The Land of Short Sentences

By Stine Pilgaard

A young mother follows her partner to a rural community in West Jutland, Denmark, where he teaches at the local school for adult education. Isolated, she is forced to find her way in a bewildering community and in the inscrutable conversational forms of the local population.

A young woman relocates to an outlying community in West Jutland, Denmark, and is forced to find her way, not only in the bewildering environment of the residential Folk High School, where her partner has been hired to teach, but also in the inscrutable conversational forms of the local population. And on top of it all, there’s the small matter of juggling her roles as mother to a newborn baby and advice columnist in the local newspaper. In this understated and hilarious novel, Stine Pilgaard conjures a tale of venturing into new and uncharted land, of human relationships, dilemmas, and the ways and byways of social intercourse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: World Editions
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781642861099

Book preview

Nature Plus the Present Tense

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THE PRINCIPAL KNOCKS three times in quick succession and lets herself in. That’s how we do it out here, she says when I look up at her in surprise. Doesn’t anyone in Velling have sex, I ask, isn’t there anyone who watches porn or masturbates, you can’t get your clothes on after just three knocks. People manage, says the principal, and she takes two cups from the cabinet. She has bought a bag of black tea and a little sieve for herself, because she doesn’t care for my Pickwick. That’s a coffee drinker’s tea, she says, only one step above Medova, and no one wants to go there. She’s just been over at the højskole to put flowers in the students’ rooms. Before long, they’ll be arriving in blue buses from across the country. Farewell tranquility, I say, and soon I’ll have to bid farewell to my maternity leave as well. The principal rotates her cup slowly between her hands while my son hides under her red dress as if it were a tent. He needs a name, the principal says, pointing between her legs. She says people are starting to talk. She has contacts in local government, and she knows that they’ve already sent us three fines. You sound like a mafia boss, I say. The principal lifts our son up and he reaches out for the plastic flower on her hair clip. Are you a little Nicolai, she asks. My son drools indifferently. A name is a big responsibility, I say. A sequence of letters that school teachers will yell out every day when they go down the list. A name our son will say every single time he meets another person. At playgrounds, nightclubs, and job interviews. He’ll sign documents with the name we come up with. It will sit in the top corner of the drawings we hang on the refrigerator. It will be scratched into the ugly clay pots that we get as Christmas gifts, and it will end its days on a headstone. In the interim it will appear in medical records, on academic examinations, rental agreements, bank loans, Christmas cards, criminal records, and possibly Wikipedia. You have no idea where your name will end up, I say. The principal suggests Frederik. I reject it out of hand, because my first criterion is that it has to be rhymeable. For his confirmation, I say, and the major birthdays, we have the chance right now to make it easy on ourselves. Severin, says the principal, rhymes with bedouin. I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to use that one, I say. We’re looking for something with two syllables ending in a vowel sound, so we’ve come that far. You need to get out of your little bubble, the principal says. In the year that we’ve lived in Velling, I’ve done nothing but throw up, give birth, and breastfeed. My son smiles at me as if none of these three activities have anything to do with him. He needs a name, says the principal, and you need a job. It’s about integration, all of our experience shows that the school’s teachers only continue living here if their spouses find a way to settle in. We’re not married, I say. You ought to see to that, says the principal, and she points to my son as if the matter required no further discussion. She harbors the province dweller’s fear that new families will vanish just as the local community is blossoming. In her free time the principal finds romantic partners for people so they won’t move away. She herself was hired as a dance teacher during the school’s summer session, and she was only meant to stay here for four weeks. That was thirty years ago now, and that’s how it goes for plenty of people, she says, this place has an attraction that makes it inconceivable to leave. And it’s the teachers and their trailing spouses who create the school’s story, says the principal. All of the teachers live with their families in residences around the big red-brick building, as if it were a church, the natural center of a hysterical religious community. You are the school, says the principal, pointing at me. Her voice rises and falls, paints pictures and broadcasts advertisements. There’s a farm with a little roadside shop on the way to Højmark where you can just drop by and leave money on the counter and everything’s a hundred percent organic. The town is brimming with entrepreneurs and idealists, and so many vegetarians you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one. It’s not just mink farms and evangelical churches out here. The farmers know about more than just their crops, and the fishermen don’t only talk about fish. So, the principal says as she takes off her glasses, where do your talents lie. Her eyes are glowing turquoise, and the lamp over the table sways back and forth in her left iris. I’m a sort of oracle, I say, but hardly anybody knows it. An oracle, mumbles the principal, and she looks like someone trying to solve a complicated problem of foreign diplomacy. I can tell that she is the one who keeps the town together, and perhaps the whole country. She gently pulls some strings, tugs a little harder if necessary, and in the blink of an eye she’s relocated a few sand dunes and there are ocean views for all. We need youthful energies here, says the principal, and she gives me a job that doesn’t exist and for which I haven’t applied. She arranges it all, studying me penetratingly while making a couple of quick, whispered phone calls. That was the newspaper, says the principal, and it turns out that they could use an advice column aimed at all age groups. I lift my son into his playpen. A lot of people do the wedding at the same time as the baptism, says the principal, two birds, one stone. He’s not going to be baptized, I say. The principal nods slightly to herself and says, We’ll think about that further down the line. She leaves her tea and her sieve in the top drawer. So it’s here for next time, she says. Thank you, I say, and I roll a yellow ball toward my son. We want it in Velling, says the principal. Yes we do, I say.

