Copenhagen Noir

by Bo Tao Michaelis

  “Damnit, I left without my wallet.”

  “Old habits … ?” I couldn’t help it. So often in the past I had seen him bumming cigarettes off unpaid gofers or underpaid stagehands. He wasn’t actually stingy, he was just thoughtless. One time, many years ago, he’d asked if I had a smoke on me. “I’ve only got one left,” I answered, and showed him the pack to prove I wasn’t lying. “That’s all right.” He grabbed the pack out of my hand, asked for a light, slapped me on the shoulder, and went back to the shot. Strange, the memories you drag around with you.

  He hadn’t heard me, it looked as though he was struggling to remember something. He was several years older than me, fast closing in on fifty, the bohemian, longish dark hair was salt-and-pepper in spots. A handsome man, as I’ve said, but much smaller in person. In photos he always looked like some tall, half-decadent aristocrat, but he was only five-seven. At least I had him there, I was almost six-three.

  “Give me the lighter while you run up.”

  Erik Rützou gaped at me, lifted the marble-white Bodil statuette. “You think I’ll run off on you? Do you not have any idea who I am!?” He fell over, laughing. “You can have this fucking statuette, I already have at least ten others. What do you say?” Light from the streetlamp fell across his face, cutting it in half to resemble a black-and-white mask. He was actually quite pale, I noticed. As if he had seen a ghost. But apparently he hadn’t. “Then you could brag that you won a Bodil. Tell the kids about the time you won the Bodil. Ha!”

  As far as my children went, they’d probably prefer that their mother got the child support I owed her. It kept adding up.

  “The lighter,” I repeated.

  “How do I know you won’t run off!?”

  “So a stupid lighter means more than this …” I couldn’t bring myself to utter the word “Bodil.” It was ridiculous, but I was a bit sensitive about the matter.

  “Why don’t you come up with me? Have a shot. And get your money.” He already had the door open, his patent-leather shoes dangling out of the car, as if he was carefully testing the water’s temperature. We could drown in this dark, cold river.

  “I can’t park here.” I rolled on further; the side door was still open, the cold rushed in, the parked cars were bumper to bumper, I ended up parking halfway up on the sidewalk in front of a classy little shop that sold homemade chocolate.

  We walked back through a large passageway and up a neat, well-kept, red-carpeted stairway.

  On one floor Rützou cast a knowing glance at the nameplate. “The old prime minister, you know.”

  I didn’t answer, for I was wondering why he hadn’t brought some little sweet thing home with him. That wasn’t like him, but maybe someone was up there warming his bed. Moreover, he looked even smaller than what I remembered, as if he had shrunk. He gasped for breath. Finally we reached his floor. My breathing wasn’t normal, either. Winded, he pushed the door open and showed me into his entry, or hallway, where the ceiling was high, stuccoed everywhere. Rützou set his Bodil down distractedly on an antique bureau, as if it were his daily mail, ads. An umbrella stand lay overturned, a large gold-framed mirror hung crooked, and a massive floor vase had been knocked over in the next room; the tall, shriveled, reedlike flowers looked like spears or enormous pickup sticks, and I spotted something on the wall that looked like blood but was just red wine, of course, a flowing stain with a delta of thin blue-red vessels. Lights on everywhere, as if he’d left abruptly. On a low table between two mahogany chairs, though most of the pieces had fallen on the floor, a few pawns and a bishop still stood, lonely and confused on a chessboard.

  “A damn mess in here.” Instead of lifting the floor vase back up, he stepped over it and crossed immediately to the bar, also dark mahogany. I had been expecting that he’d surrounded himself with Arne Jacobsen furniture and contemporary design, that cool, consistent Scandinavian style, but the rooms mostly resembled some English manor; all they lacked was a pair of cocker spaniels and a portrait of the family patriarch, the old major, above the mantel. Maybe that’s what living in conservative Frederiksberg does to you. Back then he was a real left-winger.

  “Whiskey? Cognac? Or … ?”

  “Just whiskey, straight, thanks.”

  He pushed a thick little glass over to me, flung his arms out, irritated.

