The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood ; Youth ; Dependency

by Tove Ditlevsen

  After I lived in the boarding house for a month, Piet visited me one afternoon. He seemed excited and a bit nervous. He didn’t kiss me as usual, but he sat down, drumming lightly on the floor with the silver-handled walking cane that he had picked up recently. There is something I have to tell you, he says, looking at me askance with his raisin eyes. He hangs the cane on the back of the chair and wrings his hands, as if he’s cold or is relishing something. He says, I’m sure you’ll take this on the chin, won’t you? I promise to take it on the chin, but his entire manner frightens me. In this moment he seems like a complete stranger who has never held me in his arms. Quickly he continues, I met a young woman recently, very pretty, very rich. We fell in love immediately, and now she’s invited me over to Jylland – to a mansion. It’s in her family. I’m leaving tomorrow; I hope you’re not upset.

  I feel dizzy – what about my rent and what about my future? No tears, he says, opening his hands in an authoritative motion. For God’s sake, take it with a stiff upper lip. We’re under no obligation here, right? I’m unable to answer, but it feels as if the walls are starting to lean in, and I want to hold them back. My heart is pounding violently like it did back when I felt sick with Viggo F. Before I can say or do anything, Piet is out the door again, so fast it’s as if he left through the wall. Then the tears come. I lie down on the divan, sobbing into the pillow, thinking about Nadja and how I should have listened to her warnings. It’s hard to stop crying, so maybe that means I was in love with him after all.

  Then there’s a knock on the door and Nadja walks in, wearing a dingy trench coat over long pants. She sits down calmly on the divan and strokes my hair. Piet asked me to look in on you, she says. Stop crying; he’s not worth it. I dry my eyes and stand up. You’re right, I say. It was exactly like he did to you. And the chin? she asks, laughing. Were you supposed to take it on the chin? I laugh too, and the world gets a bit brighter. Yes, I say, with a stiff upper lip. He’s so funny. Yes he is, admits Nadja, and there’s something about him that girls fall for, but then afterwards they have no idea what it was. Afterwards all you can do is laugh at him. She sits there with a pensive look on her benevolent face with its heavy Slavic features. He writes good letters, she says. I’ve saved all of them. Did he write to you too? Oh yes, I say, walking to the dresser. I take out a whole bundle of letters that I’ve tied up with a red bow. Let me see them, says Nadja, if you don’t mind? I give them to her, and she reads a couple of lines of the first one and immediately throws her head back and starts laughing, so she can hardly stop. Oh God, she says, reading: Dear Kitten, You are the only girl I could ever think of marrying. That is so insane, she says, gasping for air, that is exactly the same thing he wrote to me. She reads some more and realizes that it is word for word the same letter she has at home. You know what, she says, he must have them duplicated someplace. Heaven knows how many Kittens he has, spread around the country. When he leaves that mansion woman, he’ll send you there to comfort her. I get serious again and explain to Nadja that I can’t stay living here, because it’s too expensive, and I’m flat broke. Then she suggests, just like Piet, that I try and sell my poems, because she thinks it would be too sad if I had to work in an office again. Go over to the Red Evening Post, she says. Piet sold them a ton of poems, all the ones the Politiken didn’t want. You have to live by the pen now. All that about being taken care of is nonsense. That must be something you were brought up with.

  The next day I visit the editor’s office with three poems. I’m shown in to the editor, an old man with a long white beard. While he reads the poems, he pats me on the behind, absent-mindedly and mechanically. Then he says, These are good. You can go out to accounting and withdraw thirty kroner. After that I sell poems to the Politiken’s magazine and to Hjemmet, and I write a column for Ekstra Bladet about the Young Artists Club. So I’m able to stay in the boarding house. Through Ester I learn that Viggo F. is missing me terribly, and that she has to sit and talk with him for hours every night before he goes to bed. I ask her to ask him if he wants to see me, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even want her to mention me. I miss him more than I miss Piet Hein, and apart from the sporadic visits by my friends from the club, I never see anyone.

