Star Without Land - 5

‘I took the card. It would have seemed a bit odd to refuse it, now that they had made me their confidante. For I’d been the one who had asked if there was something wrong with the man... It had been something completely intuitive, that question. My reptilian brain must have had a reflex action...

‘I turned the card over and read: Andreas Falkenland, photographer. Then, without comment, I put it in my handbag.’

A wave of fog drifts over me as again I hear Rebecca say his full name... Andreas, my friend... An anxiety that is close to a sense of queasiness takes me unawares. My cerebrum begins to reflect: why?

She shrugs her shoulders and says in a low voice:

‘His address was in a block of flats on Gothersgade. This block of flats.’

‘Andreas lives two floors above me.’

‘Yes...’

‘When I saw you hesitating down there, I thought you might summon up some courage if we talked?’

‘I had no idea that Andreas had been in Barcelona. It’s ages since I’ve seen him. And Irene, too, for that matter. It takes me by surprise that Irene had followed him like a close girlfriend, even though I’m aware that they know each other.

Rebecca’s gaze fixes mine.

‘Now I really want to meet this Andreas Falkenland, but when I tried to ring the buzzer I quite rightly had my doubts, as you saw... The fact that I’m sitting here in your apartment, with someone I don’t know at all, is something I understand even less than my impulse to meet him.

‘When I got the visiting card on the plane, the woman said he wanted to photograph me. And he’s not just any photographer, she added...

‘But you must know him very well, since you live in the same block of flats?’

‘Yes, I know Andreas.’

Rebecca sends me a big smile, which I can’t possibly not return. A warm radiance wafts from her.

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Star Without Land
Star Without Land - 2
Star Without Land - 3
Star Without Land - 4

Star Without Land - 4

It strikes me as an odd merging of coincidences that she should be in my apartment. She doesn’t set boundaries the way most people do, it occurs to me. She has accepted the challenge of dropping in on me, doing so in the same way that she wants to meet Andreas. What makes her walk into other people’s lives like this? What is she looking for?

Then she straightens up and continues:

‘The man got back into action. Leaning forward at an angle, he began to tell me about the woman who was sitting between us, while she listened with a look of contentment.

‘She had been a photo model. I stared at the woman mutely as before, surprised that this thought had not occurred to me. She smiled at me and told me that her friend was a photographer.

‘Then, as far as was possible for a breath-taking model, she tried to make herself invisible again, and the man went on:

‘He had photographed the woman several times. He wasn’t really a fashion photographer. He didn’t have much time for the glamorous fashion magazines, but had been hired one day when another photographer failed to turn up. Now and then he stepped in like that to help a colleague out. His friendship with the woman had begun directly after the first photo session, which had taken place one September day, on a jetty, in a bitterly cold wind.

‘He and the stylist had been okay, but she had caught a chill from posing on the jetty with not enough clothes on. He’d felt he was to blame, because under the pressure of work he had ignored her protests. On the other hand, next day he had phoned her. He’d brought her some cold medicine and a bottle of decent brandy, and said he was sorry if he’d ordered her about – he wasn’t always good at spotting the different reactions models had to things, but he was anxious to make up for the callous way he’d treated her.

‘The invisible woman interrupted the conversation with loud laughter. She said that being a model she couldn’t consume more than about a thousand calories a day, so she hadn’t touched the brandy, but during the next few days he’d done his best to restore her to health. That was something she had not been able to resist.

‘They’d been together ever since, he said. Now and then they might not see each other for a while, but when they did they always had a good time together. Indeed, she gradually became one of the girlfriends to whom he could pour out his sorrows – in spite of the age difference between them.’

This gives me a twinge of pain, but I don’t allow it to be noticed.
His girlfriend was in a really tough profession, and that was why she was able to give him sympathy. If he had any problems, he went to her. Problems: I wonder what that word covered?’

‘Rebecca looks at me inquiringly. I choose to remain silent, and also wait before I say that I know Irene.

She goes on:

‘I remember stumbling over the word... His girlfriend was thinking of giving up her career as a model. The death of a very young colleague during a fashion show affected her deeply. While working for a pharmaceutical company for several years the woman had been involved in various vaccination programmes. In between photo-shoots she had waited in hotel rooms. There she had gone on the Internet and begun to find out about the kind of products the company was known for. She’d read about contagious diseases, the danger of infection, precautionary measures. She’d found it disturbing to gain an insight into these things, and gradually she’d been put in charge of various hygiene programmes and vaccination projects in some African villages.

