“Yes, my head is still swimming. But I guess I ought to pull myself together and get something done. I’m still pooped from last night.”
Steffensen grinned. “And I suppose I’d better clear out.”
“Oh, you might as well stay for the time being. Johanne won’t be back right away.”
They moved into the living room. Jastrau took a book from the stack of review copies and began to cut the pages. Steffensen sat on the sofa, picked up one of Jastrau’s writing pads, and in a moment was busy drawing profiles and writing.
Jastrau was at loose ends. His thoughts were as unsubstantial as a cloud of dust. He found it impossible to understand how Steffensen could settle down to work so easily and calmly. Could it be that he had no hangover? He sat there sketching, sketching, sketching as if in a trance. Then, with a sudden start, he would write a line or perhaps an entire stanza. Jastrau told himself that he, too, had better get something done. Concentrate on the book that he had to review. Oh, to be able to produce again! He found himself unable to concentrate. How long it had been since he himself had written a book! Now it was always someone else’s book that was waiting to be read and reviewed. And there was always a bill that was falling due. Bills! Just the thought of a bill that any moment might be shoved in through the mail slot—wasn’t it enough to corrode a person’s spinal cord? And the bill would have to be paid. One paid a penalty for being a respectable citizen.
And there, over on the couch, sat Steffensen, a big rawboned figure who had not the faintest idea of where he would sleep the next night. He had time and space to sit in, and that was all he needed. He could sit down and write wherever he was. Here and now.
Then the telephone rang.
Yes, that was the way it always was. There stood that apparatus, right in the middle of his room, and it rang every minute of the day. And then it was good-bye to all dreams and thoughts.
“Yes, hello? Ole Jastrau speaking.”
He heard his brother-in-law’s voice. “Listen—you must excuse me for calling—but after all it’s my sister you’re married to. And I couldn’t help feeling—I couldn’t help feeling all the time I was up there with you . . . A person has certain sensibilities, you know, and can understand things even though they aren’t made plain in so many words. Do you know what I mean?”
“No,” Jastrau said curtly.
“No—I don’t suppose so. I wanted to have a word with you in all seriousness, but I didn’t have a chance with that lout you had up there. I imagine he’s still there. But I want to tell you that he has a bad influence on you. I could notice it. You weren’t at all yourself today. And then I had a talk with Johanne about it, and she told me what my own sensibilities long ago led me to think. And I want to say to you that it won’t do in the long run. A home is a home. And you can’t have that sort of vermin living with you. You owe your wife—my sister—a certain amount of consideration. And me too. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes—you’re right—you’re right.” Jastrau’s face was contracted in a bitter frown.
“Well, that’s why I called. I thought I’d tell you, even though you’re older than I am. It’s really just between two brothers-in-law, you know. And then—maybe now I’m being indiscreet—but aren’t you boozing too much? After all, you’re a married man, and I’m not. And she’s my sister—”
Jastrau hung up.
The phone rang again.
“Let it ring,” Jastrau said to Steffensen. “It’s only that horse who likes to think.”
They sank back in their chairs.
But Jastrau could not pull himself together. The white pages of the book shimmered before his eyes. It was the whiskey he had drunk the day before. There was also a certain instability in the objects around him, an animation that seemed to lurk in them and then suddenly dissolve everything in his line of vision into a hallucination. No, it was impossible to sit still. He was also conscious of an insidious restlessness in his rear end that made it necessary for him to get up and pace the floor. Go for a drive! Something had to happen. Here, in the daylight, he had the nagging feeling of being an outcast.
“If only the sun would set soon,” he sighed.
“Why?” asked Steffensen. He had obviously finished his poem, because now he sat humming a tune he had composed himself, one that was presumably meant to correspond to the length and meter of the verses he had written.
“I wish it would get dark. The darkness calms a person down. What do you say we go out?”
“Yes, let’s get out of here. She’ll probably be back soon.” Steffensen folded the sheet with his poem on it and put it in his pocket.
