how catching a Dane and studying him, Donut had pre-
tended to understand perfectly well what it entailed. But he
hadn’t understood too well. To be honest, he hadn’t
understood a thing: not what sort of people these Danes
were, neither how to go about catching them. The grown-
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
72 n Eugen Kluev
ups all round him never stopped saying the most terrible
things about the Danes. Donut had looked all around him
as carefully as he could, but failed to see anyone especially
terrible—at least nobody with a tail . . . and absolutely no
one with scales. Danes never came to this neck of the
woods, he had told himself, they’d all settled somewhere
by the sea. Donut, of course, had never been to the sea. In
the emptiness of life without Shitface he had decided that if
the Danes really lived by the sea it would be best to catch
them with a net. Donut had read how people used to catch
all sorts of sea monsters with a net: you threw out the net,
the monster got caught in the net . . . job done!
But what were you supposed to do with it once you had
it? Studying was another thing everyone was supposed to
be able to do, and Shitface had said he knew how to. But
Donut didn’t. Just one time, he remembered, he’d made a
study of a cockroach—by tearing off one leg after another.
But the experiment hadn’t been very successful: the cock-
roach died. What if the Dane died too?
‘We’re not going to hurt him, are we?’ asked Giselle, as
though she could read Donut’s mind.
‘Why should we do that? We—we’re going to measure
him.’
Phew! Suddenly everything fell into place. Donut
straight off thanked his foreign god, and likewise—just in
case—the local one too, for whispering in his ear: of
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
To Catch a Dane n 73
course, studying means measuring! You just had to take
measuring instruments along—a ruler, a tape measure,
and whatever. And then—well then you used them to
measure the sleeping Dane—length, width, height, and
what was it called . . . diameter? And if he had a tail then
the tail would have to be measured on its own, or similarly
wings, and so forth. Measure, and then write it down—and
that way you’d clear up the mystery.
‘We need to clear things up’, said Donut.
‘So where did they actually come from, these Danes?
Or have they always been around?’ asked Small without
much interest, while fiddling with his sister’s mobile
phone.
‘From Denmark, is that so hard to understand?’ Giselle
took the phone off him. ‘There’s a country called that.’
‘There was’, clarified Donut. ‘That was in the olden
days. It was where the Vikings lived—they’re the ones with
horns. I have a book at home with “Denmark—Land of the
Vikings” written outside and there’s pictures of these Vik-
ings in it. They look like beetles. But later their horns
dropped off and they became extinct - same as the coun-
try, so I read. But the Danes—they’re entirely different—
they pop up all by themselves in any old country.’
‘With horns?’ asked Small. Just to be on the safe side.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
74 n Eugen Kluev
‘Most likely without.’ Giselle, who having waited in
vain for Donut’s answer now supplied it for him. ‘Defi-
nitely with tails, but I’m not so sure about with horns . . . ’
The horns will have to be measured as well, if they have
them—Donut silently noted to himself.
‘Perhaps we ought to check up first, Donut? After all
it’s better to know in advance, if they have horns or not . . . ’
Giselle gave Small a clip across the ear, he’d pinched her
mobile again.
‘The ones with horns, they butt you’, Small warned
them, and showed how.
‘Have you both gone crazy?’ said Donut, and shook his
head. ‘Do you want everyone to know? That will be the
finish!’
Darn it, what a bummer it was that Shitface had gone
off to the third world—these little kids didn’t have a clue.
How daft to suggest it. Go out to the coast where it’s
teeming with Danes and gawp at them all . . . they’ll catch
us in a second and gobble us up—it’s no accident they say
they live on raw meat. Shitface told a story about how he’d
once seen a Dane in the cinema: he was standing up by
the screen in a black suit holding out some sort of raw
meat . . . ugh! And the kids didn’t have national costumes;
he’d have to get hold of some himself, or even worse make
them! Also he’d somehow have to get hold of a net.
