“Is it?”
“Well, I suppose not. But you forget it.”
She sounded so certain of herself. She clenched her nervous hands as if she wanted to pound them against the table, and her words came twice as fast as his. He spoke very slowly, now and then in a nasal tone, and with a slight Copenhagen accent.
“Don’t you think, though, that it’s quite funny to see such a creature?” he asked.
“No.”
“But I do. And it seems to me that it’s the only thing that really is funny.”
“But that doesn’t have to make you a drunkard, and you aren’t one either,” she said, almost as if brushing the subject aside.
“Yes, for some inexplicable reason it does. Because I see creatures I’ve never set eyes on before. One of them blinks his eyes, and an electric shock goes through me. Recently, I’ve experienced Jesus in this way.”
“You were speaking of animals,” she said with a touch of irony.
“All right, then let’s say forms or mental images, or whatever you want to call them. As a matter of fact, Christ is often symbolized by a fish, isn’t He? And so I caught sight of Him, His form stood there immovably before my mind’s eye—and that’s why I have a hole in my pants,” he added in a desperate attempt at a witticism. He had just shifted his leg and noticed the humiliating draft on his thigh.
“Are you crazy?” she asked bluntly, staring at him uncomprehendingly. She was becoming uneasy.
“No, but I’m not a critic. So there was the figure of Christ, blinking at me,” he said, laughing. “But then there was a good friend of mine who made me realize that of course Christ couldn’t be anything but a reminiscence from my school days, and consequently of no interest to me. For I wanted to arouse a creature—or a mental image—that came from deep inside the aquarium. A stalk-eyed fish with an armored head and sharp joints and edges. Do you know how it is when a person strikes himself on the eye in order to see visions—flaming visions?”
“You want to get back to your work,” she replied quietly. She compressed her lips as if she understood.
“No,” he said firmly.
“But, for goodness sake, what is it you want then?”
“There is something I want, and when I drink I sometimes feel for a moment that I’ve captured it. Liquor is the only substitute for religion, shall we put it that way—just for fun?”
“You want to forget—that’s it,” she remarked with conviction. Jastrau could tell that she had been a student as a young woman.
“Yes—ideas, opinions, and all such trivia. And then on the other hand I don’t know whether everything I’m sitting here and telling you isn’t fiction—because I’m simply a drunkard, thirsty. In other words, an excuse.”
He raised his beer glass and toasted her banteringly. Fru Luise had appeared to be understanding, he thought. That would not do.
“I want to sit around comfortably, drinking, and at the same time fancy that I’m working hard. A bit of seaweed that thinks it’s a fish,” he added in a slow drawl when he had finished his drink. “Waiter! Another beer.”
“What you need is a love affair,” she exclaimed with the voice of experience.
Jastrau looked at her and laughed. “Ah yes. As a matter of fact I almost had one the other day. And that was a strange fish—that feeling. It was practically invisible—wouldn’t take shape. And then it turned out that a friend and I played matches for her.”
“You did what?”
Jastrau took some matches from the container on the table and in a matter-of-fact way explained the rules of the game, while Fru Luise’s eyes grew wider and wider. She sat up very straight as if scandalized, and Jastrau could see how thin she was. It struck him that despite her intelligent banter she was essentially quite dull.
“And you did this to a woman with whom you were in love?”
“Yes. That, you see, is the question. Was I in love with her?” he replied slowly. “You see, Fru Luise, every normal person wants to experience that feeling and to have it take its usual form, the way he has read about it and has seen others do. He will call it love and behave the way a person in love behaves. But I want such a feeling to take a unique form—not become just a love affair. That’s a cliché. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“But it ended in a farce, don’t you see? It ended with us playing for her with matches. And as a matter of fact, that’s how it was with my religious experience. That ended in disorderly conduct, too. It ended as a farce. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“Don’t you realize, either, that I’ve resigned from Dagbladet?”
Fru Luise leaned forward over the table.
