“Yes, of course,” Jastrau reassured him, and sat down.
But just as quickly Eriksen’s tone became friendly again. He inclined his head to one side and blinked his triangular eyes cunningly. There was a nervous twitching of his eyebrows that reminded Jastrau of a dog.
“Yes, excuse me for not offering you any. But one has to look out for himself first, isn’t that right? You know that—yes, I’m sure you understand, don’t you, Jazz? You’re a drunkard yourself.”
“Am I a drunkard?” Jastrau exclaimed. “Well, perhaps.”
“Now, now,” Eriksen protested indignantly, lifting his hands and shaking a finger at Jastrau like a despairing Jew. “You are a drunkard. Just be honest, Jazz. That’s the best way of going to the dogs. Honesty. Don’t you think we know you’re a drunkard? We know everything up here at the paper. A first-class newspaper. We know you’re a drunkard. We’ve known it for a long time. We know everything. And it won’t do you any good to deny it, We know that your wife has run out on you. You’re going to be divorced, you are, you old lecher. Well, you know how denials are treated here at the paper. Discreetly, of course. They get printed in small type on a back page in my ‘Here and There’ column—the dullest thing in the whole newspaper—something that nobody reads, and that nobody has to read, you understand. That’s why it’s part of the paper. But you’re a drunkard—in capital letters. A drunkard.”
He banged his fist convincingly on his desk so hard that the coffee cup rattled. The wine glass behind the phone books betrayed its presence by a faint tinkle.
Then he sat for a while and struggled to get his breath, while Jastrau stared at him. There was a hoarse, convulsive “r-r-r-u-u.”
“Ah yes,” he sighed. “But life has left its mark on me too, hee hee,” he added slyly.
“Is that an advantage?” Jastrau asked, feeling bewildered.
“Are you crazy, man?” said Eriksen. “If it weren’t for that, I’d have been let go long ago. No, life has left its mark on me, the old man in the corner room says, hee hee. My wife is in the hospital. I was a rich man once—during the war, when no one could avoid getting rich. And I’ve been a tramp too—after the war, when a person couldn’t avoid becoming one. And it was as a tramp that I came up here with my first article. ‘It might be that you’re the man in the street,’ the old man said. Hee hee—he’s always sitting in his office and waiting for the man in the street. I’m the last one who walked in off the street, and he’ll never let me forget it—until the next one walks in. Isn’t it the truth?”
The angular corners of his bloodshot eyes radiated his good fortune.
“But you—” he went on, waving a hand as if brushing Jastrau aside. “You came from the university, and that kind the old man doesn’t like. He says they can’t write. Hee hee. Well, so it turns out you can write. But now you’re going to be divorced—and that he can’t understand. A man’s private life, yes, certainly. A little spice now and then never does any harm. But divorce! There’s nothing you can say about it, because he can’t understand it. There are plenty of girls, and they’re all all right, each in her own way. One is tall and another is fat, so why do people have to get divorced? And I feel the same way about it.”
“And then besides, you drink, you swine,” he added after a pause.
Jastrau sat and nodded without saying a word. Why did he feel compelled to sit there listening to Eriksen’s ranting torrent of words? He did listen, however—listened as if a wish were in the process of being fulfilled.
“But what the hell, Jazz, don’t let it worry you, damn it all,” Eriksen continued, getting up from his chair. He laid a hand consolingly on Jastrau’s shoulder, bent over until his mouth was close to Jastrau’s ear, and spoke in a hoarse whisper. A pungent aroma of port struck Jastrau in the face.
“But don’t let it get you down, damn it all. All you have to do is get it down to a system. Sure, they grumble about it up here, but all you have to do is pay attention to your work, show up every day and write your crap, and then close up shop at six o’clock. That’s the way it is with me. It’s six o’clock, and there’s been a train wreck at Vigerslev. I couldn’t care less I tell them. Thirty people dead. They have to die before six o’clock is what I tell them. It’s six o’clock. I go and sit at a table over at Sommer’s and have a nice cozy time with a bottle of port. Not the Bar des Artistes—no, not with that phonograph there. There I’d only behave like a Spanish dancing girl, and to hell with that, to hell with that. There I’d get high and probably pick a fight. No, Sommer’s is the place. It’s nice there. At nine o’clock I order another half-bottle. At ten o’clock I’ve lost track of time—everything is a blank. And at eleven o’clock Sommer puts me into a cab. Then I go home. And the next morning I’m back here in shape to work.”
