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If somebody comes and pushes your bed out of the ward and you see the sky turning green and you want to spare the curate his graveside homily, then it’s time for you to creep out of bed, quietly, like children creep out of bed when the morning light shines through the shutters; you must take care that nurse doesn’t see you, and you must be quick.

But the curate has already started his homily: you can hear his young and earnest voice in full spate. Let him go on; let the blind rain swallow up his pious words. Your grave is open. Leave him with nothing on which to exercise his ready trust, and help yourself. If you go, he’ll be left without the slightest idea whether he has started yet or not, and so he’ll make a sign to the bearers. They won’t ask many questions, but pick your coffin up again, and hand back the wreath that’s on the lid to the young man standing with bowed head by the graveside. The young man will take back his wreath, and be embarrassed, and smooth out the ribbons, and for a moment he’ll raise his brow, and the rain will cause a few tears to trickle down his cheeks. Then the funeral procession will make its way back again along the walls. The candles in the hideous little chapel will be lit again, and the curate will say the prayers for the dead, to enable you to live. He will vigorously shake the young man’s hand, and out of embarrassment wish him the best of luck. This is his first funeral service, and he will blush right under his collar. Before he can correct himself the young man will have disappeared. What is he to do next? After the officiating priest has wished a mourner the best of luck, what can he possibly do but send the corpse back to where it came from?

A few moments later the hearse with your coffin will be driving back again down the long street. There are yellow daffodils in the windows of all the houses on both sides of the road, the same kind of daffodils that the wreaths are made of, but it can’t be helped. Children press their faces against the windows, which are closed because of the rain, but in spite of that a small boy comes running out of a front-door and hitches himself onto the back of the hearse. But he is told to get off and is left behind. He puts both hands over his eyes and looks after you angrily. What chance of a lift has a boy who lives on the road to the cemetery except on a hearse?

The hearse has to stop at the crossroads and wait for the green light. It’s not raining so heavily now, and the drops are dancing on the hearse roof. There is a distant smell of hay. The streets have been newly christened, and heaven has laid its hand on all the roofs. For a time your hearse drives side by side with a tram. Two small boys on the curb bet which will overtake the other, but the boy who backed the tram is bound to lose. You could have warned him, but no one has ever yet climbed out of a coffin for such a purpose.

Be patient. It is early summer, and at this season morning reaches far into the night. Before it gets dark and all the children have vanished from the streets the hearse turns into the hospital yard, and a strip of moon appears just over the entrance gate. Men immediately appear and lift your coffin from the hearse, which drives cheerfully away.

They carry your coffin through the second gate and across the yard to the mortuary, where the empty slab is waiting, black and high and bare. They put your coffin on it and open it again, and one of them curses, because the nails have been hammered in so firmly. That cursed thoroughness!

Soon afterwards the young man appears, bringing his wreath back; and high time too. The men tidy the bows on the wreath, and place it neatly again on the coffin. There’s no need to worry about the wreath. Overnight the faded blooms will have freshened and closed up into buds again. All night you’ll be left alone, with the cross in your hands, and during the day you’ll have plenty of rest too. It will be a long time before you manage to lie so still again.

In the morning the young man turns up again; because there’s no rain to give him tears he stares into the void and twists his cap in his hands. Only when they come and pick the coffin up again does he cover his face with his hands and weep. You’re leaving the mortuary now, so why should he weep? The coffin lid is loose, it is broad daylight and the sparrows are chirping merrily. They do not know that it is forbidden to wake the dead. The young man walks in front of your coffin; he walks as if he were afraid of treading on glass. The wind is cool and unruly, a child not yet of age.

They carry you back into the hospital and up the stairs, and lift you out of the coffin. Your bed is freshly made. The young man stares through the window down into the yard, where two pigeons are mating and cooing loudly, and he turns away in disgust.

Now they have put you back into bed and covered your face again, which makes you look so strange. The young man starts shrieking, and flings himself on top of you. They lead him gently away. There are notices on the walls saying: “Quiet, please,” and all the hospitals are overcrowded nowadays, and the dead must not be wakened too soon.

The ship’s sirens sound in the harbor. Is it an arrival or a departure? There’s no way of telling. Quiet, please! Don’t wake the dead too soon, for they sleep lightly. But the ships’ sirens howl again. Soon they will have to uncover your face, whether they want to or not; and they will wash you and change your nightgown, and one of them will quickly bend over you to listen to your heart—that is, while you are still dead. There’s not much time left, and that’s the ships’ fault. The morning is getting darker. They open your eyes, in which there is a white gleam. They no longer say that you look peaceful, thank heaven, the words die in their mouth. Wait a bit! Soon they will all go away.

Nobody wants to be a witness of what is happening, because they would be burned at the stake for it, even today.

They leave you alone. They leave you so alone that you open your eyes and see the green sky. They leave you so alone that you start breathing, deeply and heavily and with a rattling sound, like an anchor chain when it is let down. You start struggling, and shrieking for your mother. How green the sky is!

