On the day before the final permitted departure day, Crowhurst said goodbye to his family and a gathering of several thousand well-wishers and left the harbour. Ten minutes later, when his sail jammed, he was towed back in again. Local sailors gave him little chance. To their minds, his boat was far too flimsy, but the worst thing was that Crowhurst himself had begun to have doubts. On the evening before his departure he broke down crying in his wife’s lap, and the fact that he sailed at all was perhaps only a matter of his stiff upper lip British upbringing.
In Crowhurst’s teenage years, his father went bankrupt and died soon afterwards of a heart attack. Now Crowhurst found himself in what he considered to be a perilously similar financial position. His benefactor, the local factory owner, had made his support conditional upon Crowhurst being personally liable, which meant that his family would have to sell their beloved house in the event of Crowhurst dropping out or his boat being wrecked at sea.
On the afternoon of 31 October, Crowhurst finally set sail. It didn’t matter that his competitors had left weeks earlier: the prize money was for the fastest circumnavigation. The first week passed without event, Crowhurst making progress, though nowhere near as quickly as expected. On the eighth day, however, his boat began taking in water, and a number of bearing screws were lost to the Atlantic.
The short cuts taken by the shipyard began to show, and while he was able to bail the vessel manually he knew he would find himself in rather more serious trouble after rounding the Cape and entering the Indian Ocean. The waves there would reach some thirty metres in height and tear the screws from the hull, and it would no longer be possible for him to bail by hand. The boat would sink.
Crowhurst now faced an impossible choice: either he sailed on into the Indian Ocean to meet his death, or else he gave up and returned home to disgrace and financial ruin. He loitered, dragging out the decision for days without solution.
After a week of brooding, an alternative gradually presented itself.
During his deliberations he had shut down his radio, causing much consternation to the press and his family. Their joy when finally he made contact again knew no bounds. He even had good news. He had entered the Indian Ocean and was making excellent speed. In fact, he was sailing so quickly he was now the fastest of the nine competitors.
The press sensed a sensation. Crowhurst’s children were proud. What they didn’t know was that Crowhurst had begun to keep two logs: his actual navigation log and a second that was false. By intricate calculation he succeeded in accounting for his false position, while all the time remaining in the South Atlantic. Crowhurst had a plan.
He would slip into the wake of his competitors for the return leg, but since this was still some considerable time off he decided, in order not to be discovered, to shut off his radio once again.
For eleven weeks he loitered off the coast of Brazil. The only things he saw were the sea and the sky. He lost all sense of time and place, finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish himself from his surroundings and penning madly escalating torrents of prose about a higher cosmic order.
By the time the others crossed his position, the competition was considerably reduced. Five had given up in the Indian Ocean, while one had sailed on with no fixed destination, and when Crowhurst, after almost three months of isolation, broke his radio silence he was finally able to state a position that accorded with the truth.
His wife was delirious with joy and the press had a field day with the story of the happy amateur now vying for the prize.
Robin Knox-Johnston would be first home, but he had been the first competitor to leave and would not be the fastest man. That honour would befall another Briton, Nigel Tetley, which suited Crowhurst admirably.
The winner’s log would be subjected to the severest scrutiny, and though Crowhurst had been meticulous in his falsification he would surely be exposed. For that reason he proceeded at a leisurely pace with his eye on the second place that would secure him honour and reunite him with his family and home.
Tetley, however, felt himself to be under pressure and forced the pace beyond his boat’s capabilities, and two days before finishing, his vessel broke up and sank. Crowhurst, realising then that victory was unavoidable, gushed out twenty-five thousand words and then threw himself overboard.
Twelve days later, his empty boat was found.
We avoided eye contact as Mosbeck concluded the story. I stared at a radiator, he downed his beer in two gulps. ‘I hope you work it out, Mikkel,’ he said, curling his lip in what was supposed to be a smile.
