“Let’s say fifteen. Then I’ll take off everything.” He knew it was a stock professional request.
He nodded.
After he had undressed, he noticed a string of amber beads around her neck. In the dim light admitted through the curtains, their cool, yellow color had a meliorating effect against the dull skin, somewhat as in a dream. She insisted on keeping them on, and Jastrau did not object. The bit of ornamentation made it easier to regard her as attractive. And for fifteen kroner he thought he was entitled to a little attractiveness—be it ever so little. He found her body nice and smiled at her. But it was a smile compounded of ardor and distress.
“My Lord, man, you seem to be embarrassed. I wouldn’t have thought it,” she said, laughing and giving him a playful twitch on the ear.
4
TODAY Johanne would have to come home, because that night they were to attend a party at Eyvind Krog’s. A full-dress affair—so late in the season. Almost the early part of summer.
But Jastrau was not able to think so far ahead. Johanne was coming. He had been alone so long. It was impossible to think beyond ten thirty. By that time he would be sitting in Dr. E. Rambusch’s waiting room. And then—
He walked along Strøget at a brisk pace, maintaining an erect carriage, but his face was flushed. And it was odd that he should recall that episode with Vuldum in the Bar des Artistes. Her broad, Slavic features—that was what he remembered. How was it now? Yes, a little, humble man in a skimpy jacket had come into the barroom with a basket of flowers. And three pink roses clutched in his hand.
“What makes you think you can sell flowers here? As you can see, there are no ladies in the place.”
It was as if he could hear Vuldum’s contemptuous remark right there amidst the swarm of people on the sidewalk near the Bernina. Each word rang sharp and clear, although it had happened more than a year ago.
A black dress. A fat white neck. A bit plump, in any event. Yes, it was she. It was she. What was it Vuldum had called her? Black—black something or other. Over on the other side of the street, under the linden trees in front of the Church of the Holy Ghost, Jastrau involuntarily began to walk faster.
“Can you think of anything worse than a sore covered over with powder?” Wasn’t that what he had said? Was Vuldum walking by his side? He thought he heard the words, the tone in which they were spoken, and he remembered his feeling of physical revulsion. Oh, if only it was today that Dr. Rambusch had office hours. Because it must be she. It was she. Black—Black Eva or Ellen—
Yes, it was she.
And suddenly he became so apprehensive that he could hardly get his breath. He gasped there in the sunlight. Ah—such lovely weather. Patches of sunlight on the pavement. The white bird-droppings that made the sidewalk look as if it had been sprinkled with lime. The sunshine. But it only tormented him. And that evening he would have to get into formal dress and engage in conversation. Drink and detention in the lockup, girls and the doctor and a fine, all hidden behind a white shirt front. Ecce homo!
Outside the house where Dr. Rambusch lived—it was discreetly tucked away in a side street—he looked cautiously around before going in. Oddly enough, all the windows in the adjoining buildings had a dull, unwashed look. It was, as a matter of fact, the rear of a row of impressive Copenhagen office buildings. They were politely turning their backs, and no one noticed him as he slipped in.
How fortunate! The doctor was having office hours, and a sign saying “Open” hung on the door. Inside the waiting room, which was drab and dreary, there was but one suntanned man who sat leafing absentmindedly through one of the large supply of old issues of the Family Journal. He had a blue anchor tattooed on the back of one hand.
Jastrau tried to regard him as disinterestedly as he could. A muttered acknowledgment of each other’s presence remained stuck in each man’s throat, so that it sounded like a grunt. Jastrau went and hung his hat on a many-pronged hatstand.
An ugly and forbidding hatstand stood bristling there in the corner as in a pub, much like the one in the parlor at Stenosgade. Yes, there was one of these hideous monsters wherever people went to seek help, like an old-fashioned instrument of torture, a wheel set upon a stake.
There was always the threat that the sentence would be pronounced, and with a barbaric, medieval severity. Of what use, then, was the modern spirit of humanity? None—none whatsoever. Everywhere, people sat around ugly tables, with nothing but calling-card bowls and old issues of the Family Journal to comfort the eye while they waited—waited.
