“Things are pretty dull here tonight,” he remarked as he sat down on the high stool and began swaying back and forth in time with the music.
Lundbom shook his head glumly and shoved a dish of olives over to him.
Jastrau sat waving his arms. Music—music. He ate olives in time with the music, and he ordered a highball so that he could drink in time with it, too, even though his glass of Sandeman was still standing on the table over where the others were. The jazz enlivened the atmosphere, made the place come alive. Something was happening. And before he knew it, he was on his feet, waltzing around with the bar stool in his arms.
He stopped as he drew near the table where Steffensen and Eriksen sat. They had put their heads close together. Eriksen’s face wore an affable, attentive expression that emerged from behind the bewildering mass of wrinkles, then disappeared, only to emerge again like a moon from behind the clouds. Steffensen’s hard face had an intent look about it. His eyes were glazed with an alcoholic film, but behind it they could be seen glistening.
“ ‘But,’ says the fine gentleman, looking down at his nails again, ‘it’s worse than that, because you see I and the housemaid haven’t exactly been strangers to each other—’ ”
“Ha, ha,” Jastrau roared, swinging the long legs of the stool over their heads. “That’s Steffensen’s only funny story.”
But suddenly he put the stool down and went out into the hotel’s small courtyard. He did not care to hear the story again. Steffensen was a simple soul in many ways.
Out in the darkness of the courtyard there was a medley of sounds. From the restaurant came the notes of the violin and piano, from the bar the music of the phonograph, and from the kitchen the clatter of plates and utensils. The concrete pavement and the walls of the buildings augmented the volume of sound, which in a bewildering series of discords swept up through the airshaft and out into the spring evening against the starry heavens as if through a French horn. It was a big moment—a time to feel expansive. And all those floors above, all the windows, and all that had happened in those hotel rooms over the years—all looking straight out at a blank fire wall. A strange building. A person would never have to leave it.
Then inside again. A new jazz melody greeted him, and he had to resume his dance steps.
“We’ve got to liven things up in this empty barroom,” he shouted.
“Hush—hush,” Lundbom warned.
“But now suppose there were no doctor in the story—would it still be funny?” asked Steffensen doggedly. “Would it still be funny?” He was leaning over the table toward Eriksen, who looked bored.
“Do you always get so philosophical when you tell a dirty joke?” Eriksen asked irascibly.
“I’m asking you if it would still be funny.”
“Yes, of course.”
“But suppose the wife had not become infected?”
“Oh, go to hell! You make me tired,” Eriksen exclaimed and started to get up. But Steffensen pushed him back roughly into his chair. “Suppose the wife had not become infected. Would it still be funny?”
“Yes, it would be enough to make you die laughing. Now let go of me. I want to dance with Jazz.”
And suddenly he stood in the middle of the room with his arms raised. Like a Spanish dancing girl. The phonograph played on. Jazz! Jazz! Ole Jastrau stood opposite Eriksen in the same posture. Chest thrust out. Brawny arms. Flashing eyes. Like a Spanish dancing girl. Then began a self-choreographed dance between the two men in the empty barroom—a dance of jubilance and exultation that was interrupted only whenever the record was changed.
But there was a moment when gloom again descended over the room. Eriksen collapsed, his chest caved in, his vest hung in loose folds, and he sighed, “ ‘Spoiled charmer!’ Isn’t it enough to make you get drunk?”
Then a new record was put on.
Nobody noticed Steffensen order a whole bottle of port and empty it in the course of five minutes. Nor did anyone remember how the dance ended.
Little P. had sat and watched them, smiling. Where in the devil had he come from? “Excellent, maestro,” he had applauded. And the eternal Kjær had turned up, too. The perpetual sot. He had sat there beating time to the music with both hands and quietly singing a hymn.
“Blessed, blessed are those who have peace.”
This much Jastrau had been aware of. Or was it a dream? There was no way of knowing or remembering.
A Spanish dancing girl!
*In Danish, forkælede means “spoiled”; a person accused of heresy is said to be forkætret.
