Havoc

by Havoc (retail) (epub)

  “Uh, how I hate—” Steffensen said suddenly. The words came rushing from him in staccato syllables. “How I hate—all the old—scoundrels. He took her—because he knew—I was spending the nights with her. It excited him—the old goat—to hang a pair of horns on his son’s forehead. It gave him his manhood back again—otherwise he wouldn’t have been able—wouldn’t have been able to do anything. That smile of his—when we sat together at the table—And Mother!” Jastrau sat up straight at the words. He must not say anything. “And Mother!” Steffensen repeated. “Harsh and unyielding and sallow-complected—I take after her. Oh no—I tell you—”

  He leaned his breast against the edge of the table and writhed in agony. And Jastrau exerted every effort to hold himself back. He must not say it. The urn in the briefcase. It seemed to him that Steffensen’s face glowed with a strange light. Every feature became significant, as in the face of a person in a death chamber.

  “Oh—I’ve—I’ve been made ridiculous forever. Do you understand what I mean? Ridiculous forever. My grief is ridiculous, laughable. My feelings—my love—Oh, damn it all! I can’t get over it. I have to get out somewhere—into space—where all this will seem like nothing. Or get revenge. Revenge, I tell you!”

  He rubbed his breast against the table and edged farther and farther forward. And Jastrau perceived him as an apparition, a vision—as he always perceived things when he grew sober during a drinking bout. Steffensen had drawn back his lips, baring his long, narrow teeth, and a faint flush spread over his forehead. His face was like a mask, set in a rigid grimace that was at once painful and comic, and clearly illuminated and delineated in the glare from the light-yellow oak furniture. And the furniture stood out with a weird clarity, as in a ship’s salon at night when the dark sea outside foams against the hull.

  “I’ve hurled the whole thing in his face,” Steffensen went on in a low, hoarse voice. “I did—I did. His impotence. I said it to him when she got tossed out—for naturally she was tossed out—and then—then I left too. But I’ll get revenge. Ah—these old scoundrels—they’ve made a laughing stock of us forever.”

  Jastrau glanced uneasily toward the kitchen door. He heard Anna Marie walking about there and getting out the coffee cups.

  Steffensen had absentmindedly opened the matchbox and was letting the matches fall onto the table.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  “Ah! Now he’s coming with the wine!” Steffensen exclaimed with relief.

  Jastrau got up and opened the door.

  But it was not the janitor. It was a little four-year-old girl with a round head and round shining eyes. She stood there with a wine bottle in her arms as if it were a doll, and in her hand she clutched some money.

  “Father said I should tell you that he couldn’t come.” She stopped to collect her thoughts.

  “And here’s the money that’s left,” she exclaimed dutifully, giving Jastrau a two-krone piece that was still warm from the childish hand.

  Jastrau took the bottle. “Give your father my regards.”

  But when the little one had fulfilled her mission, she leaned curiously to one side in order to see around Jastrau’s legs and peer into the hallway.

  “Where’s the little boy?” she asked, looking up at Jastrau with sparkling eyes.

  “He’s gone away.”

  “Yes, that’s what Father said too,” she replied calmly.

  Having established the fact, she immediately turned around and, with the help of the stair rail began to pull herself up the altogether too high steps. With each effort, her little dress was hoisted way up to her middle.

  Jastrau’s face twisted into a brief scowl in an effort to forget, forget.

  “Here’s the wine,” he said as he stepped into the living room. It seemed to him that the Shrove Monday rod, topped by the paper flowers and the cut-out elf, shone so brightly. “But Edwin himself isn’t coming back.”

  Anna Marie stood by the table with the coffeepot in her hand.

  “Oh, I suppose his wife got her hooks into him,” Steffensen said, grinning and reaching for the wine bottle. Anna Marie looked up at Jastrau for a moment. Ah—now he remembered. And he smiled tenderly at her. Yes, now they were two together. He would not let her down. They were two now, and Steffensen could do them no harm.

  “What do we want with coffee?” Steffensen growled.

  “You were the one who asked for it,” Jastrau said. He was suffering torture. A little girl had leaned to one side to peer inquisitively around his legs and into the hallway.

