Am I Cold

by Martin Kongstad

  A design shop was followed by a place selling skateboarding gear and then a café with futuristic lighting and a smartly dressed younger clientele. I showed the owner my photo of Diana and he told me the place had only been going for three years and shook his head.

  Was Kiss a Jewish name? I had the feeling I was on the right track and braced myself to run into her round the next corner. Part of my plan was to visit every laundry on my way. The first one was run by Chinese. I called Diana’s number, only to get her answerphone again. From a third-floor window came the purest of scales from a violin. A couple of side streets further on, an opera singer was practising. There were spacious bookstores and shops selling musical instruments and classical records.

  The second laundry was Hungarian-owned. The woman was wearing a white coat and took time to study the photo. I got my little notepad out that I’d taken from the hotel and wrote the name Kiss, endeavouring by means of gestures and drawings to explain that the woman I was looking for was the daughter of a woman who ran a laundry business. The woman’s face lit up and she handed me a stack of flyers advertising a good deal on shirts.

  In a basement drinking place all I got was filthy innuendo, and the dreadlocked bartender in the anarchist café eyed me suspiciously. I had goulash soup at Menza, a smart restaurant in the flashy street called Liszt Ferenc tér that messed around with a kitsch aesthetic for those in the know. The waiters didn’t know Diana, but then I started on the bars one by one. At the scruffiest of them they were playing The Doors and airing the place out after the excesses of the night before. ‘Yes, I remember her,’ an Australian bartender said. ‘She used to come here all the time, but it’s been years.’

  ‘Do you know where she lived?’

  ‘Can’t say I do, mate. A bunch of girls, you know.’

  ‘Do you remember any names?’

  ‘Arhhh… Maria was another. They used to hang out all the time.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know her last name, would you?’

  ‘Sorry, mate. Never any time for proper introductions here.’

  I left the Jewish quarter and found Andrássy Ut, a surrogate Champs Élysées with dashed hopes. Posters advertised concerts by Vaya con Dios, Kiss and Paul Anka. The shops still had their high ceilings, but were now full of crap and cheap mobile phones.

  The Academy of Fine Arts was at the top end, and the girl at reception was helpful enough:

  ‘We have the files from 2000 and 2001, but I’ll have to go through them manually. It could take a week.’

  Dinner at the hotel restaurant was a definite mistake. The tablecloths were damask, the tables themselves placed too far apart, the diners few and far between. The waiters in full get-up struck all the right poses, but the lobster soup tasted of stock cube, the salmon mousse had a perilous smell about it, and the steak had been overdone by about half an hour.

  I decided to go for an evening stroll and have a beer before bedtime. The hotel’s back entrance led out on to a quiet side street and a hundred metres further on two girls with a map stopped me and asked the way. They were from Pécs in the southern part of the country and were going to a hairdressing fair the next day on the other side of the river.

  They were interested to learn of my endeavour and we walked together towards the Danube. They were about twenty-five years old, one rather short and provincially broad-bottomed, the other somewhat taller and decent looking, both of them bright, uncomplicated and good humoured. I suggested a generic English pub, but they were more for the place next door, a bar advertising the best cocktails in town, and it looked like the kind of place that would get lively later on.

  The doormen hung around at the bar and inside were two couples on dates, high-backed chairs, black candles in rectangular glass candlesticks and dreadful high-tech art on the walls. The way they studied the cocktail menu was rather ravishing.

  I made do with a Heineken served in a tall, thin glass with a blue base and stem, most likely to justify bumping up the price.

  Rebecca and Olga wanted to hear all about my romantic mission and couldn’t get enough of my and Diana’s relationship. In Hungary, they said, it would be unthinkable for a man to engage in such a project.

  The sexes had drifted apart after the dissolution of the Eastern bloc.

  Women now took an education, were ambitious, industrious and outgoing, while men carried on as they had done under communism: they drank too much, were lazy and incapable of providing any kind of qualified sounding board.

