But there was no cognac left.
•
He awoke shivering, and his heart pounded as he saw a branch of a tree over his head. He heard the noise from a trolly-car cable. Sky, trees, earth, water. The trolly-car was going by on the other side of the moat. He had gone to sleep beside the Thieves’ Walk along the Christianshavn embankment.
He walked slowly down to the water, rinsed his hands and face, and dried them with his handkerchief. It was disagreeable to go around for a whole day with a moist handkerchief. One’s pocket gets damp. He straightened up and stretched himself. What was it that had happened? Why had he become another individual? His personality had suffered a dislocation. It was—no, not Anna Marie. He felt a pressure in the region of his heart. No, no. His heart was in the grip of a brutal fist—a fist that was compressing it as one squeezes a sponge. No, it couldn’t be true. It was he who was out of his mind. If only he had some tobacco or money. But no—not an øre. Just twenty-five øre was all he needed—for some cigarettes. And there lay the cognac bottle. He held it up to the light. Yes, something inside it glistened.
One single drop of cognac can cover the entire tongue.
A moment passed. Then the fist gripped his heart again. It couldn’t be true. But he had stood behind the curtains, and he had seen that anything could happen. His home had gone up in flames. All the things he had once been so attached to—to think that he had had to say good-bye to them—burned. But Steffensen—it was impossible.
Jastrau could not remain where he was; he was too agitated. Nor could he just calmly walk away. Had he had money, he would have taken a taxi. He must, of course, have a talk with the janitor. Why hadn’t he thought of that the night before? But could he talk to him without appearing ridiculous? Suppose it was the product of a deranged mind, sheer fabrication and fantasy? He could walk in to Istedgade. But he had no money, so he could not go into the shops, buy something, and then casually make inquiries. No, he could not make a fool of himself.
Short of breath, he walked in toward the center of town, along Vestre Boulevard, across Tietgen Bridge, and behind the railroad station to Istedgade.
Then he spied a woman in a brown dress coming out of a bakery shop with a package of pastry in her hand.
A black belt encircled her waist above her broad hips.
“Anna Marie!” he cried out, running toward her.
She turned around.
And as she did so he sank to his knees and wrapped his arms about her legs.
“Oh, thank God!” he exclaimed with a moan.
A beer truck was drawn up at the curb beside them. The driver, who was lugging a case of beer, looked up in surprise, placed it on the sidewalk so that the bottles rattled, and then began to laugh.
“Why, Herr Jastrau—you must be crazy! What will people think?” Anna Marie exclaimed, trying to tear herself away. The pastry fell out of the loose tissue-paper wrapping.
Jastrau got up hastily and stared at her with a wild look. Tears glistened in his eyes.
“It doesn’t matter, Anna Marie. I’m going now.”
“But look here now—”
Jastrau was already some distance down the street, and Anna Marie stood staring after him. His clothes were wrinkled. His collar was dirty. The brim of his hat was covered with dust.
“Here you are, Frøken,” said the beer-truck driver, gallantly gathering up the pastry for her.
But she dared not look at him. She had a feeling that he was shaking his head very expressively, and she heard a soft-spoken remark:
“Off his rocker.”
Then she ran into an entranceway and burst into tears.
8
FOR SEVERAL hours Jastrau had been lying and staring at the small-patterned flowered wallpaper as he listened to the rain splashing down in the hotel courtyard. Now and then he turned his head and watched the raindrops rolling down the windowpanes in long rivulets with the same dogged sluggishness as the thoughts coursing through his brain.
He did not want to get up and put on his clothes. What could he say to the hall porter? He had no money. Actually, he was swindling the hotel by appearing there without an øre and ordering a room. That was what he had done about eight o’clock that morning. But everything was a swindle when one had no money. He did not even have a right to be there in that small, shoddy hotel room.
