by Helle Helle
THIS SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN THE PRESENT TENSE
Copyright © Helle Helle 2011
English translation copyright © Martin Aitken 2014
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Counterpoint edition 2015
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available
Soft Skull Press
An Imprint of COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.softskull.com
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-762-6
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
THIS SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN THE PRESENT TENSE
1.
I wrote too much about that step. Where I locked myself out in March. Where I sat and stared in April. Where my mum and dad stood in down jackets well into May, heads at an angle.
The lilacs were in bloom. A bus swung away from the station. A hot smell of diesel, then lilacs again. My arms were bare, the air was warm and mild.
‘You forgot these,’ said my dad, and handed me the carrier bag. ‘We’ll head up and wash the place down.’
‘Your dad’s let them out,’ said my mum.
They turned and went back to the car, and my mum got in. A bucket and mop stuck up from the back seat. My dad raised his hand in a wave, his hair lifted in the wind. I went back into the kitchen. I left the door open behind me. I poured a glass of milk and heard them drive away. This is how it might have been.
I’d spent most of the night packing and sorting. Now my good clothes were in the tartan suitcase on the kitchen floor, I’d thrown the rest out. I filled three black bin bags. I was amazed at where it all came from. I couldn’t remember having bought that much stuff. There were T-shirts and tops, and all kinds of leggings. Shoes and boots. Unworn dresses from the charity shop.
In one of the bin bags was my so-called work. I never used to think I could throw anything out that I’d put down in words, now I’d got the better of it. I tried not to look, but the odd stiff sentence kept jumping out at me. I glanced away, binning those texts was still hard. In general, I wrote too much about moving house. Like now, the suitcase on the kitchen floor, the carrier bag with my trousers in it on the windowsill. Outside by the road the lilacs bloomed white, and my mum and dad were in a car with a bucket and a mop, already far from Glumsø.
2.
I’d rented the house the year before. It was a bungalow right by the railway line. Dorte paced out the distance in her white clogs while I stood in the front garden and bit into an apple. The landlady had said to help ourselves and pulled down a branch as the three o’clock came in. She was in a trouser suit and looked uncomfortable. It struck me that we were about the same age, twenty or so. She took an apple too, and kept polishing it on her trousers.
‘Do you work here?’ she said.
‘No. I’ve started studying in Copenhagen,’ I said, and cringed at my accent. That trouser suit did nothing for her, the sleeves didn’t have enough room for her arms.
‘You’re well situated here, then.’
‘That was what I thought.’
‘What are you studying?’ she said, and looked towards the road from where Dorte came clacking with the wind in her highlights. ‘I think your mum’s got her answer now.’
‘Twenty-seven metres, give or take,’ Dorte said in a loud voice and lifted one foot in the air.
‘She’s my auntie,’ I said.
‘Oh, I see,’ said the landlady.
She said we could stay as long as we liked, all we had to do was shut the door behind us. We sat on the cracked paintwork on the windowsills in the front room and discussed the rent. I would just about be able to manage without having to borrow. There was a funny smell coming from the bathroom, it reminded me of stagnant pond. Dorte lit a cigarette, she always kept the lighter in the packet.
‘It’s a lovely house,’ she said.
‘But I haven’t got any furniture.’
‘You can have my chest of drawers. And the bumhole lamp, if you like?’
‘What I really need is a table.’
‘Didn’t you see that one in the shed?’
‘Here, you mean?’
‘Yes, just behind the door,’ she said, jumping down.
It was a little kitchen table with hinged leaves. Dorte nodded, her cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth.
‘I can just see that by the window in the front room, can’t you?’
‘I’ll need some curtains.’
‘Never mind curtains, you can always get blinds. Look at that,’ she said, and pointed at a coffee tin on the shelf, but then a goods train went by and distracted us. We stood in the doorway watching the long line of rust-red wagons.
Before we left, we had a walk round the garden. Besides the apple tree there were pears and mirabelle plums, and a wilderness at the far end that Dorte said was probably full of raspberries. We looked in through all the windows. The place was nice and bright inside, the afternoon sun slanted in across the floors. Dorte pressed her forehead against the kitchen window.
‘Those units just need shining up. Original Vordingborg, that is.’
Then she turned round and picked the grass and squashed yellow plum off one clog, then the other. She wiped her hands with some leaves and looked at her watch.
‘Take care, love. I’m expecting a pig.’
3.