He straightened up and arched his chest. “Yes, I guess life has left its mark on me,” he said in a more solemn tone, “but I stand up for my rights like a class-conscious drunkard. No two ways about it. After six o’clock I’m drunk. But you, you hang around a bar all day long. Now, you know I like you. Damn it all, I like you tremendously.” He reached for Jastrau’s hand and crushed it in his grip. “And I want to tell you—don’t take so much as a single drink as long as the sun is still shining over Vesterbro.”
He raised his left hand in a dramatic gesture.
“Not so much as a”—his face grew flushed—“not so much as a single drink.” The red coloration of his face changed to purple. He let go of Jastrau’s hand and suddenly clasped both of his own hands to his chest as he bent forward in a severe fit of hoarse coughing.
“You can go now. Just leave me alone,” he groaned, almost doubled up. He waved one hand in the air and then the cough broke forth again, disrupting every word and shaking his small, stocky body.
Jastrau got up. He wanted to ask if he could bring him some water, but Eriksen drew himself up, red and blue in the face, with tears streaming from his eyes and still coughing so that a spray of saliva issued from his mouth.
“Go on now, damn it!” A new attack seized him. “I—I’m busy.”
Jastrau left and closed Eriksen’s door. But the hollow cough was audible even through the door—the sound of a man left alone.
The sun streamed into the vestibule from two empty offices whose doors stood wide open. But over in the corner, outside the corner room, it was dark. Editor Iversen was probably sitting in there.
Just then he ran into the copy editor.
“Have you got a minute, Ole Jastrau?” he asked, letting his somber, polite gaze rest on Jastrau.
“No, unfortunately I’m very busy,” Jastrau replied as meekly as a schoolboy.
It was absolutely impossible for the two of them to understand each other. And so Jastrau felt humble. He could just as well have felt superior.
“I’d like to have a talk with you, because things can’t go on this way for very long,” the copy editor went on.
“What can’t go on?” Jastrau asked uncomprehendingly.
“You’re neglecting your opportunities up here. You know that very well yourself. Not your work. But you’re so casual about your connection with the paper. You don’t enter into things, Ole Jastrau, and we could make a big man of you. But you won’t go along.”
“Ye-s,” Jastrau said slowly.
The copy editor shook his head sadly but with a trace of humor.
“And so I’d like to have a serious talk with you one of these days, as soon as possible, Ole Jastrau. And don’t forget it, now,” he concluded in a business-like tone. They exchanged smiles. Did they both understand in a flash how impossible it was?
“No, I won’t,” Jastrau replied in a sing-song voice that sounded anything but dependable. And with that he was out the door.
A big man! As if that were what he wanted. What did that have to do with the infinitude of the soul, the real meaning of things, a man’s true self? To write an article every day about the intellectual life. Was that being a big man? To be in o
n editorial intrigues and always keep the publisher’s interests in mind, to know all about the private lives of the Danish intellectual bigwigs, friends and enemies alike, to know who pulled what strings and why. Was that being a big man?
“Disgust with the perversity of the way the world is going,” he said as he went down the stairs. He was talking aloud to himself, but it sounded like a quotation.
And when he stood bareheaded on the sidewalk outside of Dagbladet and saw the sunlight gleaming on bicycles, streetcars, and automobiles, flashing mirror-like surfaces that glided by in the flickering heat haze, saw cheerful human forms bending forward, intent on their destinations, and women with rounded calves, he suddenly recalled the darkness outside the closed door of Editor Iversen’s corner room.
“I’ll walk out on him—withdraw from the scene.” That too sounded somewhat like a quotation.
