The fact was that a couple of crucial events which had occurred during the past couple of days looked set to triumph over my highly-developed ability to block out any sort of unpleasantness, particularly of an emotional nature. One of these was Janne’s desertion. I was on my own again. All the signs were that this was a fact. But did I really want to be on my own? I had to admit that it probably was not going to be as easy as it had been in the good, old days for me to score the female students. Seldom, now, did I attract any glances from the new batches of first years with their bewildered, awestruck eyes. Being single again might be a lot more difficult than I thought. And then there was the appearance in Bratislava of that mysterious woman. Who was she? And what did she want with me? If she had not simply been spinning me a yarn, that is. It bothered me that Irma had not yet called me back. I really needed to talk to my wise sister; she usually had a good explanation for just about anything. She was a tough cookie, it’s true, but she could also dispense tea and sympathy if she felt that was what you needed. And poor Teddy certainly did.
For want of anything better to do I made my way over to the south side, to Amager and the University of Copenhagen and my tiny office in the monstrosity of a building which some mad architect had succeeded in getting past the planners back in the early seventies. Imagine building a concrete pile in the worst East German style to house, of all things, the Faculty of Humanities – in which we who worked and studied there were expected to think great thoughts about the meaning of life and instil in young people a knowledge of language, history and literature. The weighty matters in life. Maybe that was why most of the thoughts generated here tended to be small and muddled. We led our own life within these walls, unaffected by the society around us which footed the bill. I was not the only one to have ground to a halt in the academic world; the odd polemical piece in the newspapers the only visible sign of our existence. Every attempt to have the whole execrable edifice pulled down had failed and I had eventually come to the resigned conclusion that this travesty of a building would outlive both me and the next generation. But at least the pay and the pension were good, considering how little one had to do for it. In the canteen we tried to outdo one another with tales of how godawful busy we were. And what hell it was to be slaves to diaries which nowadays were always packed with meetings. How demanding our research was. What we did not say, we middle-aged lecturers, was that the new generation was coming up fast and that they were both ambitious and talented. Just as well we all had tenure. From the early seventies onwards we had been appointed in droves, regardless of our exam results. And the idea that anyone could be fired for incompetence or laziness was beyond the bounds of our imaginations.
There were only a couple of people at the Institute when I got there. I stopped for a quick chat with them, but not about the one thing on all our minds: they knew that I knew that Janne had left me.
The woman, Signe, was – like most of us – in her fifties, an acerbic-looking character who always behaved as if no one realised how brilliant she was. Her one concession to a world that had moved on was a touch of mascara on her eyelashes. Her specialist area was women’s writing in a male-dominated society, a subject which had filled classes in the seventies and early eighties, but like mine her course was not particularly popular today. That was not why she was so bitter, though. There were two other reasons for her hatred of the world. One was that another old Marxist had landed the job of editing a major history of literature for Gyldendal, the country’s biggest publishing house. They were both dyed-in-the-wool hard-line leftists, so the injustice lay more in the fact that she had lost out to someone from such a provincial institution as South Jutland University. The other was that Signe had dreamt of becoming a literary critic with Politiken, the leading left-wing daily, even though she always described it as a crypto-conservative paper, but since the demise of the communist Land og Folk along with that of the Berlin Wall and my own narrow field of academic expertise, they had no use for her. In these post-Wall times her ability to assess a work of literature in the light of the slogan ‘No feminist struggle without class struggle. No class struggle without feminist struggle’ was not what Politiken was looking for. So she had wound up working for Information, which was fine as far as it went, but not what she wanted – so few people read the little left-wing rag. She was, therefore, pretty bitter. She had been in the same consciousness-raising group as Irma, and tended therefore to give me a bit more slack than she allowed other men, although if the truth be told she had always viewed me as a shallow womaniser with no concept of the singularly repressed state of the female sex. Her current lover, Jeppe, who stood there nodding throughout our conversation, was nothing but a moron. We carried on as though our teaching and our research work were of the utmost importance, but were wise enough not to actually talk shop.
