Falling Sideways

  “Sh …”

  “I—”

  “Sh …”

  Their eyes met and held. Hers always narrow, little spots of burgundy, but now glistening, soft, and their gazes explored each other’s faces while he moved so she could feel what the nearness of her did to his body.

  “God, Birgitte,” he whispered, “I want you so—”

  “Sh …”

  He wanted to do it right there, but she took a step back, leaned away from him, shaking her smiling mouth, saying, “Sh … Sh … No. We’ll talk. Later.”

  And left him there.

  Later? Talk? Talk?

  But one sweet fact was irrefutable. She had put her tongue in his mouth. Of her own volition.

  17. Jes Breathwaite, Jalâl al-Din

  The Dome of the Rock Key & Heel Bar was tucked in between the Trafik Cafeen and a 7-Eleven kiosk on the southern edge of St. Hans Square in North Bridge. Outside the little shop, a small leather-harnessed carousel pony of battered, painted wood was mounted on a banged-up red metal stand, an electrical motor plugged into an external wall outlet. A note, printed in black marker on the red stand, alongside a coin slot, read: “2 × 2 kr.”

  Inside, Jalâl al-Din sat behind his shoeless last, sipping tea. He wore a gray dishdasha robe and black kufi cap. The wall behind and beside him, spreading toward the front of the shop, was stippled with little hooks from which hung blister packs of shoelaces, innersoles, key rings with an array of first names and signs of the zodiac, key chains, nail clippers, bicycle locks. There were shelves of spray cans, tins, jars of polish, silicon, waterproofing, shoehorns, shoe brushes, and buffer cloths, and a pegwood board from which hung many kinds and colors of uncut keys.

  Farther toward the street in the deep, narrow shopfront, Jes Breathwaite leaned against the wrought-iron key grinder, elbow propped on the little work platform, chin propped in his palm, contemplating the little carousel pony. He had never seen a child ride on it.

  Jalâl’s wife, Khadiya, came swishing out of the back in her blue-and-silver jilbab robes, a silver hijab around her long black hair. “Ay,” she said, and placed a glass of tea before Jes. She dragged over a stool and patted the seat. “Sit,” she said to Jes. “Time for relax now.” And she reached deep into a hidden pocket in her jilbab to produce a large bar of dark chocolate studded with bits of fruit and nut, which she placed beside the tea. The shy pleasure of her smile flashed gold.

  “Thank you!” Jes said, bowing a little. “Thank you.” A bar like that cost about twenty crowns, no small amount for him.

  “You are a boy,” she said. “Boys like something sweet on the tongue.”

  “He is a man,” Jalâl said quietly.

  “Yes, he is a man, and all men are boys,” Khadiya said, laughing. “And he needs more fat on his long body. Look at him behind, he is haunchless, it is a wonder he can sit at all, there is nothing there.”

  Caught by surprise, Jes blushed, smiled, and she laughed merrily. She disappeared again through the blue curtains into the back of the shop while Jalâl barked, “Respect! Show this young man respect!” To Jes he said, “Thee women have no more respect for thee men.” But Jes could see the pleasure in the man’s eyes at his wife’s spirit.

  Jes remained standing, opening the wrapping of the chocolate bar self-consciously. He extended the opened packet to Jalâl, who raised the back of one finger with a pleasantly stern set to his lips. “Is good for you, not for me. I must to honor the Ramadan.”

  “But you’re drinking tea.”

  “In my interpretation there is way that this is permitted, for tea is of the innocence. It give necessary strength of the body in order to support the requirements for the spirit. Why you don’t sit? Relieve the veins of your legs. No mind what Khadiya say. Sit.”

  Jes felt funny about sitting during work hours, even if there was nothing to do at the moment. He felt funny about that, too, that Jalâl didn’t just send him home when it was so slow. His unaccustomed delicacy here was agreeable to him. He found himself admiring the firmness of Jalâl’s personality, his character, the seeming lack of necessity for conscious consideration of his speech or actions. He was who he was, said what he said, did what he did. At the same time, however, he felt a near irresistible urge to mimic and parody the man. A customer had come in once, and Jes began to serve him without greeting him first, and afterward Jalâl had said to him, “My friend: Always remember to greet and to treat with good words. Even the customer who does not impress you with his own good manner. Especially him. If you treat your neighbor as good neighbor, you help him to become the good neighbor he might become.”

