Havoc

by Havoc (retail) (epub)

  *A play on words based on the word bogen, which means “book” and Bogense, a town in Funen.

  6

  JASTRAU and the eternal Kjær sat in the two wicker chairs in the hotel lobby observing the people and traffic passing by—individuals in an inordinate hurry, bicycles, trucks, and streetcars. A press photographer dashed by in his small, gray car, and waved a greeting. Kjær formally laid a hand on his pleated vest and nodded in return. “Peace be with him,” he said. Jastrau removed the pipe from his mouth.

  It was practically impossible to sit still. Jastrau really did not have time to do so. He had to get an article written and see about selling it. But that could wait until tomorrow. A bicycle capsized. It was a nuisance to park it so that the pedal rested against the curb. One of the wheels kept revolving so that the spokes flashed in the light. A pretty invention. An insect!

  “Herr Jastrau.” It was the hall porter with the black mustache. He stood beside Jastrau’s chair. “A gentleman just phoned with a message for you. He said that everything was arranged and that you could go to Berlin tonight.”

  Kjær turned slowly and indolently toward Jastrau with an ironical expression and whistled.

  Jastrau thanked the porter, but the latter went on in a low tone of voice: “May I be allowed to present you with your bill?”

  “Ha,” Kjær exclaimed, laughing from his position in the other chair and kicking out with one foot as Jastrau studied the bill with an air of resignation, and then paid it.

  “Are you leaving us, Jazz? Are you deserting the camp?” Kjær asked, sputtering with laughter.

  Jastrau shrugged his shoulders.

  “Like Little P.—ha ha. You can’t see it through.” Kjær leaned back in the wicker chair and gazed up at the roofs of the buildings across the street, so that the sky was reflected in his bleary eyes. There was a look of quiet wistfulness in them. “I’ve tried it myself, Jazz. But one invariably comes back to the Bar des Artistes. Are you familiar with the antlion?”

  “Is that the name of a bar?”

  “Ha, no. It’s an animal,” Kjær said, grinning. “It digs a hole in the sand—a hole with slanting sides so that the ants slide down into it.”

  “I must say you’re being profound.”

  “No, I’m only wise, and since you won’t listen to the master’s wisdom, go ahead and travel to Berlin—or Canada—ha.” Kjær sat there in his dignity, like a god, and laughed. “I’ve heard from Little P. He’s become something of an explorer. He writes that he’s found a bar in London—ha.”

  Jastrau did not reply.

  “Now he’s sitting and playing matches for drinks—ah yes,” Kjær went on, lost in memories. “And now you’re going to Berlin. But you and he will both be back. You’ll come back—that I know for sure. ‘And when tomorrow you return, tell me everything you saw,’ ” he hummed as if to himself. “You really ought to take an interest in the antlion, you know.”

  Just then a car horn tooted frantically over in the Town Hall Square. Traffic outside the hotel halted, streetcars came to a stop, and an ambulance with a yellow flag protruding diagonally and flapping from its side swept by with the speed of a shiver running down a spine.

  Their eyes followed the ambulance, and when the sound of its horn died away after it had turned into Nørrevold, Kjær got up from his chair with a groan. “I think I’ll look up the antlion in an encyclopedia,” he said with a sigh. Blue in the face from exertion, he hobbled on his gouty feet in to the hall porter.

  But the sound of the ambulance remained fixed in Jastrau’s consciousness. The accident. The shriek of a bird piercing the air. When one was dancing to phonograph music to blunt one’s senses, and then suddenly had to let out a scream—Suppose it was Oluf whom the ambulance was going for. But it had driven down Nørrevold, so that could not be it. Gone. Invisible. That boy, that boy. If something should happen to him Jastrau would not know about it. There were so many dangers. Spread out his hands and protect him.

  Involuntarily he extended his arms, with his hands in a grasping position, but suddenly he realized how ridiculous the gesture was. Like carrying on a distraught conversation with oneself.

  Behind him he heard the eternal Kjær puffing, and then a door slammed. Kjær had gone into the bar after his strenuous bout with the antlion and the encyclopedia. That was how it was when a person had money. When one was comfortably fixed, as the saying was. A saying.

