“Book reviewing is somewhat subjective and vague,” Raben said superciliously.
“Do you think law is more objective?” Jastrau shot back, squinting. Fru Kryger laughed.
And when she did so, the lines in her neck indicated that she was no longer so young.
“In my dictionary, objective means the same as boring,” she chirped. “When you men begin to talk objectively, then I thank my Lord and Creator that I’m a woman.”
“When women have feelings and good looks, what more do they need?” Raben replied banteringly.
“Do you think so too, Herr Jastrau?” she asked quickly.
Just then three Dubonnets were placed before them.
“I don’t understand women. I only have a weakness for them,” Jastrau amused himself by saying as he looked deeply into her eyes. She knew that he was going to be divorced. That was why her eyes were so vivacious, and he displayed his teeth in another smile.
She laughed. “There, you see, Herr Raben—a sensible man at last. But you’re also a critic.”
Her laughter was consciously girlish.
“And I thought a critic was by nature more austere and scholarly,” she went on, swinging her foot mischievously.
“Well, that’s what I am.”
All three of them laughed.
“Hm. But I really have such great respect for critics.” Jastrau could hear that she was being frivolous. “And I can’t understand how they know if what they write about a book is true.”
Raben guffawed.
“It must be a good job, and well paid, I should think,” he then remarked in an almost benevolent tone, directing his dark eyes at Jastrau.
But Jastrau felt like going on with the game. A transformation had come over him.
“Yes, it pays splendidly,” he answered, stretching his legs out in front of him. “I live a carefree life. I can well afford to order three Dubonnets.”
“But you make enemies,” Fru Kryger interjected.
“If I didn’t, how would I be able to put up with life?” Jastrau felt like a virtuoso. It made no difference what he played, as long as he was playing. “Is there anything that braces a person up more?” he went on. “I swear that nowhere is the Danish language written better than in the reviews that tear a book to pieces. It’s as if you can hear the language sizzling in an article of that kind. Have you ever noticed that?”
“Yes, power is a fine thing,” Raben sighed.
“Yes, power is wonderful.” Jastrau laughed exultantly. Now, for the first time, he realized what an important and responsible position he had held. The thought made him feel good. He felt a desire to brag, and he stared playfully and provocatively into Fru Kryger’s eyes.
“I didn’t think you were so bloodthirsty,” she objected.
“Bloodthirstiness, frue,”—he thrust his lips out wolfishly—“bloodthirstiness stimulates the imagination. It sharpens a writer’s language and his whole style. Take a critic’s laudatory reviews and his denunciatory ones and set them side by side, and you’ll see that the scathing ones are the good ones. Tight syntax that strikes home—now here, now there—subtle and smooth with amazing images, both novel and exquisitely nasty. And yet people say malice is not creative. The laudatory articles, on the other hand, are almost always limp as a dishcloth and sloppily written.”
And he laughed.
“Yes, power must be wonderful,” Raben said, rubbing his hands together.
But Fru Kryger leaned forward and laid her hand on Jastrau’s arm.
“I don’t believe you mean a word of what you’re saying.”
“Why shouldn’t I mean it?” Jastrau asked ironically. “If not, why do you think I stay at it year after year for a modest salary? Do you think it’s to endear myself to those whose work I praise? Ha ha, the poets think the praise is no more than reasonable. And if I happen to praise one of their colleagues, then it’s because I lack guts. No, I stay at it because the rough-and-tumble fighting is good. I like to hear Skræp sing.* That’s it in a nutshell. And if I ever retire or get fired—which I hope won’t happen for a long time—I want my name on the pillar up there. You know that pillar, don’t you, frue? I know that then I’ll come to yearn for that sound, that very distinct sizzling in the language—Skræp making itself heard.”
“You fellows aren’t exactly idealists,” Raben observed with a faint smile of contempt.
But Jastrau went on playing.
“There are critics who go around whistling all day long like little schoolboys when they’re engaged in a squabble. Yes, there’s a lot of joy and satisfaction in it.”