7
SUDDENLY Jastrau found himself in bed, wide awake.
He stared up at the ceiling with a look of puzzlement and fright. But then what he saw looked familiar. It was the ceiling of his own bedroom. The window was open. Somebody was beating rugs down in the courtyard.
Johanne had gotten up. Oluf’s black iron bed also was empty. And there on a chair, hung with almost painful care, were his clothes. But he had no pajamas on—only his undershirt.
And so it had happened again. Why? He could not recognize himself. Why did he drink? No, he was not a drunkard. He had only slipped for a couple of days.
But how quiet it was in the apartment. Not a sound. It was as if all the doors were shut—all fourteen of the doors in this apartment where the rooms were so inconveniently arranged. It was distressing—this silence. The rug-beating down in the courtyard made the bedchamber seem as desolate and impersonal as a hotel room. And how terrible he felt! A fist closed around his heart and was squeezing it. He was conscious of something ominous that threatened. It lay in wait there in the apartment. Once he had drawn up a rough floor plan of the place, and the result was most grotesque; it had resembled an ungainly animal grazing, a rhinoceros with its snout down in the water, or something equally preposterous—an arrangement that could bring nothing but trouble.
But where was Johanne? Had she gone away? How had he gotten home? Had he been up to some mischief? Gotten into a fight? He looked at his hands, rolled back the sleeves of the undershirt, and examined his arms. No, there were no marks. But how had he gotten home? He had danced with Eriksen—that he remembered. He remembered the barroom with its red linoleum, its mahogany and brasswork, and the bewildering array of gleaming colored bottles on the back bar shelves. The three oval casks set in the wall, one of them with “Boal” stamped on it. That much he remembered clearly. But what else? Yes, Steffensen had been there, and Kjær and Little P. But no one else. He recalled that some of the workers at Dagbladet usually went down to the bar at about eleven o’clock. Had they seen him? Or had he himself gone up to the office to sun himself and create a spectacle, the way Eriksen did practically every night? Oh, how quiet it was. Had Johanne gone?
He sprang out of bed as nimbly as an animal. His body felt unusually alive and supple. Hurriedly he drew on his pants to go out to the kitchen for a drink of water. He was so thirsty. But how strange—he had to open the door to the small hallway, and the kitchen door as well.
He saw Johanne sitting in the kitchen. She must have shut the doors—carefully and tightly—because she had not wanted to talk to him. Now she had also shut her lips tightly, and her eyes looked weary and red-rimmed from loss of sleep. And her hands lay folded in her lap—like a picture in the Family Journal entitled “Forsaken Girl” or “Betrayed.” A sharp twinge went through him. She was putting on an act.
“Where is Oluf?” he asked, looking around the room, puzzled.
“I let the janitor’s wife take him out for a walk,” she replied, moving her lips mechanically. Otherwise it was as if she were petrified. Her eyes did not move. “So he could play with their little girl,” she added.
Ole Jastrau had nothing on but undershirt and pants. He was barefoot. No wonder he felt humble.
“Oh, come now, Johanne,” he pleaded suddenly, shaking his head. She sent him a surprised, overbearing look.
Suddenly he ran and threw himself on his knees before her, laid
his head in her lap, and rocked it back and forth. “Oh, Johanne, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I don’t understand it. I’m not usually this way—you know that, don’t you? Sometimes I get so afraid.” He wanted to cry. Yes, he would cry—it would give him a feeling of relief. But his emotion was not genuine. He felt stiff and unyielding. “Oh, Johanne—you know what I have to contend with. It’s here inside me—plaguing me all the time.” He sighed, and a few tears rolled down his cheeks. He felt them wetting his face. But they brought no relief. The only thing that helped was cradling his head in her lap—that seemed to calm him somewhat. It was soothing to make believe he was a child. “Oh, Johanne—don’t you understand? It’s enough to make me go out of my mind.”
