“Come on, man! Help me!” she whispered vehemently to Kjær. “Oh—what if someone should see us?”
She bent over, seized Jastrau by one arm, and tugged at him. Kjær lurched forward and got Jastrau’s feet disengaged from the doormat, shoved them inside, then followed them in. The door slammed shut behind him. They stood in a dark hallway, breathing heavily but feeling relieved. The footsteps passed by outside.
“But what am I going to do with a pair like you?” Fru Luise sighed. Jastrau tried to get up.
“This is altogether wrong, frue,” Kjær said consolingly.
“Wow wow! Wow wow!” Jastrau barked fatuously, crawling on all fours. “I’m a dog. Wow wow! Wow wow!”
“It’s altogether wrong, frue.”
And suddenly Fru Luise broke into laughter—a strange, fluttery sort of laughter. “How completely crazy!” she exclaimed. “And—and what luck! I let my housemaid go for the afternoon.”
“A dog. Wow wow!”
“It’s wrong, frue—all wrong.”
“No, it’s funny.” Her eyes had opened wide, and they remained so while she laughed. “How funny—and crazy. Yes, crazy. But he can’t lie there like that, barking.”
“No, he can’t. No, he can’t.” Kjær muttered.
“Wow wow!”
“Ha ha.” With a child-like gesture Kjær raised an index finger. “And in the green woods. Fido learned that w-o-w always means wow.”
Fru Luise bent over and grabbed Jastrau by the arm again, and now Kjær stooped over too. With difficulty they got Jastrau on his feet and led him in through a sunny dining room in which a smorgasbord had been set for three.
At the sight of the gleaming snaps glasses Kjær instinctively came to a halt.
“No, we must go on into my husband’s study,” Fru Luise commanded. Then she attempted to laugh, but the laughter turned into a groan under her burden.
“I’m sorry,” Jastrau sniveled. For a second he had a flash of lucidity. The green canal. He remembered that. They opened a door and helped him to a couch.
3
THE MORNING light shone down from a strange ceiling, and in the white glare three black men popped up like goblins out of a jack-in-the-box. They had no arms. And the black Jesuits’ robes in which they were clad grew larger and larger until the three lean drawn faces hung over Jastrau, staring at him with dark squinting eyes.
And then all three of them spat, so that the air around them glistened with the droplets.
Jastrau felt his heart being constricted. It pained him, and he sat up. The men were still standing there. It seemed to him that the long robes came together at the bottom, like three branches merging into one tree trunk. But that was not the reason his heart beat so violently. It was the malice which the three ash-gray faces, with their creases and wrinkles revealed—a caustic, ascetic malice that knew no bounds, the essence of evil in triune monkish form, tainted by piety and contempt—a pale devil in the shape of a Jesuitical hydra.
The lips that had spat were still open and drawn taut, and he was afraid that once again, once more they would spit so that the air around them would glisten. But he would not give in. His heart pounded. He would not give in. And he stared steadfastly at them, stared and cried out because his heart hurt so. And then the faces faded, the black robes became transparent, and everything assumed concrete form. Two black bookcases. One of them he viewed from the side. And between them, a picture of a young pale-faced man with a distinguished oval face and dark ecstatic eyes—a reproduction of one of El Greco’s idealized male figures.
Jastrau drew a deep breath of relief. His breast heaved and fell. Where was he? A new fear assailed him. The jail cell! No, no. A strange ceiling. He was afraid of it, hardly dared to look up at it, it made his heart pound so. Where was he? Where? A canal with green water. “Master Jacob. Master Jacob.” He remembered, and his whole body began to tremble. Here he lay on a strange couch, fully clothed. He even had his shoes on.
And once more he let his glance wander over the menacing white ceiling. Over by the window the light was pouring in. Brilliant reflections undulated fitfully across the ceiling with the serpentine suppleness of water.
A door opened, and a pale, slightly-built woman with an almost boyish figure, dressed in pink pajamas, stood in the doorway. She looked at him with wide-open eyes.
“Why did you scream?” she asked breathlessly.