  “Stupid bitch. Well, it’s over now.” Oddly enough, he looked thoroughly happy at the thought. “Are you married, uh … ?”

  I hesitated, it was as if he’d been about to say something more. My name, maybe.

  “I have a girlfriend.” Yes, I did. The problem was that she’d just gotten a job in Greenland as a social worker. They were badly needed up there. But I needed her too.

  “I’m finished with women.” Rützou finally righted the floor vase, and with a simple, delicate operation arranged the dried flowers or whatever they were, took a pillow that for reasons unknown had ended up on a windowsill, and tossed it over on one of the large, plush sofas. I sipped my whiskey, stood over in the window bay, glanced down at the boulevard, the leafless trees. A single car lurched off, moments later a taxi shot by.

  “This is a nice place here,” I said, not even trying to hide my sarcasm, “with the theaters and the cafés and the park up the street. Quiet. The perfect place for the perfect solitary life.”

  “You think? Well.”

  “And it’s only a ten-minute walk to Vesterbro. If a person needs drugs or sex.”

  He laughed shortly. Drank. “Are you insinuating that I’m the type who beats off in a booth at the Hawaii Bio?”

  “They have booths in there?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Really? Because we were in there together once, Erik.” Short pause, the famous theatrical pause. “After filming a scene.”

  Boozily, half-focused, he stared at me.

  I swore silently. The words had just jumped out of my mouth. I hadn’t meant to reveal myself, but the situation had gripped me, it was almost like standing on stage again, or in front of the whirring cameras. With a firm grip on the role. But the feeling was short-lived and empty. I drank greedily, as if I could somehow swallow the words back again.

  “We were? Sorry, but I know a million people. And vice versa,” he added, not without a certain satisfaction.

  I seethed.

  “After filming, you say? Are you a soundman or something? Give me a hint …”

  “Forget it,” I mumble.

  “Okay, let’s forget it. Such are the times, and the people. Forgetful, and I must pee.” He stood up, brushed back his dark mane, more from old habit, I thought, sent me one of his impish smiles, and then I heard his steps dwindling down an apparently endless hallway.

  I don’t know. I could have taken off. He was gone a long time. I could have grabbed his Bodil and smashed everything in sight and continued through the double doors into the dining room, I could … Instead I finished off the whiskey and poured another. I spotted a pack of Marlboros on the coffee table, mine were all gone, I fished one out, stuck the pack in my inside pocket; when I thought about how many he had bummed from me in his time, he’d survive …

  Finally I heard the thin sound of a toilet flushing far away, a door slamming open, steps approaching. More steps.

  I stuck my head out in the long hallway.

  “Did you see where I put that idiotic Bodil?” he blustered, from somewhere. The kitchen, I thought.

  “Out in the entryway. The hallway.”

  “That’s right.”

  He tottered out from a doorway, floundered past me, came back.

  I sat down in the living room in a wing-back chair, sniffed the whiskey, drank. Could already make out the bottom.

  “It could be I do remember you. Faintly. Søren, isn’t it? I remember being out on a drinking binge with a soundman once after a shoot. Think we ended up at a hooker bar in Vesterbro. Was that you?”

  “Yeah, let’s say that.”

  “And now you drive a cab?”
/>   “You got it.”

  “Do you recall us fucking any women that night, Søren?”

  “Till they couldn’t walk.”

  “Which is how it should be. Let’s drink to that.”

  “But … now you’re finished with women?”

  Rützou hesitated a moment, then smiled modestly. “Absolutely finished, you can never be; they’re standing in line. But this woman here,” he cast one of his knowing glances around the room, “I am thoroughly finished with.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “luckily new women keep showing up, new roles. I mean, for someone like you …”

  He coughed. “Sorry?”

  I repeated what I had said, word for word. As if I were learning it again. Acting. For it may have been half an eternity since we had seen each other, since we, well, had acted together. Together from morning to night at rehearsals. Hit the town together, bent some arms, chased women. All of that. But if he really couldn’t remember me, he’d have had to be suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s. And despite everything, that didn’t appear to be the case. But something was wrong. He seemed to be a shadow of himself. We actually resembled each other. Again.

