‘Super-duper-dismal!’ said Blismann.
‘Your prices have risen three hundred per cent in six years, Diana. Your tapestries aren’t the kind of thing people buy on a whim, and maybe that slump everyone keeps whingeing about is actually going to come down on us all of a sudden. The art market is jumpy and this isn’t the right way to go about making it stable again.’
He held up Diana as Kráka on Berlingske’s front page.
‘Why don’t we have a look at my tapestry?’ said Diana.
Kaspar Moritz skidded across the floor on his office chair.
‘For Christ’s sake, Diana! I’m trying to put it nicely for you.’
‘Then put it not nicely instead!’ she said.
‘Next time, you’re out of Galleri Moritz. I’ve got a brand to think about too, and I can’t have artists displaying that kind of idiocy.’
We unpacked the tapestry in silence.
‘The colours are good,’ said Moritz.
Diana’s cunt lay open before us. And Peter Borch-Jensen’s semen.
‘Sick!’ said Blismann. ‘Is it your own cunt?’
‘I’m not comfortable with this,’ said Moritz. ‘The age of provocation is gone. Do we agree not to include it?’
Fifteen minutes later, Blismann and I were walking through Vesterbro with the tapestry across our shoulders. Diana was silent.
‘I’m a brazen hussy with a great big pussy!’ Blismann sang.
We had to keep stopping to reorganise ourselves after his fits of laughter.
‘Let’s go to Blomsten,’ said Diana.
We sat there with ninety thousand kroner’s worth of cunt under our feet, and Blismann went to the bar for more safari suits.
‘I’ve got to give Ida-Marie ten thousand six hundred tomorrow,’ said Diana.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out some crumpled notes.
‘Where’s the rest?’ she said.
‘I only got five thousand and I’ve spent some of it.’
There were two thousand seven hundred left. Diana sat staring into the clouds of tobacco smoke until Blismann stepped in.
‘Can’t you see she’s upset?’ he said, pulling up his chair and putting his big arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. How come everyone else could comfort her better than I could?
I used to drink to have a good time, now I just wanted to be drunk. I had no anecdotes I was desperate to tell, and I couldn’t be bothered listening to those of others. I was too unfocused for serious discussion, too weighed down to have fun. I wanted to feel something, and alcohol was the only thing that would let me.
‘Have you got Kreuzmann’s number?’ said Diana.
She came back ten minutes later.
‘Let’s get this cunt home, then you can come back.’
There was no doubt that the latter was an order and sadly it suited me fine. I had already written Diana off for the night. Café Sommersted was my idea, on the basis of an assumption that our Faroese binge would befit the gloomy interior. I didn’t want to be seen and I didn’t want to see anyone. All I wanted was to be left alone to drink.
It’s the summer, and outside the season, hoola hoola, I love that cola cola.
Blismann had got a jug in and there was nothing I fancied less than stout, aquavit, lemonade and Pernod all mixed together. ‘How can it be summer and outside the season at the same time?’ I said.
I took a sip and nearly threw up.
‘Is it June, I wonder?’ I said.
‘This is August, mate,’ said Blismann.
‘In the song, I mean. Johnny Madsen lives on the island of Fanø. Perhaps he’s singing about a holiday place before the hordes arrive. But what’s cola cola, and who would drink it?’
‘Should I have that kid?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Should I have a kid with Kirstine?’
‘No, I don’t think you should.’
He got that defiant look in his eye that I’ve never cared for.
‘And why would that be, my fine friend?’
‘You asked and I gave you an answer,’ I said.
He put his hands down hard on the table.
‘This decision, Mikkel, is going to determine the rest of my life, and with that in mind I honestly think you could pull yourself together a bit and give the issue rather more consideration. We’re not talking about a glass of wine, you know!’
‘I find it sad that there’s such an obvious lack of passion involved.’
‘It’s me, Blismann, you’re talking to. You’ve seen how I react when there’s passion involved.’
I reran a couple of his impossible love affairs in my mind, fast-forwarding to what they would have been if they’d lasted, and saw Blismann stuck in some hinterland about to put a rope around his neck or else apply for a mortgage.
‘I can learn to love her,’ he said.
‘That sounds sensible.’
‘Is it wrong?’
I made the mistake of looking down at the floor and it came lunging up into my face. I put my glass down and tried to focus.
‘I’m going for a piss and then it’s either yes or no, okay?’
I hit my shoulder against the door frame as I went out.
I tried splashing my face with water, but it didn’t help.
A tubby guy with his wallet in his back pocket waddled his way to the urinal.
‘That’s the bastard thing about drinking ale,’ he said. ‘It gets lost! It goes in all right, but when it comes out it’s all diluted!’
Of course Blismann had to have that kid.
I staggered back, preparing to toast his impending fatherhood, only he was nowhere to be seen. Sønder Boulevard was deserted on both sides.
He must have legged it down one of the side streets, and that was the most surprising part of the whole situation: Blismann running.
Andreas Møller and Nikolaj Krogh picked me up in Krogh’s new Volvo at ten on the dot. I hadn’t seen Andreas since he had left the camp just over a fortnight earlier and being always on the lookout for somewhere to park his disappointment, he chose at first to ignore me completely.
