Falling Sideways (14 page)

As the sound of the chopper faded in the distance, another sound caught his ear. From the cloakroom behind him. It sounded like someone sniffling. He opened the door and saw Birgitte Sommer there, big-breasted and slender in a midthigh mini, hand in the pocket of an elegant gray herringbone coat that hung from a wall hook. Her hand was just emerging with a bunch of Kleenex that she put to her nose, but she started when she saw Jaeger there. Her left hand flew to her breast. “You frightened me!” Her eyes were red. She looked sweet.

Jaeger peered into her face with concern. “Are you crying, Birgitte?”

“Of course not, I have a cold.” She blew her nose.

“Oh, sorry! I thought for a minute …” Then: “You don’t have a cold,” he said, and she hunched around the crumple of Kleenex and the waterworks started for real. Tentatively he laid his palm on her slender shoulder, warm to his touch, and made the move with his body that moved her into his embrace, where she let go and sobbed, twitching in his arms. He was in heaven.

“Here,” he said softly. “In here.” He led her behind the door of the little alcove.

She drew away, wiping her eyes with that same wad of Kleenex, which grew smaller and more ragged with each application to nose and eyes. Her nostrils glowed pink against the creamy pale skin of her face, and as luck would have it, he was able to deliver a clean white linen handkerchief to her, albeit slightly wrinkled, which came away from her eyes with streaks of black mascara on it.
Mysterious paint they use on their eyes.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”

Which carried associations he wished to hold away from his consciousness just now. “Nothing wrong with a good cry,” he said. “You’re lucky you can. Wish I could.”

Her red, puffy eyes took him in. Smiling lips and charming black smudge beneath her damp eyelids.
Like to kiss her mouth. Careful. Wrong move could be dangerous. Chief of finance here.

“You haven’t had an easy time of it, either, have you, Harald? How are your babies?”

“I just love ’em to death.”

She touched his arm. Sympathetic smile. And he stepped closer. “You’re not in trouble with the job? The economies?”

Comprehension took a moment. “Oh, no,” she said. “No. It’s … personal. It’s, oh, it’s Lars, he is so … cold.”

Lips nearing hers, he whispered, “How could he be? I just, oh, Birgitte …” And their mouths fused, his heart hammering crazily. Soft skin of her neck on his palm, her hands bracketing his face in position for her mouth.
She wants me. To kiss.
“Oh, Birgitte, I—”

“Sh …”

“I—”

“Sh …”

Their eyes met and held. Hers always narrow, little spots of burgundy, but now glistening, soft, and their gazes explored each other’s faces while he moved so she could feel what the nearness of her did to his body.

“God, Birgitte,” he whispered, “I
want
you so—”

“Sh …”

He wanted to do it right there, but she took a step back, leaned away from him, shaking her smiling mouth, saying, “Sh … Sh … No. We’ll talk. Later.”

And left him there.

Later? Talk?
Talk?

But one sweet fact was irrefutable. She had put her tongue in his mouth. Of her own volition.

17. Jes Breathwaite, Jalâl al-Din

The Dome of the Rock Key & Heel Bar was tucked in between the Trafik Cafeen and a 7-Eleven kiosk on the southern edge of St. Hans Square in North Bridge. Outside the little shop, a small leather-harnessed carousel pony of battered, painted wood was mounted on a banged-up red metal stand, an electrical motor plugged into an external wall outlet. A note, printed in black marker on the red stand, alongside a coin slot, read: “2 × 2 kr.”

Inside, Jalâl al-Din sat behind his shoeless last, sipping tea. He wore a gray dishdasha robe and black kufi cap. The wall behind and beside him, spreading toward the front of the shop, was stippled with little hooks from which hung blister packs of shoelaces, innersoles, key rings with an array of first names and signs of the zodiac, key chains, nail clippers, bicycle locks. There were shelves of spray cans, tins, jars of polish, silicon, waterproofing, shoehorns, shoe brushes, and buffer cloths, and a pegwood board from which hung many kinds and colors of uncut keys.

Farther toward the street in the deep, narrow shopfront, Jes Breathwaite leaned against the wrought-iron key grinder, elbow propped on the little work platform, chin propped in his palm, contemplating the little carousel pony. He had never seen a child ride on it.

Jalâl’s wife, Khadiya, came swishing out of the back in her blue-and-silver jilbab robes, a silver hijab around her long black hair. “Ay,” she said, and placed a glass of tea before Jes. She dragged over a stool and patted the seat. “Sit,” she said to Jes. “Time for relax now.” And she reached deep into a hidden pocket in her jilbab to produce a large bar of dark chocolate studded with bits of fruit and nut, which she placed beside the tea. The shy pleasure of her smile flashed gold.