  “Pouring in,” came the delayed response, as if he didn’t really care to tune into the conversation’s wavelength.

  “But maybe it’s dangerous when a guy thinks he can walk on water,” I said softly.

  “What do you mean by that, Søren?”

  “Cut the Søren shit. I nearly fell for it, but … how stupid do you think I am?”

  “I wouldn’t know. But you look like a half-brained overweight cab driver, I can see that much.”

  “And you look like a sick cream puff. But I’m disappointed in you, Erik. Overplaying this way. Even if I’ve put on a few pounds since back then.”

  “What could he be babbling about?” he emoted, speaking to the stucco rosette on the ceiling, hamming it up. Then breaking out in a horse laugh, bending over, slapping his knee. “Of course, Klaus, damnit. It’s you. Now I remember you! But I thought you were dead and gone …”

  “You recognized me the first second. And you still didn’t say a thing …”

  “Let’s say that, then.”

  “Yeah, let’s.”

  “Listen, my friend. That girl who biked right in front of you. I just wanted to get home. I couldn’t get a cab, I didn’t want to go into town with the others. Tap on the window, see a middle-aged fat guy who looks familiar. What’s his name? I’m thinking. But I meet people all the goddamn time. I’m sorry, Klaus, but you’ve been out of the picture for fucking twenty years!”

  “Fifteen,” I replied childishly. “And now I’m the one who has to piss.”

  Along the way I took the opportunity to explore the apartment, the rooms. The bedroom was no exception to the strange sense of disintegration that filled the apartment: clothes were scattered all over, shirts, suit jackets, wardrobe doors stood wide open revealing rows of suits, the big double bed was unmade. A large ceiling fan whirled around for no reason, weekly magazines and pages of dialogue lay on the floor. The office was a cave of relics from a long, successful life. A big framed film poster from one of his most famous roles, a few small paintings from a wild, well-known Danish artist, and high shelves, completely filled up. But the shelves held more than books: photo albums, piles of gossip mags, scrapbooks, a pith helmet, bits of kinky eroticism, including an enormous phallus. In one corner, a southern French village of wine in unopened gift boxes and solid wooden crates. A desk globe inside of which I envisioned a cosmos of liquor bottles, a brand-new set of golf clubs parked against an easy chair. A couple more Bodils stood in a windowsill. Despite everything, it hadn’t amounted to more than that. A gigantic desk with a laptop. Along with a horde of photos framed behind glass of Rützou alongside diverse beauties and famous colleagues, the desk was flooded with manuscripts, invitations, bank statements. I picked up a random letter from the bank—he was loaded, the bastard. Then I found another letter. The sender’s official name and logo was up in the corner. I picked it up …

  When I returned, he abruptly said: “It’s your fault that I’m sitting here. In a tux and bow tie.”

  “Really?”

  “I preferred the stage. Sensing the audience in the theater, sitting in the dressing room, going out for a beer afterward with everyone. Film felt very lonesome to me. No, not lonesome, fragmented, you might say. You know: you show up, say your lines, walk off, and that’s it. You might meet with the actors at the premiere.” He inspected his well-groomed hands, the whiskey glass he had set down the chess table, a short and stout rook, golden brown. “But then you simply vanished that time, called in sick or whatever it was that happened …”

  “When?”

  “Playing the innocent, are we? That leading role in the Carlsen film was yours. Have you repressed that, man? You must think I’m senile. You disappeared off the face of the earth, so they called me instead.” Rützou flung out his arms again, theatrically, and there was nothing else he needed to say: that film was his breakthrough, the roles started pouring in afterward.

  “You’ve performed at the Royal Theater between all the films, I know that much, Erik. Even at Kronborg! I think I’ve seen you in commercials too. And some really bad family films.” The kids loved them.

  “Everything except the old bawdy films,” he laughed. “They were before my time. But you’re right.” He stifled a belch. “But anyway.”

  “You raked in the roles and the money, man.”