Instead we discussed the news that a Yugoslav anti-aircraft unit had managed to shoot down one of the Americans’ top-secret Stealth bombers. Like the majority of left-wing academics Signe and Jeppe were against the NATO bombing campaign. They felt it was immoral, possibly because NATO was intent on avoiding any losses on its own side, possibly because the bombings had swelled the stream of refugees pouring into Albania. Or possibly because the Chilean coup and the war in Vietnam had left them with an instinctive abhorrence of NATO and the United States. They were considering the one move to which Danish intellectuals always resort when they really want to feel involved: that of collecting signatures for a petition denouncing the war and calling for peace, a document which they fully expected Politiken to print. They had given no thought, however, to what this ‘peace’ might entail. Nowadays most of us were too set in our ways to go taking part in demonstrations. I got round her request to support such a declaration by saying that I was too busy. They accused me of shirking a difficult confrontation. But deep down I was of the opinion that enough was enough, that Milosevic deserved a good hiding and that we could not permit the perpetration of ethnic cleansing in modern-day Europe. Petitions could not do much to stop it. But a few missiles might. Signe said I was naive and that war only made matters worse. That the possibilties for negotiation were not yet exhausted.
I went into my office, shaking my head, and spent a couple of hours answering emails and reading the ordinary post that had piled up in my absence, some of it work-related, the rest just junk mail. Along with yet another exhortation from the Faculty of Literary Studies to sign a petition protesting against NATO’s military operation. It went straight into the wastepaper bin. I called Irma’s numbers again. Her secretary said she could not understand why she was not back yet, but they were expecting her that day. Her mobile was switched off. I sent her an email, telling her about the woman in Bratislava. I gave her most of the details and demanded an explanation, for God’s sake. I thought briefly of phoning Fritz, but we found it hard to talk to one another. There were always long, weird pauses in our conversations. My older brother was a down-to-earth man who produced that basic staple of existence, bread, and he often found it hard to take my more high-flown academic musings seriously. His world and mine were poles apart. He was also a lot older. We had never had much in common. And I knew what he would say if I told him my story: You’d better talk to Irma about that.
I considered switching off my computer and calling it a day, instead of sitting there staring at my static-laden needle-felt carpeting and concrete walls, their drabness relieved by some lovely old Soviet propaganda posters. One of these depicted a brawny worker and a blonde woman. The overall-clad worker had his eye fixed steadfastly on the socialist horizon and his powerful fist curled around a hammer; the staunch, blonde land-girl gazed at him adoringly, her golden locks framed by a sickle. ‘Together we march towards socialism. The party leads the way’ it said in graceful Cyrillic script. It made you weep to think how much the world had changed.
I took a chance and called Lasse’s extension and surprisingly enough he answered. He had arrived home on the Sunday afternoon and – bu
sy, conscientious bee that he was – he had of course popped into the office early on the Monday morning to make sure that none of his students were missing Uncle Lasse or needed his help. Some of them did, but he could meet me later, he said, once he had spoken to them, relieved their anxieties about their dissertations and sent each one off feeling confident that he or she was the greatest genius the university had ever fostered. He had a gift for it. But he would love to have lunch with me.
‘I’ve such a lot to tell you,’ he said, like a globetrotter returning from distant climes.
A couple of hours later he appeared, long-limbed and smiling gently, in the doorway of one of my favourite refuges in the Queen’s Copenhagen, the little luncheon establishment Restauranten nestling next to its leafy little tree on Gammel Torv. With one schnapps and one large draught beer already downed and the prospect of a herring on rye sandwich and one with roast beef washed down by another schnapps and another beer the world did not seem such a bad place after all. The small, low-ceilinged premises were wreathed in cooking fumes and the smoke from the cigarettes of patrons who were almost buzzing with the expectation of tucking into the sort of good solid grub which had not yet been banned by the health freaks. I was sitting at a table by the window to the right of the door, looking out at the winter-wan Copenhageners hurrying past. The March light was lovely, though – grey, perhaps, but with a golden cast that said April was just around the corner. Sunshine glinted off the spokes of a freshly polished bike wheel and more optimistic souls were striding out briskly with their coats unbuttoned. The solitary tree outside the restaurant was covered in swollen, straining buds, reminding me of the sex life I no longer had. My back was still acting up, but it did feel a little better. I still had to be careful when standing up, and I held my head a little too stiffly, but things were moving in the right direction and the world was, if not young and lovely, then not quite as decrepit as it had seemed the day before.
