The History of Danish Dreams: A Novel

by Høeg, Peter

  This view of that moment, and indeed of Carl Laurids in particular, complies with a dream we all have, and that is the dream of being able to say that certain people are inhuman. But in this case, in this case at least, it is a poor explanation. Here, in the gondola, high above Copenhagen, we are never going to get anywhere near Carl Laurids by declaring him to be a beast, when, during these minutes, what is making him tremble and bringing the palms of his hands out in a cold sweat and causing him to peer searchingly into flushed and powdered and expectant faces that take neither his dour demeanor nor his revolver seriously is not in fact a thirst for revenge but the fear of losing something. Carl Laurids, too, is just about to recognize that this is the case, after having made a survey of all his guests without coming up with anything other than what he himself pulled out all the stops to achieve: intoxication, lechery, gourmandise, abandonment, gratitude, and a tenuous, short-lived sense of security—all suspended beneath the huge balloon. Having passed the last of the Romeos and Juliets—who have hung their furs and tailcoats over the gas lamps and subsided onto the darkness of the divans—and the last of the barons—so drunk on champagne that they have forgotten their newly purchased titles and have rediscovered their identities as cattle drovers and are swearing and arm-wrestling and finger-pulling and hanging one-armed over the edge of the gondola—Carl Laurids arrives at the wickerwork chaise longue on which Amalie is lying. And here he stops, because his symptoms vanish: his heart slows down, his palms dry up, and he notices that he is hungry. He clips the revolver back into place next to his waistcoat pocket and tells himself that he has suffered some sort of inexplicable attack that has now, absolutely and most definitely, blown over.

  But actually this was only the beginning. No matter how strange it may sound, by that time Carl Laurids was a goner. Even though I harbor serious doubts about Fate, I would say that, just then, Carl Laurids’s hour had come. And what lay in store for him was love. Not the contradictory turn-of-the-century dream of languorous, ever-faithful wives and spirited but steady and strong-willed husbands; nor yet our ideal of two mature and liberated individuals striding side by side, heads held high, into the pale green future. What faced Carl Laurids Mahogany and Amalie Teander was a romantic quagmire, a steamy morass of emotions that would never become clear.

  If anyone had told Carl Laurids this—now, in his moment of triumph, just when he had regained his equilibrium—he would have given an affable but dismissive wave of his hand. He was back on top, back on a firm footing. He winked roguishly at Amalie and promised himself that if he remembered this pale-faced girl after they had landed, he would have her fed up so that he could commemorate the success of this balloon trip by screwing her, without running the risk of knocking the last spark of life out of her frail body. Then he gave the balloonist the order to take the balloon tenderly back and down, while he made the rounds of his guests, ensuring that no one would be disturbed by the noise of the propeller shaft, or by the fierce hiss of the hydrogen being released. He knew, you see, that for these people—who were all fundamentally neurotic and plagued by constipation and various, baffling types of nervous disorder—a soft, imperceptible landing was every bit as important as the ascent. To his satisfaction, he found that the party had been such a success that they did not even notice the landing. Their screeching and singing and cheering, together with the racket from the orchestra, which had now turned to playing jazz—some of the first jazz ever played in Copenhagen—completely drowned out the engine noise and the bumps and hissing of the valves.

  * * *

  As Carl Laurids carried Amalie off in a cab, the party was still going strong in the glittering gondola, now tethered in the meadow; and far down Strand Drive, as they drove through that beautiful night, they could still hear the scintillating music.

