Auntie stood by the window in her black mourning together with all us children, except for my little brother, whom the stork had brought a week ago.
When the hearse and procession had passed and the street was empty, Auntie wanted to go, but I didn’t want to. I was waiting for the angel, brewer Rasmussen. He had become a little winged child of God and had to appear.
“Auntie,” I said, “Don’t you think he’ll be coming now? Or when the stork brings us another little brother, will he bring angel Rasmussen?”
Auntie was completely overwhelmed by my imagination and said, “That child will become a great poet!” She repeated that all through my school years, after my confirmation, and now into my years as a college student.
She was and is the most sympathetic friend to me, both in my pains with my poetry and pains in my teeth. I have bouts of both.
“Just write down all your thoughts,” she said, ”and put them in the drawer. That’s what jean Paul1 did, and he became a great poet, although I don’t really like him. He isn’t exciting. You must be exciting! And you will be exciting!”
The night after this conversation I lay awake in longing and distress, with the want and need to become the great poet that Auntie saw and sensed in me. I was in “poet pain,” but there’s a worse pain, and that’s a toothache. It crushed and squashed me. I became a writhing worm with an herbal hot pad on my cheek and Spanish fly.
“I know all about that,” said Auntie. She had a sad smile on her lips, and her teeth shone so white.
I must start a new section of my story and Auntie’s.
III.
I had moved into my new apartment and had lived there a month. I talked with Auntie about it.
“I live with a quiet family. They don’t pay any attention to me, even if I ring three times. Actually it’s a real madhouse with racket and noises of wind and weather and people. I live right over the entrance portal, and every coach that drives in or out makes the pictures on the wall shake. The gate slams and shakes the house as if it were an earthquake. If I’m lying in bed, the jolts go through all my limbs, but that is supposed to be good for the nerves. If the wind’s blowing, and it’s always windy here in this country, then the long casement window hooks dangle back and forth and slam against the brick wall. The neighbor’s portal bell rings with every gust of wind.
The residents of the building come home in batches from late in the evening until far into the night. The lodger right above me, who gives trombone lessons during the day, comes home last, and he doesn’t go to bed until he has had a little midnight walk around his room with heavy tromping in iron-clad boots.
There are no double windows, but there’s a broken pane that the landlady has pasted paper over. The wind blows through the crack anyway and makes a sound like a humming horsefly. It’s music to put you to sleep. When I finally do fall asleep, I’m soon awakened by the crow of the rooster. The rooster and hens announce from the chicken coop of the man in the cellar that it’ll soon be morning. The little ponies, who don’t have a stable, are tethered in the sandpit below the stairs. They kick at the door and the walls for exercise.
At daybreak, the janitor, who lives in the attic with his family, comes lumbering down the stairs. Wooden shoes clack, the gate slams, the house shakes, and when that’s over, the lodger upstairs begins his exercises. He lifts a heavy iron ball in each hand, but he can’t keep a hold of them. They fall again and again, while at the same time all the children in the building run screaming on their way to school. I go to the window and open it to get some fresh air—it’s refreshing when I can get it—if the lady in the back building isn’t washing gloves in stain remover. That’s how she makes her living. All in all, it’s a nice building, and I live with a quiet family.”
That was the account I gave my aunt about my apartment. It was more lively though, because an oral presentation is more vivid than the written word.
“You’re a poet!” shouted Auntie. “Just write up what you said, and you’ll be just as good as Dickens. Actually you interest me much more. You paint when you speak! You describe your building so that one can see it. It makes one shudder! Keep writing, make it come alive. Put people in, beautiful people and preferably unhappy ones!”
I really did write it down, as it stands with the noises and sounds, but just with myself in it, no action. That came later!
IV.
It was in the winter, late in the evening after the theater. There was a terrible snowstorm, so it was almost impossible to make any headway walking.
Auntie had been to the theater, and I was there to see her home, but it was hard to walk oneself, much less help someone else. All the cabs were taken. Auntie lived far over in town, but my room was close to the theater. If that hadn’t been the case, we would have had to stand in the sentry box for who knows how long.
We struggled along in the deep snow, surrounded by the whirling snowflakes. I lifted her, held her, and pushed her along. We only fell twice, but we fell softly.
We reached my gate where we shook ourselves off. We shook ourselves on the stairs too, and we still had enough snow on us to fill up the floor in the entry.
We took off our coats and other clothing that could be taken off. The landlady lent Auntie dry stockings and a robe. She said it was a necessity, and added that Auntie could not possibly get home that night, which was true. She asked her to make do with the sofa in her living room, where she would make up a bed in front of the always locked door to my room. And that was done.
A fire burned in my stove. The teapot was brought to the table, and the little room became cozy, if not as cozy as at Auntie’s, where there are thick curtains in front of the door in the winter, thick curtains over the windows, and two-ply carpets with three layers of heavy paper underneath. You sit there as if in a tightly corked bottle of warm air. But, as I said, it was cozy there in my place too. Outside the wind howled.
Auntie talked and told stories. Back came the days of her youth and back came the brewer, old memories.
She remembered when I got my first tooth, and the pleasure the family took in it. The first tooth! The tooth of innocence, shining like a little white drop of milk—the milk tooth.
First came one, then others, a whole line. Side by side, upper and lower—the most lovely baby teeth, but yet just the vanguards, not the real ones that have to last for a lifetime.
They came too, and the wisdom teeth also. Flankers of the rank, born in pain and with great difficulty.
And they leave again, every one of them! They go before their service is up. Even the last tooth goes, and that’s not a day of celebration. It’s a melancholy day.
And then you’re old, even if your spirit is young.
Such thoughts and talk aren’t pleasant, and yet we talked about all this. We went back to childhood years. We talked and talked. It was midnight before Auntie went to bed in the room next door.
“Good night, my sweet child,” she called. “Now I’ll sleep as if I’m lying in my own bed.”
And she slept peacefully, but there was no peace either in the house or outside. The storm shook the windows, slammed the long dangling iron hooks, and rang the neighbor’s portal bell in the back building. The lodger upstairs had come home. He was still taking his little walk up and down. He took off his boots and went to bed and to rest, but he snores so loudly that good ears can hear it through the ceiling.
I couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t calm down. The weather didn’t calm down either. It was immensely lively. The wind whistled and sang in its fashion and my teeth also began to get lively. They whistled and sang in their fashion, and struck up a terrific toothache.
There was a draft from the window. The moonlight shone onto the floor. The lighting changed as the clouds came and went in the stormy weather. There was a shifting of shadow and light, but at last the shadow on the floor took shape and looked like something. I looked at the moving shape and sensed an icy cold blast.