Living with a relative in the area was a boy who called himself Bölverk. He did the work of nine and was cheap to feed. When it came to wages, the only thing he asked for was a glass of the famous drink; it had to be somewhere in the neighbourhood. His request was denied. But he did find out where the drink was stored.
Bölverk picked up a drill and bored his way into the mountain, wriggling his way through the hole like a snake until he entered the cave where the obstinate Gunnlöd kept watch.
She didn’t see many people inside that cellar, of course. Yet suddenly here was a man in the prime of his life, saying that she certainly could tolerate the light of day. One thing led to another. After the first night, a desire awakened that was found to be pleasant and right and proper. After the second night, they became even more aroused.
Only after three long nights was their desire assuaged. Bölverk was thirsty. He asked to be allowed to take three gulps from the famous drink. Gunnlöd was sated and compliant. He could do whatever the hell he liked.
With the first gulp he emptied Odrärer, with the second gulp Bodn and with the third Sön.
Only the Old Man, at the height of his powers, could possibly hold so much. Wise but drunk, he flew home as an eagle. Suttung, the rightful owner, was hot on his heels. The Old Man managed to get all the way home, although he shat a good deal onto the ground.
The shit was allowed to pass for second-rate goods, the allotment for lousy skalds, what any mediocre poet could lap up.
The real goods were well protected, a mighty vomit that was poured into fine, new casks. It would turn many chosen individuals into wise and great skalds. Perhaps their appearance might give a hint as to how the drink tasted. Those that Hanck had seen perform had a number of features in common. They might seem different in both appearance and style, but they nearly always had a stern, solemn, almost tormented look on their faces, perhaps an appropriate look for men and women who were burdened by serious thoughts and who cultivated this expression so that it might evoke the desired credence. But once you found out what they had tasted, their expression took on a whole different meaning.
Hanck refused to draw the conclusion that all knowledge was meant to awaken disgust, no matter how tempting that concept might be.
He took a roundabout way this time, avoiding the open square in front of the palace and approaching the queue from a different direction, heading straight for the main entrance. There stood a couple of stolid-looking guards in uniform to keep order and receive testimonials and letters of recommendation of various types that people submitted. With an indifferent expression a young giant accepted Hanck’s crumpled letter. He cast an eye at the addressee, as if he were able to read, but kept to himself whatever he might be thinking about the matter. The letter was sent on into the building.
Hanck moved a short distance away, turning his back to the queue. He didn’t want to meet the gaze of any of the desperate people who had stood there waiting for so long. It was clear what they thought about someone who tried to get in through the VIP entrance, people with contacts, a type of nomenklatura that were always given precedence.
Actually, Hanck had never heard of anyone who had gained admission in this way. No doubt there were other avenues for very important people. Perhaps that door was just an illusory possibility, the gap that had to exist in every closed system so that it wouldn’t seem totally hopeless and inhumane.
And yet, if it did work, if against all reasonable expectations it happened, then he ought to know what he was going to say. Like all the others in the queue he ought to rehearse his requests so that he could present them in a convincing manner: explain that his son had been killed by a member of the Clan and that he therefore considered it his right to see his son one last time.
Next to the queue stood a bunch of black singers who were singing a tune that Hanck recognised. The refrain went like this: ‘I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine . . .’
If only he could convey even an ounce of that feeling he’d be able to convince anyone, even the most hard-hearted, that his request was a reasonable one.
‘You over there!’ he heard behind his back. ‘You over there!’
He turned round. The young giant was pointing at him. At Hanck. He’d been waiting only five or ten minutes. ‘You’re wanted inside! Hurry up!’
Silence fell over the crowd; even the soul singers broke off. The woman who was serving up porridge in the mobile food cart stopped abruptly with the ladle hovering over a bowl. Hanck had been singled out, specially chosen.
The tall doors opened onto a narrow shaft with walls that were twenty metres high and made of sheer concrete. At the end of this shaft was a long stairway. Hanck was subjected to a thorough search, first done manually, then by X-rays in an enclosed chute. Having passed, he was then taken over to the stairs and told to hurry up.
It was a long climb. He had to stop and rest several times. The stairs ended at the roof level of the original buildings, the old façades that served as a template for the massive foundation. There a huge vista stretched out before him, an open hall with marble floors and tall pillars.
An intense amount of activity was going on. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people were busy at long desks with telephones and monitors where they were working with codes made up of numbers and abbreviations, exchanging them with others, from desk to desk, or with people who stood at a podium beneath a big monitor with other charts, numbers and codes. White-clad functionaries ran back and forth along the rows, their heels clacking on the floor; machines roared and telephones rang. The noise was deafening. Someone screamed out a code in panic; another shouted out a different code in triumph. One person was overjoyed and received slaps on the back. Another collapsed in despair.
It was business as usual, and had nothing to do with Hanck.
His arrival was expected. Guards stood in a long row and seemed to be competing in the art of looking officious and concerned. They ushered him into a lift.