“Thank you!” Jes said, bowing a little. “
Thank
you.” A bar like that cost about twenty crowns, no small amount for him.

“You are a boy,” she said. “Boys like something sweet on the tongue.”

“He is a man,” Jalâl said quietly.

“Yes, he is a man, and all men are boys,” Khadiya said, laughing. “And he needs more fat on his long body. Look at him behind, he is haunchless, it is a wonder he can sit at all, there is nothing there.”

Caught by surprise, Jes blushed, smiled, and she laughed merrily. She disappeared again through the blue curtains into the back of the shop while Jalâl barked, “Respect! Show this young man respect!” To Jes he said, “Thee women have no more respect for thee men.” But Jes could see the pleasure in the man’s eyes at his wife’s spirit.

Jes remained standing, opening the wrapping of the chocolate bar self-consciously. He extended the opened packet to Jalâl, who raised the back of one finger with a pleasantly stern set to his lips. “Is good for you, not for me. I must to honor the Ramadan.”

“But you’re drinking tea.”

“In my interpretation there is way that this is permitted, for tea is of the innocence. It give necessary strength of the body in order to support the requirements for the spirit. Why you don’t sit? Relieve the veins of your legs. No mind what Khadiya say. Sit.”

Jes felt funny about sitting during work hours, even if there was nothing to do at the moment. He felt funny about that, too, that Jalâl didn’t just send him home when it was so slow. His unaccustomed delicacy here was agreeable to him. He found himself admiring the firmness of Jalâl’s personality, his character, the seeming lack of necessity for conscious consideration of his speech or actions. He was who he was, said what he said, did what he did. At the same time, however, he felt a near irresistible urge to mimic and parody the man. A customer had come in once, and Jes began to serve him without greeting him first, and afterward Jalâl had said to him, “My friend: Always remember to greet and to treat with good words. Even the customer who does not impress you with his own good manner. Especially him. If you treat your neighbor as good neighbor, you help him to become the good neighbor he might become.”

Jes was dazzled. Could this man be for real?

“Sit!” Jalâl exclaimed now, and Jes finally acquiesced. He sat there with one foot on the chrome rung of the stool and munched the chocolate, gazing across the square. A single linden tree rose from a patch of earth on a little concrete knoll directly across from the window, behind a sculpture that looked to Jes like a huge black iron tarantula in attack mode—or maybe like a solid iron house of cards. Not to be toppled. Beyond that, a Tulip sausage wagon stood with its back flush against the spigots of the fountain, which sprayed three low streams of water into the cool, sunny air. The heavyset sausage man munched a medister inside the windowed cabin of the wagon. The square was empty but for a little girl in a yellow dress and yellow jacket who methodically chased the pigeons pecking for crumbs around the sausage van and beneath the linden.

“So slow today,” said Jalâl, and sipped loudly at his tea.

“God is merciful,” said Jes. “He gives us leisure.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the back of Jalâl’s index finger shoot up. “My friend: Do not sorrow your own soul with poor wit.”

Spoken with a mild smile, but Jes was embarrassed that his private condescension had leaked through unwittingly. “Forgive me,” he said. “I meant no harm or disrespect.” Increasingly when he was here working, he found himself imitating the phrasings and rhythms of Jalâl’s speech.

“You are forgiven.”

The little girl wheeled around the side of the sausage wagon for a fresh attack on the newly settled pigeons, scattering them one after another. If they only flapped their wings without taking flight, she stamped her shiny buckled shoes harder behind them to make them fly. Her mother and father sat over drinks at one of the few remaining outdoor autumn tables around the beer kiosk attached to the Pussy Galore serving house. They were tall and blond and sat with open jackets, seemingly oblivious to the chill. Jes could see the woman was drinking a cappuccino and the man a large draft. He wondered if Jalâl understood the name of the bar, and if so, what he thought about it and what he might say. Jes kept a little notebook that he had titled
The Sayings of Jalâl
with which he entertained his drinking friends, repeating the man’s pronouncements with an ironic portentousness that belied the affection and admiration developing in him for Jalâl. He imagined Jalâl’s judgment of Pussy Galore,
The Perverter is a wretched companion
, and covered his mouth with the side of his fist to hide his smile.

