Youth

by Tove Ditlevsen

  13

  Aksel and I are formally engaged after knowing each other for two weeks, and treating each other as chastely as if we were brother and sister. Nina told Egon that I wouldn’t go to bed with Aksel until we were engaged, and Egon told Aksel, who suggested the engagement as his own spontaneous idea. Now I’m an engaged girl, and my mother is thrilled. She thinks Aksel looks stable; just as she could tell that Edvin’s wife couldn’t cook, she can tell that Aksel doesn’t drink. He behaves very gallantly toward my mother. ‘Anyone can see,’ she says to my father, who doesn’t contradict her, ‘that he’s an educated person.’ After spending several evenings with him, my father says, ‘You know, he’s never learned anything except how to drive a car.’ ‘Well,’ says my mother offended, ‘isn’t that good enough? Maybe you know how to drive a car?’ Aksel has promised to take my mother out driving someday; I don’t give it much thought, however. But one day, while I’m innocently sitting in the office, there is a loud honking outside and Miss Løngren stares out the window. ‘Who on earth is that?’ she says astonished. ‘They’re waving over here. Is it someone you know?’ I deny it, blushing, because Aksel and my mother are waving like mad and leaning out the window while Aksel honks the horn, long and rhythmically. ‘It must be for the people upstairs,’ I say miserably. ‘What nerve,’ says Miss Løngren, drawing the curtains tighter together. When I get home, I say furiously that I don’t want any part of that stupid waving, and my mother says that she and Aksel had so much fun all day. They went to a pastry shop and Aksel treated her. Her eyes shine, as if she were the one who was engaged to him. Aksel’s parents are both tiny and old and tremendously nice. They live in a bungalow in Kastrup. The father is a foreman in a factory and there’s an air of affluence over the house. Aksel has his room down in the basement. He has a radio and a phonograph and over three hundred records, arranged on tall shelves like books. The room next door is a billiard room where all four of us play billiards when Nina and Egon are there. Aksel’s parents call him Assemand and treat him as if he were a little boy. He’s very loving toward them just as he is toward me. He has a warmth in his being that makes you feel secure and comfortable. One day Nina says that we’re going to have a little party out at Aksel’s. We’re going to drink his father’s homemade wine and we’ve gotten permission for this from Aksel’s parents. We’re also going to dance and play billiards and afterwards I must give Aksel the great pleasure of going to bed with him. ‘When you’ve been drinking,’ says Nina encouragingly, ‘it doesn’t hurt a bit.’ Egon also thinks it’s about time, Nina tells me, and it’s really as if Aksel and I aren’t even consulted. We don’t talk about it at all and he still respects me to a fault. Nina and I go out there together and Aksel is a conscientious host. He opens the bottles and puts on records and we all get giddy from the wine, which doesn’t taste nearly as terrible as beer. Egon sits and kisses Nina in between dances. She laughs and says if only The Shrub could see this, because she’s told her secret to Egon, who makes fun of The Shrub, whom he imagines sitting on the doorstep, tamping his evening pipe as he watches the sunset. We all laugh loudly at this stereotype. ‘Nina comes out,’ elaborates Egon, encouraged by his success, ‘with three sniveling kids hanging onto her dress, dries her hands on her apron and says, “Papa, it’s time for evening coffee.”’ Aksel doesn’t kiss me at all and as time goes on, he grows more and more serious. I almost feel sorry for him because in so many ways he seems like a child. I myself have gotten very animated from the wine and I’m really set on going through with it now. It surely won’t be any worse for me than for so many others. Sometime after midnight, Nina and Egon sneak into the billiard room and close the door behind them. ‘What are you doing in there?’ Aksel yells unnecessarily. Then he looks at me, uncertain and afraid. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’d better make the bed.’ He does this with slow, careful movements. ‘Take off your clothes,’ he says miserably, ‘at least some of them.’ It’s like being at the doctor’s. ‘Why don’t we talk a little first?’ I ask. ‘Sure,’ he says and we sit down in separate chairs. He fills our glasses to the top and we empty them greedily. ‘You should see about getting your front teeth filled,’ he says gently. ‘Yes,’ I say astonished. Unlike the other procedure, though, it costs money to go the dentist. ‘I can’t afford it,’ I add. Then he offers to pay for it and since I don’t feel that I can accept, he says that he’s going to support me someday anyway. So I thank him and agree to let him pay for the fillings. ‘It’s a shame,’ he explains, ‘because otherwise you’re so pretty.’ Suddenly there’s a strange howl from the billiard room, and both of us gasp. ‘It’s Egon,’ explains Aksel. ‘He’s so passionate.’ ‘Are you too?’ I ask cautiously, because I’d like to be prepared for it if he’s actually going to roar. ‘No,’ he says honestly, ‘I’m not very passionate.’ ‘I don’t think I am either,’ I admit. A glimmer of hope appears in his eyes. ‘We could,’ he says optimistically, ‘wait until another time?’ ‘Then they’ll think we’re crazy,’ I say, nodding toward the billiard room. ‘No. Well, we could turn out the light.’ Aksel turns out the light. I clench my teeth and lie listening to his warm, kind, reassuring words. The whole thing isn’t so bad, and he doesn’t utter any animal-like sounds. Afterwards he turns on the light again, and we both laugh with great relief that it’s over and that it wasn’t anything special. ‘I want to tell you,’ he confesses, ‘I’ve never been to bed with a virgin before.’ Nina and Egon appear in the door with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. They look from the bed to us and then at each other, as if it were all their doing, but nothing is said about it. We continue dancing, because when I’m with Aksel, I’m allowed to come home late. With him I can do anything, so this wouldn’t upset my mother, either, if she found out. Later Nina asks me if it wasn’t wonderful, and of course I say yes. She says that it gets better and better each time. I hadn’t considered that the procedure would be repeated. In reality I think that it was a completely insignificant event in my life – not nearly as important as my brief meeting with Kurt and what that meeting could have developed into. But still, I write in my diary that I’ve kept since I got my own room, ‘As Nina gave herself to Egon with all of her warm, passionate body in the billiard room, I answered Aksel’s question about whether I was innocent with a pure and chaste “yes,” etc.’ In my diary everything is sheer romanticism. I store it in the top dresser drawer in the bedroom at home. I’ve had an extra key made for it. In the drawer are also my two ‘real’ poems, three thermometers, and five or six condoms. The latter items I stole from the nursing supply company because at one time I thought of opening a nursing supply store. But I was thrown out before my stock was large enough. To my great relief, Aksel continues to treat me exactly as before, and he never refers to the embarrassing interlude. I think that he does everything that Egon tells him to do, just as I tend to do whatever Nina wants me to. When I’m alone with Nina, I pretend that Aksel and I are frequently together and maybe he does the same when he’s with Egon. During the day Aksel drives around with my mother, who sits in the delivery van and waits while he’s with customers. He works for a furniture company, and he tells me that there are many whores among the customers. My suspicious mother has discovered that he stays an especially long time with them, but he just says that it’s difficult to get the money from them. My mother says that I shouldn’t trust him, but actually I couldn’t care less whether he goes to bed with the whores. I don’t think it’s any concern of mine or my mother’s. It’s worse that I sense a certain coolness from his parents whenever I’m visiting. I can’t figure out how I’ve offended them. Once in a while I catch his mother staring at me sharply when she doesn’t think I’ll notice. She’s very tiny and always dressed in black like my grandmother. She has wise brown eyes and completely white hair. I’ve never seen her without an apron. ‘Has Aksel promised to pay your dentist bill?’ she says one evening. ‘Yes,’ I say, feeling uncomfortable. ‘He doesn’t make very much,’ says his mother. ‘I’m afraid that you may
have to pay it yourself.’ There’s something that I don’t understand at all. One evening when I’m invited to dinner, I get there a little before Aksel. His parents look very serious. His mother says that Aksel isn’t the man for me. He’ll never be able to support a wife, and I’m too good for him. ‘Let me,’ says his father, waving at her with his hand. ‘The thing is,’ he says, ‘many times we’ve paid the company back when there’ve been funds missing. I mean, when Aksel has taken money that isn’t his. When it comes to money, he’s a child. We thought it would help when he got engaged to a nice girl, but it hasn’t helped. He’s our only son and our greatest sorrow. He’s run away from eleven apprenticeships, and the only things he thinks about are cars and records.’ ‘He’s a good boy,’ his mother defends him, wiping her eyes, ‘but reckless and irresponsible.’ ‘I like him a lot,’ I say. ‘And I don’t need to be supported. I can make a living writing poetry.’ The latter slips out of me involuntarily and I look at Aksel’s parents, horrified. They don’t look very surprised. ‘I knew you weren’t an ordinary young girl. You can see that,’ says his mother. Then Aksel drives up and stops out in the gravel with screeching brakes. He often drives home in the company van. As he rings the bell, his mother says, ‘Now you can’t say that you weren’t warned.’ I think it over for a few days and am very glad that people can see I’m not ordinary. It wasn’t so many years ago that I was unhappy about that. I think a lot about my fiancé and I reach the conclusion that he’s not suited to be a lifelong mate to a girl who wants to break into high society someday. But I can’t get myself to break the engagement. I feel sorry for Aksel, who is still gallant and kind and respects me. But my mother also starts to wonder why Aksel always has money in his pocket and why he stays so long with the whores. She stops accompanying him in his van and she advises me to see about finding someone else, someone like Erling who wanted to be a schoolteacher, whom I spurned as if there were a whole line of young men waiting at my door. Nina is in the midst of a serious crisis, because she’s considering breaking off with The Shrub and marrying Egon. When I tell her what I know about Aksel, she advises me to end things with him as soon as my dental work is done. The fillings are almost invisible, and when they’re finished, Nina thinks that I can get whoever I want. She says that I’ve finally gotten some ‘class’, and that’s what men notice. But I’m so happy when I’m with Aksel because I’m really fond of him. I’m happy and secure in his company. I stop visiting his parents, and he stops visiting mine. My mother treats him coldly now and my father asks him questions that only serve to show his ignorance. ‘What do you think about the Olympics? Huh? Isn’t it scandalous?’ my father says to him. He means the Olympics in Berlin where our girl swimmers are, but Aksel knows nothing about any Olympics. He only knows a little about Hitler and the world situation, and he hasn’t read The Last Civilian by Ernst Glaeser. I have, and so I know a lot about the persecution of the Jews and the concentration camps, and all of it fills me with fear. It’s so pleasant with Aksel because he knows nothing about all the things that could terrify a person these days. That doesn’t mean that he’s an idiot, but my father’s interrogation is only aimed at showing that he is. He senses that and stops visiting. So we’re homeless when we’re together and only have the taverns and the streets. One day he picks me up outside the office and, silently, we walk down H. C. Ørstedsvej. It’s clear that there’s something he wants to tell me. Finally it comes. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he says, ‘that we ought to take off our rings. I’ve never really been in love with you.’ ‘And I haven’t been in love with you, either,’ I say. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I know that.’ He takes great strides, out of sheer embarrassment, and I have to jog to keep up with him. ‘And I’ll be eighteen soon,’ I say, not knowing what that has to do with anything. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘then you won’t be a minor anymore.’ We walk for a while without saying anything. ‘And my mother says you’re too good for me,’ he explains. ‘You should marry someone who has a lot of money and reads books and things like that.’ ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I think so too.’ At home in the entryway, he kisses me tenderly as always and then twists the ring off his finger. He puts it in his pocket and mine goes there too. ‘Maybe,’ he says, ‘we’ll see each other again.’ His short, stiff eyelashes scratch my cheek for the last time. Then he walks down Westend with his scissors-shaped legs and his supple boy’s back. He turns around and waves at me. ‘Bye,’ he yells. ‘Bye,’ I yell back, waving. Then I go up, taking a deep breath before I put the key in the door, because the smell is getting worse and worse. I go in to my mother and Aunt Rosalia. ‘Now I’m not engaged anymore,’ I say. ‘That’s fine,’ says my mother. ‘He wasn’t much good.’ ‘Yes, he was,’ I say and then keep quiet. I can’t explain to my mother what was good about Aksel. ‘There’s something good about everyone, Alfrida,’ says my aunt gently from her bed. And we both know she’s thinking about Uncle Carl.