  Jes was dazzled. Could this man be for real?

  “Sit!” Jalâl exclaimed now, and Jes finally acquiesced. He sat there with one foot on the chrome rung of the stool and munched the chocolate, gazing across the square. A single linden tree rose from a patch of earth on a little concrete knoll directly across from the window, behind a sculpture that looked to Jes like a huge black iron tarantula in attack mode—or maybe like a solid iron house of cards. Not to be toppled. Beyond that, a Tulip sausage wagon stood with its back flush against the spigots of the fountain, which sprayed three low streams of water into the cool, sunny air. The heavyset sausage man munched a medister inside the windowed cabin of the wagon. The square was empty but for a little girl in a yellow dress and yellow jacket who methodically chased the pigeons pecking for crumbs around the sausage van and beneath the linden.

  “So slow today,” said Jalâl, and sipped loudly at his tea.

  “God is merciful,” said Jes. “He gives us leisure.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the back of Jalâl’s index finger shoot up. “My friend: Do not sorrow your own soul with poor wit.”

  Spoken with a mild smile, but Jes was embarrassed that his private condescension had leaked through unwittingly. “Forgive me,” he said. “I meant no harm or disrespect.” Increasingly when he was here working, he found himself imitating the phrasings and rhythms of Jalâl’s speech.

  “You are forgiven.”

  The little girl wheeled around the side of the sausage wagon for a fresh attack on the newly settled pigeons, scattering them one after another. If they only flapped their wings without taking flight, she stamped her shiny buckled shoes harder behind them to make them fly. Her mother and father sat over drinks at one of the few remaining outdoor autumn tables around the beer kiosk attached to the Pussy Galore serving house. They were tall and blond and sat with open jackets, seemingly oblivious to the chill. Jes could see the woman was drinking a cappuccino and the man a large draft. He wondered if Jalâl understood the name of the bar, and if so, what he thought about it and what he might say. Jes kept a little notebook that he had titled The Sayings of Jalâl with which he entertained his drinking friends, repeating the man’s pronouncements with an ironic portentousness that belied the affection and admiration developing in him for Jalâl. He imagined Jalâl’s judgment of Pussy Galore, The Perverter is a wretched companion, and covered his mouth with the side of his fist to hide his smile.

  At just that moment, the little girl made the mistake of coming too close to a full-throated bull pigeon that had been near success in mounting a sleek gray little dove. The girl stamped her foot behind the pair, and the male flapped up into her face as though to attack. The little girl screamed and began to weep, running for her parents. Both Jalâl and Jes burst out laughing.

  “What is so funny?” asked Khadiya, thrusting her face out from behind the curtains.

  “Even the dove knows wrath,” Jalâl said with mock portent.

  Khadiya surveyed the square. “Do you laugh at a weeping child?” she demanded mildly. Jes was impressed with how quickly she had assessed the situation.

  “There was no harm,” said Jalâl. “Our laughter is to ourself as well as the girl. She has learn to respect for the birds. We learn this, too, with her.”

  “I think idleness is curdling your wit,” Khadiya said, gathering their empty
glasses. “Tea time is over. Make some work now.”

  Jes looked away, not to embarrass Jalâl with his witness; but to his surprise, his boss only smiled owlishly at him. “Thee women are always good to us. They save us from idleness and self-importance.”

  Jes itched to write it down in his notebook but feared that might appear odd. Maybe it was odd. Why was he collecting all these quotes? Just to play the clown for his drinking buddies? He thought with relish of their laughter, their delight, as he did his imitation of the shoemaker in the North Bodega each evening. Not only what Jalâl said, but the way he pronounced words. For example, when he dyed leather he wore rubber gloves and asked Jes to fetch them for him from the shelf over the door—Jes stood half a meter higher than the older man.