  Meanwhile Anna Marie poured the coffee and took her place at the table. Her mouth hung half-open. She felt insecure, and did not take her eyes off Jastrau. He nodded to her with a preoccupied air.

  “Ah,” Steffensen sighed when he had poured himself some wine. “Now you’re going to have something to drink too, kiddo.”

  Anna Marie shook her head in confusion and again looked inquiringly at Jastrau. Was she doing the right thing? At the same time, she became uneasy because Jastrau reached out for the wine bottle with an unconscious impetuousness. To forget, to forget.

  “Well, thank God,” Steffensen said with a grin. He too, had seen how hastily Jastrau reached for the wine. He sat hunched up in his chair like a consumptive, waiting to see what was going to happen. “And so, let’s drink to—what was it you said before—the intractability of the soul? Ho!”

  Jastrau laughed and drank.

  “But why aren’t you drinking?” Steffensen went on stubbornly, addressing Anna Marie. “Why isn’t she drinking, Jastrau old boy—why isn’t she drinking?”

  “Let her alone now,” Jastrau replied. He drank apprehensively. “Let her alone now.”

  “All right! I’ll let her alone, damn it!” Steffensen exclaimed so vehemently that a sudden spasm went through his slumped-over body. “But why isn’t she drinking? What have you—?”

  Suddenly his shining eyes came to rest on Jastrau’s hand, which was reassuringly patting Anna Marie’s bare arm.

  “Ha!”

  Then he took another drink and sat staring over his glass as if hypnotized.

  They sat in silence for some minutes. Jastrau drank in feverish haste, alternately from the coffee and the wine.

  “Be careful now,” Anna Marie implored.

  “Ye-s,” Jastrau replied.

  He sensed that she was looking at him with wide-open eyes full of fear, and he nodded.

  “I could kiss you on the forehead,” he said gently.

  “Ha!” Steffensen said, laughing.

  “I could. I could, I tell you,” Jastrau went on. Anna Marie tried to withdraw her arm, but he held it with desperate firmness. “I could.”

  “Why isn’t she drinking?” Steffensen said, sitting up straight in his chair.

  Jastrau leaned over and kissed Anna Marie on the wrist.

  “What?” Steffensen sat up even straighter. “What are you doing? Don’t you know she’s—?”

  “Now you shut up!” Anna Marie exclaimed angrily, and rose from her chair. “Otherwise I’m going to leave.”

  Steffensen rummaged with the matches on the table.

  “Do you want her?” he asked listlessly.

  Jastrau did not hear what he said. He sat staring at Anna Marie. His eyes had become blurred.

  A breeze blew in through the open window, as if they were aboard a ship.

  Then Steffensen picked up some of the matches.

  “We—we can play matches for her,” he said.

  “Stefan!”

  Anna Marie did not get to say anything more, because just then she detected a glimmer of light in Jastrau’s eyes, far behind their blurred exterior. And Jastrau had eyes only for Steffensen. He kept staring at him.

  “Yes—you. We can play matches for her.”

  Anna Marie said nothing. She could not move. She stood limp and motionless like a woman up for sale in a slave market, in a state of collapse, broad in the hips, limp. It couldn’t be true. Steffensen stooped o
ver, fumbling with the matches, and far inside Jastrau’s eyes was an ominous glimmer that she had never seen before.

  “One of us has to test whether she’s sick or not.”

  Who said it? Steffensen sat up with a start. Jastrau leaned over the table as if to leap at the matches. It was he who had said it. And Anna Marie screamed. She screamed. Stared from one to the other. Jastrau wanted to get up. Suddenly he understood. But a gambler’s smile still played about his lips, a cruel twinkle of a smile.

  She saw nothing else. She saw only the bleary, Mongoloid face. Far out in the yellowish light she sensed Steffensen sitting rigidly with bloodshot eyes, a dull, oily luster emanating from eyes that had once mirrored a soul. But she saw nothing except the Mongoloid face. And it was that in which she had put her trust!

