Havoc

by Havoc (retail) (epub)

  And Fru Luise?

  Then he heard swift, energetic footsteps in the room and turned around uneasily. It was a small, dark-haired man in a smart, light-colored topcoat. He carried his felt hat in his swinging hand.

  “Well, there you are. And already at the snaps. Ha ha.”

  Jastrau turned deathly pale and felt dizzy as he encountered a sympathetic, cheery smile.

  “Hello, Kryger,” he said hoarsely.

  But Kryger sat down, unconcerned, on a chair opposite him and tossed his hat onto an unoccupied table.

  “Yes, I’m busy. A beer, waiter. Yes. But nothing to eat. No. And how are things with you, Jastrau? Gone completely to hell, I dare say.”

  Jastrau looked at his powerful hands, the strong wrists, and the gleaming white cuffs. Those were the hands that caressed Fru Luise and many other women—lots of them.

  “The wreck never founders,” he replied. “It just drifts along. It gives in to the opposition.”

  “Well, are you in a mood? That goes with the lighting in here. Incidentally, I bring you greetings from Luise. She’s very fond of you.”

  Jastrau had to meet Kryger’s glance. His eyes were dark and cordial. A broad smile lit up his face.

  “The feeling is mutual,” Jastrau replied.

  “But I say—you look really terrible,” Kryger went on, drawing his chair closer to the table. “Have you let go all your moorings?”

  “Yes, so to speak.”

  Kryger’s tie was smoothly knotted and rounded at the ends.

  “Your marriage?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the boy, too?”

  “Yes.”

  Kryger apparently never fastened the top button of his vest.

  “And Dagbladet, so I hear.”

  “Yes.”

  “And so you’re going to start writing on your own—producing?”

  “No.”

  Kryger had a low forehead. It was odd to be sitting there looking at it. There was a slight hump over each eye—roots of the horns.

  But Kryger leaned back, returned Jastrau’s glance, and exposed his teeth in a broad, ironic smile.

  “What do you want to do, then? Drink?”

  Jastrau quickly shifted his gaze. This aggressive cordiality made him ill at ease. Kryger looked so bright and cheerful that the effect was dazzling. It was strange that Fru Luise—

  “You ought not to keep on living here. You’ll only ruin yourself if you do,” Kryger went on, taking two cigars from his pocket. “Have one. You ought to move in with us. I have a couch in my study.”

  “You have a couch?” Jastrau asked slowly. Three black figures like three branches stemming from one trunk. Three spitting faces. The essence of evil. How wild! Do you love me? Tell me! Oh you barbaric, unbarbered man!

  “You sound as if you didn’t believe me, Jastrau.”

  “Yes, I believe you,” Jastrau replied somberly while he stared and stared at Kryger’s hands.

  “You seem preoccupied, to put it mildly. Either that or you have a hangover.”

  Jastrau knew that Kryger was not stupid. But could this be? Was it so easy to feel superior to a person? Yes, simply impose upon him, deceive him. Then one became superior—held the fourth position at the card game. And Jastrau looked directly into Kryger’s eyes.

  “What a wild look you have, Jastrau.”

  “Yes, I’ve been drinking a good deal lately,” Jastrau replied. And he kept looking straight into Kryger’s eyes. How easy it was.

  “But things can’t possibly go on this way, man,” Kryger exclaimed, carefully, almost meticulously cutting the tip off his cigar and blowing through it to get the dust out. Again Jastrau’s eyes grazed Kryger’s forehead and his comely, smooth, blue-black hair.

  “Well then, what do you want to do?” asked Kryger.

  “Sometimes I imagine I have a philosophical purpose,” Jastrau said. “I’ve wanted to get at the meaning of things—my own opinions, for example. I’ve wanted to find out what’s behind them.”

  “Yes, and there was lust and drunkenness, wasn’t there?” Kryger said, laughing and lighting his cigar. “Are you in love with someone?”

  “No,” Jastrau replied with a smile. And suddenly he dared say it. He keyed himself up for it, as if tuning an instrument. “If I were, it would be with your wife.”

