The trouble with happine.., p.8
The Trouble with Happiness, page 8
Then Hanne went as stiff as her mother. ‘Isn’t she dead?’ she asked, her mouth going dry.
‘But Hanne, dear,’ said her mother. ‘Don’t talk like that. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.’ And her father released her suddenly, as if he had burned himself. For a moment he stood there alone, not knowing what to do with his hands or his eyes. Then her new father took her hand and started leading her up the stairs, while the silence behind them hurt just as much as his hard, unfamiliar grasp. She didn’t want to cry before she was in bed. No, she wasn’t going to cry; she wasn’t even going to bed. She was going on a trip and she was going to sit on her father’s lap the whole way.
‘Let me go!’ she yelled, twisting her hand out of the man’s grip and running back into the sharp light, where her mother sat, looking pitiful, and where there was a father too many. Something unmerciful, a totally new anxiety, kept her from seeking the most comforting shelter she knew. She stood hanging her head in front of her father, who had put on his hat, as if his work here was finished. She felt cold and shrugged her spindly shoulders and stepped hard on her own toes, as she gazed helplessly and imploringly at her mother, who was looking up at the man on the stairway with an anxious, pleading expression, as if it were she who had said something wrong.
He walked down the stairs with hard, deliberate steps. ‘Let’s get this over with right now,’ he said tersely. ‘Are you coming or not, Hanne?’
She looked down at her father’s feet. Her forehead was burning with confusion, shame, and defiance. She took the difficult steps toward him, but he didn’t touch her. His clothes smelled of distant, lost things. The whole way she could sit and sleep with her nose buried in his smell with her back to Grete-mom.
‘I – want to come,’ she begged, humbled with defeat.
When the girl went upstairs to get dressed, three people watched her lonely little figure. None of them could help her, and they didn’t dare look at one another.
Depression
Lulu stacked the dirty dishes on top of one another in the nearly scalding water, so parsley sprigs, wilted lettuce leaves, and radish tops released and floated on top in a sad, greasy stew, which she appraised, disgusted for a moment, before she could bring herself to plunge her hands down into it and bring the porcelain back out. First the plates, then the forks, knives, and glasses. She used a lot of water. Behind her, the dented kettle was boiling dry, because she kept forgetting to fill it.
She heard noise and laughter from the living room. It was a festive, successful evening, and she knew it made a little dip in the mood when she, the hostess, in the middle of all the merriment, broke away to do the dishes. But she couldn’t face waking up in the morning to a messy kitchen. Kai would just have to figure it out. She could hear his voice among the others; he spoke quickly, nervously, excitedly. He drank and smoked like crazy, and forgot to be accommodating to the guests when she wasn’t around.
It would be so wonderful if his depression were over and done with. It had lasted from the moment they realized she was definitely pregnant for the second time in their marriage. The first depression lasted until she was five months along. And now little Bent was only one and a half. Of course it was unfortunate, but to her mind it wasn’t the end of the world. And certainly not for him. In the end, she was the one who had to do the heavy lifting. But she was, as Kai put it, so healthy and well-adjusted. The nausea, the exhaustion, and everything that came with it, she knew would come to an end shortly. The economic stress would have to be borne by Kai (or more correctly, his parents), and unlike her complaints, that would only increase after the baby was born.
His studies would be finished in a year. But he had done no work for the last three months; he just lay all day long on the divan without sleeping or doing anything. If she tiptoed through the living room, he gave her a pained, unhappy look, which made her feel guilty, because she never knew if she should lie down beside him and caress his forehead, or if that would just bother him.
He went to psychoanalysis, but she didn’t think it was helping. On the contrary, it cost a fortune, and this stranger (his analyst), whom she had never seen, instilled in her a distrust and something resembling jealousy. He had suggested admittance to an institution, but Kai didn’t want that, because of his parents, who lived at their parsonage in Jylland and supported them, and who mustn’t at any cost be upset by bad news from Copenhagen. He was their only child, and they expected a result from investing in their son in the form of a newly hatched doctor.