  “Oh God!” she exclaimed, raising her hands to her breast.

  And then she ran. Out into the hallway. The door slammed. Jastrau stood leaning on his chair for support. He wanted to stop her. He wanted to repent. Hurried footsteps sounded on the stairway. Going up or down? It was impossible to tell.

  “It’s a good thing she beat it. Otherwise I’d have murdered her,” Steffensen said softly.

  And Jastrau gave up completely. He simply sat down.

  “A good thing,” Steffensen repeated while a slightly awkward smile played about his rigid lips. He shoved his arms toward the center of the table so that a heap of matches was pushed in across the tabletop.

  “Now we can drink in peace,” he went on, nodding his head.

  Jastrau got up again.

  “But where did she run off to? We ought to know—”

  “It was a good thing. She—”

  “But—but—”

  “It was a good thing, I tell you.”

  “Yes, yes, yes.” And Jastrau shook his head in bewilderment. “But we’re crazy, man—stark, staring mad!”

  “Yes—what else?”

  Steffensen raised his listless eyes.

  “Let’s drink now.” And Jastrau sank heavily back into his chair.

  When they had finished the port, they poured the coffee into the glasses.

  “I think Edwin and I brought some bottles of beer down here,” Steffensen remarked. “Ha, Edwin!” And he blinked his eyes.

  “You probably drank them.”

  “Yes.” Steffensen shook with soundless laughter. “But we can’t drink a toast with coffee—a toast to the intractability of the soul?”

  “Infinitude,” Jastrau corrected peevishly.

  “Really? Is that where you are—way out there?”

  “Now cut out this stupid jargon, because that’s all it is. You—you’re nothing but a student.”

  Jastrau put all his bitterness into the remark. His mind was clear, but not under control. His words took on an unaccustomed sharpness. And Steffensen had to dodge as if a knife had been thrown at him. For a second, his eyes flashed with hate.

  “So-o?” he said, slumping in his chair.

  “It’s a mannerism,” Jastrau said, striking again.

  “The unmannerliness of the soul—what?”

  “It’s proletarian snobbery—all your damned crustiness.”

  “Hadn’t we better decide it in some other manner?” Steffensen said doggedly as he swayed unsteadily and laid his fist on the table. He clenched it slowly. Jastrau had seen him do the same thing once before that evening.

  “You admire your muscle, don’t you?”

  Then suddenly Steffensen laughed as if in reconciliation. “Damned if I ever thought coffee could make you so nasty.”

  “It isn’t the coffee. It’s the whole business. We were rough on her.”

  “You were lovey-dovey enough.”

  “Yes, you might well call it that.”

  “You looked so disgustingly sanctimonious.”

  Jastrau put his coffee-filled glass aside in surprise and stared across at Steffensen.

  “Could you notice it?” he asked slowly. “It’s Jesus.”

  “Ah—ha ha!” Steffensen laughed boisterously. “You idiot.”

  “It is. When I’ve been drinking, or when I’m with women—especially a certain kind of women—then He turns up. Here—from inside me. You know—Jesus and the fallen women, and all that—it’s an obsession with me. Then I behave like him—imitate him.”

  “Haven’t you gotten farther than that?” Steffensen said scornfully. The light shone on the jumble of empty bottles and glasses and dulled their vision.

  “Farther than that? I’m speaking seriously!” Jastrau exclaimed with intense feeling.

  “So am I, damn it! I’m so confounded serious that I have to have another pipeful of tobacco.”

  He fumbled with his pipe. It slid from his hand and fell to the floor. With a groan, he retrieved it.

  “Haven’t you gotten beyond that?” he repeated, out of breath.

  “What do you mean?” Jastrau asked irascibly.

  “I mean you’re getting old.” Steffensen drew back his lips. “You’re the one who prattles about the infinitude of the soul. And then you haven’t gotten farther than the Bible stories. Ah, yes, it’s nothing but the religious lessons you learned in school that crop up, you poor boob.”

