Am I Cold

by Martin Kongstad

  ‘I went to school with him,’ I said. ‘He’s on the level.’

  ‘Thomas Kreuzmann?’ said Goldschmidt. ‘We’ve a number of loose missiles whizzing about at the moment and Thomas Kreuzmann is almost synonymous. He couldn’t buy a cucumber without being asked to show some ID.’

  ‘I can get him to withdraw it,’ I said.

  ‘The damage is already done,’ said Minna Lund. ‘Neither Moritz nor I can accept one of our artists being presented at cut price.’

  Diana introduced me to a whole new sound when we got home. It came from the diaphragm, at once deep and guttural, and between each eruption she reached for something on the shelves and smashed it against the wall. I had a feeling she blamed me for bringing Kreuzmann into her life and landing her in a situation that threatened to end her career. I was reluctant to put my hands on her shoulders and poured her a whisky instead, which she promptly dashed to the floor, causing the glass to shatter into a hundred pieces.

  ‘Do you want me to stay?’ I said.

  ‘Do whatever the hell you want!’

  I biked over to Klerkegade and slept like it was the nineties again, without cause to even turn in my slumbers. I was almost grateful when Kaspar Moritz rang at a quarter past nine.

  ‘Can you meet me over at Minna Lund’s place at ten? We need a plan of action.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Diana?’

  ‘She’s got enough to think about as it is.’

  Moritz was waiting outside the house in a suit. The remains of the dinner from the night before had been consigned into bin bags neatly placed beside the path.

  ‘What day is it?’ I said.

  ‘Friday,’ he said.

  ‘It feels like it’s Tuesday,’ I said.

  ‘Aha,’ he said.

  ‘It must be the light,’ I said.

  A maid showed us into the garden room and tea was served in thin cups, along with some biscuits that didn’t make much difference one way or the other.

  ‘Diana’s tapestry is due to be auctioned on the seventh of October,’ said Moritz. ‘A fortnight later I’m showing eight similar works. These have been priced at ninety thousand. We simply can’t operate with the kind of uncertainty that exists on the free market.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’ I said.

  ‘We need to make sure that tapestry doesn’t come cheap.’

  ‘How do we do that?’

  ‘Do you know anyone, male or female, a person who can dress well and who at the same time is rather more reliable than Thomas Kreuzmann?’

  ‘What would she have to do?’ I said.

  ‘She would attend the auction,’ said Minna Lund.

  ‘And bid for the tapestry?’ I said.

  ‘More precise instructions will be forthcoming,’ said Moritz.

  I knew exactly who I had to ask, and headed round to Clara’s.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Clara was in a pair of old Levi’s and a purple college sweatshirt. Getting straight to the point would be suicide.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  She was listening to Joni Mitchell and I recognised her mood all too well.

  ‘Sorry’s only a bit better than nothing,’ she said.

  She was in the process of reupholstering an armchair in pink material and had once again decided to become a tea drinker.

  ‘I’ve got Erik’s stuff together.’

  She nodded at a tote bag in the corner.

  ‘See if there’s anything you want.’

  A tie was poking out. Black satin.

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ I said.

  ‘Kathrine ran into them at the theatre,’ she said. ‘He used to take me to the theatre. She’s got blue veins on her tits, hasn’t she?’

  ‘What was on?’

  ‘A comedy, at FÅR302. According to Kathrine, he fell asleep.’

  ‘Are you glad you got rid of him?’

  ‘Does it look like it? You gave him a bed to fuck in, Mikkel. I know he’s a drunken freeloader, and he’s not exactly the height of intelligence, but I do actually miss him.’

  She held my gaze. ‘She’s as thick as a plank. I’m better-looking than her, aren’t I? I’ve got better taste, anyway. But she bribes him with blowjobs. Why are men such bloody imbeciles?’

  ‘That’s a bit simplified,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve never understood the attraction of a dick in your mouth. It’s where I put my food.’

  She put the kettle on.

  ‘I’ve tried to despise you, Mikkel, but I can’t. You just can’t be hated. Why is that?’

