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Translated from the Danish by Ida Mackintosh

Things pass through places.

P. F. Strawson

I

The seagulls have moved towards the city. They hang low, and hear but faintly the sounds from the harbour where fish are no longer being loaded. An iron ship lies with its long chains plunged into the water and containers are piled beneath each other, coloured and rusty.

We switch on all the lights in the apartment before we leave. We switch them on one by one and leave the house with the door open and the light falling on the stairs. For someone to find their way back in the darkness.

In the amphitheatre the plays have finished. Light from the projectors still lingers in the stones encircling the scene, but actors and costumes have been taken in for the night. Here and there people are sitting on the luminous stones. They keep their backs bent. Listen or rise suddenly without a cause.

They approach the harbour from one side at a time. Alone or two by two. Speaking to each other or on their own. No one leaves the city at daytime. We meet at the harbour in the dark. Cafés with opened facades and tables set out. Quays populated with slow promenades.

At the bar we order kahlua with milk, juice and grenadine, curaçao with lime. Light, coloured drinks with no effect.

We draw quotation marks in the air as we talk. Two fingers on each hand draw lines in the air and the lines suspend the words for a while. This way we can say reality and world and time, up in front of the eyes. And this way we are sitting, again, with something alive gently squeezing itself against the ground as we sketch all the signs we know.

A foot and there a cobble stone. There a cigarette end. The old woman rushes about between the tables. She reaches for hands but nobody cares about their destinies. The future is a large damp cloth wiping words and sentences off thoughts.

From the tables outside the café everything is carried in. Glasses and tablecloths. Green metal chairs. A waiter closes the door and looks at his watch.

The stalls are lined up along the quay where people stagger with lucky findings. Clothes or worn out tools. Small carts or furniture for their houses. At the stalls we buy cut up fruit and meals in folded paper, calamari maralinga or riz caïeu.

The body folds like the stairs. He has been lying there a long time. Gravel on the shoes, one of them fallen off and up the stairs. His mouth is formed like a smile folding down the stairs while he is lying. Gravel on the lips, and ants.

I wipe the knife in my dress. I fold the knife. Along the pier, paper is moving towards the sea. Newspapers, bags and dissolved cardboard.

The merchants’ voices are hardly heard from the pier where people are passing by on their way to the ships. In the bottom of the ships people have just fallen asleep. Tossing around with faces against tepid pillowcases.

II

Just then the eyelids are blown wide open. Someone is standing in the corner, by an easel, painting in the dim light. A landscape in black, white and wet. Rain on the window and newly trimmed horses at the fence.

The river is named Murray. This does not matter. It is brown. This does not matter. A branch is floating on the river.

Slowly the houses are moving closer. Watchtowers taking short steps in their too tight coats. A branch is floating on a river.

The rain forms circles in the brown water. They extend. Towards the edges of the river and towards the houses, glancing into each other.

There is light in the offices, still. The river curves past. At times it has direction. At times it has colour or name. Now it is blank. A branch is floating.

It comes in from outside today. The poisonous rain stands in the air like a coughing grate. From the floor in the hall I have picked up the newest languages and the latest models of liberation. The rain has brought them through the chink under the door. Not the postman.

The wet cats on the slope receive with lifted heads whatever is thrown from the opened windows of the houses. They watch it closely as it lands on the damp soil and drag it down the bank.

People walk along the river. They carry glass. Large pieces of window glass without frames or pictures. They follow the path along the river, bending over the glass.

In the rain they stand out distinctly. They carry glass. They carry it as a present for someone. With care in order not to catch motifs in the glass.

Stones lie in the water where the river parts and changes direction, once more. A branch is floating in the slow light. Now it is stopped by the angular stones in the water.

III

The world is green and grey. A landscape slowly changing colour. A large surprised break in the State. The State is a small crunching battery behind the ear as it turns towards the landscape. Some fall in and start climbing over the stones.

Anatomically & is provided with eyes like binoculars broken and wrongly assembled. One eye pointing inwards and one towards the horizon.

& has met someone else. & has a hand crunching with doubt or tenderness across the skin of the other. The other is provided with eyes like dice which can be cast.

& and the other step down a slope. They look around and watch an unnoticed city appearing on the horizon. They try to assemble the horizon in one hand. Then it crunches.

The stones are covered with moss. Everywhere there are puddles of grey light. Here and there houses are squeezed down among the stones. Sun falls on the mountains. Along the bottom melted ice or snow is running.

& and the other step over the stones, into the streets. They move across squares and move in long jumps over puddles and rivers. They get water in their shoes, empty them and continue towards the houses. The doors are coloured green or grey.

& and the other are crossing the street. They are coming closer. It is a hall with faint sounds and purple-coloured fabric. There is ice on the chairs. Some melted ice or snow runs along the floor.