A little later they were strolling diagonally across Vesterbro Passage and past the obelisk of the Freedom Statue, which shone with a dull luster the color of old chocolate. The sun hung in a glowing afternoon haze above Vesterbro’s rooftops, and even though Jastrau and Steffensen had their backs to it they were dazzled by the flickering light from the car windscreens and bicycle handlebars—a constant stream of glistening glass and nickel that blinded them just as the traffic light changed at the corner by the Wivel Restaurant.
They went on into Vesterbrogade.
“You don’t have to go up to the paper?” Steffensen asked.
Jastrau looked up at Dagbladet’s red building. He caught sight of Vuldum through one of the windows on the second floor. The sunlight shone on his red hair as on a piece of metal. There was a consuming intensity about the pale night-denizen that reminded Jastrau of a flame burning in daylight.
“Not on your life!” he replied vehemently.
And they walked along farther toward the Bar des Artistes.
When its dark-red portieres had finally closed behind them, and the semidarkness and the drone of the phonograph had engulfed them, they felt as if they had been precipitated headlong into another element. To be sure, the clock hung over the bar and indicated the time. But it was another thing entirely—like a clock in a moving picture, telling time for the actors in the film rather than for the spectators.
“Ah—now the sun has gone down,” said Jastrau, puffing and sitting down at one of the nearest tables.
“What’ll we have?” Steffensen asked gruffly.
“Peace, peace,” sighed Jastrau. “Now we’ll sink deeper and deeper out of sight. It’s always night here, and there’s always the sound of music. You don’t get a chance to feel there’s such a thing as emptiness. Now we’ll very quietly—and very slowly—go to the dogs.”
Up at the bar sat a group of well-dressed men—businessmen who always, about five o’clock, came in for their drink. Lundbom was all smiles. He felt honored, because these were “nice people.”
But the round table, where Kjær and Little P. usually sat, was deserted.
Steffensen began to stuff his pipe.
“Hi there, waiter!” Jastrau called out. “Two cocktails—French and Italian vermouth, half and half.”
The little waiter with the smile of a street urchin bowed.
“Oh hell!” exclaimed Steffensen. “Is that what you call going to the dogs?”
“Slowly—I said.”
Both of them lapsed into silence.
But Jastrau felt tormented. Why was he sitting here with this person who seldom said a word? He saw him in the light of his poem, of course. But he did not understand him. Spasmodically he would utter a word or two, then shut up like a stone and become impenetrable.
“May I see your new poem?” Jastrau asked.
“Oh, go soak your head.”
“Go soak your head?” It was an expression that had long ago gone out of fashion. Why had Steffensen used it? Did it indicate a crack in the mask of vulgarity he constantly wore? He usually insisted on using coarse language.
The lights were turned on in the room. It was evening, evening, and Jastrau felt it as a blessed relief. Now the sun was going down. No—someone drew the portieres aside, and the blue daylight spilled in. A glimpse of hurrying traffic. Six o’clock. People were
coming from work. Then the portieres were drawn shut again. Yes, now the sun was going down—thank the Lord. It was like the soothing effect of a beer. It calmed him down.
“Are you thinking of publishing a collection of poems?”
“I suppose I’ll have to. A collection of poems makes an ideal garbage can,” replied Steffensen.
They fell silent again.
But the silence grated on Jastrau’s nerves. The businessmen had left with a loud shout: “So long, old chap!” They were so British! And the place seemed deserted.
“I say, Lundbom, it looks sort of empty in here,” Jastrau said to the fat Swede, who had seized the opportunity to take his evening walk down as far as the red portieres.
“It usually is around six o’clock. But tonight there won’t be many people here—not after an election night.” Lundbom inclined his red moon-face to one side and screwed up his blue eyes knowingly. “They’re resting up tonight,” he said.
The phonograph had been turned off. Only the ventilator hummed, and even the tobacco smoke was being sucked out of the room.
