by Helle Helle
‘It’s on Øster Voldgade,’ he said, and I nodded as well even though I had no idea, but I knew Albertslundplanen, the housing development we clattered past. I’d been to a so-called reading group there three weeks before. It was the first meeting, there was nothing in particular we were supposed to have read. There were four of us. The girl who lived there was called Margrethe, she wore a beret too. She’d read law to begin with, but that had been a mistake, she’d only chosen the course on political grounds. We had goat’s cheese and baguette with red wine, and she made coffee in a French press and heated up the milk. She had a shelving system in untreated pine, and a proper sofa. She was two years older than me. The others were even older, their names were Benny and Hase. Benny was a woman. She had a loud and throaty laugh, smoked Look cigarettes because they were out of Cecils, and pinched off the filter. There was something odd about Hase. He was round-shouldered and the waist of his trousers was too high up. But his face was kind, he sang in the church choir in Greve Landsby. We drank three bottles of wine and decided to call ourselves the Oldies. I left with Hase when it was time to go, it took twenty-one minutes on the S-train. He asked if we could have lunch together the next day in the canteen. He bent forward and kissed me on the hand when we went our separate ways at Central Station. I took his hand without thinking about it and gave it a squeeze, it made him smile. He smiled at me all the way down the escalator to the Nykøbing train. I hadn’t been to the reading group since. Maybe there hadn’t been any meetings.
I let the school children get off before me, there was a smell of chewing gum in the air around them. I put my head through the strap of my bag and went straight to Rådhuspladsen. There was a branch of Privatbanken on the corner and I took out four hundred kroner. Then I went back and got on a number 12 to the Amager campus, I drank a cup of coffee at the far end of the canteen. I had a piece of cheesecake too, and then I went to the library and wandered round the shelves. I pulled out a guide to punctuation and sat down with it. I looked at the back cover. I looked in the index. I looked at my hands. I tried to pull myself together. I read and took nothing in.
After an hour I got the bus back into town and went round Scala. I bought a scarf and wrapped it round my neck, and stuffed it well down into the opening of my trench coat. I saw three versions of myself in a fitting room, each one stumpier than the next. Then I left the fitting room and went down the stairs and along the street to Central Station, and got on the next train just before two. I was home an hour later. The sun was low behind the supermarket, I picked two apples and put the picnic basket away in the shed.
Late in the afternoon my dad came and picked me up for fried herring, it had been arranged for ages. My mum had made stewed potatoes, she had new, faintly orange lipstick on. She put her hand on my forearm when I reached across for the dish. They’d been out at Jan and Bitte’s over the weekend in the trenches, as my dad said, he’d been helping Jan dig a ditch. They’d had fondue, but it hadn’t been up to much, all that oil. He asked how my course was going and I said fine. He said fondue might be more my kind of thing. My mum asked about the house, how I was settling in, and if there was anything I needed to borrow.
They drove me home at eight, the two of them together. I insisted on being dropped off by the church for the walk. In the night I lay and stared out into the darkness of the back garden again. It was like the whole house was creaking and groaning: doors, floors, skirting boards and panels.
16.
Dorte was so proud of my song in The Duckling she asked for a stack to have on the counter. We sat in the kitchen at the back of the shop with a cup of coffee, her cigarette lay smouldering in the ashtray, she was too busy to smoke it. She laughed and coughed and held up the page in front of her, humming the melody and reading the words over and over again.
‘That’s lovely, that is. Too good not to be in print,’ she said.
‘I think it’s a bit odd.’
‘It is a bit. But nice, all the same.’
‘Remember your fag.’
‘Oh, I forgot.’
She took a drag, then a couple more puffs before stubbing it out with quick, efficient jabs. Then she got up and lifted the lid off a big pot and a tart smell of apples rose up.
‘Do you want some stewed apples?’ she asked.
‘No, thanks.’
‘You’ll wither away soon. Aren’t they feeding you on the farm?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Is he good to you?’
