Excerpts from
The Faces
By Tove Ditlevsen
In the evening it was a little better. She could smooth it out and look at it, cautiously, hoping that someday she would have a full view of it, as if it were an unfinished multi-colored gobelin tapestry whose pattern would perhaps be revealed one day. The voices came back to her; with a little patience, they could be unraveled from each other like the strands of a tangled ball of yarn. She could think about the words in peace, without fearing that new ones would appear before the night was over. During this time the night held the days apart only with difficulty, and if she happened to breathe a hole into the darkness, like on a frost-covered windowpane, the morning might shine into her eyes hours ahead of time.
They were all asleep except Kurt, who hadnīt come home yet, even though it was almost midnight. They slept, and their faces were blank and peaceful and didnīt have to be used again until morning. Maybe they had even taken off their faces and placed them prudently on top of their clothes, to give them a rest; they werenīt absolutely necessary while they were sleeping. In the daytime the faces were constantly changing, as if she saw them reflected in flowing water. Eyes, nose, mouth - that simple triangle - and yet how could it contain such an infinite number of variations? For a long time she had avoided going out on the street because the crowd of faces frightened her. She didnīt dare take on any new ones, and she was afraid of meeting the old ones again. They didnīt match her memory of them at all - in her memory they had lain down next to the dead, whom she was protected from in a different way. When she met people she hadnīt seen in years, their faces had changed, aged, turned strange, and no one had tried to prevent it. She hadnīt taken care of them, they had slipped out of her protective hands, which should have held them up above the surface of the water like people drowning.
Preoccupied with other things, she hadnīt taken care of the face, and at the very last moment it was replaced by a new one, stolen from a dead or sleeping person, who then had to make do as best he could. It was either too big or too small, and it bore traces of a life that didnīt belong to the new owner. And yet, when you got used to it, glimpses of the original face would appear, just the way old wallpaper will crack and reveal patches of the hidden layer underneath, still fresh and well-preserved and filled with memories of the former tenants of the house.
But some people, out of impatience or a need to keep up with fashion, would take on a new face long before the old one was worn out, just as people buy new clothes even though the ones they have on have hardly been worn.
From Tove Ditlevsen: The Faces
Fjord Press, 1991
http://www.fjordpress.com/
Translated by Tiina Nunnally
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