“That’s a lie.”
Jastrau shrugged his shoulders and shook himself.
“He says it’s a lie, he says it’s a lie,” he remarked, laughing.
And with brisk, springy steps, with the derby on his head, the walking stick in hand, and the tapering fingers of his gloves bristling in all directions, Adolf Smith-Jørgensen marched toward the door, a picture of noble and righteous indignation.
The move took Jastrau by surprise.
“Say hello to Michelsen,” he managed to call out.
At that moment, subdued Hawaiian guitar music began to issue from the phonograph over in the corner. The little snub-nosed waiter, who had been standing silent and motionless behind the bar had, with a certain feeling for the amenities, set it going.
And once more Jastrau staggered over to the eternal Kjær.
“Jazz,” said Kjær reproachfully, raising his broad head from out of his lethargy, “you mustn’t do that, you mustn’t do that.”
Jastrau grunted irascibly.
“He was far beneath your level, Jazz. A person has to be particular.” And once more the broad head drooped.
Jastrau groaned. Suddenly he felt as if he would explode with the heat. The dusky atmosphere tormented him. He could not recapture the feeling of coziness.
“I want to get out,” he said.
“I want out, I want out,” Kjær hummed.
“Let’s get a taxi and take a ride,” Jastrau proposed.
Kjær shook his head. Wrinkles of anxiety appeared on his forehead.
“No. I’m staying here,” he said, raising his hand slowly in a disparaging gesture.
“No. You’re coming with me.”
“No, no.”
“Yes.”
Kjaer’s large frame squirmed uncomfortably.
“But I don’t want to, damn it,” he said.
“Have you seen the woods this year?” Jastrau asked stubbornly.
“I don’t want to.”
“But you must!” shouted Jastrau.
“What do I want with the woods? They’re only green.”
“This year they’re blue.”
Kjær’s eyes widened in amazement. “What are you saying?”
“Yes, yes, the wine-blue beeches.”
“You’re drunk, Jazz.”
“I want you along. I do, I do.”
“Arnold,” said the eternal Kjaer, turning slowly in his chair, “should I go along with this drunken gentleman to the woods? He sees blue beech trees.”
“Yes, I think you should Herr Kjær. A little fresh air, you know.” And the waiter waved his hand politely.
“All right, then,” Kjaer exclaimed with a groan. He stood up in all his solemn majesty. “If Arnold says so, then, damn it, I’ll have to go into the woods.”
A little later, they walked through the room arm in arm, humming softly. The portiere was drawn aside so that the sunlight exploded around them. Out on the sidewalk, they reeled for a moment and rubbed their eyes. The people walking by looked remarkably clear-skinned, but their faces were tightly drawn. They took too short steps, these people, and they did not swing their aims as they walked. Besides, they swerved out of the way. Jastrau and Kjær were left with plenty of space around them, as well as too intense sunlight.
Finally they sat in a taxi.
Arnold stood in the doorway of the bar. The uniformed hall porter stood in the entrance to the hotel, and behind the windows were several grinning faces, eager to witness the beginning of the journey to Charlottenlund. Kjær waved his hand in a broad gesture of acknowledgment. His fedora sat low and askew over his forehead.
“Uh,” he said as the taxi turned into Farimagsgade. “Strange buildings, what? I don’t really like it.”
But the park flashed by at their right. The tree branches stretched out over the tall iron fence, and beneath the leaves the passers-by moved restlessly in the flickering light and shadow.
And Jastrau began to be aware of things. The breeze whistled about his forehead. They were in an open-topped taxi. He suddenly discovered that his hands were dirty, as if he had been crawling around on the ground.
But just then Kjær was thrown over against him. They were swinging into the Frederiksborggade crossing. Kjær’s hat rolled off onto the floor, and he leaned forward with a groan to retrieve it.
“Oh, oh,” he sighed from below. “Isn’t there anyone who sympathizes with me? There! There it is.”
Jastrau managed with difficulty to help him back into the seat, and once more the hat was placed askew over his forehead.
“Are we going to Canada, over to see Little P.?” asked Kjær; and then he laughed in bewilderment.
