There was nothing wrong with the applause apart from the fact that it stopped abruptly while I was still some ten metres from the stage. From there on, only the sound of my creaking footsteps could be heard and I had to narrow my eyes in order to maintain some kind of grip on reality. But once I was standing in front of the mic with the flimsy pages of my notepad in my hand, staring out at the audience, I realised that the lights had been dimmed and everyone present was a cuddly toy.
‘Five years ago I met the woman of my dreams,’ I said. ‘We had a baby together and I was crippled with guilt when two years later we split up and got divorced. But then one day I was talking to a friend of mine about it and I heard myself say: “The only thing standing between me and true love is couplehood.”’
A ripple of laughter passed across the tables and the beads of their little eyes were so cute. I made them laugh, the women mostly, and the Q&A afterwards overran the allotted time by fifteen minutes. ‘But doesn’t it all get samey if you can be with whoever you want?’ a woman asked.
‘I think it makes it all the more significant,’ I answered. ‘I’m not advocating just sleeping around, but granting each other the best in life.’
‘Personally I’d lose focus entirely,’ she said.
‘We can handle a lot more than we think,’ I said. ‘As I see it, most couples lost their focus a long time ago.’
‘I’d live in constant fear that my husband would fall in love with someone else,’ she said.
‘In that case, I wouldn’t advise you to make the experiment. Obviously, it requires both parties to be in agreement and to trust each other completely.’
‘I feel the exact opposite,’ another woman said. ‘Everything’s so fleeting and stressful these days, I actually think a lot of people are very happy to promise each other fidelity.’
‘I’m not talking about irresponsibility,’ I said. ‘I’m talking about the opposite, and I think it’s a fine thing indeed to love each other until death do us part. But I don’t understand why it should rule out loving others as well.’
‘But what about the children?’ she said. ‘Isn’t it confusing for them?’
‘I believe children are happiest when they’re given as much love as possible, and I’m certain it’s better for them to grow up in a loving environment rather than one that is disharmonious. I’d say they’d be more confused growing up in the confines of a relationship that is defined by conflict.’
‘If you’re in love, you don’t want anyone else,’ someone said.
‘Well, that’s what they say, at least,’ I replied. ‘In my own personal experience I’ve found myself wanting all sorts of other people even when I’ve been in love. But because we’re brought up to go for the one and only, I’ve always fought against it.’
‘What about you?’ said a thickset woman with glasses on a cord around her neck. ‘Have you found yourself a new partner?’
‘We don’t call each other that.’
‘But you’re in love with a nice girl?’
‘Very much in love, yes.’
‘Then you’ll want to marry her and have children with her, won’t you?’
‘We haven’t thought about it.’
‘She could be in bed with someone else right now, then?’
‘Possibly, yes.’
‘Doesn’t that hurt?’
‘Not after three glasses of wine.’
The women were so interested in talking to me throughout dinner that I had to lift my glass to their husbands every now and then to reassure them. I met Stig Nissen in the gents and he dug his elbow into my side.
‘You carried it off, Vallin. We’re all lined up now for a big night at the Kvium Bar.’
‘Kvium Bar?’
‘It’s not for kids,’ he said, and took me by the arm. ‘The difference between us and you is that you Copenhageners write books about it. Here we just do it. Are you with me?’
He laughed and breezed out through the door without holding it open for me.
At exactly eleven o’clock, everyone got to their feet, found their coats and went back out to their cars. Stig Nissen led the convoy and the Kvium Bar turned out to be housed in a wing of Nissen’s vast house: black carpets, black walls, three big canvases from Kvium’s black period on each of the long walls, the fourth comprising a curved panorama window facing out into the darkness.
The lights were dimmed over the cosy sofa areas, and the long bar at the end of the room was softly illuminated and enticing with Grey Goose vodka, Curaçao rum, a selection of whiskies, grappa, Poire Williams and some unfamiliar gin labels.
