A Tricky Moment n 59
‘Blame vitamin B. You’re not getting enough vitamin B.’
Aksel leaned forward.
‘Sweet Suzy,’ he began.
‘In control’—Suzy put the file down—‘in control
they’re wild about the idea. You come on last, we’ve
scrapped the other acts.’
‘Suzy, you need to think again, girl.’
Aksel shook his head and had a glimpse of himself
from the outside. He was sitting on a yellow sofa and
shaking his head as he heard Hans Schreiber’s popular
number coming from the studio.
Suzy was presented with a bottle of lotion by Raul who
said he rubbed it on his hands four times a day.
‘If I forget they dry out completely. If there is anything
I hate it’s dry hands.’
Aksel stared at Suzy who was rubbing her hands
together. She said the tune was very beautiful.
‘It’s genuinely beautiful, Aksel.’
‘Yes, it is beautiful. But it shouldn’t be sung by a middle
aged man. My dear children, now let us . . . ’
He stopped short and thought of the word dementia.
What had he been about to say? He had been about to
say, Now let us pat the horse.
The dress fitted perfectly. It was possibly a shade too
big, but Raul sorted that out with a strip of gaffer tape.
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60 n Bjarne Reuter
Were they wearing paper hats in Trørød? Were they
celebrating? Perhaps they were watching TV. Waiting for
him to appear. Lene and her grandchildren. Aksel’s plastic
grandchildren. The ones with the ambitious names: Fre-
derik-August, AnnCeline, and Chelsea-Margrete. The trio
that invented aloofness.
But what was his driver’s name? . . .
‘Gaffer!’ He said it out loud.
They were always using gaffer out here.
Aksel sighed and looked round at the gaffer institution.
Piss and paper and adhesive tape.
‘Are you called after that football player?’
Raul was studying his hands.
‘Me? Ah. Who? Oh, him. No, I’m not. To be quite
honest I don’t know who I’m called after. Perhaps my
uncle. I’m from Macedonia. Take this little cap for your
head, if we set it at a slant we avoid a wig. I’m not one for
wigs. I draw the line there.’
Aksel wondered where he drew his own line, and swore
that this was the last time. The last time he discussed his
performance with a world-weary chain smoker from the
Planet of the Apes and a homosexual lotion expert from
Macedonia.
Suzy appeared at the entrance to the studio.
‘Three minutes, Raul.’
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A Tricky Moment n 61
On the stage stood two plaster figures and a grand
piano. The backdrop represented a flowering meadow.
Aksel went over to stand on the little cross on the floor
he had been shown. The lights were extinguished, leaving
only the one spotlight shining where he was standing.
He screwed up his eyes.
‘Hello, what about my shoes?’
‘They can’t see your shoes.’
Said who? A voice he hadn’t heard before.
‘Shouldn’t we have rehearsed it first?’
‘Control is happy. Twenty seconds.’
Aksel got a nod from his accompanist whom he had
met on a previous occasion, to be exact at Nyborg Strand,
in 1998. The delegates had sung the Midsummer Ballad to
the Shu-Bi-Dua tune. No one could remember the original
version. The pianist looked dry and unconcerned, as
though he couldn’t wait to get home. He suggested a key.
Aksel rubbed his eyes and felt something snap, pre-
sumably the gaffer.
A voice asked for silence in the studio.
Aksel cleared his throat, took a sip from his glass of
water, and stared out into the darkness.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
To Catch a Dane
Eugen Kluev
They decided to go out at dawn to catch a Dane.
‘It’s best to catch them early, while they’re still fresh’,
said Donut.
‘What do you want a Dane for?’ asked Giselle, who was
in the process of applying war paint to her face with
poisonous Indian ink. Giselle was just what she was called,
no-one had a clue why.
‘For the sake of the thing!’ said Donut sternly. ‘To see
what they’re like. Everyone talks about them: the Danes,
the Danes . . . but no one’s ever seen an actual Dane.’
‘The grown-ups have seen them’, said Giselle, quickly
adding, flustered that she might have lied: ‘Some grown-ups.’
‘How could they have seen them when no Danes ever
come here?’ said Donut incredulously. ‘You can find them
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64 n Eugen Kluev
out in Hellerup. And in Gentofte. And along the coast. But
this is Nørrebro, and there are no Danes here.’
‘So it’s not here we catch him? Then I expect it might
be best along the coast . . . ’
‘I’m not allowed to go that far’, warned Small. ‘I’m only
allowed here. Or they’ll string me up from the chandelier,
my dad says.’
Small was seven, and that limitation you had to accept.
