‘I shouldn’t say this, but it worries me that my best friend has found a girlfriend who’s made him lose his sense of humour.’
‘We’re not a couple,’ I said.
‘Have you started skateboarding as well?’
‘I’ve stopped listening to “Billie Jean” anymore, Clara, is that okay?’
‘What does it mean, anyway, you’re not a couple?’
‘I’m not sure yet. We’ve only been together a month.’
‘It’s not you at all, Mikkel.’
‘That’s for me to decide.’
‘She’s going to be leading you round the ring. She already is.’
‘I think the way we’re together is going to get more and more common.’
‘You’re in love, and that’s wonderful. But everything has its time.’
‘How long does it last, being in love?’ I said.
‘Actually, there are strict rules about that: six months.’
‘October,’ I said. ‘What if we’re still together?’
‘Then I really will be worried.’
It was hard to find an objection to my being fired from the newspaper, the only one being, perhaps, that it came a couple of years too late.
It happened last November, and it was supposed to have been just another food write-up. I wanted to find out whether Indian Corner, Copenhagen’s best Indian restaurant of the nineties, could still deliver a chicken jalfrezi, but it was one of those balmy nights in late summer, the kind that need handling with care and attention, and so I went by way of the floating bar at Christianshavns Bådudlejning and sat down at the bulwark with Stendahl’s Walks in Rome and a ginger ale.
I ran into Kreuzmann, who I hadn’t seen since a disastrous dinner in Taarbæk, and I knew from Clara that the evening had proved decisive for his and Claudia’s divorce. Now here he was, broad as a pillar box in an untucked, short-sleeved shirt, the trousers of one of his old business suits, and bare feet in white Adidas.
‘Have a seat,’ I said, pulling up a café chair.
‘If you ask how I’m doing, I’ll headbutt you,’ he said.
‘How was your yoga class today?’ I said.
He took my ginger ale and poured it in the canal.
‘I want to have so much to drink I won’t be able to feel my legs.’
He went up to the bar and was audibly stroppy about the wine menu for some time before returning with a bottle of white and pouring a couple of glasses like he was Russian.
‘Are you with me, Vallin? All the way?’
We hugged, and he smelled of sweat and old newspaper.
He only used to drink with Botox Barbies and men in box-fresh white shirts; now he wanted to go on to Café Stærkodder. Elephant Beer and Jägermeister, naturally, the so-called safari suit.
He was stuck in the aftermath of ten years of fatal decision-making and was desperate to unload the lot. People he’d stabbed in the back, tarts he’d shagged while expensively out of his head, all the foie gras he’d wolfed down without ever pausing to taste. Kreuzmann is a man of conscience, with a singular ability to ignore the fact.
‘Do you realise how cold a place the world is, Vallin?’
I reckoned I did.
‘Of course you don’t, you great knobhead. I can tell just by the way you’re sitting.’
I was sitting with my legs crossed, as one does if one happens to be the kind of guy who stayed behind with the girls while the others went off climbing tall trees.
‘You wouldn’t even make the effort to get wrecked, Vallin.’
At some point a full bottle of Nordsøolie appeared on the table, and from then on things went rather awry; we danced to Ensomhedens Gade nr. 9 with the fantastic horn arrangement and found ourselves back in the seventies, with Bent Jadig and Perry Knudsen and brilliant, utterly uncomprising drinking, and we made friends with Preben, who had worked on the Norway boat.
We drank so fiercely we transcended intoxication.
‘Claudia knew what she was getting into, of course she did,’ said Kreuzmann. ‘Have I ever told you about our first date?’
He knew perfectly well he had.
‘I took her out for a meal at Sankt Gertruds Kloster. That place was really the shit in 1986, as you well know. All caviar and salmon, and steaks in red-wine sauce, and of course I’d got the Boss suit on with the white shirt and the floral tie from London House. Claudia saw herself as a bit of a bohemian, so she was like seriously down about Strunge’s death, but you know me. I didn’t even know who Michael Strunge was until you could get him on a bedspread from IKEA, did I? Anyway, I told her I’d got plans for the two of us, big house and two kids, which understandably she was a bit taken aback about, seeing as how it was only the second time we’d met. But I was really going for it in those days, so when I realised part of the problem was the yuppie togs, I took them all off in front of her and ended up sitting there in the buff. How about that, then?’