At just that moment, the little girl made the mistake of coming too close to a full-throated bull pigeon that had been near success in mounting a sleek gray little dove. The girl stamped her foot behind the pair, and the male flapped up into her face as though to attack. The little girl screamed and began to weep, running for her parents. Both Jalâl and Jes burst out laughing.

“What is so funny?” asked Khadiya, thrusting her face out from behind the curtains.

“Even the dove knows wrath,” Jalâl said with mock portent.

Khadiya surveyed the square. “Do you laugh at a weeping child?” she demanded mildly. Jes was impressed with how quickly she had assessed the situation.

“There was no harm,” said Jalâl. “Our laughter is to ourself as well as the girl. She has learn to respect for the birds. We learn this, too, with her.”

“I think idleness is curdling your wit,” Khadiya said, gathering their empty glasses. “Tea time is over. Make some work now.”

Jes looked away, not to embarrass Jalâl with his witness; but to his surprise, his boss only smiled owlishly at him. “Thee women are always good to us. They save us from idleness and self-importance.”

Jes itched to write it down in his notebook but feared that might appear odd. Maybe it was odd. Why was he collecting all these quotes? Just to play the clown for his drinking buddies? He thought with relish of their laughter, their delight, as he did his imitation of the shoemaker in the North Bodega each evening. Not only what Jalâl said, but the way he pronounced words. For example, when he dyed leather he wore rubber gloves and asked Jes to fetch them for him from the shelf over the door—Jes stood half a meter higher than the older man.

“Jes, please, to take down woba golves to me.”

Jes could barely wait for him to request them again. This was now a saying among his friends; for no reason at all, one might suddenly look at the other, perhaps in displeasure, perhaps in response to a reminder that it was his turn to buy a round, and say simply, “Woba golves!” and everybody present would crack up.

Yet Jes’s feeling for the Afghani was not simple, he knew that. The more he came to know of him, the more he recognized that he had made an assumption at the start—that he was inherently superior to this man. But each day in his presence was a challenge to that assumption. There seemed no end to it.

Jes had been working for Jalâl for not quite two months now, since his leave of absence from
RUC
started and his student salary stopped. He’d seen a hand-lettered sign in the shop window in some kind of Arabic, English, and Danish. How perfect it seemed! Practically just around the corner from his apartment on Blågårds Place, and it was not an office job. He was willing to do practically anything that would keep him out of an office. It seemed to him that almost nobody in Denmark actually did anything anymore; they all just sat in offices sending e-mails to one another or went to meetings where they sat around a table and talked about the e-mails. His father had got him a student job at the Tank two years before, and Jes had been amazed at how little anyone seemed to do. They wrote e-mails or sometimes letters, photocopied and filed them, sent them, and received responses, which needed new letters, new photocopies, new files. They went to meetings. Sometimes some of the big shots went to meetings in other cities or other countries where they apparently had their e-mails translated into other languages so they could talk about them with foreigners. Meanwhile, there were a million truly important things that needed doing in the world, things that were a matter of life and death for people who lived in poverty and misery. Jes wanted a foot into that door. And meanwhile, he wanted to do something concrete.

When Jes went into the shop and introduced himself to the smiling little pop-eyed man behind the shoe desk, Jalâl said in English, “Your name is Yes?”

“Yes: Jes. With a ‘J.’ ”

“Please to write this for me.… Ah, ‘Jes’! But spoken as ‘Yes.’ This is good name. Much better than ‘No.’ ”

Jes laughed.

“So you want to come to work for a foreign man in your own country? You know, when I was only the little more than age of you, I had to select if I must to spend my life repairing and polishing the boots of the Russians. I am Kabuli. Was born in Kabul, the city of my father, and I thought it was also my city. But Kabul has many master in the three thousand year. I was only tenant in rented house that pass from the hand of one foreign to another. Arab, Persian, British, Russian. Now American. But I did not know about the American was coming like this. I only knew the Russian came and killed my father, and they wanted me to take their boots in my hands. To repair the boots of other man is humble, there is honor. But not the boots of man who kill your father. My father was good man. He teach me to read, he teach me many thing. He teach many people, the young people. I think they kill him because he teach. It says in Koran that whoever flee in cause of God will find on the earth many a spacious refuge. This I have found here where I have now lived since twenty-five years. That is one year more than I live in Kabul, which has have many master and destructions and pain in the years since I leave her. Now is Copenhagen my home, and you, a young Dane with father who came from other land, come to
me
for an occupation. This honors me. I consider. Return here to me tomorrow and we shall decide together if you are to take this little job of work for me.”