Falling Sideways

  Jes’s instinct was to scoff, but he tempered his challenge into the form of a question. “Can it really be that simple?”

  “Yes.”

  “I respect you, Jalâl, but I don’t know.”

  “My friend: Do not wrong or sorrow your own soul.”

  “Jalâl, my father’s country is destroying the world. My own country is helping. I think more than simple homilies are needed.”

  “I understand these words and their source, my friend. Someday those who oppress will wish there were a great distance between them and their evil. My friend: Ways of life have passed away before us. If you travel the earth, you will see how scorners have ended up. Do not wrong your own soul.”

  Jes decided to say nothing more then as he took the last shoe in his hands and leaned into the turning wheel, welcoming the high, shrill whine of it into his ears.

  18. Frederick Breathwaite

  Breathwaite closed Kampman’s door behind him and moved slowly along the hall, hand in his pocket, stirring the coins there. He remembered then how his own father used to do that and how that sound of dimes and nickels and quarters and fifty-cent pieces clicking against one another had seemed wondrous to him when he was a boy. The wonder of money in the possession of adults. Pockets full of jingling coins. Wallets fat with green folding currency. The very word cash. The silver money clip his father carried in the buttoned back pocket of his suit pants, bills folded in ascending denominations from ones to twenties, the occasional fifty. His mother’s black purse with the snap clasp, inside of it a smaller purse with its own snap clasp and separate compartments for coins and bills.

  Many years had passed before the unconsidered assumption that adult pockets came filled with cash revealed itself as false, before he recognized the relationship between labor and monetary recompense. It embarrassed him now to think how old he was. Not that he’d been lazy. Breathwaite had worked all his life. Newspaper routes, delivery boy for a grocery store, runner for a druggist. Unlike most of his friends, he was allowed to keep and use what he earned as he pleased. Candy, comic books, movie money, popcorn and, later, cigarettes, clothes, pizza, even restaurants, six-packs of beer. It was not until after high school when, for reasons still murky to him—was it his father’s drinking, his mother’s infidelity, a tight economy (but this was the 1960s!), or just bad karma?—his parents had sold their house and moved into a three-room apartment that Breathwaite recognized the ride here on out would not be free. That he awoke to the fact he would have to work for the rest of his life to earn his keep.

  Late waker. Until then he had a little ironic motto he used to employ on people he considered unnecessarily and ostentatiously industrious: “You have got to get up early and work hard; otherwise other people will look at you and say, ‘He doesn’t get up early and work hard.’ ”

  With his mother and father living in a small apartment, Breathwaite slept on a pull-out sofa bed for a while, then got a room of his own and began to turn the fruit of his labor to essentials—food, rent, college tuition. If he got a toothache, he had to pay the dentist to make it go away. A shot of penicillin for the flu cost money. Razor blades and shaving cream, toothpaste, toilet paper, the use of a washer and dryer, shoe leather, the dry cleaner’s, meat and bread and cheese and condiments, ketchup, mustard, subway tokens, bus fare—everything cost money. And that was not even to mention luxuries, which cost a lot of money. A lot more than he was earning as he, with painful slowness, inched his way toward the American dream of having everything you wanted and your parents never quite had, until it began to appear that everything you wanted was at the cost of everything you had to give. You could have it, everything, but you couldn’t have the time to enjoy it.

  The Danish dream, on the other hand, was more modest and manageable. All you needed here was a house or apartment in the city, a house in the country, a car or two, maybe even a time-share in the south of France, TV, stereo, delicious furniture, a cozy, well-equipped kitchen and bath, a garden, and a six-week holiday to enjoy it all in, as well as a society that takes care of everything else for everybody so you could enjoy what you had without guilt and without too much worry about being envied, robbed, or murdered for it. Breathwaite pretty much had the furnishings of his Danish dream in place. Or had had, before this pulling of the plug. He could already hear the water of comfort gurgling down the drain.

  Marianne, he was pleased to note, was not at her desk, so he didn’t have to muster energy to raise a mask with which to reassure and comfort her that he would be okay. He closed the door of his office behind him and sat with his feet up on the desk, gazing out his window toward the autumn-withered botanical garden.