Lundbom stood and smiled at them in genial, fatherly fashion. But soon it became evident that it was difficult to find a topic of conversation. The emptiness was audible, and the sound of the ventilator took on a symbolic significance. Emptiness. Emptiness! And suddenly the bulky, awkward figure—northern Europe’s most eminent man with a cocktail shaker—stood there in his own saloon looking very lonely, and his smile became one of self-conscious embarrassment.
“I think we’d better go into the restaurant and get something in the way of food,” Jastrau said suddenly, getting up from his chair. There was something about that embarrassed smile, a sick man’s fear perhaps, that must not be allowed to erupt. “But we’ll stay in the building, so we won’t say good-bye.”
Lundbom’s fat frame doubled up in an obsequious bow. For a moment, Jastrau thought of slapping him familiarly on the shoulder. But one could never tell about businessmen. Perhaps the awkward smile had no significance.
He walked over to the restaurant, followed by Steffensen.
There was a piano and some stringed instruments. And in the music a strong element of illusion. It made a person think he was having an experience. It made him feel as if he were playing the leading role in a film. The tone of the violin was somber, imbued with a note of the inevitability of fate. And underfoot was a carpet. You made such an impressive entrance. You saw yourself life-size in the mirrors, striding across the room. Impressive. And you caught sight of your own face so often that there could be no question about your being there.
After they had found a seat near a potted palm, Jastrau had to go to the phone booth and telephone home. Why? And why did he want to lie?
It was an interview, he told Johanne. A German aviator—something about a flight over the pole. Clever of him to think of that. At the moment, he was at the Cosmopolite Hotel. That was clever, too. It was unavoidable. He could not tell when he might get home. Yes, she was right—it was pretty late in the day to be letting her know. No, he couldn’t say when he’d be home. He’d pick up a bite to eat somewhere. Finally she hung up. His forehead was covered with sweat from standing in the stuffy phone booth.
When he came out into the light, his eyes seemed clouded over with a film. Was he sleepy? He had a strange feeling of remoteness. But it must be from the day before—his latest hangover.
“First we must have a couple of beers,” he said. “They’ll drown our hangovers.”
“Shalom aleichem,” Steffensen muttered solemnly, his eyes sparkling.
And so they sat over their beer and food for a couple of hours. Jastrau talked, and felt better. The violin set the tone of his mood. It was first subdued, then bombastic—now sentimental and melancholy, now a lively pizzicato.
Steffensen ate and drank with gusto, grinning and responding to Jastrau’s remarks with scatological monosyllables.
But deep down inside him the conversation grated on Jastrau’s nerves, and he felt compelled to order liqueur with the coffee. And cigars as well. For he had to pierce this fog of unintelligibility. It haunted him. He could not stop staring at Steffensen. But it was hopeless trying to entice a soul from a stone—a stone that seemed spattered with white bird droppings.
He chewed nervously on the end of his cigar. Before he knew it, his liqueur glass was empty. Now he was drinking faster than Steffensen.
“Now let me see that poem you wrote today,” he burst out suddenly, irritated and half-drunk.
“Like hell I will. But you can buy me a whiskey over at the bar. I don’t feel like sitting here any longer nipping at liqueur in the shadow of these flower pots.”
“You’re good at cadging drinks.”
They got up and strode through the restaurant. Again he was struck by the image of himself reflected in the innumerable mirrors. Steffensen with his hands in his pockets and his rolling seaman’s gait. In the mirror—now here, now there. And himself, with his little newspaperman’s belly and a nervous uncertainty evident in every step he took. A strange pair. They jostled each other like a couple of lovers who had gotten out of step.
The Bar des Artistes was deserted. Lundbom had prophesied correctly. People were resting up.
There was but one customer. He sat at a table near the bar and stared listlessly at a glass of Sandeman port. It was Journalist Eriksen.
“Is that you, Jazz?” he snarled between his teeth as he raised his troubled, bloodshot countenance and looked up at them. “Yes, it’s you all right, Jazz. Damned if it isn’t. Sit down, Jazz. I’m buying the drinks all around. And the young man with you. Sit down, damn it all! Don’t mind me—I’m only drunk, as usual.”
They sat down.
