The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood ; Youth ; Dependency

by Tove Ditlevsen

  We’re not members of the state church, and for that reason I’m going to have a civil confirmation. That separates me from all the girls in my class who go to a pastor, but it doesn’t matter much since I’ve given up on being like them. They take turns visiting each other on Saturdays when Victor Cornelius plays for the radio’s Saturday dances. Boys are invited then too and many of my classmates already have someone they’re going steady with. We don’t have a radio at home, and it’s no fun anymore to put on the headphones and listen to the crackling of the crystal set my brother made at school. And even if we had a radio, my parents wouldn’t have been inclined to give a Saturday dance in my honor. I’m taking exams now and I don’t care whether I get good or bad grades. Maybe I’m disappointed after all that I can’t go to high school. Only one of the girls in my class is allowed to. Her name is Inger Nørgård and she’s just as tall and lanky as I am. She never does anything except study and gets A’s in every subject. The others say that she’ll be an old maid – that’s why she’s going to continue in school. I’ve never really talked to her, no more than with anyone else in school. I have to keep everything to myself, and sometimes I think I’m about to suffocate. I’ve stopped going around on Istedgade in the evening with Ruth and Minna because more and more their conversations consist of nothing but giggling references and coarse, obscene things that can’t always be transformed into gentle, rhythmic lines in my increasingly sensitive soul. I only talk to my mother about very trivial things, about what we eat, or about the people who live downstairs. My father has grown very quiet since Edvin moved away, and for him I’m just someone who should ‘make a good start’, with all the terrible events he imagines with that expression. One day when I’m visiting my brother, he says to my astonishment that his friend Thorvald would like to meet me. He’s told Thorvald that I write poems, and he asks if Thorvald may read them. Horrified, I say no, but then my brother says that Thorvald knows an editor at Social-Demokraten who might possibly print my poems if they’re good. He says this in between fits of coughing because he can’t tolerate the cellulose lacquer he works with. Finally I give in and promise to come over with my poetry book the next evening, then Thorvald will look at my poems. Thorvald is also a journeyman painter, eighteen years old, and not engaged. The latter I verify since I’ve already started dreaming about him as the kind young man who, almost without a word, will understand everything.

  With my poetry album in my school bag, I walk over to Bagerstræde the next evening. I look firmly at the people I meet because soon I’ll be famous, and then they’ll be proud that they met me on my way to the stars. I’m terribly afraid that Thorvald will laugh at my poetry as Edvin did long ago. I imagine that he looks like my brother, except he has a thin black mustache. When I enter Edvin’s room, Thorvald is sitting on the bed next to my brother. He stands up and puts out his hand. He is little and solid. His hair is blond and coarse and his face is covered with pimples in all states of ripeness. He is visibly shy and the whole time he runs his hand through his hair so that it stands straight up in the air. I stare at him horrified because I think that I can’t possibly show him my poems. ‘This is my sister,’ says Edvin completely superfluously. ‘She’s damn pretty,’ says Thorvald, twisting his hair in his fingers. I think it’s very kind of him to say that, and I smile at him as I sit down on the room’s only chair. You shouldn’t be swayed by people’s appearance, I think, and maybe he really thinks I’m pretty. At any rate, he’s the first person who’s ever said that. I take the book out of my bag and hold it in my hands for a while. I’m so afraid that this influential person will think the poems are bad. I don’t know whether they’re any good at all. ‘Give it to him now,’ says my brother impatiently, and I hand it to him reluctantly. As he pages through it and reads with a serious, furrowed brow, I feel as if I’m in a completely different state of existence. I’m excited and moved and scared and it’s as if the book is a trembling, living part of myself that can be destroyed with a single harsh or insulting word. Thorvald reads in silence and there’s not a smile on his face. Finally he shuts the book, gives me an admiring look with his pale blue eyes and says emphatically, ‘They’re damn good!’ Thorvald’s language reminds me of Ruth’s. She can hardly form a sentence, either, without embellishing it with some seldom-varying swear word. But you shouldn’t judge a person by that, and at the moment I think Thorvald looks both wise and handsome. ‘Do you really think so?’ I ask happily. ‘God damn, yes,’ he avows. ‘You can easily sell them.’ His father is a printer, Edvin explains, and he knows all the editors. ‘Yes,’ says Thorvald with pride, ‘I’ll take care of it, by God. Just let me take the book home and I’ll show it to the old man.’ ‘No,’ I say quickly, and grab for the book. ‘I … I want to go there myself and show it to this editor. You just need to tell me where he lives.’ ‘All right,’ says Thorvald amenably. ‘I’ll tell Edvin and then he can explain it to you.’ I pack the book away in my school bag again and am in a hurry to get home. I want to be alone to dream about my happiness. Now it doesn’t matter about confirmation, it doesn’t matter about growing up and going out among strangers, it doesn’t matter about anything except the wonderful prospect of having just one poem printed in the newspaper.

