Smith-Jørgensen made a gracious gesture with his hand, so that his wristwatch sparkled in the sunlight.
“Done,” he said, sighing in relief.
Thereupon he gave the moving man instructions. Jastrau sat and puffed on the cigar while the man juggled Oluf’s bed.
“Damned if it wouldn’t be interesting to be present at one’s own funeral,” Jastrau remarked with a smile.
“What did you say?”
Jastrau did not care to repeat it, but kept right on puffing.
“Well, then, I think I’ll be running along,” Adolf went on, politely showing his teeth. “We’ll undoubtedly be meeting each other from time to time—out on the eternal hunting grounds, ha ha. And then there’ll always be an opportunity for a drink together.”
He slapped Jastrau on the shoulder, and Jastrau regarded the dapper stockbrokers’ runner, who was so many years younger than he, with a sad smile.
“Shall I see you out?”
They both laughed politely. Out in the foyer, however, their mood suddenly changed to one of seriousness, for the door to the stairway was open, and in the doorway stood Stefan Steffensen with his hands in his pockets. Behind him stood a shabbily dressed young girl.
“Well, I must hurry off,” Adolf said with an ungracious smile. He bade a hasty farewell, as if he had not recognized Steffensen.
“Good-bye, then. We’ll be seeing each other.”
And Adolf quickly made his exit.
“Well, that was your brother-in-law,” Steffensen drawled with a grin. “Hello, there. May I introduce my friend? This is Frøken Jensen, and this is Herr Jastrau, and all that sort of thing. And the two of us would like to talk to you.”
Jastrau looked into a pair of large, frightened, girlish eyes. The blue irises opened up so that they became white in their depths, imparting a strangely blurred, milky quality to her gaze.
“All right, come inside.”
“Look, Jastrau,” Steffensen began at once, as Frøken Jensen trotted along humbly at his heels, “—you see, Jastrau, Anna Marie and I would like to rent a couple of rooms from you. What the devil does a single man like you need all this room for?”
He waved his cap in the air to indicate how much too big the apartment was.
“Then you know—”
Jastrau took a step backward. Now it was all clear, revealed as by a flash of lightning.
“Yes, of course. But how can I help it if Sanders is such a full-blown pathological idiot with a muddled sense of Communist morality? I tried to prevent it, but he was so noble about it—it was his duty and all that sort of thing. And your lady—yes, he said your lady—was altogether too wonderful a person. She should not be subjected to such deception, and tra-la-la—”
“Stefan! You shouldn’t run Bernhard down that way,” Anna Marie protested in a lilting East Jutland accent.
“There, you see, Jastrau. The women think he’s a noble soul.”
“After all, he’s helped us,” she went on zealously, clenching her stubby hands nervously.
But Jastrau paid no attention to what they were saying.
He stood and stared at the two shabby figures. After all, this was youth coming to meet him, and now he felt on an equal footing with them.
For a moment, it seemed to him that unconsciously he had been struggling toward this as an objective.
But then he was suddenly overtaken by a fit of shivering, by a premonition of his desperate lot.
PART THREE
Forever and Ever
1
OLE JASTRAU slowly tore a document to pieces and let the bits of white paper flutter away in the breeze. They floated in through the iron fence bordering Tivoli and fell like confetti into the shrubbery.
But suppose some inquisitive person took it into his head to pick up the pieces and put them together. What then? He would have learned that Editor Ole Jastrau, in a bad state of intoxication, had been apprehended on Frederiksberggade, where he had been annoying the passers-by. Did it mean anything more than that? Was it not out of a sense of habitual bourgeois propriety that he had destroyed this noteworthy document and committed it to the dusty bushes at the edge of Tivoli? He really should have kept it. After all, it was only proof that he paid what he owed. Fifteen kroner for disorderly conduct. He could have preserved it along with the postal receipt proving that he had sent the seventy-five kroner to Kryger. He might be a drunk, but he was honest. A decent editor. Well—a bit crazy.
