Falling Sideways

by Kennedy Thomas E.

  “Now that,” said Jes, “is faith. Now that is faith. Right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Wrong. It’s fuckin’ fear, man. Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling, he says, well, he writes it in the name of Johannes de Silentio—Johannes the Silent—he says that he cannot understand the Abraham story, and his conclusion—ironic, natch—is that he is stupid because everyone else understands it, but he can’t. What he’s saying, to my mind, is that the story is not based on faith but on good-old, bad-old, old-fashioned fucking shit-in-the-pants fear, and that’s what Dylan says, too. The world is corrupt. The Judeo-Christian God is corrupt. God is in cahoots with the world, which is a great highway of fucking commerce where you can sell anything—telephones that do not ring and forty red-white-and-blue shoestrings—and you can sacrifice your beloved fucking son rather than buck the system. Man, what father doesn’t sacrifice his fucking son, son? They’re scared shitless themselves, and they’re even more scared for their sons not being scared, because if their sons aren’t scared, then they have to admit that they themselves are scared. And scared of what? Scared of a God who demands that you sacrifice your fucking son? No, man! I don’t buy it. It’s a vicious fucking cycle and a sham, and you need a good lawyer. Now Muhammad, he says that Abraham is one of the great prophets, and he says that we do not and we cannot understand the greatness of God, we can only submit. Allah Akhbar! Allah is great, man is little. But what do we submit to? ’Cause God never speaks to us! God never tells anybody anything. God is the silent fucking sky, man. It is only the father of the son on earth who puts the knife to your neck. Look at the New Testament, too. God sacrifices His only son for the sins of man? He’s just like Abraham, man. He wants Abraham to kill his son. He lets His own son get tortured to death in agony by puny little ants He could snuff out with His little finger. I tell you, Adam, this is a problem that we got to deal with, this killing of sons.”

  “But isn’t it, like, a symbol? Or a metaphor?”

  “Am I a symbol? Are you a fucking metaphor? Men don’t even believe any of this stuff, but they’re conducting the pattern. Kill a son today. Feed him to the fuckin’ machine. ’Cause if we don’t do that, then the son is going to survive and look at us and say, ‘Uh, like, Dad, you’re a corpse, man. I think your dad cut your throat about two thousand years ago, so don’t shake your head or nothin’.’ ”

  The case was empty, so Jes fetched cold bottles out of the fridge and popped them open. The green-glass bottle was cold against Adam’s palm, and the first swig burned coolly in his throat. He drank as he had seen Jes do, tipping the bottle back at his mouth so the beer made a swirling, sucking sound out the glass neck. He liked the sound and the feel of it in his mouth and the way it made him feel. The CD had ended, and they sat in silence.

  Then Adam noticed that he had taken down a third of the bottle in one pull, and it occurred to him that this was already his fourth bottle—the empties stood in a row on the stained, chipped surface of the coffee table—and a sense of sadness invaded him.

  “Damn,” he said. “These go so fast. Look, three pulls and the bottle’s empty.”

  “That bottle’s not empty,” Jes said. “It’s more than half-full.” He flourished his hand before him. “In the sayings of Jalâl, fear of the thirst when well is full is the thirst you never quench.”

  “You’re gonna end up a Muslim, Jes.”

  “Worse things to be.”

  Adam chuckled. “Jes the perker.”

  “I hate that fuckin’ word, man. Don’t use it in my home, okay?”

  “You use it yourself.”

  “Only ironically.”

  “Ironsick Jes,” Adam said, and started snuffling laughter.

  “Man, you’re fucking wasted on four beers-sick.” He fished an Advokat out of the pack in the pocket of his flannel shirt and lit it with a stick match.

  “You smoke fucking cigars-sick?” Adam liked this word game. He felt very clever for having invented it and flattered that Jes was playing along.

  “My old man-sick got me hooked on the fuckers.” He held up one finger. “One fucking cigar-sick and I’m hooked-sick. Hey, man, we need some more mu-sick.” He hopped up and shuffled through the CD stack.

  “I got to pissick,” Adam said.

