Often I Am Happy Read online

  The first time on my own. It was like playing in a movie, the first time I ran up a new flight of stairs, locked myself in, and stepped through an unfamiliar corridor and through my very own door. I rented a room with a single woman on Søndre Fasanvej. I thought it was classy, and it was, sort of, when you came from Amerikavej. My mother couldn’t understand that I was moving from one single woman to the other just because one of them happened to be my parent. I am eighteen, I answered brusquely, and she said no more. I believe that she hid her relief at no longer having me around in her one-and-a-half-room apartment, but she must also have been worried at the prospect of having to pay the rent and daily expenses all by herself. Pinch and scrape, turn every penny. I worked in a shop and took evening classes. You and I still hadn’t met; I was alone in the world, that’s how it felt, even if it was just a mere fifteen minutes from Frederiksberg to Vesterbro. It was still home but not a place I wished to go more often than I had to. We got along all right, my mother and I, but it was so silent between us once we’d finished telling each other what had happened since last time.

  I didn’t go out much, couldn’t afford it. Anyway, I was happy to spend the evenings in my room, reading or listening to the radio. I turned it down so as not to disturb my landlady. Freedom was never more boundless than in my rented room on Søndre Fasanvej in the autumn of ’63. On Sundays I went to the national museum of art, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I had never looked at paintings, but the painters became my friends, especially the ones who painted something I knew, even if it was half a century ago. Fishermen and peasants, people in the streets, or just the forests and furrows out in the country, the view over an undulating meadow or a vegetable garden. I thought I could hear the wind in the treetops and a clock’s gravitating weights as I stood in a museum hall and forgot myself. It never entered my mind if it was cultured or in good taste to look at paintings—I just liked it. I think that was how Morten got on the track, and now there isn’t a thing he can’t tell you about artists, be they Renaissance or Baroque. I remember the first time I took him to Glyptoteket. He stood a long time before Manet’s Absinthe Drinker until he asked if the man’s left leg was made of rubber. He was right to ask, if you look more closely.

  Morten was busy as usual pleasing Mie and being the helpful, familiar guest. He can be quite oily in an unbecoming way, especially when he falls over his feet to submit himself. At times he will even change his mind in the middle of a sentence, just to suit her. And he used to be so critical and quibbling, back home in his left-wing row house. He had been late as usual. He, too, has had to get used to showing up alone with Thea. Franca was visibly relieved at having her cousin’s ear to whisper in. It was Morten’s turn to have her. Before Christmas, he had believed that he was in love with a colleague from his faculty, but when Easter approached she wasn’t ready after all to leave her husband. In the meantime, Morten had been ousted at full blast. Maybe he was truly in love, and maybe this was how it had to be, but it is no longer relevant to ask. There was what was, and there is what is. His ex is called Masja, but what do all these names mean to you? Life went on without you; the years have passed like an express train, its windows full of new faces. I am not even sure that you would recognize your boys. They had only just started in the first grade. Had you even begun to imagine what their adult lives would look like?

  You would have no reason to be anything but satisfied if you could see Stefan and Mie’s home. Everything is black and white, and they’ve demolished the walls on the ground floor to make room for the kitchen / living room. It is reminiscent of the control room in a power station, and we may choose between dispersing ourselves along half a mile of dinner table or disappearing into one of the sofas, each the size of a minibus. Between them is a coffee table made of driftwood, with a glass plate on top where photos of the kids with or without their parents are lined up, safely framed in silver. There are pictures of Mie’s parents, too. She is especially proud of the driftwood; she says it has soul, and I bet she’s right. Still, something about the household disgusts me. I couldn’t miss how Eliot and Franca were sprawling on each of their sofas when I arrived, like lethargic seals basking in the sun, while the Filipino au pair laid the table. The children didn’t know how to deal with my widowhood, and Eliot was speaking frenziedly about an upcoming high school trip to Scotland. He will probably return in a kilt. He is a handsome fellow, a bit of a dreamer like his uncle. I don’t think Stefan is quite at ease with his son’s reading poems rather than playing soccer and kissing girls. Mie told her brother-in-law about a sofa she thought that he ought to buy. Everyone must have a sofa; there’s no home without it. She likes to assist him in his new life as a single with joint custody, but I feel how she is seized with panic and compassion because he has had to move into an apartment. Three rooms on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. I’ve heard her console him with the fact that, after all, he hasn’t left the municipality.