He sat up and peered at her through the morning glare. There were bags under her eyes, and her face was swollen from lack of sleep. The skin over her cheeks and neck sagged like that of an old woman.
“Did I scream?” he asked, and a smile passed over his lips. He could feel that his lips were dry and burning, and he was aware of an itching that bespoke a growing stubble of beard. He rubbed his hand awkwardly over it and smiled again, a canny, desperately ironic smile.
Fru Luise’s breast was heaving violently beneath the flimsy pajama top.
“Oh, you scared me so,” she moaned as she caught her breath.
“I simply had a hallucination,” Jastrau replied with the same fixed smile. He spoke as if hallucinations were an everyday occurrence.
And just then Fru Luise looked chastely down at her pajamas.
“And here I am,” she laughed, “standing stark naked in front of a strange man.” There was an odd quiver to her laughter.
“Compromised!” she exclaimed, bringing her feet and the legs of the pink pajama pants together. He suspected that her legs were skinny and her knees sharp.
“Well!” He drew the exclamation out. But she had concealed herself behind a portiere so that only her head, with its ash-gray, rumpled boyish hair, protruded. As she stood there she broke into loud shrill laughter.
“This is wild,” she said in a high-pitched voice.
“Is it?” Jastrau asked apathetically as he raised his eyebrows and looked down at his soiled hands. That was the way hands always looked the morning after—the skin grimy, the fingers stained with nicotine, the nails black. He could smell them; it was an odor like that of dusty old clothes. “I just think it’s ludicrous,” he added.
“Really now, you don’t mean that!” she exclaimed. “And you have the nerve to put it that way! Ludicrous! Don’t you consider me and the position you’ve placed me in?”
Jastrau glanced up and stared into her flashing gray eyes, stared so long that a faint blush spread over her powdered face.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing,” he said, compressing his lips in irony. “For you it’s ludicrous. As for me, I don’t have to care.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked impetuously, stepping halfway out from behind the portiere. The neck of the pajama top had fallen aside, and in the glow from the pink fabric one of her breasts, which had come to view, shone with a fresh and youthful charm, and the dark nipple caught his glance and fascinated him by its disproportionate size, so large was the brown aureola surrounding it.
“I mean I have to leave,” he said. He got up and walked toward the door.
But she stepped in his way.
“No. You must tell me what you mean by ‘ludicrous.’ ”
And with a wild, distraught expression she looked him squarely in the eye. Her expression was much too intense. The skin around her chin looked old and wrinkled. And he wanted to cup his hands, take her gently by the arms, and move her aside, but one of his hands slipped in against her breast. Was it she who had thrust her breast forward? Through the thin pajamas, he felt softness and warmth, a slender female form, and he saw her breast, fresh and youthful in a glow of morning sunlight through pink cloth. And it was this glow of youth and morning that welled up in him like a dream. He seized her, kissed her. Her lips remained motionless. They gave no indication of proficiency. But the expression on her face was resolute—that of a married woman. And he lifted her up and carried her to the couch, while her dilated eyes stared and stared and were so large that they seemed to take in the entire room in its morning radiance, a
s well as the window and the houses across the canal.
She was animated and much too hasty, devoid of real passion. She exhibited no emotion, only movement—no understanding, only experience. And so it became not a fusion but an encounter, without ecstasy or synthesis of feeling.
And she jabbered. “My, how wild!” There was nothing wild about it. “Do you love me? Tell me!” She stroked the back of his neck fitfully; it was like the wing beats of young birds. “Oh, you barbaric creature!” She rubbed her cheeks against his so that the stubble-growth of beard crackled. “And you’re unshaven, you wild man. And all you want to do is get drunk.” Her voice rose to a frenzied pitch and she laughed. “Oh you—fierce and unshaved—oh you, you—”
“Now it’s probably not at all so ludicrous,” Jastrau said, and went over to the window. Rose-red morning clouds drifted across a pale blue sky. Clouds that seemed to reflect the glow of Fru Luise’s pajamas. The houses with the old-fashioned gables on the other side of the canal stood with their colors revealed, brown and yellow, soft as skin, and red as if transparently suffused with blood. Fru Luise’s breast.