  “Well, don’t forget to flush-sick after you. And don’t pissick on the seat-sick, you prick-sick.”

  “We’re fucking sick-sick, man!”

  Giggling, Jes picked out a CD and slid it into the player. “Hey, man, more old-gold-sick.”

  Bob Dylan came on singing “Black Diamond Bay.” Jes sang along, about going to “grabanotherbeer.” Adam stepped back out, trying to zip up. “Shit, my zip-sick is stuck.”

  “Well, don’t get your prick-sick caught in it.”

  The door opened, and Jytte stood there, panting. “Lock the door! Adam’s father’s on his way up!”

  “Fuck him anyway,” Jes said, and glanced at Adam. “Fuck-sick him, right?”

  Jytte’s face was flushed. “I hate him!”

  “Don’t do him that honor,” said Jes, but Adam saw then she was crying. “What did he do to you!”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. “He fired me!”

  “I’m gonna fight him!” Adam said. “The fuck! The bully fuck!”

  “Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa,” Jes said, maneuvering Adam to the sofa. “You can’t fight your own father with your fly open.”

  Jytte giggled, sniffling.

  “Sit down here now—”

  The bell rang and knuckles rapped the door at the same time.

  “He can’t see you from the door. Let me do this,” Jes said, and opened the door a slit, stood with one shoulder to the jamb, the other behind the edge of the door. Adam watched his back. If he lays a hand on Jes! He heard his father’s voice.

  “I’d like to talk to Adam.”

  “Who? You mean like the father of sin?”

  The voice was cool, almost friendly, but Adam knew the tone only too well as he heard his father say briskly, “That’s okay. I need to have a word with my son. Now. His mother is sick.”

  “She is not!” Jytte shouted from inside.

  “Mmmm. May I … come in?” Adam’s father said.

  “No, you may not,” said Jes. “So I’ll just say good night, good luck, and good-bye. Hurry up, please, it’s time.” And he shut the door, spinning the dead bolt. “Now I know why there was a lock on that door all this time,” he said, facing the others.

  The doorbell rang immediately and knuckles rapped the door. There was an authority to the knock that twisted in Adam’s stomach.

  Three knocks, a pause, three knocks again, a pause.

  Adam whispered, “Did he recognize you?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “But he’d see your name on the bell.”

  “You haven’t noticed the name on the bell? How unobservant of you.” He flourished his hand. “Permit me to antrodoos mysalf. HVT6. Fifth look-alike to President Saddam Hussein. High value target 6 only. Relative safe-ety. Now, let us cerebrate cereblate and dance to mu-sick!”

  40. Martin Kampman

  Incredulous, Kampman glared at the battered slab of wood not three inches from his face. He balled his fist, about to hammer it again. Then he noticed the words printed aslant across it: SUCCES SUCKS. Clever Dick hanging his pictures where his nails were. Slowly he relaxed his hand. He glanced at the doorbell for a name and smirked: “HVT6.” Snot puppy with that T-shirt, FUCK IT. He had almost smacked the boy’s face, he almost regretted not having done so, but he was also painfully aware of his strategic miscalculation the weekend before when he had used force on Adam. The art was to win without employing force, to will things into place. Somehow he had to get Adam out of that apartment without force. He was aware that it had also been a miscalculation to say that Adam’s mother was sick. That could be checked by a simple phone call, exposing his own desperation.

  Well, he wasn’t desperate, but he was deter
mined, and he would have Adam home again and back in school before any real damage had been done, and he would see to it that the boy’s bank account was tied up out of his reach for a long time to come. Adam would not be allowed to ruin his life or to spend more money on that little tart, and this foolishness would be toppled by the weight of its own stupidity.

  He swung the BMW out of its place on Kors Street and edged it up onto Blågårds Place, pulled in alongside the low wall at one end of the little park. From there, he could see the door of the apartment building while he let his mind work, considering his next step.

  The girl was the key to it. When she was out of the way and Adam’s funds were blocked, the boy would return. He would have no other option. Time to get the Tank lawyers moving to lock up those bonds before the boy’s birthday. No, get someone else. Keep this private. He had three months in which to get that done, a little less than three, but even that was too long. He wanted the boy back on track within three days.

