“No—far from it. But I’ve come to tell you that I’m resigning,” he said, forming his words precisely.
The editor leaned forward slightly in order to subject the phenomenon to a closer inspection. Then he stroked his big drooping mustache, and his face took on an expression that made it look as if it had just bobbed up from a pool of water.
“Well, I declare,” he muttered after a pause. “That surprises me. Isn’t this a bit sudden—as far as you’re concerned, I mean?”
“Not really,” Jastrau replied. He now felt that he had arrived at the decision long ago. He had reached it at the very same time, five years ago, that he had stepped into the job.
“Are you resentful about something?”
“No.”
“Is it a matter of money?”
“No.”
“Well, I declare. This comes as a surprise.” The editor inclined his large cranium and scratched his neck. “But now there’ll be three long summer months in which you won’t have anything to do,” he added hopefully.
“Yes, and it’s those three months I’m reckoning with. The contract calls for three months’ notice, you know.”
Jastrau sat there stiffly. Inside he was tingling.
Editor Iversen shifted slowly in his chair. It annoyed him that now he also had this to think about.
“But it’s a long summer,” he said suddenly, seizing upon a way out with a sense of relief. “A lot of things can happen, you know.”
“It’s no use.”
“No?”
“No. Because between now and September I’ll be going to the dogs, and then there’ll be the autumn season and all those books. No—” Jastrau shook his head in premonition.
“It’s strange,” Editor Iversen replied listlessly.
“I’d rather quit now and not ruin the work I’ve done by turning out poor stuff. I feel that I can take pride in what I’ve done so far,” Jastrau said quickly.
“Yes, so you can,” the editor replied politely. Dark patches had appeared beneath his eyes. That always happened when he felt moved during the principal speech of an evening, and Jastrau had the deepest mistrust of them. Nevertheless, his own eyes began to blink. Tears?
“Yes, your work does you great credit,” the editor said as if wool-gathering, in the slow drawl that everyone in his department knew how to imitate. It sounded so honest, that Jastrau had to blink even more.
“But suppose you took a year’s leave of absence,” came the gentle suggestion.
Jastrau sat up straighter. He had heard rumors that Editor Iversen intended to retire within six months, and this strengthened his resolution.
“No, it’s no use.”
“It’s strange. So you insist on leaving. But whom shall I put in your place?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t any idea.”
“You’d do me a big favor if you would suggest someone,” the editor said earnestly.
“I don’t very well see how I can decide who’s to be my successor—no, I don’t see that,” came the firm answer.
“If only you would,” Iversen said wearily. The editor’s listless eyes rested on him in a friendly manner. They were a darker shade than usual and there was something profoundly human in them. “If only you would decide the whole thing. More you can’t ask of us. We’ll extend ourselves as far as we can.” He flung out his hands in a gesture of mournful irony. “And then you’d be doing me a big favor in the bargain.”
Jastrau smiled.
“But I can’t appoint a man to my job and then come back and toss him out again if I should take it into my head to return to normal.”
The editor again brushed his hand across the lower part of his face.
“Well, I wouldn’t regret it if you did that, hee hee.” A sudden look of cunning came over the old man’s face. “You really ought to think about it, and then, hee hee, it might be that you’d feel sorry. Shall we let it go at that?”
Having said this much, he looked content. The uncertainty had been dispelled by some sort of agreement, and this suited him best. But Jastrau pulled himself together with a start. “No, by September I’ll have gone completely to the dogs.”
“Can a person say such a thing?” Iversen drawled, as if it made no sense to him. “In that case it’s really very distressing.”
“It’s something I have to go through,” Jastrau said in a lilting tone. “And in the meantime I won’t be fit for anything.”
Jastrau’s attitude was one of irresponsibility. He swung one leg over the other and no longer had to lean on his stick.
“Well, then it really is very distressing—for me to see such a thing happening. I thought, you know, that you were on the way up—not down.”
Jastrau puckered his eyebrows.
“Yes, because I hear that you’re spending a good deal of time out on Stenosgade with the Catholics.”