  Thorvald and Edvin keep their word, and a couple of days later I have a note in my hand on which it says: ‘Editor Brochmann, Sunday Magazine, Social-Demokraten, Nørre Farimagsgade 49, Tuesday, two o’clock.’ I put on my Sunday clothes, rub my mother’s pink tissue paper across my cheeks, make her think that I’m going to take care of Olga’s baby, and stroll out to Nørre Farimagsgade. I find the door in the big building with the editor’s name on a sign and knock cautiously. ‘Come in’ sounds from the other side. I step into an office where an old man with a white beard is sitting at a big, cluttered desk. ‘Sit down,’ he says very kindly and motions toward a chair. I sit down and am gripped by an intense shyness. ‘Well,’ he says, taking off his glasses, ‘what do you want?’ Since I’m unable to utter a word, I can’t think of what else to do except hand him the by now rather grubby little book. ‘What’s this?’ He leafs through it and reads a couple of the poems half aloud. Then he looks at me over his glasses: ‘They’re very sensual, aren’t they?’ he says, astonished. I turn bright red in the face and say quickly, ‘Not all of them.’ He reads on and then says: ‘No, but the sensual ones are the best, by God. How old are you?’ ‘Fourteen,’ I say. ‘Hmm…’ Irresolutely he strokes his beard. ‘I only edit the children’s page, you know, and we can’t use these. Come back in a couple of years.’ He snaps shut my poor book and hands it to me, smiling. ‘Goodbye, my dear,’ he says. Somehow or other I edge myself out the door with all my crushed hopes. Slowly, numbed, I walk through the city’s spring, the others’ spring, the others’ joyous transformation, the others’ happiness. I’ll never be famous, my poems are worthless. I’ll marry a stable skilled worker who doesn’t drink, or get a steady job with a pension. After that deadly disappointment, a long time passes before I write in my poetry album again. Even though no one else cares for my poems, I have to write them because it dulls the sorrow and longing in my heart.

  18

  During the preparations for my confirmation, the big question is whether The Hollow Leg will be invited. He has never visited us before, but now all of a sudden he’s stopped drinking. He sits the whole day drinking just as many bottles of soda pop as he used to drink beers. My mother and father say it’s a great joy for Aunt Rosalia. But she doesn’t look happy, because the man is completely yellow in the face from a bad liver and apparently doesn’t have long to live. The family thinks that’s to her advantage, too. Now I’m allowed to visit them and it’s no longer necessary to protect me from seeing and hearing anything that’s not good for me. But Uncle Carl hasn’t changed at all. He still mumbles gruffly and inarticulately down at the table about the rotten society and the incompetent government ministers. At intervals he issues short, telegraphic orders to Aunt Rosalia, who obeys his slightest gest
ure as she always has. The soda pop bottles are lined up in front of him and it’s incomprehensible that any person is capable of consuming so much liquid. I wonder at my parents. When you go down into the basement for coal, you usually fall over some drunk who’s sleeping it off wrapped up in the ruins of an overcoat, and on the street, drunken men are such an everyday sight that no one bothers to turn around to look at them. Almost every evening, a bunch of men stand in the doorway drinking beer and schnapps, and it’s only the very young children who are afraid of them. But throughout our whole childhood, we weren’t allowed to see Uncle Carl, even though it would have pleased Aunt Rosalia beyond words. After long discussions between my mother and father and between my mother and Aunt Agnete, it’s decided that he will be invited to my confirmation. So the whole family will be there except for my four cousins, since there’s just not room for them in the living room. My mother is in a good mood because of the big event, and she says I’m ungrateful and odd because I can’t hide that I think all of the preparations have nothing to do with me.

