She heard noise and laughter from the living room. It was a festive, successful evening, and she knew it made a little dip in the mood when she, the hostess, in the middle of all the merriment, broke away to do the dishes. But she couldn’t face waking up in the morning to a messy kitchen. Kai would just have to figure it out. She could hear his voice among the others; he spoke quickly, nervously, excitedly. He drank and smoked like crazy, and forgot to be accommodating to the guests when she wasn’t around.

It would be so wonderful if his depression were over and done with. It had lasted from the moment they realized she was definitely pregnant for the second time in their marriage. The first depression lasted until she was five months along. And now little Bent was only one and a half. Of course it was unfortunate, but to her mind it wasn’t the end of the world. And certainly not for him. In the end, she was the one who had to do the heavy lifting. But she was, as Kai put it, so healthy and well-adjusted. The nausea, the exhaustion, and everything that came with it, she knew would come to an end shortly. The economic stress would have to be borne by Kai (or more correctly, his parents), and unlike her complaints, that would only increase after the baby was born.

His studies would be finished in a year. But he had done no work for the last three months; he just lay all day long on the divan without sleeping or doing anything. If she tiptoed through the living room, he gave her a pained, unhappy look, which made her feel guilty, because she never knew if she should lie down beside him and caress his forehead, or if that would just bother him.

He went to psychoanalysis, but she didn’t think it was helping. On the contrary, it cost a fortune, and this stranger (his analyst), whom she had never seen, instilled in her a distrust and something resembling jealousy. He had suggested admittance to an institution, but Kai didn’t want that, because of his parents, who lived at their parsonage in Jylland and supported them, and who mustn’t at any cost be upset by bad news from Copenhagen. He was their only child, and they expected a result from investing in their son in the form of a newly hatched doctor.