by Gail Godwin
Lorraine is having trouble with her Polish woman. She accused L. of eating too much chutney. Today, I was irritated by my dear friend, even while liking her. First of all, she gets up early in the morning, rides horseback, writes her novel, and then, just when I am waking and getting sufficiently alive, she comes over to interrupt my work schedule. Today that happened. Plus she criticized my stories after I had been dishonest and told her I thought her work had great possibilities.
Tonight I went to Palle & Gaert’s. Gaert likes me very much and I find him a cuddlesome way to spend the evening. He is an artist and knows art and a few other things to make him sufficiently interesting. I like his silver-blond tousled head (“Dammit, I had it cut in France a month ago”), and I like his silly, wistful grin. He is a strange, unusual, nuzzling kind of boy. He necks rather well, but makes no effort to seduce me.
I hope Niels doesn’t come tomorrow morning. I have to: finish the story, tidy the house, pick up mail at American Express, and go by the office.74
My newspaper articles, Paris, starting the novel “Walk, Don’t Run.”75 Gaert. Niels. Reading. This winter may be glorious, God willing.
Yes, you believe-nothing people, there is a Director.
I need a ream of paper & must write Mother, Frank Crowther, Aunt Sophie & Uncle William.
NOVEMBER 21
I have been in Denmark one month. Went to the Royal Hotel to the hairdresser; stopped by Feature Press & collected 75 Kr, had squid and antipasto with Frowsy at an Italian restaurant with fine music & service. Afterwards we came home & made coffee and I slept in my special new boots from Italy. Niels called at 11: 30 and Frowsy talked to him for a while. Then me. Niels got Kierkegaard out of the library instead of buying it. First steps toward rehabilitation? Then I lay on the sofa & Frowsy read me a bedtime story from a book called Deals with the Devil.76 We then went out on the terrace and looked at the moon with a frost ring encircling it. A train rattled back to Copenhagen and I went in the bathroom. When I came back, Frowsy had made my bed and my new boots were tucked in, too, the toes resting on the pillow. I had told him I always wanted to sleep with new shoes when I was a child.
NOVEMBER 23
Tonight at 6: 00 I simply sat down at the typewriter and wrote until 9: 30. It was painless and I enjoyed it. I wanted to go on into the night but I had to go to town to see Niels. I did ten pages—about twenty with a bigger typeface. Twenty more and “Roxanne” should be finished.77 Then comes the hard but happy part—the core of the book—NIELS. I want it to be about the size of a Sagan novel.78 I can finish it in two more weeks if there are no interruptions. Then comes the polishing when I retype it. For the first time, I am not scared. I was trying too hard before. I am not Virginia Woolf, not Durrell. My forte is understatement and non sequiturs. I notice that I am catching the language well in the writing.
Helsingør79 tomorrow. We are staying at the Prins Hamlet. I must pay close attention because this will be the center of the book.
NOVEMBER 25
Niels tonight: “Do you love me?”
“Yes, of course. Why?”
“I didn’t want to go to the trouble of meeting you tomorrow if you didn’t.”
NOVEMBER 27
Frowsy left a picture for me with my glasses on top. Hilarious. He just finished reading Sturgeon’s “Fluffy”80 to me aloud.
NOVEMBER 28
Today has been one of those days when no material comfort has been denied me—but at the same time a day in which I have actually suffered from self-doubt. I have recently become aware of the most unpleasant characteristic in myself. I allow myself to be dominated, stepped on, and made uncomfortable by people I really do not like. When they are doing it, I stand around looking restless and making all kinds of terrible faces so that they invariably ask, Are you sick?
Høiaas dominates me because I give in rather than risk criticism. Why? What does it matter?
I allow criticism to overwhelm me. For instance, worrying about the hotel desk clerks and grocers and landlords and selfish opportunists of the world.
I don’t need them.
