So Much for That Winter

by Dorthe Nors

  Not completely, no, for all that I originally asked for was a cup of coffee

  and now look at all this.

  Ran around Damhus Pond, with all the ducklings shunted out of the way in the grass.

  Ran so slowly that I was caught by a father and his little boy, and Are there sharks in that water, Dad? the boy asked, and the father replied, Might be,

  and if he’d looked back he’d have seen me nod.

  Couldn’t sit inside for the sun, couldn’t avoid Frederiksberg Gardens, but there weren’t any elephants, only their smell.

  Drew a line in the gravel with my sneakers.

  Sat on a bench by the goldfish pond in the graveyard,

  opened my bag and sat like that: me and my notes and an ice cream from the cross-eyed man in the kiosk, and yet there lay everything I ought to be observing with the shiny side up.

  I don’t know if it’s worth it, I thought,

  I think that’ll do now,

  and then I nodded to the old gaffer who was talking to himself on the bench opposite, and he might have had Alzheimer’s, or perhaps he was about to make notes too, for he nodded back,

  and he was mournful, but alive and kicking,

  and We should have the courage to keep at it, he whispered. We should believe, lose, love, be lost and again found,

  and he looked at me, whispering,

  Necessity is the only criterion,

  and he whispered, Forget the pillories,

  whispered, Have patience and confidence till the end,

  and then I took out my pencil,

  and it’s possible I imagined it

  but I was sure he giggled.

  Caught sight of something so small that I couldn’t really see it and longed for it to be larger,

  such a little window into such a big greenhouse.

  Had to sit on the edge of a kitchen chair and push away the newspaper,

  but breathing is a triangle with the point at the bottom and I’m on top, and if I hold my breath long enough my arms will turn into wings.

  Ran my fingertip along the edge of an iris, there where it curls inward, and then tugged up the zipper to the darkness (that’s allowed)

  and bought white flowers for forty crowns.

  Leafed through a book.

  Watched one pigeon mount another on the chimney across the backyard, whereupon they went their respective ways along the ridge, balancing, totally matter-of-fact, while those of us over here in our segment know that nothing done is undone,

  and that you have to take the consequence.

  Agreed with myself never to wear a large hat, not even if I could use some class,

  necessity, I thought, alone and stuck my foot out into the crosswalk on Roskildevej.

  Walked down the long paths, past Vilhelm Kyhn

  and home again

  to the flat and my relation to myself. It’s always dicey,

  you never know what awaits—an accident, a counterattack, another’s joy, or simply a thought, like when I sat in Chinatown and ate Peking duck and a revelation ran through my head at a point when I couldn’t listen: Pull yourself together, little girl, this sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life.

  Chopped lettuce without cutting my finger

  and decided that perhaps in time something good would happen. I do know that something will, I know it, like when you’re riding a train across Zealand in winter:

  darkness darkness darkness darkness

  and then suddenly a greenhouse crackling warm

  in the middle of it all.

  Woke slowly to the scent of wet sky.

  Couldn’t think of a better way to start the day than to run around in the rain in a cemetery,

  transcribed straight from a gravestone onto my moist palm the name of Anna Mess (and without reality we’d have lost the knack of fiction long ago).

  Wondered why I’m always thinking about Refshale Island, and came to no conclusion,

  but when I was young, we’d go to the air show once a year, and there was a place where kids were allowed to sit in the cockpit of a Draken, and the pilot lifted kid after kid up into the plane, first one boy and then another, and then he looked at me standing next to my mom. I suppose you’re going to try to fly too? But I wouldn’t, for what if the sky’s a far better place, I thought, clinging to my mom’s leg,

  and seen from that perspective, love is what binds us to the earth.

  Got caught in a thunderstorm by Valby PO.

  Got caught in a hail shower under the awning of Café Sommerfuglen.

  Got caught in a downpour at the library, in a side wind, in the constant dripping from the leaky gutters on Horsekildevej

  and kept standing there anyway

  until I walked through the graves and the magnolia trees home.

  It’ll end well, this business. It’ll end well. It almost can’t help but. Denmark’s too tiny and there will always be doors I’ll find myself entering, and then we’ll stand there face to face, me and his rap sheet,

  and we’ll be able to have a conversation, I thought,

  it doesn’t make sense otherwise, I thought,

  and seated myself in the graveyard among daisies and dandelions, and

  it’s tough now, yes, right now it’s like driving a car in quicksand and suddenly realizing that the answer lies in the glove box, but you can’t reach the glove box, the glove box is two inches beyond your reach, your fingertips are tingling in the air but the glove box is out of reach and it’s in there, the wig, the magic potion, the pardon.

  But it’ll end well, I thought, looking at the daisies.

  My birthday was in fifteen days (nearly midlife), but it’ll end well, my life. With patience, industry, and goodwill, it’ll end well.

  Biked into town and sat in a café near Kastellet.

  Went when the shadows fell, round and round the fort, down to the water, as I usually do, through Nyhavn, as far as I could with arms swinging and the wind in my face, back to the Nyboder quarter, where I put on my bike helmet

  (and it’ll all work out fine).