“No, that’s not true,” Jastrau replied emphatically.
“It did seem a bit strange,” Iversen said abstractedly. “Wasn’t it you? But then it must have been somebody else. A person sits up here like a father and hears about everybody, and he grows old and gets people mixed up. But anyhow, I believed it. And indeed, I could well understand it better than what you’ve just told me—that by September you’ll have gone to the dogs, just the way I might say that I’m going up to Kregme on Thursday—hee hee.”
He smiled out into space and shook his head.
“Incidentally, have you heard that the farmers now want it called Krejme because that’s the way they pronounce it, hee hee?” he added.
Jastrau sat still and stared at him.
“Krejme,” Iversen replied, lost in a smile.
Then he got up and walked stoop-shouldered over to a desk, opened a drawer, and took out a sheet of writing paper.
“So you want to resign,” he muttered down toward the desk. “I’m really very sorry about it. It makes me feel genuinely distressed.”
But suddenly he had forgotten the writing paper and walked over toward the big corner window that looked out on the sunlit teeming square.
“It looks so nice today.”
The tall figure stood hunched up by the window with his hands in his pockets. “It always does, by the way. Come and see for yourself, Jastrau.”
Jastrau got up. He knew it was a sign of a great favor when the editor-in-chief wanted to share the view from his window with one of his staff. To stand by that window with him was like standing on a balcony with the head of the state.
“I’m so fond of this view here,” Editor Iversen went on slowly and with feeling, absorbed in a monologue. Jastrau was now standing beside him. “I never tire of it. And so I stand here so often and think that some poor boy—yes, look, there comes one down on the corner, the one with the handcart—and think that perhaps some day he’ll sit in my chair. See—he’s looking up here. Yes, and now it’s I who am standing here. Some day he may remember that.”
His voice was touched with emotion, although it might at any moment take refuge in irony. To Jastrau, however, the words seemed weighty and full of significance as the editor at the same time put his arm over his shoulder and leaned his tall, bony frame against him. Was it a human being who was revealing himself?
It was an oddly problematic, unsettled moment. Jastrau would always remember the square as it then lay spread out before him, a genial, whitish expanse slanting like the sea when viewed from the face of a cliff. And he would recall the dark, transverse column of people crossing from Vesterbrogade to Strøget, the constant movement, and all the bright, cheerful women. As he stood by the window, the tall, stooping editor with the dull, listless eyes and the animated square below merged into one picture representing journalism, the most living picture of all, but one with overtones of weariness and disillusion.
“Yes, I was once a boy like that. And now here I am. But for how long? I think of that so often.”
There was something naive about Editor Iversen’s tone of voice when he bec
ame philosophical. One platitudinous thought abruptly followed another. When moved to emotion, he was like the readers of his paper.
“Yes, death. A person gets old, Jastrau.” He looked down at him. “But how young you must be, since you are determined to go to the dogs. Hee hee. So I don’t suppose you give much thought to death. I’m constantly reminded of it. Incidentally, it can be rather funny at times.” He snickered, and now he had managed to overcome his emotion. But then, in order to cover himself, he added, “Despite it being so tragic. For example, yesterday I had a visit from H. C. Stefani—you know him. He was in mourning and wearing a nap hat. His wife was Norwegian, and up there they call a high silk hat a nap hat.”
Jastrau suddenly grew tense under the weight of Editor Iversen’s arm. Shouldn’t he be allowed to resign from these five years of his life in peace? Was Steffensen’s life again casting a shadow across his path? He could guess what had happened.
But the editor went on. He lapsed into an anecdote, having freed himself from tragic thoughts.
“Yes, I knew her quite well—a large woman. ‘You’re a fine-looking lad when you’re wearing a nap hat,’ she said once—we were at a big funeral. They call it a nap hat up there in Oslo. But as I was saying, yesterday Stefani came up here. He was completely upset—his wife had died—and he had her ashes with him in an urn. And you know what? The urn was in a briefcase out in the vestibule.”
He stared far out into the blue sky.