“The fever dreams are slackening and the death struggle is beginning,” says a voice behind you.

Don’t listen to them! What do they know about it?

Now is the time to go. Now is your chance. They have all been called away. Slip away before they come back and start whispering again. Go down the stairs and slip past the hall porter, and out into the morning that is turning into night. The birds are shrieking in the dark, as if your pains had started to rejoice. Go home and get back into your own bed, even if it’s unmade and creaks in all its joints. In your own bed you’ll get well quicker. In your own bed you’ll rave against yourself for only three days and drink your fill of the green sky, and for three days you’ll refuse the soup that the woman from upstairs brings you, and on the fourth day you’ll drink it.

And on the seventh day, which is the day of rest, you go out. Your pains drive you, and you find the way. First left, and then right, and then left again, and through the alleys down by the harbor, which are so dreadful that they can’t help leading to the sea. If only the young man were with you, but he’s not here now—in your coffin you were much more beautiful. Now your face is twisted with pain, your pains have stopped rejoicing and there’s continual perspiration on your brow. No, you were more beautiful in your coffin.

All the way children are playing marbles. You make your way through them, it’s as if you were walking backwards among them, but none of the children is your child. How could any of them be your child if you’re going to the old woman who lives next door to the tavern? The whole harbor knows how the old woman earns the money to pay for her drink.

She’s standing at the open door, holding out her hand towards you. It’s a filthy hand, and the whole place is filthy. There are yellow flowers on the mantelpiece, the flowers they make wreaths of, the same flowers again; the old woman is much too friendly, and the stairs creak here too, and the ships’ sirens howl. Wherever you go you hear the ships howling, and they howl here too. Your pains shake you, but you’re not allowed to shriek. The ships are allowed to howl, but you are not. Give the old woman the money for her drink! When she has got her money she’ll keep her mouth shut. She’s perfectly sober from all the brandy she has drunk, and she doesn’t dream about the unborn. Innocent children don’t dare complain about her to the saints, nor do the guilty ones. But you dare.

“Bring my child back to life!” you shriek at her.

No one has ever dared ask her that before, but you dare. The cracked, worn-out, unreflecting mirror gives you strength. The unseeing mirror with the fly marks on it gives you strength to ask for something for which nobody has ever asked before.

“Bring my child back to life, or I’ll knock your yellow flowers over, I’ll scratch your eyes out, I’ll fling open the window and tell the whole street what they know already, I’ll scream. . . .”

That terrifies the old woman, and in her terror she carries out your wish in the unseeing mirror. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but in the unseeing mirror she manages to do it. The fear becomes terrible, and at last the pains begin to rejoice again. And before you scream you remember the lullaby: “Sleep, baby, sleep!” And before you scream the mirror throws you downstairs again and lets you go, lets you walk. Don’t walk too quickly!

You had better not look down at the ground, or you might collide with a man, a young man who twists his cap in his hands, down there by the fence round the vacant building plot. You recognize him by the way he twists his cap. He did it just now beside your coffin, and here he is again. Here he is, leaning against the fence, as if he had never gone away. You fall into his arms. He has no tears in his eyes this time either, so give him some of yours. And say good-bye to him before you take his arm. Say goodbye to him! You won’t forget it, even if he does; one says good-bye at the beginning. Before you walk away with him you must say good-bye for ever by the fence round the vacant building plot.

Then you walk away together. There is a path there that leads past the coal dump down to the sea. Neither of you speak. You wait for him to speak first, you wait for him to start, so that you won’t have to speak last. What is he going to say? Quick! Before you reach the sea, which makes you reckless. What does he say? What is the first thing he says? Can what he wants to say really be so difficult that it makes him stammer and afraid to look up? Or is it the huge heaps of coal rearing up behind the fence that give him rings under his eyes and dazzle him with their blackness? The first thing he says—at last he has come out with it—is the name of a street the street the old woman lives on. How can that be possible? He mentions the old woman to you before he knows you’re expecting a child, before telling you even that he loves you. Calm yourself! He doesn’t know that you’ve been to the old woman already, he couldn’t know, he knows nothing about the mirror. But no sooner has he said it than he has forgotten it. You tell the mirror everything you want to forget. No sooner have you said that you are expecting a child than you have told him nothing. The mirror reflects everything. The piles of coal disappear behind you, because you have reached the shore and can see white sails like question-marks on the horizon. Keep quiet, because the sea takes the answers out of your mouth, swallows up what you were going to say.

From the sea you walk many times up the beach, as if you were leaving it behind and going home.

What are they whispering in their white headdresses? “This is the death struggle.” Let them whisper!

One day the sky will be pale enough, so pale that its very pallor will shine brightly. Is there any brightness other than that of the last pallor?

Today the doomed house is reflected in the blind mirror. People call a house that is being pulled down doomed, but that’s because they know no better. There’s no cause to be afraid. The sky is pale enough now. After much laughter tears come easily. You have wept enough. Take back your wreath. Soon you’ll be able to loosen your plaits again. Everything is in the mirror. And the sea lies green behind everything you do. If you leave the house it is standing in front of you. If you step out through the sunk windows you have forgotten. In the mirror one does everything so that it may be forgiven.

