Companions

by Christina Hesselholdt

  ‘I want to sleep, and you give me speed,’ I wrote to her.

  She had pulled the wrong foil square out of her bag. She apologised profusely. She offered to come by straight away with the right one. I rejected. Politely. And thought that it was a tiny little bit funny. And I relaxed. And slept for a couple of hours.)

  In any case I had visited the accommodation portals so often that I knew how many square metres the homes for sale in my own neighbourhood were, how much they cost, and approximately how long they had been up for sale. I could have become an accommodation guide. I don’t know if I care for the word ‘laytime’, I associate it with hens, with nests. All that looking at accommodation made me ready to change nests. But nobody fell into the trap – into my nest. Some thought it was too dark, others that the room divisions were wrong, and yet others were dissatisfied that they could not have a balcony – I approached the committee and asked if an exception could be made on the ground floor, ‘the balcony would collide with the rubbish chute, you would have to crawl under the balcony to be able to push your rubbish in the chute,’ was the reply, ‘such eccentrics,’ I said to the estate agent, ‘would they sit half a metre above the ground, on their balconies, why can they not sit in the courtyard like everyone else’ (apart from me, I never use the courtyard).

  You can, it turned out, buy racing horses at bargain prices, unsuitable specimens, so-called lane snails, I see the most incredible horses, young beautiful racing thoroughbreds, for fifteen to twenty thousand kroner. Maybe I won’t have to sell my gold just yet, I should maybe wait until everything is sorted out; I had placed a gold bracelet from my grandmother down in the bag with the rings, for sale; and I kept imagining her face back when many years ago, now long since dead, she clasped the heirloom around my wrist. She looked as if something was fulfilled when the click from the jewellery’s lock sounded. She looked content and expectant. As though she closed something behind her, opened something in front of her. Gave me a shove ahead, even though I was left standing.

  I could just put the bracelet back in my jewellery box and only sell the rings, my tired eyes also belonged in there, those are pearls that were her eyes, oh, it got far too difficult. I needed someone to talk things through with.

  I made a new budget and added it up seven or eight times.

  I reserved a stall at a riding school near Dyrehaven. I made an appointment with a horse owner and went to see the horse.

  ‘It was called Chicken Heart,’ the lady says and leads it through the gate out of the fold which it only leaves reluctantly, ‘because it usually loses courage towards the end of the race and comes to a complete stop and just allows itself to be overtaken.’

  ‘But I will call it Brave Heart,’ I said, without hesitation, suddenly inspired.

  The lady nodded and asked if I wanted to try it. In the advert it stated that it could be ridden by anyone.

  ‘No, I want it to get used to me,’ I said.

  (It had been twenty-five years since I had last sat on a horse.)

  I handed her a cheque. She handed me its papers, I got a glimpse of its forefathers’ long majestic names, then I grabbed the end of the rope.

  I place my hand on the horse’s bent neck, and we begin to walk through Dyrehaven, the forest of my childhood, towards its new home. (The whole thing looked like the bike trip Molloy or Malone goes on with a son somewhere in the trilogy, bumpy and somehow endless.)

  It’s raining. It is apparently a very tired horse I have bought, maybe it is deficient in vitamin B, or has worms. We fit together because I am also tired. It drags its legs, and its snout hangs by the ground. Why did I do it? I ask the horse.

  In a sudden burst of energy the horse curls its upper lip back, tosses its head backwards, the mouth wide-open, so all its discoloured teeth can be seen, in a veritable laugh, a grimace at the imbecility of the world, that you have to be forced ahead when you could just let your head hang and continue sleeping, in the rain, in your green fold.

  Wait. There is a moment until the curtain falls.

  It was getting dark. It was also foggy. And windy. Yellow leaves scattered through the white air. All very enchanting. I had forgotten how close you can get to the deer when you are on a horse. (I had in the meantime got up on it.) They did not run away, but remained standing, and I stared into several sika bucks’ red-rimmed, actually rather malicious small eyes. I could have touched the surreal trees on their foreheads.

  I rode out through the red gate, a stone’s throw from the stable – and Øresund where I also would have been rowing with Peterpiper and all the rest of them now, had I not bought this horse.

  There were some sounds I did not recognize, a monotone electric humming and a hard regular tramping.

  I turned into the courtyard of the stable where all the woodwork was red-and-white-striped, and the riding hall was a grey vision, designed by Arne Jacobsen, I had read. It was close to where the sound came from. From an outdoor horse exerciser. And on the horse exerciser walked a horse. Walked and walked a horse on its treadmill, tramp tramp tramp. Above it on the wall of the riding hall its large shadow walked and tramped in its own blackness.

  How should I put it, the red and white woodwork, the sound of the sea and the forest, the tramping of the upper class horse, I thought I had arrived at a condensed place that could come to mean something to me for some time.

