share with anyone, there are books on shelves in her room and pictures on the walls and blue curtains. From the window she can look out into the garden where there are big trees that throw shadows on warm days. Lone’s mother is at home all day. She goes from room to room with a duster in her hand, she changes tablecloths according to color and straightens pictures and rows of books. She walks in the garden and picks flowers she arranges in vases on the tables. All the vases are blue, the tablecloths are yellow and green. On Sundays she plays the piano in the library and croquet on the grass in the garden with Lone and her brother Hans. Hans is two years younger than Lone and has to wear a sailor suit on Sunday, he is hot and red in the face when he turns and sees me coming through the gate and up the gravel path to the house. He sneers at me. I stop and stand still until Lone has seen me and waves. I’ve been friends with that slob since May. When the long winter was behind us we started to talk to each other. Maybe it’s the books I can borrow from her, maybe I like her, no one else does. Whatever it is, the war between us is over. She never comes to my house, I have been to hers several times, I have waited in the hall between the rooms and heard her mother talk about flowers and colors and how important it is to have clear contrasts.
“Simplicity is the most beautiful style,” she says, smiling at me because she thinks I know something about simplicity, but Jesper says I have shocking taste for a girl. I couldn’t care less. Once she takes a book from the shelf and reads aloud from Jeppe Aakjær. She holds the book in her left hand and lifts her right arm in the air when she reads.
“Isn’t that good,” she says with protruding lips, putting the book back in its right place in the alphabet. I nod and say it is good. Lone’s mother believes in poetry. Her father, the headmaster, believes in natural science. He talks about the insects and their world. As often as he can spare the time he goes out in the fields with his rucksack and net to catch insects, put pins in them, and hang them up in a glass frame on the wall with Latin names underneath.
“You can learn a lot about human beings by studying the insects,” he says, “their world is like ours in miniature, they just have a far better distribution of work.” There may be clarity and contrasts in Lone’s family, but I don’t care for insects. Insects scratch and tickle, they creep up under your dress and sting you.
Every time I go through the gate to Lone’s house I remember the wheelchair and the girl in the red dress, the shadows and sunbeams among the trees and roses of Rosevej. I ask about her and tell Lone the dream I had. Lone says the girl was a cousin from Copenhagen on a visit and to get some fresh air. She is dead now, of tuberculosis. Lone went to Copenhagen by boat to attend the funeral. It was terribly sad, everyone wore suits and dresses and her mother had to sit on a chair because she couldn’t stand for grief, and there were people all over the churchyard, dark against the green grass; they were all looking the same way rather like you do at the theater. Lone once went to the Royal Theater and she often talks about it.
“I cried through most of the priest’s address,” she says proudly. The girl’s name was Irma, she was in the sixth form and was seventeen. I’m thirteen and I feel strong, stronger than Lone and her brother Hans, almost as strong as Jesper. Lone feels it too, I notice by the way she touches me. Hans has called me a peasant girl several times, that’s what they’re like, he thinks. Their mother follows me with her eyes when I walk about the house. She’s afraid I may break something. I have had rickets, but I got over it, I got stronger by fighting, my mother says, almost unfeminine, only the enamel on my teeth was damaged in several places so I have to take good care and brush them often.
They have all
“Simplicity is the most beautiful style,” she says, smiling at me because she thinks I know something about simplicity, but Jesper says I have shocking taste for a girl. I couldn’t care less. Once she takes a book from the shelf and reads aloud from Jeppe Aakjær. She holds the book in her left hand and lifts her right arm in the air when she reads.
“Isn’t that good,” she says with protruding lips, putting the book back in its right place in the alphabet. I nod and say it is good. Lone’s mother believes in poetry. Her father, the headmaster, believes in natural science. He talks about the insects and their world. As often as he can spare the time he goes out in the fields with his rucksack and net to catch insects, put pins in them, and hang them up in a glass frame on the wall with Latin names underneath.
“You can learn a lot about human beings by studying the insects,” he says, “their world is like ours in miniature, they just have a far better distribution of work.” There may be clarity and contrasts in Lone’s family, but I don’t care for insects. Insects scratch and tickle, they creep up under your dress and sting you.
Every time I go through the gate to Lone’s house I remember the wheelchair and the girl in the red dress, the shadows and sunbeams among the trees and roses of Rosevej. I ask about her and tell Lone the dream I had. Lone says the girl was a cousin from Copenhagen on a visit and to get some fresh air. She is dead now, of tuberculosis. Lone went to Copenhagen by boat to attend the funeral. It was terribly sad, everyone wore suits and dresses and her mother had to sit on a chair because she couldn’t stand for grief, and there were people all over the churchyard, dark against the green grass; they were all looking the same way rather like you do at the theater. Lone once went to the Royal Theater and she often talks about it.
“I cried through most of the priest’s address,” she says proudly. The girl’s name was Irma, she was in the sixth form and was seventeen. I’m thirteen and I feel strong, stronger than Lone and her brother Hans, almost as strong as Jesper. Lone feels it too, I notice by the way she touches me. Hans has called me a peasant girl several times, that’s what they’re like, he thinks. Their mother follows me with her eyes when I walk about the house. She’s afraid I may break something. I have had rickets, but I got over it, I got stronger by fighting, my mother says, almost unfeminine, only the enamel on my teeth was damaged in several places so I have to take good care and brush them often.
They have all
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