He was hungry. His belly was shrunken. There were so many things to think about. But they all lay in a heap of ruins now—all the things he should be thinking of. He was famished. But he could not bring himself to do it. Go down and speak to the hall porter? That hall porter with his hand discreetly poised in front of his mustache? How could he ask him if he would get one of the waiters to step out into the lobby? He did not want to discuss the situation inside the restaurant. And then enter into negotiation with him—for food on credit? The thought was repulsive. The distrustful look in waiters’ eyes always remained in one’s mind. No, he could not bring himself to do it yet.
The rain fell steadily, a dark, descending pall outside the windowpanes, and with the same somber monotony his thoughts grew more depressing. He was a drunkard. Consequently, he ought to feel despair. He ought to lose heart. The rain kept falling, spattering in the courtyard, and the monotony of it made him feel so helpless that he could not even raise his hands. It was the same thing over and over—a constant recurrence. It was hell. Lying on his bed, he floated down through the darkness of hell, and hell too resounded with an eternal, ceaseless movement like the rain—a moving curtain of gray, slanting rivulets and a murky twilight that percolated through everything.
He wondered what time it might be. A little while before he had heard the Town Hall clock strike the half hour. But which hour? Should he reach his hand out toward his vest, which hung over the back of a chair, and look at his watch? Should he?
He gave a start, and his hand stopped in mid-air.
Something heavy bumped against his door with a noise like thunder. There was a scraping and lurching out in the hallway, a noise which because of its indefinite character had a disagreeable effect and invested the ceaseless rain and the continuous, perpetual semidarkness with an even more melancholy quality. There was a sound of ponderous, uneven steps, a walking stick came down heavily against the floor, striking it each time with a loud thud as if the tip would explode, and then several short, tripping footfalls could be heard vainly trying to keep in step with the heavy thumps. An apoplectic groan added a sinister note to it all. It was the invalid procession going by out in the corridor.
So it was half-past four.
And Jastrau heard the door of the room next to his being opened. The eternal Kjær gasped for breath in an ominous, agonized manner. Then he heard Kjær’s ponderous bulk being rolled over on the bed as the snickering waiter began to pull off his clothes.
It was half-past four.
It was as if the rainy atmosphere had grown darker and the darkness more distressing. Ghosts of ill-omen were lurching about in the hallway. Or they lay in ugly rooms beneath ceilings that brought on heart palpitations. And one of them was hungry. Jastrau was hungry.
Oh, couldn’t he wait a few more hours? He could hear the water running in the roof gutters, areaways, and drains outside. Or could he not at least fall asleep and not wake up until morning? By that time perhaps the weather would have cleared, and under a bright sky hope would manifest itself like a song in a sunny courtyard. Tomorrow he could perhaps wangle a lunch. That was easier. During the forenoon there was no one in the restaurant, so it would be less embarrassing to deal with the waiter.
His home had burned.
He sat up, as if the thought of the fire had roused him. His home had burned. He had not said a word about it to the hall porter that morning when he had taken a room, and the porter had believed that he had been on a binge the whole night long. His home had burned. Something might be said about that, and about the fire-insurance policy that he had inscribed to Lundbom. But it belonged to his wife. Ah yes. But ne
vertheless, couldn’t some dodge be managed with it so that he would get a respite—for a few days.
He had to get up. A few days’ respite. Then he could write a series of articles—
But then there was a knock on the door.
Should he make believe he was asleep? Who could it be? Whoever it was, it would be disagreeable. Suddenly the door opened. He had forgotten to lock it. And Otto Kryger entered hastily.
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed when he saw Jastrau in bed.
“What do you want?” Jastrau asked in a tone of exasperation.
“I want to send you off to Berlin, my dear fellow, and that immediately.” He shook his head, laid his wet topcoat aside on the little sofa, and placed his wet hat on the table. “But I see by the paper that your apartment has burned. What about that? Did you have it insured?”
Jastrau sat up in bed and watched him with a sardonic expression. Kryger’s self-assured gestures were laughable, and his beaming, precipitate friendliness was unbearable. Was Otto Kryger a decent sort? Decent? Ha ha. He was a cuckold. And so decent that it made a person indignant.
“Did you have it insured, I’m asking you?”