He walked calmly toward the Tietgen Bridge. There was such an unobstructed view there after one had passed the red post-office building. A view of a dark but busy railway right-of-way. Trains, watchtowers, long steel bridges, all blackened with smoke. And in the distance, cranes and the water. Here the gleaming sunlight came in with the off-shore breeze.
He could feel that he was no longer young. Here he had stood so often in his student days, looking out over the scene. This was what was called nostalgia. He had also often stood on the other side of the bridge and looked down on the station platforms and the tops of the railway coaches directly under his feet. There was a certain time in the late afternoon when the Berlin express departed. Now he had forgotten the hour. But then, in those days, one form of his youthful dissipation had been to stand on this bridge, in the evening air and the glare of the lights, and watch the express train go by. Youth. Memories of one’s youth, it was called.
He stood there and in an imploring tone recited the long jejune lines of a verse he had never finished:
“Annihilation and inaction—both have I known.
The memories rankle like letters I never answered.”
But now—
Just then a paunchy gentleman with dark-rimmed spectacles halfway down his nose walked by, peering nervously over the top of the glasses. His four-year-old son, a youngster with a hat pulled tightly down over his ears in hooligan fashion so that his head resembled a highly inflated football, had torn himself loose from his father, who was obviously afraid that the boy might run out into the road.
“Come here, Mogens.”
“No, Father. Your hands are too hot and wet!”
Suddenly Jastrau shook himself. What was this? Had he become infected with Steffensen’s hoodlum habit of fidgeting with his shoulders? He cast a frightened glance at the father and son. Yes, this boy too had a bit of trouble in walking. And the little fellow’s shoes—exactly the same size. Stockings sagging. No, no—Jastrau had to look the other way again, out over the trains and the watchtowers, and over the harbor in the distance.
They would soon be passing by him. The thought sent a feeling of chill through his loins. Yes, now they were almost up to him. And then Jastrau had to look at the boy again. The same dignified carriage of his body on uncertain legs. The jutting belly. The same burly little figure.
A sting of pain every time a little child went by. What a lot of painful sensations there were. Children. They hurried by on the sidewalk and had the same agitating effect on him as a hazy red sun seen through a picket fence.
No, it was better to think of the deserted four-room apartment on Istedgade that already was in a state of dissolution. Altogether too large for him. And the two roomers who had forced themselves on him. Stefan Steffensen! Did he really like him? Yes and no. He was a person who at the moment was bound in the same direction as he, nothing but that, and so they might as well get along. And the dubious Anna Marie?
And suddenly Jastrau briskly crossed the road and went down a sloping sidewalk that led from the bridge down to the railroad station.
It was as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun—this section around Reventlowsgade and Istedgade. An out-of-the-way place right in the downtown part of Copenhagen, with hideouts and secret passages and doorways, and dark, damp, ground-floor dwellings that with their proper, respectable window curtains looked like camouflaged brothels.
There in a deep, cavern-like street he saw a green tree with its roots cramped in between the pavement, and sparrows making a c
ommotion amidst the green leaves above. He could usually spare a sad smile for that sort of thing, but today it merely brushed his subconscious, like a glimpse of green seen far down through a body of murky water.
For it was all too crazy. The evening before, Steffensen had brought a young girl home with him. Had he done it to torment Anna Marie? Jastrau had heard it all. He had come home a half hour before in a semi-stupor from whiskey and tobacco, unsteady on his legs but nevertheless well aware of what went on. And then it had happened. Anna Marie had lain crying very softly, very gently. Steffensen might not have heard her, or perhaps had not wanted to hear, busily engaged as he was with the other girl. But the continuous sobbing there in that apartment, where the rooms had such a ghostly aspect in the glow of the light night, the sound of pent-up whimpering behind closed lips, had become more and more audible, demoralizing in its monotony. It had shaken her body so that the sofa on which she lay had creaked and groaned, an intolerable squeaking sound, and the upshot of it had been that Jastrau in a fit of rage had hurled a shoe against the sliding door and told her to shut up.
