The Serbian Dane

by Leif Davidsen

‘I was on my way to the library…’

  ‘Oh, then you’ll have to go down to Krystalgade,’ they said both at once and laughed.

  ‘Oh right, of course. Force of habit…you know…’

  ‘Yeah, God knows why they have to keep moving things around,’ the girls said, and they both giggled.

  ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘No problem.’

  They linked arms and waltzed off.

  ‘Kan du ha’ en god dag,’ they called back to him. Have a nice day.

  He must remember that expression. Everybody seemed to be saying it nowadays.

  He found himself a seat among the other browsers in the new Central Library reading room. He asked to see all copies of Politiken for the past month and proceeded to work his way systematically through them as the afternoon passed into evening. He found the article on Sara Santanda, studied the picture of her and that of Lise Carlsen. The caption underneath the latter said that Lise Carlsen, a staff reporter with Politiken and the chair of Danish PEN, would be Santanda’s host during her visit, the schedule for which was, for the moment, being kept secret. The date for the arrival of the condemned writer was also a secret. But Politiken expected the visit to go ahead as planned, despite the imprudent leak. He looked at the picture of Lise. He saw an attractive, young-looking woman smiling softly at the camera.

  Vuk left the library, carrying his plastic bag, and found a phone box, but it did not accept coins. There was a sign saying you had to use a phone card. What was a phone card? He walked on. In the next phone box he came to he could use his coins. He called directory enquiries and was given Lise Carlsen’s telephone number and her Østerbro address. He walked down to Nørreport station, bought a phone card and a bus ticket and scanned the row of bus stops till he found the one for buses to Østerbro.

  The apartment lay on the third floor. Next to the call-porter button for the third floor right were the names Ole Carlsen and Lise Carlsen. Across the road from the building lay an old-fashioned pub, one that had not yet been converted into a café or fast food joint. Tables and chairs had been set out on the pavement, even though the weather was wavering between summer and autumn, but that side of the street got the afternoon sun. Vuk sat down, put his carrier bag at his feet. He ordered a draught beer and lit a cigarette while considering the tenement from behind his dark sunglasses. It was a big building and well looked after, with new windows throughout. Its residents arrived home, one after another. Vuk contemplated this scene not with envy, but with a certain wistfulness. He liked other people’s everyday lives. It was nice to see Danes returning home with their carrier bags from the local supermarkets: Irma and Super Brugsen. That life would never be his, but regretting that fact was just a waste of time. Although, of course, there were moments when he couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t gone back to Bosnia, but had stayed in this peaceful little country. He drank his beer and thought of his parents and his sister, and of Emma, then pushed these thoughts away. If he gave them free rein, the blood-roller would run that night, and that he could not take. A car pulled into the kerb, and a man in his mid-forties got out. He looked tired and tight-lipped. He locked the car door and walked up to the front door of the tenement with his door key in one hand and his brown briefcase in the other. He was slightly round-shouldered and dragged his feet a little. He let himself in. The waiter came out and emptied the ashtray. Vuk ordered another beer. Moments later he saw the man from before come out of the door and cross the street to the pub. He walked right past Vuk and through the open door.

  ‘Hi, Ole,’ the waiter said as he placed a fresh glass on Vuk’s table. He was a youngish man with a muscular torso that looked too big for his short legs. A fitness centre body, Vuk thought to himself. It looked strong but wouldn’t be so tough if it came to the crunch. He would never be scared of a bodybuilder.

  ‘Hi, Mads,’ the man said without stopping. ‘I’ll have a beer and a chaser.’

  ‘Erna’s inside.’

  Vuk sat on, sipping his beer.

  ‘Don’t you want to move inside? It’s getting cold,’ the waiter said.

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll just finish this out here,’ Vuk said.

  ‘Okay.’