“What’s his name?” Eriksen asked, pointing to Steffensen and peering at him foggily.
“Steffensen.”
“Oh—Stefani?”
Jastrau and Steffensen both gave a start. “No, Steffensen.”
“Oh, then I must be wrong. Don’t you want some port, too? Ho skipper, where’s the mess boy? Tell him to bring a couple of glasses for these two strangers.”
Lundbom, who was standing behind the bar, bowed and smiled.
“Right away, Herr Eriksen—right away.”
“Ugh, how hideous it sounds. ‘Right away, Herr Eriksen—right away,’ ” Eriksen jeered, mimicking Lundbom. He inched forward over the table, like a creeping animal, until his wrinkled face almost brushed Jastrau’s nose. “It’s hideous, I tell you—hideous. And in a little while, it’ll be, ‘Now I think you’d better have a taxi, Herr Eriksen.’ And by then I’ll really be drunk, and all my money will be gone. The mercenary so-and-so—the money-grubber!” He raised an angry quivering fist and shook it threateningly.
But soon his fury subsided, and he seemed to collapse so that his clothes hung limply on him. It was as if a full sack had suddenly sprung a leak.
“I feel so down in the dumps today,” he sighed.
“He’s too tragic a figure,” Steffensen blurted out. “Hadn’t we better move on?”
“Tragic!” Eriksen sat up, and once again the sack was distended until his coat and vest fitted him snugly. “Tragic! Do you know what the word means? But you, Jazz—you understand. You’re a newspaperman—lock, stock, and barrel. Those nitwits up in the composing room! What do we have proofreaders for? People must think I’m an idiot. ‘A spoiled charmer!’ Did you read it, Jazz?”
“Yes.”
Steffensen’s eyes were now riveted on Eriksen. The glasses of port were brought to the table.
“Well, what’s all this about the spoiled charmer?” Jastrau asked.
Eriksen squinted at him distrustfully.
“Honestly, Jazz—what did you think when you read it?”
Jastrau shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a good description of him,” he said.
“No, that’s exactly what it isn’t.” He raised a trembling forefinger and shook it menacingly in front of Jastrau’s nose. “Stefani is a d
ecent person. And my copy read ‘heretical charmer.’* Ugh—it takes a lot of port to wash down a proof error like that. What must our readers think?”
Once again he sank back, limp and deflated. But Steffensen and Jastrau burst into laughter.
“Yes, you can afford to laugh,” Eriksen went on from his supine position. Both his forehead and vest were furrowed by innumerable wrinkles. “But he doesn’t deserve that sort of thing. He’s a decent fellow—”
“Really?” growled Steffensen.
Again Journalist Eriksen threw out his chest, blew himself up almost to the bursting point, and held his head high as a general’s. “Yes. I’m in a position to know,” he said. “I’ve traveled a lot by ship, and I know many seamen who’ve come to Aarhus and gotten free injections and all that sort of thing from him.”
Steffensen remained unimpressed. He sat with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out in front of him.
“Damned if I knew about that,” he said without showing much interest.
“There are many things you don’t know.”
“Well, he’s my father, so—”
Eriksen’s eyes opened wider. “Hmm,” was all he said. Then, paying no further attention to Steffensen’s remark, he said with a desperate intensity: “But you must be able to understand what I mean, Jazz. I write ‘heretical,’ and then up there they set it as ‘spoiled.’ And everything’s ruined—all that work.” He leaned his head disconsolately against his big fists and rocked back and forth. “Spoiled charmer—spoiled charmer! What nonsense.”
Steffensen leaned over as the boyish-looking waiter went by, and said, “Listen, Arnold, we’ve got to have some more port.”
Eriksen took his hands away from his head and directed a listless look at Steffensen. “Yes,” he said.
Just then the phonograph began blaring forth a high-pitched jazz melody, and Jastrau gave a sudden start. All his nerves and muscles were taut. “That’s right, Lundbom. Let’s have a little life in this empty room.”
He got up and with a clumsy dance step made his way to the bar to eat some salted almonds.
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