  The exams are over and we’ve had the graduation party at school. Everyone cheered now that they were leaving the ‘red prison’, and I cheered loudest of all. It bothers me a lot that I don’t seem to own any real feelings anymore, but always have to pretend that I do by copying other people’s reactions. It’s as if I’m only moved by things that come to me indirectly. I can cry when I see a picture in the newspaper of an unfortunate family that’s been evicted, but when I see the same ordinary sight in reality, it doesn’t touch me. I’m moved by poetry and lyrical prose, now as always – but the things that are described leave me completely cold. I don’t think very much of reality. When I said goodbye to Miss Mathiassen, she asked me whether I’d found a position. I said yes, and chattered on with false cheerfulness about how I was going to home economics school in a year and until then I had an au pair job at a woman’s home where I would take care of her child. All of the others were going to work in offices or stores and I was ashamed that I was only going to be a mother’s helper. Miss Mathiassen looked at me searchingly with her wise, kind eyes. ‘Well, well,’ she sighed, ‘it’s a shame though that you couldn’t go to high school.’ As soon as my confirmation is over, I’m going to start my job. I went there with my mother to apply for it. The woman was divorced and treated us with cool condescension. She didn’t look as if she would be interested in discovering I wrote poetry and just had to pass the time until I could go back to Editor Brochmann at Social-Demokraten in a couple of years. It wasn’t very elegant in the apartment, either, even though there was of course a grand piano and carpets on the floor. She’s at work during the day and in the meantime I’m supposed to clean, cook, and take care of the boy. I haven’t done any of these things before, and I don’t know how I’m going to be worth the twenty-five kroner I’m supposed to earn every month. Behind me is my childhood and school, and before me an unknown and dreaded life among strangers. I’m closed in and caught between these two poles, the way my feet are squeezed down into the long, pointed brocade shoes. I sit in the Odd Fellows Hall between my parents and listen to a speech about youth as the future all of Denmark is counting on, and about how we must never disappoint our parents who have done so much for us. All of the girls are sitting with a bouquet of carnations in their laps just like me, and they look as though they’re just as bored. My father is tugging at his stiff collar and Edvin is suffering from fits of coughing. The doctor said he should change jobs, but that’s impossible, of course, after he’s been through four years of training to become a journeyman painter. My mother is wearing a new black silk dress with three cloth roses at the neck, and her newly permed hair frizzes around her head. She had to fight to have it done, partly because my father didn’t think they could afford it, and partly because he thinks it’s ‘new-fangled’ and ‘loose’. I liked her hair better when it was long and smooth. Now and then she puts her handkerchief up to her eyes, but I don’t know whether she’s really crying. I can’t see any reason for it. I think about the fact that once the most important thing in the world was whether my mother liked me; but the child who yearned so deeply for that love and always had to search for any sign of it doesn’t exist anymore. Now I think that my mother cares for me, but it doesn’t make me happy.