  “You don’t say,” replied Kryger, opening his eyes wider. A twinkle came into them, and then he smiled ironically. “As a matter of fact, Jastrau, I don’t think you know anything about love. I’ve never thought so.”

  “You don’t think so?” Jastrau said provocatively with a sudden burst of laughter. “The fact of the matter is that you’re right.”

  Kryger nodded understandingly.

  “As far as I’m concerned, women fall into two definite categories—the ones a man makes love to and those he worships,” Jastrau went on. He felt a compulsion to be tactlessly honest with this man whom he had deceived, lay himself open, confess his guilt, regardless of the consequences, and yet escape unscathed. “There are Mary Magdalenes and Madonnas, and it’s impossible for me to comprehend the two in one woman.”

  “But you have been married, haven’t you?” Kryger asked abruptly.

  Jastrau nodded.

  “What’s the real reason for your divorce?”

  “Well, I hardly know. Was it I who was unfaithful, or was it she?” Jastrau stared straight ahead with a vacant look. “I miss my boy so much,” he added.

  Kryger had taken the cigar from his mouth. He uttered a low whistle.

  “And your mother?” he asked.

  “Are you conducting a cross-examination?” Jastrau asked in a tone of annoyance.

  “Oh no, not at all,” Kryger replied amiably, almost tenderly. “I am very sorry, old boy. I am very sorry. It was just something that occurred to me as I sat here thinking, and then I forgot myself. I had no intention of hurting you—no certainly not. That wasn’t the reason I came here—you likable old fool.”

  He inclined his head to one side and regarded Jastrau in a cordial manner. His wide, sensitive lips were as soft as those of a woman.

  But Jastrau leaned his forehead against his hands, stared down at the tablecloth, and was on the point of bursting into tears. It would have been a relief to do so. But would they have been anything but alcoholic tears, a manifestation of a hangover headache, and an exhibition of undignified remorse? This was the day he was supposed to go out to Stenosgade. De profundis clamavi! De profundis clamavi! He would have to get it over with, get it off his chest. But when had he made up his mind to that?

  He mopped his face with his hand and drew himself up with a scowl of contempt. He would have to go through with it.

  “It was something else entirely that I wanted to see you about,” Kryger said abruptly. His eyes were again flashing the signal for a surprise attack. “Do you think you might like to take a job in Berlin as secretary to Professor Geberhardt?”

  “Secretary?” Jastrau sat up with a start.

  Kryger nodded. “To the best of my recollection, you know shorthand. I remember seeing some shorthand notes on one of your rough drafts.”

  Jastrau sighed.

  “Yes, that’s right. But that doesn’t mean that I have a degree in economics, and so what would Geberhardt want with me?”

  “I know all that,” Kryger said sharply. “But I’m in correspondence with Geberhardt, and in his last letter he asked me to get him a secretary. I’m going to talk to him over the telephone tonight in Berlin, and so I’ll arrange it, because you have to get away from this damned city here. That’s the main thing.”

  Jastrau gazed at him with a tired smile. It was indeed an awkward bit of magnanimity on Kryger’s part. If only he could say no to it. Did Kryger know something? If only he could say no.

  “It does present some difficulties,” he objected.

  “What are they?” Kryger asked, showing his teeth.

  “My job with Dagbladet. The three months aren’t up
yet.”

  “I’ll fix that. The most important thing is to see that you get out of town. All I’ll have to do is drop a hint to Editor Iversen. Do you think it’s to the advantage of the newspaper to have you floundering around here in this condition?”

  “It looks as if I’m to be sent into exile,” Jastrau said sullenly, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

  “Are there any further difficulties?”

  “Yes. Lots of them. I don’t know my way around in Berlin.”

  “Nonsense! If you have something I can write on I’ll give you Professor Geberhardt’s address.”

  Jastrau searched in his wallet and in his pockets. He had his passport, which he always carried with him, and the fire-insurance policy.

  “You may as well write it on this,” he said, shoving the insurance policy across the table. “I even give you leave to draw on it—decorate it.” He laughed.

