His wife! He could get a good long sleep before she came. He could relegate the whole thing into the background. To be sure, his body still ached from lying on the wooden bunk. It was still present in all its unyielding hardness. And there was still a strange feeling about his back, as if he did not have suspenders on.
He wandered aimlessly around.
What a noise a door can make when it bangs shut in an empty apartment! Out in the pantry there was nothing to eat. There was a very little bit of coffee in a tin. But how was it now that one went about making coffee? Ah yes, then the coffee bag would have to be rinsed out and all that. No, he simply wasn’t up to it. There was some butter in a paper, shapeless and runny because it had stood in the sun. A few slices of rye bread lay crumbled and dry on a plate. A knife he had used to butter bread with the day before still littered the kitchen table, along with a couple of dirty plates with eggshells and the remains of a herring on them. How conspicuous these inanimate objects were. Disorder and chaos. Persistently they forced themselves into his consciousness, and persistently he had to combat them, hold them down. And he could not—no, he could not—pull himself together enough to make up his mind whether the struggle was worth the trouble.
He picked up a piece of the dry rye bread and began munching on it. It was ridiculous. In a four-room apartment the man gnaws on a crust of bread. Was it because of laziness? No—it was that the world was so full of insuperable difficulties.
Go to bed. The light in the bedroom was dazzling. Forenoon light. No soothing shadows on the unmade bed, the crumpled sheets, the pillow with the two-day-old imprint of his head. Nothing soothing anywhere—not even down in the courtyard. Somebody was beating rugs there, and the sound of every blow bounced back and forth between the building walls as it rose toward the rooftops. Things assumed such a harsh, clear aspect during the forenoon—so clear that it would be a fateful mistake to look in the mirror.
Should he shave? No—the mirror. Ecce homo! No! On the other hand, he found himself able to take off all his clothes and let a wet sponge glide coolly over his entire body. This immediately made him feel farther away from the lockup. It was as if he had washed it away.
Naked, he crept into bed. Even though it was unmade, the effect was soothing. Down under the duvet. Shut out the dazzling sunlight that tormented him into the inner recesses of his soul—the glaring light of a hospital room. And now to disappear completely.
But down in the darkness he immediately became aware of a flickering, as if his eyelids were twitching nervously. Was he lying in a ship’s bunk, watching the light reflected through the porthole by the waves play on the ceiling? Yes, that was the way it seemed behind his closed eyes. But they were not white undulating waves that constantly seemed to wash over him; they were a golden bronze. And unfamiliar flowers seemed to be drifting on the water above him—incessantly.
He grew so restless that he had to rub his neck. His hand became drenched with sweat. Now he could feel it. The sweat actually dripped off his hand as he mopped his forehead. It felt as if his index finger had been dipped in sticky water. And it got worse yet. Sweat! Sweat! But that tormenting restlessness in his back was still worse. Was he lying on a torture rack? It was impossible to lie still. Besides, a feeling of vertigo was lurking in the back of his head. Something had fastened its grip on his neck. It was impossible to remain where he was.
The next thing he knew he was standing stark-naked beside the bed. Naturally he had forgotten to draw the blinds and of course a young woman was leaning out the kitchen window across the way. Well, that was her affair. Greetings to all good fellows from Peter Boyesen. Peter Boyesen greets all gay girls. A fat man’s jovial smile. That was how life should be lived.
Back into his clothes. Should he shave? No, he would leave that to a barber. Three kroner and seventeen øre. He would have to get an advance. The towel was wet after he had dried his forehead with it.
But some beer—that was it.
A little while later, he was sitting in a dive that he seldom frequented. He sat at a small square table near the window so he could look out into the street through the transparent curtains. And every time a woman walked by in the sunlight he felt a violent surge of excitement. He could not avoid following her with his eyes. If she had a good figure and shapely legs, then it was utterly disconcerting. It sent him into a frenzy, and he noticed how his lips went slack. But if there was no grace in her movements, if there was anything the least bit ridiculous about her, he felt a sense of relief.
And so he had to drink. It calmed him down. Perhaps it was only an illusion, because when he drank beer the sweat evaporated from his brow. Over at the counter, the waiter was apparently calming himself in the same way.
But it was an empty world. A billiard table, a blackboard with some figures written on it with chalk, a rack of cues, a spittoon, sand on the floor, all like a stage set after a performance—lifeless and without meaning.
Suddenly the waiter caught sight of the figures on the blackboard and went and erased them.
“Oh, that bitch,” he mumbled. This was all that occurred.
Jastrau suddenly made up his mind that he did not want to stay longer, for the waiter was purple in the face, and a slight tremor of his thick lower lip suggested that he might express himself in greater detail concerning the female in question.
Jastrau got up, paid, and left.
Out in the street, however, it was as if a veil had been drawn aside. Now he no longer observed the women through a curtain. Still, he could not—simply could not—refrain from watching their legs, from indulging in fleeting fantasies, from stopping and turning to look. It was as if he were suffering from a disease that he could not hide. From behind the curtain, he had watched uneasily, reluctantly, and now here in the street he had just as little control over himself, despite the fact that everybody could see him. He discovered female legs at long, long distances, far down a side street perhaps, and then he would have to stop to watch. He might suddenly turn into the side street and take up the chase. There in broad daylight. Zigzagging along through the streets. It was intolerable—like a nightmare, but lacking the mollifying haziness of a dream.