“What did you say? You’re no longer a critic?” she asked with feverish excitement.
Jastrau shook his head.
“But how are you going to make a living?”
“Naturally you ask me that question. God knows how often I’m going to hear it now.”
“Yes, but why did you do it?” she asked in agitation.
“Yes. That’s the question. Perhaps, Fru Luise, it’s your husband who’s to blame for it. He told me one election night that I was a good conservative critic. What he said, in effect, was that aesthetics preserves the illusion that there is freedom of thought in the country.”
“Freedom of thought—but we do have that.”
Jastrau shook his head.
“No, it’s an illusion. A person can think whatever he wants to about aesthetics, ethics, and I don’t know what else. But if he has opinions that encroach on economics, then the freedom no longer applies.”
“But your opinions have nothing to do with economics,” Fru Luise protested. Her gray eyes wavered uneasily as if she was recoiling from the argument.
“No, not yet—not yet. As I’ve told you, I have no opinions. But if—”
“If, if!” She shook her head.
“Yes, if some day it should occur to me that this and that is right and this and that is wrong, and if my opinion were contrary to that of the economic powers that be, then—”
“No, no, that’s really too ambiguous,” Fru Luise said with a sigh. “When people talk about economics and capitalism, they get boring—all of a sudden.”
Jastrau smiled and went on unconcerned.
“I believe that it’s this ‘if’—that it’s the possibility, or the thought of the possibility, of being forced that has driven me away from it all.”
“And I, who thought I was sitting here with the chief reviewer for Dagbladet, the well-known critic!” she exclaimed with droll despair. Her voice had a singsong quality.
“Yes, and then I turn out to be a simple, ordinary man who has made a slight attempt to plumb the depths of the soul and find the meaning of absolute freedom. And for now I’ve managed to become a drunk.”
His tone was at once ironic and melancholy, and Fru Luise had to look up and smile. Then, with sudden animation and assurance, she extended her hand to him across the table. He took it hesitantly, and she squeezed his hand gently—a gratuitous expression of confidence.
“I was just about to get furious with you,” she said. The tender smile remained on her thin lips. “But I can’t. No, I can’t. I see this drunkard before me, your close friend, that apoplectic in the Bar des Artistes. And I see your apartment. Broken furniture and bits of glass. And you tell me that you and another man drew lots for a woman. But then it becomes something else when you talk about it. It’s as if you were discussing a theory.”
Jastrau’s lips curled in a sneer. But she tugged at his hand.
“You must get away from that apartment, do you hear? You mustn’t go back up there to all those rooms. Where are you going to eat tonight? Come home with me. Yes—my husband—” She laughed. “Ah yes, he certainly has it better than he deserves. But you ought to come—you should. Instead of sitting up there in your apartment. Uh, how dismal it was! Or instead of going to a restaurant, you—you incorrigible drunkard.”
When they parted a little later he stood at the park gate and watched her retreating figure, the luminous gray dress, her agile legs. His eyes could follow her far down the avenue. The thinly-leaved, newly planted trees afforded a broad view.
Then he wanted to turn around and go back into the park. There was a playground over at the right in the northern corner, and perhaps Oluf was playing there.
Slowly he lighted his pipe. The stream of people was more concentrated here near the exit from the park. Suppose Oluf now appeared on the scene. There were so many children. Suppose he did. People sauntered by slowly, the way they walk in a park. A child’s play wagon screeched. It could be Oluf’s.
And suddenly he saw himself with new eyes.
Frederiksberg Park! It was a park for children and lonely pensioners. And in the evening it was frequented by the young people. There they sought each other out in the darkness along the asphalt pathways.
This he had always known.
But was it not also a park for divorced men?
Didn’t they steal out here to catch a glimpse of their children? Didn’t they stand, lonely and decorously, at the edge of the play area? They did not go any closer. They did not disturb the children at play, but held themselves under rigid control in order not to betray themselves with a sentimental wave of the hand.
A park for divorced men.