  Carl Laurids had the cab drive to the grand and expensive Hotel d’Angleterre (designed by Meldahl, of course), where he hired the bridal suite for Amalie. That he should have headed for this hotel in particular seemed rather rash, since it was from here that he had, only the year before, absconded from the biggest hotel bill ever reneged upon in Denmark. It was not all that long since he had been forced to pay up, after a lengthy lawsuit, and the astronomical bill itself still hung in its frame above the receptionist’s desk in the foyer, as a warning to all and perhaps also as an extravagant joke totally befitting such an ostentatious establishment. I think, in other circumstances, Carl Laurids would have been ejected on the spot, and it is, at any rate, hard to imagine the hotel’s welcoming him with open arms after that traumatic lawsuit. To begin with, the police had found it almost impossible to track him down; then the magistrate’s court had even more difficulty in establishing whether he was solvent, whether there actually were any funds to draw upon behind all the trade names and companies that had screened his business activities during the two years since he had come to Copenhagen from Mørkhøj. Nonetheless, Carl Laurids is now met by nothing but open arms and courtesy, and this, I think, must be put down to the aura of confidence that surrounds him. With every hour that has gone by since he met Amalie his spirits have risen, until by now he is irrepressible—although he cannot say why he should have been seized by such restless euphoria, or why this should put it into his head that of course she’ll stay at the d’Angleterre, it’s the obvious place for fattening her up. This confidence is the only explanation I can offer for everything’s passing off as well as it does—and some such explanation is necessary, since Carl Laurids meets no opposition whatsoever. Quite the contrary: everyone rushes to his assistance. The doormen hold the door open for him, the receptionists gush and grin fatuously, and the bellhops just about fall over one another in their efforts to locate his nonexistent baggage. At one point a glimpse can also be caught, in this chaotic picture, of the maître d’hôtel saluting politely and the chef promising something or other now lost to posterity. Perhaps even the manager is there at one point, as if just to let Carl Laurids know that nobody here bears a grudge, and that even if no great amount of water has flowed under the bridge since he last tried to rob the hotel, rest assured, he can feel welcome here.

  Through this tableau strides Carl Laurids, and in a way this scene can be regarded as symbolic of his progress through life during these years. The stage set—this hotel, the d’Angleterre—tries to convey an impression of deep-rooted nobility, while in fact it is nothing but a series of façades recently thrown together by Meldahl, that son of the proletariat. The idea was to create an environment in which Copenhagen’s nouveaux riches could rub shoulders with its old shabby-genteel bourgeoisie and its bankrupted aristocracy, thus finding just a little of that security they all seek, the security Carl Laurids provides. This must be why he is admitted to this stage set that night; this must be why the waiter and the maître d’hôtel and the hotel manager and the receptionists bow before this man who does not even have any baggage. It is a dream of self-assurance, the early-twentieth-century dream of being allowed to bow down to a personality, if only it is strong enough.

  And even to us, today, there is something alluring about this scene. There is something both modern and romantic about Carl Laurids’s entrance. Imagine: he gains admittance to and residence in the most expensive hotel in Copenhagen, late one night, after a trip in a balloon; arriving with nothing except his beloved and, of course, his famous boyish charm—though probably without any prospect of being able to pay the bill! But once we have said this, if the picture is to be complete, then it is necessary to say something else: to add that there is also something comical about the whole situation; about Amalie, opening her eyes now and then, only to languorously close them again after having reassured herself that she is still in paradise; and above all about Carl Laurids, this gallant in his leather helmet and flying goggles. In his manic euphoria, he winks at the receptionist, blows a kiss to his old hotel bill, waves to the manager—not saying a word, but making it quite clear that he has come back here, of all places, because he has a mind to put his own
immortality to the test. That, and because he doubts whether the little shrinking violet he has brought here has ever seen the like of this jerry-built whorehouse, and because it is going to be such a pleasure—heh, heh—to screw her in that bridal suite, where he has had so many other sweet young things before her. And the funniest thing of all is that by this time Carl Laurids is in fact floundering in the net; these fine airs of his are, in truth, convulsive twitches; as soon as Amalie looked at him for the first time—back there in the balloon, just before she turned her head away—something happened to him. That is what he is trying to cover up in the early hours of that morning, as the spring sun is rising over the Citadel and over the Royal Theater (another of those pies in which Meldahl had a finger); as he calls for a doctor, a specialist, a professor, to fatten up Amalie—someone who can turn this little cigar into a match for Daddy. And, of course, Carl Laurids gets his doctor and his nurse and a chaperone and even a cook, whose sole task will be to prepare dishes for Amalie from the diet prescribed by the doctor. Carl Laurids himself visits her once a day, then twice, then three times, then four, then five, and then as often as he can, not because this little escapade means anything special to him—far from it—but because the idea of this little Pygmalion story excites his curiosity; because just three-five-seven-ten-fifteen times a day he needs to see how she is getting on, his little chick, his spur-of-the-moment sweetheart. And the feelings he cherishes for her are really no more than ripples on the surface of that ocean of will and ambition harbored in the depths of his soul.

