Falling Sideways

  47. Harald Jaeger

  Jaeger looked up from his desk—formerly Claus Clausen’s desk—in the tiny cramped office that had been Clausen’s and saw his colleague moving past, leather meeting planner beneath his arm, on his way to the Mumble Club. Clausen saw Jaeger looking and leaned in around the jamb, his tall, rangy body draped up against it.

  “How goes?” Clausen asked.

  “It goes.”

  “Y’okay?”

  “All in all,” said Jaeger. “I miss my windows …”

  “Great windows.”

  “… but it is almost worth it that I don’t have to attend those meetings anymore.”

  Clausen’s smile dripped with pity, which Jaeger did not wish to have and which he feared might have been intentionally taunting. In a bid to appear lighthearted, he said, “Listen, now that you sit in on those meetings, why don’t you propose another office for me? One with windows.”

  “Of all people, you should know, Harald. That’s not how we play the piano here.”

  Jaeger felt the naked droop of his own lips. Big boys don’t cry. But clearly Clausen saw it, too.

  “Guess it’s been pretty tough for you, Harald,” he said. “Did they stiff you bad on the money? What are they paying you now?”

  You insolent prick! Eat this: “Well, Claus, it’s like this. Being asked that is like being asked how big your dick is. If it’s big, discretion dictates humility. And if it’s little, well, you just don’t much want that information getting around, you know?”

  Clausen looked hard at him. Jaeger’s instant of satisfaction led immediately to regret. This man could hurt him even more than he was hurt. But before he could try to make amends, Clausen was gone. And now he had said it. Clausen knew he had seen behind the towel that day in the showers. You idiot.

  He and Clausen had not been out for a drink or a meal together since what Jaeger referred to, in the privacy of his thoughts, as his “reversal of fortune.” The phrase was consoling, seemed to lend a dignified formality to the mess of his life. It seemed to him that in the snap of two fingers he had lost virtually everything of the little that had remained after the divorce: title, corner office, windows, secretary, a third of his salary, the apartment he could no longer afford to meet the mortgage payments on, and, worst of all, his two angels. And now, apparently, his friendship with Clausen.

  He was struggling to maintain some semblance of pride, and he would not suggest to Clausen that they meet for a drink. Clausen would have to take that lead. If he suggested it to Clausen and was turned down, the refusal would be one more blow of the hammer driving him deeper into the pit of loss. So he had to wait and swallow the indignity of waiting, counting the pennies of the aftermath of his disgrace. At least, he thought, he no longer had to worry about calamity descending upon his life. It had descended.

  And at least he still had a job. If only he had not made that crack to Clausen.

  Kampman had called him in and with seeming profound regret informed him that he had reviewed the personnel budget with the board and that he had been instructed to make some rotations. “And”—he firmed his lips as if with brave sorrow—“to let some people go. Even my own secretary. We’ll be moving Clausen around. And we cannot afford to maintain the current department head structure.”

  Jaeger felt sweat soak the back of his shirt, beneath his arms. Jaeger, who was two years older than the CEO, felt as though he were being lectured by his father. In a way, he realized, he thought of the CEO as his father. Please understand me; I hate you.

  “I will certainly understand,” Kampman said, “if you feel unable to accept what I can offer.”

  Only after he had left the CEO’s office did Jaeger hear echoed in his own ears the sound of his own voice thanking the man profusely for the demotion and decrease in salary, see in his mind’s eye the picture of himself clutching and shaking the CEO’s hand, which declined to respond to the clinging pressure of Jaeger’s.

  Now, at his new desk in his miserable little windowless alcove, he looked at the hand that had so instinctively and ignominiously betrayed his own dignity, or the scrap of it that remained. He stared at the five-fingered traitor, the pulpy tip of the pinky with the pink crescent edge of nail that had begun to reappear.