  Olga was a good example. She had her own salon, went on courses in London and Amsterdam and had got a divorce the year before.

  I asked about the hairdressing fair and she told me about the competition.

  The theme was extensions, and she knew most of the other competitors and reckoned she had a fair chance of winning. Rebecca was always her model. They had both been talented sports dancers in their teenage years.

  It was half past eleven. I asked for the bill.

  ‘Have you got a picture of Diana?’ Rebecca asked.

  She studied it intensely and said something to Olga.

  The bill was a hundred and eighty-eight thousand forint, about four hundred and eighty kroner, expensive for Hungary.

  The girls seemed to be arguing and had raised their voices. I got my money out and realised I didn’t have anywhere near enough. I did the sums again and this time it came to four thousand eight hundred kroner.

  ‘I think there’s some mistake,’ I said to the bartender. ‘We had six cocktails and three beers. The bill’s way too high.’

  I showed him, only he didn’t bother to look. ‘I made it out myself,’ was all he said.

  ‘You’re charging me a hundred euros for a cocktail. I never saw prices like this anywhere in the world. How do you explain that?’

  ‘This is a VIP bar,’ he said.

  ‘This is illegal.’

  ‘The price list is on display in the window,’ he said.

  I was just another horny middle-aged punter.

  ‘There’s a cashpoint on the other side of the street, sir.’

  Rebecca was unable to look me in the eye. Olga was as cold as ice.

  ‘Listen, I’m a journalist from Denmark and I’m writing about Budapest.’

  The black doormen fronted up.

  ‘If you don’t have the money in cash, I will allow you to go to the cashpoint on the other side of the street, sir. No problem.’

  The girls got up and left.

  ‘I thought you were nice,’ I said.

  The bartender and the three doormen accompanied me over to the cashpoint.

  I had a good look to make sure I remembered the place, then strode purposefully off back to the hotel to report the incident.

  Rebecca was waiting at the entrance.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know Diana. You can meet me tomorrow at twelve o’clock.’

  She handed me a note that said Café Csiga and the address.

  The place was in Józsefváros, a district I’d have been worried about visiting in the dark.

  She was seated at the bar. Her hair was tied in a ponytail. She looked older without her make-up and there was an almost dejected air about her. Her name wasn’t Rebecca at all, but Maria, she said, and she had never been a hairdresser’s model in her life.

  She handed me forty-seven thousand forint, her share of the spoils, and I tried to ease the situation by praising her acting skills, but the previous night’s events had been no one-off performance and tonight she would be back at work.

  I ordered two beers from the Irish bartender.

  ‘Can you show me where Diana’s mother lives?’ I said.

  ‘Just around the corner,’ she said.

  She told me she’d lost contact with Diana in 2000.

  ‘Diana got involved with Mr Jørn.’

  ‘Her Danish violinist?’ I said.

  ‘He’s a jerk,’ she said. ‘He fucked up her mind.’

  She and Diana had been inseparable since Ye
ar Three.

  ‘I miss her,’ she said. ‘It was so funny to work with her.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Diana was a consumer girl like me. The best! Every night she invented a new story.’

  ‘She’s an artist now,’ I said.

  ‘Diana can be anybody,’ she said.

  We drank up and turned down the first side street.

  Maybe Maria was ashamed of not getting on in life. She pointed towards the laundry and shook my hand.

  ‘You’re a nice girl,’ I said.

  ‘I do bad things,’ she said.

  The street was cobbled and the house was small and consisted of two storeys.

  Diana’s mother was short and stocky with jet-black hair. She was wearing a pink smock and her calves were a criss-cross of varicose veins. I introduced myself as a friend of Diana’s and explained that Maria had shown me the way.

  ‘Diana?’ she said.

  ‘Is Diana here?’ I said, twirling a finger in the air to indicate the home.

  ‘Diana not here,’ she said.

  ‘Diana out with Nona?’ I said.