It had been eight days since Diana had left for Budapest. I had started listening to Schubert’s String Quintet in C major and was proceeding sideways through the days with an ache in my chest. The night before, I’d had dinner with Charlie and Helene, and she had been positively quivering. The initial shock at Tue’s betrayal had turned into grief and bewilderment. But as is so often the case with those who are abandoned, something in her was already anticipating better times. Her hair had taken on a sheen, her eyes were bright and energetic, she had begun to lose weight without trying, and to voice whatever thoughts occurred to her, like how nice it would be to relocate to Mozambique, the destructive honesty of Thomas Mann, or getting her boobs done. I prayed this openness would last.
A couple went by the window of the bar, their pram laden with carrier bags from the supermarket. You looked after your offspring, made sure the home was warm enough and there were clean sheets on the bed, and cooked the meat until it could be eaten. You did the washing-up, and from the kitchen window noticed a plane in the sky, recalling what it felt like to be on your way into the unknown. A train, a boat, a plane. Then you opened the bottom cupboard and put the salad bowl back in its place, and there were voices coming from the television in the living room, and every step towards it seemed like a bad decision.
On the Wednesday morning Diana called and said she’d be landing in the evening at sevenish. I knew she wasn’t capable of putting feeling into the transfer of practical information, so I didn’t take it personally that her tone was mechanical, bordering on the abrupt, but I did decide right away that I would cook her a welcome-home dinner of Pappardelle ai funghi porcini – porcini mushrooms lightly fried with shallots, garlic, a nip of rosemary and a dash of cream to bring it all together.
There was no doubt that a cup of strong chicken stock would add to the dynamics, and so I went to Irma on Borgergade and spent the last of my money on a young cockerel, a kilo of organic onions and the same of carrots. I got the stock on the go and then cycled over to Helene’s office and borrowed a thousand kroner. As we hugged I couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t put her hands on my shoulders as she normally did, but instead slid one hand around my hip. The Italian on Lille Trianglen had pappardelle, but was out of fresh porcini, and while he was kind enough to enquire with Supermercato in Sydhavnen, it seemed I was out of luck. In the old days, the grocer’s on Rosenvænget would have saved the day, but all they had was a little basket of dry-looking chanterelles.
Mad og Vin had cultivated oyster mushrooms and those brown beech mushrooms that taste vaguely of chlorine, as well as some chanterelles that looked like they were from Chernobyl, but no porcini, and Røde Claus over at Restaurant Gammel Mønt reproached me for not having given word earlier, sending me over the road to Bo at Restaurationen, who, though he had copious amounts of forest mushrooms, albeit mostly brown birch boletes, could spare no porcini at all. I rang round a few Italian restaurants, one of which actually served Fettucine ai funghi porcini, but they used the dried variety.
It was one o’clock when I got hold of Kreuzmann. He hadn’t got the Range Rover, but he could borrow Claudia’s car, and twenty minutes later he picked me up in a white Mini at Klampenborg Station. ‘We’re going up to the castle ruin at Asserbo,’ I said. ‘Head for Hillerød, Helsinge, then turn off towards Frederiksværk.’ I made no efforts towards polite conversation and stared stiffly at the glove compartment.
Three days
of heavy rain had compensated for the lengthy dry spell and the woods were dotted with mushrooms: orange blankets of freshly emerged chanterelles, flourishes of sweet tooth, birch boletes and honey fungus in their hundreds, but, after an hour’s intense searching, only three porcini, of which two were too sloppy in the cap.
I sat down on a tree stump and stared at the forest floor.
‘Has she got a man in Budapest?’ Kreuzmann said.
‘She’s got a child,’ I said.
‘Presumably there’s a father,’ he said.
‘Do you know “Borderline” by Madonna?’
‘The only one I remember’s the one with the tits.’
‘Do you know when a song opens up for you because someone you know is mad about it?’
‘How many fingers have I got?’ said Kreuzmann, holding up four in front of me.
‘You used to have two hundred million, now you’ve got none.’
‘Listen, mate, I may be broke, but all it means is I’m temporarily on Mâcon instead of Meursault.’
