Havoc

by Havoc (retail) (epub)

  And finally he stood with sore feet outside the entranceway in Istedgade. Why hadn’t he gone to a hotel? Why? Steffensen was probably lying up there asleep, as if it were his apartment. Had Anna Marie returned?

  As he opened the heavy outer door, he shut his eyes. He was so tired, and the darkness seemed filled with fire and smoke. A flaming unrest that lurked within him.

  “Hee hee—good morning.” And before him stood the janitor with red-rimmed eyes and two beer bottles protruding from the front pockets of his overalls. “No, it isn’t easy to be up in the front lines.” He was lurching.

  Jastrau nodded.

  “Now we can go along together a few steps—up the stairs, as the saying goes. Company makes the way shorter.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Yes, I ought to get a little shut-eye too before tomorrow—which incidentally is today. I’ve been talking politics fluently with the baker, you might say. He’s the one who’d like to buy your phonograph, but damn it, Jastrau, I want a commission. Aw, Jastrau, you drunken galoot.”

  They were on their way up the stairs, which looked dusty in the morning light. The windows needed cleaning.

  “Drunken lout,” said the janitor, grinning and clapping him on the shoulder. “And here I’ve been thinking all along that you’re a genteel sort and a good-for-nothing, and then you turn out to be a human being. A human being. And we’re on familiar terms, right? Believe me, I made quite a commotion putting those boards up over your hallway door. Hee hee. The place looks as if there’d been a murder there.”

  Jastrau looked up at his door and stopped abruptly. The frosted patterned panes, the big star-shaped hole with its exploded jagged edges, and the crude boards that had been nailed up behind it so that an intruder could not reach an arm in and open the door from the inside—the crass reality of it all made such an impression on him that he caught his breath. It was havoc, all too clearly visible, and the janitor was right. It looked as if a murder had been committed behind the barricaded door.

  “Nice work, so to speak,” said the janitor, snickering and lurching against him.

  “Is he asleep in there?” Jastrau asked, puffing for breath. He could not take his eyes away from the damaged door. It was the entrance to his home. What a home!

  “Him—that lout? Yes, he’s playing lord and master. Frøken Jensen is scared to death of him. He’s a tough customer, and besides he comes from a good family.”

  “Frøken Jensen?” Jastrau asked in wearied bewilderment, turning aside and leaning against the bannister.

  “Yes, the young girl who ran out on you that night. But,” he went on, tottering a bit, “I can’t make it, the way these stairs are heaving.”

  “Then we’ll sit down,” replied Jastrau, and sat on the steps with his back toward the disconcerting door.

  “All right, then we’ll sit down,” the janitor exclaimed. “Phew! The battle isn’t so easy. No, indeed it isn’t.”

  Jastrau stared down at the staircase window with its little air hole, and out into the courtyard.

  “Frøken Jensen—Anna Marie,” he said softly. “So she ran upstairs to you?”

  “Yes. Not to me that is, but to my wife, of course,” said the janitor, grinning and leaning his elbows comfortably on the stair tread behind him as he stared down at the bagging front of his overalls. “But what’s that I see sticking out of my front pockets? Two beers—for two gentlemen. So you see, I had an idea I’d meet you on the stairway. Have one.”

  He yanked the caps off the bottles and let them roll down the stairs. Then he and Jastrau crossed and clinked the bottle necks, toasted, and drank.

  “Look here, Jastrau,” the janitor said, moaning over the neck of the bottle so that a hollow whistle sounded from down inside it, “aren’t you going to sell that dandy phonograph?”

  “No,” came the irritated reply. “But is Anna Marie still staying with you? Is she upstairs?”

  The janitor scratched his red hair.

  “Anna Marie? Oh, you mean Frøken Jensen.” He grinned thoughtfully. “I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone, but it isn’t so easy to keep your mouth shut when you run into someone on the stairs and you’re both going up to hit the sack. Ah—that bottle hit the spot. It’s wonderful how beer can keep on tasting so good.”

  Jastrau wrinkled his brows.

  “You can’t possibly afford it,” he said.

