A Fortunate Man (1905)
By Henrik Pontoppidan. Translation: Paul Larkin
Chapter Two
One of the best known and most respected inhabitants of Nyboder, during the period in which this tale is set, was an old pensioner, Senior Boatswain Olufsen, who lived in Hjertensfrydgade. Every morning, just as the tower clock in Saint Paul’s church struck eleven, his tall, thin, slightly pitching figure was to be seen stepping out from a low door in the compact two storey dwelling whose upper floor he occupied. Then, he would pause for a moment in the quiet, empty street, as a sailor would; taking in the weather, looking up to the skies and running the rule across the rooftops as if inspecting a ship’s tackle and rigging. He was dressed in a somewhat faded but diligently brushed overcoat, whose button hole boasted a fluttering emblem in the red and white of the Dannebrog flag, which denoted his long service in the Danish fleet. His white head was covered by a grey cylinder hat, and on his left hand, which he used to lean against his umbrella as he walked, was an old, shrivelled leather glove.
Thus arranged, and with his right arm placed behind his back, he would shuffle carefully along the uneven pavement. At the same time, his wife’s reflection would appear in a street mirror which had been affixed opposite the sitting room window on the first floor from whence she would continue to observe her husband’s progress until he had successfully navigated the gutter channel at the corner of Elsdyrsgade. There she stood in their crow’s nest, decked out in her nightgown with its pattern of large flowers and her head festooned in paper curlers, enjoying the cut of his smartly attired figure with no little pride and self satisfaction, as if she herself had invented him from top to toe.
At the very point where senior Boatswain Olufsen passed Nyboder’s guardhouse with its high gantry, which housed the alarm bell, he would shift the umbrella over to his right hand in order to be able to give a salute with his gloved hand in the event that the watch crew should oblige him with a military salute – something he set great store by and always observed. From there, he would turn down Kamelgade and head for the square at Amalienborg Castle, where he would present himself on a daily basis just as the changing of the guard was about to commence. After listening to the military music for a short while, he would go back over Store Kongensgade and then go through Borgergade and then progress into the town centre itself.
Here, where he was outside of his former area of operations; where nobody knew him as senior Boatswain Olufsen who had received the Dannebrog emblem from the king’s own hand; where, to put it bluntly, he was just an ordinary civilian out for a stroll and was therefore at the mercy of people who were wont to bump and buffet him – here, his upright bearing would involuntarily shrink as he tentatively nudged his way on tender feet amongst the rushing populace. He never went any further than Købmagergade. Anything that lay to the other side of this street was, as far as he was concerned, not part of the real Copenhagen but rather a kind of suburb, which was so remote that he could not fathom how anybody would want to live there. By his charts, Adel- and Borgergade were the town’s main thoroughfares and encompassed, along with the Grønne-Sværte-Regnegade triangle, Toldboden and Holmen, his entire world. As soon as his daily stroll had taken him as far as the brush makers in Antonistræde, or he had called into Miss Jordan’s book lenders on Silkegade so as to swap a book for his wife, he would turn around and head for home.
However, a couple of hours would normally have passed before he finally got back to Hjertensfrydgade. It was, you see, his habit to station himself at almost every street corner on the way home to observe the passing confluence of people and carriages. Moreover, and despite his eighty years and rheumy eyesight, he still retained a weather eye for any approaching maid or servant girl and particularly for those whose arms were exposed to the elements. On the occasions that such a body would come so close as to brush past him, he would declare his undying love for her in a soft whisper and then hurry away with a bowed head and a chuckle on his lips.
Another contributory factor was that he was obliged to stop for a moment outside a large number of shop windows in order to look at the goods displayed there and learn the prices off by heart for everything ranging from the underwear in the woollens boutique to the diamond jewellery in the goldsmiths – not, by any means because he intended to purchase any of these things (severely hindered as he was in this regard by the fact that his wife, being all too familiar with his weakness where females were concerned, never allowed him to cruise anywhere with money in his pocket); but his empty pockets notwithstanding, he gained a great deal of satisfaction from simply going into the shops and partaking of the shopping etiquette, requesting permission to inspect the various goods on show, inquiring about the price for the costliest items and then shuffling off after saying that he would "call back at a later date".
Senior Boatswain Olufsen always spent the early afternoon at home in his sitting room – "The Parlour", as it was called in Nyboder parlance – a low slung cabin like room with a series of small windows looking out onto the street. Here, he would sit for hours by one of the windows in his shirt sleeves, and a skull cap on his head, watching the legions of half tame crows over at the little green as they took flight and squawked over neighbouring rooftops, or were to be observed squabbling amongst the rubbish bins, which at that time of day were still standing in the quiet, empty street. Occasionally, a kind of milky film would cover his failing eyes, his head would slowly sink down to his chest and his mouth would fall open.
"There you go again cooking peas, wee man," his wife would say in reference to the distinctive buzzing noise which Boatswain Olufsen would emit whenever sleep was just about to overpower him. The woman of the house had her own habitual afternoon spot in the form of a low, chair by the side of the oven, where she sat and knitted. At the same time, she would read one of her tattered old novels, which she would perch on her knee, turning the pages with her elbow so that her knitting could proceed without interruption. Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, a young blonde haired girl could often be seen sat in a corner with her sewing. This was their foster daughter Trine, and the door into her room, which looked out over the inner yard, was invariably left ajar. There was also a canary in a cage in this room. The cage was hung up by the side of the window and the bird would spend all day hopping up and down on its perch.