He had no inkling of how long he roamed about that section of Vesterbro. It seemed he could not get away from it. So many women came hurrying along the street about whom a man couldn’t be wrong. But each one was carrying a jug of cream or a box of coffee cake. And there were other women as well. Yes, he might well make a mistake. Young housewives. Servant girls with a shopping basket, or a jug of cream. A coherent world, and people with many purposes in mind. While he—here in the glaring daylight—still had the night in his blood and was preoccupied solely by night’s one prime desire.
Nevertheless, there was a dream-like element in all this reality. Otherwise, why did the tall drab buildings become invested with such significance for him? Their walls seemed to become transparent, and the rooms inside were filled with the same indistinct stuff that dreams are made of. He could not help examining them curiously. Furnished rooms and more furnished rooms—small hotels. The words had a magic power, like letters that one remembers while waking from a dream. And curtains. Majolica pottery. Everything was symbolic. He could not tear himself away from this quarter with its notorious rooming houses. No, the beer was no help against this form of disquietude. Was it that the damned whiskey altered one’s personality? A lustful warmth flowed through his entire body. There—a pair of flesh-colored stockings in a doorway. He had to stop. No—go on. It was insane. He went on. He passed the doorway. A werewolf who had slipped out into the light of day.
Up on Vesterbrogade, the streetcars glided quietly along with a low hum, yellow and prosaic, the sunlight flickering in their big windows, and their staid passengers sitting erect and shoulder to shoulder. It was a world he could not make his way into, as clear as an image reflected in water, but a world he could not enter. People hurrying here and there. And if he retreated back into that other world—the one it se
emed he had just come from—he discovered that it was already deserted and desolate. If he went into a low dive, it turned out to be empty. They were cleaning the place up. If he sauntered into a better bar—the Orient or whatever it might be called—it was a mistake. The colored tinsel, the Chinese lanterns, and the portieres looked tawdry and covered with dust. The waiters rubbed their eyes sleepily, yawned, and seemed out of sorts. Everything there was so overdone.
And so he decided he would rather keep walking along Vesterbrogade. To be sure, he had to walk at a pace different from that of these daytime people. His feet were sore from all his wandering about. But if only he could keep himself from being enticed down the next side street by a glimpse of a silk-clad leg far, far away on the sidewalk or cutting across the street—a flesh-colored symbol of hope that beckoned him from, say, way down near Halmtorvet. If only—
Once the sun went down, he knew there would be peace again. Evening would bring recovery. But that was still many hours away, many sunlit hours, and he had to keep trudging on through them, driven by anxiety and restlessness. He wondered if that was the way things were when one had committed a crime. Was it like a guilty conscience? But he did not have a guilty conscience. It was a physical phenomenon—all that whiskey in his system. That was the trouble. But it was confoundedly like a sickness of the soul.
Jastrau got himself a shave in a barber shop that he picked at random. He edged himself into the chair, but did not look in the mirror. Ecce homo! When he leaned back to let the barber scrape his chin, he again noticed the sensation of emptiness and vertigo in the hollow of his neck, but nevertheless he had to keep from moving. It was nearly impossible. His heart began to thump. Then he experienced that unpleasant fantasy that many modern men go through—a neurasthenic form of terror. It was the sight of the long, lethal razor glinting in the sunlight and the indulgent way the barber smacked his lips that filled him with apprehension. Luckily, he escaped unscathed.
Afterwards Jastrau went up to Dagbladet and drew an advance of a hundred and fifty kroner. A dark-haired young man opened the ledger and glanced obliquely at the account. “Are you starting this now, too?” he remarked in a mournful tone. Whereupon Jastrau raised his own voice a sniveling octave higher and became ashamed of himself when he heard how unnatural it sounded. But he did get the money.
Then once again he was home in the deserted apartment. A bill had come from a fire insurance company. He might just as well go and pay it at once. Then it would be over and done with.
He stood for a moment with the bunch of bank notes in his hand. Thoughtfully he riffled through them as if turning the pages of a book, then suddenly went and placed a hundred kroner in a drawer and slammed it shut. Turning on his heel, and with the rest of the ten-krone notes dangling casually from his hand, he went out the door, down the stairs, and was on his way.
Then there was the insurance company’s office. The glare of sunlight through the big windows. Glass. Glass. Glass. Typewriters glistening. The office girls’ hairdos, that gleamed like halos in the sunshine. The gleaming white pages of the account books, over which the light danced like a bluish liquid flame. And the bright luster of the waxed floors. Shiny, glaring surfaces. A complicated perception of space, as in a cabinet of mirrors. And everything in full swing, with a movement that could only be sensed, not felt or seen. He paid the premium on the policy with a feeling that a part of his self was groping around in a new dimension.
How his brain was whirling!