*
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
To Catch a Dane n 75
Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark Jensen—all skin and
bone, eighty-seven years of age, unmarried—naturally
had nothing personal against integrated refugees-and-
immigrants. To be sure, in all her long life she had never
met a single integrated person, and not a single refugee-
and-immigrant for that matter, thank the Lord. Here, on
Zealand’s north-east coast, where she lived in her villa
‘Valhalla’, which she had inherited from her parents, no
refugees-and-immigrants were ever to be observed, not
even in good weather. But on the television Ingerlise
Annemarie Vildmark Jensen could look at them as much
as she wanted, and she had noted that there was a startling
variety in the looks of refugees-and-immigrants. They
consisted of both men and women; old, middle-aged,
young, and even very small children; slit-eyed and some
with normal-shaped eyes; thick-lipped and some with
hardly any lips at all; hairy, moderately hairy, and some
completely bald; tall, short, and extremely short . . . some
simply pitiful; black-skinned, red-skinned, yellow-skinned,
white-skinned . . . This last group in particular struck her
as more dangerous than the rest: integration had clearly
succeeded so well for them that they could easily be mis-
taken for members of the indigenous population, including
Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark Jensen herself.
Even so, naturally she had nothing personal against the
integrated white-skinned ones; they were welcome, she
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76 n Eugen Kluev
opined, to settle somewhere or other along with the rest—
only just not here. After all, there were special places—like
Nørrebro, or Ishøj—where it was suitable for that sort to
live. But Kokkedal, for example, was in her view wholly
inappropriate. Why should they live so close to her?
All the same, for a while now the media had been
talking of nothing but how things were not going so well
right here in Kokkedal. You only needed to turn on the
television, and in no t
ime up popped one refugee-and-
immigrant after another on the screen smiling a crafty
smile . . . aimed what’s more directly at Ingerlise Anne-
marie Vildmark Jensen. It was as though they were all of
them saying, Hello old Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark
Jensen, how are you, are you still doing okay?
It was the ‘still’ which alarmed her so greatly . . .
And one time Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark Jensen’s
secret but entirely platonic admirer, the tanned golfer
Ejvind Julienne, had told her that driving along the
Rungsted coast road in his Porsche he had sighted two
refugees-and-immigrants: there they were in broad day-
light standing right in the middle of the road indulging in a
long multi-ethnic kiss.
After this disagreeable story Ingerlise Annemarie Vild-
mark Jensen had immediately contacted the very definitely
not publicly listed company ‘Andersen & Sons’, which
specialised in the delivery and installation of alarm
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
To Catch a Dane n 77
systems. Rather rashly taking advantage of their winter
discount, she ordered their package deal, complete with
all appliances, and a service contract which went under the
trade description of ‘combined coastal surveillance’. The
combined coastal surveillance turned out to cost nearly
one quarter of all the savings Ingerlise Annemarie Vild-
mark Jensen had set aside for her still distant old age.
Just a week later Villa Valhalla had become unrecog-
nizable. Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark Jensen was partic-
ularly pleased with the four long-distance cameras of
impressive dimensions now mounted on each side of the
building. They captured and relayed to the audio-video
database all movements carried out by whatsoever randomly
selected multi-ethnic object within a radius of thirty miles.
‘Naturally I have nothing personal against integrated refu-
gees-and-immigrants’, she confided to Andersen Junior, ‘but
you do understand, young man . . . ’
The young man understood only too well. From now
on whatsoever randomly selected multi-ethnic object
merely had to set foot anywhere within a radius of thirty
miles to set coloured lights flashing on and off all round
Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark Jensen like a disco at midnight,
so that she was constantly called to the screens; and there
virtually all the tedious goings-on of the north-east coast lay
revealed to her gaze. And as for any movement by whatso-
ever randomly selected multi-ethnic object proceeding in
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78 n Eugen Kluev
the direction of Villa Valhalla itself, it instantly set off sirens which started to hoot, groan, sob, and wail in a whole
variety of registers.
To live in Villa Valhalla had become impossible, but
safe. Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark Jensen wept for joy.
But after a while—chiefly due to exhaustion caused by the
neighbourhood dogs who accompanied the sirens’ chorus
with appalling howls—she started knocking the sound
system off the alarm at night. There was no danger in
that, as her body had learned to react to movement by
whatsoever randomly selected multi-ethnic object within a
radius of thirty miles without any help at all from the
ultra-modern equipment. Nor did Ingerlise Annemarie
Vildmark Jensen need to start to hoot, groan, sob, and
wail in various registers, though if necessary she could
manage that too, for now she was all but indistinguishable
from the digital apparatus she was surrounded by.
It did, however, become necessary to alter her daily
routine; from now on Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark
Jensen slept during the day, whereas the entire night—
between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., when the alarm
was disconnected—she spent on the roof of Villa Valhalla.