A short distance away, an elderly woolly jumper of the intellectual left came crawling through the tall grass trailing a basket on her arm, her busy, ceramic artist’s fingers sifting every centimetre of soil.
‘Why don’t we just buy your rotten fungus off Granola Woman over there?’ said Kreuzmann.
‘It’s not the done thing to converse with other mushroomers,’ I said.
‘Do you want to make Diana the porcini or not?’
He trampled a mat of chanterelles underfoot on his way over.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Kreuzmann.
She looked up at him with an indignant expression. She was the type who used a knife, of course she was. Her basket was filled to the brim and contained at least three hundred grams of porcini.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ said Kreuzmann.
‘We usually don’t,’ she said.
‘My friend Mikkel here is in a bit of a jam.’
‘I’m not sure I wish to hear the rest,’ she said.
Her trousers were dyed at home, and her chunky, striped cardigan looked prickly. Her boots were the kind with wooden soles.
‘Mikkel’s a chef, you see, and tonight he’s preparing the food for a small and rather exclusive charity dinner for which he has announced there will be porcini. I know it’s quite unheard of, but we’ve been all over the city and are complete novices when it comes to mushrooming. You know your woods, I see.’
‘You could say. I’ve been coming here almost fifty years.’
‘How much do you want for your porcini?’
‘Oh, we never sell.’
‘Of course we wouldn’t be purchasing them,’ I said. ‘But we would very much like to compensate you for your efforts.’
‘How about a hundred kroner?’ said Kreuzmann.
‘I’m sorry, but I do find this all rather intrusive.’
‘Two hundred,’ said Kreuzmann.
‘Personally, I’ve always valued the porcini more than the chanterelles,’ she said.
‘We couldn’t agree more,’ I said. ‘And that’s exactly why I’d so much like to serve porcini this evening. If the dinner proves as successful as we hope, we shall have collected in the region of two hundred thousand kroner for victims of the war in Afghanistan.’
‘Of all the meaningless wars,’ she said.
‘Four hundred?’ said Kreuzmann.
She lowered her basket.
‘Well, just this once,’ she said.
Kreuzmann burned rubber as we tore off in the direction of Asserbo.
‘Fucking old hippies,’ he said.
We had fifteen porcini on the back seat.
‘A dried-up fanny like her with a great big house on Emiliekildevej and a summer house up here to the tune of five million, still voting socialist and serving her guests nettle soup.’
We reached the T-junction outside Helsinge, the grim video shop.
‘You’ve ruined their paradise back in Tisvilde,’ said Kreuzmann. ‘Monster knob Levinsen’s forever in and out at Krogh and Mille’s.’
‘Levinsen and his wife have got an open relationship,’ I said.
‘She kicked him out six months ago.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Our kids go to the same school.’
‘Everyone lies,’ I said.
‘I lied first,’ he said.
‘And then you went Christian?’
‘The only difference is it means putting your lies into a system,’ he said.
The herbs tumbled about in the simmering chicken broth, and I skimmed off the top and strained the stock through a cheesecloth. On Dronningens Tværgade I bought two bottles of Mongeard-Mugneret 2002, an earthy, graceful wine I had sampled at Sollerod Kro.
Kreuzmann took me to the airport, and as we stood in arrivals at Terminal 3 waiting for her to come, I visualised Diana’s kitchen counter. The red bowl to the right of the sink: garlic, perhaps a lemon or two, and hadn’t there been some shallots as well? How long could they stay fresh? And if they couldn’t, or there weren’t any, would I be able to cook the dish without? I saw myself peeling the skins off them, putting them down on the chopping board. If she wasn’t hungry, I could make it a late-night meal instead, but was the red wine in that case a mistake? Why hadn’t I bought a spumante or a light white? And then I looked up and saw her come trundling with her purple trolley suitcase, and I’d never seen her looking so tired. Jan was walking at her side in new clothes, she wasn’t listening to him. I immediately went up to greet her, and she was surprised to see me. Maybe it was just me feeling shy and awkward, but I was acutely aware of people around us waving their paper flags, their provincial accents. I pulled her into me, but it was hardly a kiss, more like a collision of lips. It would have been too odd to shake hands with Jan, and when I hugged him instead I saw how easily Diana embraced Kreuzmann.
