Naja Marie Aidt
A Love Story
Translated from the Danish by Denise Newman
Louisa is in her apartment and it’s been a long time since she’s been out. She doesn’t notice, but it smells. Stale and full of mildew and rot. It’s dark in the living room, where she’s sitting, waiting to fall asleep rolled up in blankets in the corner of the couch, teeth chattering. Through squinted eyes, she sees the outlines of the objects in the room; they remain mute, looking like at any moment they could topple on her and shatter into a thousand pieces all over the floor. She squeezes her eyes tight and falls into dreaming, leaving the cold of the room, the dim light and quivering silence. She floats like a leaf on water. It’s not difficult. Her dream takes up so much space now, it’s growing and growing.
In brief flashes she remembers dragging all the heavy objects up the steep staircase, out of breath, rustling black plastic bags hanging off her shoulders. She probably bought all of it. Or picked things up from the junk dealer. Perhaps he gave her a few items. In any case, more was always coming in, filling the rooms, making the paths of empty floor space narrower and narrower. When she moves around, she has to take specific routes. Gilded framed pictures on the floor against the baseboards, chandeliers and old furniture—multiples of each kind, three couches, for example, two large beds of worn mahogany with carvings and creaking boards. There are only two rooms in the apartment. Plus, a bathroom with a bathtub, claw foot and everything. A large, oval-shaped one. Louisa is a vegetarian and good at cooking. Always careful and thorough.
Never sloppy. She makes a hot meal for herself every day, never falling into the rut of a slice of rye bread with a fried egg and the cold, dry sensation in the mouth and stomach that comes with it. She also drinks a lot of tea to keep her insides warm. Blood cleansing tea, which can be necessary. With so much filth in the world, you’ve got to keep yourself cleansed.
But the objects. Their constant stream up the stairs and through the door. Collecting dust. That’s hard for her to cope with. Bugs are beginning to proliferate out of the bags of organic flour, swarming around in the kitchen cabinets. Confused, she watches their movements, their itty-bitty footprints in the fine white flour, their crawling between the crumbs and spilt oats. She watches them for a long time, not knowing what to do. She closes the cabinet door and boils water in large pots—there’s no hot water in the tap. She lugs them into the bathroom and takes a bath.
Afterward, she lathers herself with cocoa butter and plucks her eyebrows. She wants to look like Asta Nielsen, beautiful and pale, with arched eyebrows in thin lines over a theatrical expression. Silent as Asta Nielsen, but visible. When on rare occasions she goes out to shop in her faded, form-fitting green velour coat with her hands in a muff and her feet in high-heeled buttoned boots, hat cocked and a straight back, she senses that people are looking at her. They’re watching her, finding her visible. Men undress her with their eyes because they want to know what’s hidden under such clothes. Young women find her eccentric enough to scrunch up their noses and turn the other way. Then she sniffs and blinks her long eyelashes. At the greengrocer, she speaks with a clear and delicate voice when she asks for fennel, parsley root, parsnips, large winter potatoes, beets, wrinkled apples, clementines, and, even though they’re incredibly expensive, soft white pine nuts. She’s treated like an inept child and a fine lady. The greengrocer packs the groceries in a bag for her. The fine lady who drops everything on the floor and needs help gathering it all up. She totters home and shuts her eyes to the garbage chute in the entryway. A black hole breathing with a hungry wheezing sound.
She shuts out the sound with many locks and door chains. She undresses. Stands in front of one of her large tilting mirrors, throwing kisses to her reflection. She poses with her hand over her bare breasts. Then she takes a bath. She does this often. Many times a day.
The moment she sinks her body into the scalding water and feels her head getting heavy from the ethereal floral oil, which she always adds to the water, it begins. Like a suction pulling her head down, a warmth pouring from the back of her head down over her neck and breasts, down her stomach to her groin, making her inner thighs soft and compliant, her labia open like the petals they are, inner moisture seeps out, blending with the water. She lies completely still, her slack arms floating, and waits. She smiles at the joy the water brings her, all the increasing beauty of it. She’s sure her desire will be satiated.
Wrinkled as a baby, completely soaked and red, she gives herself over to a fit of shivering as she rubs cocoa butter on her skin; her skin that’s so inflamed with desire it is almost too sensitive to touch.
