The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood ; Youth ; Dependency

by Tove Ditlevsen

  When I get home, Ebbe tells me that he’s contacted the resistance and he’s going to be trained as a freedom fighter, to prepare for the day when the Germans capitulate and pull out of the country. No one thinks it will happen without a fight. No one thinks they’re going to win either, not after their defeat at Stalingrad. I could not care less, I tell him irritably, if you want to play soldier; I have other things to deal with. Ebbe says he isn’t so crazy about the idea of getting rid of the baby. People can die from that, he says, and in any case he won’t help me find a doctor to do it. I can’t be bothered to talk to him. He doesn’t understand. I don’t know what I ever saw in him.

  The next day I begin my doctor odyssey. I can only do a couple of visits a day, because they all have consultations at the same times. I sit across from these white coats in my worn-out trench coat with my red scarf around my neck. They look at me coldly and in disbelief: Who in the world took it upon themselves to give you my address? Dear woman, there are women who are much worse off than you. You’re married and you only have one child. One of them says, You don’t want me to commit a crime, do you? There’s the door.

  I return home, miserable and humbled. I pick up Helle from Ebbe’s mother’s house and I nurse her, without paying her any attention. I put her in bed, and then pick her up again. The telephone rings and a voice says, Hello, this is Hjalmar, is Ebbe home? I hand Ebbe the phone, and he answers with one-syllable words. Then he puts on the coat he inherited from his father with the silly strap in the back. He slips on his high rubber boots because it’s raining and a cap that he otherwise never wears, pulled down over his forehead. Under his arm he is holding a briefcase uncomfortably, as if it were filled with dynamite. His face is pale. Do I look suspicious? he says. No, I say flatly, though even a child would think there was something fishy about him from miles away. After he leaves, I scan the telephone book some more, page after page. But finding an abortion doctor this way is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and I give up after a couple of days. I realize I’m in a race against time, because I know no one will do it if I’m more than three months pregnant. It’s not easy to see Lise in the evening, because she’s with her lawyer after work, and she doesn’t think we should ask Ole, because he has the same attitude as Ebbe. Men seem to be excluded from my world right now. They’re foreign creatures, it’s as if they came from another planet. They’re not in touch with their bodies. They don’t have any tender, soft organs where a blob of slime can attach itself like a tumor and, completely independent of their volition, start living its own life. One evening I go to visit Nadja’s father and ask where she and her sailor live. It’s a basement apartment in Østerbro, and I go right over there. They’re sitting eating, and Nadja kindly asks if I will join them. But the smell of food makes me nauseous, and I can hardly eat anything these days. Nadja has had her hair cut, and she’s affected a swinging gait, as if she were on the deck of a ship. The sailor’s name is Einar, and he repeats the same phrases again and again: That’s right, that’s the way to do it, etc. Nadja talks like that too. When she finds out why I came by, she says that she can get me some quinine pills. She used them for a miscarriage herself once. But it could take a couple of days to work, she says. It’s not that easy. But I know where you’re coming from, she says. You hate the thought of it growing eyes and fingers and toes and you can’t do anything about it. You stare at other children and you don’t see any redeeming qualities in them. You can’t think of anything but being alone in your own body again.

  Slightly relieved, I tell Lise that Nadja has promised to get me some quinine pills, but Lise isn’t so enthusiastic. She says, I’ve heard that some people go blind and deaf from those. I say that I don’t care, as long as I get rid of this.

  Finally, the young woman we had been waiting for comes back to work at the office, and Lise gets the address of the doctor who helped her. For the first time in a long time I feel happy, walking home with the note in my hand. The man’s name is Lauritzen and he lives on Vesterbro Street. People call him ‘Abortion-Lauritz’, so it must be right. I can look at Helle and Ebbe again. I put Helle on my lap and play with her, and I say to Ebbe: When you go out and meet Hjalmar, don’t wear a cap and you should hold that briefcase as if it had books inside. You are so bad at that. But he calms me down by saying that he’s not going to be taking part in any sabotage operations, so there’s not much chance the Germans will capture him. Tomorrow at this time, I say, I will be happier than I have ever been in my entire life.