  ‘Maybe there isn’t enough of me,’ I said.

  The cushions on her sofa were in bright colours, the way she imagined they were supposed to be.

  ‘You look like shit,’ she said, making me a coffee. ‘Why do you never see white dog shit on the pavement anymore? Wasn’t it poodles? Did they put chalk in their dinner, or what?’

  ‘Things are going wrong with Diana,’ I said.

  ‘What did you expect with that stupid project of yours? Next Love! As if, Mikkel! As if!’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to become of me and Diana, but I do know I’m never coming back to this.’

  ‘So it’s all going to be young girls from now on, is it?’

  ‘She’s opened everything up for me, and once you’ve seen the big white room it’s impossible to go back into a little dark one again. Do you see what I mean?’

  She pressed the cafetière’s plunger down.

  Diana and Jan were shelling prawns on the rooftop terrace and she didn’t return my kiss. Jan was coming down on Damien Hirst. Something about a solo auction at Sotheby’s and what was it exactly Hirst had done that was so amazing, and blah, blah, blah about that bloody skull with all the diamonds in it.

  ‘I know you saw a genuine spot painting at Minna Lund’s place,’ he said. ‘But Povl Gernes was doing much better spot works in 1968, and what’s more, he did them all himself.’

  ‘Do you know what that shark thing he did is called?’ I said.

  Jan smothered the prawns in mayonnaise, dill and lemon.

  ‘It’s called The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. The title on its own is a work of art,’ I said.

  ‘I’m going for a lie-down,’ said Diana.

  Jan moved his chair into the sun and leaned back with his eyes closed. He took his T-shirt off and rolled his shoulders.

  ‘She’s been crying,’ he said.

  A seagull landed on the ridge of the roof opposite.

  Jan looked up at me for a second, then leaned back again.

  ‘She hardly stopped when we were in Berlin,’ he said.

  ‘It must have been hard on her, leaving Nona,’ I said.

  It was annoying that he kept his eyes closed. It was like talking to blancmange.

  ‘She seems to be all right about Nona,’ he said.

  A drop of sweat ran down his chest and settled in a fold of his belly.

  ‘What was she crying about, then?’ I said.

  ‘It was all that business about Mies,’ he said.

  ‘What business?’

  ‘You’re not jealous, are you?’

  ‘Didn’t she go to Berlin to meet up with you?’ I said.

  ‘You’d have to ask her about that.’

  ‘You’re the one who brought it up!’ I said.

  ‘All I did was tell you she’d been crying in Berlin.’

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ I said.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got work to do,’ he said, getting to his feet.

  ‘What work?’ I said.

  His eyes went yellow with rage.

  ‘How’s the book coming along?’ he said.

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘Face it!’

  ‘Face what?’

  ‘You’ve ripped it all off from Diana.’

  ‘I’ve exploited her energy,’ I said. ‘The ideas are mine.’

  ‘You can go on as much as you like about unrestricte
d love, but the fact is, you’re not up to it,’ said Jan.

  Diana was sweeping up the smashed plates and shards of glass. Bewildered dust particles whirled in the air.

  ‘Tell me about you and Mies,’ I said.

  She carried on without looking up.

  ‘Are you in love with him?’

  ‘Give me the dustpan,’ she said.

  ‘Why haven’t you said anything, Diana?’

  ‘Give me the fucking dustpan and shut up!’

  It was leaning up against the pillar. I snatched it up and hurled it across the room and it smashed into an African figure on the shelving. Diana rushed over to it.

  ‘You’ve killed Fela!’

  She held it up. The head had been separated from the body.

  ‘Get out!’ she said. ‘Just get out!’

  Ida-Marie appeared from her room.

  ‘Can you keep it down a bit?’

  She went over to put the kettle on.

  ‘Why don’t you mind your own business?’ said Diana.

  ‘This is a place of work,’ said Ida-Marie. There was a knock on the door and she composed herself and went to answer it.