He studied the people going by. But divorced men are not so easy to distinguish in a public park. It is much easier to see them in a bar-room.
There were also people seated along the two long rows of benches that were called “the traps.” He looked along the rows. But suddenly he had to shift his glance because it had fallen on a pair of dark birdlike eyes that fastened themselves curiously on his hands and the awkward way he held his pipe. The bird-eyes twinkled, and the sunlight flashed on the spangles of a bonnet over white hair, so that it seemed that a score of dark curious eyes were watching him. An old lady, clad in black.
Ill at ease, Jastrau turned on his heel like a soldier. Now, he felt, the old lady would observe his decisive maneuver with interest. But he did not want to be spied upon. And he left the park.
In towards town.
Suddenly he called a taxi on the avenue and rode to the Bar des Artistes.
*King Frederik VI (1808–39).
2
JASTRAU and the eternal Kjær sat opposite each other in the semidarkness of the Bar des Artistes, both of them dull and listless. The ventilator hummed incessantly as it sucked up the blue tobacco smoke.
“Nice to have you staying here, Jazz.”
Kjær raised his broad, puffy prelate’s face and directed his groggy eyes toward him.
“Yes, thanks,” Jastrau grunted. “I had a date with a woman yesterday—at noon—and then I went and forgot it.”
It was stuffy in the dimly-lighted room, while outside the afternoon sunlight was brilliant.
“One forgets everything—one forgets everything,” Kjær puffed, waving his hand.
His body shook with soundless laughter, so that his chair creaked.
“But I can’t forget, Jazz, that finally I’ve seen the beginning of a white mouse. It happened yesterday out in the lobby. It was running around underneath the hall porter’s feet. ‘Chase it away,’ I yelled. ‘Chase it away.’ And then he laughed—the uniformed beast.”
Suddenly Kjær exploded with laughter.
“It’s eyes weren’t open yet—that little mouse. But that will come. ‘Give me time, give me time,’ it squeaked happily and wiggled its little ears,” Kjær went on in a singsong voice. “All in good time, all in good time,” he intoned again while he beat out the measure with a smoking cigar.
“All in good time, all in good time,” Jastrau chimed in.
“But we won’t create a disturbance.” Kjær raised his hand admonishingly, so that his arm shot out from his clean blue shirtcuff. As always, he was well dressed. No sign of disintegration. No ashes on his vest, no necktie that sat askew, no shabby collar. Nothing gave him away except a prematurely aged face with hollows and loose skin and brown liver spots.
“My life’s purpose has always been to be a quiet, heavy drinker, and that I’ve achieved.”
He fastidiously tapped the ashes from his cigar.
“Look ahead, but never back,” he hummed as he stared listlessly deep into Jastrau’s eyes while in a hoarse voice he went on singing and again waved his cigar in a sweeping, rhythmical gesture like a baton.
“Look ahead, but never back. What the heart desires,
Perhaps will someday come to be.”
“Yes,” he continued with a faint, remote smile, “as a matter of fact I’ve written verses, too. It was twenty-five years ago, when I was still slim.”
“We’re no longer that,” Jastrau sighed down into his whiskey glass. They were having a profound twilight conversation in the middle of a summer afternoon. They had both drunk long and heavily the night before.
“We—we!” the eternal Kjær snorted. “After all, you’re nothing but a young man who should keep his trap shut and listen in reverence. At your age I was a director and producer at Charlottenborg, and a copyeditor. But one gets tired of being so talented. And what does it lead to? Vanity. And now I’ve seen the beginning of a white mouse.”
He spread his big, well-groomed hands in an ironical, defeatist gesture of resignation.
“All talents don’t get you that far,” he added with a sigh.
“Look ahead, but never back. What the heart desires—”
And Kjær’s hoarse, halting song rang out through the subtle twilight atmosphere of gleaming bottles and brasswork, creating its own mood, like a drunken man’s solo tenor coming from the distance in a deserted street. But then a gabbling, nasal voice cut in.
