The Serbian Dane

by Leif Davidsen

  ‘Hello. It’s only me. Hello-o. I’m home. Ole? Are you there?’

  Vuk recognized Lise’s voice, and that voice spurred him into action. He swiped at Ole’s feet with one hand, knocking them down onto the floor, while with the other he slapped him around the ear, not hard enough to make a noise, but with a resounding precision guaranteed to rouse Ole from his stupor. He mussed up his own hair, plastering it down over his forehead, grabbed his half-full glass, splashed some whisky onto his shirt and threw himself into one of the armchairs with his legs sprawled. Ole gave his head a shake, leaned back in the sofa then put his head in his hands and groaned.

  Vuk was now a drunken man staring in bewilderment at the woman now entering the living room.

  Lise stared at them. With a mixture of anger, disgust and contempt she took in Ole, the almost empty bottle, the overflowing ashtray and the strange man who was goggling at her in bleary-eyed befuddlement. Her anger evaporated, leaving her merely upset. After all, what right did she have to be mad? She, who had come straight from her lover’s bed, how could she cast the first stone? If she had found Ole in bed with another woman, then at least they would have been on equal terms. But there was no way she was on equal terms with the man across from her. She could see his belly under his partially unbuttoned shirt, the red eyes, the greasy rumpled hair. She did not see a man, she saw a loser, and she felt both sorry for him and sickened by him. She didn’t love him anymore.

  ‘Jesus, Ole,’ she burst out.

  ‘Aw shit, Ole. It’s your wife. I’d better get the fuck outta here,’ mumbled Vuk, struggling to string the words together. Ole clutched his head and groaned.

  Vuk pulled himself to his feet, tottered drunkenly for a second, then braced himself and with some difficulty found his balance. He took a couple of steps towards Lise, almost fell as he put his glass down on the coffee table with exaggerated care, so forcefully that it tipped over and the amber liquid spilled out.

  ‘Lady. I’m outta here’ he said, flinging out his arm.

  He made towards her. Saw Lise raise a hand as if to stop him and get him to explain himself, or maybe to strike him. He reacted instinctively, grabbed her arm in midair and held it in a vice-like grip while fixing her with eyes that were cold, menacing and stone-cold sober.

  ‘Who are you? What are you doing with my husband?’ she hissed.

  Vuk sensed her fear, released her arm and lapsed back into the role of drunkard.

  ‘We were just havin’ a bloody whisky,’ he said.

  Lise stepped aside, leaving the way clear for him.

  ‘Get out of here. Get out, damn you.’

  ‘I’m gone,’ Vuk cried, arms flailing so wildly that he almost keeled over.

  Lise waited until she heard the front door close, then she sat down across from Ole. He straightened up and sat back in the sofa.

  ‘This isn’t going to work, Ole,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Lise. Just let me get my breath back, then we’ll talk about it.’

  He was totally plastered, that she could see, but his speech was, in fact, perfectly lucid, as if he were making a great effort, or as if it had finally dawned on him that it was over.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Just a guy I met in town. Carsten something or other. He sells plastic bags.’

  This was evidently a big joke, because Ole began to titter. He reached for both cigarettes and glass, then gave this up as a bad job and slumped back in the sofa again.

  ‘Has he been in my office?’

  ‘No. We just sat here having a drink. He was with me the whole time. Oh, God, my head!’

  ‘He scared me.’

  ‘Carsten wouldn’t hurt a fly. He just sells plastic bags.’

  Ole bent forward and this time managed to get hold of the whisky glass. He took a swig, then started retching.

  Lise jumped up.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ole. Don’t start that now!’

  She left him spewing his load. It seemed a fitting way to end a marriage. He could clean it up himself or wake up in his own vomit tomorrow morning. That was one sight she could happily live without.

  She went through to her office. Nothing seemed to be out of place. She put a hand to the top right-hand drawer, and it slid open. She was sure she had locked it, although sometimes she did forget. She took out the little key and unlocked the disk case. Her heart beat a little faster, but the disk was right where it ought to be. She lifted it out and slipped it into her bag, then dialled Per’s number. He answered right away; she could just picture him in his double bed, exactly as she had left him less than an hour ago.

