Havoc

by Havoc (retail) (epub)

  PART FOUR

  And All Suns Are Darkened

  1

  THE TELEPHONE rang again. Ole Jastrau opened his eyes. Yes, the telephone had rung once before. It had rung in his dream.

  He reached for it from force of habit. The table stood there. But the telephone lay on the floor. Oh—yesterday’s brawl. He remembered the sound of glass, unpleasant as the crunching of sugar between the teeth. Now, in the forenoon light, the chairs lay overturned and the door to the hallway stood open. He could see the big star-shaped hole in the gray frosted pane, and the noise from the hallway came all the way into the room.

  He groped for the receiver with his hand. He did not want to think. No, he didn’t.

  “Ole Jastrau speaking,” he said into the mouthpiece while he remained lying on his back. The daylight hurt his eyes.

  “It’s Vuldum you’re talking to. I’m calling from down here in the library because it’s urgent.”

  The voice was indistinct. Now and then there was a rattling in the telephone mouthpiece.

  “Talk louder,” Jastrau replied in irritation.

  “It’s your little tour de force down in Stenosgade that I’m referring to.”

  “Louder.”

  “I can’t speak louder,” came Vuldum’s faint voice. “There must be something wrong with your phone. But there are such wild rumors going around about your attempt to get converted that they’ve even reached me. The entire Catholic beehive is buzzing.”

  “Ha ha! They need a pick-me-up down there,” Jastrau laughed.

  “You mustn’t take it that way, my dear Ole. Remember, they’re Jesuits, and they’re thinking of making something serious out of it. That’s why I’m not losing any time in—” An unclear rattle drowned out the voice.

  “I can hardly hear you.”

  “What the devil is the matter with your telephone? I can hear you clearly. But you ought to forestall them.”

  “Who? What?”

  “Them—down there in Stenosgade. It seems there was a pane of glass broken.”

  “Well, what of it?”

  “You ought to go down and apologize to Father Garhammer, and then pay for the glass.”

  “Oh, go fly a kite!”

  “Well—now I’ve warned you,” Vuldum said slowly. “But I can imagine that this would be good material for the scandal sheets. Remember, they’re Jesuits you’re dealing with. The chief reviewer for Dagbladet attempts to get converted, a pane of glass gets broken—it’s not altogether dull stuff, and they wouldn’t set it in small type.”

  Jastrau laughed. He had a sudden feeling of emancipation. How trivial it all was. Now nobody could touch him.

  “It could jeopardize your position on the paper, and after all that isn’t any too good now.”

  “All right, let it jeopardize it,” Jastrau said, laughing.

  “Well, it was for your own sake that I called. But now I have to get back to the reading room. So good-bye. Now I’ve told you about it, and it seems to me—yes, it’s my opinion—that you absolutely must go out and apologize to Father Garhammer. Anyway, we’ll discuss it later. Good-bye now.”

  “Good-bye, and thanks for your thoughtfulness,” Jastrau replied ironically. He was invulnerable now. Everything that formerly had tormented him over at the paper, everything that could weaken or undermine his position, was nothing but a voice drowned out now and then by a rattling sound, a faint, faint voice in a wrecked telephone receiver. Nothing, nothing could hurt him any more.

  He laid the receiver back on the floor and got up. So Vuldum still had no inkling that he had resigned, that he had finally crossed the divide. It was almost funny. No one was capable of doing him any harm. Their good advice, their warnings, their malice, their intrigues—nothing but indistinct voices in a cracked telephone receiver.

  And the reality of his present surroundings, the overturned furniture, a broken chair back, the shattered panes in the hallway door—could he take them at all seriously? So many things can be smashed to pieces around a person that he ends up finding it comical. Wasn’t there something at Tivoli called the Fun Kitchen, where for twenty-five øre one was permitted to smash the chinaware?

  Here was the point at which Steffensen became a lunatic.

  But it was at this point that Jastrau was strongest.

  He wondered how Steffensen was. Had he left like Anna Marie? Was the devastation now over?

  Jastrau felt a smile forming on his lips. Canny was the word for such a smile. And he walked into the bedroom. A strong morning sun was shining in there.

