Just then Sanders came in with three cups of steaming coffee on a tray, which he placed on the table.
“Look, Bernhard—he’s bought my poem,” Steffensen muttered. “The one I wrote last night.”
For a moment Sanders glanced from one to the other, then said sourly:
“I wouldn’t say that it’s one of your best.”
“No,” Steffensen growled in dead earnest. “I’m afraid that there’s too much opinionitis in it.”
Sanders had very quietly taken a seat in one of the rococo chairs and was biting his lips. For a moment he was not with them. Jastrau had pulled up a chair and now sat bent forward, looking at Steffensen as if hypnotized.
“What did you mean by that remark—too much opinionitis?”
Steffensen made a face. Jastrau had addressed him as “De,” instead of using the more informal “du.” “Are we suddenly on such formal terms now—du?” he asked.
“Nonsense,” Jastrau snapped. “What did you mean?”
“I meant I’m not suffering from the same disease as Sanders.”
“You’d do well to pick up some new phrases now and then,” Sanders volunteered. “But now drink your coffee. And you can console yourself, Ole, with the assurance that he didn’t mean anything—wasn’t expressing any opinions.”
Steffensen’s eyes twinkled craftily. “Why should an artist have opinions?” he drawled.
Jastrau stared at him as if taken off his guard. “Quite so,” he agreed cordially. “Or, to put it more correctly, an artist should have opinions, although it doesn’t matter what they are.”
With an expression of contempt, Sanders leaned back against the oval frame of the chair which with its imposing lines added a touch of glamour to his revolutionary appearance. Like Lenin in the Kremlin.
“Let’s talk about lunch instead,” he said with a supercilious Marxist smile. “The truth is always concrete. What do you have in the pantry, Ole?”
“Well, there’s no beer. That I know from last night,” interjected Steffensen, and Jastrau laughed. His laughter had become friendly. In any event, he was now receptive to whatever Steffensen might have to say.
But he did not, of course, know what was in the house, and Sanders did. Naturally. Had he not been out in the kitchen and taken an inventory? Some ham, a piece of steak, and a leftover pickled herring. There were no eggs or rye bread, and then, too, they were out of beer. But Jastrau could go out and do the shopping, and Steffensen would be more than delighted to go along to carry the bottles. Meanwhile Sanders would set the table. Naturally he knew where the clean tablecloths were kept.
“Do you know where the silverware is too?” Jastrau asked sarcastically.
Sanders nodded provokingly.
Soon Jastrau and Steffensen were down at the dairy-goods store. They were now getting along in comradely fashion. Next they had to stop at the delicatessen at the corner of Colbjørnsensgade, but here Steffensen remained standing outside with the bottles in his arms and jacket pockets.
“Say,” he muttered when Jastrau came out of the store, “this Istedgade is a dandy street.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s so long.”
Jastrau was about to answer with a laugh, but then he noticed that Steffensen was gazing far down the street and that his eyes were shining. Jastrau had to turn and share the view. It was true—the street seemed endless. The forenoon sun glistened on a myriad of windowpanes as if they were raindrops, and out near Enghaveplads the gray and yellow building façades rose like distant hills until they were dissolved in a shimmering haze.
“Yes. It’s stupid of me not always to be able to see how pretty it is,” remarked Jastrau.
“Yes—damned if it isn’t like an idea—one of those that are supposed to be found in poetry,” Steffensen said with a wry smile. “All this muck and rubbish here—and then the way it gets transformed by that heavenly light off in the distance.” He broke into derisive laughter.
By the time Jastrau and Steffensen got back, Johanne had arrived with Oluf. The boy came running from the dining room at full speed, leaning like a motorcycle on a curve. He came to a sudden halt as soon as he saw Steffensen with his arms full of bottles, and he stood with his awkward little body still swaying as he shouted, “Oh! Look at all the b—ee—r!” The “ee” sound was so drawn out that the “r” was hardly noticeable.
Then, to Jastrau’s great surprise, the lanky Steffensen bent over and invited Oluf to take a bottle.
