And the two young girls passed the little red tips of their tongues over their painted lips and signaled to each other.
“It’s nice that I’m staying,” chirped Little P.
But it was no longer the polite Little P. who now clung amiably to him. Now it was two soft, restless girls. Not the ones who were dancing. Two others. And there was a stirring of female hips, female breasts, hands, and knees.
“Oh—one gets to be a person here with you,” Jastrau exclaimed, hugging them both. “One gets to be more than a person.”
But why didn’t that one there—that one there, Caja—kneel before him and anoint his foot? From an alabaster vase. With spikenard or some other perfume. Why this waste? And then wipe it dry with her long hair. Ha ha. No, with her short, her wiry, her bristly bobbed hair.
Feminine warmth. Human warmth. One is a friend of man when he holds a woman close. Is he not? He becomes—the son of man.
Girls. Women. Much shall be forgiven. For his love was so great.
Whiskey—forever and ever!
He found himself standing in semidarkness. Poor light. In a toilet down in the basement. He washed his hands. Why did his hands always look as if he had been crawling about on the ground? And then he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Pudgy. Pale. Puffy, crimson lips in a sallow face. Dark hair plastered against his forehead.
A man. Behold the man! Your damned Mongolian mug! Ecce homo!
3
“THERE’S a high-class fellow in there next to us—a theologian.”
The voice was gruffer than all the others in the confusing chatter. Remnants of dreams and indistinct memories drifted away, and then Jastrau lay in the darkness, awake. There was a pain in his shoulder. His legs were askew as if he had fallen and remained lying in an awkward position. One ear and cheek felt strange. They seemed to be pressed against something hard and flat. He twisted around to get into a more comfortable position and discovered he had his clothes on. They seemed loose around the back of his neck, and he felt a draft under his collar. Where was he?
A wooden bunk. A sloping block of wood, covered with oilcloth, for a pillow. He had something over him that felt like a horse blanket.
“Are you awake, theologian?” he heard the voice say. It came from the other side of a wall.
Jastrau muttered something and felt around with his hands. They easily reached to the floor. It was stone.
“Pretty swell accommodations here, what? But expensive as all hell. Now tell us—what did you do?”
Jastrau snarled.
“All right, cut it out. You needn’t get snotty. You were stewed, and so was I. But what the hell—as long as you didn’t slug a cop it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh-h-h!” someone else behind the wall groaned.
“Yes, you’re really in trouble, but why did you have to do it?”
“Oh-oh—my nose!” came the moaning answer.
“Ha ha. What’s the matter? Can’t you find it?” asked the talkative one.
“Ye-s, but damn it, it’s all out of shape. If only I could see if it’s bleeding.”
“Ah—ha ha.”
“Yes, damn it, it’s easy enough for you to laugh. Ouch! Ou-ch! They beat me up all over.”
“You could have stopped before they clobbered you, God damn it. And hitting a cop—they’ll give you the works for that. Just ask the chaplain next door.”
“I’m not a minister, confound it!” Jastrau shouted in exasperation as he sat up. He had no idea where he was. A narrow beam of light came in through a grated window above the head of his bunk.
“What the hell are you then, since you lie in your sleep jabbering about Jesus? Damned if I thought anybody except ministers did that. And here I lay listening quietly, all the time thinking to myself that that’s how ministers sleep. Listen, you with the rubber nose, this fellow next door says he isn’t a minister. What the hell is he, then? Whatever he is, he’s a pious so-and-so.”
Dark as it was, Jastrau was aware that he was blushing. He could feel a sickening flush creeping over his cheeks. He had been lying here in the lockup prattling in his sleep about Jesus. He cowered back in his bunk again. He did not want to think. But what did it all mean? Where was—who was it? Ah yes—Steffensen. Yesterday. Little P. And he had been talking in his sleep about Jesus. As a glimmer of recollection dawned on him, he felt slimy all over. In a barroom with two girls in his arms, and then that warm, erotic feeling of benevolence toward the girls. Slop! Jesus among the whores. Well, that was the faith of his childhood filtering through. A muddy trickle it was—polluted with whiskey and bawdiness, and a tepid mixture of sentimentality, humanitarianism, and Christianity as well. Ecce homo!