‘I came back via Berlin,’ she said.
Mies appeared from the throng.
‘Mies showed us round Kreuzkölln yesterday,’ said Jan.
Mies had a new hairstyle; fair and closely cropped to his head. It accentuated the purity of his face, and he greeted me like it meant something.
Diana chose the passenger seat next to Kreuzmann.
Mies had lived on Grafestrasse since 2006 and worked as a photographic artist, traipsing round the flea markets finding old family photos from the former East Berlin, then Photoshopping himself in at the tiled coffee table at Uncle Günther’s fiftieth birthday in 1976, or beside the Christmas tree in cheerless flats with confusing wallpaper and electric organs.
Everyone got out on Lyrskovgade, and I had my hands full of porcini, red wine and stock as Mies said goodbye.
‘Why don’t you come up?’ I said.
I was frightened I’d be alone without him.
‘I’m meeting someone,’ he said, and obviously wasn’t.
Kreuzmann wanted to see Diana’s apartment, and she told him the first tapestry would soon be arriving from Vietnam. There were some shallots.
‘Do you sell to friends?’ he said.
‘All sales go through Moritz,’ she said.
‘Are you hungry?’ I said.
‘Not just now,’ she said. ‘We’ve brought some absinthe home.’
Jan lit the torches on the rooftop terrace and put some Balkan remix or other on the stereo, and it was just all too strenuous with all those wind instruments and his going on about the breakfast at Ankerklause and the little garden at the Literaturhaus and the Gerhard Richter exhibition and the men-only Lab-oratory at Berghain with shit on the floor and stiff cocks waving about at lip level.
‘Berlin’s nothing but gays and artists,’ said Kreuzmann.
‘You’re forgetting gay artists,’ said Jan.
‘I’ve always preferred Hamburg,’ said Kreuzmann. ‘The Lime Tree Terrace at the Hotel Louis C. Jacob, where the shipowners come to watch their ships sail past. Berlin is lukewarm canned beer.’
‘I’m hungry,
’ said Jan.
Kreuzmann followed me inside before he left.
‘Get rid of spunkface, so you can get her clothes off.’
I opened one of the bottles of Burgundy and it tasted of Grand de Luze, like all red wines do if they haven’t been properly attended to. I worked mechanically towards my objective, chopping the shallots, lightly frying them with the garlic, then chucking in the chopped mushrooms, the chicken stock and reducing it all down before finally adding the rosemary, but I wasn’t engaged in the various processes. The shelves on the wall were something I could relate to and understand, the way they were just there. The water came to the boil and I dropped the fresh pasta into it and got three plates.
Jan smothered his with freshly ground pepper and Diana only ate half. I couldn’t taste a thing. There were sirens below.
‘What was it like seeing Nona?’ I said.
Jan got up and took our plates.
‘It was fine,’ she said.
‘Can I see her?’
‘She’s in Budapest.’
‘I meant a picture.’
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘You didn’t take a picture of her?’
Jan screwed the top back on the absinthe.
Later, in bed, she lay looking at me as I lit the chunky candles around the room. I felt obliged to speak, so I started to tell her the story about Tue and Aurelien. I’d only just got to them making eye contact on the street when Diana interrupted and took my hand.
‘I need a father.’
‘What do you want a father for?’
‘To decide.’
I searched for something to say.
‘Will you be my dad?’ she said.
I managed to get her pants off before she fell asleep. Her little round bum filled out her small panties and I made the effort not to press my dick against her. She was twenty-seven and had just met her daughter for the first time. Of course she was exhausted.
We woke up half an hour before Dusk’s grand opening.
‘Have you got any money?’ she said as we sat in the taxi.
‘I’ve got five hundred.’
‘Ida-Marie wants the rent.’
Am I Cold Page 22