  And now all this would soon be over, almost automatically. In order to go to the dogs, a person must be able to afford it. But that article. One, at least, could be written. What was there of current importance? Nothing. What was interesting? An article could be written about summer in the big city, warm and dusty—poetic dust. Oh, rubbish! The only thing of interest was the soul, and he’d be damned, if he even knew what that was.

  A skål to the infinitude of the soul. The intractability of the soul, Steffensen had said, making a face. How was Steffensen? he wondered. Was he still living in the apartment? And Black Else lived across the street behind the white curtains. She was unhappy. No—dead drunk. He must not let his humanitarian feelings run away with him. That sort of softness belonged to the past, when Jesus rose to the surface from the aquarium of his soul, and he made those pious gestures in imitation of him—De Imitatione.

  But with grasping hands. A boy stands at the edge of an abyss, and then the hands reach out, grasping. It would be the same thing.

  Perhaps she was standing at the edge of the abyss, and then his grasping hands reached out. And Oluf—beside the abyss—then—grasping hands. Where from? Who could tell? And why? Yes, he knew why. Because he had grasped Black Else. Hands. Hands. Space is full of hands. And they imitate me. When I threaten, then all hands threaten me.

  Jastrau got up. He would go over and see Black Else. His cap was hanging in the barroom.

  In the darkness of the bar the sunlight still flickered before his eyes and danced between the gleaming colored bottles on the shelves. The pale, impertinent, Copenhagen face of Arnold, the waiter, protruded from behind the bar, and at the round table sat the eternal Kjær as if enveloped in a rain cloud, dimly discernible and bending over his Lundbom cocktail.

  “Well, how did you make out with the antlion?” Jastrau asked as he took his cap.

  “It’s a boring animal,” Kjær muttered, staring down at his cocktail. “And this is a boring hotel,” he went on after a pause. “No encyclopedia. And this is a boring bar. And this is a dull cocktail.”

  Nothing but emptiness all around as he sat there in the dusk.

  Jastrau drew the portiere aside and went out into the sunny street again. A blue, transparent haze seemed to be rising from the asphalt. Or was it the dusk of the bar evaporating?

  Suddenly an image of Kjær, sitting over his Lundbom cocktail like a frog, appeared with great clarity before his eyes. Yes, Kjær looked like a frog hidden in the shade.

  Strange how people resembled animals.

  As Jastrau passed Dagbladet’s building, he glanced like a stranger up at its red walls. Would they take an article from him? But no—it would go on his account. So there was no way out. He had to go to Berlin—was being forced to go there as he had been forced to go to Stenosgade by Vuldum. Black Else knew Vuldum. Yes, a flower peddler came walking through the barroom with three roses bristling from his hand. But why did Vuldum hate her so intensely? “As you can see, there are no ladies in the room.”

  He could hear Vuldum’s voice.

  “Can you think of anything worse than a sore covered over with powder?” Again the voice sounded clearly, word for word. Vuldum’s voice. But had Black Else had such a mark on her arm? Was she diseased—diseased—diseased?

  A movie theater on a corner. The Scourge of Mankind, the sign said in big letters. “A film everybody should see. Children under sixteen not admitted.”

  The sun shone down into the square around the Freedom Statue so that the asphalt lay like a polished surface, and everything seemed so open. The su
nshine came pouring down.

  Black letters. The Scourge of Mankind.

  It was not to be requited with free love that he was seeking out Black Else. That much he knew. Was he being noble? Hands grasping out to help—?

  He could hate Vuldum for that remark about the sore.

  But if that was what he was doing, then the whole thing was so stupid, so ridiculous. Going up to see a girl in order to have a profound conversation with her! Had he, then, been expecting something else? A woman. A woman. A woman.

  And he found himself in Istedgade. In the entranceway, the janitor’s daughter was dancing in circles with a rag doll, and singing so that the sound of her shrill, joyous voice reverberated through the street. But he turned his back on her. Indeed, he had to turn his back, for he was headed for the door of the neighbor across the street. That symbolic business of the white curtains had to be driven from his mind. He did not like it. It was a result of nerves and alcohol. White ceilings, curtains, an ambulance, moving-picture titles—apparitions all of them. So the three black men had indeed been an honest-to-goodness hallucination. God only knew what a time the eternal Kjær was having with his beginning of a white mouse.

