The Faces by Tove Ditlevsen

Author:Tove Ditlevsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador

9

While she greedily drank the water, her childhood seemed to be staring at her through the dull, calm eyes of the woman. She saw her mother before her, when she would sit under the lamp in the evening and sing for her while her father slept on the sofa. The living room was an island of light and security in the wild sea of the world. Now the memory of it glided through her mind like a warmth that had always been there and was just waiting for someone to call it forth. The woman patted her on the cheek.

‘If anyone asks you if you hear voices,’ she said in a broad, muted voice, ‘just say no. It’s very important.’

‘But that’s no use,’ said Lise, surprised, ‘everyone can hear them.’

‘Oh, no.’ She was knitting cheerfully away and there wasn’t a sound in the room except for the clicking knitting needles. ‘You can only hear your own voices.’

She said this in such a matter-of-fact way, as if she were explaining that everybody has their own toothbrush.

‘Then Dr Jørgensen can’t hear them either?’ she asked, full of hope.

‘Of course not. Tell him that you don’t hear any voices except his.’

‘Why?’

‘Otherwise you’ll never go home. If you talk about the voices, they’ll think you’re insane.’

‘That’s what they want me to believe.’

‘That’s obvious. This is an insane asylum, after all, and it can’t exist without patients.’

‘How do I get out of here?’

‘You have to write to the ombudsman. That’s what I’ve done and I’m expecting an answer any day now. And above all, you should humor the voices. It’s stupid to fight with them the whole time you’re here.’

Gert came in carrying a tray with a cup of coffee and a plate of sandwiches on it.

‘Why are you here?’ he said, frowning. ‘You shouldn’t be bothering Mrs Mundus, she needs rest.’

The woman calmly collected her knitting and left the room as if she were walking out of a painting in which she had been the central figure.

‘It’s time to eat your breakfast,’ said Gert with a borrowed voice that must have belonged to the nurse whose role he was playing.

‘Yes,’ she said obediently and looked at the open-faced sandwiches, which had a faintly greenish surface and smelled sharply of ammonia. I wonder how long you can live without food? Her hunger wasn’t as bad as her thirst had been. Maybe the woman would bring her some uncontaminated food. She thought of her as her only friend, someone she could count on in the midst of this hell, someone who wouldn’t betray her.

Gert disappeared again, and at the same moment Gitte appeared behind the negotiation grating.

‘You never understood young people,’ she said. ‘The writers who don’t understand can’t survive the new times. Do you remember when you were interviewed by two high-school boys for their school paper? They asked you why you never participated in the current debates. Do you remember what you answered? You quoted Hemingway. Repeat what you said.’

As she tried to remember the words she had used, she looked at Gitte’s hands, which were holding on to the grating.

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