Often I Am Happy Read online

  Perhaps his story did it, since it resembled mine. He had no siblings and lived alone with his mother. He had been sent to a boarding school somewhere on Zeeland. He told me how he had stood at the station in a small town on Saturday mornings, waiting for the train to Copenhagen. A loudspeaker had blended with the bell at the level crossing: Train arriving, do not pass. He talked about the drag in his stomach when at first he heard something like a hissing in the rails, before the train finally approached between hills of rye and meadow, shoved by a glacier in the Ice Age into formations of clay and gravel nearly as wavy and winding as the clouds above on such a morning in April. He knew how to tell about it all and make it special. Do you remember? I became as fond of his words as I was of his dark, rough hair that reminded me of a horse’s mane one could shake or bury one’s nose in. He took me home, a sinister apartment on Kastelsvej with leathery plants where everything was very posh and threadbare. At first, I was afraid of his mother. She looked like a lady from another century in her black dress, and her handshake felt as if a huge bird had clutched me with its claws. I told them that my father had also died when I was little, and that I couldn’t remember him. Fortunately, they asked no more questions, but I didn’t escape introducing Henning on Amerikavej. My mother was much honored, and she had done everything she could because we were coming. I was ashamed and even more so for feeling that way.

  We couldn’t be alone together anywhere. To think that it was like that, Anna. It seems almost incomprehensible today, if you haven’t lived through it. They must have expected us to take one another sight unseen, so to speak. We went to the movies and kissed in the light of inane narratives flickering past. We were protagonists ourselves, and I’d never felt that way before, as if my life meant something. We got our chance one weekend when my landlady was visiting her sister on Funen. I’ve never told you this, although I meant to do it several times. When she was about to leave she turned in the doorway and said that she trusted me. I was in such a flurry that I made a curtsy and said yes, of course, and two hours later Henning rang the bell. We sat in her living room as if it were ours, as if we had a place of our own, a home. He kept pressing me; he loved me, he promised to be careful. In the end, I gave in. It was the first time, I mean for real; otherwise, we had only been fumbling. His condom burst, and of course we’d won the big one.

  Henning was all remorse, and when I told him a few weeks later that I was pregnant, he wanted to marry me right away. That’s how impulsive he was, but you know all about that. It was really quite decent of him, and I was still in love with him but didn’t know which way to turn. He told his bosses at the shipping company that he was planning to get married, but they asked him to wait until he had completed his training and started as a clerk. He couldn’t bring himself to tell them why it had to be right away. Luckily, he had a friend who’d also gotten himself into trouble and who could provide an address. It didn’t go quite the way we’d hoped, or rather, it did so abundantly, but we didn’t know until years later. When friends brought us along to Georg and yourself for chestnuts and red wine, we still believed that one day we would have children.

  Anna and Georg. You were the kind of people who are talked about. You were married already, and you had your own apartment in a modern block of yellow bricks on a leafy avenue in the suburbs. Georg had a car; you had your black hair and your Italian surname. Nobody knew that your father had been nothing but a brat from Salerno who had drifted north between the wars, escaping poverty, to take whatever he could get like so many other migrant workers after him. Nobody asked where anyone came from, and even now I’ve never met people like ourselves who acted as if our roots were in the future, in our dreams about it. We felt like visitors in a new era when we came to see you, white walls, light modern furniture, snap frames with art posters from Louisiana. It was interesting to think that Georg was almost eight years older than the rest of us although he didn’t seem like it, apart from always being so calm. I admired you in your Jacqueline Kennedy dress; I admired your spirits and your waist and your hips. If I remember correctly, we became friends already that first evening with chestnuts and red wine and Nana Mouskouri on the record player. I was way too intense and completely forgot that Henning was with me. You had to excuse yourself several times because I talked and talked, even when you’d already turned around to step into the corridor and greet new guests and carry their coats into the bedroom where other coats were piling up on the bed. Do you remember? I wonder what we were talking about.

