by Helle Helle
‘Do you write poems?’ she said.
‘No, not really.’
‘You should. Per says you’re good at writing.’
‘She is as well,’ said Per from the sofa, slouching down. His fringe had grown, it got in the way of his eyelashes every now and then.
‘You should read the song lyrics she wrote for her aunt’s birthday,’ he said.
‘How old was she?’
‘Only forty-three,’ I said.
‘Go on, then,’ she said, and so I cleared my throat and began to sing. My voice was shaky, I had to pause between two verses to clear my throat again. The way I sang made it more serious than it was meant to be. Ruth sat with her head tilted to one side, Per sat up. Just as I finished, the door of the study opened and his dad was standing there with a recorder in his mouth.
‘Not now, Hans-Jakob,’ said Ruth. She leaned back in her chair and smiled at me.
‘It’s a lovely song. I’d like to publish it.’
‘Isn’t it a bit private?’ I said.
‘No, that doesn’t matter.’
‘It’s a party song, isn’t it?’ said Hans-Jakob.
‘For her aunt,’ said Per.
‘When’s the party?’
‘A while ago. Or rather, there wasn’t one,’ I said.
‘It was just the two of them,’ said Per.
In the evening we had red wine from Spain with our stew. We sat at the table in the kitchen and talked for ages. The fire roared in the stove and we laughed at the woodwork teacher’s verse. Per stretched his legs out under the table and put mine in a scissor lock. It was almost midnight. Ruth went into the pantry and improvised a dessert out of preserved apricots and nut brittle. Hans-Jakob opened a bottle of dessert wine and the thought occurred to me: I’m an adult, I’ve been a dinner guest. I was nineteen years old and the moon was out above the stable. A couple of weeks later I moved in there with Per, into the new bedsit they’d had converted on the first floor, with its own bathroom. It was the third time I’d left home. My mum and dad gave us a pewter mug as a moving-in present, but they never got the chance to see the place.
12.
The first time I left home I moved in with Dorte. I was in my second year at the gymnasium school, it had been a harsh winter. Every day I cycled two kilometres the back way along the lane between the fields to the bus stop. My wet hair froze into icicles. I got the bus to Næstved station, from there a city bus ran every twenty minutes. Dorte thought it was too hard on me. She’d got herself a two-bedroom flat with a balcony in the centre of Næstved.
In the mornings when I got up the coffee maker was all ready. She wrote me notes on the filter, and put my mug out on a tray along with butter and jam. I made toast and sat down in the living room, I didn’t need to get going until the last minute. Sometimes she’d get stuck with the crossword and leave it for me, her pencil lying like a half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. In the evenings we played charades. Dorte’s efforts had us in stitches, we laughed so much the downstairs neighbour phoned to complain.
‘Yes, all right, you miserable old bat,’ said Dorte, almost before she’d put down the receiver, and then we reached for the blankets and laughed hysterically into the wool until it set our teeth on edge.
Dorte was convinced that she was the one who had introduced fake fur coats to mid and southern Sjælland. She’d had four at one stage, but the pink one was worn out and she’d given the long one away to a homeless person. I got the one with Mickey Mouse on it. We stood in her bedroom in front of the mirror.
‘You can have it, it suits you,’ she said. ‘If you haven’t worn it for a year get rid, that’s what I say.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Funeral outfits excepted.’
I did another twirl by the mirror, but then the doorbell rang, and it was my mum. She’d been to the ear, nose and throat specialist and now she was stopping by with a couple of books she thought I might have forgotten. She’d had her hair done, too, Dorte complimented her on it. We stood for a bit in the hall. They couldn’t find a parking space, my dad was waiting outside. I hadn’t missed the books, and my mum didn’t mention the fur coat. Dorte didn’t say anything about the car park round the back either, but she had to be getting back to the shop, she’d only popped home for an hour.
I wasn’t keen on that coat. I wore my old woollen one instead, and hung the fur outside on the balcony so it would be wet with snow when Dorte came home at six. When the front door opened a smell of fried onions filled the air. She put the food in the oven to warm and changed into her jogging pants, then drew her legs up underneath her on the sofa next to me.
‘Don’t you wear it much?’ she said.
‘Not really.’
‘Tell you what, we’ll give it to Vagn’s sister. I think it’s more her style.’
I hadn’t heard about Vagn before, but he came round that same evening. He had funny teeth, and a month later Dorte gave up the lease. I moved back home in the middle of April, the woods were starred with thimbleweed. I biked along the track behind the lane in the late afternoons with my bag on the pannier rack. Everything smelled of soil and sprouting plants, and my mum and dad waved hello from wherever they happened to be in the garden. We never mentioned Dorte all summer. I cycled out to see her in Skelby on the sly and bought new potatoes to take with me from a stall by the road. Vagn lay at her feet on the patio with a cigarette protruding from his front teeth. The potatoes made me feel stupid.
But then autumn and winter came, and before I’d left school Dorte was back in our kitchen on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my mum at the worktop with her back to us, endlessly stirring a pot with some utensil or other.
13.
