(and so I felt the cold metal against my skin, and the doctor moved the stethoscope across my chest in small hops as if my heart were in flight, for there isn’t anything the heart fears more than people who listen to it of their own free will).
There’s a goodness besides the one you’re waiting for, said my mother. So be patient, she said,
and then I opened the windows to hear the Vietnamese neighbors’ party in the backyard, for happiness may well occur in ways we don’t understand, I thought, looking at the love I have and safeguarding it against enemy forces the way an Inuit guards his whale-oil lamp,
his mukluks,
and his laughter.
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Grabbed the egg the second before it hit the floor,
went to the grocery store and dragged my little basket along
and took my place at the end of the line.
Fell into a reverie at the sight of the corpulent woman who is the supermarket’s star cashier because the only thing she can do is move her arms, and they guide other people’s everyday lives past the bar code reader so fast, you can hardly see the gold ring that shines on her finger, but it’s there, and inside it says Your eternal beloved.
Bought new bulbs, since everything burns out anyway.
Decided that despite it all, I would stick to the truth as I knew it
and walked over to the cemetery,
and the pigeons rose into the air.
Discovered a gravestone of a person whom I knew to be utterly alive, and I’d walked down that path countless times but never seen the stone before, or in any case never noticed the name, so perhaps it wasn’t there yesterday, or there’s another person buried there, or I just see my truths gradually as they unfold before me,
I thought, and noticed that the person in question had died in 1934, and that it could therefore in no way be the same one, but other than that there was an absolute convergence of things that didn’t make sense
and I felt humbled,
I felt listened to
and loved beneath the surface,
and bore in mind the thought that for God, a gravestone is just a scrap to make notes upon, the way the rest of us write our small concerns on the papers on the desk,
and one thing is inescapable: I write,
I write
centifolia, multiflora, and Astrid Lindgren.
That cannot be changed, I thought
and skirted the high-piled Midsummer Night bonfires, smiling (demented)
across the hay-scented lawns home.
Acknowledgments
I could not have written this book without the inspiration of those who came before me. Minna Needs Rehearsal Space was in particular inspired by the work of others. Above all I have to thank Ingmar Bergman. His books Images: My Life in Film and Magic Lantern live on in Minna. So do Jens Peter Jacobsen’s 1874 poem “Arabesk: Til en Haandtegning af Michel Angelo” [“Arabesque: For a Drawing by Michelangelo”]; Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s “Sangen Har Lysning” [“The Song Has Light”], also known as #159 in Højskolesangbogen [The Danish Folk High School Songbook]; and Carl Orff’s “In Trutina” [“In the Balance”]. So grateful for your writing, dead guys. It was such an honor to sing duet with you on these pages.
Now to the living! I wish to express my gratitude to the Danish Arts Council and the Danish Arts Agency for supporting this book with grants. Thanks to my Danish editor Julie Paludan-Müller, and to my American editors Brigid Hughes and Fiona McCrae — and I can’t forget the amazing Graywolf team and all the other great book people I work with in the US. A warm thank-you as well to Astri von Arbin Ahlander and Christine Edhäll in Stockholm (you rock!) and to the many writers and friends who have helped me find my way. A special thanks to translator Misha Hoekstra for his enthusiasm and extraordinary skill; it’s been fun working with you. And last but not least: thank you to my family.
About the Authors
DORTHE NORS is the author of five books in her native Denmark, including the story collection Karate Chop, for which she received the 2014 Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, A Public Space, and Harper’s. She lives in Jutland.
MISHA HOEKSTRA taught creative writing and literature at Deep Springs College before moving to Denmark in 1997. He writes and performs songs as Minka Hoist.
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Book design by Ann Sudmeier. Composition by Bookmobile Design & Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.