Every time he had gone to psychoanalysis, Kai showed animosity toward her and Bent afterward, and he was more irritable than usual. If she didn’t know better, she would think he had returned from being with another woman. Sometimes she wished it were something like that. At least that was something you could wrap your head around, a battle you could win or lose. The way it was now, it was like some strong, invisible enemy was sapping her energy, but she wasn’t supposed to feel that way. Sometimes Kai tried to discuss it with her. ‘It’s important that one person in the world totally understands why I react the way I do,’ he explained.
During his first depression, Kai had begun studying ‘mental mechanisms’ and things like that; and when he started to brighten up again, he would only spend time with people who were involved in similar pursuits. They were studying for a test (she didn’t know what the subject was) or had already taken it. They often (no, almost exclusively) spoke with tortured faces about the doctors’ distrust of them, and they challenged Kai to ‘do something for their cause’ in his medical capacity. She had the vague feeling that they were in the process of seducing him into something mystical of which she could never be a part, since she, according to their ‘teaching’, could never understand or help him, because she was too close. But when his mood changed, and suddenly he wanted to have people around him, he gushed with brightness and attentiveness. ‘You have been so amazing,’ he said then. ‘How would I have ever gotten through this without you?’
Lulu sat down for a minute on the kitchen counter and wearily brushed her hair back from her forehead with her hand. Kai’s voice reached her from the living room: ‘The essential difference between a depression and a neurosis…’
She jumped down and started putting things away, rattling them unnecessarily loudly. They always talked like that. Psychoanalysis, repression, hypnosis, depression, neurosis, mania! Sometimes she actually felt guilty over her own boring psyche, and found herself rather lacking, that in the middle of a crazy and besieged world she could keep her grip on the insignificant, necessary things which formed the foundation of their existence. But she was incurably normal, even though Kai asserted at times that she was full of inhibitions and complexes which she wouldn’t acknowledge. ‘The way the world looks today,’ he said, ‘it’s more a wonder that a person can keep their ego together, than that they give up.’ He looked at her with a cool, questioning face, as if she were a kitten playing in the middle of a pile of smoldering ruins. She wondered how he would take it if one day she ‘gave up’!
Lulu removed her apron and walked to the bathroom to straighten her appearance a bit before returning to their guests. God knows if they would be gone by midnight. Kai slept so poorly, despite the sleeping pills and sedatives; but for the time being it didn’t matter that he wasn’t sleeping. He woke her early in the morning and was innocent, happy, and full of pep, kissing her lovingly and playing with Bent and laying out the wildest plans for the future. She had become used to hearing about them, and she listened in the same way that she listened to the child’s excited, awkward babbling. They would have their own house, or a farm with blue shutters and a thatched roof, a puppy at least – people could learn a lot from animals: give them neuroses, create conditioned reflexes, etc. Anyway it was wrong the way they walled themselves in and never saw other people. It wasn’t healthy for her either –
He was like that this morning, and he had called far and wide to invite people over. All day he had helped her prepare for the party. Everything was bought on credit; everything always got paid for at the last possible moment. She had to take detours so she wouldn’t pass the stores where they were in debt. Owing money didn’t bother Kai, who was otherwise so picky about things. But it bothered her enormously. Inviting people over and filling them with food and wine that hadn’t been paid for took away half the enjoyment for her. But she had been happy most of the day, because Kai was. He opened cans, brought the wine to room temperature, and gave her advice with regards to spices and vegetables that would liven up the table.
In the midst of all their preparations, Kai sat down with Bent on his lap, testing the boy in various ways to display his intelligence. Bent was in good form today, and the child was jubilant when he guessed right. ‘Daddy happy!’ he shouted, and Kai was moved and thoughtful a moment, as he set the child down in the playpen. ‘It’s a shame it affects other people when you feel a certain way,’ he said. In her hands, tenderly, she had taken his fine, narrow face, which already bore the indelible mark of his secret inner pain, from which she couldn’t relieve him. ‘A day like today offsets this whole, long, difficult period for all of us,’ she said softly.
