Falling Sideways (9 page)

You’ve got potential, Adam.

Thanks, Dad.

Use it.

That smile.
Thanks, Dad.

Now his voice was crisp, though not without affection. “Carpe diem, sonny!”

“Right, Dad.”

“Come on.”

The boy sighed—true colors there—threw back his covers, and slid his legs out so his feet were flat on the antique plank floor. But sitting, not standing. Kampman could see he’d slept in his underwear. Sloppy habit.
We provide pajamas. Use them. Maintain form at all times.
Demonstratively, he shot his cuff and looked at his wristwatch.

“You
are
up, are you not?”

“Yo, Dad.”

“Good. I’m counting on you now. Up early and work hard. You’ll never regret it.”

“Right, Dad.”

“Good. Have a good workday, sonny. Love ya.”

“Love you, too, Dad.” Rubbing his eyes.

Kampman leaned forward and gave the back of the boy’s head an affectionate smack.

Down the hall, he looked in on the twins, still sleeping in their little twin beds. He wanted to kiss their golden brows but feared it might wake them, complicate the morning before Karen was up or the au pair here to deal with it.

Across to Karen. He could see the blue shadows of her open eyes in the pale darkness. He bent to kiss her, could smell she’d had a cigarette yesterday, decided not to mention it. Sometimes the secret of a successful marriage, he thought, was simply keeping your mouth shut. Pity, though. Weakness there, for all the world to see. Aside from the health problem, the stink, and the economic waste of it.

“Have a good day, honey,” he said.

“You too, honey.” Her sleepy smile of admiration. “How do you do it?”

“Easy. Just do it.”

“But where do you get the energy?”

“From just doing it.”

At the bedroom door he turned to wave, and she twinkled her fingers at him. Both of these actions, they knew, were necessary parts of the turnkey operation that started their day, kept each part balanced in the flow of the harmonious whole that was the life of their family,
his
family.

As his cushioned Nikes hit the pavement outside their villa on Tonysvej, he glanced at his watch and was rewarded to see the time was precisely what he’d felt it to be, 6:02, and he was jogging west to Bernstorffs Way, south toward the city. He jogged on the bike path that ran parallel to the road, past Gentofte Town Hall and the fire station, heading out of Charlottenlund into Hellerup, heights to middle heights, through the fine-misted damp air. The rain hung in the air rather than fell, haloing the objects that furnished the semidarkness along the road, early bikers in their slicks humped over handlebars, cozy blur of their headlamps, houses, a red mailbox. The streetlamps were not yet extinguished, light smearing pale in the mist, as did the headlights of the slowing, thickening motor traffic. The stretch and contraction of his muscles was agreeable, elbows pumping steadily with his heart, lungs, all in smooth high function. He felt light and agile as he slowly built speed through the boring streets past Helleruplund Church and Rygaards School—little to engage the eye. A good leader is never bored, can always find engagement. The stretch of his legs was long and easy as his jog built to a quick trot, to a sprint, past St. Lukas Hospital and Fragaria Way. Odd name for a street—Fragaria. Strawberry? Strawberry Way? Kilometer and a half behind him already, but he reminded himself to keep the measure simple and objective. The journey, not the distance. Stay in the moment of the run. Seven kilometers total. A sixty-minute run normally, fifty on a better day. Started out at 6:02 today, should be there by 7:02 the latest. First one in. Annoyed him if someone came in before him, but no one ever did. God forbid they should give a little extra. Difference between the leader and the led. Clausen sometimes—8:30, 8:40. Clausen the only one. Keep him in mind.

This was his prep for the day. Two and a half kilometers straight down Bernstorffs Way to Tuborg Way, veer right along Fragaria Way and across Lyngby Motor Road for the next one and a half kilometers, past Emdrup Pond, across Emdrup Way, past the little shopping center there toward Hans Knudsens Place. Time it so you reach Hans Knudsens on the green and jog toward the big polar bear sign on the Polar Bodega. Dismal place. Gave him a shudder. Kind of joint his father used to frequent.
Damn loser.

He broke into a sprint for the next one and a half kilometers past Vibenshus Center, the Magister House (Medister House, one of the twins called it once, Sausage House, Meatball House), Vibens Motor Circle, and open to a full run down Nørre Allé, past the Commons, west wall of the Rigshospitalet, the State Hospital, and hook right on Tagens Way. Not thinking, letting thought find him. He knew there would be many thoughts preparing themselves today, and he would not rush them. Let the pick get the meat out of the nut for him, just let it happen, no rush, let thought come to him.

A million details were grouping themselves into bunches, preparing themselves for his attention now that things were falling into place. Breathwaite on the catapult. But what had already appeared first thing, way back alongside the misty face of the fire station, was Adam’s effusive smile. He rejected the image at once. This was not a thought he wished to spend time with right now. It threw him off his stride. He had to skip a beat, two beats, to catch his pace again. The soles of his Nikes popped an easy half-dozen steps against the tarmac in proper sync, and the unwanted thought was gone.

But now here it was again, nearly five kilometers afterward. That smile. Effusive. Why?
Deal with it later.