  ‘Hi, it’s me. Is it all right if I come back over?’ she said.

  Chapter 17

  Vuk had drunk enough for his demons to surface like monsters in his subconscious, but not enough for the alcohol to blot them out. As always he dreamed of the mountains around Pale, which lay there like a wolf stronghold surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies. They swarmed down on the town, clad in turbans and baggy trousers and brandishing long curving scimitars: men and women, shouting and screaming and mowing down everyone in their way, and the horizon was all ablaze. First his mother, then his father and then his sister were hacked to pieces before his very eyes. He stretched out his arms, but he was rooted to the spot. He stood there, petrified like Lot’s wife, wanting to run, to react, to kill, but even though he was alive his muscles refused to respond. He was imprisoned within the armour of his body but saw everything with stark clarity. The colours were a yellowish-green shot with blood-red, he heard the rumble of the heavy bulldozer in the distance and knew that now the screaming would start. His own screaming, when the nightmare reached the point where the massive road roller hove into view, crushing everyone in its path until its huge steel cylinder was stained crimson with the people’s blood, not only that of their enemies but also that of his own family who were suddenly standing there, alive again and terror-stricken in the face of its slowly grinding bulk. And he himself was driving the blood-roller.

  Vuk was woken, not by his own screams but by the person in the room next door banging loudly on the wall. He switched on the light and lay there, trembling and drenched in sweat, staring at a ceiling, which was blurred and rippling like the surface of a pond broken by a stone. His heart was pounding fit to burst. It was a long time since it had been this bad. He was filled with dread, and he knew the reason why. His life no longer had focus. He no longer had a goal. The nationalistic fervour that had fed his own personal hatred had burned out, and in its place was a gaping void. He forced himself to think of Emma, of her face, her small delicate hands, her slender feet, her ankles, her slim thighs, her navel, her breasts, her face again. As if he were a sculptor fashioning her in his head. And by the time she stood, perfectly formed, before his mind’s eye, his pulse rate had begun to slacken. He opened his eyes again. The ceiling and its hideous light fitting were back in focus.

  Vuk got out of bed and found his cigarettes. He took a vodka from the minibar, knocked it back and smoked a cig. He picked up the disk that was lying on the bedside table and held it in his palm. He would force himself to focus on the job in hand. He would force himself to carry it through. He would force himself to shut out everything else and once more become the reliable machine he had been when he was fighting for the cause.

  He paced the floor. The watch on his wrist said four o’clock. He had screamed out loud. He would have to change hotel again today. He switched on the television, took another miniature of vodka and sat down to watch CNN to keep his mind off things while he waited for it to get light outside. He was far too frightened to sleep.

  Vuk had breakfast and read the Danish papers. Then he went back to his room, dismantled and then assembled his pistol, which he had stashed away in a locked suitcase. Every time he left the hotel room he smeared a little talcum powder around the keyholes, but no one had attempted to discover what he had in his case.

  By ten o’clock he reckoned
that Mikael would be awake. He had got hold of his parents’ telephone number through directory enquiries. It turned out that they were still living in the same big house as when Mikael and Vuk were boys. Back then Vuk had been called something else, but Mikael, Vuk and Peter, whom Vuk had once seen on the Danish news, had been the three musketeers. Best pals. Mikael had to a great extent grown up along with the others in Nørrebro, in the inner city, while his extremely wealthy parents spent most of their time in Spain. Mikael had been a bit of an afterthought, and his parents had not wanted to spend any more time in Denmark than absolutely necessary, not once his father sold his firm, so he was left with his mother’s sister, who was happy to have his company in her large apartment – until he got to be big and pale and weird, but by then it didn’t matter because he was old enough to live on his own in the mansion in Hellerup.