  “Jes, please, to take down woba golves to me.”

  Jes could barely wait for him to request them again. This was now a saying among his friends; for no reason at all, one might suddenly look at the other, perhaps in displeasure, perhaps in response to a reminder that it was his turn to buy a round, and say simply, “Woba golves!” and everybody present would crack up.

  Yet Jes’s feeling for the Afghani was not simple, he knew that. The more he came to know of him, the more he recognized that he had made an assumption at the start—that he was inherently superior to this man. But each day in his presence was a challenge to that assumption. There seemed no end to it.

  Jes had been working for Jalâl for not quite two months now, since his leave of absence from RUC started and his student salary stopped. He’d seen a hand-lettered sign in the shop window in some kind of Arabic, English, and Danish. How perfect it seemed! Practically just around the corner from his apartment on Blågårds Place, and it was not an office job. He was willing to do practically anything that would keep him out of an office. It seemed to him that almost nobody in Denmark actually did anything anymore; they all just sat in offices sending e-mails to one another or went to meetings where they sat around a table and talked about the e-mails. His father had got him a student job at the Tank two years before, and Jes had been amazed at how little anyone seemed to do. They wrote e-mails or sometimes letters, photocopied and filed them, sent them, and received responses, which needed new letters, new photocopies, new files. They went to meetings. Sometimes some of the big shots went to meetings in other cities or other countries where they apparently had their e-mails translated into other languages so they could talk about them with foreigners. Meanwhile, there were a million truly important things that needed doing in the world, things that were a matter of life and death for people who lived in poverty and misery. Jes wanted a foot into that door. And meanwhile, he wanted to do something concrete.

  When Jes went into the shop and introduced himself to the smiling little pop-eyed man behind the shoe desk, Jalâl said in English, “Your name is Yes?”

  “Yes: Jes. With a ‘J.’ ”

  “Please to write this for me.… Ah, ‘Jes’! But spoken as ‘Yes.’ This is good name. Much better than ‘No.’ ”

  Jes laughed.

  “So you want to come to work for a foreign man in your own country? You know, when I was only the little more than age of you, I had to select if I must to spend my life repairing and polishing the boots of the Russians. I am Kabuli. Was born in Kabul, the city of my father, and I thought it was also my city. But Kabul has many master in the three thousand year. I was only tenant in rented house that pass from the hand of one foreign to another. Arab, Persian, British, Russian. Now American. But I did not know about the American was coming like this. I only knew the Russian came and killed my father, and they wanted me to take their boots in my hands. To repair the boots of other man is humble, there is honor. But not the boots of man who kill your father. My father was good man. He teach me to read, he teach me many thing. He teach many people, the young people. I think they kill him because he teach. It says in Koran that whoever flee in cause of God will find on the earth many a spacious refuge. This I have found here where I have now lived since twenty-five years. That is one year more than I live in Kabul, which has have many master and destructions and pain in the years since I leave her. Now is Copenhagen my home, and you, a young Dane with father who came from other land, come to me for an occupation. This honors me. I consider. Return here to me tomorrow and we shall decide together if you are to take this little job of work for me.”

  That night in the North Bodega, Jes was quickly the star of the evening. Even the old-time regulars were amused. But now it occurred to Jes that they would refer to Jalâl as a perker, a spic, and anger stirred in him—at them, at himself. He despised that word.

  Next day, Jalâl said, “Do you wish to work for me still? The pay is not great.”

  “Thank you, Mr. al-Din.”

  “Please, no ‘Mr.’ Is not necessary. I am Jalâl, like the great poet, you know him? No? You read him sometime. I have name from him. But they have sometimes call me Al-Jariz because my eyes, you know, they stick out. Al-Jariz it mean, how you say, ‘the Goggle-Eyed.’ ” He made a comical show of displaying his pop eyes. “They have said it indicates force to have the eyes protrude, but I know it indicates only a slight disturbing of a gland behind my throat. For this I swallow the heart of a garlic morning and night. This way there is no odor. For me to smell of the garlic is to invite the Danes to call me perker. Not wise to tempt. To swallow the garlic also regulate elimination system very well. So, how you say? The situation win-win.”