“He cried—yes, he did—over that briefcase.”
Steffensen’s mother was dead. Jastrau envisaged her in rough outline as a big black shadow. But why was this shadow being cast over him at such a bright moment? Couldn’t Jastrau be permitted to live out his own life? Now he was handing in his resignation, and he should not be compelled to think of anything else.
“Hee. Yes, it’s funny when one has known Stefani—rather well. He’s always had a hard time of it whenever he caught sight of a skirt, and they say she was jealous. A big Norwegian woman who is jealous in the bargain—but now he had her in a briefcase—bon. And then he cried. I really felt sorry for him.”
Jastrau began to stir uneasily.
“Do you have to go, Jastrau?” asked the editor. “Well, then we’re agreed that you’ll consider it once more. You’re so quick-tempered, Jastrau.”
Jastrau looked at him. The boyish smile rippled beneath the mustache.
“No, I’m resigning today.”
The editor doubled up a little, as if he had received a blow. Again there were dark patches under his eyes.
“You’ve always been a decent person, and I think it’s foolish of you to want to go to the dogs. It would be better if you went on a trip and then came back and became a great man. But it’s honest of you to want to leave rather than remain and write trash. Ha—we have enough of that.”
Jastrau smiled in embarrassment. Again his eyes were blinking. “Now I’ll say good-bye,” he said.
“Do we have to say good-bye now? We don’t have to be ceremonious about it, do we? There are still three whole months during which we can shake hands. Well, good-bye.” And he waved roguishly.
Jastrau bowed and left the room, deeply affected.
“Ah—finally!” exclaimed a journalist who had been sitting waiting in the vestibule. It was Gundersen with the dark glasses and the Negroid lips. “It was a lengthy chat you had with the rhinoceros. What sort of a humor is he in?”
“Excellent,” Jastrau said, grinning. “We stood at the corner window with tears in our eyes—both of us.”
“That’s fine. Let me in to see him, then.”
And Gundersen knocked on the open door.
Jastrau slipped quietly away. He was so engrossed with his feeling of invulnerability that he did not want to talk to anyone. Whistling gently, he went out the door.
A faint smile played about his lips. Good-bye. Good-bye. The bright assurance of now being able to go tranquilly to the dogs made him tingle inside as he walked down the stairs. Down to the dogs. Goodbye, good-bye.
Steffensen’s mother was dead. Should he tell him? No, why? Now everything was moving along smoothly. Where? Downward? And there was momentum in it.
And as he stood on the sidewalk he felt an overwhelming urge to reward himself. He had earned it. Yes, indeed. And naturally he turned to the right and went into the Bar des Artistes.
It was dim and deserted inside. Not a soul around. Nor was it later than three o’clock.
The red portieres closed behind him with a subdued zipping sound and shut out the sunlight. Suddenly the day advanced several hours toward evening, and twilight set in. Far in the interior the huge array of bottles, glasses, and the bar with its brasswork gleamed like a cryptic alchemistical laboratory.
The little waiter had drawn the portieres of the door leading to the courtyard a little to one side and stood bent over with laughter.
“Come and see, Herr Jastrau,” he sniggered. “Herr Kjær is about to yank out one of his back teeth.”
Jastrau had to take a look, and out in the courtyard he saw a heavy-set gentleman in a smart gray-green suit who was performing a strange solitary dance. His movements resembled most closely those of a disabled jumping jack who could kick out with only one leg.
“What’s he using, Arnold?”
“A pair of pincers, of course. We found an old, rusty pair.”
And then Jastrau saw the eternal Kjær lean his head far back, as if looking up at the little quadrangle of blue sky, and begin hopping about on one leg.
Jastrau and the waiter laughed.
Suddenly Kjær wheeled around and triumphantly waved the pincers in the air.
“Eureka!” he exclaimed as, with the sweat dripping from him, he stepped back inside. “Have you ever seen a tooth to compare with that?”
He held forth a black and bloody object with the crooked roots hanging from it.
“Why didn’t you go to the dentist?”
