"My honor would be hurt," Pia said. "You know, that girl is not like that. Really she is very quiet and not asserting -- asserting? -- asserting herself. My mother said I should be more like her."
Edward sat at a sidewalk cafe drinking a beer. He was wearing his brown suede shoes, his black dungarees, his black-and-white checked shirt, his red beard, his immense spectacles. Edward re?garded his hands. His hands seemed old. "I am thirty-three." Tiny girls walked past the sidewalk cafe wearing skintight black pants. Then large girls in skintight white pants.
"Who was he?"
"Very often?"
"Is there vinegar?" Edward asked. "I like. . . vinegar. . . with my. . ." Edward read a magazine for men full of colored photographs of naked girls living normal lives. Edward read the New States?man, with its letters to the editor. Pia appeared in her new blue, red, and green dress. She looked wonderful.
"So he didnt pay."
"You were my brother," Pia said. "We were mak?ing a film. You were the hero. It was a costume film. You had a cape and a sword. You were jump?ing about, jumping on tables. But in the second half of the film you had lost all your weight. You were thin. The film was ruined. The parts didnt match."
Edward and Pia walked along Frederiksberg A116, under the queer box-cut trees. "Here I was knocked off my bicycle when I was seven," Pia said. "By a car. In a snowstorm."
"Youre joking."
"What is connected with that place in your mind?"
"And your real brother is going to Italy, you said."
"I dreamed of beans."
"I interpreted that dream very sketchily," Pete said to Edward.
"Ho!" Edward said.
"I cant remember," Pia said.
"What else?"
Edward bought Madam Cherokees Dream Book. Dreams in alphabetical order. If you dream of black cloth, there will be a death in the family. If you dream of scissors, a birth.Edward and Pia saw three films by Jean-Luc Godard. The landlord came and asked Edward to pay Danish income tax. "But I dont make any money in Denmark," Ed?ward said. Everything was rotten.
"So why was it not allowed?"
"La vache!" Pia said.
Edward had four hundred dollars in his pocket. It was supposed to last him two months. The hid?eously smiling rug salesman pressed closer. They burst into the street. Just in time. "God knows theyre beautiful, however," Edward said.
"Why should I want unhappy love affairs?"
"I cant remember."
"Did you sleep with him?"
Edward looked at her. Madam Cherokees Dream Book flew into his hand.
"I cant remember."
Pia reported a new dream. "I came home to a small town where I was born. First, I ran around as a tourist with my camera. Then a boy who was selling something -- from one of those little wagons? -- asked me to take his picture. But I couldnt find him in the photo apparat. In the view glass. Always other people got in the way. Everyone in this town was divorced. Everybody I knew. Then I went to a ladies club, a place where the women asked the men to dance. But there was only one man there. His picture was on an advertisement outside. He was the gigolo. Gigolo? Is that right? Then I called up people I knew, on the telephone. But they were all divorced. Everybody was di?vorced. My mother and father were divorced. Helle and Jens were divorced. Everybody. Every?body was floating about in a strange way."
Edward and Pia talked about dreams. Pia said she had been dreaming about unhappy love affairs. In these dreams, she said, she was very unhappy. Then she woke, relieved.
Edward resisted The Interpretation of Dreams. He read eight novels by Anthony Powell. Pia walked down the street in Edwards blue sweater. She looked at herself in a shop window. Her hair was rotten. Pia went into the bathroom and played with her hair for one hour. Then she brushed her teeth for a bit. Her hair was still rotten. Pia sat down and began to cry. She cried for a quarter hour, without making any noise. Everything was rotten.
"What did you dream?"
"I dreamed of a roof," Pia said. "Where corn was kept. Where it was stored."
"When I was on my way to the ladies club, the boy I had tried to take a picture of came up and took my arm. I was surprised but I said to myself something like, Its necessary to have friends here."
"I dont know."
"Did it remind you of anything?"
Pia silently rehearsed three additional dreams. Edward regarded the green leaves of Malmo. Ed?ward and Pia moved through the rug department of a department store. Surrounded by exciting rugs: Rya rugs, Polish rugs, rag rugs, straw rugs, area rugs, wall-to-wall rugs, rug remnants. Edward was thinking about one that cost five hundred crowns, in seven shades of red, about the size of an opened-up Herald Tribune, Paris edition.
"Big," Pia said.
"I hate it."
"Freud turned his friend R. into a disreputable uncle, in a dream."
Edward and Pia went to Malmo on the flying boat. The hydrofoil leaped into the air. The feeling was that of a plane laboring down an interminable runway.
"I dont."
Pia was not quite asleep. She was standing on a street corner. Women regarded her out of the cor?ners of their eyes. She was holding a string bag containing strawberries, beer, razor blades, turnips. An old lady rode up on a bicycle and stopped for the traffic light. The old lady straddled her bicycle, seized Pias string bag, and threw it into the gutter. Then she pedalled away, with the changing light. People crowded around. Someone picked up the string bag. Pia shook her head. "No," she said. "She just. . . I have never seen her before." Someone asked Pia if she wanted him to call a policeman. "What for?" Pia said. Her father was standing there smiling. Pia thought, These things have no significance really. Pia thought, If this is to be my dream for tonight, then I dont want it.
"What does that --" Edward began.
"You look wonderful."
Pia was chopping up an enormous cabbage, a cabbage big as a basketball. The cabbage was of an extraordinary size. It was a big cabbage. "Thats a big cabbage," Edward said.
Edward read The Interpretation of Dreams. Pia bent over the sewing machine, sewing blue, red, and green cloth.