Now they drove over the Queen Louise Bridge. On both sides of them stretched the lakes with their neat stone embankments. Far away in the sunlight a charming yellow coloration was discernible, a color that Jastrau had loved as a boy. It was the buildings on distant Østerbro, the corner properties at Willemoesgade. The color was so lovely, like something in a dream. That was the way the horizon should shine.
“Where is Little P.?” Jastrau asked, straightening up in the seat again. From deep within his memory the color glowed like the recollection of a joy he had known long ago, and he found himself preoccupied and lucid at one and the same time. He did not understand the double nature of the feelings that were part of this car ride, this experience. There above the houses on Nørrebro was the real sunshine, today’s sunshine, but beneath it glowed the rays from a bygone sunshine, radiant and full of sentimentality.
“Old Little P. came and got young Little P., and now he’s on his way to New York with him—ha ha. But Little P. will come back to the Bar des Artistes, that I know for certain.” And Kjær nodded so vigorously that his hat nearly fell off again. “He’ll come, yes. For what’s he going to do in a wild, uncivilized place like America—among a lot of barfly Indians?”
A greenish tinge came over his face, and he shuddered. They drove out along Nørre Allé, with the huge tree trunks like pillars on both sides of them, while ahead the branches met to form high tapering arches. The color was like sunlight coming through stained-glass windows.
The eternal Kjær groaned deeply.
But in Jastrau’s world the long avenue was like a telescope, green on its inner side, while in the round aperture, far in the distance, were some buildings and a yellow streetcar that happened to be passing by.
“Our streetcars are the best looking streetcars in the world,” said Jastrau, thinking at the same time that blue suits were flattering to blond-haired women. But the eternal Kjær did not hear him. He sat with his hands folded over his fat belly and his hat over his right ear while he sang:
“Think when once the fog has vanished,
Think when once the fog has—
When once the fog has vanished,
Think when once the fog has van—ish—”
“Oh!” he sighed deeply as they rode out past the houses on Lyngbyvej. He pushed off his hat and mopped his wet brow with a handkerchief. “Oh, Jazz, thank God! I thought we were in church, Jazz.” He laid his hand heavily on Jastrau’s knee and drew a deep, labored breath. “I can’t stand such excitement.” Then, with sudden intensity, he asked, “What—what time is it?” He was blue in the face, as if about to suffer an attack of apoplexy.
Jastrau pulled his watch out of his vest pocket and looked at it. It was four-thirty.
And suddenly he could see before him the angle of the hands of the clock at the Bar des Artistes, and he could see the procession—Kjær with his unseeing eyes and swaying colossus of a body, and the two small tail-coated waiters, both leaning in against him to keep him in equilibrium.
“It’s three o’clock,” Jastrau replied, drawing a breath of relief when he saw the eternal Kjær straighten up with renewed strength.
“I thought I was in church,” he repeated with half-open lips, gaping and smiling in bewilderment. “But where are we going, Jazz? I’m thirsty.”
Jastr
au waved his hand at the road ahead. And they drove rapidly on under the railway grade-crossing gates and out toward the open country which soon became a residential area. A long straight road lay ahead.
Now and then they heard the rustle of a treetop above their heads, now and then a tram whizzed by close to them, leaving a long-sustained singing in the cable as the breeze raised by the car’s passing blew down on them in the open taxi.
“It’s—it’s like drowning,” gasped Kjær, who still sat with his hands folded over his ponderous belly. His breath came in jerks. “It’s more than a person can stand,” he groaned. “It’s disgusting all this fresh air. If only I were back at the bar again.”
He laid his hand imploringly on Jastrau’s shoulder. “Why did you drag me out here? I don’t care anything about seeing the woods.” He stamped his foot in rage and went on monotonously, “I don’t want to see the woods. I don’t want to see the woods.”
Out at Femvejen, they swung into Jægersborg Allé with its tall, majestic trees, and when their green crowns began to cast back a wave of sound over their heads Kjær involuntarily ducked his head, folded his hands, and hummed:
“Think when once the fog has vanished—no, no, of course—they’re trees.” He put both hands up to his face. “They’re trees, but—it’s like being in church. They’re trees.”