‘Very.’
‘Spoil you rotten, does he?’
‘Mostly.’
‘And you’re earning your keep?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ she said, and went out into the shop. When she came back she had two five-hundred krone notes in her hand, she crumpled them up and pressed them into my palm.
‘Here. Get yourself a perm.’
‘Ha, ha. I can’t take this.’
‘You can and you will.’
Not long after, I started earning decent money writing lyrics for party songs. To begin with it was just for teachers in the Ringsted area, but then word got round as far as Osted. A single event sometimes meant four songs. I charged a hundred and fifty kroner a piece and could do two in a week, even though I did set myself certain rules. On principle I wouldn’t duplicate a line from any song I’d written before, and if I could avoid it I wouldn’t rhyme on a verb. I hated the narrative present. I wrote lying down on the waterbed. Ruth gave me a rhyming dictionary that helped a lot. I sang the songs through for Per before sending them off, sometimes he played along. He turned the contents of our hammock out and got in with his guitar. When he moved his hand, all the long muscles up his arm flexed, the hair stuck out from under his arms. I buried my nose in it and he squeezed me tight.
‘Now I’ve got you.’
‘Hm.’
‘Come here.’
He drew me in towards him and the guitar fell down with a twang into the heap of dirty washing. We could hardly breathe in that hammock. We lay there looking out. The sunset was different every day, just then it was a big pink stripe over the fields from south to north. We shifted our weight and the hammock started to sway. His mouth was practically inside my ear.
‘What should we do?’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘You mean now?’
‘Now, but not just now.’
‘Let’s wait a bit, then we’ll see,’ I whispered back. I hadn’t thought about it much, I kept avoiding it. I thought about my songs and how I could be of help over in the house, cooking and washing up, hoovering the sofa even if no one would ever notice, polishing the glass tabletop. I thought about the lapwing tumbling over the fallow field at that very moment, pee-wit, pee-wit, its angular wings and little quiff. It was here so early this year, just like every year, the winter was hardly over before the lapwing was back.
17.
It was the twelfth of March, we were lying in the waterbed and couldn’t get up. It was after midday, the sun was shining and there was a racket coming from the cobbles at the front. Someone had given Hans-Jakob an old wooden parlour bench and now he was doing it up. He stood with a sander in his hand and had been at it for a while. We were naked under the duvet, looking up at the sloping wall. There were marks above my head from a foot or a hand. Then came a sound of laughter, the sander stopped and we could hear Hans-Jakob talking to someone. Per got halfway out of bed and leaned over to the window.
‘It’s my cousin. He’s back.’
‘The one who was in the States?’
‘Yeah, he’s down there with my dad.’
‘We’d better get up, then.’
‘Doesn’t matter, he won’t mind. Lars!’
He unhasped the window and the sparrows on the roof flew off as he pushed it open. His cousin shouted back from below, his voice reverberating off the outside walls:
‘Hey!’
‘When did you get back?’
‘Yesterday. The folks came and pi
cked me up.’
‘From Cleveland?’
‘Ha, ha.’
‘Are you coming up? Come on,’ said Per and closed the window. He picked his underpants off the floor and pulled them on, hopping about on one foot. I could already hear his cousin on the stairs.
‘What about me?’ I said and pulled the duvet up under my chin, and then there he was inside the room. They shook hands and hugged. He had longish hair and blue eyes. He had an anorak on and the air around him was cool and fresh, it reached all the way over to me in the bed.
‘Bloody hell, I’m out of shape,’ he said, and patted his stomach. Per laughed.
‘Too many steaks, I bet. You’ve grown your hair.’
‘That makes two of us then,’ he said, and turned towards me.
‘I’m Lars. You must be Dorte.’
‘Yeah, that’s Dorte,’ said Per.
His handshake was firm. He moved his hand up and down a few times and mine went with it, it made waves in the waterbed. He went over and sat down in the swivel chair, Per searched for some clothes in the hammock.
