Bo Michaëlis - Copenhagen Noir

While everyone else went into job training or the military or found girlfriends who wanted to go to Ikea and buy coffee tables you assemble yourself, and many of them began talking about home entertainment systems with large, flat screens and surround sound, so they could hold each others’ hands and watch I, Robot , I became a dedicated amphetamine abuser. A few months that came back to me in flashes as the indictment was being read. Like emptying the minibar in a hotel room and waking up hung over, then looking at the price list on top of the television.

Nabil enrolled in several areas of training at vo-tech schools, but always stopped after a short while. He talked about becoming a driving instructor. Next time I saw him he wanted to start up a cleaning service.

As quickly as Christian became part of the neighborhood, became one of the natives, he pulled out just as fast. He moved away, went to school. The last I heard he was about to become an auditor or bookkeeper or economist. Something with numbers and lots of money. When I met him he was wearing a polo shirt with a Gucci bag over his shoulder.

Now we’re in the car together. Our reunion.

Nabil guides us. Down this street, make a right ahead. Otherwise no one speaks.

We’re still in Northwest, close to Emdrup. “Here it is,” Nabil says, and points to a redbrick building. I drive by, park the car on the first side street. We get out. Everything happens so slowly, infinitely slowly. Like underwater. Three men, one with a sports bag in his hand. They walk down the street, come to a door. Slowly, slowly. There’s no intercom, one of them opens the door, and they continue up the stairs. So slowly, three men. Though I’m one of them, I’m watching from the outside. Feet climbing the stairway.

Nabil presses the buzzer.

If I hadn’t answered my phone I would be lying on the sofa right now. I would be asleep in front of the film I’d rented, a few empty beer bottles on the coffee table. Tomorrow I’d have woken up, watched the rest of the film while eating breakfast, fed my two birds, and went to work.

The door opens. I recognize him from the video, a sunkenchested young man in a T-shirt and jogging pants. When he sees us he tries to slam the door. He doesn’t stand a chance, the door rams his head. He stumbles back a few steps.

Then I see the knife in his hand. It must have been there in the hall, on the little table under the mirror, ready in case. He smiles for a moment, raises the knife. Then it happens. I wake up. No longer underwater, I feel the blood in my veins again. The world is suddenly hard and sharp. I can feel my hands, feel my legs, feel the air flowing in my nostrils and filling my lungs. I toss the sports bag full of tools in his face. Before he hits the floor Nabil has started hitting him. I was never hooked on amphetamines. At least not only. This was what I needed. What I was trying to snort up, to no avail. Now, in this moment, I know it. When I hear Christian close the door behind us, and we drag the guy through the hall and into the living room.

We’re the boys from the block again. The boys from the high-rise on Swallow Street. We’re together again.

I don’t know how long we keep at it. Not just an hour, a lot longer. With the stereo turned way up. We sweat, we laugh. I lose my sense of time. Remember only short flashes. Postcards of violence. One where I’ve raised the hammer above my head. One where I hold him and Christian sticks the handle of the screwdriver down his throat. One where Nabil jerks the guy’s pants down and reaches for the monkey wrench.

We might have been easier on him, stopped earlier, if the room hadn’t reminded us of the images from the video.

At some point he starts screaming. Screaming so loudly that he drowns out the stereo. This is after we’ve got his pants off. Which wasn’t easy, because he kept twisting, kicking. Nabil goes into the bedroom. He’s laughing when he comes back out. He’s holding a gag, a pink rubber ball hanging by two leather strings. In it goes, into the guy’s mouth. “One of the rough ones!” Christian yells, while he holds him by the throat. “This here is going to be one of the rough ones!”

There’s not much left of him when we leave. He’s barely alive. It’s hard to determine which sex he is. We destroyed him. How do you destroy a man? Keep at it. Just keep at it.

Early morning. It’s quiet in the car again. I drop the two of them off. Stop a few times on the way home and throw the tools in various trash containers. Then the sports bag.

I take a shower before going to bed. Stuff the clothes in a garbage bag that I’ll throw out on the way to work.

I lie in bed and listen to the quiet. My eyes are already heavy. I know that as soon as I wake up the hangover will check in. Far stronger and different from any I’ve had before. The first few minutes I’ll think it’s something I dreamed. A nasty dream I can blink away, that will be out of my body when I’m done pissing. A dream I’ll have forgotten when I smell the coffee flowing through the machine. But then I’ll remember that it wasn’t a dream. I’ll grab the duvet or sheet and try to hold on. I’ll sit there like it’s a bad movie and make a face and keep holding on until the alarm clock rings again. Telling me that the day has begun.

First I’ll drive out and buy some new tools. Then to work. Be on time. Old Nielsen will be waiting with a new record player or transistor radio that should have been thrown out but some old lady has insisted it be repaired. The next few weeks I’ll jump up whenever the doorbell rings. Every time I’ll think it’s the police. Whenever I’m about to forget what happened, my sore muscles will remind me. But that’s not the hard part. Not at all. Time will pass. A new day will begin. New days always begin. The hard part will be forgetting how good it felt. To be alive again. To be the boys from Swallow Street, the boys from the block. Us.

M Thursday, 6:05 p.m. E65 to Swinouscie, Reza’s Bistro arek opened the camper door. Reza stood on a stool with her back to him and both hands in a tub. She had rolled up her puffed sleeves, and her elbows were pumping. The camper smelled like fish. She turned, stood with a large cooked roach in her gloved hand.

“I’m too old for this, Marek. I had to send Zbigniew out for gelatin for the aspic. And now I need shallots and coriander.”

The rubber glove slid off with a snap. She stepped down from the stool, left the fish on the kitchen counter, and walked over to the laminated table at the back of camper, took out a cigarette from a silver case, lit up, and inhaled the smoke deep into her lungs. Then she came back, stood with her face inches from his. She had been drinking slivovitz again and had eaten something spicy. She lifted her forearm and showed him the z and the small green numbers of the tattoo.

“They’ve tried to kill us off, Marek. They injected phenol in the hearts of my younger brothers. They shot color in Sonja’s green, green eyes and they got infected, but they didn’t let her die, not before she got gangrene. But we will never die, Marek.”

Marek lowered his head, he always felt uneasy here. Glanced around at the screaming-red sashed curtains, the brown laminate, the green, red, yellow lamps, the picture of the brothers and sisters, the cousins, and the mother and father in a frame beside the television, the press photo for Zigeuner-Zirkus 1939 , the entire tiny band with a Great Dane to establish proportions-the violinist to the right holding the toy violin reached the dog’s shoulders: Reza at nine years of age.

“Irina says that you pull out. And you’re doing it less and less.” She pinched his arm with her small, hard claws. “Look at me, Marek.”