And he could not sleep. His entire body was contaminated. His clothing constricted him, and there was a voluptuous sensation of pressure. Should he ask?
“Listen, you in there,” he shouted toward the wall. “Where can a person urinate here?”
“Ha ha, you can tell he’s an educated fellow. All right, I’ll tell you. There’s a hole in the floor, and you can piss into that.”
Jastrau got up and felt his way through the darkness with his feet. Where? Where was it? As he inched forward, he felt a cool draft on his hind quarters and was aware that his pants were slipping down. He grabbed them and hitched them up and felt his shirttail creeping up under his vest. What was this? His vest. Buttoned wrong. And his suspenders—where were they?
This was disastrous. Where were his suspenders? He must have sunk low indeed, to be standing there and losing his pants.
Then he remembered. They took the suspenders away from everyone so they would not hang themselves in the cell. At least so he had heard. But he had never thought about what it signified. His necktie was also gone. His pockets were empty. No knives. No sharp instruments. The vein in the wrist. Such preposterous things did happen.
Jastrau cringed. He shivered as he accomplished his mission. There he stood, his shirt creeping up behind and his pants still slipping down. It was impossible to regain his composure. He felt crumpled. Tossed onto the rubbish heap.
“Well—that helped, didn’t it?” Jastrau did not answer.
“You could at least say thanks, couldn’t you?”
But he made no reply. He was thinking of his suspenders. That anyone had dared take them from him—tamper with him in such a way and then leave him to himself with nothing to hold up his pants! Shivers ran up and down his back. Shame. Indignation. Futile rage. The pants kept slipping down.
He felt his way carefully with his feet. Yes, there was the bunk. Nothing but a raised step. He flopped down on it. It was difficult to shiver on such a hard surface. It was impossible to hide his head with such an oilcloth pillow or to conceal himself under the short horse blanket. Should he take off his shoes? One thing he knew—he wanted to lie down. That way his pants stayed in place. Oh, if he could only fade out of the picture, fall asleep.
In the cell next to him they kept talking. Should he try to be pals with them? Make some crude remark on their own level? Yes, that would be just lovely. Feeling the spirit of Christianity welling up in him as he sat wedged between two girls in a bar and experiencing a sanctimonious sense of comradeship in a jail cell. Slop!
Just then he became aware of a reddish light and heard a rustling of keys. He raised his head. Yes, someone with a light was coming down the stairs. He could see the light through the grating. A grated door. As in a cage. One could stand outside and look in at the animals.
“Oh, couldn’t I get a drink of water?” someone groaned in the next cell.
“Yes, just wait a bit,” a gruff voice answered.
Meanwhile, a key was inserted, the grated door swung open, and the man with the light approached him. The light dazzled Jastrau so that he had to rub his eyes. He could distinguish only the shadowy outlines of a large man.
“Well, have you managed to sleep it off?”
“Uuhh.”
Jastrau raised himself on one elbow like one of t
he damned in hell. He recalled a picture he had seen—Jesus in the kingdom of the dead. There it was—Jesus again. Why was everything so obscured in a fog of impurity?
“Yes, we had a bad time with you. We couldn’t get you to tell us who you were. Not a word out of you. But we have to have your name. You see, we have to phone the national registration office before we can let you go.”
Jastrau gave the necessary information. “But tell me,” he said, “what did I do?”
“I don’t know. Nothing very serious. But that fellow in there”—the shadow behind the light nodded toward the wall—“it will go hard with him. As usual, it’s this liquor—this liquor. Why can’t people drink moderately?”
He stamped on the stone floor in indignation, so that the light wobbled and the square, dimly illuminated room began to rock.
“Carousing and tomfoolery,” he said impatiently.
Then he shuffled off again, rattled a tin cup, and went into the next cell.
“Well, I must say you’re a pretty sight,” Jastrau heard him mutter in a shocked tone of voice. “What do you think your mother would say if she saw you now?”