‘Just lying here dossing, the two of you?’
‘You could say that,’ said Per.
‘Have you been out on the town?’
‘What town?’
‘I was supposed to be going to Pub 22,’ I said, pronouncing it all wrong. I cringed but carried on, or it would have made it worse. ‘With my aunt. But she couldn’t make it in the end.’
‘She’s got a smørrebrød shop in Ringsted. She’s quite young considering,’ said Per.
‘She’ll have had it for twenty years next year,’ I said.
‘Long time,’ said Lars.
‘Are you on your bike?’ said Per.
‘What do you think? Where’s your mum?’
‘In the house, I suppose.’
‘Should we go and see if she’s got any coffee?’
‘Yeah, let’s,’ said Per. He’d managed to get his trousers and a T-shirt on now, he came and gave me a kiss.
‘We’ll go and get some coffee on, then.’
‘I’ll be over in a bit,’ I said.
We all sat round the table in the kitchen. Ruth sat next to Lars and kept putting her hand on his arm or his shoulder.
‘He’s like a second son to me, can you tell?’ she said, and I nodded.
‘I can see that.’
‘So what are you doing now, until your course starts?’ said Hans-Jakob.
‘Earning some money at the nursery,’ said Lars.
‘Have you still got your bedsit in Haslev?’
‘Yeah, from April. What about you two?’ he said, looking at Per and me. ‘Are you going to start studying?’
‘At some point,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking about becoming a teacher.’
‘Are you?’ said Per.
‘Good idea,’ said Hans-Jakob.
‘I’d think twice if I were you,’ said Ruth with a laugh. She patted Lars on the head, he kept looking at me while she was doing it.
‘See what I have to put up with?’
He went to the teacher training college in Haslev, his main subjects were biology and physics. I understood he was doing well and got lots of As. It wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, he changed the subject. He told us about his younger brother who’d got an apprenticeship in a bakery in Roskilde. He’d made a cake with fourteen tiers and the top one had been decorated with a helicopter made out of boiled sugar. It was for one of his other brothers, the youngest. There were five of them all together, all boys. Lars was the eldest.
‘And the second best-looking,’ he said with a smile. His blue eyes gleamed across the table.
‘Who’s number one?’ said Ruth.
‘Leon, Ruth, as well you know,’ said Lars. He pronounced her name the English way and Per laughed.
‘Yes, Leon’s always had the girls after him.’
‘Has he, now?’ said Hans-Jakob, turning his teaspoon in the air. He had a wry smile on his face. Ruth had a little dig at him.
‘Just like you, in your younger days,’ she said and shook her head. Her hair danced on either side of her parting, it was thick and had a good sheen to it. She drank a glass of buttermilk every day and claimed that was why. Lars shook his head too, and smiled.
‘Leon’s not meant to be on his own.’
‘Dorte says that as well,’ I said. Lars gave me a puzzled look, Per came to my aid.
‘She’s the one with the smørrebrød shop. Her aunt.’
‘About herself, I mean,’ I said, and felt my cheeks going red. Lars reached out for a biscuit from the dish.
‘What a lot of Dortes,’ he said.
‘Don’t you want some butter on that?’ said Ruth. ‘It’s good for the brain.’
‘Give him a big dollop,’ said Hans-Jakob.
He left again after coffee, we all stood on the cobbles and waved goodbye as he got on his racer with the drop handlebars and took off down the drive. When he got to the road he turned and waved again, Per put both his arms in the air.
‘Come back soon,’ he shouted, and made his voice crack. He pulled me close, Ruth and Hans-Jakob were already on their way back inside. The parlour bench was in two pieces in the yard, it stayed there for months. I buried my face in the opening of Per’s jumper, it smelled a bit musty, an old one from the pile. I could feel him swallowing, ligaments and cartilage bobbing up and down. We stood there like that, and then we went back to ours.
18.