We were off to the Sjælsmark Kaserne barracks and I was in the back, emitting two odours: one was sweet bordering on sickly and issued from my pores, that were hard at work separating glucose from alcohol; the other was so rank it made my eyes sting, came from my stomach and was channelled out through my mouth into the confined space of the car’s interior. I had a serious hangover.
As we passed B 1903’s training ground the first sentences and images of the night before began to crop up and trouble me. After Café Sommersted I had lurched off in the direction of Lyrskovgade, and as so often happens when changing location in a state of total intoxication, that state escalated with each step I took. Diana was sound asleep when I began pounding at the door with the flat of my hand. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour perhaps, passed before she opened up. I delivered a speech, a jumble of indignation, sudden accusations and self-pitying tears over the unconditional nature of my love for her, and the worst thing was that along the way I not only paid emotional tribute to myself for being honest, but also completely confused the concepts of passion and loss of control.
She did the cruellest thing and heard me out.
‘What is it you’re hiding, Diana?’
She wanted to sleep, it being night-time, and yet she may have been amused by my behaviour. At any rate, she joined me in a straight vodka.
‘What do you want to know, Mikkel?’
‘We can’t have a relationship if you refuse to talk to me about the things that matter, Diana. Nona, for instance. You went to Budapest and saw your daughter for the first time. That must mean something to you! But you’re completely closed about it. There isn’t a single photo, a single story you’ve told about meeting her. Nothing!’
‘She’s like me,’ said Diana. ‘She’s exactly like me.’
‘Where does she live?’
‘With my mother.’
‘How can you be so unmoved?’
‘It was a mistake to visit her.’
‘Do you miss her?’
She knocked back a gulp of vodka.
‘Why does your CV say you went to the Academy of Fine Ats in Budapest?’
‘It was my uncle’s fault I didn’t get in.’
‘In what way?’
‘He was vice-chancellor there until the Wall came down. He was a party loyalist and it reflected on me.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘István Kiss.’
I got the laptop and googled him:
István Kiss, vice-chancellor of the academy 1985–9, sculptor, responsible for a number of monumental works of socialist bent.
‘Everyone knew I was his niece. They didn’t even look at my drawings, they just sent out the letter of rejection as a matter of course.’
I poured us some more vodka.
‘Did you go to San Cataldo in order to meet me, Diana?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? And how did you know who I was?’
‘The first piece of yours I read was your interview with Bjarne Riis in Euroman. My Danish teacher, Jørn, had his sister go to the library in Copenhagen and dig out everything you’d written. Have you ever been to Budapest?’
I shook my head.
‘My mother works fourteen hours a day doing people’s laundry and still our flat was cold and damp. Budapest is porn, Serbian gangs and Albanian pimps. Everything’s dirty: the way people treat each other, their clothes, the streets. It all smells of wet dog, and without my Danish connection I’d have gone down with the rest of them.
‘I imagined what your life was like. Your style of writing is very personal and I soaked up all the information: what you thought about various things, your travels, your opinions. You belonged somewhere and to me you represented something secure and infinitely attractive. I did go to San Cataldo just to meet you. I know it sounds funny, but I thought of you as my crowning glory, and at long last I felt up to making a go of it.’
‘How did you know I was there?’
‘You mentioned it to Christian Finne and he happened to mention it to me one day when we were talking about where to find some peace to work.’
‘What was it like meeting me?’ I said.
‘It was wonderful right from the start, Mikkel, but I was surprised by how much it taught me about myself.’
‘Like what?’
‘Everything I was so eager to find in you is exactly what tears us apart.’
‘Such as?’
‘You have a history, Mikkel, and you keep on adding to it each day. I felt it so strongly that evening at Clara’s, all the things you don’t need to talk about. You know what she looked like as a child, you know your friends’ parents, your language is all slotted into place, the music, the opinions, the furniture.’
‘But you not being a part of all that is exactly what’s so fantastic, Diana.’
‘I’ve met your friends, Mikkel, and in the space of half an hour they’ll tell me things you’ve never talked to them about. It’s to do with me being the way I am, of course, but it’s more than that: I don’t count, I’m an outsider.’
‘Of course you count.’
‘If I went away, you’d all miss me for about a month, and maybe you’d miss me again at some dinner a year later, but I don’t have the history. Do you understand how hard it is for us to be together? I keep having to start again from scratch.’
‘I’d like to start from scratch, too.’
‘I know you would, Mikkel.’
It all just followed on once we got under the covers. Each and every thrust felt overwhelming to me, and with everything being so intoxicatingly sad, it just had to be head-on, so we could look at each other.
Kreuzmann woke us up the next morning. He was wearing a tie again and put a thick envelope down on the table.
‘Forty big ones.’
‘What’s going on?’ I said.
‘Claudia wants some art on her walls,’ he said.
‘Kreuzmann’s bought the spunky cunt,’ said Diana.
As Nikolaj Krogh drove he gave us the low-down on the firm of architects who were in the picture to take charge of doing up and refitting the barracks for Next Love, and Andreas Møller fired questions at him.