  The next day I put on the lined fustian jacket that I bought from Sinne, because it’s getting cold out. Sinne had it sewn from some old comforters from her family, but when everyone and his brother started wearing fustian jackets, she didn’t want it anymore. I’m also wearing long pants. I bicycle to Vesterbro Street, which is already decorated for Christmas with pine garlands and red ribbons along the sidewalk. I’ve been told not to tell anyone and not to say where I got the address from. There are a lot of people in the waiting room, mostly women. A woman in a fur coat is pacing, wringing her hands. She pats a little girl on the head as if it were something her hands did all on their own, and then she continues pacing. She turns and approaches a young woman and asks, May I please go in before you? I’m in a lot of pain. Okay, says the woman amenably, and when the door to the consultation room opens and someone yells: Next! she runs inside and slams the door shut. A few moments later the woman comes out a changed person. Her eyes are beaming, her cheeks are red, and there is a strange distant smile on her lips. She pulls aside the curtain and looks down at the street. How beautiful, she says, to see all those decorations. I can’t wait until Christmas. Amazed, I watch her go. My respect for the doctor has grown. If he can help such a miserable person in just a couple of minutes, who knows what he could do for me.

  What seems to be the trouble? the doctor says, looking at me with his tired, friendly eyes. He is an older, gray-haired man with an undefinable, slovenly appearance. There’s a salami sandwich on his desk, with both ends of the bread curled up. I tell him that I’m pregnant but that I don’t want another baby. Well, he says, rubbing his chin, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m not doing that for the time being, because it’s getting hot around here.

  My disappointment is so immense, so paralyzing, that I bury my face in my hands and burst out crying. But you’re my last chance, I sob; I’m almost three months pregnant. If you don’t help me, I’ll kill myself. That’s what so many women say, he says quietly, removing his glasses to get a better look at me. Now, he says, you’re Tove Ditlevsen, aren’t you? I admit it, but I don’t see that it makes any difference. I read your last book, he says, it was good. I’m an old Vesterbro boy myself. If you’ll just stop crying, he says very slowly, I might be able to whisper an address to you. I am about to hug him in gratitude when he writes an address down on a slip of paper for me. You can get an appointment with him, he says. All he does is poke a hole in the amniotic sac. If you start to bleed, you have to call me. And if I don’t start bleeding? I ask, anxious that this is going to be more complicated than I thought. That wouldn’t be good, he says, but it usually does. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

  When I come home I tell Ebbe about it, and he pleads with me to give up my mission. No, I say vehemently, I would rather die. Ill at ease, he paces the living room, looking at the ceiling as if he could find a convincing argument up there. I call the doctor, who lives in Charlottenlund. Tomorrow six o’clock, he says in a grumpy, toneless voice. Just come right in; the door will be open. Bring three hundred kroner with you. I tell Ebbe not to worry. If anything happens I’ll be at the doctor’s, so he’ll be careful. When it’s all over, I say, things will return to normal, Ebbe. That’s why I need to have this done.

  10

  I take the streetcar to Charlottenlund, because I don’t want to ride my bicycle, not knowing what kind of condition I’ll be in after my appointment. It’s two days before Christmas, and people are loaded down with packag
es covered in bright wrapping paper. Maybe this will all be over by Christmas Eve, so we can have Christmas at my parents’ house again. I would love that. I’m sitting next to a German soldier. A heavy-set woman with packages has just made a big show of getting up and moving over to the opposite side. I feel bad for the soldier, who probably has a wife and children at home, where he would rather be, instead of traipsing around in a foreign country that his leader decided to invade. Ebbe is sitting at home, more nervous than me. He bought me a flashlight so I can find the address in the dark. We looked in a book to find out what an amniotic sac was. When it breaks, the book said, the water comes out and the birth starts. But there’s supposed to be blood, not water. Neither of us really understands.