I was named after Dorte because she couldn’t have children of her own. They’d given her the diagnosis when she was twenty and already married. It might have been the reason they split up. At any rate, her ex had four kids in no time by a seamstress in Tornemark. They bought a detached that turned out to be built on contaminated land. It cost them a fortune and they were stuck with the place. Dorte’s voice grew hollow when she talked about it, she was upset for them regardless. They didn’t have a penny to their name, they spent their summer holidays in camping chairs on the patio. Her ex had even done his back in, he fell off a carport. He was nearly fifty now and the only prospect he had left was the knacker’s yard, as Dorte put it.
She didn’t like talking about that diagnosis. Mostly because it had been so awful the day they told her. She’d cycled all the way to Køge to be examined. The doctor peered between her legs and shook his head.
‘Barren,’ he said.
She hadn’t grasped what he meant. Afterwards she stood for a long time in the waiting room with her coat in her hands, a bomber jacket in blue satin. Eventually she went up and asked the secretary, and the secretary fetched the doctor. He was in the middle of seeing his next patient and came and stood in the doorway with his gynaecologist’s headlamp on and his arms at his sides.
‘I said you can’t have children,’ he said, spelling it out, and Dorte stared back at him, she even smiled and thanked him for his time.
That was almost the worst bit. Then when she came out her bike had been stolen, she had to walk nineteen kilometres from Køge to Borup. It was a gorgeous evening in August. There were some young people on tandem bikes in the dwindling light, and couples lying in the wheat fields watching for shooting stars. It was the first time in her life she didn’t want to go on living. The bomber jacket was nearly see-through from tears by the time she got home. She stayed in bed for three days, my mum and dad came with cabbage soup. She was small and pale and hugged my mother like a child, burying her face in her apron. But on the fourth day she got up, she had a large brandy and went to the shop for a women’s magazine and turned down the corner of every page with nice clothes on it. Not long after that, she got divorced, moved to Roskilde and took her diploma, then lived in Jersie and even Copenhagen, three months in a butcher’s shop in Østerbro, before buying the business in Ringsted. It was her anchor all the time she kept moving.
The times I lived with her she always had a laugh sticking a note up next to her name on the door so it said Dorte Hansen x 2. Once, the postman rang th
e bell and asked what it was supposed to mean.
‘Exactly what it says,’ she told him.
19.
To help me fall asleep I’d started visualising two guards on the bungalow’s front step. There had to be two so they could come to each other’s aid in an emergency. Sometimes one of them stood by the garden gate, it changed a bit. For weeks I’d been tossing and turning. Whenever I managed to sleep I had nightmares about murders and ferries that sank. Ice drifts, and people who couldn’t be trusted. I woke up all sweaty in my pyjamas, fumbling with the buttons under the duvet until eventually I had to sit up to take them off. I put the light on and found a T-shirt in the cupboard, went to the kitchen and drank some water out of a big glass, sat down in the armchair in the front room. I thought about getting a pet of some sort, or at least some curtains. But in the morning, when it got light and the day got started, it never seemed important any more. I sat there knowing I wouldn’t buy curtain material the next day either. I’d actually seen some that would have been all right, on the fourth floor of Daells Varehus, some unbleached linen. The girl came up and asked if I needed help. She seemed familiar, a young girl with unusually wide nostrils. She moved some rolls of fabric aside so I could have a better look, then looked at me with a smile.
‘Didn’t you used to go to school in Næstved?’ she said.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Me too. You won’t remember me, though. I was a year below.’
‘Oh, but I thought I recognised you.’
‘My hair’s different now,’ she said, and tossed her head. A strand got stuck in the corner of her mouth, she blew it away. ‘Pff. Have you moved here as well?’
‘No. I live in Glumsø.’
‘Oh, right, just out for the day, then?’
‘You could say.’
‘I’m reading psychology, as you can see,’ she said with a laugh, and I laughed too. I put my hand on the roll and felt the fabric, even though I knew I wasn’t going to buy any.