At the restaurant at the edge of the Charlottenlund woods Jastrau rose up in the seat.
“Stop here.”
A yellow anemone! Yes, they were both crazy. A yellow anemone! An obstinate boyish voice from out of the remote past, when life had been different.
“Well—there are the woods,” Kjær moaned, laboriously rising from the seat. “Shouldn’t we go in and have an absinthe?”
He remained standing for a moment on the street and let his eyes wander over the edge of the woods and the dark-green treetops. The broad road, flooded with intense light, cut into the forest. Then he shook his head in bewilderment and with a smile took Jastrau by the arm.
“Allons, enfants de la patrie,” he hummed, and they marched on into the little restaurant.
They gulped down their first absinthe in silence.
“I’ve never seen a blue anemone,” Jastrau suddenly sighed. He felt a boundless grief, a grief that could never be allayed.
Kjær’s eyes were blurred as he let them wander around the dining room. It had an air of provincial elegance.
“Neither have I,” he replied with equal melancholy. “Nobody has. A blue anemone. What are you driving at? What did we have to come out here for anyway?” he whined. “Why, Jazz? After all, I’m not much of a traveler any more. I’m old and tired.” And he supported his sparsely-haired pate with both hands as he stared down at the tablecloth.
“What business do I have in strange places?” he groaned.
“I’ve never seen a blue anemone,” Jastrau repeated, and drank the second absinthe. “What shall I do about it?”
Kjær raised his head and looked at him with unspeakable sadness.
“But enough of this,” Jastrau exclaimed with a sudden display of energy. “This place is unbearable. And now I’m going out to visit a lady—that’s what I’m going to do. Keep a date—that’s what. And you’re coming with me. Yes, you are. You need a change.”
“No, no women,” Kjær replied quietly. “You must promise me that.” He sighed deeply. “It was bad enough with the trees. I thought I was in church.” He sputtered with laughter.
“But you must!” Jastrau’s arms were flailing about, and he spoke so loudly that his voice rang disconcertingly through the empty room. “You must!” He pounded the table. “Now I’m going to call her up. I must get this damned, repulsive blue anemone out of my head.”
And with an unaccountable zeal he got up from his chair and found his way to a telephone located on the back stairway of the restaurant.
“Hello. This is Ole Jastrau.”
He almost fell against the telephone.
“Is it you, Herr Jastrau? I thought you were going to let me down,” came Fru Luise’s voice.
“Never!” Jastrau gesticulated with exaggerated force so that he had to hop sideways like a starling on a ridgepole in order not to lose his balance and stumble back against the telephone.
Fru Luise laughed skeptically.
“I’m out at Charlottenlund with a friend.”
“It wouldn’t be your friend who came to see about the door panes, would it?” she asked in mock alarm.
“No, no. He’s a gentleman, one of the most genteel persons I know, and we’re coming to see you.”
He shut his lips tightly. Now he had luckily gotten through that sentence without stumbling, and he drew himself up so energetically that he had to take a step backward, and then another, as far as the telephone would reach.
“But my goodness! Who is he?”
Jastrau came close to the telephone and spoke earnestly.
“A gentleman,” he said intently. “And—and we’re coming.”
“Well, all right,” came the resigned answer. “But when?”
“In just a minute.”
“From Charlottenlund?” Her voice sounded as if she had misgivings. “Oh, all right then.”
“So we’ll be there.”
And Jastrau hung up immediately. But then he remained standing, staring at the telephone. He really ought not to go back into town to visit Fru Luise, should he? No, he shouldn’t. If he went there with Kjær—Well, Kjær was a gentleman. He certainly was. But hadn’t they had too much to drink? That damned blue anemone! But he had promised her he would come. It would be impolite not to do so. And the day before, he had forgotten. Impolite. Unforgiveable. So he would have to make amends—and go.
Kjær was having his third absinthe.
“So are we going to the woods?” he asked abstractedly. He muttered as if his lips were stuck together.
