Nothing But Fear

by Knud Romer

  They had to find a larger place to live, and the increase in his salary would allow them to buy a house. Mother persuaded him to demand a company car suitable for a manager, and it was to be a Mercedes. He was given the smallest model – a dark-blue Mercedes 180 – and it was the only one of its kind in town. Father gave her a fur coat, an ocelot, and she handed in her notice at the Sugar Factory and sat beside Father in the car. Then he cruised off in first gear, changed into second and took a drive around Nykøbing. It was the last time they saw anyone. From then on the space around them became completely void.

  In 1959 they moved into a detached red-brick house on Hans Ditlevsensgade, and Mother had her belongings fetched from Einbeck. They arrived in a goods carriage, were unloaded at the station and ferried home. Then they reinstated the dining room rescued from Kleinwanzleben – sideboard, table and chairs, silver and tableware, all found a place. They unpacked the porcelain, and the double bed and the wardrobes were carried up into the bedroom. They unrolled the carpets in the sitting room, and Mother hung the paintings. Finally, to top it all, they opened one of the bottles of wine left over from Papa Schneider’s cellar – it was an 1892 vintage and very expensive – and Father took a taste and said ‘Arghhh!’, and Mother laughed. It tasted of vinegar. It couldn’t travel and had gone off. She saw in her mind’s eye the party elite in East Germany, who had been given the wine as a bribe, pouring it out, clinking glasses and screwing up their mouths. She brought out the duvet covers, embroidered with their coat of arms, and made the bed. Father took a look outside, checked everything, locked the front door and lay down to sleep beside my mother, who was a dream in a bed in another country.

  Sunlight fell between the curtains in the morning, crept across the floor like a tiger and licked me on the cheek. I always woke before I got eaten. It was gone but I could hear it outside roaring. I was convinced that lions and tigers walked the streets – sometimes there was the sound of other animals too, apes or parrots – and the hedge around our house was there to keep out wild beasts, just like in Peter and the Wolf.

  What I could hear was the Zoo. I had dreamt about it ever since our teacher, Fru Kronov, had said that we were going on a school outing. We lined up in two rows and marched through the town, past the railway station and on out to Sønder Kohave Wood, and there we walked around Nykøbing Folkepark. There was a kiosk at the entrance, where they sold spaghetti for the monkeys and ice cream for the children.

  You could pat the goats, but the he-goats butted with their horns and we ran outside. To the left lay the bears’ grotto, where a brown bear danced for sugar lumps and turned round and round in endless circles. Antelopes walked the ploughed fields among the cows, and the flamingos stood on stalks in the lake and rotted from the feet up. The monkeys chewed the bars and made faces and reached out their arms for the spaghetti. The lions were skeletal, their manes moulting, and the giant turtle lay on its back, dead. The stench was awful. At the exit a parrot, a blue and gold macaw, sat rocking from side to side pecking at itself and staring at me with evil yellow eyes, and I could not get it out of my head.

  We marched back to the school as though nothing had happened, and behind us the animals howled and bellowed and gathered themselves into a single ear-splitting scream. But no one heard it in Nykøbing. I took a porcelain figure home with me that I had bought at the kiosk with my sweet money. It was a sea lion, and Mother kissed me, gave me a cuddle and put it on the bedside table. There it stood, a memento of my school outing, a souvenir of hell on earth.

  Two or three times a year Mother and Father went on major shopping expeditions. We would take the ferry, and the tables juddered as we left the quayside, and King Frederik and Queen Ingrid and Princess Margrethe trembled in their frames on the wall. The woman’s voice in the loudspeakers wished us a good crossing in three languages, and for 45 minutes there were no limits to the tax-free shopping. Then it was on to Lübeck, and we walked up through the pedestrian precinct, in and out of the shops. I tried on a jazzy shirt that Mother had found, and dreaded the idea of wearing it to school. We had lunch in the Rathauskeller – ‘Wienerschnitzel mit pommes frites’ – and later we went to Niederegger, the confectioner where they made marzipan. I had an Italian ice cream. Mother drank coffee and smoked cheroots.

