Anyway, what had come of it?
A ruined marriage and a lost job. Here he was. Brawling and broken windowpanes. Tawdry seduction and infidelity. Ridiculous conversion and a home gone up in flames. Hallucinations and havoc. And Ecce homo! Was it a man who stood here? And whiskey, whiskey, whiskey!
I have longed for shipwrecks,
For havoc and sudden death.
Steffensen’s poem from out of the past, a long, long time ago. Jastrau breathed more freely. A few words set to rhythm had relieved him. Now he could finally go down to the restaurant.
In the lobby, he handed the hall porter the key with a casual air.
“It seems you had a fire, Herr Jastrau,” the porter snickered.
“Don’t bring up the subject. However, the insurance—” His smile hinted at a large, reassuring amount of indemnity, and the porter bowed.
Although it was summer, there were many customers in the restaurant. The rain had driven them in. The electric lights had been turned on early, too, in order to dispel the gloominess of the weather, and a piano and violin drowned out the splashing of the rain.
Kryger had found a place over near the window next to the hotel courtyard. He sat studying the insurance policy.
“Well, I see that Lundbom hung onto it,” said Jastrau, laughing. Kryger looked up and wrinkled his brows.
“You look rather déclassé,” he remarked.
“Yes, my collar, my collar,” Jastrau repeated nervously as he sat down. “I realize that it isn’t altogether clean. But then, I lost all my clothes in the fire.”
Kryger stopped a waiter and asked for a menu.
“Now we’ll eat, and then—then we’ll have to see if we can’t make some order out of all this Babylonian confusion,” he said.
“Yes, I suppose I’ll have to stay here in town until the insurance—”
“Well, that’s what you think.” Kryger showed his teeth. “No, you’re going to Berlin to be a secretary and learn something about economics and finance—about realities, to put it briefly. They’re good sound subjects.”
Jastrau did not want to smile. It was easy to feel superior toward a man who had humps on his forehead—the roots of antlers. And that man talked about realities. But why yield to such a cheap feeling of superiority?
The roast was served, the snaps poured, and Jastrau stared at Kryger’s forehead, stared stupidly at it in order to blot out a cynical thought. Finally, in order to get his breath he had to—simply had to—ask:
“Why do you really want to help me this way?”
Kryger directed his dark eyes toward him, and a smile appeared on his wide, sensitive lips. There was a pronounced irony in the smile, yet it was cordial.
“Quite frankly, because my wife likes you.”
Jastrau nearly choked on his snaps. It burned and scorched his throat. And as he coughed, he felt himself blushing.
“Now, now—not with that expensive snaps,” Kryger joked. When Jastrau had finally calmed down, although he still had tears in his eyes, Kryger went on, “Because I must confide to you that for some stupid reason or other my wife seems to have faith in you, and I’ve been influenced by it. How could I help but be?”
“I see,” Jastrau muttered. He could not look Kryger in the eye.
“However, I don’t know,” Kryger continued. “I’ve loaned you a hundred kroner, and now I suppose I’ll have to loan you another hundred. And you must admit that you’re not the safest bank I could put my money in. But as I said, Luise believes in you, and what won’t a person do when confronted with such a touching display of confidence by a member of the fair sex? As a matter of fact, she won’t be satisfied until you’re in Berlin. That’s the way she is.”
He made an expansive gesture with one hand to indicate that he himself had given up trying to solve the riddle.
“Furthermore, as far as I personally am concerned,” he added, “I can imagine that under Geberhardt’s social and economic tutelage you might come to your senses.”
“And become aware of the realities and turn into a conservative,” Jastrau went on sarcastically.
“Ah yes, may God grant that,” Kryger sighed. “Then at least I’d have saved a man from perdition. Incidentally, are you reading my articles?”
“No, I abhor business and conservatism.”
“You abhor them? Good Lord!” Kryger threw up his hands pathetically. “So that’s the sort of a monster I’m helping. Ah yes. But incidentally, this meat tastes good.” The sudden change of subject was not without a conscious note of sarcasm.
“Yes, you believe in the realities,” Jastrau replied in the same tone.