  It felt as if we’d known each other always, and we soon became a close-knit quartet, Anna and Georg, Ellinor and Henning. You taught me how to make tiramisu twenty years before anyone knew what it was. You went with me to look at wedding dresses and casually let me know, during our search, that I could also take over yours, if I liked it. You must have known that we had no money, but you never made me feel like someone near the edge. On weekends, we went for a ride in Georg’s Renault 4 up to Hornbaek to go for a swim, or to Gribskov to collect chanterelles. Your basket was always full; everything about you was exuberant, warm, alive. It isn’t that I don’t understand Henning, but I didn’t notice anything.

  We got married, and shortly after, an apartment became available in the block across from you and Georg. You could wave to us from your balcony when we stood in the kitchen window. We were regulars with one another, and there must have been a great many occasions when you and Henning would have been alone together by chance at your place or ours. I never gave it a thought. There were times, too, when I was alone together with Georg, but for me he was nothing but a dear, somewhat shy friend with his blotchy good nature and his steady, rustic hold on everything practical. We could always call Georg if a tap was dripping, or if we needed a visit from a power drill. He taught Henning to paint a bookcase without leaving any drips. I am not aware what Henning taught Georg, but I could tell from Georg’s amused, slightly incredulous look that he found it interesting when Henning gave his imagination a free rein.

  The more I got to know Henning, the better I liked him. He had been sailing a couple of times on the ships of the company, and he told me about the cities they had called at in South America. Once he had spent a week in Montevideo because the first officer had been taken to the hospital. He read to me from the diary he’d written on board. His words reminded me of the colorful Japanese paper flowers that unfold from shells when you drop them into a glass of water. He could make a name like Montevideo unfold in my thoughts as he read so that I saw everything very clearly, although I’d never been there. He had written poems before he went into shipping, and he had dreamed of seeing them published, but that was hopeless, of course, he told me with a smile. He kept saying that he loved me and that he wanted to have children with me. We tried; we tried and we tried until I pulled myself together and went to be examined and got a plain answer. He held me in his arms all night long and kept whispering that it didn’t matter, and I knew that he was lying.

  Life was all but taking shape. Our lonely, gray mothers became visitors to a world in which they had no share. I’d gotten myself a job in the advertisement department at Berlingske Tidende, and even if the wages were nothing to write home about I could at least contribute to the household. Besides, I worked short hours, and I was actually amused by the classifieds’ peepholes into unknown lives where a room had to be let, a used car sold, or someone hoped to fall in love. When I was going home, I liked to look through the basement windows at the huge press, knowing that in a few hours the contact numbers of the empty room, the old car, or the lonely heart would be multiplied and spread all over the country. I’ve always lacked any ambition, and you kept reproaching me for it. You who gave up on the mere thought of a career when you became pregnant. This must have been half a year after I was informed that my uterus had been destroyed. I never told you. In the beginning, I was too upset about it, and later, when you were expecting, I didn’t want to spoil your joy. You were always so generous, always ready to empathize
, and if something made you happy, you wished the same for me. I also believe I am being honest when I say that I rejoiced without feeling jealous.

  It may have helped that I didn’t like what your pregnancy did to you. You became sluggish and flabby, and you developed this heiferish expression, but you were so happy. Georg also seemed happy, and he showed you with so many gestures how enthusiastic he was to see the object of his desire deformed until a house on piles walked about in place of the waist and hips of your once delightful body. I felt ashamed for thinking that way, and I told myself that I must have become sterile all the way up into my head. If I caught Henning gazing ravenously at your buxomness, I would keep staring at him until he noticed and lowered his eyes. It only made me feel even more ashamed, and something artificial came over me when I tried to be nice, until in the end I was almost sickened.

  You have never been more beautiful than when we came to see you in the maternity ward and you sat in your bed with two instead of just one. You ought to have given one of them to us—Stefan or Morten, no matter who. I think it was worse for Henning than it was for me, but he probably still didn’t know what the sight of you did to him. I don’t believe that he started dreaming about you before you had moved because the apartment became too cramped.

  The years are blurring, Anna. At a distance, they seem to be compressed, without any space, an amassed body of events and emotions devoid of any sequence. The perspective returns only as I write, and my perspective is different from yours, and Henning’s. I had no inkling of what was going on the first winter your boys were big enough to be taken care of by your parents. Henning had suggested that the four of us go on a ski trip, and I remember how excited you were. I had never been skiing before, but of course I came along. I remember how you insisted that I come.