“I thought I’d find you here, brother-in-law. Ha ha—I thought so. And why waste time? Think logically and act accordingly. If people have to drink, then they have to drink.”
And Jastrau was bowled over by a friendly clap on the shoulder that caught him completely off guard. It was Adolf Smith-Jørgensen.
With somber mien, the eternal Kjær leaned ominously over the big round table. His bleary eyes flashed with a singular malice in the melancholy blue atmosphere.
“I forbid this man to sit at our table!” he exclaimed, pointing a complaining finger at Jastrau’s brother-in-law, who in consternation took a step backward.
“Pardon me—pardon me, for breaking into your party. But may I introduce myself?”
“No!” thundered Kjær. “Plebeians don’t interest me.”
And Kjær quietly began to busy himself with his whiskey, as if the intruder had left.
But Jastrau got up listlessly, staggered a bit, and followed his brother-in-law over to another table.
“Bad company, bad company,” muttered the eternal Kjær, shaking his head while he stared down at the table. “Extremely bad company, my dear Jazz,” he added, nodding at the matchbox container.
“Well, I declare. What a boor!” Smith-Jørgensen exclaimed indignantly.
“Is there something else you want to tell me?” Jastrau asked dully, raising his head.
“This is really too much,” his brother-in-law went on, laying down his gloves, derby, and walking stick. But gradually he calmed down. “Well, let’s forget this barbarian. We certainly do have other things to talk about. We ought to see about—if not the divorce—then in any event about a separation, and apparently you haven’t thought about that, not really, that is, have you? Ha ha, you’re an amiable bounder.”
“Do I have to think?” Jastrau asked, collapsing wearily.
“Johanne hasn’t seen as much as an øre from you, and that won’t do. We must have it arranged legally. Haven’t you had a letter from Johanne’s lawyer?”
“Lawyer?” Jastrau repeated apathetically.
“Yes, of course she has a lawyer. We must get this worked out along clear lines. That’s always been my prin
ciple.”
“Clear lines?” Jastrau said.
“Is it physically impossible for you to see clear lines today?” Smith-Jørgensen exclaimed with a supercilious laugh.
“Ha ha. But now listen to me. Johanne must have four hundred kroner within the next few days. Can you get that through your muddled head?”
“Four hundred kroner? Yes, I have that much—up at the paper. Sure—I think so. And when I’ve drawn it out—when I’ve drawn it out—then—then there won’t be anything left.”
His brother-in-law shot him a quick glance.
“Can’t we go up there and draw it out now?” he asked in a business-like way.
“Draw, draw, draw,” Jastrau muttered. But then suddenly he drew himself up and said, “All right, draw it out and be damned.”
“Yes, but—” His brother-in-law drummed nervously on the table with his fingers. “You can’t go up to the cashier in this condition.”
Jastrau sank back in his chair again, so that his chin rested against his chest.
“No, I certainly can’t,” he mumbled down at his necktie.
“But look here!” Adolf exclaimed, slapping the palm of his hand against the table top so that the glasses jumped. Both Jastrau and Kjær gave a start. “The cur!” Kjær growled, sagging heavily against the table.
Jastrau’s eyes blinked in alarm.
“You frightened me, damn it,” he said. “But I agree with you. We must—we must get this cleared up. Yes, we must, we must, we must—” Adolf’s round cheeks puffed out dangerously, and his lips grew thin and compressed.
“Now I’m going,” he said menacingly. “I don’t have time for this sort of nonsense. And so you’ll have to excuse me if I and Johanne’s lawyer take hold of this thing in our own way. Speaking of lawyers, what’s your lawyer’s name?”
Jastrau looked at his brother-in-law through blurred eyes and then burst into a giggle.
“Yes, God knows what his name is.”
“Oh, you’re intolerable. But—you’ll—hear—from—me! And incidentally, while we’re on the subject, what about that fire-insurance policy?”
Jastrau tittered and shook his head. “It’s expired.”
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