“Can you carry it?” he muttered, winking at the boy.
Oluf reached for the bottle and began to inspect the label, while Steffensen patted him on the head and rubbed his neck the way one would pet a dog. “There, there, puppy,” he said.
“Puppy? What does he mean?” exclaimed Oluf in astonishment, staring up at him. Jastrau laughed.
“Well, what can one say to a fellow like that?” Steffensen said as if to himself with a vague smile. “Here’s the beer,” he announced, proceeding with his long seaman’s stride into the dining room and setting the bottles on the table.
Jastrau went on into the kitchen.
“No, you mustn’t! Let me do it,” he heard his wife say. Her voice sounded gay. And as he stepped into the kitchen, he halted in surprise. Johanne stood near the kitchen table and was trying to take a plate away from Sanders. But it was not this that surprised him. No, it was the animated play of her features as she stood there struggling for possession of the plate. He recognized it with a feeling of bitterness. It was the same glow of animation that once had dazzled him and sent the blood coursing passionately through his veins.
Her happiness at such moments had always seemed like a trick that his eyes were playing on him.
He stood stock still, although he was inwardly raging, and followed her struggle with the swarthy Sanders, whose eyes were glistening like a bluebottle fly.
And then he saw her flourish the plate triumphantly above her head as if it were a tambourine.
“Johanne,” he said quietly.
She turned and looked at her husband, and suddenly the aura of enchantment that had surrounded her vanished. He stared at her for a moment as she stood there, her eyes swimming, her mouth hanging open and gasping for breath. Like a white rabbit, he thought suddenly.
“Here are the eggs and the bread,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
But she must have been taken back, for now she began to vent her feelings in a dozen ways at once—with words, gestures, and glances. She could not find enough ways of expressing herself.
“Isn’t it simply wonderful of Herr Sanders? He’s washed the dishes, cleaned the house, dusted, laid a fire in the stove, made coffee, and everything. At first he wouldn’t admit it, but I found him out. Did you ever see anything like it?”
Her enthusiasm was too unfettered, too breathless. It was supposed to overwhelm him, but the effect was only comical. He stood there with a faint grudging smile.
“You could never have done such a thing, Ole.”
He stared at her much too matter-of-factly. It was the female in her that had been stirred. A white rabbit. The trace of a smile remained about his lips.
“But now you leave things to me, Herr Sanders. Go inside. This is no place for men, and you can just get out of my kitchen.”
Laughingly, she shoved Sanders toward the door. Jastrau got a shove too.
“Out with you! Out with you both!”
Jastrau went willingly enough. But in his resentment he could not help casting a sidelong glance at Sanders. This was the way one went about achieving a conquest with a simple, unsophisticated girl. Was it possible that a wife could be so light-headed? A sudden froth of eroticism, dazzling as in the old days—but only for a moment. Then, just as suddenly, it all seemed comical. A white rabbit. Why the change? The humdrum of married life? He wondered. Was it all over?
“One, two, three, four,” came a voice from the dining room.
Steffensen had seated himself in his old position a
t the end of the table and had placed all the bottles in front of him. “One, two, three, four, five,” he counted, pointing at each of them in turn with a crooked finger, while Oluf, his chin resting on the edge of the table, watched the procedure with enthusiasm.
“One, two, four,” he volunteered experimentally.
But Jastrau paid no attention to them. Listlessly he drew a chair up to the table. He had to remain apathetic. He could not, however, fail to notice the silent vague smile with which Sanders comfortably settled himself at the table. It sank into his consciousness and remained there like a hard, glistening lump of anthracite.
Meanwhile, Johanne ran to and fro in housewifely fashion, bringing on the food.
“Now we might as well begin,” said Jastrau.
“But hadn’t we better wait until your wife—?” protested Sanders.
“No,” was the abrupt answer.
Sanders’s smile was transformed into a look of insolence. “Indeed!” he replied with exaggerated politeness.
