Copenhagen 7: Living with Therese

by Kennedy Graham

I live with Therese.  We are cohabiting in her apartment these past six nights.  It is an intimate arrangement.  We share the bathroom.  I think she showers at night.  I shower in the morning.  Her bedroom is right next to the bathroom, which I use, hopefully to modest effect.  My bedroom is around the corner past the living room, perhaps 5 metres, but separated only by a bedroom wall.

Therese is one of a syndicate of Danish hosts who have signed up to billet conference participants from outside Denmark.  Jeanette and Rick have separate hosts.  The difference is, they have met theirs.  I have not met mine.  Five days and five nights together without ever meeting.  It is a surreal arrangement but it has become surprisingly normal.

Therese offered some months back and we set up the arrangement.  I made direct email contact with her just before my departure for Denmark last week.  She wrote back.  “Anyone who fights climate change is welcome in my home”, she said simply.  I immediately looked forward to meeting her.

I headed off for Copenhagen on Air New Zealand.  In Hong Kong airport I checked my email.  This was just as well since Therese had made a late-minute change to the arrangements.  She was attending her annual Xmas Party the Friday night I was arriving.  She would leave the key for her apartment at the Left Luggage counter at Copenhagen Airport.  An unusual arrangement, I thought, perhaps normal in Nordic culture, though three years in Sweden had not bolstered my experience for this.  I was beginning to like Therese.

Sure enough, the Danish official at Left Luggage cheerfully handed over the envelope in my name.  Don’t you want to check my identity, I said, incredulously, offering my passport?.  No, no, he said in clear and clipped Danelish.  We trust you.  I felt humbled.  I was beginning to like all Danes.

I take a train, and then a metro, then I track down her apartment on the street.  It is close to midnight, cold and dark and unfamiliar.  The apartment is the standard, brick, semi-detached tenement building bordering right on the street.  Moment of truth.  The outside door-key works.  I reach the top floor and the same key allows me inside.  I am home.  There is a welcome note from Therese.  She will be home around 3.30 a.m.  I creep in, use the shower, and flop into what is presume is my bed in what I presume is my bedroom.  This proves to be perfect judgement.  At 4.00 am, I hear what I take to be Therese climbing the stairs and passing my bedroom.

Saturday morning I am up and off at 6.30 a.m.  Unsurprisingly, no stirring from Therese’s bedroom.  I e-mail her from the conference.  She emails back.  Welcome she says.  She will out that night at a second Xmas Party.  Do not expect her back early.  I am back at midnight – to an empty apartment.  But it has been made warm by a wood-burner and a light is left on for good cheer.

From Friday to Thursday today, I have left in the dark around 7.00 a.m. and returned in the dark around midnight.  It is not a routine guaranteed to meet Therese.   I email her.  This is from your phantom guest, I say.  It is proving difficult to meet up.  Perhaps breakfast next Saturday morning before I fly out to New Zealand?

She replies by email.  It says: “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha”.  Perhaps.  Perhaps not. Perhaps before.

I believe I k now Therese very well – better than many delegates I have shaken hands with and exchanged professional comment at Bella Conference Centre.  I know her habits.  I know her reading material.  I know what she looks like, since there are photos of her – at least I think it is her – on my bedroom wall.  There are quite personal notes to her posted up, which, given she knows I am coming and leaves them up, I presume I am free to read, though I feel a pang of prurient guilt nonetheless.  They make her out as an unusually creative, pleasant and carefree young woman.

I hope I meet Therese.

They also serve, who pass like ships in the night.