He leaned back and showed his teeth again, and he was tingling inside. He could have sung every word he said, so little had they to do with reality. But Fru Kryger was still leaning forward and gazing at him. He could not get her to take her eyes off him. What did she want?
“You don’t really mean that, do you?” she asked, pursing her lips.
“Don’t I?” came the lilting reply.
Just then there was a sound of erratic footsteps, the scraping of a stick skidding on the floor, and a whispered “Have you got hold of yourself?” Fru Kryger gave a start. A stocky figure was weaving around over in the far end of the room. It looked like a scuffle.
“What—?” she managed to say breathlessly.
Then the figure approached with his arms around the shoulders of the two small tail-coated waiters. It was the eternal Kjær, blind drunk. He would have walked right into the wall if he had not been led. Slowly and cautiously the procession made its way past their table.
“Who in the world was that old man?” asked Fru Kryger, hunching herself up as if she felt cold.
“Old man?” laughed Jastrau. “He’s no more than forty-five.”
And he looked smilingly over at the clock above the bar. Yes—right on the dot. It was half-past four.
“Uh-h—I can’t get him out of my mind,” Fru Kryger said, trembling all over. “I feel positively cold.”
Raben laughed.
“No, you mustn’t take it that way,” she exclaimed in agitation. Suddenly she looked across at Jastrau with a sharp, almost malicious expression. “Will you be that way some day, Herr Jastrau?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not as regular in my habits as Kjær.”
Raben slapped his hand against his thigh.
“As Kjær?” Fru Kryger repeated, and her eyes suddenly showed alarm—a quick shifting of luminous gray tones. “Do you know him, then?”
Jastrau leaned toward her with a teasing familiarity. “He’s one of my closest friends,” he said.
She shook her head. “It’s strange how men look upon that sort of thing. I haven’t recovered yet. Hadn’t we better leave? Yes, we’re going, aren’t we? It’s so dark here.”
Out on the sunlit sidewalk Fru Kryger took them each by an arm and wormed her way in between them.
“One forgets when the sun is shining,” she said, laughing. “It’s strange—I’ve always felt so nice and cozy in that bar.”
“You should have had a cocktail,” Raben said patronizingly.
Jastrau blinked his eyes. He felt the alcohol. Around him the traffic was a solid streaming mass. Thoughts and words were one, life a swirling rapids. He smiled to himself.
“Oh, by the way,” Fru Kryger said, squeezing his arm, “the other day you wrote about a contemporary Irish book, didn’t you? About Odysseus, I think it was.”
“It was Vuldum who wrote about it. It was Joyce’s Ulysses.”
“Do you know the book?”
“No, but I have it.
“You have it? I don’t suppose you’d let me borrow it,” she said eagerly.
Jastrau looked down at her with an ironic expression.
“Do you have a strong constitution?” he asked mischievously as he looked down at her slight figure.
“A strange question to ask,” she exclaimed.
“No, because it’s a long, difficult book, impossible to wade through, and
famous besides. You need muscles to read that book.”
“May I borrow it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, here we are at your paper,” Raben said. They were standing in the shadow of Dagbladet’s building. “And so I suppose we must say good-bye.” Jastrau did not know if it was a polite hint that he should make himself scarce, but he chose to interpret it that way.
“Yes,” he said, “I have to get up there.”
He said good-bye. But again Fru Kryger’s gray eyes rested on him inquisitively. What was the meaning of that look? Ah, good Lord—was he so interesting? Nevertheless, he could not help being attracted by this animated scrutiny of a woman of the world. He had to return her glance, smile in return, look dazed, but only for a moment.
Then he tore himself loose and pretended to go in through the revolving door—all the way around and out again. Fru Kryger and Raben had already disappeared. She still seemed to shimmer before his eyes. Was she on the loose? Raben? But forget about it. Just let the revolving door swing around. Away with everything. Say good-bye to it.