  ‘Such a marzipan they do not have in Dänemark,’ she said, sitting with the shopping bags at her feet – gloves, shoes and a dress from Jaeger – and Father said how right she was, and nor could you get decent sausages or proper chocolate back home, and then we drove out to the end of the rainbow, where everything you wanted was brought together in one place, Citti Grossmarkt.

  It was a cathedral. Even the shopping trolleys were so big that it took two people to push them. We walked along the shelves in the aisles, and everything looked as though you were seeing it through a magnifying glass. There were giant cucumbers and pickled gerkins and more varieties of chips than I had ever seen, and the rows of coloured Smarties went on forever. Father filled up the boot of the car with hams and sauerkraut and sausages in tins, with marmalade and salted crackers and chocolate, with wine and vodka. The car was so weighted down on the way home that the traffic in the opposite lane hooted and flashed at us, blinded by our headlights. When we got home, he systematically unpacked all the things we had bought in the sitting room, laying them out and taking a photograph of our haul. Then he stashed them away in the larder down in the cellar, wrote everything down in his diary and registered it all with the price and quantity. Maggi, Dr Oetker, Nutella. We ate frankfurters in the kitchen. Mother served them up with mustard and beetroot. ‘Mmmm,’ she said, and Father nodded and speared another sausage from the saucepan. It was as though they were stocking up for the war that was to come – and in a way they were.

  Aunt Annelise, my father’s sister, was the illegitimate daughter of King Christian IX and called herself Princess Ann. When she went down to collect her invalid pension it was her royal appanage. She was mad as a hatter, and I only knew her because I had been unlucky enough to answer the telephone a few times when she had been on the other end.

  ‘Hello, Knud,’ she might say. ‘Do you think I might have a word with your father?’

  I’d quickly fetch Father, who took the receiver and spoke with her – Mother and I were all ears – and the conversation always ended with Father saying goodbye and ‘I’ll be sending you a little envelope’. As soon as he put the phone down, it was as though nothing had happened. But it had, and one day the bell rang, and Annelise stood there in the doorway.

  I couldn’t believe that it was her, Aunt Annelise, sitting in front of me on the sofa smoking one cigarette after the other. Her hands shook, and she had to get a grip on herself to hit the ashtray that Father had set beside her. I was frightened out of my wits, convinced that it was infectious and that soon we would all go mad. Mother came in with a beer – she placed a silver coaster under the bottle so it didn’t mark the mahogany – and Annelise said thank you and gabbled in a nervous stream, skating dangerously along the edge of song and dance and swearing and gobbledegook.

  Mother and Father whispered together in the kitchen about her afterwards – I wasn’t supposed to hear – and when Father said, ‘Not on your life!’ Mother answered that she had nowhere to go and hadn’t even got any clothes. Annelise had been arrested at the English customs smuggling pornography into the country – she had met a man in Nyhavn and they were lovers – the embassy had sent her straight back to Oringe Hospital, but instead she was now on her way to Copenhagen. When it came down to it, she was after money as usual. If Father could just give her a bit, she would vanish as quickly as she had come – and Father gave in and let her stay the night in the guest room.

  Never had I heard so many illicit acts referred to at one time. I could hardly believe my ears and dared not think about Aunt Annelise lying and sleeping down in our cellar. When she emerged the following morning, Father handed her an envelope, and she was given some clothes by Mother along with a discarded f
ur. After savouring her own reflection in the wardrobe mirror, she looked at us as though she expected us to fall on one knee – and then she was out across the ploughed fields, taking the shortest route to Copenhagen, shaking her fist and shouting, ‘This place stinks of death and decay!’

  Aunt Annelise had been spoilt from the day she opened her eyes on the world. She was the only girl, the youngest, and every day was her birthday. She was pretty and she always had her way, toying with people as though they were her dolls, and they did as she said and played along with her. As she entered her teens, she behaved more and more outrageously. She read novelettes and wanted to be an actress, and she went to dance classes at Birgitte Reimer’s, flirting with her husband even though he was old and married with children of her age. One day she would be a film star on her way to Hollywood, the next she would be a nun and renounce everything. When the royal yacht came by and anchored in Nykøbing, she was knocked sideways – rumours were going around about King Christian having affairs in the town – and after that for weeks she was a lady-in-waiting and impossible to talk to. She was a cut above this world, and when she came home with notes from school, Grandfather said that Annelise just had too much imagination.