  Steffensen lay sprawled across the double bed, fully clothed. The sun shone on his blond hair, giving it a golden, childish look. He lay with his mouth open, snoring.

  Jastrau stood for a moment observing his rigid features. There was nothing puzzling about them now. Angry lips. Many small teeth. An altogether too high forehead, serving as cover for a logic gone amok. Unshaven he was, too. Collar stretched tightly over his Adam’s apple like a dirty bandage on a clenched fist.

  An object of ridicule. Forever.

  Jastrau picked up his shaving things and went back to the living room. He lathered his face. He walked back and forth in his undershirt, pants, and bare feet. Where was Anna Marie? He used the shaving brush with vigor. Ah—that bewildered little girl. His suspenders dangled about his legs. He was a gay devil. Now she was very likely running about the streets and alleyways. He began to scrape one cheek in front of the mirror. And so probably she was going to the dogs. He made a shaver’s grimace and was aware of a smile coming over his twisted lips. A canny smile it was called. He was invulnerable.

  Just then the hallway doorbell rang, and he shifted one leg irritably. He felt a breeze. The Catholic rip in his pants. How would he get it sewed up?

  He turned around.

  It was a lady who stood peering aghast through the large star-shaped hole in the door pane. He could see part of her face. A pair of bright piercing eyes. And she had caught sight of him, too. Consequently, he would have to go to the door. But one cheek was smeared with white lather, he had on only an undershirt and pants, the latter ripped, and who could tell that the rip was the result of a spiritual conflict? Nevertheless, he would have to go to the door. Who was she?

  He opened the door, and his razor dripped soap as he raised it in a gesture of surprise.

  “No! Is it you, Fru Kryger?”

  It was she. She stood out on the landing, dressed in luminous gray. But her eyes were wide with alarm, almost unseeing, and she was leaning forward as if at any moment she would fall against him.

  “Then this is the right place.” She blinked, and the searching gray expression returned to her eyes. “Yes, your name is there on the door plate, but—”

  Jastrau bowed politely and smiled. The soap was drying and puckering up his cheek.

  “Yes. I must ask your pardon, frue. As you can see, I live in a state of siege.”

  “So I see,” she replied, drawing a deep breath.

  “Do I dare invite you to visit the ruins?” There seemed to be a flickering in his brain. There was sunlight on the stairway, and long bright shafts of it were reflected by Fru Kryger’s gray dress.

  “Well, I almost don’t know whether I dare,” she said with a smile, and then suddenly laughed. “Wouldn’t it be better if you shut the door and handed me that book—the one by Joyce—out through the hole there?”

  “It’s too thick—the book. If you want it, you’ll have to venture in.”

  Slowly Fru Kryger stepped inside. She put her foot cautiously forward, as if walking on a quagmire, and looked around, completely at a loss and helplessly alone, and when she stopped in the middle of the room she stood with her feet close together, looking down in front of her as if fearful of being contaminated. The overturned chairs, the pictures littering the floor, the bits of glass, the bottles and beer caps filled her with alarm.

  “How this place does look!”

  “Yes. A conversation took place here,” Jas
trau replied, gallantly flourishing his razor as if it were a fencing foil. There is a type of smile that is called canny.

  Greetings to all good fellows from Peter Boyesen!

  “Is it so difficult for a man to live alone?” exclaimed Fru Luise, looking at him inquiringly. “Are you menfolk like this?”

  Jastrau sat down on the sofa, passed his hand self-consciously over his face, and got his fingers sticky from the solidifying soap.

  “I must finish shaving,” he said hurriedly. “If you dare to stay here alone, I’ll be through in a—”

  “Yes, I dare to, all right,” she replied with mock bravado. “But I won’t deny that I feel a bit like a lion tamer.”

  She stood erectly as she smiled.

  Jastrau took all his clothes—shirt, collar, jacket and vest—rolled them into a bundle, and tossed it into the dining room.