Don’t I know by now the extent of my own assets? Why do I flinch when Lorraine tells me Palle thinks I am stupid? Don’t I know after at least twenty years of adulation in school, at home, at work, that I am intelligent? Can’t I keep up a memorable conversation with almost anyone I meet?
So I am not pretty—many people have, of course, told me I am, but I don’t believe them. I do know I have some kind of appeal—have had it, have attracted all kinds of men for ten years.
I am going to start keeping a list every day of
the number of things I do that I don’t want to do,
the times I get “taken.”
NOVEMBER 29
I am having mental troubles with the novel. Where is that plane where levity and soberness meet? What happens when I get to the “Christian” chapter?81 Remember the “walk, don’t run” episode.
“Don’t run ,” he commanded, annoyed. “You’re in Denmark. Not in America.”
The Dud Avocado82 —
Salinger83 —
It occurred to me, as I watched his face just after I told him I loved him, that I must get him to go to a really good photographer—the Karsh84 of Copenhagen—so that I could preserve that magnificent face, shadowed to its best advantage, in just the right frame on just the right piano in an apartment in America. I would be telling someone at home (Jackson perhaps) rather wistfully, “This is a boy I once loved in Denmark. He was the most beautiful man I ever knew.”
This. This duplicity was the kind of thing I was capable of.
DECEMBER 1
Mailed Christmas cards . . . Hobbled along with the novel and met Niels after he finished at the theater. He is completely contrary to my image of man. I can’t do a thing with him.
He bought me Durrell’s Dark Labyrinth.85
It will either inspire me or undo me.
DECEMBER 2
He said: “I’ve begun a novel inside. It should take five years to experience and a year to write. It will be my only justification for taking such a long holiday from myself.”
—DURRELL, DARK LABYRINTH
I am gradually learning to accept those days during which I feel no response to the love, questions, wishes, or intensities of others. I am completely detached and look upon all forms of human intercourse as somewhat of a nuisance. I don’t love. I don’t hate. Conversation trickles right out of my ears and I only wish they would all leave me in peace to read or to sleep, or simply to lie and think. I am beginning to like myself, and the number of hours during which I find myself acceptable is increasing.
Niels wrote a poem to me in German which said he would kill me if I left him. And yet, how relieved I was when he and Frowsy became occupied with the slingshot so I could read the very book in which he had written that dramatic poem.
DECEMBER 5
Some things are a little bit hard to take. Of course I have been sick, but I don’t think that is it. Of course I have hypnotized myself with really good science fiction for the last three days while I endured this cold. But all the enchantment of my novel is gone and it reads like a silly schoolgirl’s English composition. “My Summer Vacation.” It has no plot, no central thread. Could it be that I am mediocre?
Or do I just feel bad?
Or do I just need to keep groping without hope until I stumble upon it?
DECEMBER 7
Tonight I came in and found my bed occupied by a monkey wearing gloves and my brown shoes. I stifled a scream & giggled instead. Frowsy’s been reading horror stories again.
Read an excellent article on DURRELL in the Atlantic. Must save it.
DECEMBER 11
MONDAY
Slowly something is hardening inside. Pretty soon I will be indomitable. This weekend, being my “first anniversary,”86 was a horror to get through, but offered some pleasures, some enjoyments, and some enlightenment. Saturday morning Niels came. I went to meet him at
the station but he got the wrong train so I was halfway to the market when I saw that camel-colored coat bobbing up and down beside a København-bound train. The ticket collector had told him that his “fiancée” had just passed, headed for the town train. If I had not seen Niels in time, he would have boarded the train and gone back to town.
“Didn’t you know I wouldn’t take the train to town when I am expecting you from town?”
“I never know,” he said.
Such is that state of affairs. He—working day & night, not really trusting me; me—sleeping, eating, and playing day & night, not to be trusted.
We enjoyed a very proper breakfast with Høiaas & Gudrun, eating eggs bacon toast jam coffee milk & Tio Pepe dry. Niels wanted them to have it, I said no, fearing that it wasn’t done; he recoiled faithfully, then in a spurt of renewed individuality poured it into their glasses. So they enjoyed it, he retained his masculinity, what the hell?
