by Peter Høeg
If it is correct that the middle-class breeding and decent upbringing and good manners that Amalie abides by during these years is a strain, then perhaps I can describe what happens next as a sudden lapse. One evening, just after sending a guest home, Amalie went down to fetch Carsten. There is nothing at all unusual in this; she usually comes to fetch him around this time and normally finds him hunched over a book, or sitting, staring decorously into space, in some corner, with his white face a pale, gleaming patch in the darkness. But not this day; this day she finds him naked, having taken his clothes off and wrapped his body—which is slender and white with a greenish cast, through lack of sunshine—in black velvet. He has taken the velvet fabric from one of the long and ingeniously draped curtains that had, just a moment before, been covering the windows: pulled it down and cut it with the harmless scissors. To Amalie’s thunderstruck face he says simply, “Darling Mother, I wanted so much to be just a little bit naughty,” and thus avoids getting into trouble; thus he charms his mother and makes her forgive him on the spot. And one thing leads to another. Amalie wraps a bit of the sheared velvet around her head like a turban; later she loosens her dress; later still she calls for Gladys and gets her to help her undo the corset she has started wearing because she has put on weight and because her clients feel more comfortable in the company of corseted women. At this point she and Carsten dress up Gladys in some of the black velvet, and when there is not enough, the other curtain is cut down, allowing the waning evening sunlight to fill the room with a reddish, wistful light that reveals its Moorish wall decorations and patterned floor à la Alhambra. And perhaps that is why the game these three people are playing turns into a harem scene, with Carsten ordering the two women about and displaying an imperiousness that makes me think this middle-class propriety is full of surprises. Their game ends with Carsten laying his head in Amalie’s lap while Gladys sings one of her tribe’s wailing, feet-pounding songs. Obviously, all of this takes place indoors, and what makes this scene so astonishing is that it is precisely the kind of thing that Amalie is usually at such great pains to prevent. Picture, if you will, the sight of Amalie, the great—at this point almost naked—whore, and Carsten, the pale, dictatorial little boy, and Gladys, the sturdy African with the dreamy eyes and rhythmic movements, dancing and singing in the rays of the setting sun in these outlandish surroundings.
The next day everything is of course forgotten and has never happened and presents no problem; but from then on, Amalie and Carsten play abandoned games of this nature with increasing regularity. Often they play them in the bedroom, where Amalie gets Carsten to pretend to be a lawyer presenting cases in imaginary courtrooms against fictitious opponents who have insulted her sacred honor. Or she gets him to sing, or to dance childish little minuets that he has learned during some of the endless one-to-one classes with his private tutors. As time goes on, the character of these games alters. Sometimes they act out abduction scenes in which he kidnaps her and they ride on the tasseled bolsters across Amalie’s bed, which is as vast as a desert. Or she tells him about the life he and she will share once he has distinguished himself and completed his education and been appointed to a permanent post. It is during this period that she persuades him to take her photograph with a camera she has been given by one of her clients, and more and more often she tells him, “There have been three men in my life: my father, Carl Laurids, and you; but the other two let me down.” After a while she seems to forget both Christoffer Ludwig and Carl Laurids, and it is then that she switches to saying, “There has only ever been one man in my life, and that is you.”
They start to go on outings. A Friend of the Family has loaned Amalie a chauffeur-driven car, and in this she and Carsten take drives through the woods of North Zealand, sitting in the back-seat sniggering like children, unaware that they are heading into the land of lost souls that lies just beyond the bounds of good breeding and reticence.
It was on one of these outings that they paid a visit to Christoffer Ludwig. It was spring, and the cool air and the sunlight and Amalie’s feelings for Carsten, which by this time had long since eliminated her good judgment, filled her, one Saturday morning, with a sentimental urge to see her father—and Carsten assented. Amalie had begun to ask his advice, and that morning, when she asked him if he would like to visit her father, she added flirtatiously, “I’m asking you because you are the man of the house.”