  Someone passed in the hall, and he glimpsed Birgitte Sommer on her way to the Mumble Club. Had that been the edge of a smile of malicious triumph on her lips? As he sat there gazing out, the new woman from accounting passed and glanced in, smiling. Jaeger had met her only once, and they had hardly spoken. When he’d introduced himself, she had offered her hand, and as he moved to take it, she stepped closer and he accidentally cupped her breast in his palm, jerked his hand away as if stung, face full of apology, but she’d only smiled. With plump lips that were made to be kissed. And her butt so gorgeous that it was almost painful for him to behold. Now, as if his mental response to its power had radiated out into the hallway and nudged her, she dropped the pencil she was carrying and bent to retrieve it, drawing blue green denim tight around those globes of marvel. Jaeger felt himself stiffen as his heart lurched, pumping blood toward his center, rallying for action. She straightened again and smiled once more, the tip of her tongue, its underside, slipping out to wet her upper lip.

  Oh God, Jaeger thought. Oh God, oh God, oh God, you are so fucking beautiful!

  At the nadir of the long deep tiled toilet, Jaeger sat with his pants around his ankles, elbows on his knees, trying. Another of his losses. He had never had this problem before. Never. On the contrary.

  The curtain slid aside on its rod, and Tatyana appeared. Jaeger coughed to alert her to the fact that he was present.

  “I vill not look,” she said. She was naked. “Haf you had success?” she asked, looking away from him, in sympathy with his leaden bowels.

  “Nul and nix,” he said. “Can’t even take a successful crap anymore.”

  She lifted the telephone shower from its hook on the wall and began to wash herself in its feeble spray, five meters from him, turning her long thin body in the narrow space between the walls. She hummed in a minor key as she washed, eyelids lowered, a smile on her lips. The melody was deeply sorrowful, but through her smiling lips and with its resonance in the high narrow space, there seemed some reverse power at the core of its sorrow, some reverent beauty.

  He studied her, the lines of her, the childlike buttocks and the mysterious cleft between, the fork of her limbs with its vertical lips—an enigmatic tilted smile, her tiny breasts, china-delicate hands, fingers, wrists, feet—the feet on which she stood, toes lightly spread to negotiate her balance. The electric light from behind the curtain limned the lines of her in the steam of the water, and it seemed to him then that her body was a screen both shielding and revealing the light that blazed within her being.

  He stepped out of his pants and shoes, stripped off his shirt, and stepped forward to kneel before her. She opened her eyes and beamed her smiling mouth down at him.

  “Vhat kind of bird are you?” she asked, and touched his face.

  He pressed his cheek against her cunt, arms doubled around her narrow hips, and began to murmur a silent prayer of thanksgiving.

  48. Martin Kampman

  Kampman pulled the Toyota into the garage and entered the house through the boot closet, limping slightly, his eyelids half-lowered with memory of sounds and words and sensations that would nourish him for three weeks to come. It was late. He would sleep in the basement guest room. But first he would allow himself a cognac from the XO he kept under lock in the living room. He would sit in the dark with it and contemplate the details of his evening. This was his time. No thought of Adam, no thought of anything.

  In the hallway, he thought he smelled cigarette smoke. Karen again, no doubt. But in the house? That would have to be mentioned in the morning. He knew she smoked, but she usually at least tried to hide it.

  He crossed the living room in the dark, slipped out his key pouch to fit the key into the cabinet lock, lifted
out the XO and a snifter. The smell of smoke was heavy here. Then a light clicked on behind him, and he spun toward it. Karen sat in her chair with a glass of wine, the floor lamp lit beside her, a cigarette smoldering between her lips.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  He felt his head twitch. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Who are you?”

  “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Who are you?”

  For a moment he could think of no further response, fixed as he was in the sharpness of her gaze. Then his mouth opened and he said, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  Her face showed no sign of having heard. “Who are you?” she said again.

  “Who am I? I’ll tell you who I am. I am the man who takes care of things. I am the man who gets up first in the morning and who is first into the office and last out in the evening and who takes care of things. There and here, too. That’s who I fucking well am.”