I then washed the dishes and we retired to my room for a little furtive passion which left me quite cold (what with listening to Høiaas’s hacking cough in the next room and fearing he might walk in any minute).
Rode on the train to town with Niels, he piqued because I left early just to get a letter at American Express before it closed. We parted at Svanemollen amid much hand squeezing and I promised to call him. “Call me every night, ” he ordered. And so I didn’t call him at all.
(Even the old bastard’s cough is self-assertive. I will never feel sorry for him again, I feel sure.)
So I got my letter from B.87 —saved and savored it—and browsed in Boghallen until it was too late to mail my letter. I found out that Buddenbrooksis now out of print and bought Sturgeon’s Some of Your Blood88 instead.
By the time I got back to Klampenborg it was growing dark and windy and the ocean was as bleak as dirty mop-water. I came inside 425 Strandvej to find myself quite alone with “Papa,” who just could not see fit to leave me in peace. Making me coffee, bringing me old scarves which belonged to his wife. Finally I escaped in sleep at about 4: 00 p.m. and he, discouraged, went off with Gudrun for beers in Toorbeck. I was awakened once more when Gudrun called and INSISTED I have beers with them, offering to send a TAXI for me. (What is this fatal charm of mine?) After ten minutes of saying no I finally went back to bed. The phone rang once and I knew it was either Gaert or Hartley so I did not answer. The next time I woke it was Mr. H., who was calling me to the phone. “Fellow calls himself Mr. Heinrichson,” he said sourly. “I wormed his name out of him.” By this time I was mad. Dear soft-voiced Gaert with his throaty “HOW AH YOU?” He said perhaps we could go out and I said no and he said well, maybe I could come Sunday at noon and I said “Okay.” (Anything to get them off!) Then I hung up and saw the old tyrant dozing puckered up like an owl under his checked blanket and I knew I couldn’t stay in that silent, dominated house with the wind howling and nothing but SF to read. So I called Gaert back and told him I’d be there in an hour.
Funny thing: I can remember the reluctance, resignation, and weltschmertz I felt as I kicked on my clothes and swept out into the wind. I felt very put-upon, one of nature’s oppressed . . . Now I enjoy writing about it as a prelude to a very enjoyable weekend which got better by degrees, which started out BLAHHH and wound up fine.
Which always proves: When you least expect it . . .
DECEMBER 11
Saturday night was spent complaining to Gaert, socializing with two rather drab people, a middle-aged chess partner of Palle & one of his ex-girls. A pallid desperate blonde of about thirty with bad gums who teaches school. She hated me, all Palle’s girls do, because I simply do not care. Gaert & I walked clear across town to buy sandwiches in great fervor, only no one was hungry when we got back. Palle blithely shut everyone out and read Russian and I tried to entertain the weary guests who’d invited themselves.
On Sunday, G. wrapped me up and forced me to go for a walk. “PLEASE,” he said. “I never get to see daylight in the winter.” I remember at the beginning of that walk I just gazed up at the gray skies and let my arms hang at my side like sticks. I was feeling sorry for myself, and very fashionable to be having my very own Danish depression. Of course, it helped to have a strong hand holding me by the scruff of the neck. After he had taken me down by the canal (where I teetered on the edge, wishing I could fall in and scared to death I might) and by the old stone fishwife. And in front of ABSALOM on his rearing horse. By the time I had heard the tinkling message of the NICKOLAI chimes and G. had bought me a chunk of NOUGAT I felt better.
We then returned (Palle had left) and played Carnaval89 & Mozart and I was a real bitch. He finally said that my passivity irritated him and that made me mad, which was better than passivity.