  One evening Nadja comes over, dressed, as usual, as if she had just escaped a burning house. You need a circle of friends, she says. You’re so alone in the world. I know some young people, out by the south harbor, who would love to meet you. They’re all students at Høng Business School, and on Saturday they’re having a party. Won’t you come? The most charming of them is the dean’s son. His name is Ebbe, and he looks just like Leslie Howard. He’s twenty-five, and he’s studying economics, when he’s not drinking. I used to be totally infatuated with him, but he never knew it. He’s attracted to poetic, blonde, long-haired girls like you. Now listen to me, I say, you’re acting like a matchmaker or something. I’ll come on Saturday, because you’re right, I do need to get out with other young people who aren’t artists. I happily prepare my divan, and I go to bed with a faint yearning in my heart to be lying with someone’s arm around me. I think about this Ebbe fellow before I fall asleep. I wonder what he looks like? Would he really fall for someone like me? The streetcars roll by, whining through the night, as if they were driving across my living room. People are sitting inside them, going out to have fun, completely normal people, who want to place glorious events between the evening and the morning, when they have to get up early for work. Apart from my writing I’m completely normal too, dreaming about a normal young man, who is attracted to blonde, long-haired girls.

  5

  On the way out to the south harbor, Nadja tells me a little about ‘The Lantern Club’, as they call themselves, no one knows why. It’s made up of students who have come to Copenhagen to get their degrees from Høng Business School, but they don’t do much other than hold parties, get drunk, and lie around with hangovers. We’re riding our bicycles into the wind; it’s rainy and cold. I’m dressed up as a little girl, with a short dress, a bow in my hair, knee socks and flats. I have a wool sweater over my dress, and over that a trench coat just like Nadja’s, with a red scarf around my neck with the ends trailing behind me. That’s supposed to be in fashion this year. Nadja is dressed as an Apache girl, and her long black silk pants flap against the bike chain guard with loud smacks. She tells me this group is very freethinking. They’re all dirt poor and only get a little money from home. The party will be at Ole and Lise’s, who are married with an infant. Ole is going to be an architect, and Lise works in an office, while her mother, who is a widow and lives next door to them, watches the baby. They live off mushrooms from the landfill, she says, which is nearby. She also says that it’s a potluck dinner, but that girls don’t have to bring anything. They don’t let any new men into the group, she says, but they always need girls. When we arrive, everyone is sitting around a table in a long bright room with fine old furniture. They’re eating open-faced rye-bread sandwiches – most of them topped with ramona, a kind of carrot mixture with a poisonous color. They are also drinking pullimut, because that is the only alcohol anyone can get. The mood is already pretty high, and everyone is talking at the same time. I say hello to Lise, a pretty, thin girl with a madonna-like face. She welcomes me and then they sing an invented song with unintelligible references to everyone there. Ole stands up and delivers a speech. He has a flat, dark, immense face with two deep furrows from his nose to his mouth, which make him look much older than he is. He is constantly pulling up his pants, as if they were too big for him, and he isn’t dressed up like the rest of us. He says he’s proud to have a writer in the house, and he says he’s sorry that Ebbe is at home with his mother, nursing a fever of 39°C. He just caught the flu. Then the table is moved to the side, and Nadja and Lise carry out the dishes. The record player is turned on, and we start dancing. I dance with Ole, who stoops over me, pulls up his pants, gives a shy laugh and says that he’ll go over and get Ebbe. Ebbe lives across the street, and Ole says th
at Ebbe has been looking forward to meeting me. He says that a little fever won’t stand in the way. Then he and another guy go out into the night to bring back Ebbe. The mood is quite loose; everyone is a bit drunk. Lise comes over and asks if I want to see the baby, and we go into the baby’s room. It’s a six-month-old boy, and I feel a pang of jealousy when she starts nursing him. She’s no older than I am, and I feel like I’ve been wasting my time, since I don’t have a baby too. The little boy has a slight shadowed hollow in the back of his neck, just under his hairline. It pulses rhythmically as he drinks. Suddenly the door opens; it’s Ole, standing there pulling on his curly black hair. Ebbe’s here, he says. Tove, don’t you want to say hello? I go with Ole into the living room, where the noise is tremendous. A cover from a record is hanging from the chandelier, and streamers of all different colors are intertwined between the furniture and dangling from the shoulders and hair of the people dancing. Standing in the center there’s a young man wearing a blue robe over striped pajamas, and a gigantic scarf is wrapped several times around his neck. This is Ebbe, says Ole proudly, and I shake Ebbe’s hand, which is sweaty with fever. He has a drawn, gentle face with fine features, and I get a strong feeling that he is the leader of their clique. Welcome to the Lantern Club, he says. I hope—Then he looks around with a helpless expression and loses his train of thought. Ole claps him on the back. Don’t you want to dance with Tove? he asks. Ebbe looks at me for a second with his slanted eyes. Then he extends his palm and says quietly: Die Sternen, begehrt Mann nicht.1 Bravo, exclaims Ole, no one else in the world could have thought of saying that. Ebbe dances with me anyway. His hot cheek finds mine and our steps get a bit unsteady. Then the others suddenly gather around him, hand him a glass, pull on his robe, and ask about his health. Another guy dances with me, and for a moment I lose sight of Ebbe. The gramophone is blasting, and Ole is sitting in the corner with his ear pressed to a homemade speaker, listening to the BBC broadcast. Now everyone is drunk, and a lot of them are sick. Nadja grabs them one by one, leads them to the toilet and holds their heads while they throw up. She loves doing that, says Lise, laughing. Lise is dressed as Columbine, and you can see her large plump breasts beneath all the ruffles. I wonder if it’s true that you get a nice bust from nursing, and I dance with Ebbe again, who desires the stars after all, because he suggests that we take a break in another room. We lie down on a bed and he takes me in his arms, as if that is something they just do in this group, with no lead-in maneuvers of any kind. I feel happy and loved for the first time in my life. I stroke his thick brown hair, which curls at his neck, and I look into his strange, slanted eyes, which have brown dots in the blue. He says it’s because his mother has brown eyes, and that always comes through in one way or another. He asks if he can come visit me at my boarding house, and I say yes. He reaches down on the floor for a bottle he brought in with us, and we both take a drink from it. Then we fall asleep. Early in the morning I wake up and I don’t know where I am. Ebbe is still sleeping, and his short, turned-up eyelashes brush lightly against the pillowcase. Suddenly I see another couple in a child’s bed by the other wall. They’re sleeping in one another’s arms and I don’t recognize them from the night before. A motley pile of dress-up clothing is lying on the floor. I get up carefully and walk into the living room, which resembles a battlefield. Nadja is already cleaning up, wiping up vomit in the corners. She looks cheerful. That damned pullimut, she says. No one can take it. Isn’t he sweet – Ebbe – completely different than that creep Piet. In the baby’s room, Lise is sitting, nursing. Watch out for Ebbe, she says smiling, looking up at me. He’s a heartbreaker.