“Yes.” And Kryger sipped at his snaps.
But a glint of mischief had come into Jastrau’s eyes, and he leaned closer to Kryger.
“I remember that you once asked me about my mother,” he said slyly.
Kryger ignored the tone of voice and looked at him with concern.
“Oh yes, so I did,” he replied apologetically. “But it was certainly not my intention to hurt you, I can assure you of that.”
“You wanted to show that I was a poor lover,” Jastrau went on, speaking still more slowly.
“Let’s forget about it,” Kryger replied with a nervous flick of his hand.
“And you wanted to indicate an Oedipus complex, didn’t you?”
Kryger sighed. “Yes, yes, yes. I regret what I said—I assure you I do.”
“You mustn’t.” Jastrau lingered over his words. “You mustn’t do so. But now you’re going to solve a riddle.”
“Where do you think we are? In school?” Kryger asked. His teeth were gleaming.
Jastrau laughed. “Now listen to this,” he said. “A man is put to studying economics.”
“The most important subject of all,” Kryger interrupted.
“His mother died when she was twenty. Consequently he never knew her—but he worships her. But he knows that she was a woman of the proletariat—in the true and most hopeless sense of the word.” Jastrau’s voice had become serious, and it quivered with intensity. The glint of mischief had vanished from his eyes, and he sat as if hypnotized from staring at a distant fire. And now Kryger’s eyes sparkled. He knew what Jastrau was getting at.
And Jastrau went on incisively: “Now, economics is as objective as anything can be, isn’t it? Figures and realities. Or am I mistaken? Isn’t it more objective than poetry? And now I ask you”—here Jastrau uttered a loud laugh—“does such a man become a conservative or a Communist?”
“It’s to be hoped that he doesn’t become a radical,” Kryger replied with a wave of his hand.
Then he emptied his glass and refilled it.
“A nice complex that, indeed,” he went on. “Nevertheless, I’m going to risk sending you down to Professor Julius Geberhardt. I believe in you,” he added, shrugging his shoulders. “And why do I believe in you? Because my wife believes in you. And why does she believe in you? I dare say because it’s downright, scandalously idiotic. So you’re going to be compelled to go to Berlin.”
“But I haven’t any money.”
“Yes, but I’ll loan you some, and for the second time. I suppose because that’s shockingly idiotic, too.”
“But I don’t care to go tonight. And the insurance—” Jastrau replied languidly.
“We’ll talk about the insurance after we have our coffee.”
“All right, but I’m not setting out tonight,” Jastrau said with a sluggish obstinacy.
“And what that means,” Kryger said with a feigned air of jauntiness, “is that I again have to risk a hundred kroner, and right here in this dangerous place to boot, next door to the Bar des Artistes.” He stared at Jastrau for a long time, but suddenly he grasped his glass and became suave and resilient. He was now acting as he did at the big parties—with an air of urbane detachment. “If it isn’t delightfully idiotic, then Luise is not the marvelous female she is. So, enfin, let’s drink to her—to Luise.”
Taken a
back, Jastrau picked up his glass. A fog floated before his eyes. Kryger’s black eyes sparkled. Did he know what the situation was? Was he being sarcastic? Was his obligingness an ironic form of revenge, a quiet attempt to remove him from the scene?
Something had to be said. Jastrau stared at the elevations on Kryger’s forehead. Who was the stronger of the two—the horned stag or the Mongoloid? Some remark had to be made.
“A toast to private initiative,” he said.
“And now we have to get to work,” Kryger said, laying a notebook on the table. For the next few hours they compiled a list of Jastrau’s belongings that had been lost in the fire. Kryger wrote them down.
Now and then they sipped at a whiskey. It was a subtle way of getting revenge. Jastrau lighted a fresh cigar. If it was indeed revenge. Helping him and getting rid of him.
Wasn’t it a fight between the horned stag and the Mongol?
No, it was no fight. Kryger was gently easing Jastrau out of Copenhagen. That was the entire battle.
