So I do that, one evening while we’re standing quietly by the canal, the water sloshing against the wharf with a soft, lazy sound. I ask Piet how a person gets divorced, and he says that he’ll take care of all the practical matters. All I have to do is tell my husband. Piet says he’ll pay for me to live in a boarding house, and that he’ll take better care of me than Viggo F. does. I say, I might be able to support myself; I’m writing a novel. I say this matter-of-factly, as if I have written twenty novels and this is just number twenty-one. Piet asks me if he can read it, and I say no one can read it until it’s finished. Then he asks if he could invite me over to his place for dinner one night. He lives on Store Kongensgade in a little apartment, where he set himself up when he got divorced. I say yes, and then I tell Viggo F. that I’m going out to visit my parents. It’s the first time I’ve lied to him, and I feel ashamed when he believes me. Viggo F. is sitting at his desk, laying out Wild Wheat. He’s cutting out drawings, stories and poems from the proofs, then gluing them into the pages of an old issue. He does this so delicately, and his whole body, with the big head bent beneath the green lamp, radiates something resembling happiness, because he loves that journal the way other people love their families. I kiss him on his soft, damp mouth and suddenly I get tears in my eyes. We have something together – not much, but something – and now I am starting to destroy it. I’m sad that my life is about to get complicated as never before. But I also think how strange it is that I never go against what anyone else wants; not really. I might be home a bit late, I say. My mother isn’t feeling well. So don’t wait up.
Well, says Piet jovially, wasn’t that good?
Yes, I say, happily. Since my affair with Aksel I’ve been wondering if maybe there was something wrong with me in that department, but there isn’t. Piet and I have had food and drink, and I’m a bit tipsy. We’re lying in a wide canopy bed that Piet got from his mother, who is an eye doctor. The room is furnished with funny lamps, modern furniture and a polar-bear skin on the floor. In a vase by the bed there’s a rose which is already starting to lose its petals. Piet gave it to me. He has given me a blue flannel dress too, which has to hang at his place for the time being. I can’t just take it home. I pick up the rose and sniff it. It doesn’t want to just be grafted anymore, I laugh. I can use that, exclaims Piet, jumping out of bed completely naked. He sits down at his desk, grabs a pen and paper and scribbles something down. When he’s done he shows it to me. It’s a grook for the Politiken newspaper, for whom he writes these four-line witty stanzas every day. It reads:
I placed a rose by my lover’s bed
It blushed, sweet aroma wafting
First one petal fell then two and more
Now it doesn’t believe in grafting.
I praise him for it, and he says that I should get half the honorarium. For Piet, being a writer is not something to hide or be ashamed of. To him it is as straightforward as breathing.
This is going to be a tough pill for Møller to swallow, he says with satisfaction. When you got married, all his friends bet on how long it would last – more than one year or less. No one thought it would last longer than one year. And then Robert Mikkelsen provided the pre-nuptial agreement, because they all thought you would take half his property.
I’m shocked. I say, You are so wicked. And conniving.
No, says Piet, it’s just I don’t like him. He’s a parasite of the arts without being an artist himself. He can’t even write.
Feeling ill at ease I say, That’s not his fault. And I don’t like it when you talk about him like that; it puts me in a bad mood. I ask what time it is, and my brief happiness slips away. A wet, silvery stillness fills the room, as if something fateful is about to happen. I don’t hear what Piet says. I’m thinking about Viggo F., bent beneath his desk lamp, laying out his journal. I’m thinking about the bet his friends made and about the impossibility of saying to him that we have to split up. Sometimes, Piet says tenderly, you get very distant, and I can’t reach you. You are so fascinating and I think I’m in love with you. Can I write to you? He asks, Does the mail arrive after he leaves? Yes, I say, you can write to me. The next day I get a love letter from Piet: Dear Kitten, You are the only girl I could ever imagine marrying. I get anxious and I telephone Viggo F. What is it? he asks, a bit shortly. I don’t know, I say. I just feel very alone. Alright, he says. I’ll be home tonight, okay?
Then I take out my novel and I write and write and forget about everything. The novel is nearly finished. The title is going to be A Child Was Harmed. In one way or another it’s about me, even though I may never experience the things the people do in the book.
