Companions Read online

  ‘Wonderfully rich prose, what a precious companion.’

  — Helle Helle, author of This Should Be Written in the Present Tense

  ‘Christina Hesselholdt is among the Danish writers who now occupy the very top rank. Her prose is lively, luminous, engaging, and fascinating.’

  — Kristeligt Dagblad

  ‘Hesselholdt has never been better. Humour and grief go hand in hand, and the language shimmers from the drily caustic to the tenderly casual to the breathtakingly erotic.’

  — Berlingske Tidende

  ‘I am quite certain that this book will do something to Danish literature. Hesselholdt is part of a generation of remarkable female authors who had their breakthroughs at the beginning of the 1990s and who in the past decade have turned their writing in new and surprising directions. None of them has moved to as wild and, yes, as promising a place as Hesselholdt has come to now.’

  — Information

  COMPANIONS

  CHRISTINA HESSELHOLDT

  Translated by

  PAUL RUSSELL GARRETT

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  I. CAMILLA AND THE HORSE

  THE RAMBLE

  ANIMALS

  DEATH HOUSE

  CAMILLA AND THE HORSE

  CAMILLA AND CHARLES

  II. CAMILLA AND THE REST OF THE PARTY

  CAMILLA AND THE REST OF THE PARTY

  CAMILLA’S GPS

  IF ASHES HAD EYES

  NATURE AS A SERIES OF BACKDROPS

  THE FACE OF RUBBISH

  THE HOUSES AND THEIR BRILLIANT SUICIDE VICTIMS

  CHARLES REVISITED

  A THEATRE OF SOULS or THE ENTIRE PARTY

  RELOCATIONS

  III. THE PARTY BREAKS UP

  THE PATIENTS or CAMILLA AND ALMA’S EARLY YEARS

  CAN I APPROPRIATE HER MUM?

  WEDDING

  THE WORLD’S GO-GO POLE

  THE HAIR IN THE DRAWER

  NOT DIVIDING, SUBDIVIDING

  A TEA PARTY (AROUND CHARLES’S BED)

  FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH

  THE MARCH HARE

  IV. MAROONED

  ALONE IN PARADISE, WITH THE GARDENERS AND THE HEDGEHOG’S HEART

  BERNHARD’S SHOES, A NOTE

  THE BOSS

  THE VETERINARIAN’S BROTHER

  COLUMBIA, THREE LITTLE CHINAMEN (AND A WILD HAPPINESS)

  FRAGMENTS OF THE COMPANIONS’ CONVERSATION IN THE GARDEN

  QUEEN OF THE JAMS WITH THE STICKY LEGS

  THE LIST OF ITEMS AND MATTERS ALREADY WRITTEN

  EEYORE WITH A STICK OF DYNAMITE IN HIS MOUTH

  ONCE THEY START TO LOOK

  MY TWO MAIN CHARACTERS

  BY THE BANKS OF THE BOOKCASE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PERMISSIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  I. CAMILLA AND THE HORSE

  ‘… and the blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.’

  — Sylvia Plath

  THE RAMBLE

  [Alma]

  Last summer I rambled through Wordsworth’s rolling landscape, where the shadows on the hills are so dark and so pronounced that the hilltops look like they are drenched in water, and the lakes are so deep that… when suddenly a fighter jet appeared and without thinking I threw myself to the ground, terror-stricken. I had neither seen nor heard the jet until it was directly above me. It wagged its wings, turned on its side and disappeared between two hills. It was so elegant, so fast and so sudden, and from that moment on I lived and breathed to see another one, preferably many more. I was lucky, because that summer RAF fighter pilots were performing training exercises there, weaving in and out of the hills of the Lake District, and perhaps they continued all the way to the Scottish Highlands before departing on a mission to Afghanistan; like predatory shadows above the endless opium fields and endless mountain ranges, ‘bearing their cargo of death’, something I repeated to myself in order to curb my enthusiasm – in any case I managed to see one or two every day. I made a few notes, this is what I came up with: ‘Typhoons, the sublime, flashing, wagging, a terrifying noise – then gone. In the very landscape where WW had one vision after the other, where in sudden flashes of insight, he looked and looked.’

  As I walked around in Wordsworth’s landscape, dragging myself up his steep hills, I thought of the fighter planes as an embodiment of his inspiration, the sudden insight, a divine flash of realization, a thought like a bolt from the blue and full of load-bearing force – enough to carry a poem through. These are not words I would ordinarily use, but I do not think William Wordsworth would have shied away from them.

  Though what consumed me more was that I could get so excited, so fulfilled by the sight of these fighter jets. I was not shameless. I was ashamed to sense delight at observing a phenomenon that was brought into the world to cause death and destruction. I was ashamed and I couldn’t wait till the next one arrived. The fact that the plane only appeared for a brief moment certainly played a part. I never tired of looking. I pursued my own ocular pleasure.