  She twisted out her cigarette and rose, looked him up and down, laughed a single, mirthless note, and left him there.

  49. Birgitte Sommer

  It was not the fish. The fish had been three days ago, and she was still getting sick. Sporadically. In the bathroom, she dipped the stick of the litmus paper into the vial of urine. It turned green.

  Lars was sitting at the kitchen table over a cup of coffee, picking his nose and leafing through the real estate pages of Berlingske. She watched him from the shadows of the shallow hall. Then he glanced up and his hand slipped beneath the edge of the table.

  “Hey, honey, listen to this,” he said. “ ‘Istedgade. Handyman’s special. Two hundred square meters. One point five mil.’ ”

  “Istedgade! Isn’t that all prostitutes and drug addicts?”

  “Was. They’re on the way out. It’s getting to be prime real estate. Now is the time to buy. We could fix it up and sell it for at least twice that, maybe three times, in just a couple of years. Meanwhile we could rent it out.”

  “Where would we get the money?”

  “Borrow it. You know very well the interest rate is down practically under the inflation level. With the money we made off that, we could pay off the place in Gilleleje just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And still have half a mil surplus.” She looked at his fingers. He looked into her eyes, and his own took on a deep, intense shade of blue, almost violet. His voice was hushed. “We could be rich, honey.”

  Birgitte stepped through the doorway and sat across from him. “Lars,” she said, “I’m pregnant.”

  She could see the smile begin to lighten his eyes before his face went still. She could see what he was thinking. She had already sorted this out. There was only one way to do this, only one thing to say. Everything now depended on it.

  She smiled and shook her head. “He and I never got that far.”

  Lars was still watching her.

  Only one thing to do. Her smile broadened. She shook her head again. “Never. He and I never did it, Lars. It’s yours, honey.”

  50. Adam Kampman

  There was music at the North Bodega tonight. Three men wearing black peaked caps trimmed with shiny metal piping, the word jazz spelled out in metal on the crown, a trumpet player, guitarist, and bass man. The bass, a short, dark-haired man with a strong jaw, also sang. He was singing “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”

  Adam sat by himself at the corner table, sipping a Hof, surprised that he was enjoying the music, the man’s moody, sad voice. He knew this song from somewhere and had never liked it, but he liked the way this man sang it.

  Across the room, the man Adam had seen before with the bandage on his finger sat at the alcove table with that strange-looking long thin woman. The bandage was gone, and he was holding her hand and peering deeply, almost reverently, into her eyes. She returned his gaze. They were very still, almost like a painting.

  The singer in the black peaked cap was making faces as he plucked the bass, now doing “Oh, Lady Be Good.”

  I’m just a poor boy

  Lost in the wood.

  Lady be good

  To me.

  Jes and Jytte had not shown up. Adam wondered whether they were together, wondered whether he cared. Jytte’s feelings for Jes seemed to fluctuate constantly between admiration and annoyance, while her feelings for him seemed more like she considered him a little brother, even if he was older than her. He realized the other evening, listening to her argue with Jes, that he didn’t love her anyway. He realized he didn’t know what love was. He didn’t know what anything was or meant, and somehow that realization was bracing to him. He felt as though he had walked into a brick wall of ignorance, slammed his face flat up against it, wiping out any thought he had ever had, or thought he had had, and now it would be necessary to rethink everything. Everything. He knew nothing, nothing at all, and the sudden awareness of that had the power of revelation. He was free.

  Life now was like a blank picture, an empty box, and what he had to do now was slowly, carefully, to fill that emptiness. He would take on nothing without carefully examining it first. And the first thing he wanted to do was read a book. He had been forced to read so many books in school and had answered questions about them in class and on examinations and had received very high grades for his answers, but it was all fake. He understood nothing of it. Now he would take one book, one, and he would read it, scrutinize it, and he would not put it aside until he understood it. He would take nothing for granted, nothing at face value. All he had to do was select the book, and he had all the time in the world to do that, and he would take his time. It was exciting to think about. Out of all the books that had ever been written, he would now select one, and he would read it. He would look at every word from every angle he could imagine, and he would find understanding.