  His work for an NGO in his twenties had brought him to a conference in Copenhagen, where he got a glimpse of the Danish dream, with which you didn’t get everything, just a nice piece of it all (town house, summer house, a car or two if you wanted), and you still got to keep something of yourself. What really sold him was the six-week annual holiday leave, not to mention the numerous three-, four-, and five-day weekends and a society that seemed not quite so predicated on the shaft. Taxes were high, but you got something back for them—education, health care, and a security net if you fell on your butt.

  Well, now he was on his butt, or about to be, and that net did not look quite so attractive from this position. And it was beginning to look worse.

  He’d just had that one piece to get into place—Jes’s future—and he realized now his mistake: He had assumed that Kampman might feel he owed him something for agreeing to leave quietly after twenty-seven years of service, but a man like Kampman did not think that way. He had also tried to flank him with surprise, and that was always a mistake with someone like Kampman.

  “I’ve been thinking about the new international structure, Martin, and it would work, but you’ll still be missing one vital thing.”

  Kampman lifted his brow. The question that was not a question. I didn’t ask, so whatever you offer might well be gratuitous. Answer at your own peril.

  Breathwaite answered nonetheless. “Someone who is perfect in English.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “Believe me, it’s a problem. When you represent the Tank—I don’t mean you, but one—with pidgin applications, the Brits will shoot you down as sure as Nelson and Wellington did. If for no other reason, they’ll do it because they see a way of doing so.”

  Kampman lifted one brow. Danger. He didn’t understand. Don’t embarrass the man.

  “We can buy the language expertise we need in town,” he said. “Ad hoc. Which is a lot cheaper than the little butter-hole we have been maintaining in the international department.” He laughed then, as if his frankness excused his insult.

  Breathwaite ignored it. “Fee for service,” he said. “Will cost you a fortune. And you’ll have no means of quality control because no one here has the English.”

  Smiling broadly, the CEO lifted his hand expansively. “Everyone here has the English.”

  “Everyone here has school English. There’s a difference.”

  “I take it you have a suggestion.”

  “I do. Would you like to hear it?”

  Kampman only stared at him, smiling inscrutably.

  As though there had been an affirmative reply, Breathwaited plunged on. “Take someone on. Part-time. Trial basis. Assistant to the chief. A right hand for Jaeger.”

  The smile was sweetly incredulous with pity. “You?”

  Sit on the outrage. Even if it sticks up the butt. Breathwaite shook his head mildly. “When I’m gone, I’m gone. My son.”

  “That might be a thought, but … Don’t have a budget.”

  “Take it from the translation budget.”

  “Already used most of that on your, uh, handshake.”

  More like a kick in the ass—as a prelude to this one. All lies, but it was imperative that Breathwaite maintain the mask. “The first two years wouldn’t cost more than two hundred K. Quarter million tops. I know wh
at the boy can do. You’ll get more than the value of the cost. You’ll be glad.”

  “And you’d be glad?”

  “Of course, but I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t know that he can do the job you need done.”

  Kampman’s lips soured as if on a bad taste. Breathwaite saw the inevitable. He had to give something here. “Give him a two-year contract and you can skim the half of it from my, uh, handshake.”

  “The half of it won’t pay the half of it.”

  “How so?”

  “Overhead, for example,” Kampman said. “Contingencies.” Then he smiled.

  It cost Breathwaite not quite 30 percent of his settlement. His little bag of good-bye moneys was now little more than a pouch. Like the little pouch of useless jewels between his thighs.

  But the boy was in the door. And that, anyhow, was something.

  19. Adam Kampman

  The sense of conclusion, of release, buoyed Adam’s step up Callisens Way, past the drear rows of villas and ligustrum privet hedges. House after house of the sort he knew his father expected him to throw away his life for, day after day, just for the hope of locking the remainder of his days in one of these yellow-brick boxes. For what? To be able to say he lived in Hellerup or Gentofte or Charlottenlund or Rungsted Kyst? Why? Who wanted to?