  Moritz was in a checked Sherlock Holmes suit and behind him cowered the three curator girls with shoulder bags full of densely written A4. Lea brought up the rear and didn’t so much as glance in our direction. The two others smiled sheepishly, cheeks blushing becomingly.

  ‘Thanks for taking the time to see us,’ said Lea.

  ‘It’s no bother,’ said Ida-Marie, holding the door.

  So as not to make a drama of it I packed a few items of clothing and had just zipped up my bag when they came out again with smiles on their faces.

  ‘I’m speechless,’ said Lea, too audibly. ‘It’s so confident, Ida-Marie! Anyone would think you’d been working on it for years.’

  I followed them out, then patted my pockets as if I’d forgotten my keys and stayed back on the landing. Their chatter reverberated around the stairwell and rose metallically back towards me.

  I might have agreed with Diana on a lot of things, but apart from that, I understood nothing about her. Never had I spent so many hours with another human being without getting any closer. I had no history to give me a clue, no inkling of what might have been motivating her, and I was never anywhere near guessing her thoughts or what she was going to say next.

  Whether it was infatuation or an advanced form of dependence I was unable to judge, but I did know that my supreme intoxication had reversed and turned against me.

  It came as a surprise to me that beyond my own vanity and banal fear of losing her, I had cultivated a veneration for Diana Kiss as a person, and felt profound and unfalsified tenderness for her.

  It began outside Bang & Jensen, because once you’ve become a part of Vesterbro, returning to the centre of the city seems so regressive. It was early afternoon and half the bands in the country seemed to be going past, and producers and DJs with expensive headphones around their necks. Inside, people sat with their laptops and soft-boiled eggs. I was outside among the more experienced crowd, Vesterbro newcomers to a man, of course, but with the privilege to criticise the newer arrivals and to withdraw from Bang & Jensen when evening closed in and couples from the provinces claimed the stage.

  Vesterbro has always had a frivolous and hearty tone about it, and while the majority of the original population has moved on, died or are simply claiming their pensions, this atmosphere lives on. The new generation of Vesterbro inhabitants are well read and intellectually inquisitive, they love explaining and discussing things at length, and as I shared my frustrations about Diana with the sympathetic assembly, the analyses came pouring in.

  She has an unresolved issue with her father, one opined. She’s put you in his place, but that means she becomes her own mother and that you’re a boy. She wants a man and you want a mother. It can’t ever join up.

  I had just asked for elaboration when Mies came walking along with that erect posture of his and a tight little rucksack on, and as always it was disarmingly easy to be convivial with him. He had come home to play a gig with his electronica duo and when he asked whether I wanted to come along to see them at Jolene’s I was already hatching a plan, so I invented a story about a big birthday bash in Charlottenlund.

  It was a regrettable lie, though one I was compelled to tell.

  The light was fading as I sat myself down on a bench in the little park that gave me a view of the entrance door to Diana’s building. I had brought a couple of beers with me, from the Herslev Bryghus, and my theory turned out to be right. At a quarter past eight Diana came out dressed in a new suit.

  Mies had been heading towards Lyrskovgade and while I credited him with the best of intentions and felt certain he had invited me to his gig out of the sheer goodness of his heart, I was equally sure that Diana had received word of my impending absence with relief. It was one thing her reserving the right to decide for herself who she wanted to share herself with, but it was quite another that she couldn’t be doing with the difficulty of me.

  I waited three minutes before following her, and I knew which way she’d gone because she always took Flensborggade no matter what. I stuck to the other side of Sønder Boulevard, keeping an appropriate distance. She turned into Kødbyen’s meat-packing district at the corner by the Chicky Grill and I watched her until she went into Jolene’s.

  An electronica duo usually play only one set, forty-five minutes, give or take, and since going in would be too risky I retreated some sixty metres and sat outside Karriere Bar with a glass of white and my legitimising notebook on the table in front of me in order to survey the situation from a comfortable vantage point. Bands were always set up by the DJ booth at the far end, and my plan was to slip in once they were finished. I wanted to hit the half-hour when friends and hangers-on were milling around the band, and I was in no doubt about where exactly I would find Diana.