Then we went to Det Lille Apotec90 and sat at a big overturned barrel by the window and had fried chicken & beer. I unwound. And his shock of blond hair became endearing. Indeed his whole aspect became angelic, his overbite puckish, his huge, veiny hands complex towers of strength. He told me his favorite animals were the penguin & the turtle and I told him mine was the cat. He said he figured that. Then he said that he liked many aspects of me.
I LIKE TO LOOK AT YOU
TALK TO YOU
DISCUSS WITH YOU
WATCH YOU MOVE
DECEMBER 15
JINGLE BELLS—
Read TW’s The Web & the Rock & Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and decided my forte is somewhere in the middle.91 I am in a bad slump. Come January, plans have got to be made. I will write Bev Miller January 1. Meanwhile, look for job here.
Sore throat again. Cold. Said Gaert: “All you can do is count them.”
Now into hibernation for a few days.
What’s with Niels? He didn’t call back the other night. Something ominous portends. There is something creepy about this still, quiet house. Høiaas is hacking away. I’m sorry, but I feel no sympathy anymore. Had a glug or gluk with the Fat Boy at Magasin du Nord.92 Rum, sweet vermouth, gin, raisins & almonds SCALDING. Mmmmm. I can’t help it. He looks so funny running for the train, coat buttoned tightly over fat belly, the homburg and the everlasting briefcase.
Gaert called yesterday at twelve, woke me up & asked me over. We spent a small fortune (rather I did) and were rewarded with succulent beef béarnaise, the excellent service of the manager of the Café de Paris (who looks like an assistant professor of political science at UNC, or a young, alert, shy-clever Miami Herald recruit bound for stardom), and a lovely warm sad red wine drunk. We all got drunk. Palle & his chess partner—who knew only one tune on his guitar—got drunk. Gaert— got drunk. And of course . . . I.
Only last night was a little off-tune. I remember lying there watching the candle flicker and looking at that terrible aqua & orange painting where Gaert tried to copy Van Gogh and, of all the stupid things, I thought of my twenty-nine-year-old cousin Jeannie sitting at the table in the den of her little house and drinking coffee with me, saying, “And I want to get a marble table for the living room . . . We have this couple who belongs to the same group we do and we play bridge at their house on Saturday night . . .” And then I thought of that special walk my mother & I used to take in the woods behind the house in Weaverville and before I knew it I was crying and listening to Carnaval and staring at a streetlight through tears.
Gaert didn’t say, What is it? What? What? Tell me. I want to help you.
He just touched me several times as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have a wine-tantrum. Then he carried me to bed and covered me up with the blue quilt.
Earlier, I asked him what he would wish if he only had one wish.
“But I usually get three.”
“No, this time it’s one.”
“Well, then I . . . I would wish to have the secret of the blue color,” he said. “And you?”
“I would simply wish to get it all down,” I said.
He calls his diary his night book. I think, aside from the hair, I like him because he croons little nothings to me i
n Danish and not English.
I bought one small cake of Balmain soap and squandered it in the tub.
Tomorrow, if I write, it will be the ERIC & MARTIN93 CHAPTER— complete with descriptions, etc.
DECEMBER 17
5: 30 A.M.
Oh strange day, full of much anger and talk with Frowsy and continued battle with Niels. I won somehow and with Frowsy’s help. I think that from now on I have a new tenderness for Niels.
When I saw Høiaas’s olive green shirt, the one he wears under the plaid vest, day after day, hanging by the radiator in the bathroom, I suddenly felt all the badness drain out of my heart as if, somewhere deep down & far away, someone had pulled out the plug.
I have been reading Of Time and the River.94 Tom, I too have the Faustian disease. And I thought I was alone. He thought the same things I thought.
And yet, people like Mr. Cole95 can stand in the kitchen and say between whiskey swigs: Old Tom, he was a little touched in the head. Drunker’n hell all the time.
I will not return yet.
I can stay here until the spring.
The idea of being a maid at Bellevue appeals to me.
Why is it?
More than being a journalist, even. That is so damn safe.
Part four
THE FATEFUL CALL
Copenhagen by Bus and Train to Málaga