  Vuk thought of all this as he took the train from the Central Station out to Hellerup. He had made this journey so many times before. He could still picture the house. Built in the twenties, on three floors, with a basement and masses of rooms. It sat down by the Sound, so close that you could walk from the lawn straight into the water. Mikael hadn’t sounded surprised when he called. Half-asleep, but not really surprised. He had told Vuk to come whenever he liked. He had the house to himself. He did not seem to find it strange that Vuk should call him after all these years: it sounded as if he was living in a world of his own, without any normal sense of time.

  Vuk was wearing his leather jacket, with his homemade garrotte in the pocket. He was the only person to get off at Hellerup station. The sun was shining from a clear blue sky as he walked down to Mikael’s house. The bad dream from the night before was only a faint murmur at the back of his mind. He thought of Mikael and of Peter, who had had his heart set on being a journalist even back then and was now a reporter on the Danish news. But what about Mikael? There was only one thing he was interested in: computers. In his inside pocket Vuk had the disk from the Carlsens’ apartment, he was hoping that Mikael would be able to crack the password and open the document for him.

  Vuk pushed open the garden gate. The hedge was thick and overgrown, it screened a rank lawn covered in leaves, moss and seeded dandelions. Weeds peeped out of the four or five neglected flowerbeds. The house lay at the far end of the ground sloping down to the Sound. It was a white house and very beautiful, despite the flaking paint on the window frames. It had not been particularly well looked after, but with such a location it must nonetheless be worth a fortune.

  Vuk pressed the bell and heard it ring out inside the house. It still had the same crisp, old-fashioned chime and brought back memories of boyhood games in the big garden and sailing on the Sound in the rowboat and dinghy. And later, high-school parties in this open hospitable home, where there was only one rule: everything had to be cleaned up before Mikael’s parents got back. They, on the other hand, never showed up unannounced. They always gave the kids a chance to get things back to normal, at least to the point where the cleaner did not have undue cause for complaint.

  Vuk heard footsteps approaching, and the door was opened.

  They looked at one another. Mikael saw a tall, well-built man with lifeless blue eyes. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved for a day or so because his face was covered with a short blond stubble. He saw a chum from his childhood and youth who hadn’t changed a bit and yet was not the same person at all. The difference lay mainly in his eyes. They no longer looked as if laughter came easily to them.

  Vuk saw a scrawny little guy who was already going thin on top. The eyes behind his thick glasses were lively and intelligent, and he had not lost his old habit of tugging his earlobe when excited or nervous. He wore a pair of battered jeans and a green shirt over a white T-shirt. He looked like the nerd he was, the clown of the trio, the boy with the big house.

  ‘Hi, Mikael,’ said Vuk.

  Mikael tugged at his earlobe. He looked both pleased and bashful.

  ‘Janos, you old Gastarbeiter! Long time, no see! Come on in. I’ve got the place all to myself.’

  ‘Yeah, so you said on the phone,’ Vuk said. Twice now, within the past couple of hours, he had heard his old name, his real name spoken out loud. He had used it himself when he called Mikael. ‘Mikael. It’s Janos,’ he had said. But the name was alien to him, it belonged to someone else, not the person he was today. His family and his friends in Denmark had called him Janos, but Janos had died in the living hell of Bosnia, and out of the ashes had come Vuk, who might resemble Janos on the outside but not on the inside. Janos was dead. Vuk inhabited his body. The name Janos was as foreign to him as Carsten, the name by which Ole Carlsen knew him.

  As usual, Mikael talked non-stop. The house looked exactly the same, with the large hall and the stairs up to the first floor. The spacious kitchen was littered with newspapers and computer magazines; in one corner MTV was running with the sound turned down. The sink was full of dirty dishes, despite the presence of a dishwasher under the kitchen worktop. Vuk glanced through the window at yet another lawn, which ended where the Sound began. Mikael was saying how good it was to see Janos again. They had had such good times together. And had Janos seen that Peter had become a big star on the television news? His rise had been pretty meteoric, taking him more or less straight from the College of Journalism to presenting the evening news. For his own part, well…he’d gone to the Technical University for a couple of years, but when it came right down to it he couldn’t really be bothered. He was going to inherit all this lot anyway, and he had that trust fund in Switzerland. His parents spent their time playing golf in Spain or on an island in the Caribbean. They seldom came home. One of his brothers was in Los Angeles, the other in Switzerland. Mikael lived here alone. Only went out to stock up on frozen dinners and ready-made meals for the microwave. He never saw anyone, and that suited him just fine. He had his computers, his music and his books. What more could he ask for?