And Jastrau recalled that election night when they had sat together up in the editorial room across from the pillar with the names on it, and Kryger had been fishing for conservative sympathizers. Or hadn’t he been fishing? Every human being was like a prism. It should be possible to measure the goodness that radiated from it. The refraction of light could be measured.
“My Lord, it’s eleven o’clock!” Kryger exclaimed, looking at his watch. “That means I have to get up to the paper. Well, I have it all down here. And I’ll turn the policy and this list over to the lawyer. I have your address in Berlin. So now there’s no more for us to do.”
He got up and tucked the notebook meticulously away in his inner pocket.
“And so good-bye. Oh yes, that’s right—” Again a smile crossed his face. Jastrau noticed now that it was the face of an Indian—the low forehead, the prominent nose, the blue-black hair. The smile was not sincere. It was erotic, and its brightness reflected cruelty. “Here’s the new loan.” He shoved a hundred-krone note across the tablecloth. “For God’s sake, don’t thank me for it. And give my warmest regards to dear Professor Julius.”
Jastrau got up laboriously and extended him his hand.
“Don’t you want me to greet Luise—for you?” Kryger’s black eyes shone for a second.
“Yes, take her my greetings.”
“And now don’t drink up the money.”
Jastrau did not reply. He stood fumbling with the hundred-krone note. Should he give it back to him?
“When the insurance is paid, you can take out the two hundred,” he said.
“Why, yes—that’s right. So I’m protected in the bargain.” Kryger laughed, waved his hand, and strode away through the restaurant. Over near the piano, he turned, waved once again, and disappeared.
Jastrau sat down, rested his elbows on the table, and stared at the money.
Then he folded it, stuck it in his vest pocket, and went out to the men’s room.
He turned on the tap, the water rushed into the sink, and in its swift stream he could distinguish the sound of music. The notes resolved themselves into those of a violin, and suddenly Sinding’s “Rustle of Spring” was dancing up and down in the bubbling jet of water. He could not help doing a tap dance on the tile floor. The white porcelain washbowls, the mirrors, the towels, the glazed brilliance of the fixtures lighted up the room as if for a festival. For now he had money in his pocket. Now he had a right to everything—the violin in the stream of water, the music in the café, the phonograph over in the bar. Now he possessed it all, this comfortable humming house. For how many hours? How did he know? That morning he had lain out there on the bare ground like a tramp, and tonight all the music, all the lighted windows, the cozy dimness of the bar, the crunching sound of ice in the cocktail shaker were his, his, his.
How much did a ticket to Berlin cost? He had no idea. But there was plenty of money for yet another night.
His collar was not clean. He was not cleanshaven. But he was the man he was.
Keeping in step with the music and in a quietly jubilant mood—what was the subdued, fatalistic waltz they were playing?—he slipped quietly through the restaurant, out into the lobby, and through the door to the Bar des Artistes.
The phonograph hummed. The soft lights and the reflection from the reddish-brown walls had a soothing effect. And behind the gleaming bar stood Lundbom with his deeply flushed face, flourishing the shiny shaker with long, undulating motions.
“Good luck with the fire insurance,” someone yelled. And Jastrau smiled.
Lundbom nodded graciously from far in the distance.
Oh, that comfortable, cozy bar. The brasswork, that always was reminiscent of trollycars and long rides, or of machinery which the public was not allowed to get close to. The high stools which ought only to be occupied by Negroes in stars-and-stripes pants. The salted almonds which whetted the thirst—gratis. The wet drink receipts. The multicolored cocktails. And the life-size picture of the naked Charles the Twelfth, a discreet reminder of the other pleasures to be had.
“Those whom the good Lord loveth never shall meet for a final farewell,” intoned a subdued, hollow voice. The eternal Kjær was seated at the round table, singing. He beat time briskly with his hands. He was rejoicing because now his solitude had been broken.
“Ah, Jazz, I’ve been waiting for you. But I knew you’d come.”
And Kjær spread his arms in an all-encompassing embrace.
“And now one of these days Little P. will come back. We’ll get together, we’ll all get together. Those whom the good Lord loveth—”
Jastrau sank into an armchair and drew a breath of surprise.