‘And you haven’t even seen Nissen’s cognac collection yet,’ said Chopper, a large man with a moustache and blotches of perspiration encroaching from under his waistcoat. The girl waiting on us smiled and pushed the sliding door of a cupboard to one side.
‘Some of them are up to a hundred and fifty years old,’ he said.
He nudged me in the side and winked. ‘I sense a certain hospitality among the local wives.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You can put two and two together, surely? Or three and three, for that matter!’
He laughed, somewhere between baritone and falsetto.
Another girl came round with white bathrobes.
We went through a black door into a wellness area worthy of a five-star German health resort. To the left was a large steam bath with glass doors, to the right a sauna, and five steps down was a twenty-five-metre indoor swimming pool. I went into the sauna, which was packed with glistening, middle-aged flesh.
Stig Nissen drove me to the station the next morning.
‘So now you’ve seen Brande by night. Not as dull as you’d think, was it?’
He handed me an envelope.
‘Make sure it’s all there.’
I opened it and there were five one-thousand-kroner notes.
‘I thought we said fifteen?’ I said.
‘It would have been if you’d given a talk to my staff. Five’s the going rate for the Brande Arts Society. Besides, we look after our big city guests, don’t we?’
I got out with the envelope still in my hand and he rolled his window down.
‘Put the word about!’
And with that he turned the car sharply, sounded the horn twice and sped off with a wheel-spin.
I couldn’t sleep on the train and kept mixing things up in my mind: the great bales of straw in the fields, the special-price offer on Haribo Starmix, a conversation between two men on their way to Fredericia to give a seminar on innovation for the local authority and who kept assuring each other how much better it was to take the train. I had to walk up and down the aisle to stop myself from going mad.
When we reached Vejle I tried to recall the names of their football team’s former captains. I could remember Iver Schriver, the Tychosen brothers, Ulrik le Fevre, Knud Nørregaard, but what was that other one’s name? Frizzy microphone hair and a beard. A sweeper.
I woke up at Fredericia and realised someone was standing over me, staring at me intently. It was my old colleague from the newspaper, Blismann. We had shared an office for five years and seen more of each other than our families. We had both overestimated our importance in the Danish media landscape and been conceited enough to imagine our turn had finally come to be opinion-makers. He’d ended up teaching in some backwater, and here he was, wearing a protective little smile as if both of our falls from grace had all been my fault. He was in a cheap anorak and looked like someone from the Faroe Islands. His short hair exposed a receding hairline and his smooth cheeks made me think of a tranquilliser pill.
‘Knud Herbert Sørensen,’ I said.
‘You what?’ he said.
‘Former captain of Vejle. Have a seat. Where is it you’re teaching these days?’ I said.
‘In Ribe.’
‘Are you enjoying it?’
‘I read that interview Kiest did with you for Berlingske.’
I assumed that wasn’t
the only information he wanted to impart, but it was all he said. I had to drag the insults out of him.
‘Anything else you’ve read recently?’ I said. ‘A brochure, perhaps?’
‘Where’s fat Tove supposed to go for free sex?’ he said.
‘How about Weight Watchers? Fat people aren’t exactly in short supply.’
‘You’re manning the barricades for the right to grope each other in trendy hangouts.’
‘It’s not my fault you had to get out of the city in a hurry,’ I said.
He looked down at the floor.
‘Where are you going anyway?’ I said.
‘A Thåström gig in Malmö.’
‘Still into him, then. Thåström.’
‘I’m going to be a dad,’ he said.
‘You’re not? Who’s the lucky lady?’
‘Her name’s Kirstine.’
‘Where did you meet?’
‘At a folk concert.’
‘What’s she like, this Kirstine of yours?’
‘She’s not a DJ, and she doesn’t blog about shoes. She’s a school-teacher and she looks like someone called Kirstine who comes from Ribe.’
‘So you’re not in love with her, is that what you’re saying?’
‘No, funnily enough. You know how useless I am when it comes to being in love.’