A door opened and a doctor in a white smock appeared. From behind him the sunlight streamed into the waiting room, momentarily dissipating the semi-obscurity. The seaman got up and went in—to what? The darkness closed in again. And Jastrau himself? What would he be going in to in a little while? Nothing could be definitely established at the time. He was aware of that. But luckily, preventive measures could be taken. How expensive stupid actions could be. One ten-øre note foolishly spent whisked the next one away just as senselessly.
And then the door opened again. The seaman had a perturbed expression as he went by. Now it was Jastrau’s turn.
He was a florid man, this Dr. Rambusch. He looked freshly scrubbed and pink-cheeked in his white smock. His light-blond eyebrows gave him a roguish appearance.
“And you?” he asked, holding his scrubbed hands up to the light that came through the window. “What can I do for you?” The businesslike question immediately seemed to give Jastrau a feeling of reassurance. Now it would all be simply an impersonal, professional transaction that would soon be over.
“Well—it was just a stupid indiscretion.”
“The usual thing—yes, of course. How long ago was it?”
“Yesterday.”
“Well, then you came in time. We’ll soon get rid of the Bolsheviks. Now, won’t you please go in there and lie down on the couch of joy?”
And with a wave of his hand, he ushered him into a small room with a glass bench.
“Yes, that sort of thing is stupid,” Jastrau said more or less to himself as he lay down.
“Ah yes,” replied the doctor casually as he rolled a little wad of cotton on a thin stick.
Next, Jastrau felt a brief, corrosive pain.
“Always wise to put up with a little smarting while there’s still time,” the doctor remarked, smiling. “I’ve never known people to come back and complain of anything after this treatment.”
Everything was sunshine again. It was all so routine.
As he went back to the dark waiting room, he was followed by a beam of sunlight and a doctor in a smock so white that it had nuances of yellow and blue, and it seemed as if he had been purified by a stream of light. He completely forgot that the hatstand resembled an instrument of torture. Taking his hat, he went away with a feeling that was almost merriment.
Greetings to all good fellows from Peter Boyesen.
The sunlight dappled the leaves of the elm trees in Kongens Nytorv. In the distance the buildings had an airy look, and their colors stood out clearly. It was still forenoon. The sidewalk seemed fresh and fragrant. The windows in the buildings sparkled. And how relieved he felt. Now and then a little twinge of pain shot through him, and he straightened up as he walked. It was only something to laugh at. Greetings from Peter Boyesen! Wasn’t that the way a person should take things? A fat man’s radiant smile.
But think of it—he had lain there in his cell chattering in his sleep about Jesus. How long ago it seemed. Here in the sunshine it seemed a very long time ago—a dark episode out of his past. But why had the thought of Jesus begun to haunt him? Was it his visit to Stenosgade? No, it could not have been the swarthy little man who juggled ideas like knives—a kind of scholastic circus act. Had that made so deep an impression on him? No. Certainly not. And yet, perhaps. Had that dark-skinned priest cast a shadow over his thoughts? It was strange how everything took fast hold in one’s consciousness. Nothing was forgotten—nothing. But—greetings f
rom Peter Boyesen—
In a mood of singular euphoria, Jastrau strolled along Strøget, took a shortcut through some side streets, arrived at the newspaper office, went in a door and up a back stairway.
And suddenly it struck him how reluctantly he was entering the building. Now he felt like another person, at once more sluggish and more irascible. The present, actuality, reality were so inconstant.
It was dark in the vestibule and The Peristyle. After the brightness of day outside, it was like coming into a twilight. Only the door to the editor-in-chief’s office stood ajar, emitting a broad band of yellow light. Inside someone was coughing.
Jastrau went around behind the counter and was bending over to pick up some review copies of books that had been put aside for him when the door opened wide and Editor Iversen’s tall, stooped figure appeared.