We had a good long laugh. He deserved it.
‘I’ve always been up front, Vallin, you’ve got to give me that, haven’t you? What you see is what you get, do you know what I mean? So how, after twenty-two years, she can get the idea she’d come away with a pig in a poke, it’s beyond me. She had nothing but high-quality pig!’
I patted the reviewer’s notebook in my pocket.
‘Indian Corner?’ said Kreuzmann. ‘No more curry, Vallin. We need to reach up into the light. It’s Noma tonight. Can you feel it?’
I called up the restaurant manager, Anders.
‘Just a quick stop-off at Taarbæk first.’
I tumbled into the back seat of the cab like a sack of potatoes with no questions asked. The night was dictating its own terms anyway.
At Bellevue people sat around their barbecues in the sand and I didn’t suspect a thing until we turned up on Taarbækdalsvej.
Kreuzmann asked the driver to wait and got out in front of the big house that had been his home for eighteen years. Was that Claudia at the kitchen window? She’d lost weight and her hair was cut short and dyed red.
‘Are we going inside to your family?’
‘No, I just need to sort something out about Oliver’s football trainer.’
He pulled the bottle of Nordsøolie out of his inside pocket, and just as we’d each knocked back a slug, Oliver came round the corner. He was with this pretty-looking guy of about thirty, medium-length wavy hair, local yachting teint, swaying gait. Oliver came running up to his dad, and the black taxi idled.
‘Have you moved in?’ said Kreuzmann.
‘I need a word,’ said the guy. ‘Only not like this.’
‘I bought that house for my family,’ said Kreuzmann.
Oliver was standing two metres away.
‘You used to be polite enough to only come creeping at night,’ said Kreuzmann. ‘But now it’s all in broad daylight, I see.’
He raised his voice so much I wondered whether I ought to step in.
‘Public knowledge now, is it? That you’re shagging my wife?’
Claudia opened the kitchen window and looked out.
The flat-hander Kreuzmann delivered to the man’s cheek was in the manner of a classic tennis forehand and shifted him a metre to the side. The one that followed sent him head first into the bushes. Through the taxi’s rear window I could see Claudia come running. Oliver stood motionless.
‘It’s called a bitch slap, in case you were wondering,’ said Kreuzmann. ‘Drive!’
I was having second thoughts as we walked in through the door of Noma. The purposeful movements of the waiters across the floor, the low hum of discreet conversation. If it hadn’t been for the interior I would probably have turned around and left. The ancient floor-boards, the great ceiling joists of variegated patinas, a mellow white relief, the windows facing the harbour, N.O. Møller’s model 62 chairs in stained south-German oak.
Restaurant manager Anders winked and led us down to the far corner.
At the neighbouring table sat two blonde
s, trying to look like they came here often. Kreuzmann ordered a bottle of champagne from Selosse and we had snacks with an absolutely stupendous creamy dressing reminiscent of mayonnaise. It was all looking up again.
I leaned over the table.
‘So it’s true, then, that businessmen visit tarts?’
‘A man needs a bit of life,’ said Kreuzmann.
‘Have you been with any?’
‘Of course I have! Loads.’
‘And you’ve never had any scruples about it?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because they sell their bodies.’
‘All women do, don’t they?’
‘Helene didn’t sell her body to me.’
‘You didn’t have any money.’
Kreuzmann asked for two more champagne glasses.
‘Fancy a taste, girls?’
Monique was pretty in a business college kind of way. Full-cheeked, reasonably tanned, affected in gesture, firm breasts under a black blouse. Emilie was tall and shapely, with eyes like an old-fashioned film star, and held her glass by the stem as if it came naturally. She barely said a word, which was due either to healthy scepticism or basic damage control.
The waiter was about to get his palaver started about the first course, but Kreuzmann raised his hand.