Eight-year-old Giselle and particularly the ten-year-old
Donut looked down on him, but put up with him. Small
was Giselle’s brother.
‘Rubbish, they won’t string you up,’ promised Donut
on behalf of the absent father.
‘And anyhow’, said Small, ‘I’m not bothered about
catching anybody, I want to roller skate!’
‘Typical!’ said Donut. ‘Third generation refugees-and-
immigrants! They do nothing but roller skate . . . So just
skate through life till you’re old. And when you are old,
you and your roller skates will be a burden on everyone.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Small, scared.
‘It’s what people say’.
‘About me?’
‘About everyone!’ pronounced Donut.
Well, if that’s what people said about everyone obvi-
ously Small could hardly object. And in any case, if that’s
what people said then it must be true.
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To Catch a Dane n 65
The idea of catching a Dane had originated with Donut’s
oldest friend who went by the name of Shitface, but not so
long ago Shitface had gone off to ‘the third world’, and
before leaving he had, so to speak, bequeathed the idea to
Donut. What ‘the third world’ was Donut did not know, but
just to be on the safe side he told Giselle and Small that
Shitface had died. Giselle had been about to burst into tears,
but when Small also looked glum she stopped.
Personally Giselle wasn’t that keen on the idea of
catching a Dane, because it made her feel sorry for the
Dane. Only from everything Donut said they were duty
bound to catch a Dane.
‘Is it on account of Shitface?’ she asked warily.
So then Donut said it totally wasn’t on account of
Shitface, and Shitface had nothing to do with it. They
needed to catch a Dane because they had to, and they
had to because all three of them, Donut, Giselle, and
even Small, were refugees-and-immigrants. In other
words, people bound to ‘create problems’. It was all over
the newspapers and talked about on TV. And that meant
that was how it was, for the papers and the telly don’t lie.
‘But what if I don’t feel like creating problems?’ Giselle
wanted to know, as she stopped in front of the bicycle
shop window and gazed in horror at her painted face in
the glass.
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66 n Eugen Kluev
‘Do you think they intend to ask if you feel like it or
not? I told you we just have to because refugees-and-
immigrants always create problems. If not, you’re not a
real refugee-and-immigrant.’
‘I am, too!’ said Giselle, offended.
‘Okay, so if you’re a refugee-and-immigrant, start cre-
ating problems.’ Donut was merciless. ‘No one else will
create them for you, it’s up to you. And not just you, every
single one of us—all refugees-and-immigrants.’
‘But I’m still a child!’
‘The young create even more problems’, Donut snapped
back.
It was pointless trying to argue with Donut, for Donut
was the most important person in the yard. And not just
the yard, possibly the entire block—the whole street even.
Sometimes it felt like Donut was the most important
person in the whole of Nørrebro. Donut had arrived in
the country when he was a babe in arms—perhaps he was
a year—and he always said he’d had time to experience
loads of things before that. Giselle and Small would listen
to him with bated breath: being born in Nørrebro they had
nothing to remember. On top of that, Donut came from a
totally foreign country which no one had ever heard of.
According to him the people in that country consisted
entirely of his family, and in fact the country had been
set up for them alone. And when they went away the
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
To Catch a Dane n 67
country was immediately abolished, since there was no
one left to live in it. Sometimes he would start speaking
to his parents in his mother tongue—and then everyone
went all quiet, they just could not see how anyone could
speak that way. And after that not one of them dared say
anything in any language at all.
All in all it was a great honour to have Donut for a
friend. And for that matter, so long as her parents gave
permission, Giselle could easily have married Donut on
the spot—not actually because she cared for him that
much, more to stop someone else getting him. But it was
still too early to marry Donut, and there was nothing else
they could do together—at least in the near future—other
than catch a Dane.
At the filling station kiosk Donut bought sweets for the
money they had, mixing all the most lurid-looking ones
together in a great big bag. They straight off sat down by
one of the pumps to eat the sweets.
‘We’re not allowed to sit here’, said Small. ‘This is
where they put the petrol in cars.’
‘Maybe some people aren’t allowed’, agreed Donut,
‘but we can and we must. Because the law wasn’t written
for people like us.’
‘Why wasn’t it?’ asked Giselle, fishing some toffees out
of the bag.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
68 n Eugen Kluev
‘Are you still wanting reasons?’ said Donut crossly.
‘Because we are refugees-and-immigrants, can’t you under-
stand that? I mean don’t you ever read the papers, don’t
you ever watch telly? We’re the ones responsible for break-
ing all the laws of the land!’