“Well, if it isn’t Jastrau,” he exclaimed at once, staring at his paper’s reviewer with a preoccupied air. “I thought you had gone abroad—to Morocco.”
Jastrau leaned self-consciously against the counter. He sensed something subtle about the remark.
“No, Herr Editor, nothing like that,” he replied politely.
“Well, I really thought you had,” the editor drawled, staring vacantly out into the room. He seemed like a ghost there in that mortuary darkness after the sunshine outside. “Some place down among the Negroes, I thought. We never see anything of you up here at the paper.”
Now Jastrau knew what he was getting at. He was to be made invisible. It was the most propitious way of letting him know that he was in the doghouse.
“It’s impossible to get the literary page to press,” he protested irascibly. “It’s been lying up there in the composing room for more than three weeks. The copy is just gathering dust.”
He was brought up short by a brief, stabbing pain.
“For more than three weeks—do you really mean it?” the editor asked with a lethargic show of interest as he stroked his mustache. “Well, that’s a long time. And just think—now we’re going to have a radio supplement every week—every week,” he repeated dreamily. “That interests people.” Suddenly a trace of a smile appeared behind the drooping mustache, “It even interests the paper’s business manager. He listens to the radio—hee hee! As long as there are sound waves in the air, he’s completely crazy about it.”
He remained standing and staring at the floor. His tall, stooped figure shook with merriment.
“Hee-hee—he thinks they’re advertisements streaming in—from the angels.”
He looked at Jastrau, and there was a naively philosophical expression in his old, gray eyes.
“But there’s a future in it.”
And with a jerk he brought himself up erect.
“Anyhow, you ought to see to it that the literary page gets printed. Well, now—have a pleasant journey to Morocco.”
Slowly he disappeared into his corner room again. But for a long while afterward his presence could be felt in the atmosphere of the half-darkened room. Like a beast of prey, he left a scent in the air, a rank, ominous odor. It was impossible to get rid of it. Indignantly Jastrau shoved the books under his arm. His job on the paper would soon be over. That was what it meant. But he had, of course, known it for more than a year. Why did it have to be dragged out so long, keeping him on tenterhooks? He went out through the revolving door.
Didn’t anyone ever get fired from this paper?
And this was the way things had stood for a year. Even as recently as the previous fall, during the busy book season, he had entertained some slight hope of getting his feet on firm ground. But after New Year’s, the situation had again become as hopeless as ever—articles that lay for months without getting printed, hung on the spike, as the expression was, ideas that crumbled away, arrangements that came to nothing.
He thought for a moment of going into the Bræddehytte tavern and ordering a lunch with an ice-cold snaps to go with it. But then he remembered that he had to be careful with his money. He bought a couple of eggs, a few slices of rye bread, and a quarter of a pound of butter from the dairy store in the building where he lived, and went upstairs to a frugal noonday meal.
So there he sat. It was strange how a plate, a knife, and a fork messed up a table when it was not a woman who had put them there. No matter how neatly he tried to spread the tablecloth, it looked like a makeshift job.
A window stood open. The sun shone on the neighbors’ windows with their everlasting curtains. Curtains. A naked woman with a string of amber beads! Now Johanne must soon be coming home. Everything would slip into place as soon as he had seen her face and could tell that he had not given himself away. But he did not know whether he was strong enough. And tomorrow Oluf would come. That was good, because over by the window stood his play table, cluttered in such meaningless fashion with a couple of mechanical dolls, a duck on wheels, and a clamped box. In the long run the things there could be dangerous.
Inanimate objects like that with expressions. If they lay there too long untouched they might easily get religion and turn into symbols and mascots. In a corner stood a big, dangerous-looking birch rod of the kind that children used to wake up their parents on Shrove Monday, with a cut-out picture of a Christmas elf adorning its top. It could make Jastrau feel positively bashful. A good thing that Oluf would come home tomorrow and toss all the stuff onto the floor.
