‘Would you like to go to the pictures with me?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘How about this evening?’
‘I’ll have to ask my parents.’
‘Okay, why don’t we ask them now.’
‘They’re not home.’
‘Of course you can go, dear,’ he said, making his voice deeper, and I laughed again and felt myself blush.
‘I don’t even know your name.’
He told me his name then asked:
‘What’s your name?’
‘Irma.’
‘It suits you.’
And with that we were friends. He shook my hand and walked off and I watched him go with a pounding heart. He was going to call for me at half past six.
To my great surprise I had no trouble obtaining permission to go to the cinema. Obviously they asked who this young man was and I told them he was a student I had met at the library a few times. My mother and step-father actually looked relieved and my step-father even gave me a whole five-kroner note, saying it was high time such a pretty girl had a boyfriend. Mum shook her head at him, but she looked pleased, for all her warnings not to be late home, I needed my sleep, had to be fresh for school the next day. I could tell it reassured them to see me acting like a normal girl, getting invited to the pictures, like all the others.
They were at the living-room window, watching, when E– came to pick me up for the early evening showing. He had changed his clothes, was now wearing a pair of smart grey flannels, a tweed jacket and even a tie. I had put on a floral print dress with a broad belt, like the ones starlet Ghita Nørby wore, and had my hair in a ponytail. E– nodded to my mother and step-father through the window, offered me his arm and off we went to the pictures, for all the world as if this were not a first date, but simply the latest of many – it felt so natural, being with him. I was walking on air, but I was also absolutely terrified. I could not help wondering whether it was all a dream from which, at any moment, I would wake to the same old emptiness and loneliness.
I do not remember which film we saw. All I remember is his hand, soft, warm and dry, taking mine as the lights went down in the packed cinema. Afterwards we walked back along dark streets wet with rain which glistened so poetically in the glow of the street lamps that I found myself thinking that only a great writer could have described the magic of that evening. I was certain that a poet like Frank Jæger would have captured the mood of it perfectly.
We halted in the darkness between two street lamps and he turned me to face him. I had to stand on tiptoe to reach his lips. He kissed me, lightly at first, then probingly with his tongue, and I felt a flicker of heat between my legs. I had never kissed a boy before. I thought it was something you had to learn, but there was nothing difficult about it. He knew all about kissing so it was just a matter of following his lead. We kissed many, many times before we reached my house. It was one of the most unsettling experiences I had ever had. There was a light on in the living room, of course. The headmaster and my mother were silhouetted against the blind. E– played his cards well right from the start. Made sure that those in authority would never suspect a thing. He got me home on time and merely pecked me on the cheek when we said goodbye at the white garden gate in the light of the street lamp, but he knew that I took the taste of his tongue and lips into the house with me. That I could feel his hand on my breast.
From the very beginning he was an adept double agent who knew never to reveal his true identity to the enemy. Outwardly leading a life which accorded with the establishment’s outmoded ideas of propriety and order, while at the same time pursuing another, secret, existence of which other people knew nothing, and of which they could never be a part. I lay in bed and thought about him and about that wonderful day, with my pillow squeezed tightly between my legs, and felt almost happy for the first time since my father had left me.
20
WHAT MORE IS THERE to tell you, sister? Only, perhaps, about the final, decisive chain of events. In which two people lay bare their lives, openly and honestly. It is night again. There is no moon tonight, only a dark chill from the tiny window, as if it were winter out there in the free air. I count the days until the next court hearing. They have to let me go, but with this system you can never be sure of anything. They will do anything they can to cover themselves, although they will of course dress up their coercive methods in legal jargon. The bourgeois, capitalist society in a nutshell, wouldn’t you say: hypocrisy is its mainstay, dissemblance the key to understanding it, and, at its core, lies and self-deception? But they will not break me. I will be strong, as I have been all my life. As I needed to be, in order to survive in the cold, harsh, materialistic world of men.