There he stood a few steps above the street level and perfectly free to go to the dogs. The consciousness of it made him feel expansive. How painless everything was at the moment, simply because he could let his destiny take its course.
Now he had to go home. Home? A faint, canny smile crossed his lips as he sauntered across the square. Was it a home? A few rooms that housed him and that he was despoiling. Steffensen! Anna Marie!
A good-looking girl brightened the entrance to the Scala. Very pretty and erect of carriage. Should he turn and speak to her? Oh—all the stupid nonsense one had to utter in such a situation. He could feel that he had been living ascetically. The girls formed too conspicuous a part of the street scene for him.
Take another look at her. He smiled at a pair of girlish eyes and said, “Pss-t.” All this nonsense one had to go through with. Here he was, with perfect freedom to go to the dogs, and he was not making use of it.
A fish in sunlit water. Sharp outlines of buildings and traffic. Somewhere inside his brain a cocktail glowed.
Then a woman dressed in black stepped down from a yellow streetcar.
Steffensen’s mother was dead. Again something stark. There was a peculiar relentlessness about the things that were happening to Steffensen that neither could nor should be mollified.
Jastrau’s lips curled in a scowl.
Why should he concern himself with what happened to another person? It was both pleasant and beneficial to sit of an evening and listen to another person grow expansive. It was like getting drunk. But Steffensen did not grow expansive. He was as arrogant in his incommunicativeness as a puzzle. Ha ha—a puzzle? He? Well no—nothing more than a tiresome crossword puzzle that had almost been solved. And if Steffensen and Anna Marie were now sitting there at home, then—another row. Why had they chosen his particular apartment for their eternal bickering. No, he would soon have to cut loose from them. It was too unbearable.
He felt so lonely here in the shade of Reventlowsgade. He wandered close to the traffic lane and zigzagged along the sidewalk as if he felt more inclined to walk on the other side. He would, of course, be so hopelessly lost, alone, if—Yes, that was it. He must have those two persons around him, otherwise—otherwise he would have no life, nothing to live for, ha ha ha! Good Lord—couldn’t he get along without them? It was too ludicrous. Steffensen. Oh yes, him he might even put up with. But Anna Marie. She was sick, yes she was. A love affair? The soft curves. A woman. Something that goes around fussing over you. Something—perhaps that was it—with an expression of fear in its eyes and—
Something that was untouchable.
That was it. His mother had died early. The sacrosanct ideal of womanhood.
An idea. Or almost an idea, a solution.
The red-haired janitor was standing in the entranceway. “I have a buyer for your phonograph.”
“But it isn’t for sale,” Jastrau replied sardonically.
“I thought—”
“No, no,” Jastrau sang out in a teasing tone and went unconcerned up the stairs. An idea had slipped away.
Anna Marie was at home alone. Something that had an expression of fear. She sat sewing on a dress. Something untouchable.
“Do you have two dresses?” Jastrau asked jocularly as he sat down opposite her. “I didn’t think you did.”
She looked up at him in alarm. “Where is Stefan?” she asked.
“Don’t know.”
“Are you on bad terms, then?”
“No, unfortunately.”
She put the dress down on her lap and stared at him. “Don’t you like Stefan?”
At first Jastrau did not answer. He gazed mischievously but with feeling into the milky whiteness of her eyes. Why did the iris seem so milky? A weak, feminine face that looked as if it had never been completely formed. How easy it was to torment her. Steffensen’s mother was dead. Wasn’t this a knife to play with?
“Do you like him?” he asked abruptly.
A deep flush spread irregularly over her throat and the lower part of her cheeks, as if she had been scalded. Her lips twisted, then went slack. No firmness to her features. She was about to burst into tears.
“How can I tell?” she replied. Her Aarhus accent sounded so sorrowful, so hopeless.
Jastrau smiled gently. He did not have the heart to do anything else. “No, one never knows.”
“Yes, one ought to know, but I don’t—I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
A tear glistened in her eye.