  “Beer? No,” replied the janitor, gaping at him and then suddenly inserting the bottle into his mouth, since it happened to be open anyway.

  “But one manages to get what he has to have,” he said, puffing and glancing at Jastrau with a crafty look in his bleary, ingenuous eyes. “Listen now, wouldn’t you like to sell that phonograph—once for all?” he exclaimed suddenly, giving Jastrau a playful shove.

  “I meant you can’t afford to have her living with you,” Jastrau said obstinately, as if trying to cut through his own morning stupor and the janitor’s fanciful thoughts at one and the same time.

  “No, I can’t afford that either. No sir!”

  “What do you intend to do with her?”

  “Hee hee.” The janitor slapped his thighs. “Do you think my wife would put up with it? No, then you don’t know her. Besides, she’s still young and frisky herself. Hell, you must have noticed that yourself. She can give a man enough to do—and one man doesn’t amount to so much in that respect. Right? Skål! Beer is a wonderful thing.”

  Jastrau drank without enjoyment. He felt listless.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said, staring down at the stair treads.

  “Damned if I do either,” said the janitor with a grin. “And I can’t for the life of me understand what it is that you don’t understand. Is it about the phonograph?”

  “I don’t understand how you can have Anna Marie living with you.”

  “Anna Marie? Who? Oh, Frøken Jensen.” The janitor raised the bottle in an elucidating gesture. “Well, you see, she helps my wife, and then my wife helps her to look for a job—in the help-wanted ad-vertise-ments. Phew, a big word for so early in the morning. And she loans her things to wear—you know, so she can look decent, so to speak, when she goes looking for a job. She’s really a good-hearted soul—my wife, that is. A big heart! Big tits! Big hips! Big ass, everything about her is big. Hee hee. But I suppose a person shouldn’t talk that way about his wife.”

  Jastrau got up and looked at him.

  “You’re nice people,” he said. He did not know if he meant it, but he felt a compulsion to be genial.

  “What’s that? Are you being sarcastic?” the janitor asked with a suspicious jerk of his head.

  Jastrau was already on his way down the stairs.

  “What do you mean? And are you leaving?”

  “Yes, I don’t want to sleep here,” Jastrau replied, nodding over his shoulder. He had suddenly come to his senses. He did not want to see that door any longer. It was too disconcerting. Never, never would he forget it, with its broken panes and the boards nailed over them. It was as if he had seen his own life in ruins.

  “You don’t want to stay here with me any longer, is that it? But what about the bills? What about them?”

  “What bills?”

  “The glazier and the boards and everything. Did you think I was making you a present of them?” The janitor stuck his freckled face out angrily toward him.

  Jastrau had already descended a few steps. Then he carefully turned to face the janitor, so stiffly and cautiously that he did not catch so much as a glimpse of the broken panes in the hallway door. The janitor was still sitting astride the stairway, his face thrust forward in an expression of chagrin.

  “Send them over to my hotel,” Jastrau answered arrogantly. Involuntarily the janitor drew himself up.

  “All right. I’ll do that.”

  Then he collapsed again and shut himself up in his thoughts.

  But as Jastrau continued down the stairs, fragments of a muddled monologue reached his ears.

&nb
sp; “You never know how you stand—oh, my God. Just when we’re sitting here—everything nice and comfortable—then they suddenly get up on their high horse. Oh, oh, oh—what the hell! Nice people—you too. Oh, my God—such a dandy phonograph.”

  And when Jastrau had almost reached the bottom of the stairs he heard a groan and a scraping of feet. At the same time the two beer bottles came bouncing and rattling down the stairway step by step.

  It was the janitor who had gotten to his feet with difficulty and was on the way up to catch a wink of sleep before morning.

  With a feeling of having walked many miles, Jastrau made his way back to the Town Hall Square. At the streetcar stop in the middle of the deserted square stood a young girl in a black dress that shone like lacquer about her superb figure. In her flesh-colored stockings and tight-fitting dress, she looked as if she were in a bathing suit, glistening wet in the morning sunlight. Jastrau made a close detour around her. For a moment he was aroused. He was a conqueror of women. But her face was smeared with make-up, and her red mouth looked weary and shameless. Fru Luise had gray, intelligent eyes. It was all so remote and unreal.