But it was so hard to stay on his wavelength for an extended period. He pulled a book down from the shelf and read aloud to her – one of his study books, replete with red underlining – while she stood over a pan of scrambled eggs. She could detect in his voice when she should smile or nod understandingly. She felt like an idiot. The words didn’t really reach her; she just listened for the excitement and intensity in his voice, and she thought about a thousand other things at the same time: How was she going to seat nine people at the dining table? They were short two glasses, and one was chipped, but she could use that one. With some goodwill, three people could sit on the divan.
Kai approached the boy again – something about drawings from the book he wanted to try. An ugly face and a nice face. ‘Which one of these two faces that you see here is ugly, and which one is nice?’ She awaited the result anxiously. Kai’s spindly, stooping figure appeared in the kitchen doorway; his forehead was wrinkled. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘A two-year-old child should be able to handle that, and Bent is so gifted! Maybe there is some defect in that test.’
But soon he forgot all about it and bounded down the steps to get a head of celery. You couldn’t offer people cheese without celery stalks!
Even before the guests arrived, she was unable to hide her exhaustion. Her hair was limp from the steam in the kitchen; her only decent dress was tight around the middle. The energetic, perfectly made-up young women (women in that circle never studied so hard that it detracted from their looks) she let in made her feel ugly and awkward. When they had all settled in, they sat for an hour or so, smoking and chatting, and each time Lulu left the room, Kai shouted, ‘Where are you going now? Relax. Stay here with us.’ ‘He’s like a chicken without a head when you aren’t in the room,’ teased one of the women, while she looked at Kai with steady, beaming eyes. He was like another person. A white shirt ironed at the last second, and a rare humorous glint in his eye that she could only recall from when they were engaged. Something he never lavished on her alone. Why not? He loved her; he was dependent on her, but he also loved the endearment of others. He was like a vain child – a difficult child.
Stepping back into the living room, she blinked slightly at the light, and her gaze sought out Kai’s. Now he was elated, totally happy, the center of the group’s attention. He was talking non-stop, his thin fingers outlining curves in the air when he wanted to explain something. All the bottles and glasses were empty. The tablecloth was stained with red wine and gravy, the air was thick and close from the smoke. She sat down, without anyone seeming to notice. In any case, they didn’t take their eyes off Kai – neither the men nor the women. She felt a sudden urge to close her eyes and go to sleep. A dark-haired woman, whom she recognized from the summer, when they had held study circles in psychology once a week, smiled at her and made room next to her on the divan. ‘You look tired, Lulu,’ she said sympathetically. Appalled, Lulu straightened up on her seat and smiled vacantly. ‘I’m not tired at all,’ she said quickly, and in the same breath, ‘Isn’t it great that Kai is doing so well?’
They both looked at him. Then the young woman said warmly, ‘He’s smarter than any of us. It’s a shame if he doesn’t get the most out of his ability.’
Lulu didn’t answer. Was it her fault if he didn’t get the most out of his ability? Had her loving and all too fertile body pulled him down into the banal and boring? The psychoanalyst was supposed to free him from guilt, but who was going to free her? She was still looking at her husband. His thin, well-proportioned frame, his burning eyes, the words streaming from his beautifully arched lips. Yes, he was happy now, she thought; these people idolize him; he doesn’t need me. And after they’ve left, it occurred to her, he will keep me awake the rest of the night talking about the party, and I will have to say that his friends are absolutely the most fabulous people – everything he loves I have to admire too, while also knowing that I don’t measure up to them – but I am all alone with the baby I’m carrying. If he mentions it at all, it’s as an increased expense – a bill from the butcher, or an oppressive creditor.
Everyone was talking all around her, over her head, and the bitterness was overflowing without her being able to stop it, filling her mind and senses with poisonous steam. She didn’t understand why, and she had never felt like this before. She had always been so gracious in excusing him, and for months she had stood guard between him and the outside world. Kept her family and girlfriends at bay with all kinds of pretenses, sent friends away when they appeared at the door, endlessly empathetic: ‘Is he depressed again? Dear God, what that man is up against!’ She had even taken it out on Bent, when he’d been rambunctious: ‘Daddy needs peace and quiet!’