Should he go back up there, burst into the corner room as into a torrent of sunshine and talk to the tall, bent-over figure that sat there blinking apathetically into the flood of sunlight, sunlight, sunlight? Talk to him and hand in his resignation now, immediately? And be washed up, once and for all?
He stuffed his pipe as he stood in the street. The wind whipped his hair. A blue car rode by. He had a feeling that a woman in it waved at him, and he nodded absentmindedly. Who was it? No way of knowing.
He saw a man lift a little boy up into a streetcar. A little boy. No, it was evidently a little girl. That caused him no pangs. Let everything be blurred by the sunlight. A press photographer greeted him. The green leaves and red blossoms of the spindly chestnut trees twinkled in the light.
He had finished stuffing his pipe.
Should he not put it in his pocket now, go up there at once, and have it over with? Up the stairs and into the corner room? But after all, a person couldn’t do that, couldn’t come rushing in off the street with his hair in wild disorder, his hands in his trouser pockets, and turn in his resignation. The old man would get a coughing fit from laughing, spit into the wastebasket, and wheeze in merriment. It was a serious matter, involving a contract and three months’ notice. A person would have to be wearing a hat so he could take it off and lay it on the desk before the conversation began.
He would have to go home and get a hat. That would strengthen him in his purpose. Otherwise he might forget the whole thing.
With calm determination he walked out along Vesterbrogade and cut diagonally past the railway station into Istedgade. Now he would resign. And the future? Nobody knew. He allowed himself to become intoxicated over his fate and began to whistle.
But when he got up to his apartment it was strangely quiet there. He walked along the half-dark corridor, still whistling. Should he take his cap or his felt hat? So strangely quiet. The felt hat, of course. And his walking stick. A stick was good. One could lean on it, and it gave a person an air of reliability. But why was it so quiet? Had Steffensen and Anna Marie gone out? Anna Marie. He smiled and put on the hat.
Whistling, he went into the living room. Automatically, he made the secret, ritualistic sign as he passed the two photographs on the table. He had thought it up himself, or rather, the idea had come to him as a fleeting whim. The left hand diagonally over his chest. It might always serve to ward off some danger. But the dreary daylight coming in through the windows, which had not been cleaned for some time, dampened his spirits immediately without his being aware of it. A change in the weather? He stopped whistling.
Then he heard Anna Marie exclaim, “Oh, it never comes out right!” There was a sound of something hitting the table.
He pushed open the door to the dining room, and as he did so he detected an unusual odor, a mild, soothing fragrance in the atmosphere of dust and decay.
There were roses on the table.
“What’s this—?” He remained standing, open-mouthed.
Anna Marie was sitting at the table with a deck of cards, playing solitaire, and Steffensen was lying on the sofa with his hands behind his head.
“An idyll,” Steffensen muttered disdainfully.
“Yes, but what’s the meaning of the roses?”
Anna Marie shook her head and said “Bizz-zz,” to indicate a momentary lapse from sanity on Steffensen’s part.
“Precisely,” replied Steffensen. “But look—haven’t you got some tobacco? I can’t think.”
“But the flowers?”
“Oh,” Steffensen snapped, “I got sentimental. But my punishment came at once—like a punch in the jaw. I met my old man right out here in the street. I wonder what he’s nosing around here for.”
“Your father? Your father? You didn’t say anything about that, Stefan.” Anna Marie was disturbed and jumped up from her chair. “Oh, your father—is he coming here? I can’t stand it. Why? What for? No, I can’t stay here. I—I—”
Jastrau leaned on his stick and looked at her without understanding what she was getting at. Why was there such a look of fear in her eyes—a look of both fear and confusion? The corners of her mouth twitched nervously. Why?
“And now everything was about to be all right. Or pretty nearly all right.” She sat down again as if she were about to collapse and let her head drop onto her arms so that her hair fell forward and lay in a thick mass down over the front of her head.
“It’s never completely all right—never completely all right. I’m going crazy—crazy, crazy,” she groaned.
“Stop it now, Anna Marie,” Steffensen said with an impatient scowl, and got up lazily from his chair. “He didn’t see me. He was probably out looking for some girl or other here in the neighborhood. That would be just like him.”