  He spun out his drink for another quarter of an hour, then decided that he could not sit there any longer. He got up and had just lifted his carrier bag when he saw Lise Carlsen cycling along the street. She parked her bike and locked it. He saw Lise’s eye go to the man’s car, then across the road to the pub, then up to the apartment on the third floor. Vuk turned his head away and called into the gloom of the pub:

  ‘Can I pay you now?’

  ‘Certainly,’ the muscleman called back.

  He came out.

  ‘Thirty-eight kroner,’ he said, then caught sight of Lise. He took Vuk’s hundred-kroner note, but his eyes were still on Lise.

  ‘Just a sec,’ he said and took a couple of steps into the road.

  ‘Lise,’ he shouted. ‘Lise! Ole’s in here.’

  Lise glanced across at them. Vuk turned his face away and regarded her out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘Okay, Mads. Just tell him I’m home.’

  ‘Right you are, Lise,’ Mads said and gave Vuk his change.

  Vuk ran over this scene in his mind later that evening as he sat in his room watching television. Or rather: the TV merely provided some pleasant background noise. It was tuned to some Danish talk show featuring a whole lot of women, all of them well dressed and extremely talkative. Vuk had given up trying to figure out what they were talking about and had turned down the sound while he worked.

  He cut the wooden handles off the skipping-rope and pulled half a yard of thin, pliant steel wire through them instead. He tied a knot in the wire at the top of each handle to secure it and tucked in the loose ends. He wrapped a towel around a pipe in the bathroom, slung the wire round it with a quick flick of the wrist and tugged hard on both handles. The wire gave a little, but the knots on the handles held. Satisfied, he laid the garrotte on the small bedside table.

  He watched television for a couple of hours, thinking about Lise and her husband Ole. He pondered how best to make contact with her while whetting the dull side of the scout knife, turning it into a double-edged blade. He used slow, steady efficient strokes; the action was soothing and helped him to think. The two edges of the knife were now razor-sharp. It was good Solingen steel, which didn’t break easily. He was no longer totally unarmed, and this made him feel a shade easier in his mind. Tomorrow or the next day at the latest, he should receive a postcard from Kravtjov telling him where he could pick up the proper weapons. He knew he didn’t have much time, and he had a suspicion that the weakest link in the chain was not Lise, but Lise’s husband. It was just a hunch, but he had seen from Lise’s face that she was disappointed, upset and a little angry. She had had no desire to join her husband for a quick one after work. On the contrary, she had glared at the pub through narrowed eyes before, to Vuk’s surprise, giving the front wheel of the car a quick, vicious little kick. Then she had unlocked her bike and cycled off again without a backward glance.

  Chapter 12

  Lise pedalled so hard that, much to her dismay, she broke out in a sweat. Suddenly she felt very foolish. This wasn’t going to solve anything. It would be far better to confront Ole with the fact that she had taken a lover, got herself a boyfriend, was having an affair. Whatever the hell she was supposed to call it, it made her feel warm all over and made her want to be with Per all the time. But she had been so pissed off when she discovered that Ole had gone over to that pub again – the bloody place stank of foul cigars and stale beer. Why couldn’t he drink in a café or a decent bar? She knew that he knew she hated pubs. She couldn’t stand the thought of him sitting there chewing the fat with a load of great oafs, maybe even discussing her with men who talked about ‘the wife’ at home. Because that’s what the sort of men who frequented such establishments did, she was sure. Grassroots culture was greatly
overrated. Give her the arts and civilized, well-educated people any day. She loathed community centres, bingo and old-fashioned pubs, with their billiard tables and the reek of male bodies. He knew how it irritated her when he went to that place, just as she knew how it irritated him when she played the radio in the mornings. Why was it that suddenly they couldn’t talk to one another anymore? Why did they go out of their way to hurt one another? Why did love die?

  She climbed off her bike when she got to the lakes, took a deep breath and murmured under her breath:

  ‘Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we? Where are we going and where do we put the empty bottles?’