  His cell phone vibrated in his shirt pocket. Karen. “Have you found him, Martin?”

  “I know where he is, but he doesn’t want to come out. Exactly as I suspected, he’s with that girl.”

  There was a silence. “Does he have money?”

  “Unfortunately, he emptied his savings account. Seventeen thousand crowns. The girl is out after the gold,” he said, and held his breath, then added, “She is definitely a gold digger.”

  There was another silence. Then: “Something is missing,” Karen said. “You don’t suppose Adam—”

  “Missing? What?”

  “My gold bracelet. You don’t—”

  Kampman watched his face in the rearview mirror. He was smiling. “Your gold … Do you know what that cost?”

  “—suppose Adam would take—”

  “Adam? I just told you he has seventeen thousand crowns in his pocket. No, why would he take a bracelet? Are you sure it’s missing?” In the mirror he watched the performance of his face as he spoke, remembered a transactional dynamics course he had taken years ago, “Do You Know What Your Face Is Doing While the Rest of You Is Negotiating?”

  “I always put it in the box in the back of the top bureau drawer.”

  “We have a safe.”

  “I know, but I wear the bracelet almost every day, and it’s such a bother pulling away the chest of drawers to get to the safe.”

  “Mmm.”

  “If Adam didn’t, then do you … No, I really do not believe that Jytte—”

  “My God, she knew,” he said. “I knew she was involved with Adam and she knew she was getting the sack …”

  “The sack? You fired her? Without—”

  Calm voice. “I only suggested to her the other night, when I drove her home, that Adam needed to have peace for his studies and that I trusted I could count on her, otherwise—”

  “You might have told me.”

  “I had every intention of telling you. But it all went much faster than I would have guessed. She’s a nasty piece of work.”

  Silence. Then: “What now?”

  “Call the police. I’ll be home right away.”

  “Do we really have to involve the police?”

  “No police, no insurance. Do you know what I paid for that bracelet?”

  Kampman detoured to Strandboulevarden on his way home. He parked the BMW in the shadows beneath a cluster of linden trees on the parking island across from her window. It was dark in her room. The little vent window on top of the tall casement was open, perhaps ten feet up from the sidewalk. And there was that sturdy red mailbox fixed to the wall beside the window ledge.

  There was no way she could be home yet.

  Karen sat in the living room with a glass of wine, her bare feet propped on the ottoman, when Kampman let himself in.

  “That took a while,” she said.

  “Traffic. Did you speak to the police?”

  “They’ll send someone out tomorrow afternoon. They wanted one of us to come in to them, but when I told them who you are, they gave in. They’ll come sometime tomorrow afternoon.” She sipped the wine.

  “Did she have a key?”

  “Yes. I asked Adam to have one made, and he knew it was for her, so I presume he gave it to her. It would make sense. Nothing unusual about that.”

  “Then we’ll need the locksmith, too. To change the lock cylinders.”

  Karen began to cry. “I just can’t believe that girl would do this. She seemed so sweet.”

  “Appearances deceive, honey.”

  41. Jes Breathwaite

  Depression had descended upon the room like a Copenhagen autumn twilight and long since had begun to bore Jes. He was tired of participating in the group consolation over Adam’s father’s bullshit treachery. Even the huggy consolation had given way to solipsistic gloom. He didn’t want to trample on their wounded young hearts, but he sat on the floor, back to the wall, holding a beer bottle between his knees, trying to think up a gentle way to get them to see the comic elements at work here: Adam hunched forlornly on the sofa, his fly straining to burst on the two safety pins he’d clasped it shut with; Jytte biting her fingernails meditatively over the prospect of no longer having to work for a bastard of a ligustrum privet fascist. I mean, get a life. And at the slow rate they drank their beer, how did they ever expect to break the morbid spell?

  He considered fishing his Sayings of Jalâl notebook from his knapsack to clown them out of it: “People of the book, do not go to excess in your religion of gloom. Do not grieve for an ungrateful people, be they Muslim, Jew, Christian, or bloody bastards.”