At his point he starts pleading with you to go inside with him. But in the excitement you leave the house behind you and turn away from the beach. Neither of you turns round, and you leave the doomed house behind you. You go up the river, and your own fever flows downstream against you, past you. His pleading becomes less urgent, and you are no longer ready, both of you are shyer. It’s the ebb, which withdraws the sea from the coast, at the ebb even the rivers sink. And over on the other side treetops at last take the place of cranes. White shingle roofs sleep under them.

Listen, because soon he’ll start talking about the future, about long life and many children, and his enthusiasm will set his cheeks aflame, and yours too. You will argue whether you want boys or girls, and you would prefer boys. He’d prefer a tiled roof, and you . . . but you have gone much too far up the river. Fright seizes both of you. The shingle roofs on the other side have disappeared, and there’s nothing there now but damp meadows. On this side you must watch carefully where you are going. It’s twilight—the sober twilight of dawn. The future is over. The future is a path along the river ending in the meadows. Go back!

What is to happen next?

Another three days and he’ll no longer dare put his arm round your shoulders; and three days later he’ll ask you your name, and you’ll ask his. After that you won’t even know each other’s names, and you won’t even ask. It’s better like that. Haven’t you both become a secret to each other?

Now at last you’re walking silently side by side again. If he asks you anything now, it will be something like whether it is going to rain or not. As if anyone could know! You grow stranger and stranger to each other, and have long since given up talking about the future. You see each other less and less often, but you’re still not strangers enough to each other. Wait, be patient, because it will come to that yet. He will be such a stranger to you that one day in a dark street in front of an open gateway you will start falling in love with him.

Everything in its own time. Now it has come.

“It’s near the end,” they say behind you. “It won’t be long now!”

What do they know about it? Isn’t it really only the beginning?

The day will come when you see him for the first time, and he sees you. The first time means the last; it means that you’ll never see him again. But don’t be frightened. You don’t have to say good-bye to each other, for you’ve done that long ago. What a good thing it is that you have said good-bye already!

It will be an autumn day, full of anticipation of all the fruits turning into blossom again, a real autumn day, with light smoke and shadows that lie so sharply between your feet that you could almost cut your feet on them, and you fall when you’re sent to market to fetch apples, you fall out of sheer joy and exuberance. A young man comes and helps you. His jacket hangs loosely over his shoulders, and he smiles and twists his cap in his hands and doesn’t know what to say. But you are both very happy in that last light. You thank him, and throw your head back a little, and the plaits twisted round your ears fall down. “Oh,” he says, “do you still go to school?” He turns and goes away whistling. That is how you part, without emu turning to look at each other, entirely painlessly, and without knowing that this is your parting.

Now you can play with your little brothers again, and take them for walks along the river, along the path under the alder trees, and the shingle roofs are still on the opposite bank. What does the future bring? No sons, but brothers, and plaits to dance about, and balls to throw in the air. Don’t be angry with the future, it has given you the best it has. It’s time to go to school.

You’re not old enough yet, so during the long break you still have to walk in crocodile, whispering and blushing and giggling between your fingers. But wait another year, and you’ll be able to kick over the traces and clutch at the branches that hang over the wall. You have learned foreign languages, but you are not out of trouble yet, because learning your own language is much harder. Learning to read and write is harder still, but forgetting everything is hardest of all. If at your first exam you had to know everything, at the very end you have to know nothing at all. Will you be able to pass that test? Will you be quiet enough? If you have enough fear not to open your mouth, it will be all right.

You hang the blue hat that all school girls wear on the hook and leave the school. It is autumn again. The blossoms have long since turned into buds, the buds into nothing, and nothing into fruit. Everywhere small children who have passed their exams like you are going home. All of you know nothing any longer. You go home, father is waiting for you, and your little brothers make as much noise as they can, and pull your hair. You quieten them, and console your father.

Soon summer with its long days comes again, and your mother dies. You and your father fetch her from the cemetery. For three days she lies in the flickering candlelight, as you did once. Blow out all the candles before she wakes up! But she smells the wax, and raises herself on her elbows, and quietly grumbles about the expense. Then she gets up and changes her clothes.

It’s as well that your mother died, because you wouldn’t have been able to manage your little brothers much longer by yourself. But now she is here. Now she looks after everything, and teaches you all sorts of things about playing, because that is something one can never know enough about. It’s no easy art. But the hardest is still to come.

The hardest is to forget how to talk, and to unlearn walking, to babble hopelessly and crawl about on the floor, and finally to be back in swaddling clothes. The hardest is to put up with all the tenderness, and only to look. Be patient. Soon everything will be all right. God knows the day on which you will be weak enough.

It’s the day of your birth. You are born, and you open your eyes and shut them again because of the strong light. The light warms your limbs, you move in the sunlight, you are there, you are alive. Father bends over you.

“It’s over,” they say behind you. “She’s dead!”

Quiet! Let them talk!