  Or else he would create it.

  The singer ended his song and said with his gravelly voice, “You have been listening to the Asger Rosenberg Trio, and now we will take a short and very intense pause before we come back singing again. And remember, as a very wise man once said, ‘A little beer is good for you.’ So by extrapolation, a lot of beer is a lot of good for you.”

  The men laid aside their instruments and went to the bar, and Adam noticed then, around the turn of the wood, half-hidden against the wall, that man again. It was definitely the same man. He thought so. It could be. The man slid off his stool and began to gather his coins and cigarette pack and matches from the bar.

  Adam decided. He swallowed the rest of his Hof, slipped on his jacket, and went to the door. The man zipped his jacket. Blood was pulsing in Adam’s ears. He took his time opening the door and paused outside, pretending to look at something he took out of his pocket, watching from the corner of his eye as the man approached the door. Then he started walking.

  He turned right from Solitude Way onto North Bridge Street and heard footsteps continue behind him. A quick glance over his shoulder and Adam saw it was the man from the bar. He decided to keep going to the next corner and to cross, and if the man was still there, he would act. He slowed his pace to time his approach to the corner with the green light, crossed slowly. The man was close behind him now. On the opposite pavement, Adam spun toward him.

  “Are you following me?”

  The man jerked back and glared at him. Then he said, “What are you, fucking nuts?”

  “You mean you’re not following me?”

  “Get lost, you little asshole. What are you, a faggot?” He stepped around Adam and moved quickly away, and Adam started laughing.

  The man spun back, muttered, “Idiot,” and crossed to the other side of the street fast.

  Adam couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. He kept chuckling as he continued down North Bridge Street, turned right on Blågårds. He hoped Jes was home. He wanted badly to talk to him, to try to explain what was happening, how the one thing seemed to lead to the other.

  Words appeared in his mind. What you don’t know you only have to ask. Ask who? Someone, yourself
. So simple, yet it seemed to have the force of revelation.

  On Blågårds Place, he spotted Jytte sitting on the low park wall, talking to someone—Jes. They were both drinking from bottles of Tuborg. There were others around them, too—the guys Jes had introduced him to at the North Bodega. Jes spotted Adam, too, and bowed to a plastic bag at his feet, lifted out a bottle, and chucked it to Adam, who barely caught it. Beer geysered out as he popped the cap, and Jes flourished his hand before him and said, “My friend: Allow me, plice, to offer you the woba golves of Jalâl. There is pain and there is suffering in the world, but we are all in the hands of God, who wears the woba golves of the eternity. All else is sport and play.”

  Jytte was sniggering. Adam laughed a little, too, but there was something here he didn’t like. Jes kept going on and on.

  Then, over Jes’s shoulder, Adam saw a man approaching from behind. He thought he recognized him. He thought it was Jalâl.

  51. Jalâl al-Din

  In the back of the shop, Jalâl washed his hands carefully, working the rough grains of scouring powder along the edges of his fingernails, into the creases of his knuckles and palms. Then, holding up his hands like a surgeon’s, he turned to Khadiya, who draped a clean white linen towel over them and rubbed them dry. It was their daily ritual, the way she helped Jalâl out of the world of commerce and back into the life of family and spirit. When she had dried his hands, she rolled down the long sleeves of his gray dishdasha for him and patted his cheek. He kissed her forehead.

  “You have some old bread for me?” he asked, pulling on a sky blue padded ski jacket over his dishdasha and switching a wool pakol for his lightweight kufi cap. She handed him a plastic bag stuffed with leftover bread and pita of the past days.

  “We eat at nine,” she said.

  “My boy Zaid is coming today?”

  “Tonight we dine alone again,” she said, and touched his cheek to comfort him. “He will be all right,” she said. “He needs only some more time.”