They were silent a long while, busy with the sweets.
‘I feel sick’, said Small. ‘And my mouth’s all sticky. We
should’ve bought apples!’
‘Don’t be so bloody weird!’ sighed Donut. ‘You’re
supposed to live an unhealthy life and have harmful habits.
Eat up and stop moaning, just look how thin you are! The
children of refugees-and-immigrants should be over-
weight, like me—that’s because we eat too much. And
the wrong kind of food. They all say that!’
Small was almost choking to death on a wine gum.
Hiccupping after finishing all the sweets they left the
petrol station and went over to the shopping centre where,
according to Donut, it was time to hang out. ‘Hanging out’
just meant wandering back and forth in the shopping
centre, spending the time sitting on benches for a bit or
messing about with all the stuff on display.
‘So what sort of problems do we create if we catch a
Dane?’ Giselle was absorbed in trying on a lady’s boot size
45, reduced.
‘Just you wait and see’, sighed Donut importantly,
hauling Small out from under a pile of cardboard boxes
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
To Catch a Dane n 69
he had collided with on his roller skates. ‘We find out once
we’re there. To start with we’ll have a really good look at
this Dane—see what he’s made of. We’ll investigate every-
thing about him—tickle him—see if he laughs or not. But
we’ve got to be in national costume.’
‘What’s that, “national”—?’
‘Surely you have some national costumes at home.’
‘I’ve got a tiger suit’, said Small cheerily as he started
unscrewing one of the legs of the bench they were sitting
on. ‘I wore it for carnival.’
‘A tiger’s not right, it’s not national. You need feathers
and stuff, necklaces out of tusks, fur . . . like for instance the Red Indians. And faces have to be painted—like yours’,
said Donut pointing at Giselle. ‘We can dye our hair as
well, that looks national. It’s all so the police will know
straight off we’re refugees-and-immigrants ready to create
trouble any moment.’
‘Will there be police, too?’ queried Giselle, sounding
scared.
‘Of course!’ Donut’s voice boomed proudly. ‘There’s
always got to be police wherever there’s refugees-and-
immigrants.’
‘But what if the Dane we’re going to catch is scary?’
asked Small suddenly, and shivered.
‘He’s most definitely scary,’ Giselle piped up promptly.
‘The Danes are altogether scary. My best friend saw a
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70 n Eugen Kluev
Dane once and nearly fainted! She, I mean the Dane,
didn’t even have legs, just a tail with scales on, like a
dragon.’
Small, who had managed to unscrew the leg from t
he
bench, suddenly let out a loud wail:
‘I’m scared of—of catching one like that, she’ll kill us
with her tail!’
‘Quit hollering’, scolded Donut. ‘Just get on with
screwing the next leg off. Like I said, we’ll catch him—or
her—at dawn, while he’s still asleep! And we’ll be in
national costume.’
‘With tusks and claws—and feathers? We don’t have
stuff like that at home . . . So maybe we shouldn’t really
even try to catch one?’ Giselle did her best to avoid Do-
nut’s eye.
‘Typical!’ he said. ‘You don’t want integration.’
‘Yes, I do want integration,’ said Giselle. ‘But integra-
tion, that’s when you have to go to work, not when
you . . . catch a Dane.’
‘You’re so dumb!’ Donut said, exasperated. ‘Refugees-
and-immigrants never ever work in their entire lives, they
aren’t capable—everyone says so! They’re not on this earth
to work—they’re just on this earth to hang out for days on
end. But integration, that’s another thing altogether, that’s
when . . . when refugees-and-immigrants study the people
of the country. That’s what we’ll do, see . . . catch a real live
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To Catch a Dane n 71
Dane and study him. We find out how he’s put together.
And then we tell everyone else.’
‘And what if he grabs us and puts us to work!’—Giselle
set the boot back where she had found it and followed
Small’s progress with interest, for he had already managed
to half unscrew the second leg of the bench.
‘He won’t do that!’ Donut assured Giselle. ‘For starters,
everybody says it’s totally impossible to get refugees-and-
immigrants to work, get it? They said that again on the
telly just last night. And then they showed a refugee-and-
immigrant who all of his own accord chose to go to work.
Wow, did he look sick! And for another thing, there isn’t
anything at all to do actually, not for anyone. There’s only
very little work left, everything’s been worked to death
already.’
The bench collapsed, and they landed on the floor,
right in the middle of the shopping centre. Small let out
another ear-splitting wail. As though he hadn’t known
how it would end!
On the whole Donut understood for himself the need
to cause a bit of trouble. When Shitface suggested some-
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