  Then, feeling even wearier, he made his way over toward the hotel.

  Outside of it hung the large oval sign. The letters “Bar des Artistes” were painted in an arc, the way one would sketch a bridge, and beneath it in a straight line, denoting the water under the bridge, was the inciting word “Dancing.”

  He was home.

  And with a feeling of peace, he went up to the entrance of the hotel and rang the bell.

  “Have you heard about it, Herr Jastrau?” the hall porter whispered to him after he had let him in. “Half an hour ago, Herr Kjær came down fully dressed and freshly shaved, and wanted to get into the bar. He thought it was one o’clock.”

  The porter hid his little black mustache behind his hand and laughed.

  “You have no idea how long it took to convince him that it was still morning. Ha ha. It makes me laugh to think about it. And do you know what he said? No, you can’t guess. He said he’d gotten mixed up about the time because he had been to church—that’s what he said—and he couldn’t stand such an irregular life. He hadn’t been drunk at four-thirty. Ha ha ha! And as a matter of fact, he said it was you who had dragged him off to church. Is that really true, Herr Jastrau?”

  “No. We rode out to the woods. When he saw the trees, the branches and the treetops, he was afraid and thought he was in church,” Jastrau replied with a tired smile.

  “A-ha,” exclaimed the porter, almost breaking into a discreet giggle. “You don’t say. Yes, Herr Kjær is priceless.”

  And then: “Good morning, Herr Jastrau.” Whereupon the porter opened the elevator door with a clatter.

  Just then a streetcar rattled by out on the street. The day had begun.

  4

  TWO DAYS later, Ole Jastrau sat in the hotel’s ground-floor restaurant and ate his lunch.

  Through the curtain he could see the glitter of sunlight high up between the rooftops, but only a pale, sickly light reached the place where he was sitting. The view of the inevitable firewall dampened his spirits, and he rubbed his hands nervously on his napkin.

  It was almost impossible to sit still. Waiting for the next dish was unbearable. Now and then he would crumble a roll to bits out of impatience.

  Then he raised the snaps glass cautiously to his lips. But the liquor in the glass quivered. It was his hands. Impossible to keep them steady. He held one hand out in front of him and observed it for a long while—thirty seconds. It was trembling.

  But he had to have another snaps.

  Kjær was certainly not up yet. He missed him. It occurred to him that he was the only person he knew. The only one. And they were apparently going the same way. But Kjær—that decayed tooth—had assets, managed for him by a lawyer. It took money to go to the dogs. To the dogs? Nonsense. Now he had collected his three months’ pay from Dagbladet. Most of it had gone for support of his wife and child. And the rest? Should he count his money? I can’t drink myself to death because I have to stay sober in order to earn the money I must have for drinks. I can’t afford to drink. Or how should he put it? It had the makings of an aphorism. But an aphorism is no good until it is collapsed like a telescope. Akvavit is a medicine. And he closed his eyes as he emptied another glass of snaps.

  “There’s a phone call for you, Herr Jastrau.”

  A waiter bowed to him with a knowing smile. Oh, yes—the night before. Yes, indeed. He had been over here in the restaurant the night before, and in that condition. Who had seen him? What had he said? The waiter’s smile was most omniscient. Ah yes, he was living in an atmosphere of waiters’ smiles; they were crowding in on him much too closely, and they could not be driven away with a mere flick of a napkin. Like mosquitoes! And their smiles were the same as those that hovered in a swarm about the eternal Kjær—indulgent, knowledgeable, intimate, reproachful, and admonitory.

  “A phone call? Thanks,” he replied as he got up.

  But who would take it into his head to call him? He came to a halt in the middle of the deserted room. A Frenchman with a full white beard was in the process of wiping his mouth with his napkin. He was the only guest in the restaurant—a wine salesman from Bordeaux. They said “Bonjour, monsieur” to each other. They did that every day at lunch. Then they laughed: “Hee hee, hee hee.”