Two days later I’d moved in. It was a Friday. Dorte drove my boxes and furniture over in the van. She’d given me the old TV she kept as a spare, and the plastic chairs. Late in the afternoon, I took the table apart and carried it into the front room. I screwed the legs back on, it was a tricky manoeuvre turning it upright again. I dragged it over to the window and sat down. If I leaned forward I could see the station at the end of the road. On the other side by the crossing there was the hair salon and a bit further on the pub. I wondered when would be the right time to make some dinner. I’d bought crispy pancakes with chicken on offer. I’d bought flour, too, and spices and cleaning produc
ts, it was all still on the worktop in the kitchen. I thought I ought to put shelf liner down in the cupboards and wrote it on a piece of paper: shelf liner. I sat at the table until the sun left the room. When I decided to do the pancakes the oven didn’t work. The lamp was on, but the oven was stone cold. I still didn’t have a frying pan, so I heated them up in a saucepan. They were soggy and burned at the same time. I stood by the worktop and ate them. I’d been hoping they might stretch until the next day. Afterwards I had to lie down. I lay on the floor in the front room, on the frayed carpet. I’d tried to pull it up earlier on, but it seemed to be glued to the floor, the rubber underneath stayed behind.
The window was ajar and I felt the cool evening air in my face. It smelled of beefburgers and something fermented, apples and plums. Cheerful voices came from the main street along with a chinking of bottles. A train arrived, brakes squealing as it drew to a halt. Then silence for a moment, and the doors opened. After that, silence again. A single voice laughed. The blast of a whistle, doors slamming shut, creaking coaches as the engine pulled heavily away. I nearly said cast off.
4.
My dad was given the tartan suitcase as a present when he finished his apprenticeship. It had been all the way to Hobro once. I borrowed it the second time I moved away from home. I’d got a job as an au pair in Vestsjælland looking after two kids and a golden retriever. I was eighteen. I was supposed to do the cleaning as well, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I only did the Monday and Wednesday then got a bus home again, the suitcase sliding around on the floor between the seats. I saw a corn field outside Havrebjerg.
After that the suitcase lived in my room. At one point it was a bedside table, the lamp threw a white cone of light on it all day long. I lay on the bed doing old crosswords with a biro. I didn’t have that many jobs to do, but I had to remember to turn my jeans inside out when I put them in the laundry bin.
In the afternoons I’d go for a walk. I walked further and further along the road before turning back. I came across Per Finland a lot, he didn’t know what to do with himself either. He spent the days driving about on his uncle’s mini loader and smoking Prince 100s. He’d joined the Young Socialists by mistake, he’d only gone to a party at someone’s house in Sandby. I started going home with him. He had a waterbed, it pitched and sloshed. His parents pottered about in the garden below. They couldn’t keep the weeds under control, they were both of them teachers. When it was time for me to go his mum would be doing her marking in the front room. One day she came out into the hall and said goodbye. Her hair parted like a pair of curtains.
‘I’m so glad you and Per have started seeing each other,’ she said.
I didn’t know what to say, I couldn’t stop thinking about her hair.
‘Thanks,’ I said, and she nodded a couple of times. I hadn’t pulled my socks up properly in my boots, they bunched up under the arches of my feet.
‘Mind how you go,’ she said, and nodded again, then she went back to her marking.
The yard was covered in slippery sycamore leaves. I walked home over the fields, my boots got heavier and heavier. On Tuesdays and Thursdays Dorte came for dinner if she didn’t have a bloke on the go. The meat was always her treat.
5.
The first night in the house I slept sitting up. I sat in the armchair with my legs up and the duvet on top of me. I hadn’t put the sheets on the bed, though Dorte had reminded me about it.
‘Remember to put your sheets on first thing. You’re always knackered after a move.’
Apart from that the bed was assembled and ready, it took up nearly the whole room. I could only just get the door open. By the time I got my head down it was almost midnight. I lay there for ages staring into the dark. There was nothing to see. Eventually I got up and went into the front room, switched on the lamp and sat down in the armchair. I sat quite still and listened. There was nothing to hear either. I reached into my canvas bag on the floor and found a packet of chewing gum, took four pieces and chewed. What a racket it made. I stopped and listened. I chewed until the flavour was gone, then after that I went into the kitchen with the lump. When I opened the bin the vacuum cleaner fell over behind me with a loud clatter. The noise was still ringing in my ears when I sat down in the chair again. I wrapped myself in the duvet and fell asleep with my head hanging down, and slept until a goods train a mile long passed through when morning came. The lamp was still on as the sun came up.
6.