“Arnold, bring me a whiskey so I’ll have something to hold on to. Is Little P. coming?”
“Yes, yes, yes, because his mother is on her deathbed. Little P. and Old P. hadn’t gotten any farther than Liverpool, and now they’re coming. Little P. is coming by plane.”
The eternal Kjær was jubilant. “He’s coming by plane, Jazz. He’s coming by plane. The trumpets sounded retreat.”
Kjær gazed at Jastrau with bleary eyes. A contented prelate’s smile hovered about his lips, and the cleft in his chin gave him a roguish look.
“It’s a joyful evening tonight, Jazz. And I hear that your arson worked out well for you. Skål, skål. And congratulations. Yes, something had to be done. It was a splendid idea to set fire to it all—a good old farmer’s trick. Good luck with the indemnity.”
There was nothing to do except raise his whiskey glass in acknowledgment and drink. Over at the bar, Lundbom wrinkled his face up into a satyr’s smile and nodded. Everything was warmth and comfort. Everybody wished him well.
“It was a good thing I kept the policy,” Lundbom remarked.
“Yes, you honorable old rascal,” Jastrau replied with a hilarious shout. “We must have more whiskey, more whiskey, more women.”
“No women,” groaned the eternal Kjær, raising the palm of his hand in alarm. “Positively not.”
“All right, but whiskey then, whiskey.”
And once more he was sitting at the round table, with Kjær holding court opposite him in all his majestic bulk. Here, and here only, could be found a peacefulness that was not of this world. The ventilator rumbled above their heads, the back door stood open out to the dark courtyard and the splashing rain, the red portieres fluttered gently in the damp breeze, and over in the corner the phonograph droned out “No More Machines for Me—”
“To you, the only gentleman in the world—skål!” Jastrau exclaimed ecstatically.
But Kjær immediately set his glass aside, raised his head high, and tried to make his dull eyes flash.
“That’s backbiting, my dear Jazz,” he said sternly.
“Well, then in any event—skål.”
“Yes, that’s something quite different,” Kjær replied, and drank. Then for a little while he sat smacking his lips. “Something entirely different,” he said pensively.
“But after all, it’s up to me to judge,” Jastrau objected.
“No,” was the harsh reply. “There is but one gentleman in Denmark, and that is H. C. Stefani.”
“That’s as if to say—”
But Kjær raised his head, as if demanding silence. “It’s as I say, young man. One time—he demonstrated—that he was a gentleman. If only I could remember it. It was on a certain occasion, and it will probably come back to me, but I forget—forget.” He had collapsed again and was gesticulating in a gloomy manner. The stamp of authority had vanished from his expression, and a helpless, quizzical look came into his eyes. “But I know that he’s a gentleman,” he added firmly.
Jastrau smiled skeptically.
“Do you know him, then?”
“No, but—”
“Then how can you—” Kjær stopped and shook his head. “Young man, young man—you sit there with a distrustful smile. With a smile like that you can kill a good man’s reputation. And Stefani is a good man. Because once when I was young—I was young and slender then—once when I was young, as I told you, he proved himself to be a gentleman. But I can’t remember it—I can’t. But do you doubt me? Do you dare to doubt me?”
He struck his clenched fist against the tabletop with a loud bang.
“Mark my words, Jazz! Stefani is a gentleman, because once when I was young—no, no—”
And suddenly he put his hands up to his head, pressed them against his temples, and began to whimper.
What was it that made Jastrau shiver? He got up. It must be the damp air coming from the courtyard. He shut the door.
“Oh, what becomes of it all—everything that once happened? It disappears—slips away—”
Jastrau’s gaze fell on Kjær’s bleary blue eyes. They peered out from his bloated face, seeking help, and a foolish smile attempted to conceal his impotence.
“But now Little P. is coming. This is going to be a joyful night. He’s coming by plane.”
Jastrau rubbed his hands together. It was as if he could feel earth under them. The Christianshavn embankment. Now he was conscious of the dew-soaked ground and the worn, sparse grass. Back to the earth. One has to be buried sometime.
Havoc Page 55
