Bo Michaëlis - Copenhagen Noir

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.