Under the duvet, with her face and black hair buried in the lace pillows with old embroidered monograms, she sweeps her hands across her arms, down over her stomach, thighs, back up to her cheeks. Making it throb between her legs. Pulling at her breasts full of ice and pain. She’s smiling the whole time. She smiles at what she’s imagining. Lovely naked girls and old horny men who are only allowed to watch and jerk themselves off in their gabardine pants while the nymphs do it with each other.
Then she sticks her finger up herself and that’s all it takes. The duvet cover’s light caresses participate. She convulses in spasms and lets out a sound; she’s wet and it is all over, she’s completely alone and the tenderness all over her body overwhelms her, and her skin, like when you have a fever, is hot, irritated and sore.
She gets up quickly, puts on her dress, and wanders around the narrow paths between the objects, listening to Billie Holliday, singing along and crying now and then, hoarsely, without tears.
In the past, when she was a squatter, and not a day over seventeen, she had a boyfriend named Ole, who took her under his wing. He accepted that she couldn’t be naked in front of him; she didn’t even need to make excuses.
“Our relationship is totally unique,” he said when they lay together trying to get warm. “Like in The Brothers Lionheart, you’re the little brother and I’m the big brother. We fight against the evil in the world.” That’s what he whispered, and she never left his side. She had just arrived in the city, and he was a few years older. But after less than a year, he was high on acid nearly all the time, and then found a henna-dyed girl who said that she was sexually possessed by him.
Ole forgot about The Brothers Lionheart, and she moved all by herself into the apartment that he’d originally found for both of them. The objects began to stream in through the door. Rugs, goblets, plaster statues, and tall pedestals for houseplants. Stuffed birds, stripped tobacco cabinets, a coffee set for twelve, and countless blue enamel kitchen items. A few different telephones, all older models. For a time, telephones were constantly streaming in. None of them hooked up; there’s no phone jack in the apartment.
But the bathtub. From the first day, it stood there waiting for her, its rounded form made out of thick porcelain on sturdy feet.
They put her welfare money into her account every month, so she doesn’t need to ever go into the office. Only twice a year, there’s a kind of check in. Some- thing concerning forms from the doctor. They pay her rent and are pleased that she lives so frugally and uses so little kerosene during the winter months. It’s way too heavy to drag upstairs; it’s hard enough with all the stuff. She keeps warm by taking baths and wrapping herself in multiple wool blankets. She cooks hot meals. Every day. Vegetables and rice or baked potatoes. She lies under her duvet, smiling with red cheeks. Or she sleeps. Long and deep, dreaming. She has to put cucumber slices on her eyes when she wakes up to reduce the swelling from sleeping.
But the bugs. The bugs in the kitchen, small and black with hard shells, she has no idea what to do with them. They’ve started to spread. She’s seen some in the other rooms. She has no idea what to do with them.
It’s different with the fruit flies. They speak to her. They fly slowly and land on her hand or shoulder or on the corner of her plate and talk to her when she’s eating. They tell her how charming she is. Charming little Asta. How earth colors suit her best. The brown thin wool dress goes so well with her eyes. What they think about the meal she’s eaten. Good, healthy food. Nourishing. They beg her to buy some fruit next time she goes shopping, and set it out in a warm place for them. Wrinkled apples and clementines. Those are their favorites. They say that she’s arranged things nicely, that they like living in her apartment. It’s different with them.
Once during the summer, a large bumblebee flew in the window. Why did she leave the window open? It stormed through the rooms, screaming at her that she was a pig and a filthy person with a sick disposition and really bad taste. It buzzed like an airplane, right in her ears, telling her that she should clear out, go take a walk on the beach.
She ran out of the room and hid in the bathroom. It gave her such a fright, she put the latch on the door and waited as still as a mouse in the dark. It took a while for it to get out. Why had she left the window open?
Since then she hasn’t aired out the rooms. The fruit flies said: “What was it thinking, that bee! Flying in here and amusing itself at the expense of others.” The small flies don’t ever buzz, they only talk with their soft voices, always noticing a new perfume, a change in her hairstyle or lipstick color. The bugs in the kitchen are silent and there are so many of them.