  He rang the bell, and an elderly woman with a faded smile and omniscient eyes opened the door. Her eyelids were half-lowered to hide her curiosity.

  “Yes, Fru Kopf is at home, I do believe. But whom am I talking to?”

  “Editor Ole Jastrau,” he replied from force of habit.

  “I’ll tell her you’re here.”

  And she slipped away as silently as a moth.

  A little later a door was opened into the hallway, and the same ingratiating voice said, “You can come in. But it will be a little while, because Fru Kopf is not up yet.”

  Jastrau stepped into a room with polished mahogany furniture and an atmosphere of banal luxury, very gaudy and overfurnished. A broad sofa with a mass of cushions looked like a cheap Oriental dream, a sea of ease and comfort, and an oval picture of a man and a woman reclining blissfully in the lap of nature beneath a tree grazed his consciousness with a touch of familiarity. But Jastrau remained standing and staring at the drawn curtains. They commanded all his attention.

  Now he had finally penetrated behind the veil of those curtains. Through a haze he caught a glimpse of his own windows across the street. How disorderly things looked over there. The curtains drawn unevenly. The windowpanes clouded with grime. He caught his breath. After all, they had once been his windows. He still recognized the curtains. Was Steffensen still living there? He should really let Johanne know that she could come and get the furniture. But a letter! It was impossible to write a letter. He was not up to it.

  A red tobacco tin stood over on the windowsill. Yes, it was Craven Mixture. That was how life would seem if the soul could once liberate itself from the body—so disorderly and so wanting in purpose. The only memory that remained with him was that he had been smoking—Craven Mixture in a red tin. Now the ashes from Vesuvius could cover Pompeii. He had left a tobacco tin behind.

  “Well, so it’s only you,” said a voice behind him. It was Black Else. The door to her bedroom stood slightly ajar, and she was looking out at him. “Fru Lund said it was some executive or other who was wearing a dirty necktie, and then it only turns out to be you. So now go back to bed. Oh, I’m so tired.” He heard a yawn. “You can come in if you want to.”

  The blind was pulled down in the bedroom so that everything lay bathed in a tawny light. But Jastrau spied a canopied bed with a lot of white bedclothing. It was elegant even though dimly discernible, and the fringed canopy came to a point at the top. Black Else’s head was resting on the pillow of this princess’s bed. Her features were blurred and in the dim light she looked like a girl whose forebears had been dark-skinned.

  And Jastrau bowed and smiled. So such a bed was the ideal. Like the oval picture. Rococo, Oriental, out of a story book—and the essence of bourgeois respectability. He felt like a tramp.

  “You’ve evidently become a prosperous girl since the last time,” he said. But she probably did not remember the last time, even though—

  “Oh yes—that time,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  “I can see that the memory of it isn’t pleasant,” he replied in a tone of irony. He remained standing in the doorway.

  “You don’t think I’m the kind that walks the streets, do you? And I’m not, either. I just want to let you know that.”

  She sat up in bed, perturbed, almost indignant. The eiderdown slipped aside, revealing a bright red kimono.

  Jastrau stared at her, unable to understand what she was getting at, and she went on, “I’ll have you know that I’m a bar girl. I work in a bar, not on the street. I was expecting my husband, and I had no cognac in the house, and so—” She gesticulated and laughed shrilly. “So then I slipped. I went out on the street. I didn’t have time to go over to the bar and catch a fish, not with my husband due back in an hour or so. Naturally I couldn’t have him come home and find me here with a man, could I? But I won’t have you going around saying that I cruise the streets, for I swear to God I don’t do that—ordinarily, that is,” she added with pathetic agitation.