Visiting Christoffer Ludwig was like stepping into another age. Dannebrogs Street languished, as always, in the same indeterminate light, and Amalie had the feeling even while still outside the house that she ought to have stayed away. The door of the apartment was not locked, but the foyer was almost completely blocked by books. There were books everywhere in the apartment, thousands of volumes stacked from floor to ceiling, and the reams and reams of paper had drained the air of moisture, leaving a crackling dryness that seared the throat. Carsten and Amalie could see, as they passed from room to room along the passages between the books, that the apartment looked as though it had always been deserted. Finally Amalie took a deep breath and led Carsten past the teetering piles and into what had at one time been her father’s study. Christoffer Ludwig was still sitting at the round table, at the same spot and in the same position as when Amalie had sought him out so many years before, to tell him she had seen her great-grandfather’s ghost. He was very old and his eyes glistened with senility. He was barely capable of grasping that there were living creatures in the room. It was evident that he had been forsaken, surrounded by books which said that love is eternal, and by crumbling bits and pieces from his life, such as the yellowing cut-out paper creatures and half-printed forms and little toys. A great hush hung over the room, and in this hush Amalie compared her own picture of old age with the truth about her father. Like most other Danes, then and now, she had her own favorite fantasy about growing old. In this she pictured a silvery-gray, cultured couple—husband and wife—surrounded by timeless green plants, and rooms filled with forgiveness, and children and grandchildren—a dream that was, of course, a lie. She had been able to make-believe that Christoffer Ludwig was living in a state of well-deserved dignity, but only because she had not seen him for ten years. Now she saw that the little porcelain-headed dolls and rocking horses around him were toys that had belonged to her and her sisters. Then she dispensed with reality. With an invisible gesture she wiped her mental blackboard clean of everything to do with Christoffer Ludwig and the loneliness of that apartment and the thought that a fully accomplished life can end like this; then she turned on her heel and left. Carsten stayed where he was for a moment longer, taking a good look at the books and the old man and the feeble hands fumbling with the bits and pieces lying on the table in front of him. Then he turned and walked away; walked out, and into disaster.
It struck on a Sunday, in the afternoon and in the most straightforward and imperceptible fashion. Behind them Carsten and Amalie have all the inventive ploys of the weekend, with dressing-up games and hours spent in the big bed; and the games they are playing now, on a Sunday afternoon in Charlottenlund, are no different from those they have played so often before. Amalie is wearing a black health corset, and at one point Carsten takes this corset off. She resists—of course she resists—but it is just for show, and then Carsten flexes his muscles. It is as though he is stronger than he has ever been and Amalie has to struggle to prevent him having his way. Now they are standing swaying together on the floor, and to us this wrestling match is reminiscent of the erotic clash between Amalie and Carl Laurids. Then suddenly Carsten has the upper hand. He has clearly become stronger, much stronger, and now he pulls the corset off Amalie—and pulling a corset off a woman, even when she is merely making a show of resistance, takes almost all a grown man’s strength, at least as far as I have been able to ascertain. Amalie is now naked; in a flash, Carsten, too, is naked and they are swept away by forces greater than themselves. No bells start to peal, no warning lights flash, because they have been through al
l this before; for years and years they have been exploring the boundaries of the mother-son relationship and have become so familiar with them that no brakes are applied now, as they overstep them.