  Annelise lived in a dream, longing for life in the big city, and her great love was amateur dramatics. She lived and breathed for the performances at the Baltic Hotel. On stage she became herself, spreading her wings in the tension of high drama, was Desdemona, was Nora, and could not come down to earth again. She would go partying after the performances and began drinking and going with men, and before her eighteenth birthday she was pregnant. The man was a photographer, Lars Krusell – he had taken pictures of her. They were married by special licence, and Annelise got away from Nykøbing.

  They moved to Haderslev and had a daughter, Pernille, but nothing was as she had imagined it would be. There was no part for her to play. Life didn’t revolve round her – she boiled nappies and cooked meals – and every day Annelise died a little in normal life. She started hanging out in bars again and met a doctor from northern Zealand, Jørn-Erik, whom she seduced and later married. He was far older than she and agreed to get a divorce. She also was divorced and took Pernille with her – and now the good life started rolling in Copenhagen with theatres, dinners and dancing. She drank cocktails, smoked with a cigarette-holder, and Jørn-Erik wrote prescriptions and supplied her with the substances her dreams were made of – sedatives and morphine. She was a star, she was part of a film, and her success story knew no end.

  As a rule Annelise was foul-tempered and depressed – but emerged transformed after every visit to the bathroom. She wore theatre make-up and dressed in dramatic costumes made of satin with sequins and feathers that swirled around her. When she walked down Bredgade with her daughter, people turned to stare, and Pernille hunched up her shoulders and fixed her eyes on the ground. When they reached the square in front of the royal residence at Amalienborg Castle, Annelise would stop and point at the palace saying, ‘You see! There it is!’ Then she walked up to the gate and rang the bell. They waited and waited, until finally a man opened the door and asked how he could be of assistance. Annelise measured him with her eyes from head to foot and asked what ever he was thinking of. Didn’t he know who she was? Princess Ann! He slammed the door shut, and they went on their way – and some weeks later they would be standing there again.

  Jørn-Erik could do nothing about it. He was just as hooked on her as she was on medicine. He was a weak, pallid fellow, and she satisfied all his desires as long as he provided her with pills and eggnogs and money to buy clothes and shoes and to hold court – her acquaintances all came to call and played along and laughed at her and continued knocking back the drink. She had another child – a son, Klaus – and never looked after him. It was all chaos. The flat was piled high with mess, the washing-up was never done, they never had meals or clean clothes, Pernille didn’t go to school, and one day Jørn-Erik had had enough. He had come home to find all their furniture thrown out of the window of the third floor and strewn across the street with people crowded round. He let himself in, and Annelise gabbled at him, shouting that he had to go down on his knees, and so he fell on his knees and begged her to stop and come to her senses, but she just grew even more furious, and from now on would only be addressed with her royal title.

  It was high time Jørn-Erik pulled himself together and did something about it – even though he was worried they might take a look at his prescriptions – and he told Annelise that they were invited to a ball in Corselitze, which the royals visited every summer. She decked herself out in long dress and jewellery and put her hair up, complaining about the car – it was a Volvo and not suitable for her standing – and spent the entire journey talking about the Lord Chamberlain and about the latest gossip from ladies-in-waiting and hairdressers and about affairs in high places. At Vordingborg he turned off the main road and drove towards Marienberg. At the end of the avenue stood some large white-painted buildings. Annelise touched up her make-up in the mirror and prepared for her grand entrance – her eyes were shining and she was lit up for a party – and so they entered Oringe Mental Hospital side by side.