When Fru Johanne was at last able to sit down with the others, the conversation again began to revolve around Sanders’s ability as a housekeeper. Johanne was quite hilarious. “Just think,” she would say in a tone of joyous incomprehension. “Just think—”
“But look here, it’s no more than natural—at least for a Communist,” objected Sanders affably, gesticulating with a hand that was not clean enough to match his eloquence. “In a Communist state, where everyone has a right to one room and no more, he also is under obligation to keep it in order.”
“Are you back on the subject of your Communism again?” asked Johanne, laughing and giving him a tap on the arm as if she were a servant girl coyly repulsing an advance. Jastrau looked down at the tablecloth.
“Yes—always back to that,” Sanders replied, unabashed. “Because, you see, it’s inseparably linked with the battle for the liberation of women. Here in this capitalistic society most women’s lives are sheer barbarism, you must admit.”
“Yes—” she said hesitantly. “But Communism—that’s something else. It makes women the property of the state.”
Jastrau did not dare to look at her. Her forehead was no doubt wrinkled in thought, and her eyes pale and colorless. He let his middle finger follow the pattern in the white tablecloth.
“That’s a lie!” exclaimed Sanders. “A lie that the newspapers have been paid to circulate throughout Europe. It’s a propaganda lie.”
At these words, Jastrau looked over at Steffensen, who seemed completely uninterested in the conversation and was opening a bottle of beer.
“Yes, but I’ve read in The Hammer—” Johanne protested.
“Have you read The Hammer?”
She nodded in animated fashion, and Jastrau finally looked over at her. Yes, now she looked dim-witted. He could not help smiling.
“You’re smiling, Ole,” she said sharply.
“Yes—because you’re so keyed up.”
“Doesn’t your husband ever talk with you about these things?” Sanders inquired slyly.
“No, he certainly doesn’t.”
“I suppose he’d say you wouldn’t understand,” Sanders said spitefully. Then, without waiting to see if the remark had struck home, he continued in a gloating tone, “Lord! How typical of our solid, middle-class menfolk.”
But Johanne disregarded the disdain in his voice and remarked naively, “No, as a matter of fact, he usually says that he’s the one who doesn’t understand such things.”
“You don’t say so,” said Steffensen with a grin. It was the only sound that had escaped him so far during the luncheon.
Jastrau laughed at the remark too.
But Sanders raised his voice and went on vehemently, “And incidentally, is there anything more ridiculous than our highly moral bourgeois indignation over the Communists’ concept of the equality of women? But the Communists didn’t have to introduce the idea. It goes back much farther in history.”
His words came with such precision that it seemed as if he were quoting, and Steffensen looked at him with distrust.
But Johanne only drew a deep breath and said calmly, “Ah yes—I suppose that’s true.”
“There’s no need for me to go on,” said Sanders, conscious of having made his point. “I don’t have to dwell on all the scandalous gossip here in Copenhagen which, incidentally, I’m not nearly so familiar with as—well, let’s say you and your husband.”
“No. That’s one of the penalties a journalist has to pay,” Jastrau said ironically.
Johanne’s brows, however, were furrowed with wrinkles of incomprehension, like water ruffled by a wind blowing at right angles to the current.
“But look,” she said in confusion, “at any rate, it’s wrong—this that the Communists are after. I’m convinced of it.”
Jastrau got up from his chair.
“Hadn’t we better have our coffee in the living room?” he asked.
“As you wish.”
Steffensen rose immediately and helped Oluf down to the floor. It was laughable, the way the two self-invited guests had made themselves at home. Sanders just as quickly began to make himself useful by piling up the dishes. And Johanne laughed.
In trying to get through the doorway to the living room at the same time, Jastrau and Steffensen suddenly found themselves shoulder to shoulder.
“Such a feast of ideas, what?” Steffensen drawled sarcastically. Jastrau shrugged his shoulders.
“I suppose,” Steffensen went on, “it’s a sort of substitute for wisdom.” Then, as if to give emphasis to his contempt, he flung himself violently down on the sofa.