“I made Lundbom a present of the policy,” Jastrau said with a faint, canny smile that hovered senselessly over his unhappy, harried features. There was a trace of dementia about it.
“Has the policy been renewed?” Kryger went on.
“Of course. Do you think my gifts are worthless?” was the scornful reply.
Kryger looked at him. Jastrau’s swollen face, his screwed-up eyes, his generally run-down appearance, combined with his stubborn, unyielding attitude and supercilious smile, made Kryger uneasy. It was indeed a disconcerting sight. Jastrau was sitting up in bed with his rumpled shirt in disorder and his hair a mess, his slovenliness revealed down to its innermost depths, more an animal than a man.
“Well, I’ll get hold of that policy, don’t you worry,” Kryger said.
“So-o?” Jastrau replied scoffingly, having thus been declared incapable of handling his own affairs.
“But why haven’t you gone to Berlin, man?” Kryger sat down in a chair and crossed one leg over the other.
“It’s lucky I didn’t go. If I had, you wouldn’t know where the policy was.”
Kryger lowered his eyelids and disregarded Jastrau’s mocking tone. It sounded so scathing, so jarring, that Kryger did not want to recognize it. If he gave in to that mocking, Mongoloid face that peered at him so malevolently through the rainy twilight, then Jastrau would turn into an imperturbable, irremovable hulk, a lunatic prophet sitting up in his tousled bed with the eiderdown humped about his knees.
“Well then, have you spent the money on booze? Because you understand that Professor Geberhardt is expecting you, and I don’t want to let him down.”
But Jastrau did not reply. He sat staring vacantly into space through the darkness of the room. Suddenly, in a faint, singsong voice, he began:
“Then crime’s consuming fire flares up
With a blue and gaseous flame—”
“What?” Kryger shook his head in exasperation.
“Yes, it may sound trite. And it may be that you’re right,” was the unexpectedly mild reply.
“Look here now, we’re talking about realities,” Kryger exclaimed harshly. “Hadn’t we better keep to them?”
“Very well.” Jastrau bowed politely from the bed and managed a foggy, subservient smile. “So we’ll keep to the realities. I don’t have money to pay for this room, so at this moment I could be locked up for cheating the hotel.”
Now his voice was hard and factual.
“You’re being hysterical,” Kryger exclaimed.
“Perhaps.” Jastrau laughed. “But I’m hungry.”
“Haven’t you any money? Where’s it gone? At least you have the ticket. You did go into Bennett’s.”
“I went into Bennett’s, that’s right,” Jastrau replied, raising a forefinger ironically. “But that doesn’t mean that I bought a ticket. I went into Bennett’s, and then I went out again.”
“But what about the hundred kroner?”
“Can’t last forever when a person needs women and liquor and other luxuries.”
Jastrau closed his eyes ecstatically and sat swaying back and forth in an aggravating manner.
“Ugh! You’re hopeless!” Kryger groaned.
Jastrau did not answer him. But the swaying motion continued, incessantly and monotonously as if he were a demented patient, and the impression was heightened by the rhythmic spattering of the rain against the concrete down in the courtyard.
“Damn it all! This I can’t stand!” Kryger shouted in vexation, and sprang up. “Now, you’re going to get your clothes on, and then we’ll go down and get something to eat. Perhaps that will bring you to your senses. Incidentally, here’s a letter for you. It was lying down at the desk.”
He tossed a letter over to Jastrau on the bed.
“Now you read that letter, which I hope doesn’t make you lose your head entirely, and then get into your clothes and meet me down in the restaurant. In the meantime, I’ll speak to Lundbom about that insurance policy.”
Kryger issued his orders in a firm, clear voice, irked as he was by Jastrau’s disconsolate rocking back and forth. Fortunately, the intolerable motion had now stopped. The letter had an effect. Kryger slung his topcoat over his arm while Jastrau nodded in a preoccupied manner and stared at the letter. The writing on the envelope was in a large, clumsy hand.
“Do you follow me?” asked Kryger.