  We have pork roast and lemon mousse for dinner, and my mother, who gets angry and irritable at any domestic effort, doesn’t relax until it’s time for dessert. Uncle Carl is seated next to the stove and he sweats so much he has to constantly wipe his bald, round head with his handkerchief. At the other end of the table sits Uncle Peter, who is a carpenter and represents the cultured branch of the family along with Aunt Agnete, who sang in the church choir as a child. She has written a song for me because she has a ‘vein’ that flows on all such occasions. It deals with various uninteresting events of my childhood and each verse ends like this: ‘God be with you on your way, fa-la-la, then luck and happiness will always follow you, fa-la-la.’ When we sing the refrain, Edvin looks at me with laughter in his eyes, and I hurriedly look at the printed words of the song in order not to smile. Then Uncle Peter taps his glass and stands up. He’s going to make a speech. It’s like the one at the Odd Fellows Hall, and I only listen with half an ear. It’s something about stepping into the adult ranks and being hardworking and clever like my parents. It’s a little too long. Uncle Carl says, ‘Hear, hear!’ every second, as if he’d been drinking wine, and Edvin coughs. My mother has shining eyes and I cringe with discomfort and boredom. When he’s done and everyone has said ‘Hurrah’, Aunt Rosalia says softly as she envelops me with her warm glance, ‘The adult ranks – Good Lord! She’s neither fish nor fowl.’ I can feel my lips quiver and quickly look down at my plate. That’s the most loving and maybe also the truest thing that is said at my confirmation. After dinner everyone can finally stretch their legs, and they all seem to be in a better mood than when they arrived, maybe also because of the wine. They admire the little wristwatch that I got from my parents. I like it too, and think that it makes my thin wrist look a little more substantial. I got money from the others, more than fifty kroner, but it’s to be put in the bank for my old age, so that doesn’t excite me much.

  After the guests have left and I’ve helped my mother clean up, we sit together at the table and talk for a while. Even though it’s past midnight, I’m wide awake and very relieved that my party is over. ‘God, how he stuffed himself,’ says my mother, meaning Uncle Peter. ‘Did you see that?’ ‘Yes,’ says my father indignantly, ‘and drank! When it’s free he can really put it away.’ ‘And he pretended that Carl wasn’t even there,’ continues my mother. ‘I felt bad for Rosalia.’ Suddenly she smiles at me and says, ‘Wasn’t it a lovely day, Tove?’ I think about how much trouble and expense this has cost them. ‘Oh yes,’ I lie, ‘it was a good confirmation.’ My mother nods in agreement and yawns. Then she’s struck by an idea. ‘Ditlev,’ she says with a happy voice, ‘since Tove is going to be earning money now, can’t we afford to buy a radio?’ The blood rushes to my head with fright and rage. ‘You’re not going to buy a radio with my money,’ I say hotly. ‘I have plenty of use for it myself.’ ‘I see,’ says my mother, cold as ice, getting up and stomping out the door, which she slams after her so that the plaster clatters down from the wall. My father looks at me, embarrassed. ‘Don’t take it so literally,’ he explains. ‘We have a little in the bank – we can use that to buy a radio. You just have to pay for your room and board here at home.’ ‘Yes,’ I say, regretting my temper. Now my mother won’t speak to me for days, I know. My father says good night kindly and goes into the bedroom, where I’ll never again sit on the windowsill and dream about all the happiness that’s only attainable by grown-up people.

  I’m alone in my childhood’s living room where my brother once sat and pounded nails into a board while my mother sang and my father read the forbidden book I haven’t seen for years. It’s all centuries ago and I think that I was very happy then, in spite of my painful feel
ing of childhood’s endlessness. On the wall hangs the sailor’s wife staring out to sea. Stauning’s serious face looks down at me, and it’s a long time since my God was created in his image. Although I’m going to be sleeping at home, I feel like I’m saying goodbye to the room tonight. I have no desire to go to bed, and I’m not sleepy, either. I’m seized by a vast sadness. I move the geraniums on the windowsill and look up at the sky where an infant star shines in the bottom of the new moon’s cradle, which rocks gently and quietly between the shifting clouds. I repeat to myself some lines from Johannes V. Jensen’s Bræen, which I’ve read so often that I know long passages by heart. ‘And now like the evening star, then like the morning star shines the little girl who was killed at her mother’s breast; white and self-absorbed like a child’s soul that wanders alone and plays so well by itself on endless roads.’ Tears run down my cheeks because the words always make me think of Ruth, whom I’ve lost for good. Ruth with the fine, heart-shaped mouth and the strong, clear eyes. My little lost friend with the sharp tongue and the loving heart. Our friendship is over just as my childhood is. Now the last remnants fall away from me like flakes of sun-scorched skin, and beneath looms an awkward, an impossible adult. I read in my poetry album while the night wanders past the window – and, unawares, my childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.