“Bang!” shouted Oluf, who had come toddling along after the two grown-ups, neither of whom paid any attention to him. He ran to his father, tugged at the pocket of his jacket, and looked up at him with round, childish eyes. “Bang!” he repeated, in astonishment at the way Steffensen had precipitated himself onto the sofa.
“Yes. Bang!” Jastrau replied abstractedly.
“No, he shouldn’t do it that way,” exclaimed Oluf angrily, stamping his foot. “No, daddy!” Then he turned and suddenly ran into the kitchen.
But in a little while he came dashing back.
“Well, my little man—can’t you stand those two out there in the kitchen either?” Steffensen said rudely, but in a friendly tone.
“He talks so loud,” said Oluf, out of breath.
Simultaneously, they heard Sanders’s voice from the kitchen.
“A woman is a person in her own right—not just an object to be enjoyed. Wine and women—Luther—the man-of-the-world’s viewpoint.”
“Yes, he certainly does make a lot of noise,” said Steffensen, guffawing.
Oluf remained standing at the foot of the sofa, a lost look on his face. His moist lips were half open as if there were something he wanted to say—he did not know to whom, he was so perplexed.
“It’s no doubt difficult to be a little man,” Steffensen said comfortingly, but with a snort of laughter. He felt uncertain in the role of a gentle consoler. And Jastrau smiled sadly.
“Would you like to play with the man?” he asked, picking up the fetish.
Oluf stared at him in surprise. His eyes grew wide as two expanses of open sky and glistened in astonishment at the incomprehensible whims of grown-ups. Then they again became child’s eyes, human eyes, filled with wishes and desires, and he came running with hands extended.
“But handle him carefully. You must be good to him.”
It was as if he had suddenly felt compelled to make some great sacrifice for the sake of the boy—to give him something that he was afraid might be broken. For the youngster looked so much like a little outcast.
Oluf took the fetish in both hands and carried it to a corner of the room.
“The man,” he mumbled, enchanted.
Jastrau stood watching him for a little while. The recollection of the two blue, uncomprehending, boyish eyes remained with him. Then suddenly he said to himself,
“God knows if it was the wrong thing to do. He isn’t supposed to play with it.”
“Absolutely all wrong,” Steffensen said with a foolish grin. Jastrau shook his head in despair.
But then the coffee was brought in, and with it the discussion spilled over into the living room too—ardent discussion between Johanne and Sanders. Sanders’s expression was set in a confident smile, befitting the experienced debater that he was. Johanne exhibited a profusion of deranged hair, flushed cheeks, and wet, glistening, mobile lips. Jastrau was swept aside into the background, where he finally found himself a chair. From this position he could keep an eye on the fetish, and that was at least some comfort. He felt a certain amount of anxiety about it.
“Isn’t it crazy, Ole?” said Johanne, laughing and brushing the golden hair back from her forehead. “Isn’t it insane that I have to listen to such talk here in my own house—and that I don’t even get furious about it?”
Sanders assumed a stiffly revolutionary position in his chair.
But suddenly Steffensen bellowed from the sofa, “Hear! Hear! Long live the revolution!”
“You mean the destruction of everything,” Sanders snarled.
“I mean the revolution, damn it!” growled Steffensen.
“There, Herr Sanders—don’t you see how ridiculous it sounds, all this about revolution?” said Johanne.
“Yes, when it comes from him,” was the curt reply.
“No, when it comes from you, too,” Johanne insisted. “Don’t you understand? Here we walk along Vesterbrogade and Strøget every day, and the very idea that a revolution is going to break out in the streets here—”
“You’re right, Johanne,” said Jastrau from his place in the background.
“Yes, am I not?” she exclaimed, turning in her chair, glad to receive support.
“Yes, we know all that,” Steffensen broke in with a sneer. “It’s something that happens only in Russia. It can’t happen here in our lovely Denmark. But, by God, it can!”
“No,” objected Jastrau, shaking his head gloomily. “No, it can’t.”
He did not know whether he wanted to go to the trouble of saying more, but nevertheless he went on:
“I’ve been through it. I’ve seen it happen. A revolution in Denmark will be drowned—in laughter.”
Havoc Page 9