  “Woba golves,” he said experimentally.

  No reaction. It was so silent in the room, he could hear the water bubbling in the radiator pipes. Another of gloom’s details. But then it gave him an idea. “Time for a bit of music-sick,” he said.

  “Do you have any Thomas Helmig?” Jytte asked.

  “Certainly not. You’ll hear this.” He slid on Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, clicked forward to “Visions of Johanna.” “Behold the glories of the English language at its best in the mouth of a world-class poet. Not to mention depression-ripping ironics, Adam-sick. As we sit here stranded, doing our best to deny it—”

  “What’s wrong with Thomas Helmig?” Jytte asked, drawing her feet up cozily beneath her.

  “You are comparing Grand Prix melodies with art.”

  “Thomas Helmig has beautiful language.”

  “Anything to compare to these visions of Johanna? You can’t hardly do that in Danish. I mean, listen to Mark Knopfler’s words, listen to Counting Crows, listen to—”

  “There are lots of fine songs in Danish! C. V. Jørgensen!”

  “He’s good.”

  “Good? He’s a genius! He’s a poet!”

  “He serves a purpose.”

  Jytte sneered. “What do you mean, purpose?”

  Jes could see he was getting her piss to cook, and that was much better than depression. “To show us that Danish can handle rock. To an extent.”

  “Why, he’s just as good as this! Better!”

  “Can’t you hear he’s an attempt to transpose Dylan to Danish? To co-opt him to a Danish setting? Even his voice, for chrissake. His crowded lines, even his nasality.”

  “And Kim Larsen!”

  “He’s good.”

  “And Lis Sørensen!”

  “Now she is good. Oh, Lis, Lis, Lis,” Jes chanted ecstatically. “I want you sooo bad!”

  “This is boring,” Jytte said.

  “Boring!”

  “Yeah, I think it’s boring. You can’t even understand what he’s mumbling. We don’t have to listen to American music all the time.”

  “Why not? Music is the best thing that’s come out of America. Or you can listen to Danish copies of it instead. Or British copies. If you want some original Danish music, listen to Poul Dissing and Benny Andersen. ‘Nina comes naked from the bath / while I eat a cheese sandwich …’ ”

  “What’s wrong with t
hat!”

  “Nothing. I love it! I’m just saying we’re not going to get any further in Danish by imitating. The language is too small. Help me out here, Adam.”

  “Hov!” Jytte was now sitting straight up, her blue eyes blazing. “Danish is our language.”

  “Right, like crowns are our money. Why live in a big world when you can stay closed up in a tiny one?”

  “Don’t tell me you like the EU!”

  “Not particularly, but I like isolation less. Someday the Danish Language Council is going to wake up and see that they can’t decide what’s Danish and what’s not. Language doesn’t come from the tower to the streets. Language comes from the streets up. Case in point: Until like last month, you couldn’t find the word fuck in Gyldendal’s New Danish Word Book, but show me one Danish kid who hasn’t been using the word since like they could speak! I mean, just look at English. Look at how many more words it has!”

  Jytte was on her feet now, shouting, and Jes loved it. “That’s just because for every word in English they have the same word in Latin or French, too!”

  “It’s because English isn’t afraid to grow!”

  “You’re only half Danish anyway. You grew up speaking English to your father, right? Or not even English—American.”

  “Poor me. The new Danish pariah. People with two languages. The poor two-languaged children. Quel problème!”

  “Two-tongued, maybe,” Adam said suddenly, glaring at him.

  Jes was startled, but then he perceived the lad was defending the damsel against his attempt to get her blood circulating again. He rolled with the punch, laughing self-deprecatingly as though found out. “The sleeper awakes. Speak again, O toothless wonder-sick.”

  “Fuck you-sick!”

  “Fuck-sick you too-sick!” Finally it was getting fun again. Dylan was singing “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” but Jytte was not ready to take it for fun yet.

  “French is a more beautiful language than English,” she said. “And Italian is, too.”

  “Italian is good for operas, and French is dead for all practical purposes. Committed suicide trying to construct long French substitutes for IT and TV terminology. But French literature, of course, is quite another matter.”