“Ha ha. With that schnozzle? Damned if she would be able to recognize him.”
“What’s that? Who asked you for your two cents’ worth?”
“Nobody, God help me—nobody.”
The cell door was slammed shut, and the light disappeared up the stairway again.
The sound of the lock turning in the door and the receding rattle of the bunch of keys made Jastrau feel desperate. Prison noises, they were. And at the same time a wave of inexplicable anger surged through him. He was imprisoned. He alone. Everybody had deserted him. Steffensen. All the others—the waiters, the bartender. They had let him down. Otherwise he would not have found himself lying here. It was cowardly of them. But perhaps it was he who had left them. Perhaps they did not know where he was. All the same, it was cowardly. He would get revenge. And suddenly he felt convinced—yes, there was no doubt about it—that the police had been rude to him. Hadn’t they? Otherwise, why would such a feeling of indignation be welling up out of his subconscious? They had been stupid. He knew them, the lubberly beasts! How often had he not witnessed their contemptible insolence toward a drunken man? The way they suddenly grabbed the culprit by the arm and barked, “Come on now, get a move on!” Yes, he knew how it was. He had seen it so often. And, of course, that was the way they had treated him. If only he could remember it—remember exactly how they had behaved. It would be enough to send him into a fury. But it was all darkness—nothing but darkness. Nothing to remember. Nevertheless, that was how it had been. And they would be exposed—yes, they would. He would not let himself be removed from his cell. He would refuse—yes, refuse—to let himself be turned loose. They would not be allowed to get out of it so easily. He would remain there where he was. He would be obstinate about it. And there would be a scandal. An investigation. An uproar in the newspapers. It was certainly not very comfortable there. But what of it? It was a fine thing—lying on a wooden bunk. It was good for a person. One became hardened by it.
He was imprisoned. The thought was like something constricting his brain—like cords being drawn tighter and tighter around it.
Should he get up and begin pacing the floor of the cell? The prisoner’s march. Wasn’t that what it was called?
Then he noticed the gray wall. Had it grown so light? He made out a small, cheery pencil scrawl: “Greetings to all good fellows from Peter Boyesen.” And beside it, a heartfelt observation: “Always drunk. Always drunk.”
It had the effect of a ray of sunshine on the bare wall. It was like a fat man’s smile. Take it easy now, Jastrau thought, take it easy—the whole thing is really quite comical—a joke. Greetings to all good fellows from Peter Boyesen!
Jastrau stared at the writing with a feeling of affection. Greetings to all good fellows from Peter Boyesen!
What a lilt to the words. Such a nice, quiet lilt. A little drunken exclamation maybe. Always drunk. Always drunk. No, that he did not understand. It might have been written in exultation. Or perhaps in penitence. But it too had a lilt to it. It was a genial, singing wall.
Again there was a rattling over by the door. No light this time. Ah—the day was dawning. Why did his thoughts take such a poetic form? The day dawning.
“You can go now,” said a voice.
And from the next cell: “Uh—the lucky dog!”
Jastrau cheerfully got up, but his pants immediately began to slip down about his knees. He had forgotten about them. He stuck his hands into the pockets to keep himself together. But his composure had vanished. He shuffled across the floor like a bum. Up a stone stairway through semidarkness. Into a large empty room. Some windows looked out on a courtyard where there was a yellowish-gray light. A dreary morning light.
Behind a counter sat a bearded man in a police uniform, glancing at a typewritten sheet of paper.
“Herr Editor Ole Jastrau.”
Jastrau stood before the counter, cringing. It was his pants that kept insisting on falling down. He felt guilty because they had taken his suspenders from him. And he was ripe to be photographed for the rogues’ gallery—profile, full-face, with a description underneath the picture—because he had no necktie.
“Your things are in there behind the screen. You can go now.”
“But—but—” Jastrau could not bring himself to ask questions.
“It wasn’t anything,” said the bearded sergeant. “Nothing to amount to anything—just disorderly conduct. Nothing much. You can pay the twelve kroner at the penalty office on Monday. No, it wasn’t anything.”