Should he go now to the Bar des Artistes or some other place where there was a salutary dusk at four o’clock in the afternoon? The portieres close behind one. Gone is the sun. The noise of weekday traffic is far away, as unreal as the sound of stage props being shifted behind a lowered curtain. The tempo of things is altered. A phonograph plays a slow, subdued fox trot. The tinkling of glasses. The crunching of ice in the shining shaker. Cool atmosphere. The hum of the ventilator. People relaxing.
But he knew if he went he would stay for ten hours.
No, he was reasonable and went instead to a temperance restaurant to get something to eat. Naturally, the restaurant faced the courtyard, and with its pillars and balcony resembled a clubroom in a country town. Here there was no conversation. Instead, people read the newspapers. They all looked like solid citizens with no nonsense about them—hard-working young people with uncomplicated minds, clear eyes indicative of sobriety, pale noses, and dark suits too short in the sleeves. Young girls with hairdos and school insignia, or with their hair parted in the middle. Industrious girls, with opinions. And with sensible shoes. Ladies with long watch chains and curly hairs protruding from their chins. Pince-nez glasses. A distinct air of morality. And no sunshine. No reflections from mirrors. No embellishments. Nothing but a clean, neutral light.
Should he wait there until the sun went down?
He read all the papers. He drank rather too much of the tax-free near beer—more than was seemly in such a place. He drank it off in large draughts. And when he ordered another bottle with his meal, he smiled at the waitress as if being in a temperance restaurant was a great joke. But she did not understand.
Nevertheless, he managed to sit there for a long time, and this was fortunate, because if he went out on the street it would be too easy to run into people he knew, and in that case he would too easily fall into free drinks. It would be unavoidable. There was always someone out there volunteering to set them up.
When he finally left, the outlines of Vesterbrogade’s buildings were fading in the twilight.
Couldn’t he go home now, draw the blinds, and lie down and sleep? His feet were so tired. He felt weak and exhausted. It seemed that he was dragging one foot after the other and that his knees were buckling. But there was twilight in the eyes of the women he saw. The sound of the traffic lingered so long in the air. There was space and noise. A subdued sound of effervescent laughter came so comfortingly from the throng of people ahead of him.
He passed a woman in a brown suit. She was standing at the edge of the sidewalk. The shoes beneath the light-colored stockings were primly placed—one right next to the other. She had a certain air about her. Was she propositioning him?
He turned and went back, brushed closely by her. Their eyes had hardly met. But he had a feeling of inevitability. He must go ahead with it. And it had to be her. He was not going to trudge on any farther. Otherwise—yes, he was sure of it—he would walk until his feet were black and blue, staring at women and deciding first that he would, then that he wouldn’t, and walking on and on until ready to collapse. It had to be her.
He nodded to her, then slowly walked on and turned the corner. As he did so, he brushed by her closely. He looked down at her. Yes, she carried herself well. Her features were broad and rather vulgar. But her dark eyes had depth.
“Well?” she said softly.
“How much?” he asked, staring straight ahead.
“Ten,” she said in the same quiet voice.
He nodded, and they quickened their pace.
Now he could not possibly turn back. It would be too ridiculous. There she was, walking along beside him and keeping in step with him. The decision had been made. The common tempo of their steps had a fateful significance, he thought. The same withholding of the breath as when one looks at the second hand of a clock and realizes the significance of every sweep of the hand.
They exchanged a few words about the weather, but otherwise they were strangely silent and remote from each other.
“Do we have far to go?”
“No, it’s right nearby. I’m staying with my sister.”
Why did they always surround themselves with an aura of family life, these women? It was one of those respectable remarks that were so typical. Perhaps it represented their ideal.
He could not help smiling. But then he suddenly looked at her. He should at least know what she looked like. She had black hair. Prominent cheek bones beneath her eyes. Her mouth was broad and firm, but the nose was plebeian. It
seemed that he had seen her before.
“You look familiar to me,” he said.
“Me? No. I don’t live here in town,” she replied casually.
They stopped outside of an old building with stone steps and a cellar-way. On the somewhat elevated first-floor level was a stamp dealer’s shopwindow before which, as a boy, he had stood on tiptoes to look at the wonderful stamps from Bosnia and Herzegovina at the risk of tumbling into the cellar. One encountered memories everywhere in this city, he thought to himself. It was annoying.
“Come on, then.”
And she hurried on ahead of him.
He watched her back as she went up the stairs. He might as well take an interest in what she looked like. His face felt flushed. Yes, he was excited, but at the same time so indifferent that it was almost depressing. She had a full, white neck. Yes, he was sure he had seen that before.
She lived in one of the old Copenhagen apartments with small square rooms and low ceilings. On the door was a nameplate: “E. Kopf, Pharmaceutical Graduate.” That was puzzling. But inside everything was obvious enough. A sofa was placed diagonally in one corner. Everything, the wallpaper and the transparent curtains, had small patterned designs. A picture of a woman in an Empire-style dress and a man reclining blissfully under a tree in nature’s lap hung on the wall. Of course, it had a gilded oval frame. Oval!
“Well, this is where I live,” the girl said.
“It’s very nice,” Jastrau replied, looking around. He was touched by the oval picture. But as he looked at it he was interrupted.
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