No, he would not put up with it. He would not have them living with him any longer. But if he chased them out now, the rooms would become limitless, and then he would go wandering around like a ghost through all four rooms as well as through the maid’s quarters and the kitchen and the two hallways, through room after room, with doors leading into other rooms and emptiness behind emptiness, until he suffered a nervous collapse. He knew that was how it would be. Empty rooms were inhabited by spirits. Nonsense. But it was true. Doors opened of their own accord. The doorknob was slowly turned by an invisible hand, and then the door swung open. Empty apartments proliferated, spawned. And at last a person saw himself, in the flesh, sitting in a chair. Oh—hello, Jastrau. With the same embarrassed smile.
But he would not put up with it.
He ran up the stairway. The hole in the windowpane facing the courtyard was still there. Should he not write a complaint to the landlord? The breeze had been blowing in through that hole for a year and a half.
Hastily he unlocked the door and entered the apartment.
Steffensen lay on his sofa, smoking a pipe. They had reached an agreement that this room was Jastrau’s. Its square ceiling had a calming, beneficial effect. The yellow and brown colors were as genial and lulling to the senses as a gentle rain.
“Why have you come barging into my room?” Jastrau demanded in a tone of exasperation.
Steffensen removed the pipe from his mouth and gaped at him. His face was pale.
“So that’s the sort of mood you’re in. As for me, I’m hungry.”
“I suppose I have to feed you too. Is that the idea?”
“No. But Anna Marie in there, the hysterical girl, is hungry too. And I don’t suppose you’re planning to gorge yourself all alone.”
Jastrau sat down heavily in one of the chairs, stared at the floor, and collected his wits.
“Not only a roof over your head, but food too,” he said softly but meaningfully—then, in a sudden crescendo—“There isn’t even a crust of bread in the pantry!”
“She could go out and get something.”
“Who?”
“Her—in there. Instead of lying around feeling sorry for herself. Damn it, she might as well make herself useful.”
“You’re a scoundrel!”
The remark came suddenly. Jastrau sat up straight in the chair. Now he would let him have it. But his eyes would travel no farther than Steffensen’s coarse, brutal mouth. It was set as if Steffensen were about to shout at him. Jastrau’s eyes would not shift to take in the hard glassy gaze with which his adversary was regarding him—that gaze which was always incomprehensible. And then he could no longer launch his attack. To sit there staring at a man’s necktie and then make a surprise attack—no, he could not do it.
But just then Steffensen’s lips relaxed, and his features softened. “Well, perhaps I am,” he said gently.
Jastrau stared at the dust that covered the floor like a gray blanket and at the tablecloth that lay wrinkled in unseemly disorder about the fetish and the telephone. And, with a sudden feeling of being aboard a wreck, he capitulated. There was nothing to do except smile, for here, amidst the common wreckage, they were all naturally in need of food.
“Now I’ll speak to her about it,” he said softly, and it seemed that with his change of tone a ray of light came into the dismal picture. He wondered if Jesus had been given to making broad conciliatory gestures.
Anna Marie was in the dining room, lying on a sofa that had been moved in there for her. To make room for it, the light-oak furniture that had been a present from his in-laws had been shoved over near the window, and the former respectable and symmetrical arrangement, with the sideboard centered along the wall like an altar and the chandelier in the middle of the ceiling, had been transformed into a pattern that seemed as bewildering and distorted as Einstein’s concept of space.
Anna Marie indolently turned her broad back to him and blew cigarette smoke against the wallpaper.
“Listen, Frøken Jensen,” Jastrau began.
“Frøken Jensen,” she repeated, laughing and still facing the wall. Her broad back was quivering.
“Well, what else should I call you?” Jastrau apologized awkwardly.
Anna Marie did not reply. A white cloud of cigarette smoke crept up along the wall.
“It’s just that—well, would you please help us get a little something to eat? We’re hungry.”