“What are you thinking of?” asked Fru Luise. She was applying face powder.
“I’m only being quiet,” he replied. “I’m only being stupid,” he heard someone say clearly. Every word came from a voice he did not recognize, so it was very likely his own. An auditory hallucination.
“Ah yes,” Fru Luise sighed from over on the couch. She was coloring her mouth with a lipstick. “Passion—that’s life.” And she laughed. He could hear that she was exerting herself to be hilarious. “Life is so many-sided. ‘Drink until your head swells,’ as your friend said.” And she struck her hand vigorously against the couch.
“What happened to Kjær?” Jastrau asked. He was still standing by the window, looking out over the canal.
“He took a taxi.”
Suddenly she stood behind him, flung her arms around his neck and hung squirming on his back.
“But Ole, he was that old sot we saw in the bar. I was so afraid, and now I’m so happy, so happy. He was polite.”
“He always is,” Jastrau managed to say. Her arms were practically choking him.
“And drunk as well,” she laughed, and once again suspended herself along his back with her legs thrust out behind her so that he almost toppled over. “But I did get so frightened. You crawled around on all fours and barked, and I was furious and laughed because I didn’t know that you were my Great Dane—mine, mine. Do you always scream in your sleep?”
And then she snuggled her head in under his arm.
“Squeeze it, squeeze it!” she cried out, her voice muffled in his clothing. “I’ve always had too many brains, and I don’t want it that way any more. Squeeze it to pieces, do you hear?”
He squeezed her head gently, but then all at once found himself beginning to tremble. The three malicious faces. It was the trinity of wickedness that he had seen, the essence of evil. And now? He was a friend of Otto Kryger. It would be impossible to look him in the eye any longer.
“Oh, you,” he said disconsolately, letting his hand glide caressingly over her head, which he still held tightly under his arm. Half-strangled, she laughed into his jacket. Her ash-gray bobbed hair hung down, bristling like a dust brush. He went on, “It was a real bit of stupidity, this.”
Immediately she withdrew her head.
“What do you mean?” she asked savagely, and stood before him. She had been too liberal with the lipstick, so that her mouth had a hard, ruthless look. Dry, thin lips covered with red.
And he looked down at the slight female figure in the pink pajamas, passed his eyes over her as she stood there in front of him, and thought that there was nothing appealing about her figure—no soft, gentle curves.
“It was a stupid thing to do,” he repeated, looking into her eyes. They were gray and weary.
But deep within the gray eyes something dark stirred—a look of understanding. She became herself again, and once more her eyes were those of a woman of experience. She looked at Jastrau’s corpulent figure, his broad unshaven face, his weak disillusioned mouth, and eyes that already shone with distrust, bloodshot as they were. She looked at his cheeks and at the creases of flesh under his chin. The entire lower part of his face was dissolving into a shapeless mass despite the fact that he had originally had a forceful chin. The tumefied face of a drunkard. Drink until your head swells.
And she laughed and nodded. “Yes, so it was,” she said.
It was an uneasy, nervous laugh, and suddenly she turned her back to him. Her head with its rumpled bobbed hair was lowered as if she was thinking.
“Now you must go, do you hear?” she said as if to herself.
“Go?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
She was still standing with her back toward him, and she nodded in a determined manner.
“Yes, yes. I don’t want to see you any more,” she said firmly.
She was about to slip away from him. So soon. Should he seize the initiative and consolidate his conquest? When he had been drinking he was equal to a conquest. But was conquest the word for it?
“Yes, I suppose that’s best. Well, good-bye then, Fru Luise, and—” He stopped. “And, thank you.”
She whirled about in surprise. A broad smile spread over her features, and she burst into laughter.
“And so you thank me. There’s nothing to thank me for, sir.” And suddenly she let her hands fall to her sides, twisted her lips in an expression of wistfulness, and shook her head. “It was nothing. You had better go, and—no, no, it was I who was looking for the big experience. No, no—good-bye now. Say good-bye to a little wife who is disregarded and neglected. Good-bye—go now. Say good-bye to your friend’s wife. Go! Don’t you hear me?”
