And there was an unreal light in the bar. It was a hallucination seen through a red haze, while the impression of earth and grass was realistic. Was he lying on the Christianshavn embankment at that moment, down by the Thieves’ Walk, and dying? With the phonograph droning on? Or playing in the trees? Among the sickly-looking leaves?
Another whiskey. How realistic the bill looked.
“Ah yes, it takes all sorts of things to make a world, but in any event, skål,” the eternal Kjær said with a sigh.
It was good to be drinking. But why had Jastrau gotten that feeling of dirt on his hands? Couldn’t it be rubbed off?
“It all slips away—ha!” And Kjær shrugged his heavy shoulders disconsolately. “I can’t remember.” He waved his hands despairingly. “If it weren’t for Charles the Twelfth hanging up there, I’d have forgotten what a woman looks like. But now I can at least remember.”
He snickered.
But it was as if Jastrau had sunk into a quagmire of despair. He sank lower and lower. Simply in order to be sociable he said “Ha,” and took a drink of his whiskey. It tasted like ground water.
“And I was married, Jazz.”
“Just as we were.”
“And then she was unfaithful. Her name was Esther. Or else I was unfaithful. I can’t remember—it all slips away.” Kjær stared hopelessly out into space. “Ha ha,” he tittered, “both of us were undoubtedly unfaithful, but it doesn’t make any difference. It’s all slipped away. Everything has slipped away.”
“I’m also separated from my wife.” But then he stopped. An uncomfortable feeling that he was only echoing Kjær rose up in him and made him hold his tongue. And then she was unfaithful. Or else it was I who was unfaithful. But it made no difference, because now he lay on the Christianshavn embankment and was dying. And his final hallucination was a reddish haze, the Bar des Artistes. Lundbom’s red face, the sun setting, the gleam of the cocktail shaker, the water in the moat beside the embankment.
But he could not see right through that hallucination.
No. Voices and the general hubbub constantly assailed his ears. Someone broke into song, and he shut his eyes. It was the eternal Kjær, who was singing in his husky voice:
“I looked but at the past. For me life lost its savor.
Then through my soul rang out so comforting a song:
Look ahead but never back. What the heart desires,
Some sunny day perhaps will come to be.
“Where life’s spring gushes forth, there lie my thoughts.
Where life’s tree blooms, there bloom my thoughts anew.
Look ahead but never back. What the heart desires,
Some sunny day perhaps will come to be.”
The voice rose in volume, resounding through the room, and Jastrau lay stretched out on the bare ground.
“Hush! You’re annoying the guests.”
“Shut up, you Swedish heathen. When the true Christian spirit—the Grundtvigian spirit—awakes in me, I want to air my feelings, you Swedish cannibal.”
The hallucination persisted in all its clarity. Lundbom kept shushing the eternal Kjær, who obligingly switched over to a silent song, opening and closing his mouth without a sound. But the earth on his hands. Was it real? In his pocket was a real handkerchief. It was damp, and the pocket was moist. There were graves with ground water in them.
Again the hoarse voice sounded and grew louder:
“But if the soul has all it longs for under the sun,
Then there are still other suns and other stars.
And all suns and all stars are darkened—”
“Hush now! Be quiet and behave yourself, Kjær. Do you hear?”
EPILOGUE
JASTRAU and the eternal Kjær sat in the two wicker chairs near the hotel entrance and watched the bustle of traffic. For some strange reason everyone seemed to be in a hurry.
With their swollen, red-veined faces they looked like two stuffed animals.
Jastrau was casually whistling a tune.
“Give that hideous melody a rest,” Kjær exclaimed in exasperation, dropping cigar ashes on himself.
Jastrau stopped his whistling.
But Kjær fidgeted in his chair. He brushed himself off, shook the bottom of his coat, snorted, and emitted a groan.
“I can get so worked up. And listening to that tune—”
“What tune?”
“Good God!” Kjær exclaimed in despair. “You have no idea what you’re whistling, but just sit here very calmly and me all worked up. It was the Internationale, Jazz—the Internationale.”
Jastrau gave a start. He had not realized what he was doing. But what did it matter? Was it anything more than a sentimental melody arising out of his subconsciousness? Emotional communism? With a feeling of irritation, he squirmed about until he was again comfortable in his chair. Emotionalism always ended with broken panes of glass—at a cost of four kroner.
“I have to go to Berlin,” he announced across to Kjær.
Kjær stirred in his chair and laughed. “And Little P. is coming today. Coming today. They come and go, come and go. Only Kjær remains.”
“But I don’t have any money.”
At once Kjær lapsed into silence. He sat motionless, his head drooping and his lips sealed, while Jastrau squirmed in his chair, troubled, embarrassed, desperate.
“I don’t have the price of a ticket.”
“Yes, I heard you.”
“Will you loan it to me?”
Quickly—quickly! Now he had said it. But the silence was ominous. The noise of the street traffic bore in on them.
“I hadn’t expected that of you,” Kjær replied with an indignant sidelong glance. “You disappoint me, Jazz.”
“I’m not rich,” Jastrau said spitefully.
Kjær half turned his back on him.
“This is a sorry business, Jazz. You’ll only drink up the money.”
Jastrau let out a loud laugh.
“All the same, Jazz, it’s a bad business.” And Kjær stirred a little as if a shiver was running down his spine.
“I say!” he called out suddenly to the hall porter.
The porter’s polite mustache protruded from behind the counter.
“Can you send one of the bellboys over to Bennett’s for a ticket to Berlin?”
“Are you going away, Herr Kjær?”
“No—damned if I am. That’s certainly a gruesome thought. But I’d like to have such a ticket. I collect them.”
A little later a bellboy stood before Kjær while he received his instructions and the money.
But as the boy was about to run off, Jastrau called out after him.
“What is it now?” Kjær asked irritably.
“Look, I’d just like to see those ten-krone notes. Just let me see them. It could be that they’re counterfeit,” Jastrau exclaimed.
Hesitantly, the bellboy handed him the money.
“Are you crazy?” Kjær burst out, and started to get up.
But Jastrau sat with the brown ten-krone notes in his hand. He merely wanted to look at them. These were the wretched shinplasters that Kjær didn’t dare trust him with. Should he tear them up? He stared and stared at them. A head of Hermes in an oval. And three lions with crowns on their heads.
“Have you gone completely crazy?”
And with a weary gesture Jastrau handed the money back. Kjær shook his head.
“Are you getting soft in the head, Jazz?”
“I just wanted to see the money. I wanted to see the money.”
“Oh.”
And a little later:
“Kjær, do you know how it is when one day you’re in good spirits and you meet a beggar with a hideous, ravaged face—a person who’s really in need—and then you give him money, so you can be free to forget him, and so your day won’t be ruined?”
Kjær straightened up in his chair.
“You—you do have—an oddly magnanimous way of saying thanks.”
Havoc Page 56
