“Yes.”
“You are about the most spineless character—” She did not finish the remark, and suddenly her tone of voice changed. “Then you’ve been drunk,” she said.
“Well—”
“Yes—you stammer. But don’t you think I know it? That youngster has a bad influence on you. I could see it plainly the time he was here. And you—a grown man! To let yourself be led astray by a boy.”
She began to pace the floor in indignation.
“You’ve been drunk again, Ole. You might as well admit it.”
“No—I’ll be damned if I have,” he answered gruffly.
“He’s your evil spirit.”
“Nonsense.”
And suddenly he rose and burst out: “Instead of making ridiculous accusations against me, you might better give some thought to the fact that we have to go to a party at Krog’s tonight.”
Why did he not toss Michelsen’s name at her? Why did he beat around the bush while he became more and more spiteful? A capricious spitefulness it was.
“Furthermore, I can let you in on a secret,” he went on vehemently. “Pretty soon we’re going to have to cut down our expenses. I’ve had a clash with Editor Iversen. Yes, I’ve had a dandy time here while you’ve been stretched out on the beach. Do you hear?”
But she only increased her pace, back and forth, back and forth. Every word he said made her walk more rapidly or provoked some violent reaction from her. She snatched up the napkin from the table, slapped it angrily against the door, against the wall, against the chairs, while she kept moving about, faster and faster, without saying a word.
“I’ll soon be fired over there—do you hear?” he yelled.
“That I can easily believe,” she replied ruthlessly. With a toss of her head she went into the kitchen.
Jastrau, on the other hand, sat down in the living room and began to cut the pages of review copies, so that the white motes of paper-dust fell like snowflakes on his trousers. What he really wanted to do was leave, but he realized that this would be unreasonable. He would only have to return, because they had to be at Krog’s. They could not back out this time. They had to go, simply had to. And he in full dress, despite the fact that he felt so seedy.
Was it self-reproach that he felt? It was a feeling of uncleanliness, that’s what it was. Very simple. It was not penitence, but fear of behaving like a free individual, being the person he was, and shouting it to the four winds. That was what tormented him most.
And then that slight disgusting pain.
And getting into full dress.
The hours slipped by. Johanne came in and looked into the money drawer.
“By the way, the fire-insurance policy is paid,” he said.
“Couldn’t that have waited?”
He did not answer her.
About six o’clock the tension increased. Now it was time to change clothes. The silence between them was broken in many ways. “Where is that collar button, now?” “Do you think I can wear champagne-colored shoes with that dress?” “What dress?”
The questions were asked hastily, and the answers were not always exactly soft-spoken as they dashed from room to room, looked at themselves in the mirror, combed their hair, brushed their clothes. The whole business had such an air of unreality in the strong sunlight that beat down on the opposite neighbor’s roof. Going out in full dress in the daylight was like a masquerade. He felt like a waiter. Seeing Johanne in the black dress with the bold yellow pattern made it seem as if they were getting ready for a carnival. The snakeskin, as Jastrau called it.
“How do I look in it, Ole?”
“Wonderful. Thunder and lightning.”
But he did not tell her that she looked a little too provocative in it.
Nevertheless, she did. Didn’t such a dress give her a suggestive, come-on look? Swelling curves. Full breasts. Legs clearly outlined beneath the tight skirt. Everything about her spelled danger. A strangely untamed creature.
“Wonderful,” he repeated, and suddenly felt self-conscious. There was a force here that he was not master of, a femininity, a sensuality that had not been subdued. Why was everything between them so drab?
He was still inexperienced, he thought, and she was mature.
A little later they sat in a taxi and rode out along Vesterbrogade. Jastrau already felt the sweat on his forehead.
“There’s something nonsensical about giving a party at this time of the year,” he remarked, gazing out at the reflection of sunlight glistening on a myriad of bicycle handlebars.
“But after all, it’s your own fault,” said Johanne. “He postponed it, and all on account of you.”
“Well, yes. But I can’t endure tails and white tie when the sun is shining.”
“You’re so sensitive.”
“Yes—I’m sweating.”