  And it is precisely because she means nothing more to him than a little bit of fun to brighten his arduous existence that he can set the stage for her seduction as though it were a gala performance. He has the bridal suite lit by two hundred candles, and two silver ice buckets containing Dom Pérignon set next to the bed, along with platters of oysters—which he himself has never much cared for, but which fill the bedroom with an interesting aroma just right for what is about to happen: he, Carl Laurids Mahogany, is going to harvest this little pearl and then he is going to drop her, because, to him, the world is full of pearls and there’s nothing in the least bit special about this one.

  Rosy-cheeked and moist-eyed, Amalie smiles at him from the bed; she has put on weight, grown plump; he has had her dressed in a yellow basque made fashionable by the great diva Dagmar Andersen, and in this she looks quite enchanting. She looks like, and is, a fruit ripe for the plucking—by Carl Laurids, in his studiedly nonchalant lounge suit. Beneath his casual veneer lurk the most painstaking of preparations. He has bathed and dabbed his underarms with eau de cologne and scrubbed his teeth with tooth powder and had his nails manicured and his beard shaved—though the sparse growth of this last presents a sad reminder that he is still not quite out of the throes of puberty. All in all, he has prepared for this coupling as a surgeon prepares for a tricky operation; without for one moment realizing that all these preparations represent one massive attempt to distance himself from the girl smiling up at him from the bed.

  The date is June 15, the day on which, approximately seven hundred years earlier, the Danish colors fell from the skies—so nothing should go wrong. Nevertheless, as he crosses to the bed, Carl Laurids is aware that his interest in this girl remains fixed at eye level, that it will not spread to the rest of his body, and that for the first time in his life he is completely and utterly impotent.

  What Carl Laurids had been hit by on that spring night, amid the two hundred candles and the champagne on ice and the scent of oysters and all the other symbols of irresistible masculine potency, was love. It had happened just as he lifted Amalie into the gondola, laid her on the chaise longue, and leaned over her. She had opened her eyes and recognized him as one of the young men who had been calling to her from her inner paradise her whole life long. Then she had turned her head away in dismissal and closed her eyes. And the thought that crossed her mind just before she lost consciousness, in the second immediately succeeding her first rush of happiness, was something along the lines of, So, he’s here at last, is he, well, he certainly took his time about it and I really don’t know whether I feel like talking to him, can’t it wait till another day—and then she fainted. But Carl Laurids had taken it all in: both the admiration, which he was used to, and the flirtatiousness, with which he had never previously been faced and which shocked him that much more, coming as it did, from someone at death’s door. And while he was trying to bring her back to life with a few more drops of cognac, while the balloon rose and rose, climbing toward the sunset, Carl Laurids tumbled into the abyss that yawned between Amalie Teander’s adoration and her rejection.