  But now, with each step along the chilly street to Ryvangs Way, he felt he was leaving them behind forever. Now it was all changed. Now his future was uncertain, and he was released from the certainty that had always been assumed for him. How could he have failed to see this option before? Every time he had ever voiced anything even remotely like a question about the necessity of an academic education, his father’s response had always been quietly relentless: Do you want to destroy your future?

  A question that had always seemed unanswerable. It answered itself irrefutably. There was only one future for him, and it must not be destroyed, for then all that remained was the yawning pit of futurelessness that awaited all boys who failed to attain an academic high school diploma with a high average followed by six years of university education in law, political science, or government with a high average. There were also medicine and dentistry. But are you sure you’re hard-nosed enough for that, son? There it was again. The nose. And, of course, theology. But really, Adam, is that a viable option? You might as well take humanities and ensure yourself a spot on the unemployment line.

  The questions always answered themselves. If you think you might like to try an M.B.A., well, let’s discuss that when the time comes. But IT is a one-way ride to oblivion. Journalism? Oh, come on!

  Oblivion. The pit again.

  The only option that had never been discussed. If you destroy your future, then some other future could be waiting. All the other futures. It might be anything. Maybe even happiness. To destroy one thing was to create another.

  Outside Hellerup Station, the smell of frying sausage coiled out the open window of a grill bar into his nostrils, and the water began to run in his mouth. He took a step toward it, but the sight of a man standing in the doorway deflected his course. The man was fat and sloppy, smoking a cigarette.

  Without understanding why, Adam went instead for the stairway down to the Hellerup Station platforms and lost his balance. He glimpsed a poster plastered to the wall advertising a film called Graceland, and his knee went loose. He stumbled, clawed for the railing, and fell, banging his hip and the small of his back as he slid over the sharp edges of the steps and rolled to the dirty concrete floor below, biting his tongue so that he tasted blood.

  Blushing furiously, he rose at once. Someone, a man with a cigarette, was descending toward him, speaking. He spun away and hurried for the Copenhagen track, ran for a train whose doors were sliding shut, jammed them open, and leapt in. The doors remained open as the train signal sounded, and he glimpsed someone, a man, boarding the car farther down. Then the doors slid shut, and Adam started hurrying, limping, toward the opposite end of the car. He still tasted blood in his mouth and spit into his handkerchief, wiped his lips.

  At Svanemøllen Station, he got off the train and ran, hobbling, for the next car. He saw dirt smudged along his hand and the side of his gray jacket. He took a seat but saw he was in the smoking section, rose again, and moved farther up as the train pulled into Østerport. A small heavy man boarded—had he come from farther down in the train?—and stood in the aisle outside the smoker, lighting a cigarette.

  At Nørreport, Adam waited until the train signal warbled over the PA system and leapt through the doors just before they closed. The man with the cigarette stared at him from behind the glass windows of the doors. Without looking behind, Adam limped rapidly up the steps to Frederiksborg Street and headed north, toward North Bridge.

  The pain in his hip was getting worse. He shoved his hand in under his shirt and his fingers stung against the skin of his back. He was cut. He leaned over the curb to spit into the gutter and saw the pink gob fall from his mouth. He limped quickly up Frederiksborg, looped through the vegetable market on Israels Place. He slowed, pretending to study the wares, glancing at the sexy women in tight slacks, who were hawking fruit.

  “Hey, ten bananas for a tenner! Ten good bananas for a tenner!”

  “Oranges! Juicy! Oranges! Seven for a tenner! Can I help you, honey?”

  Honey! In her tight, tight jeans. He stumbled on, shaking his head, trying to see if the man from the grill bar was behind him. Had he been the man on the train? Was it…? But he couldn’t tell, couldn’t remember. Am I going nuts!