We shook hands, Lasse sat down and I ordered him a beer and a schnapps, ignoring his shake of the head. And another of the same for myself. You had to be allowed some pleasures when your wife had run off and taken the car with her.
Apparently it had all been pretty dramatic in Budapest. Niels had not come down for breakfast and Charlotte had been sent up to wake him. They had heard her come screaming all the way down the stairs to the breakfast room. Lasse had gone back up with her and found Niels lying on the floor with his head smashed in. The room had looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane. Things scattered everywhere. After that the place was in uproar. A doctor was called, then the police came; they spoke to everyone, but no one could be of any help. They had attended a meeting that evening with the foreign minister, afterwards they had had a drink in the bar and gone to bed shortly before midnight.
The hotel staff who had been on night duty and had gone home once the morning shift arrived, were woken and asked to come in. The night porter had seen nothing. There had been only the usual traffic, as he so diplomatically put it, of young ladies visiting lonely men in their rooms, but he knew all of them. They too would be interviewed.
‘It was all very confusing, Teddy,’ Lasse said between mouthfuls. For my own part, I was savouring the oily, slightly acidic firmness of the fried herring, which went so well with the soft onion and the cold beer. ‘They asked about one thing and another, but it was almost as if it was a routine occurrence for a foreign visitor to be murdered in the middle of the night in a top quality hotel in the middle of Budapest. It’s all very odd.’
‘Well, that’s the new world order for you,’ I remarked, raising my schnapps glass. ‘Here’s to life!’ I said.
‘Sometimes you’re just a little too morbid,’ he said, but raised his glass anyway.
‘It could have been me,’ I said. ‘Did that ever occur to you?’
I could see from his face that it had not. He said nothing and we sat for a moment, letting that thought sink in. He would never have said it outright, of course, but I could tell he was glad that it was Niels and not me, who had been killed. Wrong though it was of me I could not help feeling pleased about this. To have this confirmation that he was fond of me. Because I was fond of him.
We thrashed the matter out over smørbrød with roast beef and cheese, then we had coffee. We both felt sorry for Charlotte, and obviously it was strange to think that Niels was, as they say, no more, but we had not known him all that well. And sadly he was not the only one of our acquaintance to have passed away – to use another of those euphemisms designed to make the notion of death easier to take. Heart attacks had begun to strike down our colleagues at an appalling rate. All the living we had done was starting to catch up on us. We eventually agreed that it must have been a robbery that had gone wrong. Over coffee I then told him the trite, woeful, tedious story of Janne and me. It came as no surprise to him.
‘Maybe you just need a break from one another,’ he said.
I shook my head.
‘I don’t believe in breaks where love is concerned,’ I said. ‘I think Janne really loves the bastard. Or at least, is in love with the thought that he lusts after her.’
‘You have to learn to invest more of yourself in your relationships,’ Lasse said, giving me the benefit, for the first time, of this particular insight. Although we were both products of the insistence in the sixties and seventies on expressing one’s feelings, we had not been particularly vocal on that score in the past twenty years. The new man had been trampled underfoot by the yuppies in the eighties.
‘Who says there are going to be any more?’ I said.
‘You usually can’t keep your hands off women,’ Lasse retorted. ‘And who knows, maybe you’re a little wiser now.’
‘According to the women in my life that is absolutely impossible,’ I said and we both laughed, happy to be in each other’s company.