  Perhaps I also pursued the inundation of the senses it entailed – the noise, the shock at its sudden appearance. I reminded myself that the suddenness which fascinated me… the purpose of which was so that the plane could appear out of nowhere, drop its bombs and be gone before anyone could even think of shooting it down; but it was no use. I simply waited for the next one. And they flew so low! It provided a sense of connection. The pilots might have seen me, and the one who saw me throw myself to the ground probably smiled.

  The we that once existed, it no longer exists. How I loved that we. How it fulfilled me.

  My husband was with me. He is tired of me never saying we any more, only I. But I forget to be mindful of that, and the next time I talk about a trip we went on, an experience we shared, I hear myself saying I again.

  He was with me on my ramble through the Lake District, and Dorothy Wordsworth had rambled through these hills just as much as her brother William had; on several occasions WW wrote poems based on her notes. But regardless of whether the event was witnessed in the company of Dorothy or was Dorothy’s own unique experience, he always used the personal pronoun ‘I’ in his poems. For example, she was the first to see the daffodils, (hundreds of daffodils along a lake) and her description formed the basis for what must be his most famous poem of all, ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’.

  Dorothy writes: ‘… as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.’

  I don’t know whether it is a matter of fairness; a simple acknowledgement that my husband was also present; that Dorothy was present. Why would I say ‘I’ about an experience that we shared… because I felt alone during it? Or because my entire focus is on the currents streaming through my own consciousness; how I experience things – the fighter jets, for example – though he had also thrown himself to the ground.

  As for William Wordsworth, not only did he write ‘I’ in the daffodil poem, he later denied that Dorothy had had any influence whatsoever on his poetry. He wrote her out of it.

  When he got married, he cut her out of his heart, at least her-being-his-muse. He had to. Just like he had to get married. People talked. Bear in mind that Byron had a child with his sister. WW was known to embrace Dorothy and kiss her on the mouth when they met
up in the landscape; maybe she had gone to meet him and stood there waiting. And there he was, finally he arrived – she rushed into his arms. They had been seen. They had been spied on in the hills.

  He wanted to see his literature as the sovereign product of a sovereign I. He distanced himself from, practically renounced the note-method in his old age (which he had used for the daffodil poem, in this case Dorothy’s notes), and writing poems from notes altogether, including his own; he wanted to view his poetry as a more original practice, as something that came directly from his consciousness: he went into the landscape, he saw, he thought, he wrote.

  But allow me not to diminish Dorothy. She had a practice that bore traces of William’s. She did not borrow words or ideas from other people. (Which during our century is taken as a matter of course as being entirely unavoidable, and had WW not denied this practice, I would have no objection.) But she did borrow people’s clothes. When she was to go on a trip where she would be away for a few days, or maybe a good while, she did not bother to pack. She relied on the wardrobe of the hostess. Even the most intimate articles of clothing, by all accounts, without any thought to the hostess, that she might have wanted to keep her underwear to herself.

  While I walked at his heels or scampered off in front of my husband, (never beside, as William presumably did on his walks with Dorothy) I recited the daffodil poem to myself:

  I wandered lonely as a cloud

  That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

  When all at once I saw a crowd,

  A host, of golden daffodils;

  Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

  Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

  Continuous as the stars that shine

  And twinkle on the milky way,

  They stretched in never-ending line

  Along the margin of a bay:

  Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

  Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

  The waves beside them danced; but they

  Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

  A poet could not but be gay,

  In such a jocund company:

  I gazed – and gazed – but little thought

  What wealth the show to me had brought:

  For oft, when on my couch I lie

  In vacant or in pensive mood,

  They flash upon that inward eye

  Which is the bliss of solitude;

  And then my heart with pleasure fills,

  And dances with the daffodils.

  Incidentally, the verse ‘They flash upon that inward eye/Which is the bliss of solitude’ was written by his wife, Mary Hutchinson. Three pairs of hands have played at that piano; the daffodil poem.

  I heard the poem for the first time when I was seventeen or eighteen; there was a TV broadcast about Wordsworth and Coleridge, some kind of dramatized documentary, at any rate someone was romping deliriously about in a landscape reciting this poem; it was windy, the grass was like a raging sea, the clouds were sailing past. Nature sang on its own, while the actor playing WW sang about the abundance of flowers.

  My husband does not believe I have a flair for words. Nor does he think I know how to move. One night when I couldn’t sleep, I went into the kitchen to fetch some water, and when I came back to bed he said: ‘Your shuffling is keeping me awake.’

  I shuffle. I stomp. I shuffle & stomp & trudge about. Shuffle-shuffle-stomp-stomp-trudge-trudge.

  I can’t sing, hence my husband thinks I am unable to hear music. By hear he means understand, relate to.

  For years, I didn’t sing. I refused to sing. I trudged around the Christmas tree like a silent vessel.

  I sing off key. And I am so unfortunate as to be able to hear it myself. I remember the few times in my life when I was able to hit a note, great and unforgettable experiences – fusion, the feeling of not being on the sidelines, but on the contrary, of belonging. Then something happens. At the time I was working as a supply teacher. To earn some extra money while I studied. I was in a nursery class that day. Working as a classroom assistant. A little girl had to go to the dentist. Her parents couldn’t go with her. I was asked to accompany her. We could take a taxi, there and back. I was happy to and the girl agreed. She sat very quietly in the back of the taxi.

