The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

38 Young Witch 1940

At the end of a long day in the School of Life at 6 Silver Street, Copenhagen, I stepped out into the November afternoon with the precious box. The shadow of the opposite row of six-storey buildings reached the fifth floor on my side, and further down the street the yellow leaves of the Rosenborg Gardens shone in horizontal rays. Copenhagen was as beautiful as before. The occupying forces had not yet conquered the trees and the light. The air was saturated with a pleasant coolness, which in my infantile mind I attributed to those thick stone walls of the city containing a frozen core (the Danish tundra), where winter was kept and sweated in isolation in the summer but exhaled cold air as soon as the sun stopped shining on them.

I waited awhile on the steps and cautiously glanced around the pavement. There were no schoolmates in sight, so I ran to the corner in a single sprint, then slowed down and strolled towards town, on the side of the park to catch the sun, with my schoolbag slung over my shoulder and the box in my hand.

There were few people about, and I allowed myself to walk in the new stride that the day demanded; I had acquired a feminine electricity in my gait; I walked straight and skillfully, thought I was a little bit more Dana. I felt the coarse wool school skirt flirting with my chilled legs, which were bare down to my high white socks and black lace-up shoes. They had been flat earlier that day but now felt like high heels, I thought. The black, hairy bud grew with every step. Yes, I had definitely turned into a woman, which was precisely what Anneli had told me not to do. This confident, graceful stride was accompanied by a sense of guilt, and what could be more adult than feeling guilty about having become sexy? Irresistibly, tongue-foamingly sexy.

A man in a bright coat and dark hat came walking towards me. I held my stride with the feminine box in my hand. He moved swiftly along the pavement with a slightly tilted head, his hat concealing his face like a shield, obviously a German. As he drew closer, I could make out his chin, then his nose. There was no question that the man was the spitting image of Tyrone Power, the heartthrob from Tinseltown. And he would now be the first man to witness my newborn femininity! The thought of it fanned the flames of my new magical powers; with them I could easily make the man in the hat fall at my feet. Within seconds he would be foaming over the delectable dish my body had become; nine steps later the German Power would fall on his knees like a shot soldier and tearfully beg the girl who had just burst out of her childhood to have dinner with him at the Hotel d’Angleterre and then go to the cinema with him at the Dagmar Teatret. The night would then be crowned by red-hot love games in the cabin of a ship anchored in the New Harbour. The girl couldn’t picture the amorous encounter in any great detail, just a simple still life of a fireplace, a hat and a girl’s bare knees.

I broke into a devilish grin when I realised my certain victory; I could barely understand how women could feel inferior to men when they held this power over them. We were drawing increasingly close to each other, and I fixed my gaze on the rim of his hat; soon two sparks would escape from under it and stoke my inflammable frenzy, setting four eyes on fire. To be safe, though, I wanted to open the sexy box to release the female genie to support me. But the lock was stuck. I couldn’t open the damned box. When I looked up, the German Power had walked by. I stood there watching him, my first perfect prince, disappear down Princess Street.

I sighed in frustration but bent over the box and, after some effort, finally managed to pry it open. I must have looked like a powder addict when I stuck my nose into it and greedily snorted all its feminine vapours into my brain. And if women really are the weaker sex, that must be why I suddenly went weak in the knees. I felt a twig burgeoning between my legs and a numbness enveloping my nipples. The bud burst into a flower that spread across my stomach and below. Hairy, black. Black and hairy. Everything started to blur, but instead of collapsing I staggered along the garden railings with the open box, salivating and limping with lust.

Soon the fence led to a small brick hut, some kind of neoclassical temple that was later converted into a restaurant, I think, but that in those days served as a public convenience with Danish signs and German cleanliness. There was no staff in sight. I slipped into the ladies’ room, locked myself in, put down my schoolbag and box, and greeted myself in the cloudy mirror. Unbuttoning my collar, I was gripped by an even more potent desire at the sight of my own flesh: I grew excited until my heart pounded when I uncovered one breast and suddenly found myself rubbing my life bud against the glacial rim of the sink and then the corner, which turned out to be even better. Then I spotted a mop in the corner, which I instinctively grabbed and shoved between my legs and started to ride like a demented witch, crying out in Danish, ‘All men are German. All men are German.’

The sorcery between my thighs intensified with every thrust, pouring satisfaction into my body and soul like porridge into a bowl. Finally, I firmly grabbed the handle and rammed it against my crotch with all my might, with my skirt and knickers in between, and then allowed myself to slide down the hard stick and experienced what women would possibly call the hint of an orgasm. It was far from being a full orgasm, of course, but plenty to keep me going for now, plenty. Because I stiffly sat on the dirty floor a good while and stared at the glistening white tiles, bombarding myself with questions that were about as numerous as the stars that twinkled in the air around me, most of them yellow.

Through the gap under the door I caught sight of thick, weary female feet in worn-out wooden clogs, shifting stiffly on the pavement outside, dragging her soles to the accompaniment of a broom.

I sprang to my feet and flushed the toilet unconvincingly, like a poor sound effect in a bad play. I picked up the box and schoolbag and was on my way. Outside stood the old witch in a blue smock clutching a broom, her best friend for half a century. And now I understood why men had labelled all the women who preferred brooms to their weenies ‘witches.’ I was a witch. And that idea has followed me all my life and has never been as strong as now, even though I gave up those kinds of pleasures long ago, since I’m a semiinvalid now, a wicked pillow cripple with a wig. I was never able to look on myself as a beautiful, lovely woman. Some men found me attractive maybe, fun, beddable. But I was never a beautiful, lovely woman. I wasn’t. No, no. I was a witch.