And she ran over to the couch, flung herself down on it, and buried her head in a pillow.
“Yes. Now I’m going,” he said.
She did not sob. She only hid her face.
And Jastrau walked quietly and thoughtfully toward the door. He left.
Down at the corner of Torvegade he lighted a pipe. The streets were empty and bright, with the multiple colors of the stonework blossoming faintly in the pavements and on the building fronts. A solitary truck gardener’s wagon from Amager rumbled along with the horse and driver enveloped in an atmosphere of morning grumpiness. The horseshoes clattered sedately, and the echoes took their time about resounding from the walls of the buildings.
Jastrau walked slowly toward the Knippel Bridge. He leaned his head back, as all morning ramblers are in the habit of doing, let his gaze follow the lines of the roofs outlined against the pale blue sky and the reddish clouds—Fru Luise—smiled and observed the reflections of the day’s brightness in the highest windows. All the fifth floors were as empty and glittering as soap bubbles. Curtains and potted plants and all signs of humanity had vanished behind floating films of moisture, obliterated by the luster of the sky mirrored in the windowpanes.
But he did not want to think.
He rubbed his hands together, so that he got a feeling of being himself, and sauntered on calmly. He noticed how tender his feet were, and trod gingerly on the sidewalk. Now and then he took a resolute step. He was himself.
The verdigris-coated dragons entwined around the steeple of the stock exchange! There were many delightful sights to be seen in the morning, all clearly revealed and each a joy in itself. And the morning air was so still that the smoke from his pipe rose in a straight, undispersed column.
He had achieved a conquest with a woman. Did that enable him to see things more clearly? A bright morning did. The first time he had been with a woman, he had stood and looked up at the tops of the trees along Rahbeks Allé. That too had been a morning sky, but darker. And the façades of the houses, standing out white in the early dawn. The same clearly discerned emptiness. A fifth-story windowpane mirroring the brightness of the summer sky.
Højbroplads lay deserted, tawny and inviting as a sit
ting room. Why did he want to walk along Strøget on his way home? It was pleasant and had a true Copenhagen atmosphere. Strøget was part of a morning stroll.
A friend’s wife. But wasn’t it hysterical? Otto worshipped strange gods. Didn’t he deserve it? It was a punishment that had long awaited him.
And the pigeons cooed on Strøget’s rooftops. A glimpse of a photographer’s studio window. A faint shadow over the street, transparent and brown. The fronts of the buildings and the sidewalks glistened. And the constant rolling sound of pigeons, as if the courtyards behind were swarming with them. Now and then a noisy flapping, followed by a procession of wings and white feathers through the air.
The cooing was like that of pigeons in empty palaces. In the deserted palace courtyards. Copenhagen on an early summer morning.
But over toward the right on Nytory was the courthouse with its colossal pillars, a yellowish-brown temple, and behind its walls was the jail.
Cold shivers ran up his spine.
He was wearing his suspenders. His pants stayed up. But there were many forms of humiliation. It was lucky that he had gotten the hotel chambermaid to sew up the rip in his pants the day before—the Catholic rip, a wound sustained in a spiritual battle. How long was it since he had been home on Istedgade? It had been the day before yesterday, when the janitor had come dragging the boards up the stairs to nail them over the holes in the panes of the hallway door. How long ago that seemed! In the meantime he had come to know Fru Luise.
“Dagbla-det! Dagbla-det!” he heard a voice shouting from out of a dark ravine that emerged into the Town Hall Square, where the buildings lay in a pale haze. Frederiksberggade.
When he encountered the newsboy he did not buy a paper. Strange. He wanted to break himself of the habit of feverishly grabbing for any paper that still bore the smell of the rotary press.
And then across the sunlit, enormous Town Hall Square. A pale-faced girl came sauntering around the corner by the Paraply. He knew her by sight. He wondered if she were the one who up at the editorial room was known as The Whistle. There was another who was called The Face. It wasn’t she.
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