  The dental clinic was inside a school. We entered the building. It smelled both of school (an unfamiliar school) and of dentist. That’s almost too much for one building. The girl took my hand, or did I take her hand?

  The dentist chair. The girl refuses to open her mouth. The dentist discusses the concept of free will. She says she never holds anyone down, never forces anyone’s mouth open. I say that sounds like a very good policy. The girl squeezes my hand. I encourage her to open her mouth. The dentist changes tack. She now appeals to the girl’s collective consciousness. She mentions how the girl’s classmates have already been in her chair and they managed alright. Surely she will be alright if all the others were? Apparently not. Her mouth remains shut. The dentist gets sentimental, she tells the girl how much people like her, how she couldn’t hurt a fly, how much her own children love her, would they love her if she wasn’t nice? The girl opens her mouth and says: ‘Of course they love you – you’re their mum.’ Her mouth remains open, the dentist pokes her hands inside, calls her sweetie and promises to sing throughout the long winter, and says the teacher has to join in, and the dental assistant too. They break into song. ‘I Can Sing a Rainbow’. I remain silent, they look at me sternly. The dentist somehow nudges me in the side. The girl has a big cavity and needs laughing gas. A contraption is placed over her nose. She clings to both of my hands, I am practically lying on top of her. She is close to going into a panic, despite the song. And then it happens. I do it. I open my mouth and sing. The others die down. I sing ‘I Can Sing a Rainbow’. My voice sounds wild and strange, a perfect accompaniment to all the steel instruments.

  ‘She who conquers herself is greater than she who captures a fortress,’ I tell the girl when we are back in the taxi, her with a filling, me with a solo under my belt.

  He is full of contempt. He is plagued by loathing. He lacks kindness. He has no sense of humour. (And his flaws go beyond these.)

  The thought of growing old with him is chilling. How is he going to look at me when I’m fifty-five or eighty-five and I am dragging my feet around, not out of fatigue or because I’m in a bad mood like now, but quite simply because I am no longer capable of lifting them.

  Perhaps age will temper him.

  ‘Last summer when I was rambling through the Lake District …’ I say.

  But he was there too.

  ‘Is there room for that ego of yours?’ he asks – and smiles for the sake of the listeners.

  Nonetheless sometimes when he gets into his stride I get the sense that we were not on the same holiday; or living the same existence; enduring the same punishment. We, the anaemic shadows who drain each other’s lives of happiness. I long for a different life; for kindness and a generous body. I get the feeling that I am drying up at the age of thirty-five. And I find myself in a kind of slumber. I cannot act. When I have to cross the street, I almost hope that I will get run over – a crash and an awakening. Maybe I should dream of being shaken instead.

  Every night I have to look away when he chews his dinner to death. It’s his tense jaw, I cannot stand how he turns his beautiful mouth into a waste disposal unit. He listens to classical music the same way he eats: clenched, tense, his pointy elbows on the table, his fingers gripping his skull like an iron ring: concentration, slavish discipline. I am not allowed to utter a sound during this séance. Music is sacred. ‘Can’t you try to hear the music?’ he says. I am in doubt. I have never connected it with effort. (When Dorothy pointed out nature to William – which she did by all accounts – it doubtless took place in a more friendly manner.) Why don’t I leave…? And so I will.

  I wonder what my dry husband thinks? First and foremost he is preoccupied with safeguarding his own eccentr
icities and therefore incapable of stepping into character as a man: socially, I mean, and so he waits, shrouded in his peculiarity, downright proud of it, but in actual fact it is merely so that I will get fed up and leave him.

  There is a man I can’t get out of my head. Occasionally I call him forth in my mind. He was on a ramble through the Lake District, or he was there at least. He sat beneath the clouds, on a roof. I saw him from below. He seemed like a lovely man. It was with a sense of a life wasted that I continued walking with my own man.

  Well, isn’t it mad… We did not so much as exchange a single word, yet still I latch onto the thought of him. I would like to be able to fall in love, just one more time in my life; to be consumed by life and sense the abyss.

  [Edward]

  There is something about art that annoys me, I realized that last summer. Then suddenly it dawned on me what the essence of art is.

  I was tired that day and had set out on a short hike. I walked along the old Coffin Trail from Grasmere to Rydal, the path the bereaved once took when they had to bring the deceased to the churchyard in Grasmere. There were several large, flat stones along the way that were used to rest the coffin on. I thought about all that effort, all the trouble they had taken, in a place I now strolled along so easily, carrying only a small rucksack.

  At the Ramblers Tea Shop in Rydal I was told about a small grotto by a waterfall that I definitely should not miss out on. The grotto was a so-called ‘viewing station’, the waitress told me, the first of its kind in England. Towards the end of the 1600s, that is at a time when people were only just developing a taste for landscapes and appreciating the beauty of nature, Sir Daniel Fleming, with his interest in nature and art, had built the station just a stone’s throw from his manor house, Rydal Hall.