Madam Olufsen herself was nearly as tall as her husband and the effect was compounded by her horse guard stature; not to mention the hint of a fine grey moustache which now graced her upper lip. Moreover, her habit of pottering around in the morning, still in her nightgown with the flowery pattern and her head covered in curlers fashioned from old newspapers, could not be said to be her most attractive trait. However; by lunchtime, after she had donned her whalebone corset and her Merino dress of fine Spanish wool, and had also covered her partially bald pate under a brightly coloured striped lady’s cap from whence peeked the, by now, carefully arranged curls at her temple, she presented a rather coquettish figure to the world. In fact, adorned in this manner and with her cheeks, which had still not completely lost their bloom, one could better understand the reputation she had always enjoyed in the Nyboder quarter as a former beauty of considerable note.
There was no doubt that they had always been regarded as a handsome couple, herself and Senior Boatswain Olufsen. They had also always been a very happy couple. And if it was the case that the old boatswain had not always strictly observed the commandment governing liaisons with unchaste women, his good Lady had, on the other hand, been loyal for both of them, despite the fact that she had never wanted for admirers seeking to lead her astray. Indeed, if the strong and persistent rumour was to be believed, one of the royal court’s most dashing young princes, whose habit was to prey on the young married women of Nyboder whilst their menfolk sailed distant seas, once passed by our heroine on the corner of Haregaden and, after having presented himself, made a gallant proposal to her, as was his wont. Madam Olufsen curtsied and shyly cast her gaze downwards and then proceeded to follow him down one of the dark, lonely alleyways which skirt the town’s keep. But here, where pure solitude reigned, she suddenly threw his little, deflated Highness across her knees and gave him a right royal spanking, which perhaps was not the first chastisement the appalled prince had received from an affronted Nyboder woman, but it was certainly the most painful.
The social cachet enjoyed by this aging couple was of long standing and their home continued to be regarded as a favoured meeting point for Nyboder’s most auspicious inhabitants. Few Nyboder dwellings could match the conviviality over which these two veterans of Hjertensfrydgade presided. For, quite apart from the usual religious feast days and holy days of obligation which are celebrated the length and breadth of Christendom by the consumption of rich foods and warm punch; they also held a range of incessant family celebrations and annual commemorations to mark events of a more private nature. Thus, there was the annual celebration marking the admission of Peter the canary into the family, then there was the commemoration of the day many years ago when Senior Boatswain Olufsen lost part of his big toe due to a severe bone infection. But pride of place in the celebratory canon belonged to Madam Olufsen’s blood letting day, which always occurred well into the spring season when heat had begun to permeate the air. This ceremony was always initiated with a substantial lunch with a chocolate theme, where the barber who was to carry out the operation was the chief guest.
On these august occasions, the assembled company always consisted of the same seven or eight old friends, who had, for more than forty years, come together to celebrate all the significant moments in the history of the family. These were by name: Retired "Master Carpenter" Bendtz from Tulipangade, retired Quartermaster Mørup from Delfingaden, Chief Ship’s Artillery Officer Jensen and Riveter Fuss from Krokodillen, all accompanied by their ladies. Nor had the rituals which governed these festivities undergone any kind of significant change, despite having been in place for more than a generation. Once all the guests were assembled in the back room, Senior Boatswain Olufsen would open the door into "The Parlour", where the table had been laid and call on the guests to be seated with a time honoured witticism that it was now time for them to "stuff their faces". Once the guests were seated and the hostess had set the steaming goose or fowl on the table, Herre Fuss the Riveter would also follow tradition by feigning great shock, throwing himself back in his chair and declaring: "My word, Madam Olufsen; that must have been some egg you hatched!" – whereupon Madam would berate him as an old rascal and then invite all the guests to treat her abode as if it were their own.
At precisely this point in proceedings, a curly haired young man would sometimes walk into the room to the general delight of those present. For, these veterans would all respectfully rise and offer their hand as little Trine – the foster daughter – whose face had suddenly gone scarlet, would scamper off to fetch a chair from the side room, set a new place at the table and bring a warm plate from the kitchen.
This youthful stranger was the Olufsens' lodger; the twenty one year old engineering student Per Sidenius who had, for some years now, lived in the downstairs room with its accompanying tiny backrooms facing into the yard, all of which formed a part of the Olufsen residence. Here, he enjoyed the status of favoured guest and as the serving dishes gradually emptied, and the schnapps glasses were filled and refilled, the atmosphere became merrier and more boisterous.