  While he was talking, Mikael took a large bottle of cola from the fridge, produced a couple of glasses and filled them. They sat down at the kitchen table. There was a brief silence and Mikael tugged at his earlobe again.

  ‘Jeez, it’s great to see you, Janos. You old Gastarbeiter. You and Peter were the only guys I ever liked. The rest were all such frigging morons. When did you get back to Denmark?’

  ‘A couple of days ago.’

  ‘From down there?’

  ‘From down there, yeah.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mikael and took a drink of his cola.

  ‘It’s good to see you too, Mikael,’ Vuk said. ‘This house takes me back to when I was a kid. Those were great days. I always think of that as being the only normal time in my life.’

  Vuk hadn’t really intended to say that: it just came out, but he meant it.

  ‘Why did you leave Denmark?’

  ‘My parents wanted to go home.’

  ‘And you just tagged along?’

  ‘It’s how I was brought up.’

  Mikael leaned across the table, his face growing grave. That too, Vuk remembered about him. He was always playing the fool, but sometimes, when he saw pictures of war and suffering on the television, he would suddenly grow very serious and be plunged into something akin to depression. They used to kid him about it: he was too sensitive for this world, they said. He was the thinker of the three of them, the one who was most preoccupied with the big issues in life. He was always looking for answers to impossible questions and had once astonished an irate teacher, who had demanded to know what weighty matters he was pondering when he should be paying attention in class, by replying ‘the riddle of life’ He had been eleven at the time, and the whole class had collapsed in fits of laughter. To begin with, Mikael had been surprised and hurt, but eventually he too had started to laugh. He had a habit of saying exactly what was in his mind at the oddest moments, and you never knew whether he was being sarcastic or serious. Whether he was making fun of himself or of others.

  ‘Janos. It’s great to see
you. Don’t get me wrong,’ Mikael said. ‘You’re very welcome here. It’s not that. But I don’t really see anybody anymore. Apart from Peter, once in a while. I just don’t like people, Janos. I can never figure out how they tick. How their programmes are put together. I crash when I’m with other people. So I keep myself to myself. I stay here. At night I sit at the computer and surf the Net. And sometimes I take a run up and down the Sound in my dinghy. Know what?’

  Vuk shook his head and waited for Mikael to continue:

  ‘I never see a soul. And yet I’m in touch with thousands of people around the world. From Sydney to Moscow. That way there are no problems. It’s too much of a hassle meeting folk face to face. It’s much easier to do it through a modem. Out in cyberspace.’

  He gave a rather sheepish grin, plucked at his ear and went on:

  ‘Now if I could just get laid via the modem, I’d never have to see another human being for the rest of my life. I could live happily in cyberspace.’

  Vuk couldn’t help laughing. That had been Mikael’s special gift: he could make people laugh. Vuk almost felt fond of him again, as Janos had done.

  ‘You always were a crazy bastard, Mikael,’ he said, as Janos would have said it.

  Mikael grinned happily back at him. The slight awkwardness between them had been dispelled, and it almost felt like the old days.

  ‘Maybe. But what does that matter when your parents are loaded?’ he said.

  Mikael poured more cola for them both.

  ‘How’re your mum and dad doing? Things are pretty bad down there, eh?’

  ‘They’re dead. Murdered, along with Katarina,’ Vuk said flatly.

  ‘Aw, Christ man! Vuk and Lea are dead? And Katarina? Fucking hell. Jesus, I’m sorry, Janos. What did I say? Stay well away from other people.’

  ‘Yeah, Mikael. That’s what you said.’

  There was that awkwardness again. Mikael plucked at his ear and fiddled with the label on the cola bottle. Through the half-open kitchen window they could hear the sound of the sea and a neighbour starting up a hedge-clipper or something.