This is how time passes. Louisa, in her apartment, never going out. She has no desire to, and starts digging into her supply of canned meat-substitute with a can opener, vegetarian prepared foods. Still, it’s a hot meal. Time passes, she has to be careful not to get too chilled, making sure to drink tea day and night. One day the doorbell rings. She peeks through the mail slot, and then slowly undoes all the chains, asking with a tiny voice who it is. “It’s your neighbor,” he says.
A man. She keeps the top chain fastened and opens the door a crack. She looks at his face, large and swollen, with eyes strangely set deep in his head.
“Um, I rang your doorbell because, um, I wanted to ask you something.” She gives a little nod.
“Well, you see, we . . . it’s a little hard to explain . . . but we’re, you know, infested with these tiny bugs in our apartment. A kind of beetle. In the kitchen. Which butts up against yours. Our kitchens, I mean . . .”
The man steps a bit closer to the door. Louisa pulls back.
“And there’s something else, I mean my wife thinks she’s seen some of these bugs on the backstairs of the building. Crawling out from under your door. And so, we started to wonder if you’re also infested with them? In your place?”
It’s quiet for a moment.
“Have you seen any in your kitchen?” he tries again, “small black ones?” “In my kitchen?” asks Louisa. “No, no . . .”
She looks at the neighbor’s hands. He’s wringing them. They’re oddly contorted, she sees that his bones are about to come loose under the skin. He sticks his hands in his pockets.
“You better see if you can get your fingers straightened out,” she says, pulling her kimono around her. “It’s no good to have fingers like that. If you’ll excuse me, sir . . .”
She closes the door and fastens the chains again, one after the other. She then stands there a moment, waiting in the entryway. And hears the neighbor close his door. Then she takes a bath. Heating up the water, clattering of pots in the kitchen, only looking at the water when it begins to boil. When she’s standing in the bathroom afterwards shivering with her arms wrapped around herself, she feels something on her bare foot. Black with a hard shell. A few are crawling around on the floor. So, they’re in here now, too, in the bathroom.
She goes to bed and tries to smile at the men’s sweaty faces, the girls’ glass-clear light eyes. But the neighbor keeps intruding. Swollen and suspicious. And the sound from the garbage chute goes through the walls. She has to go harder on herself, rubbing until it nearly hurts. Finally, it works. A little dry, dirty orgasm. She’s really sore afterwards. Her skin itches, and she’s freezing. She heats up a can of food in the kitchen, which is black with them. On the range, in the sink, all over the stack of dirty dishes.
She eats, whispering with the fruit flies. They tell her to calm down. No one, no one can bother her. Everything is good and tidy in her house; so lovely that she has left the tea leaves in the sink for them, so lovely are her eyes. Her skin, unblemished and fair. No one may disturb her. They really appreciate everything.
Louisa leaves the remains of her meal out for them and curls up on the couch. The blankets itch; she wraps herself up in them and leans her tired head against the arm of the couch. She’s freezing and hears her teeth chattering against each other. Sees the shadows of her things on the walls. Squeezes her eyes tight and slowly drifts away.
That’s how she’s sleeping sitting up when the doorbell rings again. The room is filled with gray light from outside. It’s morning. She doesn’t open the door; she’s sleeping. That’s how she’s sitting when the door is kicked in, the chains sawed through, and four men and one woman step into the apartment. A social worker, doctor, locksmith. A policeman and exterminator. Behind them are the neighbor and his wife craning their necks. The sight that meets them when they crowd into the entryway is an army of small black men with hard shells, a swarm of dancing girls, things piled up before them like houses, the windows’ closed faces.
Louisa is sitting on the couch. She doesn’t hear them come in. She’s asleep and dreaming. A light, high dream full of water and caresses. She sits silently with open eyes when the woman tries to shake her awake. She’s also quiet in the car as they drive, she’s quiet even though they’re talking to her. She holds on tight and continues shaking
Yeah, it happens sometimes. We see a lot of this type,” the officer says. “But she’s so young,” says the woman, a social worker new to the job. “Yeah, it happens sometimes,” repeats the officer.
The dream continues. Louisa is visible to herself under the water. She swims around weightless with eyes open, deep, deep down.
“If you’ll pardon me, my name is actually Asta,” she says smiling. The faces turn questioningly toward her. She does not allow herself to be disturbed.