There was only one person who remained quiet and subdued – this was little Trine whose task it was to serve the guests. She filled the glasses, brought in more bread, changed the plates, polished the lamps, rooted out the salt cellars, retrieved lost serviettes and handkerchiefs and brought water for the ladies on the occasions when a sudden spasm or hiccoughs came upon them – all done so unobtrusively that her presence never registered with the guests. It was as if an invisible sprite moved amongst them. It has to be said that she was easily overlooked given her slightness of build, which belied her nineteen years in this world. The older people within the fraternity regarded her as still being a child; a very restricted child who in reality was somewhat lacking in mental alacrity. She had been an abandoned orphan whom Senior Boatswain Olufsen had plucked from dire straits. However, where she had originally come from was a mystery to all. It would never be said that she was beautiful and even for the youthful Hr. Sidenius she was nothing more than an invisible implement who brushed his boots and collected his linen for washing.
At last, when the punch bowl and sugar strewn apple slices had been brought to the table, the guests took this as a prompt to sing various party pieces and patriotic songs, whereby Madam Fuss excelled herself by singing a song in a treble clef, which, truth be told, was more admired for its power than its beauty.
As the song commenced, and after ensuring the guests had no more requirements at table, Trine quickly made good her escape. Once out in the kitchen, she lit a lamp using one of the embers from the open hearth and descended the narrow and steep staircase – a kind of ships' ladder – in order to get Hr. Sidenius’s rooms ready for when he retired for the evening. These were two small, dark and damp rooms, which were very poorly fitted out with a small bench upholstered with oil cloth and a folding table, upon which an assortment of books, drawing implements, and large rolls of paper bearing pencil marks was strewn.
Trine set the lamp down on the table, opened a window up and stood in a momentary reverie with her hand on the window sill looking out across the Lilliput like garden, which was guarded by a fence and an outdoor toilet and was bathed in a romantic sheen from the full moon in the skies above. But then she gave a start, in the manner of one whose own thoughts had been the sudden cause of extreme consternation, and she began the work of Sisyphus in bringing order to the chaos that continually reigned in these chambers. She lifted various items of clothing which had been abandoned across the furniture and hung them up behind the screen in the corner of the bedroom. She then tidied the books on the table and placed the myriad little drawing tools into their respective, and carefully arranged, compartments and cases. For, despite the fact that her young Herre had never bothered himself to give directions in this regard, she knew exactly, where each article belonged, and where he would expect, nay, demand, that they be housed. With that instinct which love engenders, even amongst more simple souls, she had assimilated all there was to know, intuited his habits, divined his wishes and doggedly worked her way through the labyrinth of his moods and unpredictable impulses until she had mapped the path which led to the core of this young man’s will. Once, and once only, had he let it be known to her – and here he had lifted his finger and adopted a terrifying countenance – that she must regard her service to him as her life’s primary and solemn duty, the conscientious fulfilment of which would be weighed and adjudicated by God himself on the Day of Judgement.
For this reason, it was with a genuine sense of being the guardian of a Holy Grail that she moved around down there in his small chambers and busied herself with her master’s possessions. And it was with a particular sense of devotion that she lingered in his modest sleeping quarters, whilst she fussed at his bed, righted his slippers so that they both faced inwards, and then neatly placed the matchbox by the side of the lamp bowl nearest to the bed. When, finally, she took his precious pillow into her hands in order to bump up the filling, she clasped it to her heart for a moment and closed her eyes in pure bliss.
Up above in the "Parlour", meanwhile, things had become more and more animated. The Riveter Fuss, had brought out his guitar and, despite the many objections from the ladies present, proceeded to sing a notorious music hall ditty – "The bandy legged hag of Gammelstrand". The men were fit to be tied with laughter. The young Sidenius was equally enthralled and the 84 year old Master Carpenter Bendtz chuckled and wheezed like one of his old lathes. The ladies, however, rose in indignation and retired to the back room, where coffee was now being served accompanied by sugar candy and blackcurrant liqueur.
It was only as a new day dawned that the company broke up, and the various couples shuffled contentedly homeward in that state of enervated elation which encourages public displays of affection, kisses and embraces, even in the middle of the street.
* *
*
This band of merry veterans, who defied their aging bones and receding hairlines by drinking with such an unrestrained gusto from the cup of life that they could nearly see its very dregs, provided Peter Andreas with his first refuge in life, a temporary haven on the way to that Land of Luck and Happiness of which his dreams had foretold. Here, he encountered for the first time a willing indulgence of that part of his nature, which at home in the rectory they had sought to suppress and hide brand as the mark of Cain and the Devil’s own work. He had been particularly grateful for this sanctuary in his first lonely year in Copenhagen and, indeed, for the cheerful and rather idyllic Nyboder area itself, which was like a hidden province from bygone days lying in a quiet corner of the capital city. Whilst it is true – as his circle of friends in the city gradually increased – that his relationship with the old pair and their social circle took on a more fleeting character; it was never entirely broken and his aging guardians continued to dote on him, almost as if he had been one of their own sons. – They were not long in noticing how poor he was, even though he had made great efforts to conceal this from them, and there was more than one occasion when he would have gone to bed on an empty stomach but for Madam Olufsen tactfully inviting him into "sample" a new cheese, or "give his opinion" on a newly cooked side of ham.