Jastrau glanced away in embarrassment and stared down at the tabletop. It was dusty. One could draw pictures on it with a finger.
“I feel happy today. Would you like to go with me to Tivoli?” he went on without a transition.
And he looked at her again. Even he could sense that his smile was insipid.
“But I don’t have a dress I can wear,” she exclaimed in confusion.
“You have two of them, don’t you?”
“No, you mustn’t tease me,” she entreated him. “And besides, a servant girl—with you—in Tivoli?”
“It certainly won’t be the first time I’ve gone to Tivoli with a servant girl,” he said, laughing. The remark caused her to smile.
“I happen to feel happy at the moment,” he went on persuasively, “and now you’re coming along with me before I change my mind.”
“But Stefan—”
Jastrau raised his eyebrows in mock concern. “Will he be jealous?”
“Oh, he might be all sorts of things.”
Jastrau laughed as she said it. “Yes, that’s probably the only way to describe his frame of mind—full of all sorts of things.”
Anna Marie looked at him without comprehending.
“Well, then, I’d better get myself fixed up,” she said.
Jastrau could not help smiling as they went down the stairs. Her jacket and skirt were faded and worn, and the heels of her shoes run down. Around her neck she wore a mauve kerchief that looked dark and shabby. But nevertheless he felt compelled to take her by the arm, because he regretted his smile.
“Now if only you don’t have a hole in your stocking,” he said in a strangely ecstatic tone, and laughed.
She withdrew her arm nervously. “No—please.”
But he laughed again. “Because if not, I’ll go and fall in love with you.
“I’m not going with you,” she said quickly in a bitter tone.
“Nonsense.”
“You’ll only make a fool of me,” she said timorously.
Then Jastrau laid his hand on her shoulders, turned her around roughly so that she faced him, and stared into her eyes.
“Do I look like a person who would make fun of you?” he asked vehemently. She averted her eyes from him.
“No, no,” she whispered with deep feeling. At the same time a look born of experience came into her eyes, and she raised her head in a saucy manner. “You look more
as if you’d like to kiss me.”
And then Jastrau kissed her gently. She leaned her head far back, as if she expected a passionate kiss.
Instead their lips merely brushed each other in noncommittal fashion.
Something untouchable. “Well!” said Anna Marie.
Jastrau remained standing there, observing her benignly. Suddenly he reached out and smoothed her left eyebrow into an even arch.
“Let’s go now, little girl,” he said slowly.
Anna Marie bore herself more erectly as they walked down the street.
“You’re nothing but a big, fat boy,” she said, laughing and looking down at the tips of her toes.
Tivoli lay bathed in the late afternoon sunshine with wide expanses of glistening asphalt between the green trees. The tree trunks were dusty and gray, and over the pathways the city’s summer heat lay in a low haze, a dry, electrifying atmosphere.
“So this is Tivoli!” Anna Marie exclaimed, taking a deep breath. Her surprise lent a strong Aarhusian lilt to her voice. And it struck Jastrau that after all she was only a little girl from the provinces. Perhaps she had never before been to Tivoli, but had only heard people talk about it when she was a child.
“Have you never been here before?”
“No.” And then she began to rattle on. Yes, it was an experience for her. Her father had told her about it—an enchanting description remembered from the days when he had been a soldier. Lord only knew what her father looked like. He did not have the heart to ask her what his occupation was. A laborer? And again he smiled compassionately. A hole in her stocking. Now this glowing but ominous feeling of compassion again filled him with a kind of gratification that could so easily slip into eroticism.
Should he show her Tivoli? There was the outdoor stage, built in the style of a Greek temple. Some acrobats in black and red tights that accentuated their round buttocks and rippling muscles spun around in the air, outlined against the gold and blue of the sky. Should they stand quietly in the audience and gape? He said hello to a young university professor whose violet-blue eyes were appraising Anna Marie from behind his glasses. Yes, somewhat puzzling? Jastrau smiled. And then he gently edged up very close to Anna Marie, who stood staring at the acrobats.
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