Youth, fragment

I sank into a long-lasting stupor that robbed me of all initiative. ‘You’re going around asleep,’ said the ladies, whose reproaches made less of an impression on me than ever. I lost the desire to talk with my mother, and one evening when Edvin came with an invitation from Thorvald, I said no. I had no desire to go out dancing with that young man who had liked my poems. Maybe his father knew another editor who would also die before I was old enough to write real, grown- up poems. I’d gotten cold feet and didn’t dare expose myself to any more disappointments. Summer had come. When I went home in the evening, the fresh breeze cooled my stove- ushed cheeks like a silk handkerchief, and young girls in light dresses walked hand in hand with their sweet- hearts. I felt very alone. Of the girls in the trash- can corner, Ruth was the only one I knew now, and she always yelled ‘Hi’ to me when I went through the courtyard. I looked up at the front building’s wall,  ooded with life and memories, my childhood’s wailing wall, behind which people ate and slept and argued and fought. Then I went up the stairs in my red dress with blue polka dots and pu sleeves – the only summer dress I had. Sometimes Jytte was sitting in the living room, smoking cigarettes, which she also offered to my mother. My mother smoked awkwardly and ineptly and always got smoke in her eyes. Now Jytte was working in a tobacco factory. My father said that she stole the cigarettes, but my mother didn’t care. She always had to have a girlfriend who was much younger than her, because she was so youthful. But there were gray streaks in her black hair and she had put on weight around her hips. That’s why she often went to the steambaths at the public bathhouse on Lyrskovgade, and when she came home, she gleefully told us about how terribly fat all the other women were.