  Then she burst out laughing at herself. An elderly lady walking a small, podgy black-spotted dog gawped at her. She looked so sour-faced that Lise couldn’t resist sticking her tongue out at her as she swung her leg over the saddle man-fashion and set off along the path at such a lick that she sent gravel spurting in all directions. Christ, how childish. But she wasn’t used to dealing with the sort of situation in which she now found herself.

  She rode home. Ole wasn’t there. He would probably spend the whole evening across the road. Shooting dice or discussing football and politics with dumb hulks who had been dumped, kicked out or were just plain lonely – or all three at once And just when she finally had a free evening. They could have talked. Really talked. She had taken time off from the paper, from Sara and from Per. On purpose, because she didn’t feel she had as much control over her feelings as she would have liked. Although the truth was that Per couldn’t see her that evening anyway. He hadn’t said what he was doing, and it really wasn’t any of her business. But still it bothered her. She ought to make something to eat. She was getting upset again, so now, of course, she was starving. But instead she put on some water for tea and had just poured herself a cup when she heard the front door, and Ole walked into the room, a little red-eyed, but otherwise as composed and distant as always.

  ‘Hello, love! Where have you been? Have you eaten?’ she said, hating herself, because she could hear how forced it sounded.

  ‘Hi,’ was all he said, then he stood looking at her until she began to feel rather flurried. She rose and crossed to the sink. Even though there was tea in her cup she got herself a glass of water, just to have something to do with her hands. She felt Ole’s eyes on her, steeled herself and turned round. The bright, airy kitchen suddenly seemed dank and stuffy. As if the darkness outside had seeped through the walls and smothered the electric lights.

  ‘What’s wrong? Why are you staring at me like that?’ she snapped.

  Ole merely eyed her up and down. She felt like one of his wealthy neurotic patients. Or clients, as he insisted on calling them. Over the past twenty years the number of psychologists in Denmark had doubled, so you would have thought they’d all be fighting for their share of the cake, but Ole had never earned as much as he did now. Your average Dane must be really fucked up and have no one to talk to, she thought, her mind wandering because his searching glance was too much to take. She lit a cigarette and said:

  ‘Ole! What’s the matter?’

  ‘I wanted to see if it were possible to detect some physical change. But I don’t think it is. Or is it?’

  His voice was, in fact, a little slurred. She could hear the beer and schnapps in his vowel sounds.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  She quailed under his gaze, looked away.

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual story. There’s someone else,’ Ole said.

  She felt the back of her neck flushing. The man was a psychologist, for Christ’s sake, he did know a thing or two about the human mind. She pulled herself together, walked over to him and took his hand. It hung limply in hers. He smelled of the pub.

  ‘Ole, stop it now, okay?’

  Ole regarded her with eyes that might have been bleary but were also shrewd: eyes she had loved and which she had thought beautiful. He broke free of her hand and took a step back from her.

  ‘There might be certain physical clues one could go by,’ he said. ‘An inordinate amount of time spent in the bathroom, for example. Or a new perfume. Rather more frequent changes of underwear. These are the classic signs, but then you’ve always been incredibly fussy about your appearance. Then there are other signs. You blush very easily these days. Most becoming. But a bit odd in a woman of your age. You’re fidgety. And you keep running your fingers through your hair.’

  He regarded her with those searching eyes, and she realized, to her horror, that she was blushing and running her fingers through her hair. She swivelled away, turned on the tap, dowsed her cigarette in the stream of water, chucked it in the bin under the sink and filled her glass again.

  ‘I’ve always done that,’ she said at length.

  ‘Are you having an affair, Lise?’

  She had her back to him. And for that she was thankful. She knew the look on her face would have told him he had guessed right. Why didn’t she just tell him the truth? Why didn’t she dare? Because she had never been in a situation like this before? She didn’t want to have a showdown now. She wanted to be the one to choose the time and the place.

  ‘I’m just a bit uptight. On edge. This whole Santanda thing is starting to get to me.’

  ‘Are you, Lise?’