  Ate ramen while I gazed down at the pigeons in the backyard, and I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind either, I thought,

  so it’ll end well. I know that. It cannot anything but. It ends with my fingers stretching farther and farther and reaching all the way to the glove box without being able to reach it anyhow, but just when my nails are almost able to scratch at the laminated vinyl it opens anyway, the glove box, it opens of its own accord, it opens, for that is what it was made for and wants to do, and the light goes on and there it lies within:

  the pardon.

  Found a picture of the bench in Manhattan where I once sat eating my fruit and writing my postcards: Hey everybody, the world’s exactly like it is back home

  (but it wasn’t).

  My mouth hurt,

  I was dizzy

  and found a spot to lie in the sun:

  boxwood, lilacs, some obelisks, and among the stiffened pigeons a magpie that looked at me with its impudent head aslant, and I’m sure it had its eye on my sandals.

  Listened to the unoiled rollator wheels of the widows passing by.

  Saw a heron soaring high above, round and round, and from a distance it resembled both poultry shears and one of those scavengers.

  And have I ever been in the US? I asked myself

  while I looked at my hands

  and walked over to the elephants,

  found a bench, dug out a little water and my apple and observed that elephants can be a bit unsteady on their feet too, not to say dizzy, and I am dizzy, as if there’s someone who’s calling me up without using a phone, and I don’t know where my receiver’s located, but when I close my eyes all sorts of things are streaming toward me.

  Made a note to myself: there’s the reality that the others keep an eye on, and next to it is my own.

  Took a detour home

  and maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s bloat or dehydration or some so
rt of blessing,

  but in any case I’m dizzy.

  Woke up dizzy.

  Went sweatily around my flat beneath the drying attic, and water didn’t seem to help.

  Tucked the papers in my bag,

  seated myself somewhere near the Round Tower and its observatory,

  seated myself with my minor infections invisible to the naked eye, suddenly caught in the sunshine, and I thought, So the time has come to learn to surrender.

  Walked in the afternoon’s warmest hour down the main pedestrian drag and into a bookstore, to caress one maybe two books on the spine, because that’s why they stand there, they’re just like the rest of us, they want to be caressed and loved despite it all,

  I thought, and saw there was a figure from TV, balancing with an ice cream cone outside the window on a miniature bike.

  Embarked for home, scalding hot, like a little steel espresso pot,

  lay down, thought, There’s nothing wrong with me, but if I lie still then the echo chamber might stop tormenting me,

  but it didn’t.

  Dozed, took a stroll as slowly as I could, elastic as a dromedary, languid and lazy amid nature’s example for emulation: Come on, just overdo it,

  and everything so lovely that it trembles, and I stand, undeterrably dizzy in the midst of it all

  and listen, now the blackbird’s singing

  and soon the chestnut will blossom.

  Opened my hand and grabbed hold: I’m not letting go.

  Set the fan four inches from the table.

  Went for a walk in Western Cemetery,

  sat in the shade of a dawn redwood and gazed at the monument of some random industry baron, pyramidal and ivied and all, and I thought,

  He’s just like an Indian, that’s what he is, an Indian who enters his teepee after the lost battle to find the Indian in himself. He sharpens his spear, confronts his demons, sings about the night, sticks cords through his chest muscles and hoists himself through pain toward the light. He does it to find the Indian in himself again, and when he’s discovered him, he steps out of the teepee. And his woman is a squaw who’s seen the Indian in him the whole time and, no matter what he does, is able to see the Indian in him, but she also knows that the man she loves is precisely the sort of Indian who, after the lost battle, enters his teepee to find the Indian in himself again, so she doesn’t go anywhere. Where should she go?

  Sat out in the sun,

  lay down to read but looked chiefly at the sky, full of hoverflies and planes, and I’m not going anywhere. Where should I go?

  Scribbled down an inscription: IN GRATITUDE.

  Scribbled down an inscription: ALWAYS MISSED

  and thought, No doubt it’s just a transition phase,

  and then I walked home,

  clipped my nails,

  and drank my coffee scalding from the pot while I looked at my hand holding the nail clippers, the pen, and the memory of things I have seen and held true,

  and it held on, my hand, it’s not letting go.

  How could it?

  Woke and could tell that it’d be a good day.

  Biked to Dragør, which was the spit and image of the village I lived in on the island of Fanø.

  Walked the bike straight out to the Sound and looked out toward Sweden, where clouds were gathering, but it didn’t matter, because above me the sky is always blue.

  Read, in the scent of saltwater, wet dogs, and children, until the mist reached the Øresund Bridge,

  bought a shawl in a dime store

  and ate an ice cream cone on the lawn in front of one of the cannons that in 1808 had sent seventy balls into the hull of the Africa, pride of the British fleet, and ’twas on a day like this, with jam in the corners of the mouth and the will to believe that the tide of battle had turned.