He might have changed, but he could still soften up when I made an effort. I began to tell him about the humiliations I had suffered the night before in Brande.
‘I’ve never seen a cunt as voluminous as the mayor’s wife’s. She had me in a vice between her flabby thighs, and her labia were so big you could have sewn them together behind my ears. And when finally I was finished with her there was Chopper’s wife to attend to, big as a house and strong as an ox. At some point I managed to escape, soaking wet with sweat and cunt juice, then knocked back the drink until I passed out. Which was a big mistake.’
‘What happened?’ he said.
‘I came to when a pair of glasses fell down on my cock, and when I looked up I realised it was the magistrate’s wife, her Coke-bottle specs. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes, that intense, bewildered way short-sighted people stare when they haven’t got their glasses on. She was lying on her side on the sofa with my cock in her mouth, and she was wearing this long, knitted sleeveless coat.’
An announcement said next stop Odense.
‘Fancy a beer?’ I said.
Blismann wanted to convince me of how enriching it was to live in a place that was quiet in the evenings, where you could see the stars at night, hear the birds and go for long walks in the marshland, and I respected his courageous attempt to sustain this story about how happy he was, even as it evaporated beer by beer. By the time we reached Høje Taastrup, the table between us was littered with bottles and Blismann was restored to his old cynical self, and while Floss was still too much for him, thankfully there has never been anything wrong with the Jernbanecafé. I felt sure that all bad feeling between us had been swept aside and that we would be able to sit down and play a game of dice while talking about nothing in particular, absorbed temporarily into an environment of pill-pushers, errant businessmen from Jutland, semi-hot student girls from teacher-training colleges and the usual drunks in denim jackets and cheap boots, and everything was in Blismann’s words dismal! or super-dismal! or even super-duper-dismal!
I had four sixes in hand when Diana called and I stepped outside on to Rewentlowsgade and still couldn’t make up my mind whether I liked the Hotel Astoria’s architecture as she told me the first of her tapestries had arrived from Vietnam and asked me to help her carry it home from Moritz’s at nine.
You can allow yourself to be romantic when you’re with Blismann and I waxed lyrical on the bells of the Rådhus and opined that they, and the gleeful shrieks of joy from the Tivoli Gardens, were the sounds of other people’s childhoods.
We had decided on the obvious idea of having dinner in our old canteen at the newspaper; the chef was the same one as before, and Blismann naturally remembered his name. He opted for the meat loaf and I had happily forgotten how sloppy he could be with gravy. I chose a well-topped open sandwich and had just flicked the slice of orange from the pork when Peter, our former editor, came down for a diet Coke. He was all ‘bloody hell’ and ‘to what do we owe the pleasure’, but he was nervous and had good reason to be.
‘Have a seat!’ said Blismann.
‘There’s nothing I’d rather do than sit here and have a few beers with you, but I’ve got Saturday’s arts section to see to,’ said Peter.
‘Just sit yourself down with your old mates here and ask how they’re doing,’ said Blismann. ‘After all, it was you who gave us the boot.’
Peter placed a cautious hand on Blismann’s shoulder, only to be brushed away and stared down for ten very long seconds before beating a quiet retreat with shoulders drooped and eyes fixed on his commute back to Værløse.
‘What time does your concert start?’ I said.
‘It’s six months since I met Kirstine and this is the first time I’ve been away from her.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Thåström isn’t playing in Malmö tonight.’
I can’t actually remember which of us suggested going upstairs to wind up Rie Becker, but I do know she wasn’t in her office. Some plastic case folders lay fanned out on her desk: Lauritz.com, Valby Galleries, Collectors, and then, furthest to the right: Diana Kiss.
‘Super-duper-dismal!’ said Blismann, and picked it up.
A printout of Diana’s CV from Galleri Moritz’s website, a photo of Diana as Kráka from the Dusk launch, the ad from the paper, a list of phone numbers, including the long one of the Hungarian fine arts academy and another for Minna Lund, a page of notes from our evening out at the Tivoli Gardens.