  And then the world grew half-dark and empty again while the sun shone outside behind the curtains. Always behind the curtains. People, bicycles, automobiles—fleeting glimpses of them. But who would think of calling him? It might be Fru Luise. He had not heard from her since that day. Strange. Was he becoming alienated from everything? What is it that happens to a person? The restaurant, the bar, the eternal Kjær kept recurring. Semidarkness, phonograph music, a taste as if a five-øre piece were resting on his tongue, a feeling of repulsion at the thought of whiskey—a feeling which nevertheless abated each day—all these recurred incessantly. It was like a stream, a river flowing on. It was undoubtedly Fru Luise who had called him. And if it was she, what then? A voice from the bank of the stream as he floated by.

  Floated—floated—floated. But it would stop of its own accord. He would have to write an article to get money—now—today—no, perhaps not until tomorrow. But it would stop of its own accord.

  And he was able to smile craftily to himself. Canny was the word for such a smile. For this process of disintegration must automatically cease. This he knew in his innermost being; it was his own subtle, scintillating secret.

  He seized the telephone receiver.

  “De profundis clamo,” he heard a deep voice say.

  “What the devil?” Jastrau was on the point of hanging up.

  “It’s I—Vuldum—calling from out of the depths.”

  “Oh,” Jastrau replied, his face clouding with weariness. Were they now going to talk some more about that broken pane of glass out in Stenosgade?

  “I think it was wise of you, Ole,” Vuldum went on without explanation. “You got out just in time.”

  “So—do you really think so?”

  At last Vuldum knew. Now the editorial room was buzzing.

  “But you might have told me in advance,” came Vuldum’s voice in a tone of mild indignation. “I could perhaps have prevented a complete nonentity from becoming your successor. Now one can never tell. Some Mr. Nobody, perhaps.”

  “You may be right about that, Vuldum,” Jastrau replied listlessly.

  “It shows a certain lack of loyalty to a colleague, don’t you admit that?” The voice sounded sorrowful on Jastrau’s behalf.

  “Yes,” said Jastrau.

  “Self-awareness is a good thing,” said Vuldum, laughing. “But since you’ve acknowledged so much, perhaps you’ll also admit that you owe Father Garhammer an apology. I know that he has the glazier’s bill for that piece of glass. It’s four or five kroner—a mere trifle.”

  “Am I being forced to Canossa?” Jastrau asked with a
laugh.

  “No, Ole. All you have to do is show a little ordinary courtesy. After all, it was I who had the honor of introducing you to each other.”

  “You seem to be taking a special interest in this matter.”

  “Let’s say special as far as you’re concerned, Ole. I know that Father Garhammer has been expecting you every day. He can always be seen at about four o’clock.”

  Vuldum’s tone was subdued and earnest.

  “So now you ought to think it over, Ole. You understand, of course, that it makes no difference to me.”

  He wants to force me to go out there, Jastrau thought as he hung up. Force me! I’m to be humiliated. Out in Stenosgade. Come cowering. Sit there in the parlor and cower in humility. Initiate me into the confessional. De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine. A repentant sinner, paying for a bit of broken glass. But earlier Vuldum had referred to it as a pane of glass. And the rumors. He was sure that rumor had magnified it so that it had become a church window with stained and leaded panes. But now it had again become a piece of glass. A person had to fight his way by slow degrees to get an admission of the truth.

  Back in the restaurant, Jastrau caught a glimpse of himself in a pier glass, a full-size image of himself in his black tight-fitting jacket and light checked trousers, like a Negro jazz-band player or a ship’s cook on shore leave. It would be good if one could form a picture of himself as seen by an objective observer. It might yield some badly needed information. But then there were those concave mirrors at Tivoli. Now they made one look fat and round, now tall and lanky. They contorted one’s face into weird, ascetic expressions and endowed one first with long, stilt-like legs and a short torso, then with a long torso and short legs like those of a badger.

  And weren’t there concave mirrors all about you? He wondered.

  How did he look to the lady near the buffet over there behind the artificial palm? The room was so dark that the electric lights had been turned on, and there she sat, fat and pale from overeating, and smiling graciously. And how did he appear to Anna Marie? The concave mirrors at Tivoli! Was she just as afraid of him as she was of Steffensen?