  ‘Diana not here.’

  ‘And Nona?’

  ‘No… na?’

  ‘Her daughter. The child.’

  I mimed a child in my arms.

  ‘Child?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Nona.’

  ‘No Nona,’ she said.

  She beckoned for me to step behind the counter.

  ‘Come, come!’

  We went up some narrow, crooked stairs and through two small rooms full of bric-a-brac and embroidered cushions.

  She opened a low, brown-painted door and smiled.

  ‘Diana!’ she said.

  There was no sign of habitation. The room had been left untouched.

  ‘May I?’ I said, stepping inside. A bell tinkled downstairs in the shop.

  ‘Look, look,’ she said, and left me on my own.

  The room was bigger than the two through which we had passed, and faced out to the street.

  In the corner was a three-quarter-width bed with a black cover on it, and the little art deco lamp on the desk looked like something she might have saved up for. Bjarne Riis smiled down from the centre of the noticeboard, the gleaming white teeth and lean, tanned face. Next to him was a photocopy of the piece I’d done for Urban: In defence of the mother who abandons the nest.

  There was a Polaroid of Diana on her bike with a silver medal draped around her neck, and another of her and Maria taken at the Carnival. But where was Diana if she wasn’t here?

  Had she gone somewhere with Nona?

  The bookcase was full of books in Danish: Gift by Tove Ditlevsen, several of Suzanne Brøgger’s and Henrik Stangerup’s, Lykke-Per and Kongens Fald. Den Store Danske Encyklopædi took up the bottom two shelves and above it was a row of VHS cassettes: Pelle Erobreren, Café Paradis, Helle Ryslinge’s Sirup and all twenty-four episodes of Matador.

  Diana’s mother came back upstairs from the shop.

  ‘Where is Nona’s room?’ I said.

  She frowned and threw up her arms.

  ‘Look!’ she said, then mimed cycling and pulled out a drawer under the desk. The first ten pages of the scrapbook were full of cuttings from local papers and were all about Diana’s road-racing victories. After that, it was empty.

  I noticed a folder with my name on it. The xeroxed pages inside were articles, interviews and columns I’d written, all in chronological order and dating back to the beginning of the nineties and my time as a music reviewer.

  ‘Do you know Mr Jørn?’ I said.

  She mimed playing the violin and I nodded.

  ‘One moment,’ she said, then went away and came back with a little phone book.

  I thanked her and rang the number as soon as I was outside again.

  Hypodermics littered some basement stairs and his voice sounded younger than I’d expected.

  I called Diana’s number again from the taxi.

  Jørn Schelenius lived in a beautifully tatty palatial building on Szófia Ut and was hardly older than me, average height, thick, dark brown hair greying at the temples and insistent furrows that ran between his nose and the corners of his mouth. His feet splayed outwards when he walked, his shoulders were a gentle gradient and his eyes were blue and moist.

  He was in pre-washed Replay jeans, a white-and-blue-striped Ralph Lauren shirt and ordinary black leather shoes.

  His living room was high-ceilinged and from the little bay window he could look down and keep an eye on what was happening on the street below. The walls were covered in art: there was a collage of Birkemose’s, a pair of non-figurative oil canvases of debatable quality and a quirky woman in urbane surroundings by Seppo Mattinen. He poured a beer into two glasses and sat down in an armchair with a little sigh of discomfort.

  ‘My knees tell me it’s autumn,’ he said.

  The furniture looked like heirlooms from a bygone bourgeois home.

  ‘How long have you lived in Budapest?’ I asked.

  ‘Twelve years this May,’ he said.

  ‘When did you meet Diana?’

  He laughed loudly, but not because it was funny.

  ‘It was at an opening over in the ghetto. She found out I was Danish, and you know what she’s like, of course.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Over the years I’ve met quite a number of the world’s great soloists. These are people who practise twelve, fourteen hours a day. But I dare say none comes anywhere near focusing the way Diana does. After two months of Danish lessons she could make herself understood. After six months she spoke the language better than most.’