  “There. Now I’ll be back in a jiffy,” he said. Had she seen the tear in his pants—that degrading tear? There was nothing so humiliating as a hole in one’s pants. Yes, there was too—suspenders. To be without suspenders. At least, he had them on. They dangled behind him like a ridiculous tail, and he grabbed hold of them, blushed deeply, and whispered, “I’ll be right back.” Then he shut the sliding doors behind him and was alone in the dining room.

  He shaved hurriedly as he restlessly paced the floor. Now if only Steffensen didn’t wake up. He went over to the bedroom door and listened while he shaved. No, he was still sleeping. Jastrau could hear that. But he could also hear his own heart thumping from overexertion. Oh, if only he had a Pilsner! And she, Fru Kryger? He heard a chair being righted in there. She should not do that, damn it all. She should not straighten things up, get domestic. But he had better finish getting ready. Out into the kitchen to wash so as not to wake Steffensen. Put on his shirt and collar. Vest and jacket. If only he didn’t have that rip in his pants. What should he do? He would have to go out to the hallway and put on his light topcoat.

  He would have to invite her for a walk.

  Wearing the topcoat and his felt hat, and with James Joyce’s fat novel under his arm, he went back in to Fru Luise. She was sitting in one of the chairs, which now stood where it belonged. He noticed that the pictures of his mother and son had been placed on the table, and he smiled gratefully. But at the same time he felt a twinge go through him. He saw a flash of light on the glass that covered the picture of his son. It was cracked.

  “It’s so dismal here,” he said nervously. The light from the crack in the glass seemed to pierce right through him. “Hadn’t we better go out?”

  “Yes, by all means,” Fru Luise replied, and got up. “Oh! There’s the book. Yes, I can see it’s a big one.”

  On the stairway they met the janitor, who was carrying some boards. When he caught sight of Fru Luise, he blinked at Jastrau with his blue eyes.

  “I’m just going to slap a few of these boards up over the door to cover the hole. Otherwise anyone can walk right in or out, so to speak. Isn’t that so?”

  Jastrau nodded.

  “And I’ve phoned for the glazier. I’m a janitor, ha ha, but I won’t cause you any trouble.”

  And with a snigger he went on up the stairway with the boards.

  “Where shall we go?” Jastrau asked when they were down on the street. All the while he could feel her gray eyes resting on him.

  “Oh, wherever you wish. I have plenty of time. My husband is away, you know.”

  “Isn’t it fun to be a widow for a change?”

  “I’m a widow all the time as a matter of fact,” she said bitterly. Suddenly the lines of her mouth tightened and she assumed the wizened expression of an old lady.

  Jastrau looked at her earnestly, but then she shifted her glance.

  “Shouldn’t we go to Frederiksberg Park?” she exclaimed abruptly. She pronounced it “Fresber Park,” and moved her lips like those of a baby. “Shall we? Yes, that’s what we’ll do. Yes, come on!” And she seized his arm eagerly. But she did not look at him.

  “Frederiksberg Park,” Jastrau repeated slowly. He wondered if Oluf might not be playing there. His wife’s parents lived in the neighborhood. There was a crack in the glass over the photograph. Like a flash of lightning. And it had struck him.

  “Yes, let’s do that,” he said with a sigh, feeling that he was surrendering himself to his fate.

  Amidst the forenoon traffic on Vesterbrogade he made a few missteps. It was as if the sidewalk under his feet insisted on opening up, leaving him to step out into empty space. He removed his hat and nervously passed his hand over his wet forehead. But then he went on talking—incessantly, in order to forget his giddiness. Ah—a Pilsner would soothe him.

  “You’ll never get this book read,” he teased her, tapping the volume of Joyce with his hand. “It takes a set of directions to get through it.”

  But Fru Luise walked primly and calmly along at his side. She was very quiet, and Jastrau was afraid that she would suddenly begin to ask questions. He knew that then they would pour in on him, intelligent as sparkling water, and cast their reflections so far into his self—that dark cave—that he would have to expose himself, give himself away. The gray dress shone, the gray eyes gleamed and brushed him for a long moment, then went dull again, as if she were shutting herself in and thinking again, thinking again, while she calmly and in a consciously matter-of-fact way kept in step with him.