He got up suddenly, went over by the door, and leaned his head against the paneling. It was incomprehensible—this agony he was going through. It was playacting, and he was playing the part of Oluf. It was a form of self-torture. It cut through his depression and transformed it into pain. He banged his head against the door and stamped like a child. Yes, Oluf, Oluf.
“Johanne—why do I have to be this way?”
Johanne got up.
“Now stop making such a fuss,” she exclaimed in disgust. “He can hear it in there.”
“He—he? Is Steffensen here?” Jastrau turned and faced her. “He’s the one who’s to blame for it all.”
Johanne smiled faintly.
“Yes, of course. It’s all his fault.”
And she broke into a short, contemptuous laugh.
“Don’t kid yourself,” she said. Her voice sounded strangely cynical.
“Don’t you believe me any longer, Johanne?”
“No,” she said scornfully.
“All right! Now I’m going to show you something,” he exclaimed impetuously. “I won’t have him in the house a minute longer. I’m going in to wake him up—”
“He is awake,” Johanne told him sarcastically. “I’ve already served him coffee.” She dropped a curtsey, and broke into a short laugh that sounded crisp and clear. “He’s probably sitting in there now, reading the morning paper.”
“He is?” exclaimed Jastrau. “I’m telling you—not a minute longer.” Barefooted, he hurried into the living room.
Steffensen was there. His face was bloated and his small eyes had a mean look. He had seated himself in the rococo chair and lighted his pipe.
“I won’t have you staying here a moment longer!”
Steffensen was fully dressed. Very calmly, he removed the pipe from his mouth and looked at Jastrau. His glance took in the undershirt, the pants, and the bare feet. The undershirt accentuated the journalistic potbelly and made it appear as a ridiculous bulge.
“Yes, go ahead and scowl,” Jastrau went on brutally. “I tell you this has gone on long enough. This is my apartment here—my home—and I’m not going to have it ruined, because—because—”
Steffensen got out of the chair as if he meant to butt him with his head. But Jastrau summoned up all his nervous force and glowered right back at the angry eyes that flashed with such a glazed luster.
“You’re leaving now. Do you understand, Steffensen?”
Steffensen parted his lips in a soundless laugh that made him look like a horse.
“You henpecked fool!” he exclaimed, raising his right hand and turning the back of it toward Jastrau as if to whack him in the face.
“You’re leaving now.” Jastrau came a step closer.
“Watch out for your stinking toes, or I’ll step on them and flatten them out.”
Suddenly he grabbed up the newspaper from the chair and shouted, “Can you tell me how it happens that the name Stefani appears underneath my poem in this paper?”
Jastrau caught his breath.
“Well—you see—” he stammered.
“It’s a low-down, dirty trick—a newspaper trick. My father’s name! Thank you. You can go to hell!”
He tossed the newspaper on the floor, shoved Jastrau aside, and started toward the foyer.
“I forgot to mention it to you,” Jastrau called out after him. It sounded like an excuse, a sudden, plaintive transition from the positive stand he had just taken.
“That’s a lie! A dirty, journalistic lie!”
And the hallway door slammed so that the windowpanes rattled.
Jastrau sat down on the sofa, supported his head with his hands, and rocked it back and forth.
So this was his victory! This was the way he had vanquished Steffensen—ending up by owing him an apology. A low-down trick. But after all, it had been a case of forgetting—it had—it had.
There was no doubt as to who had suffered defeat.
Jastrau raised his head from his hands and stared at the table in front of him, shifted the fetish, tried to put things in order. Everything was all spread out. Then he suddenly noticed the rough-draft sheets that Steffensen had left lying there, with their sketches of female legs and elephant trunks. The word “Diminuendo” had been written in large letters across one of the sheets, and Steffensen had traced in some beech branches through the loops of the “D.” And there, besides, lay the finished draft of the entire poem.
It was the poem he had been so eager to see the day before.
But now he didn’t dare. He did not want to read it. For suppose the poem was good. It would be another defeat for him.
Oh, nonsense. He shook his head.
“You were too rough on him, Ole.”