For all that, they never managed to gain any real insight into his background. As lively and talkative as he might sometimes be – he would never broach the subject of himself and his dreams, though he would often lead them along by answering their questions by saying that he was studying to be become a "man of the cloth". In the same manner, he maintained an obdurate silence with regards to anything that touched on his home and his relationship with his family, though Madam Olufsen in particular never tired of sounding him out on the subject. He had firmly resolved to treat his former life as something forgotten, something dead, which even as a fading memory would not be allowed to haunt his new life. He had fought with might and main to transform his inner being, to expunge every bitter and humiliating memory residing in his soul, so that he could be left with an untarnished tablet of marble upon which he himself would inscribe his life’s victories and coming good fortune. For this reason, there was not so much as a portrait on his table or wall that might remind him of – or describe to others – the home he had left behind, and which he never wanted to see again before the time when he could return as one who held people to account for their actions and apportioning his judgement upon them. Were he to suddenly drop dead, a search of his most secret hiding places would not reveal even a letter, or note, that might give a clue as to his antecedents. Even his very name had been changed as much as possible so as to avoid the slightest memory of his past. For he no longer signed his name as Peter Andreas but simply as "Per", and it was a matter of regret to him that he could not also procure a more appropriate surname.
Gradually, the sum of his connection to his parents was reduced to the short letters he sent, whereby on a quarterly basis he acknowledged the financial support he still (and without any great scruples) accepted from them, but which, of course, was completely insufficient, particularly because of the huge expense of lectures, books, drawing and painting tools etc, which his studies demanded of him. From the time he had reached his eighteenth birthday onwards, and in order quite simply to survive, he had been forced to teach mathematics at a school for boys and copy technical drawings for a master tradesman. Nor was he in contact with any of his former school friends, most of whom had been students in Copenhagen for some time by this stage. He almost never saw them. Their honour offended as it was because Per had occasionally had the cheek to make fun of their bourgeois academic pretensions, they had quickly learned to avoid him and now showed that same formal reserve that his brothers always displayed towards him.
Per, in turn, turned a blind eye to all this. Yet, his apparent indifference was often more feigned than genuine. For the truth was that he had frequent bouts of quiet despair. His constant sense of humiliation was not just on account of his poverty, and especially his enforced role as a tutor in a kindergarten, which he never mentioned to anybody else. Worse still, was the fact that his studies, and the future prospects they appeared to offer, now seemed more like a crushing disappointment. When, four or five years ago, he had seen the technical college for the first time, he had approached its portals with a heightened anticipation bordering on veneration. He had imagined it as a temple of the arts, a profound place of discourse and thought, where newly liberated mankind’s future success and prosperity would be forged amid lightning bolts and thunder beneath the ark of the new world covenant – and he found instead a grim and insignificant building stuck in the corner of an old Bishop’s residence and within its shoddy walls a collection of dark and depressing lecture rooms, which bore an all pervading smell of tobacco and remnants of packed lunches, and where an assortment of youths were to be found standing over small tables covered in paper, whilst others sat reading study notes and drawing on long pipes, or surreptitiously playing cards. His soon to be lecturers, he had imagined as firebrand preachers of the holy faith that was the natural sciences, and what he met instead in the lecture rooms was a group of withered schoolteacher types who could barely be distinguished from those from his school days to whom he had only recently bidden a relieved adieu. One of these types, who bore the demeanour of an entombed Mummy and whose voice during lectures would constantly fade away and could only, apparently, be revived by the imbibing of some sort of medicine from a hip flask, delivered his lectures from vague memories of Hans Christian Ørsted’s days and the early experiments in electromagnetics. Another lecturer – Professor Sandrup, who was actually the designated lecturer in engineering – had the custom of always wearing a white tie and looked more like an aging theology graduate, or minister, than a science teacher. He enjoyed a certain reputation as being theoretically well versed but was, in fact, a pedant, who, in accordance with his pedagogical scruples, had compiled a set of lengthy technical specifications which found the need to use a mass of scientific jargon to describe even the simplest of tools, such as an axe and a wheelbarrow. He then demanded that students should learn these lists verbatim as part of the examination procedure.
Thus, from every source of academic instruction, Per received the same basic message - that the competent engineer was not (at least not any longer) the proud, globetrotting heroic adventurer of his dreams, but actually a simple pen pusher, a conscientious counting machine, a living set of calculus tables chained to a drawing board. The vast majority of his fellow students – and more precisely those who were regarded by teachers and students alike as being the most gifted – dreamed of nothing more than at some future point achieving a secure position (however humble that might be) within the civil service. Once this pinnacle of achievement was reached, they could settle down to a comfortable life as masters of their families, with a small parcel of land, a small house and an equally small garden; all of which could be rounded off after forty years of diligent service with a modest pension, and if fortune was particularly kind, some sort of public recognition of the contribution they had made, and perhaps even an appointment as a Justice of the Peace.
But this kind of prospect was pure anathema to Per. He knew that his destiny lay far beyond the realm of everyday concerns and mediocrity. He felt the blood of one who was born to rule coursing through his veins and nothing but a place at life’s top table, in the company of the world’s highest freeborn men, was good enough for him.