  It already felt as if our lives had closed again over the void left by Georg. The cavity was still there, under the surface, but when the others remembered it they became remorseful or polite, or both. Then they would look at me and lower their voices dutifully, and I would sense their expectancy without having any clear idea of what it was they expected. I couldn’t grasp whether it was grief that made them awkward, or shyness when faced with the grief of another, myself in this case, or if it was something completely different that sneaked up on us in Georg’s absence. Stefan made a point of taking it like a man, and he spoke about his father in anything but sloppy terms. What Georg had said or done on this or that occasion. He did say “Dad,” but more as if that happened to be the name Georg had been given as a baby. We could even talk about what he was like, and smile in a healthy, loving way. How he always had to walk back and pull the door handle, although he well knew that he had locked it—that sort of detail from a person’s doings. I thought we talked about him the way one would talk about someone with a handicap, very considerately. It dawned on me how the dead are counted as losers. Too bad Georg couldn’t be here! That was the bottom line, beneath our devoutness.

  I was reminded of something I hadn’t wanted to see for years, and that I had been cowardly enough to deny whenever Georg hinted at it. Eventually, your sons were no longer that attached to their father, Anna. I suppose you can’t expect all sons to be. I think they found him remote, although you and I know that he was just being shy. Suddenly, I felt alienated from your children. Throughout their childhood, I tried to treat them as if they were my own. As I saw them grow, I myself grew into the role. For ten years, nobody was closer to them than I was, apart from Georg, and sometimes I was the one they confided in. I have put iodine on their knees, I have blown up in front of them, and I have put a hand on their slight boy shoulders when they were low. I have taught them to look people in the eyes when they say hello, and I have taught them the zodiac. Love grows from that, while you are engrossed in all manner of things. Shortly after I’d moved in, I asked Georg if he hadn’t had a shock when he learned that there were two rather than just one. Had he not feared being unable to love both of them equally? He smiled and shook his head. “Love just redoubles,” he said. I thought about it for a long time. If he was right, then your boys’ love might also sprout again.

  I had come to love them, and in time they answered my love, but I haven’t always found it that easy to love the grown men who’ve come out of it. I realized as much when I heard them exchange anecdotes about Georg. As I sat there attending their cozy mourning session, I became aware that my love for them is something that was. It is the recollection of a feeling, not the feeling itself. As long as Georg was alive I could repress this knowledge, busy delivering where he had failed because of his shyness. Closeness, involvement, laughter—I had delivered all of that. Now I just sat.

  I had been sitting like that often when we visited Stefan and his family. They could easily fill up their gigantic house with themselves and whate
ver occupied them, stories from school and their jobs, plans for new acquisitions or exotic vacations. They always had so much going on among themselves, and I think that Georg sometimes felt the same as I did. It would have been too much to say that we were dispensable, but we somehow overflowed, if you know what I mean. They were brimming with themselves, Stefan, Mie, and the kids, and sometimes they would seem genuinely surprised to discover that we were there, too. As when Stefan suddenly turned to me. I knew right away what he was going to say. I’d had a feeling the whole time that they must have talked about me before I came. “Ellinor, won’t you tell us about your new apartment?” I had asked them myself to keep calling me by my first name, back when it was all new and sensitive, with your old friend in the bed where you should have been. Where you ought to have continued to lie. I haven’t tried to take your place in that sense; I remained Ellinor to them, but we did drop “Auntie.”