“Would I please?” Suddenly she turned around and looked at him wide-eyed. “You said please.” Her voice rang with loud Aarhusian laughter.
At the same time she sat up, leaned her elbows against her knees, and shook herself. Her eyes were directed at Jastrau, a bit too intensely. They had a rather wild look.
“You’re really asking me so politely?”
“Yes—what else should I do?” Jastrau asked with a smile that was a bit uncertain because she was looking at him as if she might butt him with her forehead. He made a sweeping, conciliatory gesture with his hand.
“Frøken Jensen,” she repeated, and then a reflection of his smile appeared on her face. “If only I had a less ordinary-sounding last name, because you said it so nicely.” Then she brushed the hair away from her forehead as if she were waking up, and rose from the sofa with an air of determination. “Oh, you poor things—now I’ll see what I can do.”
And as she went into the kitchen she carried herself straighter than usual.
Jastrau sat down and stared at a large comb that lay on the table. He did not understand her.
When she appeared again he made a questioning gesture—a broad kindly gesture. Why broad and kindly? But just then her body again became gross like that of a servant girl. It seemed to collapse so that her breasts and hips appeared coarser. He could tell, as if it were mirrored in her figure, that Steffensen had come into the room and was standing behind him.
“There isn’t a bit of food out in the kitchen,” she said, staring at Jastrau as if she wanted to see no one but him.
Jastrau reached into his trouser pocket for some bills, carefully smoothed them out on the tabletop first, then handed them to her.
“How did you get her to do it?” Steffensen asked when they heard her hurrying footsteps tripping down the stairs. “Usually you can’t get her to do anything. She just hangs around like a dead weight, like someone who’s been fished out of the water, wet clothes and all. A dead weight.”
“I don’t know. But hadn’t we better cover the table with something? It’s my wife’s table,” he added. He still wore the wavering, meaningless smile. It was as if it were fixed to a tether.
“Here’s a newspaper.” Steffensen tossed the paper over to him.
Jastrau spread it out over the table. But all of a sudden he stopped. It was that old copy of Danmark with the picture of Professor Julius Geberhardt and the interview. He brushed his hand over it as if it were something significant.
“This will do very nicely, especially since I don’t care to use the tablecloth,” he said. “Tablecloths are among the amenities of life, and besides they belong to my wife.”
“This is more cozy,” Steffensen growled and immediately sat down with his elbows planted on the newspaper. “But tell me, how in the devil did you get Anna Marie to toe the line?”
“You’re a swine, the way you treat her.”
Steffensen tightened his lips about the stem of his pipe.
“Hadn’t we better drop the subject and start the phonograph going,” Jastrau went on. “Otherwise we’ll only get into a squabble.”
Steffensen nodded stiffly.
Jastrau wound the phonograph and put on a worn record of the Revellers. It sounded scratchy at first. But soon the humming, boop-booping voices were heard—a series of onomatopoeic, meaningless sounds. Now they would swing into a sentimental refrain, a love song coming from thick, soft lips melting with passion, then they would relapse into pure harmony. The tones took on a superhuman, metallic quality. The singers’ lungs had to have as much force as brass instruments. And then other voices joined in. The notes fluttered through the air, then stopped short in sudden breaks. It was all done with such an easy, almost jocular effect, a virtuosity brimming over with a beauty that one could take seriously only at his own risk. The rhythms sent impulses through Jastrau’s body. He had to respond. Unfortunately, he was a poor dancer; otherwise he would have felt happy. But his legs began to move in an awkward Charleston step—an attempt at being happy.
Steffensen sat staring into the other room, a scornful smile on his face.
“What are you smiling at?” Jastrau asked as the record came to an end.
“Oh, just those saints’ images you have in there.”
“What images—?”
Jastrau stopped suddenly. Steffensen was referring to the two photographs of his mother and son that he had placed on the table in the next room. He felt himself exposed. Had Steffensen been spying on him? He had been carrying on a sort of secret ritual with the two pictures. When he was alone, he made a secret sign when he walked by them.
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