  THE MARCH HARE

  [Alwilda]

  We arrived at the wine bar at around the same time, Alma, my ever dissatisfied bespectacled friend Kristian, lively Edward, and myself, from each our edge of the city, like ants where we were each the sugar, in our heavy coats (it was March and the winter eternal). When Kristian and Edward bent down to lock their bikes, it was as though they (the men) were fastened to objects that were far too big, like ants dragging building material many times their weight. I have to say I was satisfied with my outward appearance that evening, and the wine would polish my inward self, or perhaps sharpen is more accurate, so the words could drop like a machete: ‘zak,’ Edward said, with a karate chop in the air. That’s how they prefer me. Maybe I do too. Alma looks like the Statue of Liberty, I don’t know how many Russian men or Japanese men have come running to be photographed leaning against her over the years. A little later Edward took a picture of all of us, and I thought about all that bother I had had with the hairdresser. His name is Ulis. And when he had finished, my hair looked like a flattened sticky hat. He stood jabbing his fingers in and out in an attempt to make it rise. In the mirror the difference between our hair was striking, his stood up, mine lay down. He is from Guatemala and not very tall, but has an elongated haircut, his hair is brushed upward, he is small and sparkling, during the summer he wears a straw hat, something I cannot do myself because it does not suit me, but then I lack a pair of long grey ears. When it was Easter, he invited his friends to lunch, both hot and cold, his girlfriend was in charge of the hot dishes, it was quite the coordination, in and out of the oven, ‘I was so proud of her,’ he has told me several times. He is Catholic and likes to decorate with Virgin Marys, he thinks she is cute. His mum wanted to become a hairdresser, but never did. She forced him to cut her hair when he was a child.

  ‘There,’ he finally said – my hair looked like a black sticky hat.

  ‘No, Ulis,’ I said.

  ‘I know you are the one who understands hair,’ I said appeasingly.

  ‘No, no,’ he said defensively, and I was inclined to agree with him. Afterwards I explained to him that he should dry it while I had my head down, and crumple it a lot while drying it. He sighed and moved me over to the sink, ‘yes, that’s it,’ I said, ‘over and over again.’

  Then it was good. Nearly as high and airy as his own.

  There is a lot I cannot remember… Yes. As usual Kristian inveighed against everything, to hell and back. Very drunk, very quick. Billiards table. Young beautiful black man in grey clothes, American, surrounded by insignificant friends, from Sønderjylland, with caps, almost identical
, I called them Huey and Louie. Intensely pursuing him. Howling after every good shot, I howled, I danced. He was going to be a lawyer. To establish contact I told him that Alma was a judge. That caught his interest. She denied it. I said she was shy. After I had swarmed around him for a long time, I went to the bar to buy a water. He came over to me. ‘What do you want from me?’ he asked. ‘I want you to kiss me,’ I said. Maybe he just had to discuss it with his friends, in any case he disappeared. Then he stood there again. ‘Do you still want me to kiss you?’ he asked. ’Yes,’ I said excitedly, ‘in here?’ (I meant the bar.) He shook his head. He took my hand. We went outside. He looked around. I felt like a pony, whinnying with overconfidence, tripping with expectation, and my mane was airy. Then he grabbed the door to a block of flats, it was open, and we went in and immediately started to kiss. I was very dizzy, really needed a glass of water. He stuck his hand down his pants, presumably to adjust his genitals, and I caught a glimpse of black crackling hair. Then a family with children and prams and grandparents showed up. We left the block of flats. We had probably been there around a minute. I was twice as old as him. It made me shy. He said that age meant nothing as long as you had a good heart (we spoke English). I wondered whether you could say that I had a good heart. He gave me his number. I said that he must have a lot of women, since he was so beautiful. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I have no women at all, you can ask my friends for yourself.’ He looked around for them, he was obviously so young that he was dependent on them. ‘You call,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to intrude, now be careful with it.’ Reunion with Alma, Edward, Kristian, Huey and Louie. Finding bikes, changing bar. All of that was unimportant. I felt really bad, a skin without stuffing, to spread out in front of the fireplace. He wanted to walk me home. We kissed on the street corner, and I moved my hand up to stroke him or touch (very carefully) his short trimmed black hair. He grabbed my hand in the air. His eyes were sad. He did not want me to touch his hair. It was goodbye. We went our separate ways. I noticed that he went in the direction of my place, and I walked away from mine. We had to swap directions. It could not seem as though I was following him. I took a side street which according to my calculations should lead me home, in a semi-circle. Suddenly he came towards me, flanked by Huey and Louie, all on bikes, I was growing to hate bikes. Without stopping he reached out a long arm and grabbed my head and kissed me, impressively well coordinated. He is far too young, I won’t call him, and I would get Huey and Louie with him.

  I did not call him. I gave Camilla his number to cheer her up, to give her a nudge. She accepted it with a laugh that came from the bottom of the heart (down in the actual mechanics where it rattles and is heavy).

  IV. MAROONED

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you like a sun that would light up everything for me.’

  — F. M. Dostoevsky, The Adolescent

  ALONE IN PARADISE, WITH THE GARDENERS AND THE HEDGEHOG’S HEART

  [Camilla]

  ‘When you’re alone, you risk nothing.’

  ‘But is that entirely true?’

  (I was talking to myself.)

  Marooned – the o’s like a spray of water over the railing of a ship that now can just be glimpsed on the horizon.

  ‘That is just terrible, they have all failed you,’ the neighbour said, right outside my large garden where we had met, where I stood crying.