  “No it isn’t. It’s—”

  “Oh, come now. No, you’ve gotten only as far as the Bible stories. Do you think that’s being spiritual—going back to your childhood? All the nonsense they filled us with in school. It’s nothing but that that crops up when we sit and drink to the intractability of the soul—and then we get emotional about it. That’s being spiritual? Nuts! It’s nothing but propaganda from our schooldays—all this business about the soul. Haven’t you come any farther than that?”

  “Yes, I have,” Jastrau replied desperately. “Because this sort of life we lead is a mess—drinking and whoring around. It’s nothing but a mess, and it louses up the universe. I’m going to see someone I know.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going. Will you go with me? All this drinking and whoring—I can’t stand it any longer. Will you go with me? I know a man who can make sense—a system—out of it all. He knows everything. Will you go along?”

  They looked fixedly at each other. They were at once sober and beside themselves from drinking.

  “What’s this about, anyway?” asked Steffensen. His face underwent a change. His features seemed on the point of relaxing, but the corners of his eyes were bloodshot.

  “Catholicism—that’s what I mean. There’s conversion in the air. I’m going right into the church. They’re looking hard for converts down there in Stenosgade. Will you go along, Steffensen? I know a man who has the whole universe figured out—everything neatly in order. And so we’ll get converted now—right away, tonight. We’ll walk right into the church, right into it. Will you go along?”

  “Well, now—” Steffensen said quietly.

  “No, you’re not going to slip out of it. We’re going now. This place isn’t fit to stay in. Look at the mess here on the table. It’s filthy. And so we stood right up from the feast and went and got converted. And you’re going with me, aren’t you? Then we’ll get everything straightened out.”

  “Yes,” Steffensen said quietly. He was making a pledge. A pale radiance was visible about his face.

  A mild current of air swept through the room, a breeze as gentle as that stirred up by a ship’s own movement.

  They were sailing along through violet-blue space.

  “Ha ha,” Jastrau laughed gaily. “And what a commotion in the morning. Converted! What will your dear father say?”

  “My father!” Steffensen drew out the words, and suddenly swept his hand through the air as if catching a fly. “Then, by Jove, I’ll have gotten the best of him! With all his new-fangled religious orientation. Ha—we’ll crush him, I tell you.”

  They were remarkably clear-headed as they lurched down the stairs. It was a moment of clarity. Their movements were swift and animal-like, following the rhythm of their
thoughts. They were in unison with it. And they made no sound as they went. Merely two silent creatures hurrying through the nocturnal streets, ready to leap into infinity, intent upon an eternal settlement.

  “And so—we go straight to the church,” Jastrau said, gesticulating enthusiastically. He ran half a step ahead of Steffensen, with his body turned obliquely toward him.

  Steffensen nodded silently as he shuffled along hastily beside him with the kind of thieves’ gait so often seen in that quarter. Swiftly. Swiftly. The lights gleamed clearly in the obscurity of Istedgade.

  “Won’t they be asleep?” Steffensen muttered as if to himself.

  “No, Catholic churches are always open at night. You know that, don’t you? And that’s the way it should be, for suppose a person goes and gets converted—suddenly.” Jastrau spoke quietly but with intensity. “There are people who have gone into a church and experienced God all of a sudden.”

  They did not stop at the little pub. It was not a time for deliberation, but for action, and that at once. Abel Catherinesgade. Dark irregular façades, as if the buildings had been wrongly placed. Viktoriagade. Subdued music in the Café Fatty. Vesterbrogade with its bright lights. And then they were there.

  Stenosgade lay dark and uninviting, as if it were only a disreputable side-street. Outside the church was a low iron fence. But all the gates were locked. The church lay brooding behind big closed doors, protected by a fence, just as if it were somebody’s residence. Strangely enough there was no threatening sign: Dog unleashed after six.

  Steffensen jerked furiously at the iron gates. “What’s this?” he growled angrily. “When we want to get in? Is this a respectable institution?”

  “Don’t worry,” Jastrau reassured him. His thoughts flashed through his mind like lightning. “We’ll talk with Father Garhammer.”

  But Steffensen stood with his hands in his pockets, looking maliciously up at the big dark church that towered into the night and eternity. A dark spire sailed along between the stars.