  Frederiksberg Allé was prodigiously wide, like the view out over a sea. There were no tramway tracks—only an asphalt surface. And he had never before thought about the fact that tram tracks made a street narrower. Now, however, he sensed it. At the moment, he yearned for tram tracks.

  And the entrance to Frederiksberg Park! With its yellow walls and yellow gardeners’ quarters and iron grillwork in the style of the eighteenth century. When one entered this park, he felt himself in a miniature European kingdom. The illusion of monarchy that pervaded the yellowish atmosphere of the place seemed to embellish it. And the statue of that simple man, the promenading autocrat,* seemed to greet them so convivially.

  “Denmark,” Jastrau remarked jovially, without apparent reason.

  “Yes, and I like it,” Fru Luise replied.

  “But then, you’re married to a conservative man.”

  “Are you making fun of me because you’ve slipped the bonds of your marriage?” she asked. Jastrau thought she sounded querulous. “Do you have it any better in your state of siege?” But then she quickly added, as if fearing an answer, “Though perhaps you have.”

  Jastrau sensed that he should not pursue the subject farther.

  Then they turned into the pathway at the left. The massive green crowns of the trees breathed coolly above their heads, and from between the park’s venerable tree trunks Josty’s little restaurant in Greek temple style, gray and idyllic, and with a stamp of pagan false piety about it, seemed to entice them.

  But in front of the Josty, the graveled space between the two rows of summerhouses was swarming with children. Baby carriages were being rocked back and forth incessantly with one arm as with the other the nursemaids raised their coffee cups to their mouths. Many baby carriages, and always the same creaking movement. How full of children the world was. Two small boys kicked gravel in onto the flagstones so that it sounded like the lapping of waves against a beach. Behind the trellises of the summerhouses, children were playing peek-a-boo. A little girl’s round face with bangs popped out from between the leaves like a Japanese doll. From the table surfaces came the faint, metallic patter of the house-sparrows’ claws as the birds tamely and fitfully hopped about looking for cake crumbs and sugar. All of these sounds merged into one, and suddenly Jastrau felt overwhelmed by them as by a tidal wave of grief. Children!

  Feeling strangely careworn, he invited Fru Luise to step into the restaurant.

  “Wouldn’t it be better if we sat outside?” she objected. “The sunshine is so lovely.”

  “No, no, no,” he replied dejectedly. He did not want to
state his reason. He simply led the way inside and found a table as far, far away from the children as possible.

  “I’m sure you’ll pardon me, frue, if I order a beer.” He sat opposite her and with a weary irony gazed into the deep, gray eyes. “Like all drunkards, I must have my morning bottle of beer to calm me down.”

  “Drunkard! Now I dare say you’re bragging.” She looked at him with a twinkling smile and drew the thick book by Joyce toward her.

  “No. That’s certainly all I am.”

  “You’re a critic too—and a good critic at that.”

  “No. That’s certainly what I’m not. I’m a drunkard.”

  Fru Luise laughed.

  Just then coffee was placed before her and a beer before him, and she looked ironically at the green bottle. The contractions at the corners of her mouth were those of an experienced woman. “What does it matter if you’re a drunkard? What is a drunkard?” she suddenly said with mock irritation. It was as if she suddenly had decided to obtrude herself into his life. But he lifted his glass with its foaming head and drank, and felt a melancholy tranquility come over him.

  “I want to be at ease with myself,” he said, “and observe what comes to the surface from deep down inside me.” Far off in the distance he heard the noise of the children playing, and he felt he had to be candid with her. From across the table, those gray, intelligent feminine eyes were staring at him. “Fru Kryger—Fru Luise—may I call you that? You know these caves that you see in aquariums, don’t you? The ones with a dim green light and with red and green fish darting forth, and bits of seaweed that seem to want to swim out. That’s how I want to be, and that’s the way I am when I drink.”

  “But you don’t have to drink in order to do that. We can all be like that,” she replied.

  He smiled.

  “But then, when you see something unexpected, a fish with a head like a beak and a body sharp as a knife, or perhaps more like a file, and with wicked eyes—the sort of thing you never believed yourself to be like.”

  “Then you go out into the daylight, and the creature is gone.”