  Kryger inspected the policy and wrote the professor’s address on a section of white margin: Landauerstrasse, Berlin-Willmersdorf.

  “If you use this as a notebook, it’s going to look really pretty. But I take it there are still other difficulties.”

  “Yes, plenty of them. What about the separation from my wife? That isn’t arranged.”

  “I’ll take care of that—get a lawyer and all that sort of thing. The only thing that really matters is that you get away from this destructive city.”

  “Since when have you become a moralist?” Jastrau asked, winking at the philandering journalist.

  “Strictly speaking, that has nothing to do with the matter,” Kryger said with a smile. He seemed quite unconcerned and self-assured, but nevertheless insistent. He sat erect, his diminutive body enfolded in the wrinkled summer topcoat. “And now I don’t suppose there’s anything else to stand in your way. Tonight or tomorrow night, the hall porter will have a message for you, and then all you have to do is hustle off and catch the express train south. It will do you good to learn something about economics, to get a little idea of what capitalism is all about. Don’t you think that has just as much significance as your enchanting concern with the work of young poets?”

  “Yes, perhaps just as much—but no more,” Jastrau replied.

  Kryger smiled ironically.

  “So then it’s all agreed, Jastrau, because I’m in a rush.”

  “But I don’t have the money for a trip to Berlin,” Jastrau said, provokingly interposing a new hindrance to the plan. But then, with a hurried motion, Kryger slapped his wallet down on the table. “You’re quite dependable in money matters, so here’s a hundred kroner.”

  Jastrau took the bill, folded it casually, and stuck it in his vest pocket.

  “What has made you so philanthropical?” he asked in a somewhat scornful tone.

  “It annoys me to look at a wreck, to use your own expression,” came the quick reply. “But now I’m going, and you might as well come along with me and buy the ticket at Bennett’s at once.”

  They left together.

  But Jastrau could not take Kryger altogether seriously. Laying out the money for his trip. Such a noble offer. He looked haughtily down at Kryger’s elegant little figure and smiled at the authoritative way he carried himself. And when Kryger turned for a moment to look at two bareheaded little office girls and stared at them with complete absorption, Jastrau had to laugh. Kryger’s fedora was pulled low over his forehead. The two humps, the roots of the horns, were concealed.

  “I hate to think of you as a benevolent person, Kryger,” Jastrau said, laughing again.

  “You paid me the seventy-five kroner the last time,” Kryger replied.

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “I’m not usually coddled in such fashion. But here’s Bennett’s. Good-bye, and a pleasant journey.”

  They stood in a crowd of people on a corner of Strøget.

  “Shall I thank you, Kryger?” Jastrau asked suddenly with a desperate cordiality. He did not dare look at him, for he could feel his eyes growing moist. It was so disconcerting, such a sham. It must be discernible. Through a glistening veil of tears he saw Kryger’s modish figure and his warm, sympathetic smile. “Good-bye, then, and my greetings to your wife,” he said. Was he being scornful? And at the same moment he repented. It was a cutting remark—the flash of a knife in the solar haze that lay over the crowd around them.

  With a wave of the hand Kryger disappeared. “Have a good trip.” The sound of the words remained hanging in the air. And at the same moment a large bus came roaring around the corner. Everything was swallowed up in movement. Jastrau went into the travel agency.

  A young man behind the counter came up to him. It was a question of that ticket to Berlin. But could he buy it with the money—money he had borrowed from this man, Kryger? He, whom he had sent off with a derisive kick—“And my greetings to your wife.” For it was a kick, even though Kryger did not suspect it. Why had he uttered that scornful remark. “And my greetings to your wife”? Ordinary politeness? Kryger was such a little fellow, and so sure of himself. He was being noble. He deserved nothing better than such a kick in the behind. But nevertheless, no one was going to get Jastrau to travel to Berlin with that man’s money. Kryger would get it back—he would! And now Jastrau would go out to Stenosgade, he would go through with it, go right through with it and get it over with, and then back to the hotel, write a couple of articles, find a market for them, get some money, and then—then—

  There was no danger of running into Kryger. He had disappeared among the swarm of people on the sidewalk of Strøget.