  Walked along the water,

  sat down by the harbor,

  gazed at the swans while a father and his little boy raced along the breakwater, on a day with no trapdoors but with swans and the breeze on my face, and there is peace, there is only kindness and good intentions and abundance in the hollyhocks, the half-timbering and the swans, the swans and then all the saltwater below.

  Biked homeward and was already freezing in my summer frock by the white church in Dragør.

  Biked through the airport tunnel just as a Boeing or something took off, and the pressure and its flight out into the world shook the ground, the bike, and me as I sang, because no one would be able to hear me anyway in all the happiness

  of just such a blind and sated Pentecost Copenhagen.

  It was the sky from the morning,

  the sky and my hand resting on the duvet,

  and it was the rain and the writing on the wall, on the shopping list, in the letters

  and the walk in the cemetery under white hawthorn, red hawthorn, and me and a squirrel in the willow allée.

  Reserved a table at the hotel for me and Dad and Mom, and I’m looking forward to them seeing where I live, and I’ll show Dad the planetarium and Christiansborg Palace, and I’ll show Mom that that house by the Søndermarken streetcar stop where she once lodged for a week as a twenty-year-old, not knowing that one day her children would exist and that her daughter would stand brimming and point, that that house is still standing.

  Thought about my dentist while I boiled eggs,

  wrote a crucial note,

  had an attack of vulnerability from the silence that fights back

  and then took a walk on Queen Dagmar’s Boulevard among the girls hopscotching and the boys with their scooters and then me and my insecurity, but the one who writes must dare to stand with her fledglings stuck to her fingers and surrender them in showers of spittle and roses

  and keep going, because it’s important

  and keep going, because it’s alive

  and keep going, because that’s what she believes

  and that’s the way the future is,

  keep going, because she loves it (I love it)

  and keep going when she can’t do anything else (I dare to)

  and keep going, because that’s the whole idea.

  That’s the whole idea.

  Got Mom and Dad from platform 2, Copenhagen Central Station, and they waved the whole way through the passenger tribe.

  Let Dad tell everyone on the metro where he was coming from.

  Let Mom hold my hand all the way home from Langgade Station.

  Expected nothing less and said nothing about my expectations.

  Took Valby from the green side, took Frederiksberg with flowers, wood pigeons, ducks, and Dad in the zoo,

  and it was the same animals they had in Central Park, I remember, penguins, polar bears, and wolves, and the stench of the primates’ urine also the same, and I sat tailor-fashion like a local bohemian on a knoll with my takeaway and phoned Dad, who was walking about among his trees on the other side of the planet. I can see the Empire State Building from where I’m sitting, I lied. And I can see the transformer tower, he lied, and then we spoke for the rest about how long it had taken my postcard to get there.

  Had my picture taken with Dad and the cow with black patches.

  Let Mom hold my hand, and I didn’t say a thing, and didn’t cry either.

  Walked home through Søndermarken,

  made them coffee while they rested their legs,

  made notes about that when neither of them was watching, and then

  let Dad tell everyone in the restaurant that it was my birthday.

  Went home by Magnoliavej after dinner and the birthday business,

  the lilacs, the California poppies, and Mom’s fingers in my palm, quietly morsing the message, It’ll all turn out okay, it’ll all turn out okay,

  it’ll be okay,

  my mother’s fingers morsed, and then I morsed back

  Yes it will, yes it will.

  I was the Gefion Fountain, that was me it came from, and it flowed out across Central Station, the metro to Valby, and up t
he stairs to my flat, and the plash that sounded a bit after noon was me letting go in the hallway.

  Tried not to drip on the table, even though I was filled with the sort of fluid you find in tear ducts, primordial soups, and amniotic sacs.

  Went over the empty flat with a dishtowel.

  Donned my running clothes, but was too beat to run and walked slowly with the sight of laburnum like a weight in my chest, and I miss everything, if anyone can understand that.

  Fed a house sparrow from my hand and drowned it.

  Got a call from Mom: We’re home now, and that was that, and it wasn’t that, it was more the entirety of it all, and everything that was lacking in order for life to proceed,

  and then I walked home with my shoelaces untied and muddy.

  Was in the shower without turning on the water,

  sat slightly sweaty in the dusk,

  and it wasn’t dangerous, I reflected about my day as a baroque wetland. It’s just an aspect of the ability to love

  and thereby of love itself

  and thus a sort of blessing.

  Woke up one year older, feeling that this should be seen as a sign,

  but it isn’t a sign of anything, other than that a day has passed.

  Paid my back taxes,

  attended to my mail,

  and took a long walk along the usual route through the cemetery to the elephants, and their mighty bodies played with each other in the pool as if they knew full well that their weight could prove fatal, and I stood there a long time, I stood at the side of an old woman who also pondered the elephants’ love lives.

  Bought scones at the good bakery on Gammel Kongevej

  and sat down on the way home to read a book, not far from the grotto in Søndermarken, but was badgered by a duck that begged bread from park visitors, while the sweethearts on the blanket next to me were watching all the birds warily, including mine, because the woman was afraid of birds and because the man enjoyed defending her from them,

  and so we managed to pass the afternoon that way.

  Felt pain in my mouth,