The sky over Copenhagen Central was bright blue. We went up the steps at the far end of the platform and shook hands on Tietgensgade. I clutched the collar of my leather jacket tight, there was an icy wind coming from somewhere. The girl shivered too, her eyes were watering and her hair was getting blown all over the place.
‘Thanks ever so much,’ she said, and Lasse joined in:
‘Yes, it was so nice of you.’
‘Take care of yourself. Which way are you going?’ she said, and I pointed. They were going that way too. We walked to the crossing and waited for the green man. A number 12 pulled away from the stop over the road in a cloud of diesel fumes.
‘Bad luck,’ she said, then the light changed and we stepped onto the crossing, my bag kept slipping off my shoulder. A car was turning and gave way for us. Another driver blew his horn and someone shouted. My ponytail blew into my face and then we were out of the wind, sheltered by of the building on the corner. We all stopped at the bus stop.
‘Are you getting this one too?’ asked the girl. I shook my head.
‘No, normally I walk.’
‘We do that normally as well today,’ said Lasse and patted the pocket of his raincoat.
‘Is it the university you go to? Out in Amager?’ asked the girl. I nodded and we set off again, the three of us together, she let him walk in front and stuck by my side.
‘In that case we can see you to the door. It’s exactly the way we’re going.’
Lasse led the way over pedestrian crossings and round street corners, across Langebro Bridge and down a flight of steps on the other side. He stood at the bottom and threw out his arms.
‘Islands Brygge, ladies.’
We came past the supermarket on Njalsgade. She said they’d once found a hair elastic in a packet of mince they’d bought there. To make amends, the manager had given them a whole economy pack with five kilos of pork and a bunch of roses to go with it, so all in all they’d done well out of it. Of course, the hair elastic was a bit unpleasant, it was one of those glittery ones, it had turned up in one of Lasse’s meatballs. For a while afterwards they made a point of looking for things wrong with their shopping. They’d found a wasp in a jar of marmalade too. We were almost there now, the Amager campus was just off to the right. When we got to the bik
e stands I was about to say goodbye, but Lasse shook his head and walked me right up to the entrance, pulled one of the doors and held it open for me.
‘Have a nice day. And thanks again for all your help.’
‘It was lovely meeting you,’ said the girl, and stepped forward to give me a little hug. Two young guys with leather shoulder bags went past and left a smell of musk behind them. They breezed in through Lasse’s open door.
‘I’d better go,’ I said.
‘Best of luck with everything.’
‘Same to you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Bye, then,’ I said, and went in. Lasse let go of the door and it closed. I went over to the noticeboards and stood there for a bit. My nose was running, I searched for a hankie in my bag but couldn’t find one. I went to the toilets, and a girl with a diagonal fringe nodded to me before turning back to her lipstick. I blew my nose, looked at myself in the mirror and went out again. I opened a door at the entrance. They were gone. I scurried out into the wind, turned onto Artillerivej and walked back towards town clutching the collar of my leather jacket again with one hand. My bag kept slipping off my shoulder and I ended up putting the strap over my head. Cyclists rang their bells, a bus braked hard and accelerated again almost at once. To the right, under the bridge, a tall, thin girl stepped out of her clothes and jumped into the water to loud shrieking and whooping. Another girl stood with a camera and a towel ready. The wind gusted and cut to the bone.
I bought a roll and a cup of coffee at the bakery in the arcade. The place was expensive, but you could sit there as long as you liked and they didn’t charge for water. I sat right at the back against the wall. I got my book out and tried to read. After almost an hour I went to Scala. I went round the different floors looking at jewellery and jeans, I took the escalator up to the cinema, but there was nothing on that I wanted to see. Before I went home I bought a melon in the Irma supermarket. I sat on the train with it in my canvas bag, looking out at back gardens and sheds and little houses. I thought about my own bungalow with the apple tree and no curtains. It was a very sad melon. I put it in the window in the kitchen, it stayed there until well into November.
14.
Per set the alarm every night, and every morning we overslept. It was broad daylight by the time we woke up entwined. I extricated myself and got out of bed. His parents had long since gone to work. A pheasant strutted about in the yard, it flapped its wings and flew up onto the bird table with a loud squawk. Some sparrows sat like little inflated puffballs in the bushes. I told Per:
‘Come and look at the sparrows. They’re all inflated.’
‘So am I after last night,’ he said and came up behind me. He put his arms around my waist and I leaned my head back against his shoulder.
‘The prawn nibbles were nice,’ I said.
I’d started wearing woolly socks, Ruth had given me a pair from Abracadabra. She’d bought us a hammock as well, it hung from the beams in the bedsit and was full of our dirty washing. Per rummaged around in it looking for a T-shirt. He’d have a ponytail soon.
‘Do you fancy going to the sports hall today?’ he said.
‘And do what?’
‘Play badminton. There’s always a court free on Mondays.’
‘You don’t want to play against me.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘I can’t, anyway. I’ve got to go to work.’
‘Oh, yeah, I forgot. I’ll go with you then.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I can sit and wait for you outside.’
‘It’s much too cold today.’
‘I’ll take a ball with me. Or I can go in and play with one of the kids.’
‘You’re not allowed.’
‘Yes, I am.’