  I had just got started on my second glass when they began to play, and judging by what seeped out they were relatively tuneful: heavy bass and drums, and high, almost falsetto vocals that almost certainly belonged to Mies. The idiom was simple and melancholic and the songs were short. The windows steamed up inside and people applauded longer than politeness decreed.

  ‘Come on, old mate, that’s Menu Rabbit on in there, and you’re coming in with me.’

  Levinsen had grown a moustache and it suited him.

  ‘I’m fine here,’ I said. ‘They’re good, though. Great name.’

  ‘Isn’t Diana in there?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t tell her you’ve seen me,’ I said.

  Levinsen smiled, clueless.

  ‘It’s a surprise,’ I said.

  He gave me a hug and I tried to relax into it.

  ‘Vallin, for fuck’s sake! You’re so mega old-school!’

  At ten o’clock the crowd were chanting for the encore and I went and got a double whisky, knocked it back in one and went over. I scanned the bar area through the big window and once I’d made sure Diana wasn’t in the first bit I opened the door and went in. My timing was perfect. I stood in a corner by the exit from where I could survey the stage area and still remain hidden among the punters.

  Behind the DJ booth was a makeshift backstage area and Mies and a dark-haired guy with wolflike features, his bandmate, I supposed, stood all but surrounded by a thick wedge of admirers. Directly in front of them were the genteel, older crowd: family and long-standing neighbours, perhaps; behind them a garland of friends and professionals. Diana was in the third tier with the journalists, hangers-on and oversexed girls, but was making her way through the ranks, and I reckoned she was focused enough on that for me to close in a bit. I made note of some strategic points on my route: blind spots, groups behind which to duck. My goal was the little smokers’ recess with the front-room furnishings to the right of the DJ booth. It would be perfect, allowing me a close-up, side-on view of the parties involved without much chance of being discovered.

&nbs
p; I had just sought cover behind three guys in sweatshirts and Palestinian scarves when I felt a tug on my trouser leg.

  ‘Vallin! Have you got a sec?’

  Levinsen was seated in the company of three eccentrically clad teenagers in turbans and sunglasses.

  I smiled and waved him away.

  ‘I was just telling the girls here about our summer hols. They refuse to believe Mies was running around starkers in Tisvilde.’

  ‘We’ll be there next year with no clothes on,’ said Sister Turban.

  At that moment Diana turned round and I ducked and crouched down.

  ‘Have you heard of Diana Kiss?’ said Levinsen.

  They nodded and their jewellery rattled.

  ‘Vallin’s here to propose to her.’

  The Turban Sisters clapped their hands.

  ‘Go, tiger, go, go!’ Levinsen said in English, and slapped my behind.

  Diana had made sufficient progress to nearly be at the front now, and rather boldly I decided to leave my hard-won refuge in favour of standing behind a tall guy in the crowd so as to bring myself within earshot.

  It all took place a metre and a half in front of me.

  Diana was now standing in front of Mies with a big smile on her face and only then did I realise I hadn’t thought things through to their conclusion. It was no surprise to me that she threw her arms around his neck and whispered words in his ear, or that it hurt to see them so intimately together, but I had no idea whatsoever as to what exactly I was to do next.

  I couldn’t blame her for falling in love, and certainly not with a person like Mies, the thoroughly decent, physically perfect and in every respect promising young man that he was.

  I looked down at my scuffed leather shoes and then at all the open faces that surrounded me, all of them fifteen years younger, if not twenty. I thought about being that young again, that all-consuming excitement of leaving an unfamiliar flat with a new scent lingering in the nostrils.

  I had just resolved to beat a retreat when Mies abruptly raised his voice:

  ‘Get lost, Diana!’

  The throng parted and her eyes were lowered to the floor as she left. She passed so close I could smell her shampoo.

  The next time I took Charlie back to Helene, she had just got out of the bath when we got there. She was all steamy under her robe and fragrant with wild rose moisturiser as she cubed and diced a lump of butter. On the chopping board were two chunky fillets of turbot, and in the pot some shallots were simmering away in white wine.