He had even identified a means by which he could achieve a proud and independent social status for himself. For, at the same time as he, on a more or less regular basis, attended lectures and worked on practical course projects, and without neglecting his humiliating but necessary spare time jobs so that he could continue to put bread on the table, he had in all secrecy begun to make draft plans for a huge water course project; in effect a fjord realignment, which he had conceived as early as his first year as a student in Copenhagen. The seeds for the idea were actually sown even further back in time; right back to his early youth. In fact, in that period when there had been so much talk at home about resurrecting the declining shipping trade on the fjord by dredging and regulating the navigation channels and rebuilding the port. In other words, the very undertaking his father had criticised so vehemently because of the stir it caused amongst the townspeople, and which was then abandoned. Even at that young age, he had dreamed of being the one who would turn that huge plan into a reality - that he would be the one to bring the tang of the high seas and the bounties of world trade to the town’s pathetic and moribund harbour. And this dream, of becoming the actual benefactor for the very town which had borne witness to his daily humiliations, had never really left him since. The disastrous visit home at Christmas had only made that dream all the more urgent for him. It was a thing that nagged him in his loneliness. It became an obsession, the realisation of which eventually took on the form of a kind of religious conviction. It was not just a temporary goal but the thing that would dictate the path his future life was to take.
He began working on the project as soon as he had learned how to draw canal profiles in accordance with contour line principles set out in Admiralty Charts, and had now been working on his master plan for three years. Day in day out, he had beavered away, cutting corners from his quota of night sleep so as to gain time for the calculation of land areas, the strength of sea currents, draw in fascines and fittings, design embankments and set pier heads and mooring poles. And year by year, he made his plan more ambitious, added new things, turned it increasingly into a monster project. Influenced as he was by a group of German technical journals, which he had managed to procure, the notion had grown on him that the expanded and deepened shipping lanes could be continued on the other side of the town, in the form of a canal, or set of – canals, in the manner of those built in Holland. In his mind’s eye, he could vaguely make out his final and colossal objective – no less than a fully developed network of waterways which linked all of Mid Jutland’s larger rivers, lakes and fjord inlets to each other and joined the now cultivated Heath, and its profusion of New Town developments up there, with the sea on both sides.
Yet, every time his thoughts soared towards those dizzy heights, his nerve seemed to fail him. A raft of demons would descend upon him as he worked at his desk, leaving him impotent and pouring scorn on his dreams. You are mad!, they would scream. In this benighted country, you have to be old and grey before they let you anywhere near a decent project; where it’s regarded as the height of presumption for a young man to have any greater ambition than to grow a humpback whilst chained to an office chair and where an engineer, who wants to retain the respect of his fellow citizens and confidence of his superiors, will not push things any higher than expressing a hope, perhaps, of one day achieving a post as an inspector of his Majesty’s highways. Have you forgotten already how your venerable mentor, the noble Professor Sandrup, admittedly in a grim but fatherly way, put you to rights that time when during an oral examination you began to reveal all that new stuff you had learned from your reading (at nobody’s invitation) of those modern German periodicals: "Young man, you really must try to resist that unfortunate trait you have of wanting to be different from the rest." Was it not in those tones that it was put? Words borne of experience! Words of hope!
However, he rarely allowed the poison from such bitter thoughts to eat into the inner core of his being. He was too young for that, and his moods too capricious. A brisk walk, the admiring glance of a pretty girl, a lavish feast laid on by the Nyboder veterans, or an evening spent in the company of friends at a café – nothing more was usually required in order to banish the dark furrows of doubt from his brow. Women proved increasingly to be the most effective distraction when the threat of a turn in his mood loomed on the horizon. He was now twenty one years of age and his attraction to the opposite sex was beginning to dominate his imagination and provide new vistas into which his mind could tumble.
* *
*
One evening, along with a friend, he entered an old fashioned Schweizer-Kafe, which at the time was a favourite meeting point for the town’s substantial artistic and literary demimonde. With a look which shone with pure excitement, his guide pointed out some of the most hotly debated artists and authors who could be spied amongst the throng. However, Per, who was not the slightest bit interested in that kind of thing, had fixed his gaze instead on a young girl who was standing behind the counter – a tall, slim figure with a glorious mane of strawberry blonde hair.
"That is Red Lizzy," his friend explained. "She’s the one that was the model for Iversen’s 'Venus' and for Petersen’s 'Susanne'. She is not bad, eh? Look at that skin!"
From that day forward, Per was a regular guest at the café, especially at those times of day when things were less frantic. He had become quite smitten by the young girl, and when it became apparent that this attraction was reciprocated, a path was very quickly cleared towards a more intimate kind of relationship.
His pride in his own appearance had grown apace as he stepped into manhood. He was now broad shouldered and powerfully built, had a proud forehead, framed by dark curly hair, and light blue eyes which sat below a manly brow. The hint of a moustache had begun to appear above his full lips. Yet, thanks to Madam Olufsen’s motherly care, he had retained much of his boyish vigour and his cheeks still bore a brick red and unmistakeably rural tinge. In public, and without even realising it himself, he would often be seen to have a smile on his lips, and this constant, slightly empty, gesture was often a source of disappointment for those who did not know him well; for it led them to assume that he was in essence of a childish disposition, moving through life in blissful harmony with the world around him. He had not completely been able to shake off the image of being the provincial blow-in. However, when he was dressed in his best clothes, he was imposing in stature. He held his head high and there was a dignity in his deportment. In spite of his frequent bouts of penury, he would never allow a decline in his sartorial standards. Or at least, this was the case whenever he showed himself on the street, where he would always have the appearance of being newly groomed and polished. Even by this stage, he had garnered enough experience to realise that there were moments in life when a white shirt front and an impeccably tailored coat might do more for a young man’s future than years of toil and self sacrifice – in other words that nothing was completely lost as long as appearances were kept up. At home, on the other hand, he took a far more devil may care approach and, in fact, found a certain pleasure and comfort in pottering round in his old clothing.