  Continuing north, across the lakes, he hooked over to North Bridge Street. The shopfronts and the dirty sidewalks here seemed embedded in the mystery of his new future. Details caught his eye. Signs written in Arabic script. The old signs of now defunct businesses still imprinted like pale shadows on dirty brick, old and new jostling together. Odd names in shops whose purpose he could not imagine. One with a sign that said, “Function 2.” An old chiseled brick sign spanning several windows: “L. V. Erichsen A/S. Al Rafiden gold and silver watches.” Across the lintel between a GUF record shop and a sportswear store, a flat gray canopy advertised, HOTEL CONTINENT.

  Adam gazed up at the four floors of grimy windows above the sign: one with a lit yellow lamp behind checkered curtains. Who was in there? Doing what? Across the street from him a shop sign said simply, “Food Store” and “Dhadra Indian Specialities.” A pub called Munkestuen, the Monk’s Room, with a price list propped outside the door: “House Spirit 12 crowns a unit. Beer schnapps bitters 15 crowns. Billiards and Pool One Flight Up.” Who was in there? Behind the dark windows? People who would have been excluded from the life of his old future.

  He crossed Stengade and glimpsed a tall fence dripping with withered wisteria. Women with scarf-covered heads walked past, and a dark man said to another, “Salaam aleikem.” Then there was a cemetery, Assistens Churchyard, where he knew Søren Kierkegaard was buried, Hans Christian Andersen, too. Tall trees rose from behind the yellow wall—firs and poplars, leafless elms and lindens. He doubled back, past a street called Solitude Way, a dead end closing on a bunch of chestnut trees and a grimy-fronted bar named the North Bodega. He heard the chant of an Arabic voice drifting through the air. The call to morning prayer? How strange it seemed suddenly, how foreign, to call to prayer, to pray. When had he ever really prayed?

  Crossing over along ælled Way, he passed a burial shop, the Restaurant Opium, the Restaurant Barcelona, Rita’s Danish Open-Sandwich Shop. He looked into the window of a halal butcher, and a thin man with a stubble of gray hair looked out with a dark smile.

  At the corner, he came into a square with a single linden tree, saw a sign over a café that said, “Pussy Galore.” He felt a little dizzy, and the aroma from a sausage wagon drew him. In his pocket he found a hundred-crown note and an envelope on which his mother had written, “Adam, honey, please don’t forget to copy the keys for Jytte. Keep the change. Love, Mom.”

  He was famished. He ordered a fried medister with r
aw onion and stood at the counter of the wagon munching it as he gazed around the square. The raw onion dice stung the cut inside his mouth, but he kept chewing, dipping the meat into the blobs of ketchup and strong dark mustard the sausage man had dolloped onto a square of butcher paper.

  As he swallowed the last bite, the elation of the fatty meat lifted, and he felt sleepy. He sat on the edge of a strange sculpture there and felt desolation descend upon him. Idly, he watched the sausage man behind the window of his van. He wondered what you had to do to get a job like that. The man was reading a newspaper, one of those they give out free on trains and buses. It seemed it might be a simple life, a good life. You could live off the sausage, read free newspapers, just sit in there all day by yourself and watch the world go by, no one breathing down your neck all the time. By comparison, his own life seemed impossibly complex and frustrated.

  Then he noticed a key-and-heel bar across the street. He could give the keys to Jytte himself. It would give him an excuse to talk to her.

  When he entered the shop, a short foreign man wearing a black cap and gray robe seated at the shoemaker’s bench called out, “Salaam aleikem!” And, “Good day, my friend, welcome.” He rose from the bench. “My colleague will help you,” he said, and pushed through a dark curtain to the back.

  The young man behind the counter looked familiar to Adam. He put the keys down on the Formica.

  “One of each?”

  “Yeah.”

  Adam watched the young man’s hands move deftly to place the shank of the key into the jaws of a kind of vise, flip a switch, and begin to file the key pattern into a red metal blank. The young man looked back at him.

  “Don’t I know you? You look familiar.” Then, “Are you Martin Kampman’s son?”

  “Yeah.” Uneasiness began to crawl inside Adam’s stomach, turning the sausage there.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Adam.”

  “No shit? My name’s Adam, too. But I use my middle name, Jes. No offense, but like, you know, hello? Adam?”