Falling Sideways (36 page)
And that’s it.
But no, before the little will-o’-the-wisp of spirit disperses forever in the autumn breezes, a current from the sky snakes down, as such Copenhagen streams of air will do, and lifts it for one last tour of the city. One last peep. Lifted from the fallen broken bones and splattered fluids that were Breathwaite on East Railway Street and rising to let the last breath of B take in one last time the assortment of embassy mansions and the apartments of nobodies alike, anybodies, rather, everybodies, elegant buildings along the eastern streets—sandblasted, clean, and well tended from the foot of the furrowed stone walls past sturdy heavy carved wood doors and tall slender segmented white window frames to the red-clay roof tiles, formed of a worker’s thigh.
Breathwaite’s last eternal instant of fading light sees all this and more, and his heart brims with a love for the place that he understands suddenly is profoundly felt. This is a city where a human being could live a human life, even as his guttering remnant was swept farther, across the tracks, past the Grønningen windmill, past a wall of old luxury apartments, the faces of no longer quite wealthy Danish barons and baronesses, counts and countesses, cheeks bulging with their dinners, pressed against the well-appointed windows to witness as Breathwaite is carried on the air past the relicts of their lives, the treasured objects they preserved of gone times, over the ocher naval barracks of Nyboder, toward the harbor, over the green cupola of the Marble Church in all its portly grace, flanked around by famous potbellied theologians looking upward, pointing,
Look! There’s a flying Breathwaite up above! The knight of infinite resignation who lost it!
And look down, quick, now, there’s Amalienborg—an open-courted royal castle, wondrous!
he thought, drifting back across the fortress of Kastellet and Langelinie, where he saw the tiny mermaid on her rock, watching the sea. And he thought this would surely be the end of his little closing tour, but a fluke of the wind decided to show him more. Rapidly through the Centrum first, whipping back and forth, light as a feather, over the copper towers of Christiansborg and the twisted dragon tails of the stock exchange, lifting up again, high, high, higher up, so he could see it all in one clean sweep! Look! Back over there the tower of the Savior’s Church, and there’s Rosenborg Castle! And there’s the Round Tower and Nikolaj Church, and look there, look there, Mercury on a Butcher Street roof, balanced on the toe tips of one foot like a beautiful green acrobat, a dancer defying gravity with a helmet of wings, and look there! The lakes! You see them all from up here—Black Dam and Peblinge and St. George’s, so like a river, so like the boxcars of a train, a water train on its way to circle and celebrate our great city!
See the gardens! The parks! All the statues given us by brewer Jacobsen of Carlsberg and the thirsty love of beer! All out to the west side and Frederiksberg and the canals, too, and over to the north and south toward the bridge and Amager—you never really saw, so little of it, so much more to see and see again, you never understood. Only too late now you see how beautiful this city is, what a privilege to be here, a human city where a human being might choose a human life.
Too late, too late, for Breathwaite is no more.
The night tinkles like ice in glasses. Brown leaves blow and are glued to pavements with frost, and a roaring, restless air rattles shop windows, tries doors, and slides past, raw with frosty cold.
And that’s it.
Breathwaite opened his eyes. He could not see her face for the light from the room behind her. Then she stepped closer. She was smiling. Sad Kis was smiling.
Am I dead? Am I dreaming?
Why is Kis smiling?
he thought. And,
Who knows the heart of a woman?
He looked at the Chinese archer kneeling alongside the concrete half wall. The sculpture looked clumsy, stupid. All this stuff they would have to get rid of. The air was nippy and smelled agreeably of death.
“Hello, love,” Kis said, and sat beside him on the two-man, her warm thigh flush against his. She had the look of a woman who had made a decision. She leaned into him, her body so incredibly light. He could smell her scent, the aroma of all the secret potions she used, creams and oils and vapors and colognes, all the things she had used all these years to conjure the power of her femininity, her power as a woman. Which she was. Though he, he thought, was hardly a man. But she leaned into him as though he still were, as though he still could be, as though she loved him, as though he could make love to her, tireless in her attempts, and he felt a stirring. But a stirring was not enough. He was dead. He had fallen and risen and floated all across the city, and he was of no use to her. Why did she persist? Why did she place her delicate fingers on his thigh, on the inside of his thigh, moving upward?
“You know I can’t,” he said.
She smiled up into his face, that taunting, salacious smile. “Why not let me worry about that?” she said, and the clear, deep-throated timbre of her voice vibrated deep inside him, stirring him more. She touched him and murmured, “Mmm … That feels like the Fred I used to know.”
He said nothing as she lowered her head and placed her open mouth against him, exhaling, her breath seeping hotly through the material of his slacks as her blue eyes peered up and found the complicity in his gaze.
“Oh, Kis,” he whispered, his palms lifting to her perfumed hair, and the thought of all the things they would have to get rid of dissolved under the starry autumn sky, in the tender hot insistence of her breath.
There are so many people I would like to thank for their friendship, support, and encouragement throughout my life, over the years and in recent times. It is not possible to name them all. But I would be remiss not to name the following:
Daniel and Isabel Kennedy
Leo Kennedy-Rye and his father, Søren Rye
My beloved sister, Joan
Anton Mueller and Helen Garnons-Williams
Nat Sobel and Judith Weber
Roger and Brenda Derham
Duff Brenna, Walter Cummins, Greg Herriges, Michael Lee, Robert Stewart, and Gladys Swan
Born and raised in New York, Thomas E. Kennedy has lived in Copenhagen for over two decades. His books include novels, story and essay collections, literary criticism, translation, and anthologies.
Falling Sideways
is the second book in his acclaimed Copenhagen Quartet to be published in the United States, following
In the Company of Angels
. His website is
www.thomasekennedy.com
.
Fiction
In the Company of Angels
Crossing Borders
Unreal City
A Weather of the Eye
Drive, Dive, Dance & Fight
The Book of Angels
Cast Upon the Day
A Passion in the Desert
Nonfiction
Last Night My Bed a Boat of Whiskey Going Down
Riding the Dog: A Look Back at America
Writers on the Job: Tales of the Non-Writing Life
(as editor, with Walter Cummins)
The Book of Worst Meals
(as editor, with Walter Cummins)
The Literary Traveler
(with Walter Cummins)
Realism & Other Illusions: Essays on the Craft of Fiction
First published in Great Britain 2011
Copyright © Thomas E. Kennedy 2011
This electronic edition published 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The Rumi quotes are from
The Essential Rumi
, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne (HarperCollins, 1996). The quotes from the Koran are taken from
The Essential Koran
, translated and presented by Thomas Cleary (Castle Books, 1993).
Chapter six of the novel appeared originally in altered form in
Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture
(Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville, Georgia); another portion appeared under the title ‘Let Everyone Forget Everyone’ in
South Carolina Review
; and portions of chapter three were read aloud on the Harper College documentary film
Copenhagen Quartet
– at a time when the novel in progress was entitled
Breathwaite’s Fall
.
The right of Thomas E. Kennedy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Bloomsbury Publishing London New York Berlin Sydney
49–51 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 2619 5
www.bloomsbury.com/thomasekennedy
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