3
And this, says Viggo F., twirling his mustache, a sign that he is in a good mood – have you hidden this from me all this time? He’s sitting with my manuscript in his hand, looking up at me with his bright blue eyes, which are so clear it’s like they’ve just been washed. Everything about him is clean and dapper, and he gives off the scent of soap and shaving lotion. His breath is fresh as a baby’s, because he doesn’t smoke.
Yes, I say, I wanted to surprise you. Do you really think it’s good?
It’s stunning, he says. There’s not a comma out of place. This will be a huge success.
I can tell I’m blushing with happiness. In that moment I couldn’t care less about Piet Hein or my divorce plans. Once more Viggo F. is the person I have dreamed of meeting my entire life. He pulls out a bottle of wine and pours it into the green glasses. Cheers, he says, smiling. And congratulations. We agree again to try Gyldendal first, even though they didn’t want my poems. They have recently accepted the novel by Viggo F. that I couldn’t get through. He just said that I was too young to have a feel for his writing, and that it couldn’t be helped. This one evening we enjoy each other’s company as it was before we were married, and the thought of what I will soon say to him seems distant and unreal, like the thought of what could happen in ten years. That was the last evening we were really close. We were alone together behind the blackout curtains in the green living room, sharing something the world had not yet seen, and we talked about my first novel until it was past our bedtime, and we both yawned between drinks of wine. Viggo F. never gets drunk, and he can’t stand when other people do. He threw out Johannes Weltzer many times, when, tipsy, enthusiastic and sweating, he paced our floor while talking about the novel he was writing. He’ll talk it to death, says Viggo F., who thinks Johannes has only written one good sentence in his whole life. It was: ‘Dear to me are restlessness and long trips.’ The expectation that one should drink in moderation, similar to the expectation that one should leave at the appropriate time, is always hanging in the air. We have company quite often. At those times I go shopping in a delicatessen on Amagerbrogade, because like my mother, I hardly know how to prepare food other than the most basic things.
One day I tell my mother I’m planning to get divorced. I tell her about Piet Hein, about all the gifts he has given me, and about how he is going to take care of my future. My mother wrinkles her brow and thinks for a long time. On the street where I grew up no one ever got divorced. The couples there might argue and fight like cats and dogs, but they never mention divorce. That must be something that only happens among higher society; no one knows why.
But will he marry you? she asks finally, rubbing her nose with her index finger, as she always does when something is troubling her. I say that he hasn’t talked about it, but that he probably will. I say that I can’t bear staying married to Viggo F., and that every day I feel heartsick when it’s time for him to come home. I say that the marriage has been a mistake for both of us. Yes, she says, I understand, in a way. It does look rather dumb when you two walk down the street, since he’s so much shorter than you. My mother lacks the ability to put herself in other people’s shoes, which keeps her from hurting my feelings, and that suits me fine.
Now I go home with Piet Hein every Thursday after the meeting. I tell Viggo F. that the discussions aft
er the lecture last so long, and that as chairperson it wouldn’t be proper if I were the first to leave. I tell him not to wait up for me, but to just go to bed. When he’s asleep, nothing can wake him up, and he doesn’t know how late I come home. But why, says Piet impatiently, why don’t you tell him? I keep promising to tell Viggo F. the next day, but in the end I doubt that I will ever be able to get the words out. I’m afraid how he will react. I’m afraid of arguing and scenes, and I always think with horror about when my father and brother fought every night, so there was never any peace in our little living room. If you can’t tell him, says Piet one evening, you can just move out, just like that. You can’t take anything but your clothes with you anyway. But I can’t do it. It would be too mean, too brutal, too ungrateful. Piet also asks me to pay more attention to Nadja, who is miserable because he left her. I visit her frequently. She sits in a metal chair, stretching out her long legs and rubbing her face irritably, as if she wanted to rearrange her features. She says that Piet is dangerous, created to make women unhappy. Now that he has left her, she’s going to change her life. She’s going to attend the university and study psychology, because she has always been more interested in other people than in herself. And that will save her. She says sadly, He’ll leave you, too. One day he’ll come to you and say, I’ve found someone else. But I’m sure you’ll take it on the chin. Take it on the chin is his favorite expression. She also says that I’m going to get divorced anyway, and that Piet is as good an excuse as anyone. I don’t pay too much attention to what she says, because when it comes down to it, she’s bitter about being deserted.