  THE TELEPHONE HAS BEEN RINGING A LOT as Georg is no longer there to answer it. At our place, it was the man’s job. To respond, to stand in front to meet the world. I always disliked answering the phone without knowing who it was. It frightens me a little, I don’t know why, as if someone wants to hurt me. That’s the good thing about cell phones, at least if it’s someone I know. Not right now, is what I think when I see the name on the display, and the guilt is offset by my relief at evading the communicativeness of my surroundings. You always laughed at my fear of phones, but you also gave up on curing me of it. On the whole you never tried to reform me, and neither did Georg. I am grateful for that; it made me feel at home with both of you. You were my country, first one, then the other, and now I am stateless. To begin with, Henning would have liked to change me if he could. He never said anything, but I sensed that my breasts were too small and slanting, and I might also have had a prettier nose.

  Am I being unfair? Is it only my self-hatred playing me a trick? Self-hatred is a gendered feeling: in a man it makes him a wimp; in a woman it’s the natural order to feel defective. Original sin is our element, Anna; as a Catholic you should know these things. You see, that’s why God blessed us with moodiness, menstrual pain, and hot flashes with a mustache, once we get that far. Not to speak of labor, but that I was spared. And since Henning was to blame for it, he taught himself to conceal his dissatisfaction with my other flaws. He became so considerate and thoughtful after I had been molested in an illegal clinic, and his consideration left an acrid taste. I had to sugar myself to make sure that he wouldn’t notice and to just forget about it, affecting cheerfulness, affecting rapture in bed, where we no longer had to be careful. Consideration distanced us from one another, I can see that now, and in the void he caught sight of you. Anna with her brown eyes and crackling voice. Original sin had bounced off; you took even the pain of being a woman with your head held high. It always passed, and you were radiant with your own soft, honey-skinned well-being.

  But as I was saying, the telephone has been ringing. People won’t let me sit alone. They don’t want me to believe that I’ve become untouchable in their eyes because death has visited my house. They want me to talk about it; they want me to have closure. I am more than welcome to cry, because it allows them to show me how they endure my inconsolable sorrow. Apparently, nothing is more purifying for people’s self-esteem than to place themselves at the very edge of someone else’s grief and show that they are not at all dizzy. Nobody tells me that life must go on. There is room for wailing; all I have to do is let go. I felt it at the funeral, the too-long-and-significant looks or, to the contrary, a feigned normalcy, as if to show me they knew very well that no words were adequate anyway. I’m not being fair, of course; what are people supposed to do with a bereaved person? They do their best, but the trouble is that when it comes to professions of sympathy, I’d rather not, whereas I am sure to be all by myself in the dead of night whenever I could use a hug. The first couple of weeks, I answered the phone out of a sense of duty and to show that I appreciated how people went out of their way to empathize. Gradually, I became better at letting it ring, and my cell hasn’t been charged since Georg died. To pull the plug would feel like a decidedly hostile measure, considering the solicitude on display, but I couldn’t feel obliged to plug in the charger just to make myself more accessible. There should be a limit to the officiousness of a woman in mourning.

  I don’t know why I answered the phone on the morning after I’d been eating homemade pizzas at Mie and Stefan’s and put up with their ambivalence, not to speak of mine. It was still early, and normally nobody calls at that hour; my friends know well that I like to sleep late. I thought that it might be some research institute wishing to know about my consumer behavior, but I answered it after all. The unusual time of day must have made me curious, for all I know, but I certainly didn’t expect Mie at the other end. I can’t recall when she has ever called us; it was always Stefan who invited us or just wanted to know how we were. She must have been back from her jogging. I visualized her standing at the kitchen counter with the wireless. Perhaps a pulse meter was still fastened to her tanned arm, her skin slightly flabby because she’d lost so much weight. I could see her ponytail and tight, neon-colored suit, a small proletarian flirt, and on one of her fingers clutching the receiver a voluminous diamond ring, a gift from Stefan on her fortieth birthday. What did she want, I thought to myself as she chatted for a start. I forgot to thank her for the evening. She suggested that we meet for coffee later in the day. It was momentous.