On cold nights, with her legs swathed in a woolly blue and
green tartan plaid and her head encased in a warm hat à la
Viking with vigorous horns projecting on either side, In-
gerlise Annemarie Vildmark Jensen hauled herself right up
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
To Catch a Dane n 79
on to the roof ridge, from which vantage point she was
able to react with her—now almost digital—body to any
movement made by whatsoever randomly selected multi-
ethnic object within a radius of thirty miles.
Seen from below she looked like a little flying mermaid
with horns.
Around six o’clock that May morning Ingerlise Anne-
marie Vildmark Jensen’s digital body all of a sudden
started to register certain external disturbances—it started
trembling in tiny convulsions, threatening to cause the
human shape on the roof ridge to lose balance. ‘Here we
go’, said Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark Jensen calmly to
herself, pullling out a pair of heavy binoculars . . .
This was precisely as she had imagined them, the
unintegrated refugees-and immigrants. With painted
faces, undersize, dark-skinned, covered in animal hides,
with feathers and necklaces made of tusks and claws, they
advanced slowly with a net in their hands—quite evidently
meant for her, Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark Jensen, a
person of eighty-seven years of age, unmarried. At a
short-legged, jerky pace the unintegrated refugees-and
immigrants covered the distance between the station and
Villa Valhalla, and then—suddenly catching sight of the
little flying mermaid with horns up on the roof ridge—
they screamed like crazy.
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80 n Eugen Kluev
But all in vain: Ingerlise Annemarie Vildmark Jensen’s
digital body answered with a chorus of sirens, hoots,
groans, sobs, and wails, which was immediately accompa-
nied by the howling of every dog in the neighbourhood.
And within no more than a few seconds the combined
coastal surveillance team in the shape of a dozen police
officers, arriving on the scene in four cars, had surrounded
Donut, Giselle, and Small.
‘Don’t be scared’, whispered Donut to Giselle and
Small. ‘It has to be like this. Clashes between refugees-
and-immigrants and the police are entirely normal. But
the police are powerless, says the telly . . . Charge!’
‘Ch-arge!’ yelled Small excitedly. At that very moment
he had finally fully woken up, and with great menace
swung a future crucial exhibit above his head.
A school ruler.
‘A flat plastic weapon ten centimetres in length.’
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
Willadsen
Dan Turèll
‘If I wrote novels I would write Willadsen, the novel’
– Peter Laugesen, January 1966
1
His name was Willadsen, Svend
Willadsen Nielsen. The
first time we saw him he was draped over the shoulders of
a removal man who knocked on our door and asked if it
was here Mr. Willadsen was moving in.
It was. We had been tipped off by the owner, and
obviously had known for a long time that there was a
room empty where we lived on the second floor of an
enormous villa in Lyngby, a decadent ancient overgrown
enormous villa with towers and terraces, now let out room
by room—with two families on the ground floor, two on
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
84 n Dan Turèll
the first floor, a couple in an annex, and four rooms on the
second floor. Four rooms, of which we lived in one, Peter
and Jeanette in another, and a fellow called Ole and a girl
called Annie, joiner and hairdresser, in the third—both
very rosy-cheeked and very optimistic archetypal ‘young
Danes’, as though for some reason deliberately misplaced
there amongst us wolves and outsiders (second floor was
the outsider floor in the house) . . . They were in the third,
and the fourth had been standing empty for some time.
So when the removal man arrived fairly late in the
evening with the more or less unconscious Willadsen
over his shoulder we were on the case. We laid Willadsen
on our bed, and went downstairs to give the removal man
a hand lugging Willadsen’s shit up to the second floor.
While we were struggling up and down the stairs, he,
the removal man, told us how he had spent the entire day
driving around with Willadsen. How he had picked him
up at a house somewhere on Ordrup Jagtvej where all the
other tenants (it was a house much like ours, and with the
same owner) were apparently pig sick of him and had put
all his belongings out on the pavement to be ready for the
removal man’s arrival around midday. They loaded up and
climbed aboard, and at that point Willadsen couldn’t
remember where exactly he was supposed to be headed,
but gave the removal man the key to his new room, his
destination, saying they only needed to drive around
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/8/2014, SPi
Willadsen n 85
Lyngby a little while and he’d be sure to find it, he’d seen
the house before and would recognize it . . . But he had
been drinking heavily all day, and having finally achieved
his goal he had evidently passed out with undisguised, no
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