I sat at the drop-leaf table thinking about the word bleary. It was Saturday morning, I felt like I ought to be doing something. Finishing the unpacking and taking the empty boxes out into the shed, for instance, or having a bath. Fresh air would do me good as well, I could at least go over the road and walk down the little path by the flats to the supermarket, buy some vegetables and some apples for the train that coming week. I thought about my savings account. It had lasted nearly three years, but now it was almost empty. There was only about four thousand kroner left. Then I realised I was looking out at my own apple tree. I blurted something out in surprise, got up from the chair and stuck my clogs on. I picked four big green apples and put them down on the step. Around the back I discovered a clothes line strung out between the two pear trees, but there were no pears on the branches. The leaves had big brown patches on them, or else they were turning yellow and red. I remembered I needed to renew my railcard and fetched my purse from the front room.
An elderly man on a bike was posting a letter outside the station, he straddled the crossbar with one foot on the ground as he dropped it in the box. Upstairs on the first floor the windows were open, music was streaming out and a hand appeared with a duster in it. I pushed the door open and went into the ticket office. The guy behind the counter looked up from his roll with crumbs stuck to his lips.
‘Hi.’
‘I’m interrupting your breakfast.’
‘Sorry.’
He chewed and swallowed as he smiled. His hair was fair and quite long. I wondered how he’d ended up in that ticket office. There was a newspaper open on the desk, on top of it a book about Pink Floyd with a bookmark sticking out.
There was a bit of trouble with my railcard because I belonged in a different zone now, he had to do me a new one. I still had a photo left from the booth, unfortunately not my best. I put it on the counter in front of him along with the money. He stapled it in and folded the plastic wallet, then handed it over. He was smiling the whole time.
‘You can catch the next one if you hurry,’ he said as I turned to leave.
‘It’s Saturday today,’ I said. I could feel his eyes following me on my way out.
Outside, the music from upstairs now mingled with the sound of a vacuum cleaner. For some reason I hurried over to the platform. It was deserted. The train came rumbling through the trees and began to brake. I covered my ears. The doors opened in front of me and a tall guy got off with a rucksack, he was having a job with it. The guard leaned out at the front end with his whistle in his mouth and his eyes fixed on his left wrist. He looked up at me and made a big sweeping gesture towards the train. At first I shook my head, but then when he did it again and blew his whistle I got on anyway. I scampered up the two steps and stood for a moment by the open door as the train pulled slowly away, then I jumped back down onto the platform again. I landed awkwardly and twisted my knee. The train was hardly moving but it was still a fall. Nevertheless, I sprang quickly to my feet. I went back over the tracks and gave the station building a wide berth. I’d torn a hole in my jeans, the new ones. I hadn’t even shut my front door, the place was wide open. I mimicked the guard’s gesture as I cut through the garden. I don’t know what got into me.
Because the house had been left open in the short time I’d been at the station, on the platform, on the train and on the platform again, I went and looked in all the rooms. I looked behind the doors, inside the cupboards and under the bed. I looked in the shed, too, and behind the oil tank on my way back inside. I did it casually, like the
re was nothing the matter, as if I was looking for a lost ball or a garden tool.
Afterwards I sat down in the armchair in the front room with a needle and thread and tried to mend my jeans. I was no good at it. I put the TV on and watched a gardening programme and later on the football while I ate most of a packet of biscuits. Towards evening I fell asleep in the chair, my head kept nodding to one side. Eventually, I lay down on the floor and slept there far too long, clutching a cushion with my mouth half open. My throat was parched when I woke up in the dark several hours later, but it could have been the biscuits. Now I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at bedtime, again. All I could do was sit and doodle and listen to late-night radio until it turned into breakfast radio and a heavy goods train came thundering by. Thirty-four wagons in all, Transwaggon, Transwaggon. I put my head on the table and closed my eyes, watching lines turn into oblongs and rectangles behind my eyelids.
7.
From Per Finland’s waterbed you could see the road weave between fields and farms and tatty cottages. Thin coils of smoke rose up from all the houses. When we opened the window we could smell the birch wood from the chimney. Per laughed and ran a rough finger down my back. His voice was rough too, he kept clearing his throat. We had electric panel heaters at ours, we were waiting for central heating. But after she moved from Slaglille, Dorte got a wood-burning stove, she used milk cartons packed tight with newspaper. I put our own cartons aside for her. We couldn’t give her that many, but she had an arrangement with a canteen and another for old news papers. In Per’s house they kept Politiken and a sports weekly. It was Per’s job to check the letter box in the driveway. He wrapped his long arms around me in bed one Saturday afternoon. I’d been up early and had gone for a walk. We bumped into each other at the T-junction after the pond, he was out walking too. The lanes were covered in mud from the fields.