The lift went straight up to the top floor, to the director’s residence. Here an entirely different atmosphere prevailed – unobtrusive, confidential, discreet, almost intimate. Two wolf-like dogs were waiting in the hall outside the lift. They inspected him, nodded approval, and then led the way across a burgundy, wall-to-wall carpet, through velvet drapes, doors of subdued woods with brass fittings, art on the walls in elegant gilt frames. Nineteenth-century masterpieces of the national romantic period depicting the Æsir gods, kings, ancient Nordic sacrifices, landings on faraway shores.
The dogs left Hanck in a room with low sofas, trays holding bottles, a glass table covered with newspapers and magazines with shiny covers, with more naked, rosy flesh painted in oils on the walls.
He went over to a row of windows and looked out over the city. Far below he could glimpse the swarm of people in the queue, the open square where sporadic and unpredictable commerce was conducted. Over there stretched the City Under the Roof, in a labyrinth of folds, nooks and crannies. Farther south was his part of the city; the three church towers rose up from a shapeless muddle, a frayed silhouette in the grey mist.
With a hissing, scraping sound a set of double doors opened. Hanck turned round and looked into an adjacent room that seemed completely dark until his eyes became accustomed to the dim light. From behind a heavy curtain a figure appeared, seated in a chair with a high back. A thin, grey-haired man with a patch over one eye, wearing a dark-blue silk robe, with a pair of skinny legs in transparent stockings and his feet stuck into a pair of dapper shoes with tassels. Two ravens, black-clad and moiré-glossy informants, perched on the armrests on either side of him.
It was a tableau, a scene intended to evoke respect, perhaps. But it didn’t look at all the way Hanck had imagined; the man bore very little resemblance to the one who had been described to him. He looked more like a modest government official, a relic from an old department that had been established by a king no one could remember, embedded somewhere in the Archaean
rock, with duties that only those with a good memory could explain.
But that was just a first impression. After a moment the man’s face emerged more clearly, the image became more contradictory. The lean, furrowed face was covered with spots, marks, and strangely shaped patches. It was weather-beaten in a way that only someone who had seen it with his own eyes would believe: realising that this man had sought knowledge in places where no one either dared go or was even capable of going. He had sat outside, in the open, under the hanged corpses and drawn in the essence of death in a quiet rain of rancid fat and maggots, letting slow vermin dig passages of light where the sun was shaded, like an endless, painful tattooing with blurred, secretive signs, duelling scars from the other side.
The Old Man was used to provoking surprise. He allowed himself to be studied, and out of routine and courtesy he chose to start with the arrangements surrounding him.
‘Security . . .’ he said lightly, as if dismissing it all.
Hanck could only nod mutely, a movement that with a moderate amount of exaggeration might seem like a courtly bow.
‘Please have a seat.’ The voice was powerful. It was a command. Hanck sat down in one of the deep sofas.
He now noticed that the Old Man was holding his letter of recommendation in one hand and tapping it with the other, pensively, or perhaps with a certain curiosity and animation. As if it contained a welcome surprise.
And he got straight to the point. ‘Where did you meet?’
Hanck said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ He heard the question but didn’t understand it.
‘Whereabouts did you meet?’
‘Meet who?’ said Hanck.
‘Loki.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never met this Loki. I’ve merely requested an audience so that – ’ The Old Man interrupted him without needing to raise his voice. ‘This letter . . .’ He waved the sheets of paper in his hand. ‘It’s about you, isn’t it? You’re a . . . a poet . . . it says here. And you were the one who submitted this letter. Didn’t you?’ He held up the two sheets covered with writing. Hanck recognised the elegant handwriting that he’d seen Lucy produce in the dim light of the Colonial Club.
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘It was a woman who wanted to put in a good word for me. But it was a – ’ ‘A “woman” . . .’ It wasn’t said sceptically but rather with scorn. ‘If you’d said a whore . . .’
‘I . . . I don’t usually judge,’ said Hanck.
‘Judging and writing are often the same thing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Hanck, ‘but that’s not exactly – ’ This time all the Old Man had to do was raise his hand. Hanck broke off.
‘This woman, whore or shithead . . .’ said the Old Man. ‘Call him what you like, but he’s made himself unavailable. It’s most unfortunate. Dangerous for all of us. I want to contact him. So I want to know where you met.’
‘We’re going to cut off his cock!’ said one of the moiré-glossy ravens.
‘We’ll have to see about that,’ said the Old Man.
He had the feeling that this whole thing was based on a misunderstanding. He felt dizzy.
The Old Man noticed. ‘Have a drink.’
Hanck did. He poured himself a healthy portion and downed as much as he could.
The Old Man waited in silence, allowing his guest to pull himself together. In hindsight Hanck would think that the man waited too long; a surprising breach of routine. The Old Man wanted something. Hanck was allowed to drink, reflect, and realise that he was in possession of some interesting information, and that he could make use of it. That he, the grey and anonymous person, had something of value.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Hanck Orn. Hanck with “ck” and Orn without the umlaut over the O.’
The Old Man cast a glance at one of the ravens. That was enough. The black moiré figure slipped soundlessly out of the room.
‘Have I read something about you?’