  There was an undertow in Stefan’s tone, and I know him almost as well as if he were mine. A touch of something, what should I call it? Of course, sadism is way too strong, I know that. Mie came to my rescue. She said that she could well understand why I wanted to sell the house and make a fresh start. It was too big anyway, even for two. Her little declaration of support was an unintentional admission that they had talked more than a bit; otherwise, she wouldn’t have found it necessary to step between Stefan and me with her conciliatory remark. “Have I said that I don’t understand?” Stefan smiled in the willful way that can make him seem almost intimidating. Georg and I had actually talked of selling and finding an apartment in the city center, but Stefan must have forgotten about it. “We were just a little surprised, Morten and I, I must admit that.” He must have felt how his words were too heavy and sharp. “Right, Morten?” His brother cast a sidelong glance at his sister-in-law before he cleared his throat. “Well, I also understand if you wish to…I mean, life must go on…” I could see that he was embarrassed at the cliché, but I felt warm inside anyway, because he wouldn’t let himself be bullied to enlist just like that.

  “I bought an apartment on Amerikavej,” I said and looked the boys in the eyes for a moment. The boys, I say. Stefan has been bald for the past ten years, and Morten has been wearing multifocal glasses for just as long. They knew already; it was purely pro forma that I was updating them like this at the Sunday dinner. “Bought?” Mie said, eyes wide in a feigned sort of way. “Ellinor has some money that she doesn’t…” I have to admit that I was annoyed by Stefan’s pretentious effort to sound casual. “Which has nothing to do with your father,” I said, hoping he would refrain from elaborating. Fortunately, the others didn’t seem surprised. “Amerikavej, isn’t that in Amager?” Morten asked. He wanted to appear as open-minded as the map of Copenhagen, where all street names are listed in their own right, without prejudice of rank. “Vesterbro,” I corrected him. “You’re from Vesterbro, aren’t you?” Mie’s eyes went even wider, and she was all smiles. She might as well have said Harlem or Hell; exciting, that was the message in her exaggerated, forthcoming grimace. After all, I was proving once more, for God knows which time, that I knew well how to handle knife and fork. “Ellinor grew up on Amerikavej,” Stefan said bitterly. I couldn’t gather if his slightly clenched teeth were his way of lamenting my humble extraction or he wanted to gibe Mie for her haughty ignorance. After all, she and I had known each other for most of her adult life. Perhaps it was just his ownership to the piffling bit of biographical info that made him tighten his kisser in such a self-important manner. I didn’t correct him. He and Morten have grown up knowing that their stepmother is a girl from the gutter.

  “It’s completely beyond me what you want in such a neighborhood,” Stefan said. “It’s no longer what it used to be, apart from the fact that it must have been motley enough as it was when you were a child. Every other day one hears about shootings and gang crime. You can’t leave your house without being surrounded by junkies, prostitutes, and Muslims.” Mie shook her head. I couldn’t help smiling. “I suppose it’s up to Ellinor if she wants to return to the neighborhood of her childhood,” she began. “Of course,” Stefan said, “then we can all come to visit on Amerikavej…” Mie gave him a long look. “It’s not exactly a place we can send the children,” he continued, more calm now. “Are you afraid that they will become kidnapped?” I tried to strike a light note. “What if they are?” Stefan looked me in the eyes. “Besides, you drive them everywhere,” I said.

  We all became quiet. I turned to Eliot and Franca. I felt like a traitor as I broke the silence, betraying myself as well as Georg. I seized on the first subject that came to my mind. “How was your summer?” The children got it and started speaking all at once about their grandparents in Mougins and their new infinity pool. Mie could hardly conceal her pride in her parents’ capacity. Eliot told me that it looked as if one could swim straight into the ravine. “Like real yacky,” Franca said. “It was übercool,” Eliot said and lost himself in a long account of their summer in Alpes-Maritimes. “By the way, Grandma and Grandpa send their regards,” he said and swallowed his spittle as if he thought that he had spoken about them for too long. “They were so sorry that they couldn’t come to the funeral,” Mie said. She stretched an arm across the table and stroked the back of my hand. She must have felt how I clenched the fork. How, Anna, how was I to explain to her that for all I cared, her parents could sail their infinity pool forever? I felt guilty because I didn’t put on a timid smile and instead allowed Mie to apologize that her parents hadn’t brought themselves up from Mougins to bestow their condoling presence on me. It occurred to me that Stefan’s hostility might in this case have been redirected since the power balance of his marriage ruled out any criticism of his parents-in-law.