  ‘Of course my mum can’t help that because she’s dead,’ I said, ‘and Charles – it is as it should be, we couldn’t put up with one another.’

  ‘Well, then it’s just as well.’

  ‘I’ve got used to being alone in the house. But the garden, I haven’t got used to taking care of the garden on my own yet.’

  (Until now I had sat in the house looking out onto the garden; I had not placed myself in it; I had taken it in small bites – through the window.)

  I had just let three gardeners in there, now they raged and wreaked havoc with chainsaws and brush-cutters, I was afraid that they brought about destruction rather than tidying up and creating a path – for example to my berry bushes, over to my fruit trees, which had not been trimmed and now bore fruit nobody could reach.

  ‘I don’t know if I’m making the right decisions about the garden,’ I said; the neighbour promised to come by later and look at it. Whatever good that might do, then it was done, the damage irreparable, ‘no, it will grow back again, you can be certain of that.’ I slinked into the garden again, panic-stricken, despondent: beneath all the wildness that was removed, it was withered, singed. It looked sad and bare along the edges of the garden, ‘just leave the ground elder,’ I said to the leader of The Green Fingers, ‘or it will be too bare.’

  ‘Is coming fine,’ he says reassuringly, he is Polish, and the other two, his employees, are Romanian, two slave workers with flat stomachs and well-developed chest and arm musculature, efficient gloomy young men, probably underpaid, probably illegal, he is fat, he is patronising, I feel like a seventeen-year-old virgin, a confused worried bungling virgin. Later, when he wants his 9,500 kroner for the work, I had also got the garden fenced in so Edward’s dog would not run out and get hit by a car while chasing the neighbour’s cat, and removed a tree that had toppled into the neighbour’s garden, I could not count the money while he looked at me; I tried three times, and each time it went to pot. I had to hand him the bundle and let him count the notes. As if I was dyslexic or dyscalculic, I think it’s called. That’s what he did to me. That’s how he made me feel. Looking me up and down, or intensely staring at my face, it turned me into a fool.

  ‘So do you make a good coffee?’ He wanted to come at eight o’clock that same evening for his money; he did not arrive in work clothes, but tidy and shaved, smelling of aftershave, for a moment it made me soft that a man had made an effort for me, but since I could not even count a stack of notes, I did not offer him a chair, I just told him that as far as felling my diseased birches he should wait until he heard from me, I felt like the owner of a plantation, and then he had to go. I was certain that he had ripped me off, that I had paid far too much. But the people really being cheated were the Romanian slave workers that the Pole paid twenty kroner an hour, it later turned out.

  I have painted the garden gate – it seems wrong to call it a garden gate, it is a tall and wide gate; I connect garden gates with something short that I have to bend my back a little to open and close, that’s what my granddad’s garden gate was like, it was his, because he was the one who painted it, or them, because there were two, you could enter the front garden via two different gates and then walk through the much smaller garden along two different tiled paths, where one led to the front door and another to the kitchen door. He had decorated the white gates with tins he had painted blue, it looked completely natural, as if the tins were a carving on the gates, you could only tell that they were tins, if you knew; either he had cut, for example, cat food tins down the middle, so that each tin came to constitute two types of decoration, even though it sounds terribly rigid in relation to the simplicity and ingenuity expressed by it, or else the tins were small, the size of tuna tins. Maybe the tins did not sit on the gates at all, but on the fence posts of the likewise painted white fence. Naturally they did. He used a strong clear blue colour whenever he could get his hands on it; a maritime blue, he had been a sailor, and this blue resembled a dream of the sea in strong concentrate.

  It was at least ten years since I had last painted the gate; back then the summerhouse belonged to my mum; she was hospitalised with depression, and I went and wood-treated her house and also the gate, because there was nothing else I could do for her; I could not make her better; but I hoped that it would make her happy – when she was healthy and again able to experience joy. I remember that back then, while I painted, I clung to the idea that I did something for her. (It was an obsession for me, always.) And that I looked forward to her coming to see the Swedish-red gate.

  She died: late one morning, quietly in her bed, where she lay fully clothed and
with her eyes closed behind her glasses. I took off her glasses and placed them on her bedside table that was filled with layers of unclipped features and articles. Then I sat down on a chair and sent a stream of heartfelt thank yous from an entire life towards her. The glasses left a mark on her nose; and this mark, which had the shape of a furrow, made me recall the time she one day in a straightforward merry way had busied herself with how she was going to get ‘away from there’, very concrete, wondering in what way the dead her would be transported out of the flat and down the stairs. When she saw the kind of effect the conversation had on me, she brushed the thought away with a ‘but I don’t have to worry about that’ – most likely she then quoted Epicurus: ‘When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not.’

  There it happened that she was lifted from the bed onto a stretcher, and this stretcher was already – or became – fastened to a kind of lifting mechanism (a back-sparing arrangement, not that she was particularly heavy, for the benefit of the emergency services, or whoever it was that had come), and when this machine was going to lift my mum, now fastened to the stretcher, up into a horizontal position, it was recommended that I leave; and so I did, I have always been particularly obedient towards professionals.