They wake up side by side, both of them feeling clearheaded and exhilarated. While still in bed, Amalie suggests that they should go away together this very day. Initially this suggestion seems relaxed and natural; it seems as though Amalie had been given this idea by nothing other than the birdsong and the fine weather. But deeper down it has a nasty ring of desperation about it—to me, at any rate. Amalie and Carsten are standing with one foot in reality and the other in an intimacy between mother and son of a sort which is out of the question but which, nevertheless, they now attempt to hold on to—as Amalie cancels her appointments for the week and Carsten calls to order a car without a chauffeur, because he wants to drive himself. Then Amalie packs. When Gladys tries to stop them, they pay her no heed; then they carry their cases out to the car. Everything is now ready for what they have both almost certainly thought of as a honeymoon, although they did not say this to each other. They force Gladys to take a photograph of them standing in front of the car, a two-seater Daimler convertible. The photograph shows just how bad things were: Carsten is dressed in clothes that are much too big and a bit old-fashioned—obviously taken from Carl Laurids’s wardrobe. They are both smiling, giddy with happiness. In Carsten’s smile it is possible to discern a hint of triumph—at his new conquest and at being out in the sunshine after a boyhood spent indoors. Amalie is obviously proud and happy; I do not know why, but I am afraid that she is smiling with satisfaction at once more finding herself in a respectable relationship with a man. Then they get into the car. Carsten sits on four cushions, so that he can see out of the windscreen. He cannot reach the pedals, but Amalie works them; she has taken her shoes off and is trying to remember how it looked when Carl Laurids drove. They drive down the graveled driveway, past the dilapidated pavilions in which Carl Laurids’s dwarfs once lived, and through the overgrown grounds—the little boy and the beautiful woman, Carsten and Amalie, that is, looking as though they are en route, with style and dignity, from one success to the next. Just as they reach the gateway, Carsten looks back and waves triumphantly with his straw hat—which has, as it happens, belonged to Carl Laurids—and drives head on into the right-hand gatepost, one of the two substantial pillars that flank the driveway. This does not budge an inch and in fact turns out to be even more solid than all the other pillars in this house. The car concertinas. Both Amalie and Carsten are hurled forward and bang their heads off the windscreen. When Amalie comes to, a moment later, she checks to make sure that they are not badly hurt. She takes Carsten in her arms; his eyes are closed and blood is trickling in a fine, sinuous thread down his face, which is pale and very young. And this is precisely the point when Amalie sees him as being very young. Here, in this crumpled car, she rediscovers the outlook on life held by her acquaintances; like a tidal wave, her common sense, her good judgment, and her strength return to her and for a moment she sways unsteadily on the seat. Then she straightens up and draws Carsten to her. He is still unconscious and oblivious to everything, but Amalie has once more transformed him into a child. At that moment Gladys reaches the car and helps mother and son out.
Part Three
MARIA AND CARSTEN AND THEIR CHILDREN
The house by the Lakes
(and other matters)
A longing for order
1939–1989
ON AUGUST 10, 1939, Amalie said goodbye to Carsten and sent him off to Sorø. In parting, she shook his hand—shook his hand, no more than that, not so much as a kiss on the cheek. Since their car accident in the grounds, shaking his hand was as far as Amalie could go, although to Carsten she explained this away by saying, “It isn’t quite proper for me to kiss you now that you’re all grown up.”
Carsten was dressed in the white summer uniform of Sorø Academy: white trousers with no pockets, dark blue jacket and vest, white shirt, and white-crowned cap with gleaming peak and shiny leather strap; and from a distance he looked like a naval officer. Several of their neighbors from the adjoining villas witnessed their leavetaking, having grown accustomed that summer to keeping a sharp eye on the goings-on in the white villa. Now they were trying to guess whether this smartly turned-out naval officer, this lieutenant or captain, was Amalie’s lover or just a friend. It never occurred to any of them that this was Amalie’s son, that this was just Carsten—the boy who had, not so long ago, been playing with their own children—standing here in front of the big six-cylinder Hudson that Amalie had borrowed for the occasion, looking handsome and broad-shouldered, with one forelock fluttering free of his cap.
At this moment of parting, Carsten has the look of a young man leaving his mother and father to start a life of his own and that was how Amalie wanted to see him, even while life without him was out of the question. Which was why she had done everything she could to prepare for his departure, to assure him and herself that even though she stayed behind, still, in a way, she would be with him. Some weeks earlier she had gone, by herself, to Sorø—well, of course she had gone down there, driving off in the same showy car that Carsten would ride in, which she had borrowed from a client, without having the faintest idea of where Sorø lay. At school she had been too faint with hunger to pay attention during geography lessons, and in later years Carl Laurids and her son had been her only clear focal points; she really had had more to worry about than where Sorø lay. Nor, strictly speaking, had she any idea what kind of place the academy was; the director of education’s descriptions had gone over her head, and the only thing she was sure of was that it was very, very respectable.
She had been happy with what she saw. Driving up the avenue, she noted how, with its park and library and church and main academy building and headmaster’s residence and pavilions, the huge school looked like a cross between a university, a country house, and a reform school. But the external structure was not her main concern. Her childhood in Rudkøbing and her marriage to Carl Laurids had taught her to be somewhat skeptical of buildings and interiors and had shown her how much more power she had over people than over their surroundings. Which is why she paid the headmaster of the academy a visit.