‘We’re going to be spoiled for choice,’ said Nikolaj Krogh. ‘There were nearly seven hundred in our Facebook group this morning.’
‘That crappy article did the job,’ said Andreas Møller.
Sjælsmark Kaserne was not so much a barracks as a small town. The main building was stately and the myriad of low buildings that surrounded it looked like they could relatively easily be converted into small apartments. Andreas Møller had a source high up in the Ministry of Defence and knew that the barracks was to be shut down for good imminently.
I took part in the general enthusiasm on the way home and had loads of ideas, leaning forward between the seats in front like a child that keeps pestering his parents.
Andreas Møller swivelled round.
‘Did you give Levinsen carte blanche to misuse our name? Nikolaj didn’t spend two days creating our logo just to rub shoulders with Tiger Beer.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I said.
‘He can’t remember his own promises,’ said Andreas Møller, and handed me a printed invitation:
Levinsen Open and Next Love present: The Next Party.
At the bottom were four logos: Levinsen Open, a vodka brand, Tiger Beer, and the stringent pen strokes of Next Love.
Nikolaj Krogh paid special attention to his hug when they dropped me off on Lyrskovgade. Andreas Møller made do with a handshake.
‘There’s an old friend of mine, a woman I’d like you to meet.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ I said.
‘It’s entirely up to you.’
He handed me a business card, on the back of which was written 21 August, 11.30 a.m. The front said: Xenia Leth-Hansen, Alcohol Coach.
Helene, Charlie and I had started having dinner together every other evening, and it was amazingly hassle-free. We met outside the fishmonger’s on Gammel Kongevej, to show Charlie the ferocious porbeagle before we grilled it. We went to Chinese restaurants and practised eating with chopsticks, or else we cooked fine dinners at home and teased the queen with our bad table manners. It was nothing like when we were living together and I could get stressed out just thinking about her late-afternoon phone calls. She had this supernatural ability to phone me just as I was biking across a busy crossroads.
‘Milk, butter, porridge oats.’
Or maybe:
‘Washing powder, bacon, freezer bags.’
Now and again I’d say:
‘Pork scratchings, hessian, dual carriageway.’
And she never laughed.
I realise she had to give me messages, of course.
Should she have done so in verse, or perhaps put them to music? I’m not fond of everyday life, and I realise that is where the problem lies.
It was always a contrast to go to Diana’s rooftop terrace after these quiet evenings with Helene and Charlie.
‘Can’t we do without street art soon?’ Jan might say. ‘I’m sorry, but forty-three-year-old blokes in hoodies enlarging cartoons and spraying a little skull in the corner? What’s it doing in the galleries? “Hey, man, I can like really get up your nose! I can drink out of the bottle and stub my fags out in your ketchup!” No, actually, we’re not in the slightest bit provoked, so why don’t you sod off home and tidy your room while you’re at it? And hey, take your whoopie cushion with you!’
Diana was sick of his ranting, but she could almost never be bothered to argue and preferred to change the subject.
‘I’d like to meet Helene,’ she said. ‘How about that party of Levinsen’s? Maybe you could invite her?’
‘We could go out for a meal first,’ I said.
‘Or we could just drink,’ she
said.
It could be that uncomplicated, I supposed, and so I put it to Helene one afternoon when I was bringing Charlie back.
Helene was sunbathing and had filled the paddling pool.
‘You look tired,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go up and have a lie-down?’
I felt the urge to tear off her bikini.
‘Do you want to come to a party on Friday?’ I said. ‘Diana would like to meet you.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’d like you to come, too.’
I had at last managed to get hold of Søren T-shirt to do some more interviews for the book, and I wasn’t in the mood for his eternal attempts at avoiding the subject. Besides, I didn’t much care for his new stories. They used to be about having a good time and perhaps pulling a fast one on some fruit-and-veg wholesaler at the billiard table, but now they all seemed to involve raw physical violence. I interrupted him in a loop of uppercuts and prescription fiddles.
‘Tell me about your first dealer, Søren.’
‘That’s not something I do at the drop of a hat.’
‘You’ve got to.’
‘I didn’t think that book was going to come together!’
‘Of course it is.’
‘I thought it was going to be all latte-farty, a lot of wind about relationships.’
I got a notepad out of my bag.
‘Let’s sit down and get started.’
‘You couldn’t buy me a sandwich, could you? I haven’t eaten in three days.’
We went to the little joint across the road.
‘I’ve got this dodgy stomach,’ he said. ‘Everything goes right through me.’
We sat down on a step. His grey-green features were glazed with perspiration and he took his sandwich apart and ate the lettuce first.
‘You haven’t exactly been holding back of late,’ he said.
‘No more than usual,’ I said.
We got out of the sun and went into the darkness of Floss.
‘I need to be pissed if I’m going to talk about it,’ he said.
I got him a double Arnbitter and two Gold. I had a coffee.
‘Do you remember what the tables looked like?’ I said.
‘Of course I do. They had mirrors on, all broken.’
‘A bit obvious as metaphors go,’ I said.
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