The taxi drove up in front of a villa in Frederiksberg, or rather a large ugly house that was much too big for the grounds around it. Several large chestnut trees cast so much shade that the grass in the moldy earth looked sickly.
A little gentleman in evening clothes stood at the gate, blinking nearsightedly behind his pince-nez spectacles.
“Well, so it’s you. At last—at last. Finally I’ve succeeded in tearing you away from the family hearth. But with you for a wife, frue, even a pirate would become a homebody. Yes, who would have thought it of you, you old revolutionary fool. But welcome to you both. The Einstein highballs aren’t ready yet, but there are chilled cocktails—really ice-cold—little Eskimos, ha ha ha. But here comes another taxi. More guests. God knows who it is.”
He squinted his eyes and leaned forward. His pointed wolf’s nose sniffed the air.
“Hello, Krog, and thanks for asking us to come.”
A gentleman of medium height in evening dress and an open topcoat came toward them from another taxi. His expression was at once listless and arrogant. The listlessness was apparent even in the whites of his eyes.
Behind him came a little lady in an evening wrap pulled high up around her neck. She fidgeted as she walked and looked as if all the while she was trying to hide her pointed nose.
There were introductions. It was Judge Asmussen and his wife.
“We’d better be going in!” exclaimed Krog. “We look like a crowd, and if we keep on standing here we’ll risk a fine for disorderly conduct, won’t we, Judge?”
Jastrau gave a start and looked nervously at the judge. Did he know anything? The judge was wiping his mouth with a handkerchief.
“I need whiskey, my dear Krog,” he said. “I haven’t tasted a drop since yesterday.”
“Oh, you always have to brag about what a drunk you are, Asmus,” protested his wife. She raised her nose in Johanne’s direction. “We really don’t have a drop in the house, you know. Except when we have company, of course.”
“That’s a lie, damn it, Strik,” the judge said, laughing hoarsely. “I love to get drunk, and if I know Krog I’m sure he’s taken my depravity into account.”
They went in through the gate together.
“I love booze, let me tell you,” Asmussen went on, addressing Jastrau and taking a vice-like grip on his arm.
Fru Krog, a sluggish creature with dark hair arranged in Madonna style, received them cordially with a limp handshake. A mirror in the hallway. Of course, one couldn’t help seeing himself in it. Ecce homo! Jastrau straightened his shirt front and looked at his altogether too familiar sallow face. He knew what lay hidden behind it.
The others swarmed about him. Combs, powder puffs, and lipsticks lay in a jumble on the console in front of the mirror.
Finally, they made up their minds to go in. As they opened the door from the dark hallway, the afternoon sun struck them full in the face and dazzled them. The low mahogany bookshelves along the walls sparkled. An upright piano stood in shadow, and against it, dressed in evening clothes, his face chalk-white and his back slightly arched, leaned Vuldum. He was chatting with a small lady with a Madonna hairdo who was se
ated on the piano stool—Fru Krog’s sister.
A slim gentleman with a somber, ominous expression and a reddish scar on one cheek rose from an armchair in which he had been sitting and staring meditatively at one of his patent-leather shoes.
Vuldum screwed up his eyes appraisingly, caught sight of Jastrau to the latter’s discomfiture, and went on with an objective scrutiny of Johanne before he greeted them.
“Now we’re almost all here,” exclaimed Krog, rubbing his hand together. “We’re only lacking Kryger. But it’ll do us good to wait. Our appetites will be so much the better. Come here, Jastrau, and let me show you this edition of Plato that I just got hold of.”
“How he does brag—that man,” Vuldum remarked in a loud voice.
Krog smiled self-consciously.
“He’s envious,” he confided.
“No, Krog—why should I be envious? I don’t collect books, I only read them.” Vuldum turned chivalrously to the lady again. “It’s really a bad habit. But I happen to be bone-lazy, Frøken, and I read a great deal.”
His words passed lightly over the lady’s head, and he sent a look of disdain down at her hairdo.
“You look like a Helena,” he remarked apropos of nothing, as if merely letting his words fall into the part of her hair.