‘It was nice to hear about the new direction that her life was taking, Sophia. I was immediately impressed by her, for a lot of girls are destroyed by their lives as models. I knew one girl who could only cope with the job on pills, and another who just tottered from one day to the next, her life fell totally to bits because of the way she was treated. It was intriguing, what the woman next to me on the plane was saying, but why was I being let in on it all?’

Rebecca takes her time, but I don’t hurry her, just fold my arms and go on listening.

‘I suddenly found it rather strange that I’d allowed myself to be caught up in the fates of these two people as I sat there at a height of 30,000 feet. I excused myself and went along to the toilet right at the back of the plane. I felt I needed to collect my thoughts before meeting Dino, so I stayed standing along there in the aisle for a long time.

‘As I was on my way back to my seat the landing was announced. I fastened my seatbelt and took the book out again in order to try to shake the other two off.

‘But now the woman was holding out a visiting card. She said Andreas had asked her to give it to me. Andreas!... The man actually had a name. That was more or less what it felt like.’

Rebecca gives a nervous snort.

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Star Without Land
Star Without Land - 2
Star Without Land - 3

Star Without Land - 3

‘I dared to catch a glimpse of the man. I was curious, for as I said, I had no idea that I was able to cause such strong emotions in a complete stranger... He was blocking a part of the window. The young woman withdrew her hand and pressed herself back in her seat, as though in an attempt to give us more room. Even though she was trying to disappear, she had a dazzling aura.

'The man looked at me. He was dark-haired, with the beginnings of grey temples, and he had dark eyebrows and grey-blue eyes which followed my movements, chiselled features, with a jutting chin... But I’m sorry, you already know him!’

She puts her hand to her head, and continues:

‘I’m actually rather shy, but I also looked across at him... We didn’t say anything. Then he sent me a smile, which made me lower my gaze. At that moment the flight attendant was standing behind me. The man asked for red wine, while the woman between us didn’t want anything. The man had a deep voice. He made a remark about the strike that had been called off the previous day. He asked the flight attendant questions, including one about how long they could expect to remain in the job these days. The flight attendant was soon about to be sixty, it was her last month at work. She had stuck it longer than most people do, she admitted, as she passed him a glass and bottle. A lot of people gave up around fifty, because the unstable hours of work were so stressful.

‘Now a new gentleman, very determined-looking and also cheerful, was suddenly sitting over in the window seat. This confused me... Or did it also make me even more inquisitive?

‘I saw the man fill his glass, but decided not to drink, as I was going to meet my boyfriend. Dino, he’s called... The man’s voice was calm and controlled. I put my book aside. I couldn’t possibly concentrate on reading about exile and imprisonment.’

She stops abruptly and says:

‘You’re smiling?’

‘I certainly am.’

It gives me a sinking feeling to hear Andreas described by Rebecca, even though I know that she wants to visit him. Her encounter with him on the plane takes me by surprise.

She continues:

‘His voice touched something inside me. It was strange. Feverish.’

She is suffering an unbearable inner tension, something she can’t conceal. She watches me furtively, before resuming her narrative.

‘I don’t recall ever having heard a man’s voice like that before. He began to talk to me, but I felt extremely dizzy, even though I hadn’t had a single glass. I remember at first I didn’t reply, and thought he must think I was slow-witted.

‘I could hear the noise in the cabin. Faint coughing. Other people talking to one another in a distant hum. Words that were wiped out as soon they were spoken. But the man went on talking in the same comfortable voice. His voice I could hear...

‘I kept the book on my lap. From his seat, he asked me what I was reading.

‘”Camus,” I replied, in order to avoid having to hurl the title in his face.

‘”What by Camus?”’ he wanted to know, of course.

‘The woman who was balanced between us pressed herself even harder against the back of her seat, so that the man could talk to me.

‘”The Plague!” I shouted back... I felt a stabbing pain in my head. The man had turned to one side in order to hear me better. He also liked Camus, it transpired. He had thought The Outsider was great, but The Myth of Sisyphus was the book that had really meant something to him. At that moment the book in my lap slid to the floor under the seat in front, but I managed to retrieve it with my foot, and picked it up.