  14

  One morning when I turn the corner onto the road in Frederiksberg where the printer’s is located, I see that the flag is at half-mast in the little front yard of the office building. My first thought is that perhaps it’s Miss Løngren who is dead, which fills me with perverse glee. Then I’ll be allowed to mind the switchboard and talk on the telephone. And I can call Nina as often as I like. In a rather good mood, I go up the stairs, but when I step in the door, Miss Løngren is sitting at her usual place and blowing her nose with a great blast. It’s all red, as if she’s been sitting in the hot sun. ‘Master is dead,’ she says with a breaking voice, ‘quite suddenly. He was with the brothers at the lodge. In the middle of a speech he fell over the table. A heart attack – there was nothing to be done.’ I sit down at my place and say nothing. Master was a very taciturn man that everyone was afraid of, even his sons. He had difficulty expressing himself in writing, and I always embellished the language in the letters to the brothers and in the obituaries, because he couldn’t remember what he had dictated. Aside from dictating letters, he’d never spoken to me. Miss Løngren stares at me reproachfully while I enter the work lists. ‘You could at least offer your condolences,’ she says. ‘What’s that?’ I ask. She doesn’t condescend to give an explanation, but continues her reading of the newspapers. ‘Did you hear King Edward’s abdication speech?’ she asks. ‘It was gripping. To give up a throne for the sake of a woman! And he’s so handsome. Princess Ingrid didn’t get her hands on him after all.’ ‘He looks like Leslie Howard,’ I venture to say, and now it’s her turn to ask who’s that. She shows me a picture of Mrs Simpson and says, ‘It’s just so strange that he would fall in love with such a middle-aged woman. I could understand it better if it had been a young girl.’ She runs her fingers through her old-maid hairdo, as if the thought crosses her mind that the world would have better understood it if it had been for her sake. ‘He was handsome when he was young,’ she says dreamily, meaning suddenly Master. ‘Carl Jensen looks like him, don’t you think? I’ll buy a black suit for the funeral – I owe him that. What are you going to wear? Well, you can wear your suit, since it’s spring.’ The death and the abdication have made her talkative. She says that there will certainly be big changes now, and these changes will probably mean that I’ll be let go. It was completely Master’s idea that I was hired at all. These bright prospects fill me with joy and comfort. There’s only half a year until I turn eighteen and it’s about time that I move out. In every way the air is too thick to breathe.