This I learned from E– during the first, wonderful summer after I met him. The summer of 1958, when the weather went haywire, with frost in June and rain, rain, rain all summer through. But I didn’t care if the sun didn’t shine. I was eighteen and a high-school graduate. The legal age of majority was still twenty-one then, but I had already gained my independence. My step-father and my mother accepted that I should be able to live my own life now. They had no real worries about me either. I was a good, sensible girl, after all. I had graduated with flying colours, praised by all my teachers. They too had noticed how I had blossomed, and how I spoke up more in class. Besides which, my fiancé from Århus was such a nice, polite young man. In his tweed sports jacket and tie and neatly pressed slacks he could look like every mother-in-law’s dream when he wanted to. He had also chosen to study a subject with excellent prospects. He was so good to Irma and so well-spoken. You really could not complain, not when you saw the sorts of characters other parents’ daughters brought home these days. They had not met his parents. But there was time enough for that. Irma was possibly a bit on the young side, but it certainly looked as if these two young people planned to get married once the young man had got a bit further with his studies. And his father was something with the State Railways over on Zealand. So he came from a good, solid background. A respectable family. Well, you could see that – his manners were excellent. The only thing that struck them as rather odd was that Irma wanted to go to university in Copenhagen, and not in Århus, but teenagers nowadays were so restless and independent. Life was good in little Denmark. The younger generation already appeared to have forgotten those five terrible years. They took their nice, secure life for granted. They never gave a thought to what we went through. No, the young did not always appreciate what their parents’ generation had endured, but Irma was a good girl who knew how to say ‘Thank you’. She would have to find herself a job now, though: a university education cost money and they couldn’t afford to do more than help out every now and again. Well, it was the least they could do. And of course Copenhagen was a long way off, but there was work to be had there. And it was true that if you wanted to study literature, then the University of Copenhagen, with its long and illustrious history, was the place to be. If nothing else, at least they had helped her to find a room. Not big, but neat and clean and with a nice family.
So my mother went on, all summer long, pleased as punch with her clever and now – so everyone said – pretty daughter. Fritz was doing well too, a big, strong lad with his journeyman’s papers within reach and, thereafter, a job with a big bakery in Odense obtained for him by Mr Kelstrup the solicitor. And Theodor was still just sweet little Teddy whom everyone spoiled. My mother’s gratitude that life had worked out so well for her despite the dark years, as she called her life with my father, was almost palpable.
Had they but known. As it was, they had no idea that I had stepped out of my darkness and into a secret life to which only E– and I were privy. In any case, my mother and step-father were only interested in material things. They no longer listened reverently to the radio, or read books. Instead they sat in front of the monstrosity of a television they had purchased. Sat there staring at the test card or the black-and-white clock with the hands that ticked round, marking the
time until the programmes started. The new household altar had made its entry into the small Danish homes. My mother and step-father also bought a little car. A green Volkswagen Beetle, only slightly used. Like all other middle-class Danes they took to going on Sunday drives, equipped with a thermos of coffee and camping stools. Fritz had no desire to go with them. All he was interested in was his bored-out moped – that and girls. I, too, always found excuses, but young Teddy thought it was great fun to go for a drive on a Sunday. There they would sit at the side of the road, the little nuclear family – letting everyone get a good look at their nice car while they drank coffee, ate their sandwiches and had such a nice time. God, how I hate nice! Later they also went on their first package tour, travelling by bus to Harzen in Germany and from there all the way to the Mediterranean with Spies, Denmark’s first package tour operator. The good times were finally here, they sighed with typical Danish smugness.
All of this suited me down to the ground. It left me free to live my own life, and have my other life with E–. To be honest, it was a miracle that I did so well in my high-school finals: I had no thought for anything but E–. One look at his picture and my stomach would start to flutter. Even when reading one of my favourite authors I would suddenly fall to daydreaming about the world we shared, and miss having him near. I felt I knew every inch of his body and yet it continued to surprise me. But three years of hard work and conscientious study at high school paid off. I knew my stuff. Not only that, but E– insisted that I study properly for my exams. Whatever opportunities the future might have to offer would go to those with a good academic education. We would be the new ruling class. The coming aristocracy, but born of the people, whom we would guide and liberate. He also had to study for an exam, so until the summer holidays we only saw one another from Saturday to Sunday.