  I put on my trench coat, tie the red scarf around my neck, and walk in to say goodbye to Ebbe. Oh God, my head, he moans. As soon as I get over this flu I’ll come and visit you. Are you a little bit crazy about me? I say yes, and he apologizes for not walking me out. I can see he’s flushed with fever and I say that’s perfectly all right. Then I ride my bike home alone. It’s not quite daylight yet. The birds are chirping as if it were spring, and I’m thinking, happily, that a college student is in love with me. I have a funny feeling that it might last a lifetime.

  When Ebbe is over the flu, he starts coming to visit me every evening, and I neglect the club meetings, because I don’t want to miss him. He never stays overnight, because he’s afraid of his mother. She’s the widow of the college dean. Ebbe has an older brother who also lives at home and can’t bring himself to move out, even though he’s twenty-eight. When Ebbe leaves, he winds his long scarf so many times around his neck that it reaches all the way up to his nose, because we’re having a bitterly cold winter. I get wool in my mouth when he kisses me goodbye.

  I start visiting Lise and Ole quite frequently, and I visit Ebbe’s mother too. She is little and old, and she describes everything as if it were a problem. Now that my husband is dead, she says, I only have my two boys. She looks at me with her vibrant black eyes, apparently afraid that I am going to take one of the boys away from her. Ebbe’s brother’s name is Karsten. He’s studying to be an engineer and he’s always speculating about how he’s going to tell his mother that he wants to move out, but he doesn’t have the courage. Ebbe’s mother is the daughter of a Lutheran priest and she asks me if I believe in God. When I say no, she looks at me sadly and says: Ebbe doesn’t either. I hope you both will turn your souls toward the Lord. Ebbe looks embarrassed when she says things like that.

  When Ebbe and I go to bed he never uses protection. I’ve told him that I want to have a baby, and that I’ll take care of it. Every month I put a red cross on my calendar, but time passes and nothing happens. Then my novel comes out, and the next morning my landlord comes running in with the Politiken. You’re in the paper today, she says, panting. Something about a book. Read it. I open up the paper and I can’t believe my eyes. In the most prominent position in the newspaper, next to the ‘Day to Day’ column, Frederik Schyberg has a review across two columns. The title reads: ‘Refined Innocence’. It’s an effusive review, and I am giddy with joy. Soon afterwards a telegram arrives from Morten. It reads: Thank goodness for Schyberg and the real genius. Later in the day Morten comes by in person, and while we drink coffee he says that rumors are flying at the club. People are saying I used Viggo F. for a while and then dumped him when I could take care of myself. I tell Morten there is something to that, but it still makes me feel bad, because it’s not the whole truth. The next day there’s a grook about me in the Politiken. It reads:

  I do not swing my poet’s hat

  for just any Tove this or that

  but I am thoroughly charmed

  An undebatable debut

  and such great prospects in view

  that I’m afraid a child was harmed.