The café which, more than any other, came to enjoy his patronage, and where he squandered more time and money than he cared to admit, was the so called Cave, which was a watering hole for a radical clique of artists, the 'Liberationists', a circle of young and not so young aesthetes; indeed, a very gifted circle, but all to some extent stunted in their development, either because of a lack of creative growth, or because they had flowered too quickly. There, of an evening time, sat the highly controversial seascape painter Fritjof Jensen, a beefy Viking type figure sporting a sailor’s pea coat and tousled hair and beard – an inspired and brilliant artist, a roguish Falstaff type with a foaming ale tankard never far from his reach, bereft of principles and as mercurial as a boy suffering the first pangs of puberty. There, every morning, year after year, sitting in a pose of morose contemplation, was the sickly poet Enevoldsen, polishing his glasses, attending to his nails, fiddling with his cigar, or otherwise engaged in a myriad of other petty occupations which he set himself whilst he composed his vibrant and vivid verse, masterpieces in miniature, which set a new tone in Danish poetry. There, sat the young naturalist figure painter Jørgen Hallager, with the face of a rabid dog; rebel, anarchist, insurrectionist, artistic revolutionary; the man who wished the demise of all educational institutions and the execution of all academics, but who also made a good living working as a colourist for a photographer. And there was that old cynic, the journalist and comedy writer, Reeballe, a small, bandy legged dwarf who always wore a wig and boasted one eye that stared glassily from his head, whilst the other appeared to gaze forlornly down at his long straw white goatee, which partially covered his stained shirt front, – the perennial butt of the cartoonists in the city’s satirical magazines. A well chewed cigar stump in the side of his mouth, and with one or both hands hidden behind his back, below his waistband, it was his wont to drift in a usually drunken state around the tables, set himself down here and there, often amongst people completely unknown to him, and involve himself in their conversations in the most disruptive manner possible. He too saw himself as reformer, but in a classic sense of the word. He claimed Socrates as his role model. His philosophy, he averred, was that of the clear, sober rationalist. In his most befuddled moments, he had the habit of beating his breast and declaring himself to be "The last of the Greeks".
Although Per was so much younger than this group of men and had not himself made any overtures towards them, he had achieved the distinction of being invited into their circle – as Fritjof Jensen once put it –because of the "painterly redness of his cheeks". More important, however, was his relationship with Lisbeth - the apple of their collective eye and mind, whose vivacious silky hair and translucent skin tone had helped to bolster the artistic careers of so many in the group, which favour they repaid by always welcoming her latest admirer into their fold, even where said admirer had no connection with the artistic fraternity.
Nonetheless, Per continued to feel like an intruder amongst this group. Nor was it modesty alone that deterred him from taking a more active part in their conversations. His inability to appreciate the merits of painting mirrored his lack of feeling for poetry. Indeed, he found that his studies provided him with all the material he needed to spark his imagination. Thus, his creative energies were so wrapped up in his hugely ambitious plans for the future that the arts never got a look in.
At the same time, he could never have been described as a neutral observer. Privately, he was highly amused by this curious group of people, whose members could suddenly go into a frenzy over a particular shade of colour, or disappear into the deeper realms of ecstasy because of four lines which rhymed in a certain way, as if the very existence of the human race depended on their correct interpretation. He enjoyed such histrionics as a kind of comedy of manners and would frequently laugh to himself on noticing how even Lisbeth had been gripped by this melodramatic fever and – proud as she was of her body’s significance for the arts – wished for nothing more than that her life might be regarded as being joyfully devoted to the glorification of aesthetic beauty.
There was one person within this group who sought to indulge Per as much as possible; a man who likewise would always stand on the fringes of the circle and who, generally speaking, was not even welcome there. This was a certain Ivan Salomon, a young Jew; son of one of the city’s richest men – a small creature who was fleet of movement in the manner of a brown eyed squirrel, always smiling, ever seeking to please and entranced by the fact that he could spend time in the company of so many famous artists. This man’s abiding ambition was to one day discover and then promote the cause of a new genius. Thus, he engaged himself in an endless search for some hidden or misunderstood talent, whose patron he would then become. Every physical peculiarity – a pair of deeply set eyes, a powerfully prominent forehead, or perhaps just an unkempt hairstyle – he took as a sign of rare ability and many an amusing story had been told regarding the disappointments he had subsequently suffered because of this.