"I cant remember."
"Nothing else?"
Edward smoked a cigar. "Why didnt you just give her the bed?"
"Edward was your brother?"
They regarded the enormous cabbage God had placed in the world for supper.
"Tak."
"He wanted to be an assistant professor. He was bucking for assistant professor."
"I dont remember."
"It may be something as simple as a desire to travel."
"Why did he come through the window?"
"Do you think it means you want new love affairs?"
"Yes."
"Also I dreamed of rugs. I was beating a rug," she went on. "And I dreamed about horses, I was riding."
"My bicycle was demolished utterly."
"To dream of beans is, in all cases, very unfor?tunate. Eating them means sickness, preparing them means that the married state will be a very difficult one for you. To dream of beets is on the other hand a happy omen."
Edward and Pia and Pete went for a boat ride, a tour of the Copenhagen harbor. The boat held one hundred and twenty tourists. They sat, four tour?ists abreast, on either side of the aisle. A guide spoke into a microphone in Danish, French, Ger?man, and English, telling the tourists what was in the harbor.
"The dream was saying that your mother was wrong about this girl?"
"It is too good for the floor, clearly," Pia said. "It is to be hung on the wall."
"Did you sleep with him?"
Pia came home from the hairdresser with black varnish around her eyes.
"Someone."
"Thats subtle," Pia said. "Youre insecure."
"It was in a cellar."
"Maybe you want to have love affairs but feel guilty about wanting to have love affairs, and so they become unhappy love affairs."
"I could have done a lot more with it."
"Tables are women," Edward said. "You remem?ber you said I was jumping on tables, in your dream. Freud says that tables are figures for women. Youre insecure."
"But why then am I happy when I wake up?"
Edward regarded the famous intersection. "Were you hurt?"
"It was rather like a place at the university. Where we used to dance."
"Yes."
Edward decided that he worried too much about the dark side of Pia. Pia regarded as a moon. Ed?ward lay in bed trying to remember a dream. He could not remember. It was eight oclock. Edward climbed out of bed to see if there was mail on the floor, if mail had fallen through the door. No. Pia awoke.
Edward groaned. A palpable groan. "What else?"
"For about two months, I think. But then I wake up and Im happy. That it is not so."
Scarlatti from the radio. It was Sunday. Pete sat at the breakfast table. Pete was a doctor on an American nuclear submarine, a psychiatrist. He had just come off patrol, fifty-eight days under the water. Pia gave Pete scrambled eggs with mush?rooms, wienerbrod, salami with red wine in it, bacon. Pete interpreted Pias dream.
"Once a boy came through a window to a party."
"I was your brother?"
"Perhaps."
"Why are they unhappy love affairs?"
Pias brother Soren rang the doorbell. He was carrying a pair of trousers. Pia sewed up a split in the seat. Edward made instant coffee. Pia explained blufaerdighedskraenkelse. "If you walk with your trousers open," she said. Soren gave Edward and Pia "The Joan Baez Songbook." "It is a very good one," he said in English. The doorbell rang. It was Pias father. He was carrying a pair of shoes Pia had left at the farm. Edward made more coffee. Pia sat on the floor cutting a dress out of blue, red, and green cloth. Ole arrived. He was carrying his guitar. He began to play something from "The Joan Baez Songbook." Edward regarded Oles Mowgli hair. We be of one blood, thee and I. Ed?ward read The Interpretation of Dreams. "In cases where not my ego but only a strange person ap?pears in the dream-content, I may safely assume that by means of identification my ego is concealed behind that person. I am permitted to supplement my ego."
"Errol Flynn was not even in the picture." Ed?ward was drunk. He was shouting. "Errol Flynn was not even. . . in. . . the goddam picture!"
"Because you dont have to feel guilty anymore," Edward said glibly.
"What did you dream last night?" Edward asked. "What did you dream? What?"
"Yes."
"Ho!" Pia said.
"How long?"
Edward and Pia argued about "Mrs. Miniver." It was not written by J. .B. Priestley, Edward said. "I remember it very well," Pia insisted. "Errol Flynn was her husband, he was standing there with his straps, his straps" -- Pia made a holding-up-trousers gesture -- "hanging, and she said that she loved Walter Pidgeon."
"Yes."
"Twice."
"How do you like it?"
"What else?"
Pia dreamed that she had journeyed to a great house, a castle, to sing. She had found herself a bed in a room overlooking elaborate gardens. Then another girl appeared, a childhood friend. The new girl demanded Pias bed. Pia refused. The other girl insisted. Pia refused. The other girl began to sing. She sang horribly. Pia asked her to stop. Other singers appeared, demanding that Pia sur?render the bed. Pia refused. People stood about the bed, shouting and singing.
"Yes."
"Dont," Edward said.
"Dont."
"Did you sing?"
"Errol Flynn was not even in the picture. You think J. B. Priestley wrote everything, dont you? Everything in English."
"What did the ladies club remind you of?"
"Im trying."
"I cant remember."
"They didnt know he was Freud. They hadnt seen the movie."
"Did you dance with him?"
"This is the Danish submarine fleet," the guide said into the microphone. Edward and Pia and Pete regarded the four black submarines. There had been a flick every night on Petes submarine. Pete discussed the fifty-eight flicks he had seen. Pete sat on Edwards couch discussing "The Sound of Music." Edward made drinks. Roses Lime Juice fell into the Gimlet glasses. Then Edward and Pia took Pete to the airport. Pete flew away. Edward bought The Interpretation of Dreams.
EDWARD WOKE up. Pia was already awake.
"Why?"