  Jastrau left the travel agency immediately, walked over to the cab stand, and took a taxi out to the corner of Vesterbrogade and Stenosgade. He leaned back in the cab and whistled. Now he would get it over with. The speed of the taxi was like the thrill of a caress running through him. Women on the sidewalk. Always women. The sun called forth their pretty faces and fine figures.

  De profundis clamavi. But where were the depths? As long as one can see a pretty woman’s face, a ray of sunshine penetrates the depths. Look at her—that unbelievable girl there on the sidewalk. A dark fringe of hair over her forehead and Asta Nielsen eyes. Just a glimpse of them. But he had to get out there and pay for that wretched piece of splintered glass, and then a paltry scrap of paper—paid bill—would put an end to all his Catholic whims.

  If only he had that bill in his possession, had it in his wallet. All paid, all paid!

  At the corner of Stenosgade he leaped out of the taxi and hurried over toward the red building.

  But suddenly it seemed as if the sun had slipped behind a cloud. And he walked quickly by, way down as far as Gammel Kongevej. It was a humiliation, and he had been taken advantage of deliberately—a heathen forced to go to confession. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t. But Vuldum’s incessant phone calls kept buzzing in his ears. He had to flee from them as from a swarm of wasps. If he were going to Berlin, it would have been a different matter. He could have gone, but he was not going to do so. In any event, he was not going to let Kryger help him. Kryger would have his hundred kroner back. To keep the money would be too mean a trick. And so he would have to go into this ordinary Catholic church and pay for that bit of glass.

  Once again he walked along Stenosgade, this time on the opposite side. He stopped and looked over at the pointed-arch windows with their lace curtains and let his gaze wander over toward the closed doors of the church. Why had he and Steffensen climbed over the iron fence and cavorted around in front of those doors like devils on the loose? Shadows, moods that had been reduced to foam against the church walls. And now a little scrap of paper came floating back on the wave—a bill. He had seen such dirty, unclean waves laden with bits of paper.

  A pale face came into view behind the pane of glass in the door. The dark eyes rested on him for a moment and then casually stared down the street.

  Jastrau felt he was being spied upon. But he remained standing where he was and let his gaze travel up at the church steeple. The
face had vanished.

  Jastrau retraced his steps a short distance and walked back and forth on the opposite sidewalk.

  He felt he was still being observed. The windows had watchful eyes. And then he made out the face again behind the curtains in the parlor. The dark eyes followed him. It was very likely the janitor. But the janitor was apparently aware that he had been discovered, for now he made himself quite visible, carefully straightened the curtain with his hand, stared up at the sky as if interested in the weather, and let his glance descend slowly over the façades of the buildings until it again came to rest on Jastrau as if by accident.

  With a feeling of indignation and audacity, Jastrau stared back, frankly and unashamed—stared the man away from the window. But Jastrau could still sense the dark eyes glowing in a pale ascetic face from deeper within the room.

  Why did Jastrau have to stare back? It was a childish reaction, irritation at being observed. Did the janitor know who he was? Well, if so, it was impossible, of course, to go away. Then there was nothing to do but take the road to humiliation—to Canossa.

  He went across the street and rang the bell.

  To Canossa! A slight, bitter, ironical wince as the words formed on his lips. A piece of glass that had splintered. A pitiable sort of Canossa. Yes, he had seen it. The Scandinavian weekly for Catholic Christians had gotten a new pane of glass in its display case. Nothing but a piece of glass, and for that he was to be humiliated. The thought tormented him. He had been forced down here. By chance? Because of Vuldum’s fortuitous phone calls? No, he knew better. And besides, it was not even he who had broken the glass.

  He looked dejected and out-of-sorts when the janitor came to the door. But before he could open his mouth the man said, “I’ll tell Father Garhammer you’re here. Won’t the Herr Editor wait inside?”

  The janitor’s face was impenetrable, his eyes humble, his lay-brother’s manner subservient. There was no trace of irony in his gentle voice. Nevertheless, Jastrau got a chilling impression of how expected his arrival was. The janitor had recognized him.