He rented a room in Århus and I would visit him there whenever I could scrape together the train fare. He came to my house when we knew that the headmaster and Mum were going for a drive. We sent Fritz off into town. We went to bed together for the first time only a week after our first date. I was nervous and scared, as one might expect, but he was gentle and experienced, with warm, soft fingers and patient, persuasive lips, so it only hurt a little. And very soon I could not get enough of it. How odd and wrong it seemed that sex had not figured in my life before. An erotic being had apparently been slumbering inside me. E– woke that being, and the discovery and exploration of my sexuality was like an unexpected, unguessed-at gift: a side of being a woman which no one had told me about. It would take the future women’s movement to find words to describe female sexuality and its agelong suppression, but E– understood, accepted and enjoyed the fact that the female libido is every bit as great and legitimate as the male. This may seem obvious today, but in 1958 it wasn’t. Although we did not know it, in the permissiveness of our relationship we were actually part of a consciousness-raising process which sowed the seeds of the rebellion against the established, hypocritical society. All unwittingly, we were in at the conception of what would grow into the student revolt of the late sixties and the massive left-wing revivalist movement in the seventies. We were pioneers. In our discussions and our reading too: Camus, Sartre, the banned Henry Miller, the exciting new Danish writer Klaus Rifbjerg, Erik Knudsen, and later Marx. But most of all in the music which we played on his new record player: jazz and rock, the music of this new age. E– taught me about the ways of the world; thanks to him I matured early, as a woman and as an intellectual.
It was E– who arranged for me to be fitted with a diaphragm before we went on a cycling holiday that summer, which did have its warm, sunny moments, but was for the most part wet and stormy. We did not mind the rain, though. We put up our little tent, crawled into our sleeping bag and made love with the rain hammering off the canvas. At the end of July E– got a student job with one of the ministries in Copenhagen and it was only logical for him to switch university. He helped me move in to my little room. We could not live together without being married, and although I am sure I would have said yes had he proposed, there was never any thought of this. There was a tacit understanding that marriage would hinder our development as free individuals. Besides which, E–, and I, felt it was vital that I should take my degree. I would be the family’s first academic. Education was synonymous with freedom. We were going to be part of a new movement, one which would cast off the bourgeois norms. We might even move to Paris, live with the other existentialists on the Left Bank and, like Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, be lovers, discussion partners and comrades.
I loved Copenhagen from the word go. I loved the anonymity of the big city, the dense traffic, the life and the sounds of the night and my classes at university, because I found most of the professors interesting, even if they were like gods, preaching to us little students from on high. I rarely went home to Jutland. In my first year I possibly went back only once or twice. I think my mother was hurt, but I had my own life to live. And so what if we never seemed to have any money? Looking back on it I don’t really know what we lived on. But almost everybody was hard up, so it did not matter. It was all part of being young and at university. The only person I missed was Teddy. Mum told me later that he asked for me almost every day.
But my new life outweighed even my love for my little brother.
It was also E– who first suggested we test our sexual boundaries. I still remember the first time he tied me down and told me to say the word if I felt violated or frightened, but that the pain would take me to new heights of desire and pleasure. That pain and desire were two sides of the same coin. That through these forbidden games we would attain an undreamt-of sense of unity, so deep that it would bind us to one another for ever. And he was right. We were never wholly separated. There was always a bond tying us to the past and the other life we shared alongside our everyday existences. It goes without saying that we could not stay together in the traditional sense. Or remain faithful only to one another, as the Danish establishment preached, once the waves of change began to wash over our lives, bringing ban-the-bomb marches, the pill, the student revolt, free love, travel, Women’s Lib and the revolutionary awareness that came as a natural consequence of our development.