As he said it, Anna Marie raised her head and screamed, screamed so that it must have been audible throughout the whole building. “And now you’re going to hit me. Now you’re going to hit me.” Her face was flaming and she was beside herself with rage. “But—but I’ll—” she sniveled, her soft lips protruding in brutish fashion. Then suddenly they went slack, and her mouth and chin became like a lump of soft dough. “No, no, no,” she said, her voice sinking with each utterance, first into humility and then into a tone of supplication. “You mustn’t hit me, Stefan. Don’t hit me, don’t hit me. Anything but that. Just don’t hit me. I’ll go away, leave you alone, gladly—yes, gladly.”
Jastrau shook his head in embarrassment. What was it that was happening here in his room? Something wild and incomprehensible, someone else’s private life pressing in on him so closely that he could smell it. And his own life, his own affairs—disappeared, vanished. The life that had gone on in this room. What life? Some words over the telephone—“Where have you and Mother been all this time?”—and then a woman’s weary voice. Then it had all vanished, and now there were only these two strangers who shouted and screamed. He must not forget—
“Incidentally, he was in mourning, my old man. He was wearing a top hat.” Steffensen laughed.
Jastrau still had on his fedora. He mustn’t forget, mustn’t forget. He had to go over for a talk with Editor Iversen, and he took a firm grip on his stick.
“You two ought to take a walk,” he proposed in an even tone. “And be good to each other.”
Gentle words. Like Jesus Christ. A foolish expression came over Jastrau’s face.
Steffensen smiled derisively, and there was a sharp, harsh glint in his eyes. But Anna Marie straightened up with a toss of her head.
“I’m not stepping out of doors.”
Jastrau was afraid of her eyes.
“No, of course not,” Steffensen replied.
“And neither are you—neither are you! Suppose you should meet him!” she exclaimed, leaning her heavy body in toward the table. She gasped hysterically for breath, a sustained, ominous sound as if another violent outburst was in the making. It could be heard welling up from within.
“Shouldn’t we—shouldn’t we—forget it?” Jastrau said in a tone of conciliation. The Son of Man with a felt hat and a walking stick. “I’ll go get some port, and then
we’ll forget it.”
He should go over and hand in his resignation. What if out of sheer forgetfulness he should go on being Dagbladet’s chief book reviewer?
“Yes—forget, forget, forget,” Anna Marie intoned, and sank limply back into her chair. Jastrau was taken aback by the look on her face. Feelings and expressions of all sorts were intermingled there, and her chin was grotesquely lost in the full folds of her neck.
“You must be crazy, Anna Marie,” exclaimed Steffensen. “The old man can’t do anything to me. And you—” he snorted contemptuously.
Anna Marie opened her eyes wide with a start and stared at Steffensen in abject terror.
“Stefan, Stefan,” she whimpered. “Oh, come now—I didn’t mean it.”
Steffensen’s tone was strangely gentle. Suddenly Jastrau understood why the roses were there. A fragrant odor of conciliation amidst all this merciless decay.
“So now I’ll go down and get the wine,” Jastrau repeated, once more himself in a fedora. He was glad he had hit upon the right remedy. Just blunt the senses—blunt them. A thinking brain was a painful affliction.
“Yes, do that. I can’t think anyhow,” Steffensen said.
“Do you think?” Again that old hint of scorn in his voice.
“Yes, I’m right on the point of having a necessary thought—right on the point of it.” Steffensen’s expression had grown rigid again. It looked as if he were about to butt his abnormally high forehead against a wall, and his eyes had resumed their ruthless, glazed luster.
Jastrau went downstairs and across the street to a tobacco shop, where he bought three bottles of port and remembered at the same time that they were out of tobacco.
As he casually swung into the entranceway to the apartment again with the three bottles and the tobacco, the red-haired janitor, who was standing there, grinned cannily at him. He was a little younger than Jastrau.
“That makes sense,” he said, winking innocently at Jastrau with his moist blue eyes.
“Wouldn’t you like to come up with me?” Jastrau asked, following a sudden impulse.
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