  The doctor greets me in the entry, where a bare lightbulb dangles from a hook in the ceiling. He seems nervous and grouchy. The money, he says flatly, holding out his hand. I give it to him, and he nods toward the examination room. He’s about fifty, small and shriveled, and the corners of his mouth droop, as if he has never smiled. Come on up, he says, slapping his hand on the examination table with the hanging straps for patients’ legs. I lie down with an anxious glance at the side table which has on it a row of shiny pointed instruments. Will it hurt? I ask. A bit, he says, only a second. He talks like a telegram, as if he’s trying to limit the use of his vocal cords. I shut my eyes, and a sharp pain darts through my body, but I don’t make a sound. Done, he says. If you notice blood or fever, call Dr Lauritzen. No hospitals. Don’t mention my name.

  Sitting in the streetcar on the way home, I’m afraid for the first time. Why is it so secretive and complicated? Why didn’t he just take it out? My insides are as quiet as a cathedral; there’s no sign that a deadly instrument has just penetrated the membrane which was supposed to protect what wants to live against my will. When I get home Ebbe is sitting there, feeding Helle. He’s pale and nervous. I tell him what happened. You shouldn’t have done that, he says repeatedly. You’re putting your life in danger and that’s wrong. We lie awake most of the night. There’s no sign of blood or water, no fever, and no one has told me what to expect. Then the air-raid siren sounds. We carry Helle down to the cellar in her bed; this never wakes her up. People are sitting there, half asleep. I talk to the woman who lives downstairs; she’s stuffing the mouth of her sleepy, cranky child with cookies. She’s young, with a weak, immature face. Maybe she tried to have an abortion too, with that child, or a later one. Maybe lots of women have done what I’m doing now, but no one talks about it. I haven’t even told Ebbe the name of the doctor in Charlottenlund, because I don’t want him to get in trouble if something happens to me. He helped me as my last resort, and I feel a solidarity with him, even though he was an unpleasant man.

  I get cold sitting down here, and I button my fustian jacket up to my neck. I’m so cold my teeth start chattering. I think I might have a fever, I say to Ebbe. The air-raid siren stops, and we go back up to the apartment. I take my temperature, which reads 40°C. Ebbe is beside himself. Call the doctor, he says vehemently. You have to go to the hospital right away. The fever makes me feel like I’m tipsy. Not now, I laugh, it’s the middle of the night. Then his wife and children will find out. The last thing I see before falling asleep is Ebbe pacing the floor, furiously running his fingers through his hair. I can’t believe this, he mumbles in despair, I can’t believe this. Meanwhile I’m thinking: your buddy in the resistance, Hjalmar, he puts your life in danger too, you know.

  Early the next morning I call Dr Lauritzen to tell him my fever is 40.5°, but there’s no blood or water. It’ll come, he promises. Go to the clinic right away; I’ll call and tell them you’re on your way. But not a word to the nurses, okay? You’re pregnant, you have a fever, that’s all. And don’t be scared. It’ll all work out.

  It’s a nice clinic on Christian IX Gade. The head nurse receives me – a nice, motherly older woman. We might not be able to save the baby, she says, but we’ll do what we can. Her words make me wonder, and when I’m shown to a double room, I prop myself up on my elbow and look at the woman in the other bed, who is five or six years older than me and has a sweet, trusting face above the white shirt she’s wearing. Her name is Tutti, and to my surprise, she’s Morten Nielsen’s girlfriend. He’s the father of the baby she was going to have. Tutti’s divorced, an architect, and she has a six-year-old daughter. Within an hour it’s like we’ve known each other our whole lives. A little Christmas tree stands in the middle of our room with tinkling glass decorations and a star on top. It seems ludicrous, given the circumstances. When I was a child, I say to Tutti in my fevered reverie, I thought that stars really had five points on them. The light goes on, and a nurse arrives with two trays for us. I still can’t take the sight or smell of food, so I don’t touch it. The nurse asks, are you bleeding? No, I say. Then she leaves a pail and some pads, in case it starts during the night. Dear God, I think in desperation, just let me bleed one drop of blood. After they take away the trays, Ebbe arrives, and then Morten. Hi there, he says, surprised. What are you doing here? Then he sits down on Tutti’s bed and they disappear, whispering and embracing. Ebbe has brought me twenty quinine pills which he got from Nadja. Only take them if you have to, he says. After he leaves, I tell Tutti that Nadja once forced a miscarriage by taking quinine. She doesn’t see any reason not to take them, so I do it. The night nurse comes in, turns off the ceiling light and turns on the nightlight. Its blue glow illuminates the room with an unreal, ghostly hue. I can’t fall asleep, but when I say something to Tutti, I’m unable to hear my own voice. Tutti, I yell, I’m deaf! I can see Tutti moving her lips, but I can’t hear anything. Say it louder, I tell her. Then she shouts, You don’t have to yell; I’m not deaf. It’s those pills, but I think it’s just temporary.