Sometimes Piet Hein bothers me, like when I’m lying with his arm around me, and he’s conjuring up plans for my future. It bothers me that he wants to rummage in my life and arrange it, as if I were unable to take care of it myself, and I wish he would just leave me alone. I wish I could move back and forth between him and Viggo F. without losing either of them and with no radical upheavals. I’ve always avoided change and been comforted by things staying the way they are. But it can’t go on. Now I’m able to look at loving couples in the street again, but I turn away from the sight of mothers with small children. I avoid looking in baby carriages or thinking about the girls from my old street, who were so proud that they waited until they were eighteen to have children. I suppress all those kinds of thoughts because Piet is careful not to get me pregnant. He says that women authors shouldn’t have children; there are plenty of other women who can. On the other hand, there aren’t so many who can write books.
My misery gets dramatically worse toward five o’clock in the afternoon. While I’m standing in the kitchen turning on the potatoes, my heart starts hammering and the white tile wall behind the stovetop flickers before my eyes, as if the tiles were starting to fall off. When Viggo F. walks in the door with his dark, irritated face, I start talking feverishly as if to defend against something horrible; I don’t know what. I talk incessantly while we eat, even though he only responds with one-syllable words. I’m anxious that he will say or do something terrible, irreversible, something he never said or did before. When I get his attention, my heart slows a bit, and I’m able to breathe easy again, until there’s another pause in the conversation. I talk about all kinds of things: about when Mrs Jensen, after I showed her a drawing that Ernst Hansen did of me, said, Is that drawn by hand? I talk about my mother, about her blood pressure which is too high now, though before it had always been too low. I talk about my book which has been returned from Gyldendal with a strange response, insinuating that I have been reading too much Freud. I don’t even know who Freud is. Now I’ve sent the book to a new publisher by the name of Athenæum, and every day I look forward to hearing a response. One evening Viggo F. notices my restlessness and says that I’ve turned into quite a chatterbox. I tell him I’m not feeling all that well and that I think there’s something wrong with my heart. Nonsense, he laughs, not at your age. It must be some kind of anxiety. He gives me a worried look and asks if anything is bothering me. I assure him there’s nothing wrong, that I’m snug as a bug in a rug. Then he says, I’ll call Geert Jørgensen and make an appointment for you. He is a head psychiatrist. I saw him myself once many years ago. A very sensible man.
So I sit across from the doctor, a large knobby man with huge eyes that look like they are about to leave their sockets. I tell him everything. I tell him about Piet Hein and about not telling Viggo F. that I want to get divorced. Geert Jørgensen smiles at me cheerfully, while he plays with a letter opener on the desk.
Isn’t it, he says, quite interesting to be caught between two different men?
Yes, I say, surprised; because it is.
You have to let Møller go, he says matter-of-factly. It’s a crazy marriage. As you may know, I’m the head psychiatrist at Hareskov Sanatorium. I’ll recommend to your editor that you stay there for a little while. Then I’ll take care of the rest. As soon as you’re out of his sight, your heart trouble will pass.
Right then and there he calls Viggo F., who has nothing against the idea. The very next day I pack my suitcase and go to Hareskov, where I get a private room with a view out to the woods. I talk to the head doctor again, who says that Piet Hein may not visit me before everything is taken care of. He’ll call Piet and tell him to stay away. At the sanatorium there are only women my mother’s age, very dainty and well dressed. I feel weighed down by my shabby clothes, while I think about all the outfits Piet has given me that I can’t use yet. The days pass without drama, and my heart returns to normal. I rent a typewriter from a shop in Bagsværd, and with it I write a poem:
The Eternal Triangle
In my life there are two men
who cross my path incessantly –
the one man is the man I love,
and the other man loves only me.
But I don’t really know if I love Piet Hein, just as he has never said that he loves me. He sends me chocolates and letters, and one day he sent me an orchid in a cardboard box. I placed it in a narrow vase and set it on the nightstand without giving it a second thought. On the day that Viggo F. has to go and talk to Dr Jørgensen, he first comes up to my room. He barely says hello before he sees the orchid. He gets pale and sits down on the edge of a chair. Shocked, I see his lower lip trembling. That there, he says, his voice shaking, pointing at the orchid, Who sent that? Is there someone else?