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Dear Letterbox,

I’m writing to you because I have a problem with time, and a number of my closest friends and family have made comments about it. I’m really bad at living in the present, and I’m often a few weeks ahead in my thoughts. I’m used to planning a lot in my job as a coordinator at a big company. On the home front there is a lot to manage because we have three children, what with school events, extracurricular activities, and everything that entails. My husband is very absentminded and he often double- or triple-books us. This has led both his family and friends to come to me whenever something needs to be arranged. You’ll have to consult the Sorceress of the Schedules, my husband will say, and even though I’m sure he means it with love, I can’t help but take it as a criticism. I try to be present. I meditate and I listen to dolphin sounds, but I must admit that it doesn’t come naturally to me. Am I a control freak? What should I do?

Sincerely,

The Scheduling Sorceress

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Dear Scheduling Sorceress,

This isn’t supposed to be about me, but I freely admit that I’m the type of person who has a hard time getting things done. This is owing not to a spontaneous approach to life, but rather a mix of laziness and indecision. Personally, I think the present is overrated. Live every day as if it were your last, they say, but that’s a bunch of nonsense. For god’s sake, don’t do that. The streets would be deserted, no one would take responsibility for anything. People would stay in bed all day with their lovers, smoking cigarettes and calling their parents to forgive them. I’m so tired of the present, you’re always right in the middle of it. It’s now and now and, heaven help me, now as well. There’s no crime in thinking about tomorrow. If you want to get together with your family or friends, you have to understand that it doesn’t happen by chance. You don’t just walk into a café and suddenly find them all sitting around talking about the good old days. I have a friend called Mathias who loves to organize things, it puts him into a state of euphoria. Mathias is initiative made flesh, and he progresses through life from one goal to the next. With a flick of the wrist he composes long emails about tiny details. When no one responds, he sends reminders with smiley faces, attaches weather forecasts, and makes suggestions as to appropriate attire. I’m not sure why we always tease Mathias, but it must be because it’s so easy to do. Like so many others, my boyfriend and I are people of leisure. We walk into parties as though the world had been discovered just for us. Every group of friends has its leisure people. You’ll recognize us because we only ever bring chips or a bottle of schnapps to social gatherings. We are very sensitive, and we RSVP at the last moment. We feel like life is confining if we have too many plans lined up. We perceive time in the abstract, something with a will of its own. It’s difficult for us to understand something which is, for others, readily apparent: no planning, no holiday party. It’s a meaningful thing to decorate and to arrange transportation for others. We arrive with a crooked smile, and, because we have a guilty conscience, we are a little bit mean. Whoa there, cowboy, we say to Mathias, or, Hakuna matata. But there is something worth remembering. There’s a reason why it was two cartoon characters who taught us that phrase. Our world wasn’t created by Walt Disney. The stars don’t arrange themselves into the head of a lion who can tell us who we are. But you can. Dear Scheduling Sorceress, and dear Mathias, I’m sorry. People with big hearts are always teased. Keep your spirits high, fill my calendar, waste my time. Your plans and dreams are the maypoles the rest of us dance around. After the party we’ll all go home, back to our busy lives, and you’ll be left to do the cleaning up while you think about how it might be fun to rent canoes and row down Gudenå River in the summer of ’22. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Warm regards,

