pajamas. What is it? he asks sleepily. It’s Geert Jørgensen, I say. He wants to talk to you. Oh, is that it, he says quietly, rubbing his unshaven ch
in. Then my career is ruined. He says it without reproach, and in that moment I don’t know what he means. Hello, he says into the phone, and then he’s quiet for a long time, because the other man is talking. I can hear all the way back in the room how agitated and angry he is. Carl just says, Right, tomorrow two o’clock. I’ll be there. Yes, I’ll explain it all tomorrow. After he puts down the phone, he gives me a sick smile. Do you want a shot? he says gently. This time I’ll put enough in; this calls for celebration. He gets the syringe, and the old blissfulness and sweetness from too long ago return to my blood. Are you angry with me? I say, twisting my fingers in his hair. No, he says, standing up. Everyone has to take care of themselves. Then he looks around the room, studying every single piece of furniture as if he were trying to imprint on himself the room and its furnishings. Do you remember, he says slowly, how happy we were the day we moved in? Yes, I say sluggishly, and we can be that way again. That was silly to call him. No, he says, that was your way out. You’ll be admitted and everything will be over. What about the children? I say, remembering them. They have Jabbe, he says. She won’t leave them. And what about you? I ask. What is your way out? I’m done, he says calmly. But don’t you worry about that. We each have to salvage what we can.
The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency Page 29