Jastrau nodded again and opened the letter. It was brief, and all it said was:
Dear Jastrau,
Hear that your apartment has burned. Haven’t been there for three days. So it wasn’t I who set fire to it. Wanted you to know that. Father Garhammer asks me to give you his regards.
Stefan Stefani
“Say—I don’t suppose you’d have a cigarette,” Jastrau managed to call out before Kryger had gone out the door.
A package of cigarettes sailed through the air.
“Anything hair-raising in the letter?” Kryger asked.
“No.” Jastrau fumbled for the cigarettes.
“Thank God for that.” And the door was closed.
Jastrau was out of bed immediately. He lit up and inhaled the nicotine, went over to the bed again, spread Steffensen’s letter out on the eiderdown, and read it once more. Stefan Stefani? Why in bloody hell had he signed himself Stefani—his father’s name? What had happened? Oh, he could not think just wearing a shirt! But Stefani! Why had he reassumed the name he despised? Jastrau reached for his shorts and socks. There was a hole near the big toe. All his clothes at home in Istedgade had burned. And the books. Some part of the insurance money must go to him. Consequently he was not a swindler and a hotel-cheat. Nor could he go to Berlin before the business of the insurance was settled.
But Stefani! The letter was signed Stefan Stefani. Ha! And the greeting from Father Garhammer. Father Garhammer asks me to give you his regards. But Steffensen did not even know Father Garhammer. “Asks me to give you his regards.” It sounded as if Father Garhammer had been sitting across the table from Steffensen while he had been writing the letter. What did it mean? The mystery must be cleared up. And his shoes were muddy. Mud from the Christianshavn embankment. He must ring for the bellboy and get them polished. And he must have a brush for his clothes. He was not a hotel-cheat. There must be some money coming from the fire insurance.
He phoned and got a brush.
How dreadful the back of his jacket looked. Stefan! Stefan Stefani! He must have ground his elbows into the earth, they were so filthy. But Stefani! Why Stefani? And his hat! The entire brim was crusted with dirt. And besides, Father Garhammer—Father—Garhammer!
Suddenly Jastrau tossed hat and brush up against the wall. It couldn’t awaken the eternal Kjær in the depths of his slumber. And of course—to think that it hadn’t occurred to him before—Steffensen was on the point of b
eing converted. Pooh! He too had to find the way to his infinity, there were no two ways about it. Sub specie aeterni. Conversion had lurked in Steffensen’s face that last crazy evening they had been together. What else could that tense, determined mask that he had assumed signify. Of course. A convert. And how like the Catholics it was. A son of the renowned Stefani. They could use Steffensen with a name like that. Ah yes, with his father’s well-known name. Propaganda. Three cheers for publicity in the name of piety. O-oh! Jastrau stuck his entire head into the wash basin and puffed and snorted. The water felt good.
Of course Steffensen had leapt into a conversion. Logic. Eternal recurrence. And now he could assuage his wounded vanity with the thought of infinity, cool it off as Jastrau was cooling his head in the wash basin. Pruu-u-u. Sub specie aeterni!
Sub specie aeterni, nobody is ridiculous or everyone is ridiculous. Now Steffensen had found his way home.
Jastrau flapped the towel as he dried himself. How that religion suited Steffensen. Absolute and uncompromising. A religion. Jastrau sat down and laughed loudly. Alone in his dreary hotel room.
Now Steffensen had taken a position. Now he could find use for his fists—strike out with them. Was it his youthfulness?
Carrying things to an extreme—orthodox, unswayed by sentiment.
Was it his youthfulness?
Yes. And his boundless vanity.
And Jastrau himself? No, he was no youth. He was thirty-five years old, and an old man. He had a belly. It stuck out noticeably when he stood in pants and shirtsleeves. There was a suspicion of a bald spot at the back of his head. And within this incipient corpulence resided his soul.
Soul! Soul! Soul! He glanced at himself in the mirror and discovered a dark shadow of sprouting whiskers. Yes, he recognized that face. Ecce homo! Behold the man. But wasn’t it a lie to maintain that he had sought for the spiritual? He with his Mongoloid features? The infinitude and intractability of the soul?
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