‘I prefer to speak to my friend here than listen to someone go on about beach weeds and rearing lambs in Lapland. There’s a fucking great wad of tips in this pocket, but every word you say is going to cost you twenty.’
And with that he ordered a bottle of Meursault.
Monique got to her feet to take a photo of the snack set-up from above. Her figure was surprisingly delicate, considering the fullness of her cheeks.
‘I’m going to shag her in the bogs,’ said Kreuzmann.
I fumbled the greasy black notebook out of my inside pocket and began to catch up on the smoked quail eggs, the numerous cereals, flavoured lard with pumpkin seeds and savoury æbleskiver with pork. I was on thin ice, partly because I was now drunk for the second time that evening, partly because the raw ingredients and taste of the menu here were miles away from the Mediterranean flavours I usually wrote about.
‘Did you notice the dip?’ said Monique. ‘It wasn’t just a cold hollandaise. It was egg yolk, caper juice, chicken stock, boiled carrot, rapeseed oil and roasted peanut oil.’
‘Are you a chef?’
‘I blog about food,’ she said.
‘Are you going to be taking photos of all the courses?’
‘I’m very thorough in what I do,’ she said.
‘Do you think I could borrow your photos and your notes?’
‘I’ll e-mail it all to you in the morning.’
‘Won’t you join us, girls?’ said Kreuzmann.
He and Monique were visibly in agreement as to how their acquaintance was to develop, and the mood was approaching après-ski.
The chef came to present the main courses. His sleeves were meticulously rolled up in order to display his sculpted triceps, he had a bright-yellow mohican and old-school tattoos of naked girls and ships.
He crouched down and told the girls all about the reindeer.
‘Yes, all right, Tarzan,’ said Kreuzmann, and put a twenty on the table. ‘Here, get yourself a tanning session and get back to your pots and pans.’
For a brief moment, the guy considered laying his job on the line, but thought better of it.
‘Now, let’s have some Jura,’ said Kreuzmann.
And that was where it all went wrong. At that exact moment.
Flavour can do irreparable damage, and vin jaune from the Côtes du Jura is a wine in conflict with itself. On the one hand seductively sherry-like in body, on the other coldly dismissive with all its bitter orange, vanilla and pine. The disharmony sent a tingle down my spine and made the hairs on my arms stand to attention. I have no idea how I got home or why I woke up with two bruised ribs.
The last thing I remember is Kreuzmann marching back from the loos, foaming at the mouth and with Monique creeping along behind him.
‘Filthy bitch,’ he said. ‘You go out to the bogs for a bit of fanny and she wants it up the arse. What the hell is it with young girls these days?’
The next morning, Monique sent an e-mail to Peter, my editor, revealing to him the details of how I did my job. By the end of that day, I was unemployed.
Tonight would be the first time I’d gone back to Noma since then, and though I’d spent the afternoon in my local bar, the Borgerkroen, writing and drinking, I hadn’t drunk enough to stop me feeling nervous. Diana laced her fingers through mine as we sat in the back seat of the taxi on the way there. ‘It’s so romantic, you drinking during the day,’ she said. I haven’t mentioned Diana’s bimbo side. It was classically done, wide eyes and a pout, and as far as I could figure, what triggered it was uncertainty. The odd thing is that it worked.
‘I think you should be careful about Stig,’ I said.
She looked down at the floor.
‘I’m really looking forward to meeting your friends.’
‘No one calls Nikolaj Krogh and Mille friends.’
The atmosphere at Noma had intensified since my last visit. The waiters were as intensely focused as chess players and the clientele were now European master chefs, foodies from all over the world and powerful business people.
Nikolaj Krogh was on his own at the table, and maybe I saw him with Diana’s eyes, but it was striking how handsome he was: long legs and broad shoulders; he looked a bit like an an Italian racing driver with his thick, deliriously wavy hair, and pianist’s hands. The best of all worlds, impeccable taste. His clothes were expensive, discreet and modern. And yet he exuded about as much life as half a bag of flour left behind in the cupboard of a summer cabin.
Mille wasn’t feeling well, he explained, and the lie suited him.