  She turned to face him:

  ‘You of all people ought to know what I’m talking about. Stress. You make a living out of treating people for it. You’re a psychologist. Why the hell can’t you understand?’

  This last came out as a shout, but Ole remained impassive.

  ‘Okay,’ was all he said, and this only served to infuriate and exasperate her.

  She took a step towards him, then promptly stepped back again, to where she could once more feel the reassuring edge of the bench in the small of her back.

  ‘What do you mean, “okay”?’ she said. ‘I’m not one of your patients. So spare me your psychoanalytical “okays”. All that means is: I’m listening, but I don’t give a fuck!’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Ole. Give me a little time. It’s only two weeks until Sara’s visit, after that we have to talk. Once it’s all over. I’m just rather stressed…’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Ole, will you stop saying “okay”.’

  She took a step towards him again, hesitated for a moment, then said:

  ‘Look, I’ve got the night off. Why don’t we make ourselves something really nice to eat? Go to bed with a film? Like we used to do. I’m a bit uptight, that’s all.’

  Ole looked at her. The expression on his face altered. It was no longer simply probing, she felt. There was contempt there too. He considered her for a moment, then turned on his heel and made to leave.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t patronize me. That I really don’t deserve,’ he said, walking away.

  She called after his retreating back:

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? I wasn’t…Where are you going?’

  He stopped and looked back at her:

  ‘Into town.’

  ‘Again? Don’t you want me to make us some dinner? Ole? Or I could come with you. We can eat out. Please stay. We need to talk.’

  His eyes searched her face again:

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ he said and walked out without looking back.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Lise cried as she heard the front door slam and she was left alone in the room. She called Per’s number, let it ring and ring, but he had said he was going to be out.

  ‘Oh, Per,’ she said to the ringing tone. ‘What am I going to do?’

  In the end she made herself an omelette and ate it in front of the television while she watched an old Danish comedy. They had become amazingly popular again. She needed something else to do. Tomorrow she would sit herself down and write an article about this whole phenomenon. About the nostalgic longing which people felt for the secure familiar order of a bygone era. These
films spoke of a time when agriculture did not pollute the earth and the roles of the sexes were clearly defined. Watching them, you could forget that the seventies and eighties had ever happened. In them, Denmark was presented as an immutable rustic idyll in which the sun always shone, and tramps broke into song instead of shambling around collecting empties and begging on the street. She tried calling Per again around midnight, but there was still no answer. So she went to bed. Ole did not come home that night.

  Early the next morning she settled herself in front of the computer in her bright feminine office in the newspaper building and wrote her article. Her office was lined with books and posters, international magazines and plants. She thought of Ole, then she thought of Per, but she forced herself to be light of word and profound of thought, as Tagesen put it. The end result actually read rather well, so she passed it on to editorial. Then she went into the file on Sara Santanda’s visit. She had furnished it with a password. So no one else could open it. She read through it. Things seemed to be shaping up nicely, and Flakfortet would provide a great backdrop for the television shots. She just hoped the weather would be kind to them. It was cooler today, and grey clouds chased across the sky. It looked like there would be rain later on, even though they had said on the radio that it would clear up. The phone rang. She picked it up, gave her name. A pleasant male voice spoke back.

  ‘Hi,’ said the voice – Vuk’s voice. ‘My name’s Keld Hansen. I’m a freelance journalist working for a number of Jutland trade journals. I understand you’re involved in organizing the visit by Sara Santanda, the writer?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t really comment on that,’ she said.

  ‘Well, that’s what it says in your newspaper,’ the voice said.

  ‘Well, yes…that’s right,’ said Lise, feeling for a moment rather stupid. She had been spending too much time with Per.

  The pleasant voice went on:

  ‘Look, I’m a fellow reporter, and this means a helluva lot to me. I’m a freelancer, I could really do with a good story. And the journals I work for would very much like to present their own slant on this story. A staffer like yourself can understand that, can’t you?’