Sweethaven-sagen -- my novel in Danish

Just arrived from the printers – the Danish translation of Sweet Haven. Forlaget Hjulet changed the title to Sweethaven-sagen – The Sweethaven Case, putting the focus on the investigative and legal side of the story. The original two-word English title was a play on the fictional setting of the book – a place (school, actually) called Sweethaven. But it wouldn’t have made much sense to translate the title literally into Danish, and risk losing the intended irony (as readers will discover, there is nothing sweet about the place, and neither is it a haven).

So three boxes filled with copies of the book are stacked by the dining table. It’s a storied table, in more ways than one: a pantheon of writers and artists have sat down to dinner here (including two Nobel prize winners). Not my guests, but my husband’s, and his father’s and grandfather’s before him. It was at this dining table that, in the winter of 2004, I sat down and wrote the first line of a new project: “You see, I didn’t love her,” not knowing what the hell I was doing, who the “you” was supposed to be (the reader, as it turned out), without a clear idea of the narrator and for that matter, the “her.” I was under pressure to produce some 25 manuscript pages for my first meeting with the mentor assigned me as recipient of the David T.K. Wong fellowship; back in my apartment at the University of East Anglia in Norwich was a folder full of scribblings, the bones of a novel that despite all my perseverance remained inert and dry. So there I was, in Måløv, Denmark, seeking refuge from what was supposed to be my writer’s refuge in England, at the dining table in the home of the man who was to become my husband. He was in Bolivia; I was alone with my thoughts; the fellowship to England was supposed to be the greatest thing in my literary career, marking the gaining of freedom and the chance, at long last, to write what I pleased. But the only voice in my head was of a confused and dismayed woman, telling her story in the present, and looking back to her own turning point, the start of a new and bitter life.

As it turned out, the book I subsequently wrote begins, more or less, with that very first line. “You see, I didn’t love you. If there’d only been a way to send you back, keep you from pushing your insistent way into the world. What were you in such a hurry for? Go away, Naia. Shrivel. Shrink back into a wet, pulsing mass, into what you were in the first unknowing hours after I made you; go back to the beginning, membrane by membrane, protein by protein, until you are one with my tissues again, until you are no more.”

And in Danish, the opening paragraphs:

“Forstår du, jeg elskede dig ikke. Hvis der bare havde været en måde at sende dig tilbage på, en måde der kunne standse din insisterende banen dig vej ind i verden. Hvorfor havde du så travlt? Forsvind, Naia. Krymp. Skrump ind til en våd, pulserende masse … til det du var i de første uvidende timer efter at jeg lavede dig; vend tilbage til begyndelsen, membran for membran, protein for protein, indtil du igen er ét med mit væv, indtil du ikke længere er til.

           “Jeg tænker ofte på dig, på den nat du blev født. Jeg kan ikke forstå hvordan disse minder kommer så klart til mig – så vidt jeg ved, var jeg fuldstændig væk: lå fladt på ryggen, bedøvet, bønfaldende om at blive befriet for skabningen i min krop. 72 kg, med midterpartiet svulmet op som en stor gærboble, benene i fodbøjler, kønnet barberet. De krænkede hårsække er kommet til syne som blege knopper … en kusse som kyllinge­skind, som noget på en køddisk.

            “Ude af mig selv hæver jeg mig op og bemærker en læges gummi-behandskede hænder, de kvalmende grønne vægge beklædt med fliser som værn mod overraskende springvand af blod. Dybe, brølende lyde gjalder gennem fødestuen og gangene udenfor med deres slidte træbænke – tomme, for det er længe efter midnat på dette hospital, der er opført af amerikanske missionærer tilbage i 1930’erne, derpå fløj efter fløj smækket op på trækonstruktionen efter 2. verdenskrig, med raslende spøgelser overalt. Jeg er selv som et spøgelse … frigjort, svævende lytter jeg til mine skrig af fødselskval.

           “Dit hoved dukker op mellem mine spredte ben. Du bryder igennem mit køns skærm og lader din fine krop glide ud – allerede en atlet ved fødslen – og i dit lillebitte ansigt er der et glimt af skønheden du vil bevare, selvom du er trykket sammen, uden sol, og for første gang lærer luften at kende. Du er rød over det hele – et godt tegn; det betyder at din hud, når den er tørret af for blod og slim, vil blive bleg, i modsætning til min. Lægen løfter dig op i anklerne. Du svinger. Dine sorte, perleagtige øjne synes at opfatte hele verden med ét blik. Åh, jeg kan se livet i deres dyb."