It was impossible to tell whether the repeated “It wasn’t anything” signified disappointment or reassurance. The beard was disarming, but the man’s gaze was as empty as the room with its counter, desk, and police posters on the wall. All a matter-of-fact morning dreariness.
Jastrau went behind the screen and found his suspenders and crumpled hat. In the hat lay his watch, fountain pen, wallet, a few letters, some Hungarian coins that he kept as good-luck pieces, and his money in a sealed envelope. Three kroner and seventeen øre was the notation on it in black ink. Was that really all that was left? He wondered how much money he had had when he left the apartment with Steffensen. The police had found three kroner and seventeen øre on him, but—
It was strange to see the contents of his pockets lying there. There was something indecent about it, as if his soul or his innermost secrets had been shaken out into a hat. In quick succession he stuffed the Hungarian coins into his left vest pocket, the money into the right, placed his fountain pen in the left breast pocket, the watch in the right, got his soul into working order with its parts arranged as they should be, then raised his hat almost imperceptibly to the sergeant, walked across the room and down some steps, stood for a moment feeling faint and disoriented in a large doorway where there was a draft, did not know whether to turn to the right or left, spied some buildings to the right, framed by the doorway, recognized them despite the strange frame in which they appeared, and slipped out into the early morning as casually as if coming out of Copenhagen’s monumental courthouse was an every-morning occurrence for him.
The sunlight was brilliant, but the houses still looked gray.
A moment later he was walking along Strøget. But this morning it seemed as if something were wrong with the buildings. They were not really where they belonged. And yet, he knew them well, knew them as they appeared at virtually every hour of the day—at six o’clock in the morning when the Town Hall Square lay flooded with light before the entrance to dark Frederiksberggade, at twelve when the sun was directly over the street and bareheaded office workers ran across to a café during the lunch period and hatless shop girls dashed out to do their own shopping, at four when the strollers along Vesterbro had the glare of the sun full in their faces or beating down comfortably against their backs, at six when the light was more subdued and the swarm of cyclists was at i
ts thickest, all on their way home to the suburbs, and then at evening and at night when it was as if Jastrau could read the hour by the tempo of the crowd and the brightness of the lights. But at eight o’clock in the morning—the hour it was now—everything seemed foreign to him. He was not familiar with things as they appeared in the forenoon light; the shadows fell differently. The office workers came cycling into town. He had been dumped out into the morning rush hour. He looked at their faces, fresh from a good night’s sleep but still expressionless. One cyclist after another rode by him. They gave the impression of wooden figures or gray shadows on a film, not yet animated to the point where they were actually alive, not yet filled with blood. How drab the world was, despite the glow of the morning sun and the flashing silvery-blue reflections from the bicycle handlebars. The intense light had an eerie effect. Even the brightest scene can seem dismal when one has been on an all-night spree. The light seemed morbid.
He nodded a greeting to a youngish member of the parliament who rode by, an energetic gray cyclist with a wooden face. He returned the greeting politely but with an air of abstraction—a mask saying hello to a mask. But perhaps it was the recollection of the unpleasant jail cell, the feeling of degradation that still rankled him, that made him regard the sunlit morning thoroughfare with all its gray human throng as something unreal, an empty wasteland. What did people know about him? Did they know where he had come from? And what did he know about them? Everything was disguised. What he saw was a curtain with pictures of buildings, shops, show windows, sidewalks, pedestrians, and bicyclists—a curtain drawn in front of reality.
When he got home to the empty apartment, he at first felt a sense of relief. Now the door was closed. No one could come in. The rooms were a big mask he had put on to hide his existence. And Johanne would not be home until the next day. That was fortunate. He would be able to sleep it off. It was not yet time to meet face to face. But there was the picture of his mother, that very young woman, and the one in a gilded frame of his boy with his moistened hair combed ridiculously down across his forehead. They stood on the bookcase, both of them, staring at him. They were faces too, and there was no way of knowing what they might see. He had to turn them toward the wall. For the moment they were more real than his absent wife.
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