“Who?” she asked, giving a start of surprise and blushing.
Jastrau heard no more of the conversation. He stood there, feeling awkward and embarrassed, thumbing through the German edition of Plato with its pages white, unsullied, and untouched.
“I’m reading him in the World Classics Library,” Krog said with enthusiasm. But at that moment he was interrupted.
“Listen, Krog—soon I’m going to be having food fantasies!” exclaimed the slim gentleman with the scar. It was Agner Raben, who held the position of secretary in the municipal court.
“Yes, me too,” replied Krog. “But now I’ll order the cocktails. Besides, Kryger will soon be here.” He disappeared into the dining room. “Yes, bring on the liquor,” said the judge, laughing hoarsely. “We lawyers are always thirsty.”
Over near the window, the women had gathered in a little group. The afternoon sun cast a glow of light about their party dresses and placed nebulous halos around their hair and down alongside their bare arms. There was so much bare flesh here. The married women resembled young girls, as the current fashion demanded. Their dresses fitted them tightly and covered only the area from the breasts to the knees; they were pliable, scintillating sheaths drawn over their bodies, as simply cut as paper-doll dresses, nothing but rectangles with openings for the neck and arms.
“Do you suppose we might manage to split up this bevy of beauties?” suggested Krog, who had come back to the room. “Who’s the brave one? How about you, Jastrau? You’re a ladies’ man.”
Jastrau smiled wearily.
“Yes, because I can’t stand it when the women bunch up together, can you, Vuldum? But wait—here comes the man who can do it.”
The door opened as he spoke. A youngish lady with restless gray eyes stepped in. She was dressed in gray silk—an animated, sparkling gray. And her eyes blinked as they encountered the sunlight.
She led the way. But with an air of resignation and humility that had become a habit she stepped aside for her husband, the diminutive Kryger with the blue-black, glistening hair and a flashing smile that revealed a set of white teeth. “Hello, everybody.”
Everything perked up. A mysterious, flashing energy seemed to radiate from the newcomer.
“And now we can have the cocktails,” Krog shouted.
Everybody stood up. There was a general stir. People wove in and out among each other. A servant girl in black, with a white cap and a little white apron, came in with the gray-gold cocktails on a tray.
“How are you?” asked Vuldum, who now happened to be standing close to Jastrau.
A sharp, stinging pain.
Jastrau smiled uncertainly.
“Silver nitrate,” he whispered suddenly.
Vuldum looked at him for a moment. Then he dilated his nostrils, bent over, and began to laugh without making a sound.
The cocktail shook in his hand.
But the next instant Jastrau regretted his gratuitous frankness, for Vuldum was looking at Johanne with a clouded, unfathomable expression.
“And now we can go in and sit down,” Krog announced.
5
THE EVENING had worn on until it was late. In the dining room things had been cleared away. A phonograph stood in one corner amidst a heap of records and intoned a sentimental jazz tune. But only a single couple glided quietly and intimately across the floor. It was the glum Raben and Fru Krog’s younger sister.
All the others were gathered in the living room where the silent piano stood. The table was filled with glasses and bottles, large siphon bottles, square whiskey bottles, and port and Madeira for the ladies. Judge Asmussen sat on the sofa, his face flushed and his arm around Krog’s shoulder as he laughed.
“We don’t seem to be drinking. Skål!” he bellowed.
Fru Asmussen, Fru Kryger, and Fru Krog had closed ranks in a confidential little triangle and were chatting in lively fashion about the beach hotel at Skotterup. For the moment, they had been left in peace by the elegant, agile Kryger, who had attached himself to Jastrau.
“Well, old fellow,” he remarked smilingly and slapped Jastrau on the knee. “Still just as radical as ever?”
“I’m not interested in politics.”
“Then you’re just as harmless as ever.”
Jastrau was in no mood to resume a discussion that was a year old.
Ever since that time, the memory of it had lodged in him like a splinter and tormented him. Now and then, he glanced across to a dimly lighted corner where Vuldum sat engaged in conversation with Johanne. She was obviously enjoying herself. Occasionally she would bend forward and laugh so that her blond hair shook. Vuldum was very likely being witty and a bit familiar. He sat leaning back, with an arm resting casually on the back of Johanne’s chair.