  Now a woman came into the shop with two pair of men’s oxfords in a plastic bag. Jes marked them with the thick stub of yellow crayon Jalâl kept beside the cash register and passed them over the work desk to his boss. He watched Jalâl fit the shoes over his last and with a wide-jawed pliers peel away the remains of the old heels in one sweep. With another dark iron tool he clipped off the nail stumps and hammered flat the leather beneath. Then he painted the heel space of each shoe with glue and laid on a square of nylon that protruded all around the heel. Holding each shoe, in turn, to his chest, he carved away the excess nylon with a sharp knife. Jes’s fingers itched to try it himself.

  “It must be nice,” he said. “To have a trade like that. To do something, you know, real.”

  “My father was teacher,” said Jalâl. “It was no meant for me to repair boot. But it feed my family.”

  “I would really like to have a trade like that.”

  The back of the index finger rose and twitched before him. “No for you. You father would be sad.”

  “My father is a big shot, but he’s not happy. He spends all day in an office doing nothing as far as I can see.”

  Jalâl tilted his head, and his eyes glistened as he peered into Jes’s face. “You say this to me of your father?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I love my father, but his work …”

  “Do you know your father recommend you to me?”

  Jes was confused. “You know my father?”

  “When you apply I see your name and I look in telephone book and I call to your father. We speak on telephone. I tell him I like you for this job for me, and I ask if he approve that. He tell me about his work, what he do. He is important fellow. Educated. You must become educated, too.”

  Jes felt his confusion faltering on the border of anger. He felt like a child, being discussed by two men. He didn’t need his father’s approval, goddammit! Yet the mild, good-natured certainty of Jalâl was too much for him, and he stilled his own sharp, quick tongue. He couldn’t be angry. “The problem here, Jalâl, is that there is nothing worth being educated for.”

  Jalâl laughed. “Nothing? My son Daoud will be doctor in three year time. My daughter studies the IT. My young son Zaid, he is confusing. He listens only to the music techno. All day, all time, the music techno. Boom boom boom. It drive a nail of tympanics in the soul. He is no happy.” Jalâl’s eyes glistened, and he looked at Jes. “You know, seven weeks now I no see Zaid. His mother he see, but not his father. He is no happy. The young are confusing. You are of mu
ch intelligence, I see this in your face, but your intelligence is like the morning sun when there are many clouds before it. The clouds will pass in time, and you will see light.”

  Jes watched the man’s thick hands place each shoe on the last of the nailer before he toed the pedal, turning the shoe as nails slammed neatly into the nylon, affixing it to the glued surface, and he felt as though he had wandered into the great cliché factory. He got an idea for a little skit he would play out at the North Bodega, then: Another Day at Jalâl’s Great Northern Cliché Fabrik. Yet he was tempted by Jalâl’s words; if only such simplisms could be believed! Maybe they could. Or maybe he was being tempted by candy floss.

  When the heels were in place, Jes took the shoes over to the finishing machine, hit the drive baton, and ran the edges of the heels against the waxing wheel, watching the raw pale nylon take on a deep black luster before he painted on polish and buffed them on the spinning brush. As he worked, Jalâl began speaking again.

  “It is said that God has sealed the hearts and covered the eyes and ears of the ungrateful and placed them in the torment where they cannot hear or see or feel what is true. But I believe it is the ungrateful who refuse to open their eyes and ears because they have fallen in love with their own lies and no longer can to see the falseness of them. They have become obsessed and made themselves so sick they will not know the good.”

  If only it were so simple, Jes thought. “Do you know the good, Jalâl?” he asked, thinking the question a subtle form of rebuttal. Surely the man could see reality was more complex than that.

  “Yes,” Jalâl said.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. Is simple. Worship nothing but God, be good to your parents and relatifs and to those who are without parents and to the poor and to the animal. Speak nicely to people, very important. Treat your neighbor as good neighbor so he can become good neighbor. Remember to pray and to give charity.”