Uh, no, I say immediately, It was sent anonymously, from some secret admirer.
While I say that, I’m thinking of my mother, whose quickness with a remark I have admired my whole childhood.
4
Now it’s fall, and I’m wearing a black coat with an ocelot collar while I walk around in the woods. I walk by myself, because my world seems completely different from that of the other women. I only have superficial conversations with them at mealtimes. Piet Hein visits me every day. He brings me chocolate or flowers, and we walk around in the woods for hours, while he tells me how he is looking for a good boarding house for me, and what a great job I did getting rid of Viggo F. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten rid of him just because I don’t see him anymore, but I can’t explain that to Piet, who is practical, worldly and unsentimental. He kisses me as if he were my happy owner under the multi-colored trees whose leaves float down over us, and he doesn’t think I look as happy as I ought to. I showed him a letter I received from Viggo F., but Piet just laughed and said, what else could we expect from a disappointed, bitter man. Viggo F. had written: Dear Tove, I have received a message from the publisher that they have accepted your book. I am enclosing the accompanying check. And then his signature. I turned the paper over and over, but there was nothing else. The letter upset me, even though I was glad that they wanted my book. It upset me because I’m thinking back on our last good evening, and what we had together, which is now ruined. Dr Jørgensen tells me that Viggo F. doesn’t want to get divorced, because he thinks I’ll regret what I’m doing with Piet Hein. Viggo F. never liked Piet because of his sarcastic n
ature, and they only met one another a few times. I got a letter from Ester too. She wrote that they miss me in the club, and she asked me if I would mind if she acts as chairperson in my absence. She couldn’t get Viggo F. to reveal where I was, but by twisting stone-faced Piet’s arm she was able to obtain my address. If I had been home with Viggo F., I would have paid for dinner at an expensive restaurant to celebrate the occasion. But I don’t feel like treating Piet to dinner, because it’s hanging in the air that he should be the one to treat me. And I think uneasily about my future, because there was a kind of security in those green rooms. There was security in the thought of being a married woman, who went shopping and made dinner every day, and now it’s all ruined. Piet never talks about getting married, and doesn’t seem to care if Viggo F. wants to get divorced or not.
Eventually Piet locates a suitable boarding house and I move in with a renewed feeling of being a young girl whose existence is fragile, fleeting and unsure. I have a nice bright room with good furniture, and I’m tended to by a maid with a cap on her head. I bought a typewriter with my advance and I’m transcribing poems on it, because I’ve started writing poetry again. Piet says I should try selling them to one of the magazines that publish things like that, but I’m afraid they won’t accept them. In the evening, when Piet and I lie talking in my narrow bed, I think how strange it is that he never says a single word about himself. His eyes are dull as raisins, and when he smiles, all his clean white teeth show. I still don’t know if I’m in love with him. I feel weighed down by the thought that he’s just amusing me, while I’m longing for a home and a husband and a child just like all young women do. The boarding house is located on River Boulevard and members of the club come up often and visit me when they are in the area. Then we have coffee, which I order by pushing a button. We talk about Otto Gelsted’s lecture at the club. It was about the political engagement of artists, and the discussion fell flat, because none of us are politically engaged. Morten Nielsen sits on the edge of my divan with his hands supporting his big angular face like a cradle. He says, Maybe I should join the freedom fighters. I think it’s a stupid idea, because the occupying forces are so powerful, but I don’t say that I don’t agree. Maybe I’ve inherited my father’s dislike of God, king and homeland, because I don’t have the urge to hate the German soldiers tramping around the streets. I’m too busy with my own life, my own uncertain future, to be able to think patriotically right now. I miss Viggo F. and I forget that it made me sick to be in the same room with him. I miss showing him my poems and I’m jealous of my friends who visit him and show him their writing. But the head psychiatrist said that I should leave him alone. One day Ester visits me and says that she has agreed to be Viggo F.’s housekeeper. She got fired from the pharmacy where she worked because she was always late, so she’s glad. She’s written half a novel, which now she hopes to have time to finish. She says that since I moved out, Viggo F. can’t stand being alone.
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