Now, it was obvious that he had placed all his hopes in Per, who for his part felt most uncomfortable at being the subject of such attention. Even his flattery was contrary to Per’s true nature. He felt great unease, for example, when Hr. Salomon – in quite open references to his rapid conquest of Lisbeth – smilingly told him that he was an undoubted Aladdin figure, Fortune’s child, upon whose imperious forehead one could discern a winged message from the Gods: I came, I saw, I conquered! The words themselves, he found, had a certain ring to them and stirred his innermost, secret emotions to fever pitch. However, it was painful and embarrassing in the extreme that he should first hear these hopefully prophetic words from the mouth of an obsequious Jew.
One evening, he entered the Cave at around midnight and walked straight into a riot of a party. It was that giant of a man Fritjof Jensen – known by everyone as simply "Fritjof" – who was standing the drinks in celebration of the fact that he had just sold one of his 8 foot canvases, "Hurricane in the North Sea", to a butter merchant. In the middle of the floor in a room, which was separated from the other sections of the café by a corridor, a number of small tables had been joined together and some twenty people sat around two garlanded bowls containing champagne punch.
At the upper end of the row of tables – partially obscured by the swirl of tobacco smoke – sat Fritjof himself, holding court like a God on Mount Olympia. In front of him, was his colossal private trophy bowl, the so called 'Abyss', and from his slurred speech and wall eyed countenance it was clear that he had made manful efforts to drink his bowl dry. He had spent a whole day carousing; had seen the sun go down and rise again in an oyster house, fraternised with ladies of the night, roamed around in the woods and raided wine bars, and gradually accumulated a band of friends, and acquaintances of those friends, whom he had happened to meet along the way.
A series of speeches were delivered. At one point, a pale young man with Mephistophelian features sprang up onto the seat of his chair and called a raucous toast to a certain Dr. Nathan of whom Per had heard much comment in these surroundings and always in tones of reverence and joy. This man was a literary critic and popular philosopher who was regarded by a particular group of younger academics as a spiritual leader, and who – also unhappy with the way things were in Denmark – had moved to Berlin. Other than this, Per knew very little about him, despite the fact that one could hardly open a newspaper or satirical magazine without seeing his name – "Dr. Satan", as the latter invariably called him. The fact that the man was a Jew had contributed to the fact that Per had never felt the urge to find out more about him. He did not even like this strange race of people and had, besides, very little time for literary types. And this particular doctor had even held lectures in the university itself; that place of sanctimonious utterances which played wet nurse to the whole gang of academic philistines who, in Per’s eyes, were the worst blight on the country.
The pale young speaker standing on his chair, and gesticulating with his arms in such a triumphant fashion, was a writer by the name of Povl Berger. With roars of approval from his inebriated confederates, he first described Dr. Nathan as his "Hero", then his "God" and finally his "Saviour", and after emptying his glass, crushed it in his hand as a mark of honour with the result that blood ran freely down his fingers.
Per was stunned and sat there open mouthed. He had the feeling of having been transported to a madhouse.
In the run of the evening, the size of the company was swollen by a constant stream of new arrivals. In order that room could be made for the newcomers, more small tables were added to the original configuration but this time to either the side of the main body of tables and in this way the shape of a cross was formed. But then there came a sudden roar and a hammering on the table. It was Fritjof, who was shouting:
"Are we going to sit here like a bunch of damned disciples around a cross! … What’s all this pious formality about? It’s enough to turn a man’s stomach! … Let’s form a horseshoe instead! We'll make a pact with the devil by venerating his footwear! … Move round will yez shipmates!"
And once his will had been done, and everyone was seated again after the disruption, he lifted his refilled trophy bowl and cried:
"Praise to you Lord Lucifer! Holy Liberationist! Great champion of freedom and happiness! God of all the little fiends running round! … Long may you bless me with a steady stream of fat butter merchants and I swear I will build thee an altar from oyster shells and empty champagne bottles! … Hey, Waiter! … Hominus Minimus! … More wine here! … A sea of wine! … A baptismal font full of wine my friends! … Hey! Is there anybody listening out there – –!"
The proprietor, a small Schweizer who always wore a pullover, appeared at the door leading to the main part of the café, which had long since been closed up and its lights extinguished. With frequent shrugs of his shoulders and hands raised in apology, he bade the indulgence of the good gentlemen for he dared not provide any more service that night. The clock had struck two some time ago and the obliging night constable had already given him a warning knock on the window with his baton.
"Clock? … Clock!" Fritjof roared. "Are we not Gods, Hr. Minimus?! Clocks are for tailors and cobblers!"
"Yes, and for café propryters also I am effrayed!" the little man answered, his head resting on one shoulder and his hands placed in supplication on his breast. And on noticing that his little witticism had been successful, he added with a smile that he looked forward to a return visit by the Herrer again the following day when they were welcome to come as early as they wished. "We are opening at seven."
But at this, Fritjof lurched back in his chair and thrust his hand into his right trouser pocket. "Wine I said!" he roared, strewing a handful of gold coins across the table as he did so, where they rolled and clinked across cutlery and plates, some landing on the floor. "Here’s some butter! … Do you want some more! … Drink, shipmates! … Leave that shit where it is! … We are not philistines!"