“She’s waiting,” exclaimed Jastrau, downing the fresh glass of absinthe.
Kjær did not understand.
“She? She? A woman?” He smiled drowsily. “Yes, Charles the Twelfth is waiting. Yes, let’s go. King Charles, the young hero, there she stood—” He broke off his subdued singing and finished his drink.
Slowly they tottered out to the taxi. The afternoon sun shone on the road so brightly that their eyes hurt. A white hotel on the other side of the road stood deserted and gleaming in the sunlight.
Jastrau told the driver to take them to a street in the Christianshavn section.
“And no trees,” Kjær whimpered.
The driver shook his head, but Kjær leaned forward toward him.
“Yes, no tree-lined avenues, do you understand? You must avoid the avenues with trees. My head won’t stand it.”
Jastrau crawled into the taxi and sank into the seat. Green treetops in sunlight. A glittering blue sky. White houses. And a storm was brewing. A whirring sound around them. And then they put out from land. The pleasant feeling of movement when a ship begins to pitch. Far, far away. It is cool at sea.
Master Jacob! Master Jacob!
Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?
Don’t you hear the bell ring? Don’t you hear the bell ring?
Ding-dong-ding. Ding-dong-ding.
Gray fronts of some houses. Old-fashioned houses with thick walls.
Master Jacob! Master Jacob!
Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?
It was the eternal Kjær’s hoarse voice. He waved his chubby hands while he sang, and now and then Jastrau felt a shove. “Don’t you hear the bell ring? Don’t you hear the bell ring? Ding—dong—ding. Ding—dong—ding.” The big, puffy face with its bloodshot eyes and blue and green blemishes bent over him, lighted up with a reddish tinge from the afternoon sun, and the damp corners of his mouth glistened. “Master Jacob!”
Jastrau felt a cold shiver zigzag down his spine, as well as a pain in his shoulder caused by the distorted position in which he had been lying back in the seat. Kjær continued to sing in lively fash
ion, and beyond his head Jastrau caught glimpses of old, brown, house gables that hovered oddly in the distance. A fresh breeze and the sound of gently lapping water aroused him, and he straightened up.
A canal with green water. The dark-green color impressed itself deeply in his consciousness.
“So here we are,” he lisped as he crawled freezing out of the taxi, supporting himself against it and feeling his way. The sidewalk whirled, a house with ugly blue-gray walls flickered before his eyes, and he had to support himself against the taxi again. Then finally there was something broad and solid to lean against. The eternal Kjær, thick-set, portly, and strenuously maintaining his composure, stalked off holding Jastrau by the arm. The street door gave way before their combined weight. Two heavy bodies. They lurched in onto a staircase and floundered and fumbled about until they ended up at a railing.
“Phew!” Kjær groaned. “I have to think for both of us.”
“Like hell you do,” Jastrau wheezed as he hauled himself up by the railing. “There, there!” He pointed at a door with a nameplate on it. Otto Kryger’s name. “Go ahead and ring. Or shall I?” He staggered away from the railing and over toward the door, got his foot in under the doormat, and sank to his knees as he reached up and rang the doorbell.
The door opened at the same time, and Fru Luise’s gray silk dress shone in the dark hallway. Her face grew rigid and in an instant took on a lean, oldish look. Only her gray eyes were unnaturally bright, as if she had a fever.
“This is a crazy business we’ve let ourselves in for,” muttered Kjær; who had leaned up against the wall. He wanted to raise his hand politely to his hat but gave up and let the hand fall helplessly back.
“Luise, Fru Lui-i-se,” said Jastrau on his knees while he pitched forward so that the door could not be closed. Fru Luise stepped back in horror, placed her thin hands against her breasts, and gasped.
“But—but—” She sounded as if she was sobbing.
“Yes. This is altogether wrong, frue,” came Kjær’s voice, and once more he made an unsuccessful attempt to remove his hat. His hand dangled.
But then footsteps sounded on the stairway above. Someone was on the way down. A look of fear flashed across Fru Luise’s face, and her eyes lighted up wildly, as if she were trying to look up the stairway and see through to all the floors above.
Havoc Page 45