The Letterbox

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I’VE ORDERED A manual to go along with my driving lessons, and I walk over to the grocery store to pick up the package. I know exactly who you are, the grocer says when I hand him my ID. Is that right, I say. He nods. And I know where you live, he says, down by the school in the little red house. Right again, I say. He leans against the doorframe, and I start to feel overwhelmed by all of the options in the bulk candy section. Cars pass by outside, and the grocer lifts his hand toward his temple. It doesn’t quite reach, but I think about how he must carry out that same motion, hand to almost-temple, around a hundred times per day. How can you possibly tell who it is, I say. It never hurts to wave to somebody you don’t know, the grocer says, as if he’s confessing to something. He asks whether we’ve settled in. I’d like to be friends with this grocer, and I fantasize about him dropping by for a visit in the evenings. We could listen to music and drink wine together, laugh at the things we say to one another. You get knocked back to square one, I say, and you’ve got to rediscover yourself in your new surroundings. I talk about how moving turns you into a foreigner, and the grocer starts rearranging some products. When I talk to people I’m like someone setting off to war. I become too eager, and, alone in a soup of sounds, I lie down before them like a sliced pork roast on a platter, a melting ice-cream sundae stuck with silly umbrellas. The grocer looks out the window, clearly hoping for reinforcements, when a middle-aged couple steps into the store. They live in Hee, but they shop here regularly because their children go to the charter school in Velling. Their conversation wanders slowly and cautiously through a little landscape, enthusiastically taking up residence in the least dangerous places. A heavy rainstorm, fall vacations, which are just around the corner, any statement to which it would be impossible to object. For the better part of ten minutes they stand at the counter, agreeing with one another’s every word. The couple have just cleaned out their garage. You gather so much junk over the years, it’s just got to be done. Right, yeah, true, the grocer says, and I’m filled with a mix of fascination and disgust at his ability to agree with them three times in one sentence. It seems like the others are getting closer to one another, while I feel like I’m being pushed farther and farther away, out toward an abyss of loneliness. Once the couple have walked out the door with four marzipan frogs from the display case, I put a paper bag full of candy up on the counter. Good manners make me paranoid, I say as I find my wallet in my bag, you can never tell what lies on the other side of a mountain. That’ll be 188.50, says the grocer. Maybe you think about things too much. I probably do, I say, and I leave the shop while the phantom grocer, laughing in my kitchen over a glass of red wine, dissolves into small, flickering specks.

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AT HOME IN my living room I have a cry over my conversational woes. I’m going to end up like a cat lady without any cats, I sob. My boyfriend tells me I’ve got to understand that the grocer isn’t rejecting me, he’s just adhering to the rules of a genre. You think in prose, he says, but people here are more concise. Like haiku, says my boyfriend, who compares everything to literature. Seven syllables, nature plus the present tense. He frequently employs his intellect as a shield against my big feelings, and if I’m lucky then I get a lecture thrown into the bargain. It’s not as complicated as you think, says my boyfriend, who is from a small town. Conversations in public spaces reinforce the imposed community that is a rural village. But the grocer asked me himself if we had settled in, I say. My boyfriend wags his finger and shakes his head. Wrong, he says, the grocer acknowledged that you happened to be in his store, and that you both live in the same place. When my boyfriend thinks I’m being particularly dense, his metaphors grow desperate and florid. Two lions from the same pride meet on the savannah over a dying zebra, he says slowly. They take a couple of bites, and the zebra’s back left leg twitches gently. Afterwards, they both go their own way, but they know that they might perhaps meet again over the same cadaver in a few days’ time. Think of your interactions as a nursery rhyme, says my boyfriend, a short ritual. How’s it going, it’s going fine. What a windy day, it sure is. Looks like it’s Monday again, there’s no escaping it. I repeat the phrases slowly, like magic spells I don’t really believe in. My boyfriend advises me to repress my need for intimacy, or at least hide it a little better. Take Anders Agger, he knows how to talk to everybody, my boyfriend says, searching online for his documentaries. We go into the kitchen to make popcorn. What’s up, he says, pouring it into a big bowl. Nothing much, I mumble, and we sit down on the sofa to practice. How’s it going,