Watch out. They are entering here. They approach the door to the crowded hall. Hands first. Hands up. & holds something in the hand. & and the other try to open the door with one hand. Then it crunches.

We meet on neutral ground. Contacts with coats and scarves. Small pubs along the railway track. Smoky rooms where hastening travellers order coffee and tea.

People are carrying warm or cool drinks. They drop something on the floor and pick it up.

The merchants have opened the shops and furnish the streets with signs and merchandise. People buy newly printed papers. They read them standing or fold them and put them away.

The merchants keep the shops open and busy passers-by are moving in or out. They carry bags and boxes. Looking for something behind the windows and finding it.

In the streets we meet people we know or someone resembling. We talk about things that can happen or things which have recently happened. We are coughing lightly and speaking in calm voices. We are not particularly guilty. We have hardly done anything at all.

We cross the square. We wear sunglasses and there is a light snow falling. It rarely snows here. The snow quickly disappears into the asphalt and the glasses mist as we cross the square.

We come right into the house and go quickly up the stairs. An equation with no unknown factor. A room where we have been before.

Loose apartments, effortlessly unpacked and quickly stored away. Furniture easily taken apart and stored in light boxes which are not to be found, because they are not hidden and are not to be opened, because they have not been closed. Pillows and curtains changing colour at the slightest stir. The altering pictures of the window panes.

Distinct figures at the pedestrian crossing. They turn around in the wind with their coats open and throng in the gravel near the houses.

A man keeps his watch open to the people waiting. Time shines from his wrist. They have not arrived too early. Or too late.

The people who wait near the houses find cards and tickets. They talk to each other or disappear one after the other in the same order as they arrived.

The street light pours down through the trees and all over the pavement. The curtain hangs stiffly in the window, a dress in the view. You clean the glass at the sink and place it on a table.

It is said that one’s colours change in the dark. That they vanish one by one in the same order as they have come. Slowly oozing out of the clothes and even slower out of the skin.

It is said that one speaks in a lower voice in darkness. That the sounds appear more distinct.

I am cold. You put your sweater around me and say something and it feels warmer for a while. The sweater passes through the skin and dissolves in the blood somewhere, or between the muscles, or somewhere around the skeleton. You find more sweaters and coats. Now blankets, as well, but every time the same thing happens. They pass through the skin and disappear.

Insensibly we are reducing and enlarging each other. Mathematics in the room. Addition is bad or good. Subtraction is bad or good.

You begin helping me off with my coat. Then the sweater and one more sweater comes from within and out through the skin. More sweaters and coats slide out over the shoulders and over the head. The shoes, too. One after another they slide down into the feet. Boots you patiently pull off, tops, pants and skirts, until I stand naked before you.

Like this I catch sight of you. I open the buttons in your clothes. Loosen buckles of watches and belts, which I remove one after the other. Shoelaces, which I untie. Shirts and pants and jackets, which I unbutton and put away in the dim light.

The clothes are spread out in the room. 

The open shoes thrown in the corner.

Where the night and day is thinnest. A slight mist in the streets. Still you can see how night and day is assembled. Rooms with thin walls of loose hours and a ceiling carefully placed above.

We are in the dark districts. In the underexposed streets it is wise to stick together closely. Those who sleep in the streets are tightening coats and blankets around their bodies. Awake or lightly asleep.

We part on neutral grounds.

In the street behind the station people are buying newly printed papers. They read about things which can happen or things which have just taken place.

V

In the evening yellow light emerges from the tents. The newly arrived are stooping to pick up their luggage. They have left it in the square to look around or to glance at a map.

Those who meet at the square put on suits and gloves and shoes before gathering in the tents. Sightings are painted on the clothes. Chalk is often found on the pursued.

They talk about things one can see or things recently seen. In particular they talk about squares. How they change according to the movement. How angles get acute or obtuse. Surfaces changing size and shape. How quadrangles drawn in the gravel are changing when you rise or move away.

Those who sit in the tents speak with silent voices. They move a hand through their hair. Scrape a bit of white orange out from under the nail. Look for something in a bag and find it.

It is somewhat sinister now. Sounds are approaching from one side at a time. They flow through the walls and settle at the edge of the coats.

Those who sit in the tents are anxious. They are heating water on small gas stoves. Cutting fish or pale vegetables they find on the bottom of opened cans.

In the streets people put up their umbrellas. The rain is heard softly against the fabric.

Just then the cars move into the streets. With a peculiar light they roll into the square. Somebody runs out. They are storming the tents.
Hands first. Hands up.
Hands against the wall.

The garbage is scattered in the square.
Plastic bags, boxes and papers thrown towards the stones by the rain. People in orange suits are sweeping over the square. You don’t see their hands but their arms are moving.

I put up my umbrella. Nothing else happens.
I hold it above my head.
I do this because it is raining.
It is raining.