Johanne stood in the doorway, and Jastrau looked up at her. There was a set expression around her mouth.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, irritated.
“You might have found another way to go about it. Because the way you carried on—Well, my father would never have done it, and neither would Adolf.”
Jastrau drew himself up stiffly. “If I pick up my hat, it’s wrong, and if I let it lie, it’s wrong too. What the devil did you want me to do? You wanted him out of here, and you got him out, and now that’s wrong too.”
He paced back and forth, feeling ridiculous in pants and undershirt. Suddenly he exclaimed hysterically, “I can’t stand it any longer! I’ll go crazy—lose my mind!”
“Now, just let’s not have a repetition of that scene we had in the kitchen.”
Once again her girlish voice assumed a tone of mild but irritating cynicism.
Jastrau stood for a moment and looked at her through narrowed, observant eyes. His debauched face must have reflected the animosity he felt, for Johanne’s eyes opened wide—big, blue eyes, pale blue behind the pink-edged lids. Quietly she said, “I think we’d better have some lunch.”
Jastrau nodded and went silently into the bedroom to shave. He did so without the help of a mirror, and got a wretched shave, but he had no desire to see his face. It must have looked terrible to Johanne when he lost control of himself. He heard her scurrying down the stairs. She probably had to go out to do some shopping. He began to whistle. It would be best to get himself into a better humor.
When Johanne got back, she looked as if she had been turning something over in her mind. Jastrau could see that her face bore a different expression. Something or other had happened.
He did not find out what it was until after they sat down to lunch.
“Ole, how could we owe for six bottles of Old Carlsberg down at the dairy store?”
“What’s that?”
“Yes, the woman down there said the man with the cap had just come to get six bottles for us. And he specifically said, ‘For the Jastraus.’ ”
Jastrau looked at her in astonishment. “When did he do that?”
“Just now—twenty minutes ago.”
Jastrau shook his head. But then he laid his hands on the table and exclaimed, “Really—this is—”
“Is it possible that—”
“Yes, of course.”
“But that’s downright thievery.”
“Yes,” said Ole, shrugging his shoulders. “Or revenge, or whatever you want to cal
l it.”
“But Ole, something like that! It’s only a beastly criminal who’d—”
“Now, now—”
“Well, what do you want me to say? Would you do a thing like that?”
Jastrau smiled. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. His smile was so unrestrained that he showed his teeth. “But I understand him pretty well.”
“Oh, you always understand everything,” she said with a toss of her head.
“Well, I understood him well enough to throw him out.” His elation at his victory was a bit uncertain, and he felt his way cautiously.
“You certainly did.”
“Did you hear the whole thing?”
“No, only the beginning. Then I had enough. I held my hands to my ears because I thought you were going to fight. You can expect anything from such a person.”
Jastrau smiled warmly at her. Then she had not heard their conversation about the poem, and consequently she knew nothing about his defeat. He reached across the table and squeezed her hand tenderly.
“Now I understand, Ole. You weren’t too rough on him.” Her lips were puckered in the wry little smile that he loved. It made one feel she possessed a deep sense of irony and a certain dangerous charm. He had never actually discovered these traits in her, but there it was—that smile. And now he could once more believe in her deep, deep sense of irony.
“Johanne,” he said in a voice full of emotion.
“Yes,” she replied, leaning toward him and still smiling. “What is it?”
“Oh, nothing. Well, yes, there is something. Everything, in fact.” He spoke softly, and all at once he said, “I’m so happy.”
“That’s good,” she said.
“And everything seems so nice here now. But where is Oluf? Isn’t he coming soon?”
She nodded. “Yes, but we’re eating earlier than usual.”
When she got up, he could not help following her with his eyes, observing her figure, which had not yet become flabby. Beneath the yellow dress he could distinguish the firm gentle curves that he never dared look at when she was naked, but that his hands had felt, molded, and called into being out of the night—those nights that were so few and far between because she was so reserved. Or was it that he was a bit too bold? It had been more than a month and a half since—
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