‘The cat woman suggested I exchange seats with her, so the man and I could talk. I declined. After all, what would I talk to him about? I could feel that something was going on but didn’t know what to do about it. The man really seemed to want to talk to me. As though it were the only thing he could think of, even though he was on his way to Barcelona with his girlfriend.’

For a moment Rebecca sinks into herself.

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Star Without Land
Star Without Land - 2

Star Without Land - 2

I remember Rebecca at the moment she was telling me about her meeting with Andreas on the plane to Barcelona, where she was going to visit her fiancé who was on tour there. I remember I thought: Rebecca ‘s so young, she can't possibly know what an aura she possesses. She’s so nobly built. Full of grace. But now I’m writing this: Rebecca shines. Rebecca fills a room as very few people do. So I could well understand that Andreas had reacted strongly to the sight of her. And yes, Rebecca, she looks like Sonya as she looked when Andreas met her.

What is that guides human beings and makes them act the way they do? Why is Rebecca so intent on seeing Andreas again? And why do I let her encroach on my life by saying she is welcome to visit me? A woman I don't know at all.

'The young woman who sat between me and the man on the plane took his hand and held it calmly in hers,' Rebecca continues. 'The woman could have been his daughter, she was about my age. She didn't hold his hand as if he was her fiancé, and it wasn't a motherly sort of grasp, but there was a cautiousness about it which surprised me. I'm sure I have never held a man's hand like that... What was the relation between them? That was what I sat there speculating about, instead of reading about how an entire city makes light of an outbreak of plague as if it were just a few isolated fatalities.'

A smile spreads across Rebecca's lips. Then she says:

'I don’t know how I’d managed not to notice the woman when I was taking my seat or fastening my seatbelt. The woman was probably in her mid-twenties. There was something catlike about her. She was slim, almost as tall as the man who was now rubbing tears away with his sleeve. She was dressed in designer clothes. Her skin was well-cared-for, and there was a beauty spot on her left cheek. Her blond hair was cut so that it fell in an elegant wave when she moved her head towards me, or the man by the window. I usually find it hard to be interested in someone who uses all their energy in resembling a doll, but her I couldn't take my eyes off. Two deep dimples came to her cheeks with the slightest little smile, and she had a way of raising one eyebrow that gave her a charming expression when she was listening.'

It must be Irene Rebecca was describing to me. The beauty spot, the dimples, her general manner and bearing make me think of Irene, my colleague’s daughter, whom I often saw during the years she lived at home. We have run into one another several times since. In her young years she had a habit of throwing herself eagerly into large projects. Irene’s problem is that many people react with irritation to her external appearance, just as Rebecca did, but when you encounter her she imparts interesting bits of news like an explorer, and it is she who inquires what one does and how one is – something for which very few people of her age have the energy.
Rebecca gives me an intense glance. Perhaps because it’s the first time we have talked, she follows my reactions constantly.

‘I think that as I sat there on the plane my jaw dropped when I realized what a beautiful woman I’d been put beside. The woman couldn’t help laughing at the sight of me... As I still couldn’t utter a word, she volunteered the information that she wasn’t the man’s fiancée, just a girlfriend who was accompanying him. They were going to have a week’s vacation, as her friend needed some rest. She didn’t want him to travel alone. He could get so depressed sometimes, and she hadn’t been to Barcelona before, so now they were both going there... She sounded a lot older than me when she spoke, even though she didn’t look older at all, and that was something I couldn’t help noticing.’

Rebecca stops short and puts a finger to her lips. Then her hand falls back into her lap.

‘Do you feel able to listen to all this?’

I nod. I can see that it means a lot to her to share the episode with me, but I understand her uncertainty. It’s also something special that she accepted the invitation to come here, after we met by chance the other day.

‘It’s late, forgive me for having popped up at such a sensitive time.’

‘It’s all right. Just tell it...’

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Star Without Land

Star Without Land

Star Without Land (Stjerne uden land, Gyldendal, 2008) is Pia Tafdrup's second novel. We present some excerpts from the early part of the book.



I

'It was the sight of me that made him cry,' says Rebecca, who is sitting opposite. 'That's what the woman on the plane said.'

Rebecca catches my eye, searchingly. Follows me closely as though she wants to be sure that I'm listening.

'You can't just go on reading when someone's crying, can you? Not even if it's a stranger. I’d carefully asked the woman who sat next to me if there was something wrong with the man. Even though she spoke the words clearly, I couldn't work it out when she replied that it was because he’d been looking at me… It wasn't fear of flying, it wasn't physical pain, it wasn't ordinary desperation. I evidently had an effect on that man that I wasn't aware of.'