‘No,’ said Hanck, ‘that’s impossible, because I’m – ’
‘Wait!’ said the Old Man. ‘Hanck Orn . . . Hanck Orn . . . I recognise that name . . . Wait! I know it’ll come to me . . .’ He muttered Hanck’s name to himself for a moment without getting anywhere. ‘Oh well, it’ll come . . . So . . . where did the two of you meet?’
‘You mean the person who wrote that letter was Loki?’ said Hanck.
The Old Man nodded. ‘Correct.’
‘What if I had my doubts about that?’
‘That’s your problem. Where did you meet?’
One mistake after another, thought Hanck. The man shouldn’t have told him the truth, and he shouldn’t have offered him a drink. He reached for the bottle. ‘May I?’
The Old Man nodded in a friendly manner. ‘Help yourself.’
Hanck poured himself another good-sized drink and sank back against the sofa, aware that it might look lacking in respect.
The Old Man’s expression didn’t change. He had asked a question and knew that he would get an answer. He was prepared to go further. He held up the letter and read aloud, ‘“O Allfucker . . . I bring to you a bungler that I rescued from an abyss. He wants to write literature. He’s totally ingenuous, completely naïve and utterly self-absorbed. That’s the way you want them, isn’t that right?”’ The Old Man’s good eye was visible peering over the top edge of the paper. Perhaps he was waiting to see indignation, or at least the flush of shame. Hanck displayed neither.
The Old Man continued reading: ‘“I’ve also saved a cassock-wearing clergyman from death in a pool of piss and shit, where so many nowadays find salvation. But it was accidental (I happened to tickle him back to his senses). Who wouldn’t want to be the first fly on such a cadaver? Hence a total of two souls. And the day has just begun. What else can I do to appease you? Yours, Loki.”’
The Old Man lowered the piece of paper to his lap and looked at his guest, who at the moment was having a hard time meeting his glance. The guest was faced with a re-evaluation that would upset anyone’s equilibrium, no matter what sort of trump card he might be holding.
Hanck was allowed to gather his thoughts in peace and quiet, subjecting the testimony of his own senses to a merciless critique, realising that he had been blind, and that he might be blind still.
At any rate he didn’t notice when one of the ravens returned to the Old Man’s throne and delivered his report, informing his master of almost everything concerning this guest.
So when Hanck tried to handle the situation by laying his cards on the table, and saying, ‘I’d like to explain why I’m here . . . and correct a misunderstanding . . .’ he saw an entirely new expression on the Old Man’s face. He looked so utterly unlike the man who had just been contemplating him that it was almost as if he were a different person.
He was still old, but now he was also a gentle, sympathetic and infinitely sorrowful person. Someone who had seen and heard everything, someone who had seen and heard too much.
‘That won’t be necessary.’ Even his voice sounded different. ‘I know who you are, who you were and who you’re going to be.’
Hanck was dumbfounded. It felt as if certain words at that moment could fill his lungs with the air they were lacking, fill his heart with warmth and his soul with peace. Perhaps it was simply fatigue, an almost paralysing fatigue that sooner or later strikes someone who has spent day and night in conflict with the world, who awakes, is active all day long, and finally falls asleep in his armour. His whole being screams to be allowed to rest for a while, to dare to believe and trust in someone, to surrender, at least to sleep.
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘I can’t grieve,’ said Hanck, ‘until I’m allowed to see my son.’
‘Whose life we once saved,’ said the Old Man. ‘Have you forgotten that?’
‘No,’ said Hanck. ‘But that doesn’t give you the right to take him away from me.’
‘Let’s not talk about right,’ said the Old Man. ‘Was that why yo
u stopped writing your critical reports?’
‘I was fired. The company was doing poorly.’
‘Exactly,’ said the Old Man. ‘That company was one of ours too.’
Hanck wasn’t surprised. ‘Of course,’ he said.
‘But your reports were well-written. They were read with great respect.’
‘I was just following regulations,’ said Hanck.
‘Others did that too. But with less brilliance. I thought I recognised your name. It was linked to problems, even back then.’
‘Am I supposed to feel flattered?’
‘That was back when we started to lose our grip,’ said the Old Man. ‘Our people out in the field were getting unruly.
The ones you called “berserkers” were starting to operate on their own. Everything got out of hand. And that’s where we now stand. But you know that yourself . . .’
‘No,’ said Hanck. ‘What do I know?’
‘You’ve talked to the girls out in the archipelago.’
Hanck admitted as much. ‘I had to.’
‘Under the guise of a false identity,’ said the Old Man. ‘A night spent in the library with Miss Bora.’ Hanck nodded. ‘So you must have had that unfortunate celebration described to you.’
‘The hurricane party?’ said Hanck.
‘That’s one thing to call it,’ said the Old Man. ‘What are your own thoughts?’
‘Nothing,’ said Hanck. ‘Nothing at the moment.’
The Old Man looked down at the floor with his one good eye. ‘Do you see that head over there?’ and he cocked his head to the side.
In a dim corner stood a pedestal with a glass dome over a round object that was shaped like a skull.
‘Yes, I see it.’
‘It talks to me occasionally. It once sat on the wisest person I’ve ever met. I’m not perfect. I’ve always surrounded myself with advisors, some of them good, some of them not so good. He was the best.’
The Hurricane Party Page 23