“No,” Kjær exclaimed, raising his hand in a gesture of alarm. “I’d never have found my way to one, and if I had I’d never have found my way back here. I’m no explorer.”
He sat down at the round table and held the tooth philosophically out in front of him.
“You want to see it, Jazz? It has expression.”
And then he held it over toward Jastrau.
“Can’t you see? It looks like my lawyer.”
Jastrau felt as if he were blind and shook his head.
“Then it’s because you haven’t had your Lundbom cocktail yet. Arnold—two of them.”
And then he sighed and stared at Jastrau with his foggy blue eyes.
“Why are you looking so happy and untalented today?”
“Oh, I’ve fought hard for my right to go to the dogs, and today I won.”
Kjær’s whole body shook with soundless laughter.
“That’s a lot of nonsense,” he snickered. “Because it’s completely impossible to go to the dogs, Jazz. A person dies first. It’s just as hard as getting to Canada. Now Little P. has sold his ticket again, and he’s stuck in Esbjerg.”
Kjær drew out a blue envelope.
“Just listen to this. He wants to borrow money from me or from Lundbom here so he can come back. I think we’ll let him have it. He’s lonesome for us, the poor devil.”
5
THE ETERNAL Kjær had become groggy, and his face was so bloated that the cleft in his chin was the only characteristic of which there was a visible trace. Now and then he would give the worm-eaten tooth that lay on the table a shove and mutter something about his lawyer. And Jastrau was silent. Lundbom’s cocktails buzzed in his head, but he felt so relaxed in the twilight of the barroom. Only when the portieres were drawn aside and a flash of light from the incandescent, busy street penetrated the room as from a projector did he give a sober start.
“Uh-h,” muttered the slumped-over Kjær and shook his head. His expression was bewildered. His pupils did not react. And with that egoism so typical of people who
have been drinking, Jastrau suddenly found himself disgruntled with the irregularity of what was going on at the table. He got up with a vague feeling of contempt and walked slowly through the room to see if any other acquaintances had come in.
“Hello, Herr Jastrau,” sounded a man’s voice.
“Hello, Herr Jastrau,” a woman’s voice chimed in, and he encountered a pair of luminous gray eyes—the jaded, but at the same time curious, eyes of an experienced woman.
It was Fru Kryger who, with the intrepid Herr Raben, had come in for an afternoon aperitif.
“Won’t you be good enough to sit down and have a drink at our table?” Raben asked amiably as he got up. Jastrau noticed that the scar on his cheek was becoming to him.
“Why yes—thanks,” Jastrau said with a facetious sigh as he leaned politely against the back of a chair. “But it will have to be a very weak one.” He raised his eyebrows. “Otherwise I’m afraid the result will be ghastly.”
In the semidarkness of the bar, Fru Kryger’s figure was like a gleam of light; her ashen hair, gray eyes, and gray silk dress were all of the same hue. Only a stormy morning seascape, with waves of icy silver and a gray, glowing mass of clouds behind which the sun had disappeared could produce a similar effect.
“I dare say you live hard, Herr Jastrau,” Fru Kryger remarked, bending forward toward him with a show of interest.
“A bit hectically perhaps,” he replied and sat down.
“They say you do a lot of drinking,” she went on aggressively.
“They also say I’m a Catholic,” he answered. Why did she never once take her eyes off him?
“That I don’t believe,” she said, laughing. “But I don’t understand how you find the time to set in circulation as many rumors as you do. You must be a regular Renaissance man. And of course you have to read all those books and review them. Incidentally, I read your reviews with great interest.”
“I’m damned if I do,” Raben interjected cynically. Was there already rivalry between them?
“Don’t you? They’re brilliantly written and always the first thing I look for when Dagbladet comes in the morning.”
She referred to Raben as “du.” So they were on familiar terms, Jastrau thought. Then perhaps her meaningful glances and ardent gestures were only a bit of coquetry intended to arouse Raben. Nevertheless, Jastrau could not help staring into her gray eyes. He suspected that beneath the gray silk dress her knees were rather bony.
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