So, as I say, marriage was never on the cards. That was only a line we fed the grown-ups when we were very young, so that we could be together in the narrow-minded, bourgeois Danish society. We wanted to be free, original individuals, untrammelled by the ties of convention. This was not as easy as it may sound, but it was a necessary progression if the shackles of the old order were to be broken.
Throughout our lives we were, however, true to each other on another, much higher plane. True to our innermost convictions and, in spite of the setbacks, true to our realisation that only a new social order could fundamentally alter the state of global injustice which keeps the majority of the world’s population in abject poverty while the rest of us, led by the United States, live high on the hog thanks to this inhuman exploitation.
And then there was our own private secret, which E– shared with me at Christmastime in 1960, when I had come home for the holidays, knowing I would have the house to myself. Fritz and Teddy had gone with the headmaster and Mum to spend Christmas with our step-father’s brother in Tønder. They had left on the 22nd. The weather was wet, but mild. Even so, we spent most of our time indoors. We made food together, talked, drank schnapps and lemonade, listened to music, danced, experimented and enjoyed not having to worry about the neighbours as we did in Copenhagen, where only the thin walls of our rooms separated us from other people. There was such physical and mental satisfaction in using our bodies, conscious of how naturally in accord they were, like two finely tuned instruments. The heavy curtains were drawn, the door locked. We had the radiators turned full on, wore as little clothing as possible and I was gloriously happy. I never asked him what he did when he wasn’t with me, or whether he had anyone else. Nor did he ask me, but I knew that he was less readily prey to the green-ey
ed monster than I was. I tried to fight off this feeling, but it hurt to think I might be sharing him with other girls. He did not lose his temper on those occasions when, nonetheless, I hinted that I felt jealous. He only laughed, showing his strong, white teeth and said that right here and now we were together and nothing else existed. I was hopelessly in love with him, but I knew – and this was what really hurt – that if I were to express this love in standard, conventional terms, I would lose him. I would rather have him to myself completely every now and again, than lose him completely. That was what my heart said. My mind was in unconditional agreement with his revolutionary talk of sexual freedom as a logical consequence of personal and political liberation. But, then as now, a person does not simply throw away all their historical baggage and everything that has made them who they are without some cost and emotional upheaval.
It was on Christmas Eve that he told me another of his secrets, when he confessed that he had not simply happened to run into me in the library, but had come there looking for me. We were lying in bed, smoking. The bedroom was in semi-darkness, lit only by candles, their flickering light tracing patterns on our sweat-soaked naked bodies. He lay on his back. There were red welts across his chest from the whip, I caressed them lightly with my lips. I had removed the handcuffs from his wrists and we were both sated and content. While everyone else in Denmark was dancing around the Christmas tree we had been acting out our fantasies. We felt so superior to all those common little slaves to convention. There was more cheap wine on the table next door and in a little while we would go through to the kitchen and rustle up something to eat. It was the best Christmas I had had since I was a girl during the war. We had entered upon a new decade. In the October E– and I had marched the sixty kilometres from Holbæk in the west of Zealand to Copenhagen along with eight hundred other pioneers from the new left wing, in protest against the A-bomb, that appalling weapon. I remember the stiff wind and the rain pelting down on all those hundreds of young people. But the weather was nothing to us because we were all part of a new phenomenon, unlike anything the world had ever seen. We did not know the term – it had not yet entered the Danish language – but we represented Denmark’s first grassroots movement. The radio and television stations boycotted the march and made no mention of it whatsoever. As so often before we felt the tide of history sweeping across the country. Although I could not know it that Christmas in 1960, come Easter we would march again. Despite the snow and sleet our ranks would swell from less than two thousand marchers when we raised our placards in Holbæk to over ten thousand by the time we reached Copenhagen. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was the first big step forward. Lying in bed on that Christmas Eve I knew that we had entered a decade which, I was sure, would change Denmark and the rest of the world for ever.
The Woman from Bratislava Page 29