  Evidently he still thinks about his Kitten. But he married his mansion woman and he never comes to the club anymore.

  Suddenly, nothing else matters, because I’m a few days late. I discuss it with Lise, who tells me to go to the doctor with a urine sample and have it tested. The doctor promises to call when the results come in, and over the following days I hardly leave the telephone. Finally he calls and tells me in a totally normal voice: the result was positive. I’m going to have a baby. I can hardly believe it. A tiny clump of mucus inside me is going to expand and grow every day, until I get fat and shapeless like Rapunzel was when I was a child. Ebbe isn’t nearly as happy as I am. We have to get married, he says, and I’d better tell my mother. I ask if he has anything against us getting married and he says, No, it’s just that we’re so young and we have no place to live. He gets a helpless look in his eyes at the thought of all the things to consider, and I kiss his fine, delicate mouth. I feel like I have enough strength for all three of us. Then I realize that I’m not even divorced yet, and I write a nice letter to Viggo F. asking him for a divorce since I’m pregnant. Offended, he writes back: I only have one thing to say: Good grief! Go to a lawyer and get it done, and the sooner the better. When I show the letter to Ebbe, he
says: He’s ridiculous. What did you ever see in him?

  In the following weeks, Ebbe is often drunk when he comes to visit me. He unwinds his scarf with stiff movements, and his tongue wags nonsensically when he tries to say something. I’m no good, he says. You deserve someone better. I haven’t told my mother yet. Finally he pulls himself together and tells her. She cries as if it were a disaster and says that now she has nothing to live for. Lise says that Ebbe can’t bear tears or reproaches. She says that he’s a good but weak person, and that I’m the one who will have to call the shots in our marriage. Even though I don’t do anything about it, I don’t like hearing that. And besides, I have morning sickness and I throw up every morning. Nadja visits me and says things even more directly. Ebbe is a lush, she says, and he doesn’t do a thing. He is terribly sweet, but I’m afraid you’re going to be providing for him.

  6

  We move into a room at Ebbe’s mother’s house until the divorce is finalized, because we want to be together all the time. Ebbe spends the mornings at the State Pricing Advisory, where a lot of students kill time and earn a little pocket money. He sits with another economics student named Victor. Ebbe has as many friends as there are stars in the sky, and I will never meet all of them. When he and Victor arrive at work in the morning, they sing the psalm of the day from a hymnal booklet which they then use to roll their cigarettes. Finding tobacco is very difficult, and sometimes they roll their cigarettes with ersatz tea. Meanwhile, I’m writing my next novel. I have recently submitted the manuscript of a poetry collection called Little World. Ebbe thought of the title. He’s quite interested in my work. He wanted to get a degree in literature, but his father, who died two years ago, said that that was a peasant’s fantasy. So now he’s studying economics, which doesn’t interest him in the least. But he loves literature, and he’s always reading novels when we’re not talking together. He introduces me to books that I never knew existed. And every afternoon when he returns from work, he wants to see what I’ve written. If he critiques it, there’s always substance to his advice, and I follow it. I don’t see my family much these days. My brother has moved in with a divorced woman who has a three-year-old child. Ebbe and I visited them, but he and Ebbe don’t have much in common. Ebbe is an upper-class young man from the suburbs, and Edvin is a Copenhagen painter’s helper, who breathes cellulose lacquer into his damaged lungs every day because he has no other choice. My parents’ world is also very remote from Ebbe’s. Ebbe talks with my father about books, and with my mother about me, just like Viggo F. used to do. But there’s nothing condescending in Ebbe’s attitude to them. After we’ve finished eating dinner with his mother and Karsten, we lie on the bed in our room, talking about the future, about the baby we are going to have, about life, and about our past before we knew one another. Ebbe loves questions that have no definitive answer. For example, he has a theory of why Negroes are black, and another one about why Jews have hooked noses. Once he propped himself up on his elbow and stared at me with an expression of moral intensity. I’m thinking, he said solemnly, about joining the underground resistance. It’s not looking so good after the fall of France. I say that he can leave that to people who don’t have a wife and child to think of. He seems to forget about the idea. I feel good these days: I’m going to get married, I’m going to have a baby, I’m in love with a young man, and soon we’re going to have our own home. I tell Ebbe that I’ll never leave him, and that I can’t stand it when life gets so complicated, like it’s been recently. He lifts my chin and kisses me. It could be, he says, that if you’re complicated, your life gets to be like that too.