Ruth had got me a job twice a week at the recreation club at her school. I helped a little boy called Niller with his homework. I saw him on Mondays and Wednesdays at two o’clock, just as the other kids and the staff sat down to their fruit and biscuits. Niller flew into a temper every time, he’d get up from the table with his fists clenched and his little shoulders trembling. It wasn’t the best start for homework, but the job was from two until three and that was that. We sat in a little room among cushions and board games, with his books in front of us. There was a musty smell of unwashed hair, packed lunches and dried-up mud. I got decent money for it. I told Ruth I’d pay for my keep, but all she did was roll her eyes. The job had been Per’s for a week and a half before I started, but he couldn’t teach when it came to maths, he had to open the little window in the cushion room and swear under his breath while Niller sat stiff as a board behind him with his maths book. As soon as my first wages came in I went to the flower shop near the school and bought Ruth a big cactus. She was pleased and put it on the floor next to the spinning wheel.
Per went with me to work and back again, he tickled me on the waterbed until I nearly fainted, he took his clothes off and put them back on again several times a day, went with me to the doctor’s when I got pregnant and on the bus to the hospital seven long days later, and on the way back that same afternoon he’d got me a present, a hair slide from a silversmith, made out of a spoon with a proper hallmark. I was so relieved and felt so much better despite the anaesthetic, we couldn’t stop laughing until the driver told us to be quiet. But then in the evening I had to go and lie down before dinner. Per told his parents I was feeling a bit off colour. He came over with some smørrebrød a bit later, meticulously trimmed with cress and jellied stock, he’d made such an effort. He ran his hand up and down my back, and put a glass of milk on my bedside table.
One day we went for a long walk. We went through the woods and round the other side by the stream and further on along the winding road. It had been sunny all week, but the nights were still cold. The fields were white. We held hands, except for when a car came, then we’d step onto the verge, where the snow was hard on top and could carry our weight. We stood kissing as two cars drove by, the second one slowed down and pulled in a bit further on. It was my mum and dad. They got out and we walked towards each other. It was the third time they met Per. They shook his hand. He smiled the whole time, his long fringe kept falling down in front of his eyes. He took off a glove and tucked his hair behind his ears, it would have looked better if he’d left it alone. My dad gave me a hug, and my mum stood right up close to me. My dad asked Per if we were keeping warm under the covers. Per kept smiling and messing with his hair. A car went by going too fast, we all had to stand aside in the snow for a minute.
After they’d gone, we walked a good way without speaking, then turned back when we got to the boggy bit.
‘Haven’t you got a tissue so you can blow your nose?’ I said.
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Can’t you use a leaf, then? You keep sniffing all the time.’
‘Does it bother you?’
‘I wouldn’t mention it if it didn’t,’ I said and could hardly recognise my own voice, I felt like throwing myself flat in a snow drift. Any other time I would have done, and Per would have followed suit within a second. But I kept on at a brisk pace, slightly ahead of him the whole time. At the edge of the woods a buzzard took off from a fence-post right in front of us. We almost felt it in the air, it gave us a fright. That helped, and we began to laugh. A bit later Per took his hand away and left me walking along holding an empty glove. He got me every time, I never learned.
When we got home we made raspberry slices. While we waited for the pastry to chill I did the washing-up from the day before and wiped all the cupboards down with a cloth. They were yellow and blue, Per had painted them himself a few years before. He’d been allowed to choose the colours on his own and after he finished he painted a huge flower on the end wall of the stable. The flower had become a local landmark, you could see it all the way from Aversi.
We ate three slices each, the rest we put on a plate for Ruth and Hans-Jakob. Then we went for a lie-down. We didn’t wake up until late e
vening and couldn’t sleep again for hours.
15.
They’d forgotten their picnic basket, it was sticking out under the shrubs in the front garden. I discovered it on the Tuesday morning when I went over to catch the train. I’d tried some new eyeshadow, it was dusty green and supposed to go all the way up, only my eyelids weren’t the right shape. It was only a couple of minutes till the train was due, so I left the basket where it was and cut through the station. The guy in the ticket office was busy with a customer.
It was sunny again, but bitterly cold. I wished I’d worn something else instead of my thin trench coat. I’d got it for fifty kroner in a charity shop, there was a business card from a barber’s in the pocket. I’d bought a beret as well, but I didn’t put it on until after Roskilde. People sat chattering all through the carriage. A school class had reserved the main compartment, the teacher and a couple of the kids were in ours. The sliding door in between kept opening.
‘Do we get off at Central, Hanne?’
‘We haven’t got homework for tomorrow, have we?’
‘Have we got time to buy something to drink?’
‘Yes, just stay in your seats,’ said the teacher, and stood up. She went next door and repeated the instruction, then came back with apologetic eyebrows beneath her school-teacher’s fringe.
‘There wasn’t enough room for us in one compartment.’
‘It’d be a bit of a squeeze. Day out in town, is it?’ said an elderly man.
‘Geological Museum,’ she said with a nod and rummaged in her bag. The two kids sent longing looks to their classmates in the other compartment.
‘Øster Voldgade,’ said the man, and she nodded again. The man looked across at me.