Diana the bimbo besieged him with flattering questions and encouraged him to hold forth, and after he’d delivered the story of how his signature chair, the Black Egg, had ended up at MoMA in New York, he felt sufficiently certain of his footing to tell us why he had decided to get himself involved in Stig Nissen’s dodgy enterprise: he wanted to get Mille singing again.
She had crossed over into jazz by the time he met her, which at best would be a harmless form of stagnation, but since then her career had run pretty much parallel to Rasmus Duck’s in the children’s song: first backwards, and then to a stop. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how hard the fall from grade-one certified diva to Taarbæk housewife impacted on Mille’s state of mind, but if I knew Nikolaj Krogh at all it wasn’t merely for the sake of peace on the home front that he had decided to take action, but out of genuine love for his wife and a belief in her artistic capabilities that was quite disconnected from reality. He told us that he had been trying to get Mille a gig as sound designer ever since his first meeting with Stig Nissen.
‘I think Stig Nissen has a fabulous ability to intuitively sense who he needs to hook up with,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think he knows much about music. Mille’s started doing this wild hybrid stuff, kind of a cross between folk and scratchy industrial.’
I wondered whether Mille even appreciated his loyalty.
‘You know what Mille can do as a singer and composer, Mikkel, and I’d really appreciate your support tonight.’
Stig Nissen bustled in wearing a pin-striped suit and red suede shoes. Lisa followed on hesitantly, putting her feet to the floor like she was on the boat to Norway in a rough sea and grabbing all the attention in her rust-red satin dress.
‘Have you been shagging?’ Diana asked.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Lisa.
‘We set the Hotel Michala Petri alight, I can tell you that much,’ said Stig Nissen, and rubbed his stubby fingers together.
‘Have you got the food under control, Mikkel?’
I had stretched my acquaintance with restaurant manager Anders to the limit to get the table.
‘It controls itself,
’ I said.
‘How about a bit of bubbly to start off with?’ said Stig.
We got two bottles of Selosse and a pep talk:
‘Twenty years from now, business-school students will be sweating over assignments about this night. You can almost hear it, can’t you? The Noma Session. This label of ours is going to be so big it’ll dwarf everything else, and getting there is going to be pure rock ’n’ roll. Lisa can do offbeat luxury like nobody’s business. She’s in a class of her own, two years ahead of everyone else’s time. Weltklasse! And Nikolaj, those drawings you showed me. Spitzenklasse! Mikkel makes it all come together. Nice going with the table, Mikkel! And then we’ve got our gorgeous wild card, Miss Diana. Those cunts of yours are going up on the bloody walls, they are, in the flagship on Østergade! You’ll see why once I reveal our name to you later tonight. Anyway, skål, and what a bunch of lookers we are!’
Lisa and Diana grabbed a bottle for themselves and held their own private party in the corner. Nikolaj Krogh handed Stig a CD he’d burned.
‘I’ve brought Mille’s new tracks along for you.’
Stig Nissen dropped it in his pocket without looking at it.
‘Bloody hell, look at these little buggers!’ The bread appeared wrapped in small pouches of felt tied up with a ribbon. ‘It’s enough to make you horny, that is!’
Diana and Lisa laughed, and Stig Nissen glanced uncertainly in their direction.
‘What do you reckon, Mikkel? Can’t you just see those cunts of hers blown up on the walls on Østergade? Five metres high. Wham!’
I considered my wording.
‘Diana has an exhibition on in October to which those drawings are rather pivotal.’
‘We’ll be the talk of the town at fashion week, I’m telling you! Those cunts’ll be famous by the time we get to October. Are they going to be sold, or what? It’s called free publicity.’
Restaurant manager Anders served the first course proper. On the left side of the plate was a raw razor clam encased in a garishly green parsley gel. To the right of this lay a length of dry ice made of buttermilk and horseradish, over which Anders poured mussel stock. It was like sticking your head underwater in Thorshavn. It was an expression of the Nordic mindset, a poem, no less. I have never been one for mixing up food with art, but in this case it was relevant. The table fell silent and remained so for a couple of minutes.
Am I Cold Page 7