However, his adoption of the high moral ground was an Olympian step too far for the other guests who suddenly became quite sober as they busied themselves retrieving the gold coins from the floor, whilst Fritjof continued to roar:
"Wine! – Wine and girls is what we want! – Wine. I said!"
Yet, these protests were to no avail and the revellers gradually drifted away from the tables and into the night. The proprietor had a quiet word with each departing guest, imploring them in gracious tones "on account of the Poleece" to leave quietly by the backdoor. Only Fritjof was unrelenting and continued to bellow and shout.
In the end, only Per remained at the scene. But when he too made moves to leave, Fritjof grabbed him by the sleeve and threatened, implored; in fact, begged him with sobs emanating from his throat, to stay.
Per finally relented and sat down once again. He found that he could not, in all conscience, leave a man alone like that when he was in such an overemotional state of mind. After promises were made with regards to keeping good order, coffee and cognac was brought to the table, after which 'Hominus Minimus' retreated with much shaking of his head back to his small office behind the bar.
Fritjof planted both elbows onto the table and placed his bearded head between his hands. He had suddenly become quiet and cast his half closed eyes downward.
Per, who was sitting on the opposite side of the table, lit a fresh cigar. A solitary, partly dimmed gas lamp burned directly above their heads. The rest of the large room was just about discernable through a silvery veil of fine, swirling dust and tobacco smoke. All around them was a confusion of empty tables and chairs, just as the guests had left them. The tables were strewn with cigar ash, champagne corks and broken glass. But all was deathly silent now … so conspicuously silent after the bedlam that had gone before it that it was as if the slightest noise might call forth echoes from every corner.
Given that Fritjof had still not said anything, Per assumed that he had fallen asleep. So, in the end, he knocked his glass against that of the artist’s and said:
"Skål!"
But instead of offering a toast in response, Fritjof began to speak in doleful tones about death. As he looked uncertainly across at Per with glazed eyes reminiscent of a blind man, he asked, him whether he had ever got the shakes thinking "about that – you know – the other side of the grave."
Per, who was not prone to such nervy preoccupations, and in any case was still too engaged with the present life to worry about what might come afterwards, initially believed that the question was a joke and started to laugh. But then Fritjof gripped him by the arm and, in words that carried both a threat and a sign of his deep angst, said:
"Be still man! You never know what’s round the corner! … You young pups don't think twice about your health. But just wait till you see the first grey hairs sprouting at your temples. Then you'll start feeling those prickly heat rashes on your body when you start to think that your ever so well groomed person is going to be served up as a special dish for hundreds of hungry maggots. Think! Just a bit of surplus lard around the heart and bang - gone! A pillow filled with wood shavings to rest your pretty head, eight screws for the coffin lid and – there you go boys – dinner isserved! … I'm telling you boy…you never never know what is round the corner! Maybe there’s more up there beyond the stars than our new fangled Jew prophets actually care to dream about. And if that’s the case… what then? Do we not all then face a final Day of Judgement? … We kid ourselves that we are so much cleverer now. Oh yes! But happier? … Skål!"
Per’s eyes widened. He stared at this bearded wild boar, this lusty high priest of bacchanalian pleasures, who had now suddenly revealed himself as being kindred in spirit to his mother and father; yet another underworld troll, whose deepest soul actually resided in a phantom world, where everything revolved around the grave and the vengeful God waiting on the other side – shunning the forces of light he himself had invoked in such an arrogant fashion only minutes previously. – –
And this was not to be the only time that Per received a startling insight into the inner world of these 'Liberationists' and thereby discovered suppressed heresies, a night side, the never entirely discarded remnants of former selves, who in unguarded moments would spring to life and make a grim mockery of their new personas. Be it Reeballe, "the last of the Greeks", who, on the rare occasions when he was sober, was known to torture himself in trying to live with his conscience, and then Lisbeth who would regularly produce her confirmation psalm book from her commode as soon as the pains in her lower back would start, or if she feared that she might be with child. Gradually, he began to perceive what the central thing was that sapped the human will and rendered the world into effectively nothing more than one giant poorhouse. Just as one person sought comfort in the depths of a bottle, another invoked his "inner voice" with immature verbosity and schoolboy pranks, a third, in self imposed artistic isolation, withdrew into his shell like a snail responding to thunder, whilst a fourth lost himself in futile dreams of a future anarchistic brotherhood of men, – this was how people behaved all over the world as they fought their respective demons, whilst life, hale and hearty and with a smile on its face, simply invited them to partake of the abundance that was all about them. Of course! He had seen all this before in his own home.
And now he was overwhelmed by a dizzying sensation, a feeling that he was, in fact, a breed apart, an exception to the rule, who already as a child, by some fortunate twist of fate, had sprung the chains against which even the freest spirits of the day still chafed. Ivan Salomon’s description of his having the luck of Aladdin and the God like signs written on his brow, now suddenly took on a far greater import for him. In essence, the will to act and to ruthlessly and recklessly desire was the simple key to everything – and then the full glory of life was his for the taking!
So it transpired that he did, after all, come from a regal line. He had been crowned with the emperor’s laurel wreath. At least one person had already bowed before its shining majesty and had read its inscription: I came, I saw, I conquered!