  During that fleeting moment when Amalie first opened her eyes and recognized the man in her life, then retreated into her own swoon—as if to say, I really don’t have time for this, not right now—Carl Laurids encountered resistance on the part of a woman for the first time in his life. At Mørkhøj and, later on, in Copenhagen, he had learned that, like other people, women could be manipulated like tools. Being governed by values that were worthless, they were on the lookout for someone to whom nothing was sacred; and he had always been that someone—until he saw Amalie turn her head away dismissively. Or there may be another explanation for his falling in love: that for the first time, in Amalie, he found someone as ruthlessly egoistic as himself. A third explanation would be that from the first time their eyes met she had shown him a love that also embodied rage. And there is a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth explanation—but none of them is as enlightening as the actual sequence of events. What happened was that Carl Laurids visited the bridal suite and Amalie, whose health was steadily improving, every day. He no longer ordered the candles to be lit, and after a while he also stopped the champagne, once he realized that alcohol had no effect whatsoever on his potency. He would chat condescendingly with Amalie, teasing her about her past; but he never listened to her answers, because his attention was turned inward, upon himself. All the while, as he was sending the nurse and the chaperone out of the room, and throwing his yellow gloves and his cane onto the furniture, and watching Amalie’s lips move, he was like a tiger: lying in wait for his lust, which absolutely refused to manifest itself. Each day he left the hotel frustrated and forcing a smile. He swung his cane and tried to enjoy the summer weather; tried greeting passersby of his acquaintance, whistling a vaudeville tune, and thinking about his business—anything at all, so long as it stopped him from doing what he always did: getting drawn into endless monologues addressed to Amalie Teander. His fantasies always followed a particular pattern. He imagined sending her away, telling her, Your time’s up, young lady, Daddy’s paid for everything, and now you have ten minutes, I repeat, ten minutes, to get out of here. And as for me, I’m off, I’m a busy man, the world’s waiting, I have to move on, I don’t have time to waste on a little nun like you who’s never even tickled my fancy; as far as I’m concerned, the world’s full of women. Carl Laurids then pictured himself striding briskly away without a backward glance. But this monologue was always supplanted by another in which he added, Now, if you’re ever short of cash, sweetheart, if you need your streetcar fare or fancy a piece of gateau at La Glâce, just you pop up to Daddy’s office. Because if there’s one thing we’ve no shortage of it’s money. You just come to me. And Carl Laurids pictured himself helping her and her family, and the two of them walking side by side in a forest. Suddenly they come to a halt and she looks up at him with tears in her eyes … and here the fantasy always came to an end, just at this point, because he could not imagine what it would be like to kiss her. And always he would discover that he had been wandering aimlessly; that he was now halfway to Amager, or walking along Langelinie, or standing in the middle of Frederiksberg—far away from his office in Rosengården, where he was expected—up to his neck in confused and wildly romantic reveries which were intoxicating while they lasted but which left him with a dreadful hangover of self-loathing.

  One morning Amalie received Carl Laurids fully d
ressed. She had dismissed the cook and the professor and the chaperone and the nurse, and she told Carl Laurids, with the air of a queen, that it had been interesting to make his acquaintance but now she had to leave; then went on to remark, coolly, that, as a real lady, she was not sure whether she should allow herself to remain alone with him in a strange hotel room. Carl Laurids looked over her shoulder, out of the window. The curtains were pulled back and a white-hot sun shone through the french windows, filling the room with suffocating heat and the illusory feel of a Sunday morning. From the street rose the distant clatter of horses’ hooves and metal-rimmed wheels on cobblestones, and of a car being started with a crank handle. In sudden, wild delight at the distance she had put between them he took his first step toward her. They met halfway. With his first move, Carl Laurids managed to rip off her coat. With the second he tore off her dress, petticoat, and bodice. There then followed an involuntary and comical hiatus. She might not have been wearing a corset, but the basque which he himself had bought for her in Magasin du Nord—and which had cost a small fortune—was made of a silky stuff which, though cobweb-fine to the touch, resisted all his attempts to rip it apart. His eyes met Amalie’s. Her dark curls shone in the sunshine, and from under her half-closed eyelids came a look of such scorn that fear of interruption sent a red streak of madness flashing across his brain and he ripped the basque from top to bottom. She bit his shoulder, hard, to keep him from going berserk; then they dragged each other down onto the hotel bed, whispering little curses while she teased him and urged him on by saying no and yes at the right moments.