Josefine Klougart - One of Us Is Sleeping

Her arm tingles; she has never been as comfortable in all her life.

OR ELSE MY mother phones. Mornings are, as ever, a trial. I wake up in a bed without having slept.

My mother tells me things are rough. I sit up in bed and force my legs over the edge.

Things are always rough, I think to myself. She mumbles. My hair is a mess, and the new man reaches out from under the duvet and messes it up even more. I sink my head between my shoulders like a horse about to bite, that expression, ears flat, eyes narrowed like slits of light under creaking doors.

I snap at them.

I’m ill, she says.

I am not breathing. I flex my feet, shuffle further to the edge. You’re ill, I repeat, emptied. Those words, and me, emptied.

The new man’s hand stops its tousling. I feel the abruptness with which it halts, as if suddenly encountering some sloppy mass on my scalp, something that once had life.

I love you, the new man does not say. I love you, too, I do not reply.

We say goodbye, he has a long journey ahead of him.

He whispers that he is sorry to have to go on such a day.

I know, I say, and know that he is already gone, and I am frightened to death, leaving, in every respect. I should be here for you now.

It’s all right, I say. Meaning: it’s best this way. Or just: yes.

I’m going to miss you, he says.

I’m going to miss you, I repeat, without lying, for the words are not mine, but his, uttered out of my mouth. One to one, enthusiasm and fear. I have a feeling my body is bad for his. That it pulls him apart, slowly, like an onion, layer by layer. Rotting from the outside, the way onions rot, from the outside. Or from the inside, the way onions rot from the inside. Paler and paler and paler. Younger and younger. The commotion of my affection, loud as bridges. The summer runs like telephone lines through the landscape, his love is unspoiled, for something that does not exist.

My eyes are the only things left in my crumpled face.

BEFORE WE SLEEP we call each other. Our voices are pressed together like teeth in ancient jaws, by time and too little air, in the vicinity of sleep beneath ceilings, sloping walls; he says he’s with his parents, that he’s so unhappy. I lie a thousand kilometres away from him, albeit in the same room.

The time you have wasted: the time I have wasted, he says, hesitating.

I know that feeling well, I say, believing myself.

We are both adults, though both in the guise of children, the children of parents to whom we have long since become parents. And our bodies are confused: why are we here, in these familiar beds, as they grow smaller and smaller still.

One summer I was so afraid of wasps, he tells me.

A silence ensues. I was lying in my room, he goes on, listening to cassette tapes my girlfriend had made for me.

And all the times I could have gone sailing.

Yes, I say, simply. I don’t know how to talk about it.

Silence.

I’ve no idea where you are, he says eventually, as if suddenly becoming aware that I too exist inside a body. The body of my voice.

I’m in a small room, I tell him. Underneath the roof are two big double beds, two smaller beds, a dresser full of sheets and covers, and a library of books all the way up the wall that is the spine of the house.

I’m in a room like that, too, he says.

It’s so incredibly dark here, he says. I mean, really incredibly dark. He talks about the wind, not knowing that an hour ago I sat with my parents, talking about the wind in the exact same way.

Yes, I say, we talk of the wind and it lays down flat, like a dog in the grass. Not wanting to be seen.

I’M COMING WITH you, is all I say. I think it’s the best way. For me to make that decision for him. He stands there like a tree. There’s nothing more to think about, I say, tentatively. Only it hasn’t even started yet. He hands me the towel, apathetic in all he does. Like the winter, unconsciously repeating itself, a new snowfall, a new blanket of the same fabric.

All that vanishes comes creeping back.

All that creeps along the walls. That’s the kind of winter it was, everything of importance taking place against the walls. All right, he says, if you say so, and gets in the shower as I vacate it. He turns the tap, the water is cold, cold after my cold shower.

I’m not sure, he says, once the temperature is right.

About what, I ask. My voice sounds strange; I am bent double, towelling my hair.

I’m not sure how much time I’ll have.

He falls silent, as I have fallen silent.

I have to work, he ventures. Removes his head from the jets of water in order to hear.

I tell myself: he means these coming weeks, this trip; only then I think: that’s how it is with him, never really knowing. And then this: that he reckons that’s how it has to be, that you have to know something.

I think: it’s not about knowing, it’s about wanting . Maybe it’s that simple, too.

WILL YOU GO down to the basement with me to find some wine, I ask him. He looks up at me from in front of the bookshelf, on his knees at the CDs. I can go myself, I add, seeing the look of fright on his face. It’s just a bit dark, that’s all.

He puts his hand to his mouth, his gaze collapses in on itself, his lips close and shrink like cakes in an oven. He trembles, I see that now: you’re trembling.

I crouch beside him. What’s the matter, I ask, a nervous chuckle escaping on my breath. You don’t have to, I say.

He sits down on the floor, head in hands.

I take his hand. I don’t understand what’s happening, I say.

It’s too much for me, I can’t deal with it.

It’s all right, I say. Really, it’s all right.

Everything is so quiet. With my free hand I put a CD in the player and switch it on. There is no explanation, hardly an explanation for anything in this world, I think to myself. There is impenetrability — and there is the world that reveals itself to you in detonations of sound. Nothing in between, neither darkness nor light.

There are images you carry with you all your life. An apple tree bearing its bright red fruit through winter. A bucket reeling beneath a beech tree. A bathroom seen from the floor when you lay there writhing. The window of a greenhouse. And one long attempt to return, to find a home somewhere.

THANKS, I SIGHED, for calling.

You called me.

Yes.

SHE THOUGHT: NOW I will leave this city and never come back. I will leave this unreal night, let it remain in this place, and never return to it. On the ferry she wrote a message to the new man, saying she hoped to see him, that it might be good for them. Your son, she wrote, it would be good for him to get out into the country for a while. Don’t think it over too much, she wrote, only to delete it again. She knew he wouldn’t come, she knew she shouldn’t beg. Like a dog at your legs, she ran like that; unable to find rest anywhere anymore, certainly not in the apartment. Every time he left her apartment it once more became a desolate place. It was something he did to it, his way of emptying everything, emptying her.

BUT HE DOESN’T understand I’m using him to postpone death. The way I use everything to postpone death.

I WOULD LIKE to be passed from hand to hand, a warm ring of gold bestowed, dropped between palms. I thought I knew what sleeplessness was; breathlessness, too; I thought I knew the sound of no plans . I fall in love with you, and now I discover: I knew nothing of it. There, it’s said now. It can be that way sometimes. Now that, too, is a part of my reality.

I rise from the bed in an apartment that still sleeps. You have gone, before the blinds began to wrench themselves free, to hurl themselves against the walls. The apartment, dreaming of waking; me, dreaming of the apartment’s dreams of not waking. I thought we had an agreement that this was different; different from anything leading to rising from a bed in an apartment that never slept, blinds weeping at the walls, and finding a farewell letter you don’t really understand. That I do.