Through the open window he heard a noise. A car door slammed shut. And from the deserted street came a clear voice: “Well, good-bye then, Sis.” It was his brother-in-law, Jastrau thought scornfully without moving from the table. But then he heard another voice, tender and lingering: “Good-bye, frue, and thanks for your company.” The blood rushed to Jastrau’s head. Yes, he recognized that ingratiating voice that seemed to curl itself about the ear and tickle it. It was Joachim Michelsen. Her girlhood sweetheart. She had not mentioned that he would be along on the excursion up to her brother’s summer house near Tisvilde. No, she had not.
Quietly he put down his knife and fork, and stared—stared over at the neighbors’ white curtains. They became like flames in daylight, and without his being aware of it they flamed up in his thoughts. They became his thoughts.
“Well, so there you are,” exclaimed Johanne. She stood before him, fresh and red-cheeked. A hat that resembled a hood fitted tightly over her hair and ears, so that her face had a bare look. Her eyes had watered in the wind during the automobile ride. The reddishness, the rabbity characteristics were quite conspicuous.
Jastrau sniffed, inhaling the fresh air that emanated from her clothing. It cooled him off for a moment.
“Well, how did things go?” Johanne went on, taking off her hat, so that her hair lay about her head like an unruly golden haze.
“Oh, all right.”
She spoke with such a cool aloofness. The look in her eyes gave the impression that she did not yet feel really at home in the room.
“How dreary and dusty it looks here.” She looked around like a stranger while Jastrau sat leaning forward and watching her. “Things certainly do need straightening up here. Ah, yes,” she added, yawning and stretching her arms, “so here I am, back to the old humdrum existence.”
“Are you bored already?” Jastrau asked in a tone of bitterness.
She turned suddenly and faced him. That tight-fitting jacket and her unruly hair. Yes—a real amazon.
“Right away you start making a fuss.” There was a trace of vulgarity in her voice, and a cynical tightening of the lines of her well-rounded chin betrayed her annoyance.
“Wasn’t it rather lonesome up there?” he asked, watching for her reaction.
“Why? We had a phonograph along while we were down by the water. That way one never gets bored.”
“No, nature is wonderful,” Jastrau drawled ironically. A sharp little pain shot through him.
“Oh, you’re unbearable! And you aren’t making things any easier now!” she exclaimed. “But now I have to go in and phone Oluf. I’m not a com
pletely unnatural mother.”
Was she putting on an act? Were they walking around in the same room, with their faces close to each other, yet each wearing a mask? And unable to get away from each other? She had not mentioned Michelsen—not a word about him.
“Oluf wants to talk to his father, too,” she shouted from in beside the telephone.
He got up languidly and went in.
“Hello, Oluf,” he said pleasantly into the phone.
The boy’s cheery voice came so clearly through the receiver that it sent a chill up Jastrau’s spine.
“Hello, Father. Where have you and Mother been all this time?”
“We—we’re here—at home,” he replied. The voice was like a thin ray of sunshine in a dark damp cellar.
“Look—let me talk to him!” Johanne burst out aggressively, and took the receiver. Some cheery sounds came bubbling through it, but Jastrau was not able to make out the words.
He went back into the dining room and sat down where he had been before. Across the way the white curtains blazed. They cast a bright reflection into the dark, north-oriented room.
Curtains. A naked woman with a string of amber beads. But nothing was real any more. The boy’s voice over the telephone. That was unreal, too. But there was that little corrosive pain—a stinging sensation.
Johanne went on talking in the living room. Now it was undoubtedly his mother-in-law who was on the phone. What were they talking about? The set-up in the brother’s house. The view out over the water. Too cold to go in swimming. But she did not mention Joachim Michelsen’s name.
He grew more and more depressed.
At last she finished talking and came in and threw her clothes on the play table.
“Incidentally, I had an unexpected visit,” Jastrau remarked.
“Well, that was nice. Who was it?”
“Steffensen.”
“Who did you say?”
“Steffensen—the Communist.”
“The one you threw out of here!” Johanne exclaimed sharply. “You didn’t let him in, did you?”
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