  He scratched his chin as if he had a beard.

  ‘That requires two things! A brain bordering on the autistic, and overriding ruthlessness. She keeps her head down and doesn’t look up. Diana never looks up! Because if she did, she would see only her victims, writhing around in the ditches in agony.’

  He took a sip of his beer and I felt sure he had been eating bread made of rye and wheat flour.

  ‘Diana Kiss has a personality disorder,’ he said. ‘It took me a long time to realise it, and it was not a welcome admission, but it did make things clearer.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘The same day she left for Copenhagen. She just upped and went.’

  ‘Now she’s left Copenhagen in the same way,’ I said.

  ‘I knew you were next in line.’

  ‘We’ve had a lovely time together,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t need to tell me. Of course you’ve had a lovely time together! She lifted you up out of your bag of bones and the only thing you could think about was wanting more. Am I right?’

  I refused to indulge him with so much as a nod, and his embittered laughter was getting on my nerves so much I had to look away.

  ‘It’s a pity we can’t learn from others’ mistakes,’ he said. ‘We must all learn the hard way, I’m afraid.’

  He had to go and teach, and showed me to the door. A children’s drawing hung in the hall.

  ‘Is that one of Nona’s?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, she told you about Nona.’

  ‘She came here for her birthday.’

  One of his knees appeared to buckle and his eyes glazed over.

  ‘She’ll be seven tomorrow,’ he said, and breathed in deeply to hold back the tears. ‘We’ll always have Nona, at least.’

  ‘Are you Nona’s father?’ I said.

  ‘You could say.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Nona has yet to become manifest in the physical world.’

  I took a taxi back to the laundry and explained to Diana’s mother that I needed to use her phone.

  Diana answered immediately.

  BERLIN, OCTOBER 2008

  We agreed to meet at the Würgeengel on Dresdener Strasse. I came straight from the airport and got there an hour early.

  It looked like a place that had been open since
1924.

  The long bar curved elegantly and in front of it were twelve bar stools with red leather upholstery. The ceiling was latticed glass and the dim lighting came from candelabras and a chandelier. A lot could go on in that semi-darkness. The bartender was in a shirt and waistcoat and had tucked his tie between two buttons. I studied the comprehensive menu: the classic cocktails set out according to key ingredient, a large selection of rum and whisky; indeed, just about any alcoholic beverage the heart might desire and all expertly selected. They even had mescal.

  I ordered a glass of Grauburgunder and seated myself at the bar.

  The girls were pretty starlet types and preferred their drinks strong and tart rather than package-holiday sweet, while the guys, in suit trousers, plain shirts and Hush Puppies, went for American classics.

  I was on my second glass when she ran her warm fingers down my neck. Her hair was cut short to the roots, accentuating the beauty of her features. People turned their heads to look at her.

  She was wearing an anorak.

  ‘What happened?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve found my face.’

  It was an utterance that would have frightened the life out of me in the nineties.

  ‘I was at this heavy bar in Friedrichshain with chains hanging from the ceiling and Jack Daniel’s as far as you could see. The bartender was this big girl with dark red hair. She kept looking at me and I couldn’t work out if she wanted to get off with me or if she was annoyed with me because of my clothes. But then at one point she came round the tables collecting empties and put her hand on my shoulder as she went past. It was her smell that did it.’

  ‘What did she smell of?’

  ‘Geraniums.’

  We ordered Moscow Mules and I told her about my trip to Budapest in chronological order, and now and then she had to interrupt to ask about Maria. She told me the hairdressing story was one she had made up ten years earlier, and then she wanted to know what I thought about her mother and whether I’d noticed how she never touched the ground when she walked.

  ‘Jørn told me about Nona,’ I said. ‘Why did you invent her?’

  ‘Jørn took Nona for himself. I should never have told him about her.’