This wasn’t what she had imagined when they got married. But what that was, she wasn’t really sure. A girlfriend had brought them together: ‘A devastatingly handsome and smart guy is coming tonight; you absolutely have to meet him!’
The ‘devastatingly handsome guy’ was back now. He was talking with a pale young man whom Lulu didn’t care for, because he always asked with such earnestness if she ‘was doing well’, and after an affirmative answer, would turn away with a doubtful, knowing expression, as if no one, according to his definition, could go around ‘doing well’; and if it really were the case, he wasn’t the least bit interested. For his part, he had the look of someone who suffered from constant indigestion; Kai was speaking to this person fervently, bent toward and directly facing him, in the way that a child is completely absorbed with something nearby. ‘Psychiatrists won’t acknowledge the analytical method,’ he said, ‘but they will have to eventually, you can bet on that. Not one of them has the least grasp of what they’re dealing with.’
Lulu’s bitterness congealed into a small, hard knot, there, where her heart usually sat. She stood up all of a sudden, pale, and without looking at any of the others. ‘Do you mind if I head to bed? I’m exhausted,’ she said, loudly and clearly, and there was a brief silence in the room. Kai finally stared at her with an angry, cold, irritated, and somewhat confused expression in his eyes.
‘You’re tired?’ he asked, as if she had said something unseemly, unheard of, almost indecent. Then he wrinkled his forehead and brushed his hand through his hair, bewildered, as if he were seeking aid against an injustice that had been leveled at him. The men looked at the women; the women at the men. A kind of collusion sprang up among them, brushing Lulu aside, but she held herself erect and expressionless as they stood up and said goodbye.
When the door was shut behind the last one, he turned toward her angrily. ‘What the devil are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘Don’t you have the most basic decency?’ He looked like he wanted to hit her. Then he saw her face was wet with tears, slowly slipping out between her eyelashes, and he observed her a moment, full of wonder. He had never seen her cry before. Sheepishly, he led her to the divan, where she pulled close to him, shaking with sobs and exhaustion like a small animal seeking protection. He got a blanket and laid it over her. He stood up, observing her, fragile and bent. The gleam in his eye was gone, the party was over. Outside, the birds were starting to sing. He got down on one knee and caressed her hair. She took his hand and put it to her cheek, and looked up at him helplessly and inquisitively, but he gently pulled his hand back.
‘We are quite a pair,’ he said quietly, more to himself than to her.
BOOK TWO
The Trouble with Happiness
The Knife
He lay there intensely observing his sleeping wife, as if she represented a mathematical problem which needed solving before he could move on to other things. He always felt a certain tenderness toward her just before he woke her in the morning. But this passed quickly, and she rarely noticed it. He heard their son padding around in the nursery, coughing quietly and talking to himself. Their son knew it was strictly forbidden to wake his parents.
He turned toward the wall and shouted, ‘Okay, Esther, it’s eight o’clock!’
This was his usual morning greeting. One of the duties he adopted, for some obscure reason, was to show his family a cool and slightly accusatory tone, which was supposed to express his general attitude toward life, and reinforce his own estimation of himself as a rational person who disdained sentimentality. He didn’t have his wife’s picture on his desk at his office, and, unlike his colleagues, he didn’t walk around with little photographs of his offspring to flaunt at any time. Still, they were both almost constantly in his thoughts, though the actual nature of the relationship was difficult for him to determine, just as he found it hard to differentiate one from the other. They existed like shadows inside him, thought-fetuses he couldn’t get rid of, products of a weakness in him which he tried with all his might to overcome. They were in the way of his plans, and they made him distracted and irritable, precisely at times when he needed to harness his energy. He often thought: My life would have evolved quite differently if they weren’t around. He had still been studying when he met Esther. He wasn’t really sure if he would have married her if it hadn’t suddenly become necessary. This was a question he asked himself many times a day, without ever finding an answer, or delving into what value such an answer would have for him, considering how things stood. But he didn’t like the idea that his life could be determined by chance. Things and people were something you reached out for, when they could be useful to a certain end. Either you used them for something, or else you risked being used by them.