  We met at a coffee place near the station, at the end of the leafy avenue where we once lived. It would have been to your liking, a bakery / espresso bar with stools in the window where you can sit and be on the way from one thing to the other. You died before espresso reached Denmark, and I remember how you laughed at my surprise, in the bar of the central station in Bolzano, at how tiny the cups were. You felt at home, and I enjoyed hearing you speak Italian with the barman. You also enjoyed my hearing it. A few days later it was all over, and I will never understand, Anna, how time has only made it even harder to grasp.

  Mie was already waiting on a stool in the window when I came at the hour we’d arranged. She waved and seemed almost ingratiating. It’s been a long journey, as they say in X Factor, all the way down the avenue. We started out in the cheap end, the four of us, happy just to exchange the dirty city for trees, orderliness, and a balcony of one’s own. You and Georg were the first couple of our set to buy a house. You were always the first, and the house looks like its old self. I had just left it as I parked my bike outside, wondering what Mie wanted. I had my misgivings and accepted a caffe latte, although I never take milk. While she was standing in line at the counter, I tried to analyze why I was on my guard. After all, I had no need to feel threatened just because she had proposed for the first time ever that we meet one-on-one. To begin with, she just wanted to know what it was like, going to bed and waking all alone, et cetera. More empathy; I was relieved. I said that it was difficult, mostly to honor her goodwill. She nodded, letting me talk, but every now and then she would allow herself a sip from her paper cup. I liked her for the little touch of
self-care in the midst of her earnest compassion. She was wearing a nice buttoned dark-blue dress with a collar, and she had arranged her hair with a ribbon. I asked myself what I’d ever had against her.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at your office?” I said. She said that she had a day off. I was hoping that she hadn’t taken the day off for my sake. “Stefan is worried about you,” she continued. I couldn’t help smiling and asked if he had told her to call me. She looked at me before she said no, slightly offended. “He is mad at me for selling the house,” I said. “I think you’re mistaken,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, you know I understand you, but why do you want to move all the way into town?” I smiled again. “You said it yourself yesterday: It’s where I come from.” She nodded. “But we all live out here. You could find something closer. That way, it would also be easier for the kids to come by.” I kept smiling. “Look, they don’t bother to come anyway.”

  I didn’t smile in any bitter sort of way, but that’s how it is. Eliot and Franca don’t come by for pancakes anymore. They loved how I could turn them in the air; they loved that I always made a show of it. In their company, my joy became easier than it had been together with the twins. It made less of a difference to the next generation that we weren’t really family. I felt free when I took them to the forest or they slept over. I was what they call a spry granny, but I think I know when the first chink, the first reservation, began to open between us. Eliot must have been nine, Franca seven, when Stefan and Mie came by with them one Sunday afternoon. The weather was bad, and I had given them a drawing pad each and a box of crayons so that they might entertain themselves while the grown-ups were talking. I didn’t want them to watch TV just because it was raining, and it didn’t take long before Franca came up to me and wanted to show me her drawing. She had drawn a princess in front of her castle, but to be honest, it wasn’t more than a few hasty lines. I told her that she ought to make more of an effort. After all, I’d seen how well she could draw if she took the trouble, but suddenly, the chit started to howl and ran to her mother. “Elli doesn’t like my drawing,” she blubbered. At first I thought that she was complaining about her brother, but that’s how they’ve called me. I guess it’s part of the package. You see, for many years I felt that at long last I had a family. Mie got up with the squalling Franca and carried her to the sofa. I got a cold look as she murmured into the child’s ear. Everyone fell silent at the table. “You criticized her,” Stefan said. “You’re not supposed to criticize a child.” On the sofa, Franca was still sobbing into her mother’s knees. I had no memory of ever seeing her like that when I was alone with the kids, touchy and moaning. “I didn’t criticize her,” I said, but Stefan just shook his head. “You undermine her self-worth that way,” he said. It was the first time I noticed that the words coming out of his mouth weren’t always his own. Perhaps I overinterpret the incident; perhaps I was the sensitive one for not being Franca’s biological grandmother. In any event, I thought of it again as I sat on my stool and felt Mie’s dissatisfaction with me because I didn’t stay put in the house, available whenever her teenage kids cared to drop in.