  The mental hospital was Vordingborg’s largest employer, and that said everything about the place. But if Jørn-Erik thought that he could get rid of Annelise that easily he had another think coming. She had grown up on the other side of the bridge a few kilometres south. She knew people like she knew the back of her hand and immediately picked up what was going on. She exchanged looks with the nurses and the doctor who was filling in the forms: ‘Application for the admission of a mentally ill patient’. Once he had completed the forms, he looked up and winked at Jørn-Erik before passing the papers across to Annelise, who was to sign them. And so she did. And then it was Jørn-Erik’s turn. He smiled and lowered the pen and started. Something was wrong! This was impossible – they had written the wrong name, it wasn’t Annelise who was due to be admitted but he, Jørn-Erik Mølby! He threw down the pen, shook his head and asked what on earth was going on. He wasn’t the one who was ill, it was she – he pointed at Annelise and got up – he was a doctor, he should know what he was talking about! Annelise sighed as though she had heard this hundreds of time before, and the doctor sent her an understanding nod. He said that it would, of course, require the signature of the chief of police for him to be forcibly committed using the pink forms but that could be taken care of by a telephone call – and was her husband a danger to himself or to others?

  It was Pernille who told me – she was a thin girl with slides in her hair and timid as a mouse. We were at the funeral in Herlev and were standing on our own outside the church, while round us the family was divided into groups, all ignoring each other. Most of them I hadn’t seen before and only knew by hearsay, so it was as though they didn’t exist in reality. Aunt Annelise was in mourning dress with black veil, black hat, black gloves. She was sobbing like a thing possessed. Jørn-Erik, pale and broken by grief, crossed to talk to Hanne and Jens – he was a commodore in the navy and Pernille had been taken into care by their family. And then Uncle Ib joined the company and gave me a wave – he had developed a beer-belly – and at that point Mother came rushing over, took me by the hand and said that we had better be leaving now, and we drove back to Falster; the atmosphere in the car you could cut with a knife.

  Jørn-Erik had been under Annelise’s thumb ever since the trip to Vordingborg – how she avoided being certified was still a mystery. She threatened to take the children away if he didn’t come to heel and waved the hospital forms and laughed. And Jørn-Erik resigned himself and did as she asked and consoled himself with morphine and booze. He more or less became her slave, said Mother with a shake of her head, and Father said, ‘Enough of that now…’ and turned on the car radio – only to switch it off again because it was music. We tried to avoid thinking about it but that was, of course, impossible.

  It had gone on for years, until finally Annelise lost interest and went
along with a separation provided she was guaranteed a substantial allowance. She kept the youngest, Klaus. Jørn-Erik moved out. Pernille was taken into care at the commodore’s – and after a while Jørn-Erik could come and go there as he pleased. He would make drinks before dinner and kept the commodore’s wife, Hanne, warm when her husband was away on naval exercises. They celebrated Christmas together and spent holidays together at a derelict farmhouse and kept the threesome going until the telephone rang and it all blew up in their faces. It was the police. They wished to inform him that his son, Klaus Mølby, was dead. He had been found hanging from the kitchen door at the home of Jørn-Erik’s former wife, Annelise Romer Jørgensen, and everything pointed to it having been suicide. There were, however, a number of circumstances that they wished to speak to him about. For example, a large quantity of morphine and Valium and amphetamines had been found in the flat along with prescriptions made out in his name – and was he acquainted with someone called… Princess Ann?

  We lived in a house under siege, and Father took no chances at New Year, when things got particularly bad. Children were always ringing the doorbell, throwing bangers and squibs through the letterbox and running away. They nicked the garden gate, overturned the rubbish bin in the garage and stuck a Christmas tree in the chimney. We didn’t notice until the following day, by which time everyone had seen it and was laughing at us. He hated New Year’s Eve and muffled the doorbell with cardboard, taped up the letterbox and lifted the garden gate off its hinges and put it in the shed. Then, he would lay down tripwires of string everywhere and go on about fireworks. They were a public nuisance and shouldn’t be allowed. How many thatched houses would be burnt down this year? And what about the fingers lost and eyes damaged?

  The Hagenmüller family came to visit for the New Year once – with their sons, Axel, Rainer and Claus. It was a fantastic sight, watching Uncle Helmut’s car drive up Hans Ditlevsensgade. It was much bigger than ours, but Father said that ours cost four times as much because of import taxes. If we had lived in Germany, we would have had a Mercedes 500! We fetched Grandmother from the station, and Axel took her suitcase, Rainer opened the door, and Claus sat himself beside her in the back and sucked up to her. They were only doing it for the sweets and money, to screw her for what they could get and to take my Grandmother away from me, and I found myself wishing that they would all go to hell. It didn’t cross my mind that in a way this was where they had come.