Eva Nijhoff

Eva Nijhoff’s pregnancy brings a child into a marriage whose emotional bond she believes has already ended. In her private account, the pregnancy is at once a guarded plan, a startling confirmation, and a reason to leave: she chooses the child over a return to Peter, while imagining a new life beyond their home.

Identity and Background

Eva Nijhoff recalls that she began living with Peter when she was seventeen, despite her father’s objections that she was too young to settle down and should meet other men. She was certain Peter was the one she wanted, and the promise of lifelong fidelity mattered deeply to her partly because she resented her father for breaking his promise to her mother. She wanted a family and believed Peter wanted one too.

That early certainty makes her later detachment stark. She says she tried to recover her feelings for Peter and did everything she could, but they were gone. She had remained with him partly because she feared being alone; by the time she reflects on leaving, she sees that she might have left much earlier had she acted for herself. Her account of the marriage is therefore not a simple rejection of a former love: it is a reckoning with the years she spent treating the original promise as a reason to stay after the relationship had changed.

Secret Preparation and the Positive Test

Before the pregnancy is confirmed, Eva secretly tracks her temperature for two weeks, taking it after Peter gets up to shower. She keeps the temperature chart beneath her mattress and notes that Peter’s lack of involvement in household matters makes it possible to hide her actions from him. On the evening she considers crucial, she spits out an ecstasy pill and pushes it into the flowerpot beside the sofa because she wants to remain in control and avoid any risk.

Her preparation is accompanied by intense physical anxiety. Her hands and feet remain cold despite the heat, while her head feels feverish; she rubs her feet against her calves and traps her hands between her thighs without warming them. Earlier that day she shaved her entire body with Peter’s razor, from her toes to her armpits, including between her buttocks, and is left itching. She compares herself unfavorably with Rebecca, whose smooth appearance and ease in lingerie make Eva feel awkward by contrast. Even so, she tells herself that Peter should be grateful she is willing to share him with Rebecca.

When Eva takes the pregnancy test, Rebecca is with her. Eva urinates on the stick, waits through a minute that seems to stretch, and tries to understand what she hopes the result will be. A negative result, she thinks, would let her return quietly to the familiar sorrow of her old life. Instead, the test shows two blue lines. Rebecca congratulates her and embraces her; Eva stands almost frozen, overwhelmed by happiness and fear. Sem begins crying for his mother, and Rebecca lifts and comforts him before reassuring Eva that they will wait seven weeks before telling the men.

Pregnancy and Separation from Peter

By the time Eva reflects on leaving, she describes herself as living in a small cottage and heading toward an uncertain destination. Peter’s child is not the child she carries: she calls it another man’s child, and says she has chosen the child rather than herself. She wonders whether she would have had the courage to leave if she had not become pregnant, and concludes that she probably would not have. The pregnancy thus gives her a reason to act even as she recognizes that her marriage had already become loveless.

Her bodily experience of pregnancy changes the meaning she gives to herself. Nausea at the sight of a cold platter feels, in her words, like a welcome symptom and continual proof of pregnancy and womanhood. She takes a folic acid pill with water, empties a bottle of bath oil from a Nivea set into the bath, and studies her body in the mirror. There is almost nothing visible yet, perhaps only slightly fuller breasts; when she extends her abdomen and strokes the skin below her navel, she imagines the embryo as no larger than a coffee bean. Her conviction that she can become pregnant naturally restores her belief in herself and becomes a reason for happiness, even amid uncertainty about Peter and the future.

Plans and Uncertainty

Eva knows that the pregnancy may still end in miscarriage. She notes that one in ten embryos is lost during the first three months and counts down the remaining two and a half months, worrying that a miscarriage might happen somewhere in France or Spain during her journey. Yet she insists to herself that she will not go back, even if the pregnancy does not continue. She intends to fall in love again and build a new life and family.

Her confidence is not the same as certainty: she fears what may happen, but decides that her past share of bad luck is over and that things will improve. She plans to find a father for the child, believing that this is the least she can do for her. Eva is convinced the baby is a girl and imagines herself as a mother of girls. The combination of apprehension and resolve defines her new direction: she leaves Peter not because she has secured a safe future, but because the pregnancy has made continuing in the old one impossible.