Rebecca shakes her head. She doesn't give me time to say anything, but I think my own thoughts.

'I was immersed in Camus, Sophia. I'd been one of the last passengers to step on the plane, because I'd been sitting at the departure gate finishing the first chapter of The Plague. I stuffed my coat and backpack up in the luggage rack and then flopped down into my aisle seat. I immediately started on the next chapter without really noticing the two people who were already sitting there.'

She gives a wry smile.

'I hadn't taken any of it in, but I suddenly noticed the man in the window seat…'


Even when Rebecca was still down at the front door asking for Andreas Falkenland because she didn't dare to ring the buzzer, I found her worthy of note. I’m not in the habit of inviting just anyone into my apartment without knowing who they are, but she appealed to something in me that I didn't have time to reflect on. I offered to talk to her one day, if she felt that she needed that.

So now she is here. I have an article about the changed consumer habits of young people which, though it's rather irritating, will have to be revised again, and an interview with a young man who has enlisted as a soldier. The latter I shall cut, but for once a deadline must be a deadline.

Rebecca declares:

'You look worried.'

'Do I?… Listen, would you like a cup of tea?'

'Tea would be great.'

When I enter with the teapot, she is sitting quite still, non-committal.

'Would you like something else as well?'

'No, thanks. Do you have any honey, though?'

I fetch the honey and watch her take her time as she stirs the glass mug in which the amber-yellow clump dissolves.

Then she asks:

'What do you do, actually?'

Has she been able to read my thoughts in advance?

'I'm a journalist.'

'How exciting!'

'I'm really just a spectator by profession. The job is a bit overhyped. Practically every crime novel nowadays has a central female character who's connected with the world of the media.'

'Perhaps that's because if you’re sitting on the sidelines of society it's always possible to uncover something important?'

'One shouldn't be too involved.'

'What do you mean? Isn't commitment a good thing?'

'Yes, but – for example – one shouldn't treat other people as game to be hunted. There are too many sadists in my line of work who are only too glad to see their victims suffer and who delight in thinking up the next step. One should deal with the story, but be aware of the victim's pain… It's people we're dealing with, after all.'

'Yes, of course…'

Rebecca looks surprised to hear my torrent of words. Why am I saying this, anyway? She asks me about my world, and I immediately launch into a scathing critique of it.

'What was your last piece about?'

'It was an article about how young girls are increasingly resorting to violence. They attack one another physically.'

'I recently heard of a girl who worked off her aggression by doing prone rifle practice.'

Rebecca mimes the action of firing a rifle, and continues:

'I don't know if it helped to cure her self-hatred. Girls like that come across as self-assured and in control, but they bite their fingernails and fight one another to for attention. Oh, they ignore me in town!… And what about the article before that?'

'The one before? It was an interview I did with the author of the books I Told You So and Men Aren’t What They Used To Be, a raving mad woman of my age who believed she was right, no matter what she said or did. Wearing everyone out, and a parody of my generation.'

Rebecca giggles.

'And what else?

I shrug my shoulders slightly. Why are we talking about this? After all, it's Andreas she really wants to meet.

'Just now I'm working on an interview with a young man who is so tired of sitting at the checkout in a supermarket that he's signed up for the army so he'll be sent abroad to a war zone. He’d rather risk losing his life than be bored.'

Rebecca shakes her head, setting the dark mass of curls in motion. She has a high forehead. A forehead on which a small wrinkle appears now and then when she's surprised or worried.

When she pressed the buzzer of the door phone, I was about to cast a glance at the mail I’d pushed to one side during the last few days, because a normal working day eventually becomes so abnormal that there is no time for oneself. But there was nothing interesting. No one who wanted anything from me except to make me pat what I owe or tempt me with more offers. I had stopped in the middle of my work when someone down in the street shouted so loudly that I had to go over to the window and see what was happening. An elderly woman was walking along stooped forward, as though she were fighting her way in the teeth of a gale. She was shouting right and left, ranting and raving. Apparently not at anyone in particular. At life, perhaps? People were trying not to notice her. After she passed, one of them turned and watched her as she went, as I was doing from behind the window pane up here. I didn't have the energy to return to the articles at once, so I put the computer on standby and began to examine the pile of mail instead.

translated from Danish by David McDuff