  “So, it was just by accident—”

  “But what do you want anyway? Oh, is it about last night?” She passed her hand wearily over her forehead. “Because I was so staggering drunk, wasn’t I? I can’t remember a blessed thing. How did I get home? No—were you with me? Did you come up here with me? Did I make love to you? No, I’m sure I didn’t. But how drunk was I? Have a chair, whatever your name is, and sit over here and be nice. I suppose I was very drunk, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes, damned right you were,” he replied, laughing. He found a chair and sat down near the edge of the bed.

  A painful expression came over her face.

  “You mustn’t swear, do you hear?” she said nervously.

  “Pardon me,” Jastrau replied with a smile.

  “But anyway—hello,” she said suddenly, and extended her hand to him. “Why did you really come to see me?”

  There was a decidedly cynical expression about her lips, which could signify that she wanted to laugh all sentimentality away.

  “Don’t you remember that I promised to come?” Jastrau said slowly.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Did I cry?” she asked with a sneer. “Well, thanks. Then you needn’t tell me any more. And you promised to come and comfort me. That was nice of you.” A little smile hovered on her lips, as if she was lost in her own thoughts.

  Then she lay back against the pillow again, folded her hands under her neck, and gazed up at the canopy over the bed.

  “You!” she said. “No, I don’t know your name, but you’re a newspaperman. Like this Vuldum.” She mentioned the name with distaste.

  “Yes, you know him.”

  “Uh—no. But will you believe it, he hates me. Oh how he hates me,” she said, looking at Jastrau. “And all because one night out at the Golden Age Club I called him a red-headed monkey. ‘You red-headed monkey, what a red-headed monkey,’ I said. And you should have seen him. But he can go to hell!”

  “Yes, one night I was at the Bar des Artistes—”

  “Was that you? Then you can see for yourself. After all, he is redheaded, although he can’t help that.”

  Jastrau caught himself staring at her arm. The kimono had slid up, revealing a muscular arm that looked too strong and powerful. And he could see a blue mark there. A finger imprint. Someone had taken hold of her too roughly.

  “But look here, you—what was it I wanted to say?” Her eyes wandered searchingly up toward the bed canopy. “Yes, now I know. Why do you drink so much? I’ve seen you drunk so often, and it’s not becoming to you.”

  Jastrau shrugged his shoulders.

  “I just want to say to you that it’s stupid,” she went on moralizing. Her dark-red lips took on a naive expression. “You can leave that to the others.”

  She la
y there, quiet and sanctimonious, as if waiting to see the effect of her remarks. But Jastrau could not take her words seriously. He laughed.

  “Well, you needn’t laugh, because Vera says you’re a really nice fellow when you’re sober.”

  “Don’t know her,” Jastrau replied.

  “She hangs out over here at the train station bar every afternoon. And so do I. As a matter of fact, I ought to be over there now. What time is it?”

  Jastrau took out his watch and peered at it in the dim light.

  “Quarter after four.”

  “You don’t say! What a bawling out I’ll get then, because I’m playing hooky.”

  And she laughed hilariously.

  “From—your man friend?” Jastrau ventured to ask quietly. He was interested as an objective observer.

  “Man friend?” She laughed scornfully. “No, and besides that’s out of fashion nowadays. But I don’t have a girl friend either. All the girls do. Can you understand why they care about that sort of thing?” She turned her questioning dark eyes toward him. “They don’t care for men at all. It’s only for the money. Oh, it’s all so crazy—never catching a wink of sleep.” She shook her head. “No, it’s the waiter who’ll bawl me out, and he has to do that, of course.”

  “It’s evidently no bed of roses—all this.”

  “What’s no bed of roses?”

  “This life you lead,” Jastrau said gently. Immediately he hated himself for the solicitude he was showing.

  But Black Else looked at him mischievously. Then she drew the eiderdown way up to her nose and laughed. Jastrau felt like a missionary who made the rounds of the landed estates.

  “You must excuse me for coming,” he said gently.

  “It was really very nice of you. Menfolk never keep their promises, damned if they do. There—I swore,” she added respectably. “But won’t you have a cup of coffee? I’ll ring for Fru Lund now. Don’t you think she’s nice?”

  “She’s an angel.”

  The angelic Fru Lund entered soundlessly, spoke a few soft words, and disappeared.