  “I have.” He nodded solemnly. “I have,” he repeated. “And ladies.” He tasted the word, stretched it out, lay-deeze. “But … what happened, really, back then?”

  “Uh … yeah.” Another cigarette. “It was … it was nerves,” I admitted, after a second. I had nothing to lose. Maybe I even needed to talk about it; I had never told this to anyone, not even my wife back then, definitely not the kids. “The pressure was too much. I couldn’t handle it. The thought of playing that part, I couldn’t wait for it to start, I was so happy, and I was dying of fright. Not just performance anxiety, but real anxiety. The long and short of it is, I crashed.”

  “And when you finally got up again, it wasn’t so easy to find parts,” he added sympathetically; that is, malevolently.

  “No, it was easy enough, at first. Certain bit parts. Like the deranged bar type, and the disgusting apartment caretaker. Always halfway drunk. The guy nobody likes.”

  “Oh yeah,” Rützou said. “It’s so tiresome playing yourself all the time. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s why I have always taken various parts. Hamlet one day, beer commercials the next. But listen, Klaus. You could have worked your way back, slowly. But you gave up.”

  “Yeah, I did. It wasn’t fun anymore. And I couldn’t bring in enough to make a go of it, financially.”

  “Financially! Bah! I have a good friend, a well-known writer. He’s not exactly swimming in money but he writes anyway. Because he can, won’t do anything else.”

  “Does he have a rich wife?”

  “No, Klaus. He’s got balls!”

  I finished off the whiskey, hissed: “I’m groveling at your feet, Erik. You are the greatest. And the ride’s on me.” I got ready to stand up. “Thanks for the drink.”

  “Plural, if I may say. You have put away two very serious drinks. Downed them. Doubt you can drive. You want to destroy your glorious taxi career too?”

  “I was close to a Bodil for best off-meter driving, right?”

  “Ooh, I had forgotten how screamingly funny you can be. Listen: you can still get it, Klaus.” He reached for the bottle of whiskey on the chess table between us, some expensive brand I’d never heard of. The Bodil stood there too, tall and elegant, as if it was silently listening. “Stay for a while, let’s have a nightcap.”

  I sank down in the chair, held my empty glass out like some beggar. He had hit my weak spot. I’ve never been good at saying no. If I lost my driver’s license, then … Usually I drank only after work and on off-days.
Except for the few drops of aquavit in my thermos.

  “What can I still get?” I said, mad at myself.

  “The lady here.” He stuck the statuette up in my face. I pushed his hand away, but he kept sitting there waving it around. “A special-award Bodil. For all you could have accomplished …”

  Of course I wanted to smack him, but I had driven a cab for so long and met so many extremely drunk people or just plain brain-dead types that I had learned to control myself. People had vomited all over my gearshift and my clothes, they had put a stranglehold on me from the backseat, they had tried to run from the fare, even that stoned-out floozy from Skovlunde without any money who invited me up, yeah, I hadn’t even smacked her when she screamed that I’d raped her when her boyfriend suddenly appeared in the apartment, a big dude. I hit him, sure, but in self-defense. The judge couldn’t understand what I was doing in her apartment, and my wife couldn’t either.

  Rützou fenced with the Bodil as if it were a sword or a scepter, right at the tip of my nose. I grabbed it and held it threateningly above him.

  “What the hell are you doing, Erik?” Now it was me doing the acting.

  “Getting you to wake up. You still have it in you. You are not a big zero. All this could have been yours. But you were an amateur. You blew it all. And look at yourself now, what you’ve become: a beer gut in a cheap leather jacket. It looks like something you bought on the black market in Moldavia. All that’s missing is the mustache. And by the way,” he added off-handedly, “you should do something about your eyebrows, they look like two goddamn bushes.”

  He sat close to me now, leaning forward, a scruffy birdlike figure in a tux.

  “What happened with your girlfriend?” I asked.

  “Fuck her.”

  “You threw her out, didn’t you? You’re throwing everything out, aren’t you? Cleaning house.” I laughed, pointed to the chaos in the room. “If you can call this cleaning house.”