I was feeling like my old self again, lunch was on me. We said goodbye outside the restaurant and Lasse set off towards Nørreport at a brisk lope. I headed for Rådhuspladsen, wanting to walk the stiffness out of my back. The sun was shining and the sparrows were chirping fit to burst, and I was in that pleasantly befuddled state when the light seems to dance over people’s faces. On Rådhuspladsen I glanced up at Politiken’s electronic headlines sign. Underneath an advert were the words: ‘Dane jailed for spying for Stasi’. Another one, was all I thought, and walked on in the glorious sunshine. I felt as though I had all the time in the world and I had no great wish to return to my empty flat too soon, so I cut down to Gammel Strand and strolled along the canal. The sunlight bounced off the water, reflections of the surrounding buildings were repeated in window after window. I carried on out towards Østerbro, aware of a pleasant physical tiredness in my legs. Walking was good for my back.
The flat was bathed in rosy, late-afternoon sunlight when I got home feeling very pleased with myself. I noticed the red light blinking on the answering machine. I hung my coat over a chair, lit a cigarette and listened. The first message was from SAS. They regretted to inform me that my errant suitcase was now definitely lost. Could I please contact them in order to discuss the question of compensation. There was also a message from Janne. She had a bit of a problem on Thursday evening, would it be possible for me to mind the kids? No, I thought, it certainly would not. What the hell did she think this was? She wanted me to babysit so that she could go out with her fancy man? I had to draw the line somewhere. My spirits sank a few notches, but I forced myself to stay cool, be grown up about it. I was hungry again after my long walk through the streets, so I brewed some coffee, made a couple of sandwiches and read the two foreign newspapers I had bought on the way home. Then it was time for the television news. There was another report from the Albanian refugee camps. If NATO had been hoping to stem the flow of refugees with its bombing raids then the alliance had been seriously mistaken. There were heart-rending shots of people – soaked, frozen and starving – who had crossed the border at Kukkes. These were the sort of scenes we had become
accustomed to seeing ever since Yugoslavia began its slow, suicidal breakdown almost ten years earlier. I still had not come to terms with those stony, desolate faces. They came on foot, or driving their pathetic little tractors, with all their belongings piled into the tiny trailers. What a great gulf there was between the refugees and the healthy, well-fed pilots in another item on the news, this time about the Danish F-16 fighter planes and the fact that they had not yet seen combat, but flew missions every day as air support for other NATO planes. Then it was back to Albania, where one of Danmarks Radio’s foreign correspondents reported from a refugee camp set up in some old factory buildings: more distressing scenes of individuals lying in the mud under primitive awnings made from plastic sheeting while the rain poured down. There was a shot of a ten-year-old girl up to her knees in mud, lugging a stack of sodden loaves. ‘Give me back the Berlin Wall’ I sang to myself, thinking of that song by Leonard Cohen, although I did not really mean it. The ten-year-old girl, who had dark, tangled hair and a little cat-like face with large, blank eyes, handed the loaves to a woman, who took them with a smile. Before cutting back to the reporter the camera zoomed in on the woman’s face, a fleeting glimpse only, but I recognised her right away, despite the fact that the hair under her red hat had been cut short. It was the woman from the hotel room in Bratislava. She was wearing a yellow raincoat. On it, just over her right breast, was a badge. Before I had any chance to make out what this emblem represented the reporter’s hale and hearty Danish face was back on screen, telling me what I ought to think about the whole situation, but it was her. For a moment I just sat there, stunned. I had almost begun to doubt whether she had even existed. And if my suitcase was lost, then gone too was the physical proof which she had given me in Bratislava. I sat staring at the television, letting the rest of the news go in one ear and out the other. Teddy’s World Falls Apart this picture might have been called. Cracks Start Appearing in Teddy’s Life would also have made an excellent title for this still life, which I contemplated from the outside as it were. I was jolted out of my inertia by the trill of the phone, so sudden and shrill that it made me jump.
The Woman from Bratislava Page 8