  Strangely enough, the reason for my bad conscience was that for once, I didn’t dissimulate. It’s complicated, Anna. When did I begin to withdraw from this family that should have been yours? Is it only something inside me? Is it also something about them? The feeling, after all those years, that I am not the right one after all. Didn’t they notice until now? Now that Georg is no longer here to gather us with a redeeming touch? When did I become a stranger again? Was I one all along?

  * * *

  I MISSED HIM as I was riding home on my bike. I miss him all the time, but it is something different that I miss about him at different times. His body next to me in bed, the sound of his steps, the familiar timbre of his voice in the familiar rooms. Without him, they’re just somewhere. His way of sighing, which wasn’t an expression of fatigue or despair but only, how to put it, a pneumatic effect of his composure. The sound of one man’s being in the world. A man I loved. In the dusk, on the path through the bog, I missed having him to talk with, or maybe just that he would be there, listening. To know that he was there in the semidarkness, within earshot, and hearing me, even if he didn’t answer. His bashful nature would have kept him from responding immediately, except that he might well have been upset by what I said, without wanting to admit it to me or to himself, for that matter.

  In September the days are shorter already, especially on a narrow path canopied by trees. Do you recall September? Does September make any sense in the place where you don’t hear me, like Georg wasn’t hearing what I wasn’t saying, for the very same reason? It had been raining that morning, and the black path was blacker still, but now you couldn’t even call it black anymore since nearly everything around me was, except for the flicker of receding violet over my head. An invisible horse snorted in the meadow. Soon it would be spending the night in a box in the stable of the riding school, fretfully scraping a hoof against a crack in the paving. Still moist, the path hissed under the tires, and the sound would have been only a trifle louder had two bikes rather than one been coasting downhill toward the bottom of the dip, producing a slightly intoxicating feeling. I thought of the tiny frogs I’d seen earlier in the evening as I was wheeling uphill in the opposite direction. Perhaps I ran one of them down, without feeling or hearing it.
I hoped that they had gone to bed, and I couldn’t help smiling at the picture-book idea, frogs in bed, an unknown life in the mound’s interior, sheltered from all reason. Tears rose to my eyes because I felt him behind me for a second, slightly bent over, slightly stooping, with a sweater tied around his shoulders, not feeling the least bit cold even though autumn had set in beyond all measure. He had really believed that love and repetition could turn anyone into the right one.

  When I met him he was yours, and I never imagined that he would become anything else. Nothing seems as limited as our imaginations, although we believe the opposite for years; but I know this much about myself: that it never occurred to me that I would sleep in the same bed as Georg. The man I was fond of had another body and a different name. I can’t imagine what Henning would have looked like, just as I can envisage you only as the woman, still young, whom I last took leave of one morning in a hotel in the Dolomites. I had no reason to consider that this might be the final good-bye. Today, it also seems improbable that a young man would call himself Henning. Now, when a young man may call himself Eliot and know what an infinity pool is.

  Henning was tall and dark, a bit nervous in the way he moved. He was a shipping trainee and became a head clerk shortly after, absolutely promising. Did you fall for his dark hair secretly, dark and interesting yourself in the paler Copenhagen of the 1960s? We didn’t know each other yet, you and I. I still lived on Søndre Fasanvej. I didn’t dare take Henning home with me when we had been out, although he pressed me. The lady I lived with had her rules, and no gentlemen in the room was rule number one. But he wanted me, and I was fascinated by his will. In my fascination, I sometimes forgot that I was its object, perhaps because I didn’t quite believe it to begin with. One must be capable of wanting a great many things with a will such as his, so why me? He was what they call a handsome fellow, but of course you know all about that. I’m sorry, Anna, I didn’t mean it that way. Or did I? Have I ever told you how I met him? I met him one summer’s day in the crowd of bikes in front of an ice cream stand, on the way out to Bellevue. Sweet, isn’t it? I had biked out there with a couple of girls from work. When we had been together a few times, I began to think that maybe we could be a couple.