All these stupid thoughts led to my not activating the central lock-he had already flung the door open, sunk down in the passenger seat, and said: “Frederiksberg Allé.”
I mumbled lamely: “I’m not working.”
“It will only take five minutes,” he growled arrogantly. “Are you aware of just how goddamn cold it is!? We’ll do it off the meter.”
A car behind me honked. I took off automatically, as if I was in a trance, and wheeled past the thick cylinders of the Planetarium.
Erik Rützou sat preoccupied, fingering his Bodil, presumably received for Best Male Actor. During the Christmas season the entire metropolitan area had been plastered with billboards and posters for the film. We hadn’t seen each other for at least fifteen years, maybe more-when time starts flying nothing can stop it-but I saw him constantly: on TV, on the front pages. On the side of a bus at a red light somewhere. He looked like himself, apparently I didn’t. Otherwise he would have recognized me immediately. I mean, we’d acted together, goddamnit. Had been in the same circles for a while.
We drove in silence, or so I thought, but then, through the buzz of my humiliation, I realized that Rützou was sitting there humming. Was he completely sloshed?
Down narrow Værnedamsvej to Osbornehjørnet and the knife-sharp border of Vesterbro, then I blasted up majestic Frederiksberg Allé as if my ass was on fire, Rützou still saying nothing, just humming low, the heavy German cab steamrolling the paving stones on Skt. Thomas Plads, the large, round, eerily deserted square. The grand old buildings slumbered, unworried behind the double row of lindens and the allé’s outer lanes, crowded with parked cars. We passed Café Promenaden, where I hadn’t dared show my face for years; it was still illuminated inside with a yellowish light, a few customers hanging on the bar, I noticed thirstily, and then we were already there: Rützou silently pointed out his destination. I turned and slowly rolled down the narrow lane between the broad sidewalk and the allé itself. We had just glanced off the corner of Vesterbro and all of its pushers, kebab shops, rowdy late-night bars, and porn shops: here, everything radiated peace and quiet and safety. Cars were bigger in this neighborhood, the apartments too, not to mention the gigantic old villas on the side streets, hidden behind high walls. But it was also a lie. A myth. Because suddenly you’d see auto garages, dreary apartment buildings. And though I tried to appear calm and unaffected by the situation, I was a smoldering, gloomy apartment building myself, an ocean of domestic disturbances. I was a lie too. Because I was scared. Scared, yes. Not of him, but of myself.
Take it easy, Klaus, I told myself, it will be over in a few moments, you’re not going to prison for murder here, you’ll drive home to Rødovre and drink a beer, maybe two, have a goodnight smoke, maybe two, and then you’ll go to bed. And if you can’t sleep, no matter how tired and burned out you are, you’ll take a sleeping pill, maybe two. If that doesn’t help, you’ll put on a movie, or call for some company. Most of all I wanted to sleep, drive out into a new day tomorrow evening. The only thing I was any good at. Driving. Up and down deserted roads, snaking in and out of traffic jams, flying across side streets while blind-drunk students disgorged alcohol in the backseat, drive and drive, pick people up, drive far and long, through the city, day after day, but mostly at night. I had become a night person, and I liked winters, the long dense dark. Autumn was my spring, the sublime overture of darkness.
Meanwhile, Rützou had begun frisking himself, hesitatingly, halfheartedly. The bum. Turned his pockets inside out, but all he found was a silver Dunhill lighter and a small set of keys. The damp, well-tailored smile almost turned serious. He was and is hopeless. He was and is a great performer. Our greatest living actor, according to the papers I tried not to read.
“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.