She found him in his office. He was a scholar, a strict Latinist who had assumed the academy’s classical tradition, shouldered responsibility for the future of young people, and taken up all the challenges of his day. These burdens had bowed his shoulders and endowed him with the characteristic gait that had, among the students, earned him the nickname of the “Shuffler,” and as soon as Amalie saw him she knew she had won before she had even started. He began by assuring her that he was her humble servant and that, yes, he had received the letter from the director of schools in Copenhagen, whom he knew very well and for whom he had great respect; he then went on to express his regret that every place at the school was filled; furthermore, the academy entrance examination—which was compulsory—had long since been held; finally he said quite bluntly that there could be no thought of accepting her son at the academy. And not for one second during this long-winded, Germanically convoluted speech did he raise the visor of academic arrogance that covered his face—a mask that reminds me that Sorø Academy has, at different times, been both a monastery and a lunatic asylum. As he was winding up his speech, Amalie was drawing closer and closer to his desk, wanting to get around all these objections, to get so close to him that his nearsighted eyes would, for the first time, be able to see her, and to envelop him in the thick folds of her radiance.
“Headmaster,” she said, “I’ve been so much looking forward to meeting you.”
By the time she left the school, everything was, of course, in order. The great philologist accompanied her all the way to her car, his gait grown youthful and spry. As Amalie drew her fur-trimmed driving cape around her shoulders, he spread his arms and said, “Madam, ‘mea virtute me involvo’—you wrap yourself in your virtue.” “You’re so
sweet, Raaschou,” said Amalie and blew him a kiss. Then she drove down to Sorø town, to see Curre the watchmaker, whom the headmaster had recommended as having an excellent family with whom she need have no worries about lodging Carsten.
She spent an hour at the watchmaker’s house, making an indelible impression. She introduced herself and presented the letter of recommendation the headmaster had given her; then she described how sensitive Carsten was and how his stomach tolerated only the best-quality produce and his skin only the cleanest of sheets and his lungs only the freshest of air and his good looks only whole nights of unbroken sleep and his health only the finest treatment imaginable—until she had given the watchmaker’s family the impression that this prospective lodger was some superior being who might at any moment die on their hands. While Amalie was speaking, her eyes were scanning the house, noting the neatness of it, with the pictures of the King and the Crown Prince on the wall; noting the provincial seemliness that she knew from Rudkøbing, and the humility with which the watchmaker and his wife showed that they would consider it an honor to have a student of Sorø Academy in their home. Later, in Copenhagen, Amalie explained to her women friends and to the Friends of the Family that it was this air of scrubbed subservience that had made her decide in favor of the Curre family, but in actuality other factors had been at work here. What she had ascertained, during that hour in which she had spoken nonstop, was, first and foremost, that the family’s only daughter was just seven years old and that Mrs. Curre was a workhorse—small and thin, with large red hands and all the steadiness of the works in her husband’s clocks, but totally lacking in that feminine menace from which Amalie would do anything to protect Carsten. Because there were to be no women in his life except her—at any rate, not right now; at any rate, not for the next three or four or five or six or seven years; there’s time enough for that sort of thing, she thought. Then suddenly, after having seen every inch of the house and every member of the family and talking nonstop and terrifying everyone, she softened. With a startling change of mood, she turned the brilliance of her smile—which was by this time becoming famous in certain circles in Copenhagen—on the watchmaker’s family, whom she had just flattened completely. Then she raised Carsten’s rent from 75 kroner to 150 kroner per month—of the stockbroker’s money—and shamelessly complimented the watchmaker on his wit, the watchmaker’s wife on her charm, and their daughter (who had not uttered a single word) on her intelligence. Thereafter she slapped the watchmaker on the back and said, “Damn, I’m glad the little darling’s going to be living with you,” before sweeping out of the door and into the car. The Hudson roared to life, and she drove off, back to Copenhagen. So lost was she in her own thoughts on this journey that she arrived home still none the wiser as to where in the world Sorø might be. All she knew was that the place was in order—in every respect in order.