Jastrau shifted uneasily in his chair. Why had he been so candid with Vuldum?
“My point of view is honest enough,” he said, addressing himself to Kryger. There was indignation in his tone. But was it not because of the way Vuldum’s eyes were expertly appraising Johanne’s bosom? Over there where the light was so dim, everything was blurred, and it seemed as if Joachim Michelsen’s features blended disquietingly with Vuldum’s, although the two in no way resembled each other.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” replied Kryger with a warm smile. “I’m not accusing you of dishonesty, but of blindness.”
“Even if I were not with Dagbladet, I’d feel the same as I do.”
“But you are with Dagbladet. And that means that you’re a respectable member of society, just as I am.”
“Oh, you argue just like a Communist!” Jastrau replied vehemently and took a big swallow of whiskey.
But at that moment he detected an uneasy look in Johanne’s eyes over in the dimly lighted corner. Vuldum had laid his hand on her shoulder. Yes, Jastrau saw it clearly. And Johanne? She had seen him looking at her and then shifted her position suddenly so that Vuldum’s hand fell limply away.
“Why don’t you come in and dance?” came a voice from the doorway. It was Fru Krog’s lively sister with the Madonna hairdo. Raben’s figure could be seen behind her in the dark room between the lighted dining room and the living room, where the rest of the company sat.
Johanne had moved away from Vuldum. But would she have done so if—if—?
Fru Kryger drew up her gray head and said in answer to the inquiry, “Oh, they’re drinking and talking politics.”
“That’s a lie, damn it,” exclaimed the judge, laughing as heartily as he could. “We’re drinking right enough, but we aren’t drinking enough.”
“You sound like a philosopher,” said Vuldum.
“Yes, ha ha.”
“Well then—skål, everybody!” sh
outed the little host so loudly that one might have taken him for a broad-shouldered hulk of a man.
They all raised their glasses. But Jastrau felt another stinging reminder. After all this time. He was not being allowed to forget.
“Oh, by the way, Judge”—again it was Fru Krog’s sister who spoke—“I completely forgot to thank you for the other day.”
“Yes—that’s right,” Fru Krog summoned up the energy to say.
Asmussen laughed. “Yes. Everything’s nice and cozy down there at the courthouse, isn’t it?”
“At the courthouse? Can a person get in there?” asked Fru Kryger, her eyes lighting up. “That must be interesting.”
“Yes.” The judge laughed so that his little, round belly bobbed up and down. “Do you know what I showed the ladies, Fru Kryger?”
A cold shiver ran down Jastrau’s spine.
“No, what?” asked Kryger, sitting up politely.
“The lockup.”
There was a pause for a second.
Then, from his corner, Vuldum burst into loud laughter that had a startling effect on the others. Jastrau took a firmer hold on his glass and laughed along with the rest.
“The lockup,” repeated the judge slowly, gloating over the interest he had aroused.
“But unfortunately there was no one in there,” came a feeble feminine complaint. It was Fru Krog with the Madonna hairdo.
“My, how ferocious you are, little frue,” Vuldum observed in a caressing tone as he moved nearer. “A melancholy little beast of prey.” And then his well-modulated words were drowned out in the general laughter.
But this time Jastrau did not join in, so nervous and disconcerted was he by the turn the conversation had taken. He concealed his feelings by drinking.
“Beast of prey!” replied Fru Krog with blasé indignation. She was also a little flattered. “But there’s really nothing to see when there isn’t one of those drunken rowdies there who’s imprisoned.”
“Imprisoned!” objected Krog. “That’s a strong word.”
“Well—arrested, then.”
The three lawyers in the group broke into loud laughter. Vuldum smiled understandingly.
“But how can you say that, Anna?” exclaimed the sister, who felt no bewilderment at the nuances of Danish legal terminology. “It was unpleasant enough as it was—that little dark room and the two bunks and those dreary bare walls.”
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