  There’s whooshing in my ears, and behind the whoosh there is a cottony, charged silence. Maybe I’ve become permanently deaf, for no reason, because there’s still no blood. Tutti gets out of bed and walks over to me and shouts in my ear, They just want to see blood. So I’ll give you my used pads, and you just show it to them tomorrow morning. Then they’ll scrape you out. Talk louder, I say, and finally I’m able to understand what she said. During the night she walks over and places her used pads in my pail. When she passes the Christmas tree, the glass decorations clink together and I know they’re tinkling, but I can’t hear them. I think about Ebbe and Morten and their desolate expressions amid this woman’s world of blood, nausea and fever. And I think of my childhood Christmases, when we walked around the tree singing: Out of the depths we come – instead of singing psalms. I think about my mother. She has no idea I’m lying here, because she can never keep a secret. I also think about my father who has always been hard of hearing, because it runs in his family. Deaf people must live stifled, isolated lives. I might need a hearing aid. But my deafness doesn’t mean much next to Tutti’s act of mercy. She shouts in my ear, They know full well what’s going on here. They just have to keep up appearances.

  Towards morning I fall asleep, exhausted, until the nurse comes in and wakes us. My oh my, you’ve been bleeding a lot, she says with fake worry, looking down into the pail with the night’s harvest. I’m afraid we won’t be able to save the baby. I’ll call the doctor right away. To my relief, I realize that my hearing has come back. Are you sad? asks the nurse. A little, I lie, trying to put on a downcast face.

  In the afternoon the doctor comes in, and I’m wheeled to the operating room. Don’t feel so bad, he says cheerfully. At least you have one child already. Then they place a mask over my face and the world fills with the smell of ether.

  When I wake up, I’m lying in bed with a clean, white shirt on. Tutti smiles over at me. Well, she says, are you happy now? Yes, I say. I don’t know what I would have done without you. She doesn’t know either, and she says that it’s all behind us now. She says Morten wants to marry her. She’s madly in love with him and she adores his poetry, which has just been published and has been praised everywhere in the press. Be
sides you, she says tactfully, he’s the most talented young person today. I think so too, but I’ve never been close to him. Ebbe arrives with flowers like I’ve just given birth, and he’s so happy, because now it’s over. We have to be more careful in the future, he says. I go and ask Dr Lauritzen to show me how to put my diaphragm in correctly. Still I harbor a strong resistance to that piece of hardware, a resistance that will remain with me my whole life. My temperature drops quickly to normal, and I’m ravenously hungry now that my nausea has disappeared, as if by a stroke of magic. I miss Helle’s little pudgy body with the dimples on her knees. When Ebbe brings her in to me, I think with horror, what if it were her that we had just denied access to life? I bring her up into the bed with me and play with her. She is more dear to me than ever.

  In the evening the doctor comes into our room without his coat on, holding two children by the hand. They are ten or twelve years old. Merry Christmas, he says jovially, and squeezes our hands. The children shake hands with us too, and when they’re gone, Tutti says: He’s so nice. We should be thankful that someone dares to do this.

  On Christmas Eve I wake up, take out a pencil and paper from my bag and write a poem in the weak glow of the nightlight:

  You who sought shelter

  with one weak and afraid,

  For you I hum a lullaby

  between the night and day – – –

  I don’t regret what I did, but in the dark, tarnished corridors of my mind there is a faint impression, like a child’s footprints in damp sand.