The door opened and it was Peter.
‘You’ve no business here,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ said Blismann.
A security guard stepped forward.
‘I ought to report you to the police,’ said Peter.
‘Look at him,’ said Blismann. ‘I much preferred the bourgeoisie in the old days. At least they had style.’
Blismann was received with applause and confetti at Floss and it was all hugs and kisses until Søren T-shirt turned up and he and I descended into an epic reminiscence about the night at U-Matic in 1987 when Søren got hold of some real Bolivian coke and Signe thought she was ill because her tongue had gone numb from kissing him.
‘Søren T-shirt! Still on the fiddle, are we? Keeping dismal?’ said Blismann, butting in and making Søren spill his beer.
‘Watch what you’re doing, you fucking idiot,’ said Søren.
Blismann narrowed his eyes.
‘I’ve not seen my mate Mikkel here for over a year and we happen to have more important things to talk about than you being off your head on coke at U-Matic twenty-one years ago.’
I glanced at my watch.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘I promised to help Diana.’
‘If he’s in a free relationship, then all I can say is that free relationships sound exactly like ordinary ones,’ said Blismann.
‘There he goes, with his tail between his legs again,’ said Søren T-shirt.
I said my goodbyes to Søren and was about to do the same with Blismann.
‘I’m coming with you!’ he said. He recited Strunge in the taxi:
‘Berlin, maybe a never-developed image exists of a girl on Kurfürstendamm who for a second saw me as human in the world.’
I stared at the city lights without speaking.
‘Berlin, my head is so unclear.’
He was so close to me I felt his spit in my face. His voice slowed:
‘How can I find her lips in all that dust?’
I shifted away from him.
‘He could have looked somewhere other than a building site.’
Diana was standing with her shoulder against t
he wall outside Galleri Moritz. She was in a slim-fitting grey suit, matt red and terracotta-coloured golfing shoes, purple shirt and a dark green tie.
‘She looks like a Hopper painting,’ said Blismann.
Diana hadn’t seen Moritz since the photo shoot for the ad and the fashion show. The situation required some subtlety, and I had with me Blismann, a person who possessed none.
‘Super-dismal, Vallin! First the Jerbanecafé, then Floss and now Galleri Moritz! We’re like knights in a game of chess, two squares forward and one to the side, all the way through the city!’
I put my hand on his arm.
‘Best keep your head down here, Blismann.’
‘What are you on about?’ he said.
Blismann pogoed into the expansive premises and roared at the top of his voice:
‘Squatters in our hearts!’
‘Squatters in our hearts, Comrade Blismann!’ Moritz repeated, placing his hand to his chest.
They embraced warmly. ‘What the fuck have you been up to, Moritz? Last time we met, you were booking some Belgian industrial band.’
‘That was the nineties, Blismann.’
‘Art for art’s sake! Money for God’s sake,’ said Blismann.
‘Bowie?’ said Moritz.
‘10cc,’ I said.
Diana’s tapestry was rolled up in bubble wrap.
‘It’d be great to sit and talk about old times,’ said Moritz, ‘only I’ve got some matters to discuss with my favourite artist.’
‘They can stay, I don’t mind,’ said Diana.
Moritz fetched a bottle of Sune’s nature spumante, raised his glass politely and pulled up a chair for Diana. Blismann sat down in the deep window recess three metres away and I just hung about.
‘Before we unpack the tapestry, we need to talk about your involvement in Dusk, Diana,’ said Moritz, pulling out a drawer. ‘What the hell is this?’
He held up the ad in front of her.
‘It’s a good photo,’ she said.
Moritz gave her an indulgent smile, which was a mistake.
‘Minna Lund didn’t buy your work because you’ve got a good body, Diana. She wants to support a serious working artist.’
‘Minna Lund lives in a palace,’ said Diana. ‘I live in a plumber’s storeroom.’
Am I Cold Page 24