Yet it threw him off into thought streams that were subterranean. Couldn’t be dealt with. Then the big glowing white polar bear reminding him of the old man, wasting himself at a smoky bar. Cigarettes. Schnapps. Beer. No doubt women, too. The kind who sat at the tables of serving houses. Slurred voices and greasy hair. So easy. Easiest thing in the world was to lose. Lose a chance, a negotiation, lose a window of opportunity, a whole season, lose your whole damn life and end up like him, eating weinerbrød pastry with beer in the morning. Goddamned loser. Adam looked like him. Same traits. Days abed and morns of slumber were not meant for man alive. Adam would not lose.
Keep at him.
Slow and sure. Karen was too easy with him.
He’s a sensitive fellow, Martin.
Who isn’t, Karen?
The boy needs love
. Yes, indeed, he does; now tell me your definition of love, please. We live in a culture of dependency, my friend, and dependency neither yields nor breeds love. Contrariwise. That is
not
love. That is
not
nurturing strength. That is encouraging weakness. Adam will be a leader of men, not a follower of his own desire for comfort. A leader of men and women. He will not repeat his grandfather’s sorry life. That is a model we scrap right from the start. Break the mold and throw it away.

The south wall of the State Hospital loomed up above him on his left, Panum Institute to his right, high red brick studded with small black windows. Like running through a valley. Through the valley of sweat ran Martin Kampman. He liked that. Sweat of triumph clinging to his back, his flanks, the muscles of his ass and thighs and calves working with his blood, his pump, tight swing of elbows.

As he aimed for the green traffic light at the corner, a dream fragment fleeted across the screen of his consciousness: He had been in the airport, and he saw a Swedish colleague, Anders Sachost, and was about to say hello, but the face looked wrong. Kampman watched it, transfixed, as it began to mutate into one face after another; it became the face of a fly, of a wasp, but green as a grasshopper. Frightened, Kampman asked brusquely,
What are you, celebrating carnival early?
And Sachost’s face grew purple mandibles between which his teeth spelled out, “Early Carnival,” and all the people around them began to laugh at Kampman. Ugly dream.

He missed the light on Blegdamsvej and had to stop while buses and cars and trucks rumbled past. He leaned forward, palms on knees, catching the breath the interruption cost him. Sweat dripped from his forehead, headband soaked through. He crouched there in the pale shadow of the ridiculous huge sculpture of Finsen, hands raised melodramatically to the heavens to receive radium. Like that crazy Swede in the von Trier film on TV: “With plutonium we will force the Danes to their knees!” Funny joke. Had to hand it to those damn Swedes, though. Built their nuclear power plants at the farthest outpost of their waters—a stone’s throw off the waters of Copenhagen. They get the energy and we take the risk. Had to hand it to them. They never flinch. Make a joke about it to try to give them a dig in the rib and they laugh right along with you. Make like nothing. Okay, so they promised to close it, but only after toughing it out for how many years? If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t work, well, maybe it works anyway. Tough decisions to tough out in this life. Like Breathwaite: “We knew this was coming, so why didn’t we do something to prepare for it?” Give him a shrug, firm smile, say, “
We knew it was a possibility, but …
” Shrug again. Meet his eyes and he gets the message.
I know that you know that I know, so what are you going to do about it? Not a thing you can do. Try. See what happens.

Then he sensed some connection between the dream about Anders Sachost and the Finsen statue and the Swede in the von Trier film.
Keep that in mind. Something to keep an eye on. Anyway, even if the Swedes were closing down their reactors here, I’ll believe it when I see it. They closed one once before, then opened it up again.

The light went green, and he jogged across, along the long green oblong of Peace Park, where they had raked away those slummy buildings years before. Public outcry to save some rat-infested firetraps. Tough decisions. He waited for the next thought, running past that odd sculpture to his left. Big tilted stone monolith with a keyhole in its center.
Now what in the hell is that supposed to mean? They call that art? Waste.

He crossed here past another crummy bodega of the sort his father hid away in half his life or more. Over the Peace Bridge. Black Dam Lake beginning to sparkle black silver in the slowly lifting dark. Magnificent. This was his city.
His.
On to Silver Square and a sharp right past the Chinese clinic, the Thai restaurant, along East Farimags Street, and he was at the great carved-walnut double doors of the Tank, handsome purple-and-gold logo in brass at the center of each door.

He estimated it to be 7:04 before checking his watch: 7:03. Pleased, he spent a few minutes stretching and destressing his legs against the door, up on the edge of the wrought-iron fence. Then he removed the master key from the pocket of his sweats and let himself in.

On the top floor, he stepped out of the little elevator and briskly followed the darkened hallway to the opposite end of the building front, passed through the anteroom that housed his secretary’s desk into his own office. He plopped down in his swivel chair, sidewise to his desk, picked fruit from the bowl on the Finnish shelving beside him, lifted a bottle of grapefruit juice from the little paneled refrigerator beneath, and wet his dry tongue, swallowing carefully.

Sunlight cut a sharp white crease between the dark sky and snaggled horizon of building tops off behind the botantical garden and glinted off the glass roof of the central hothouse in the garden below, looking like a Russian summer palace. The garden was still morning dark. Eyelids at half-mast, his gaze played with pleasant endorphin-induced languor across the shadowy October trees, the dim yellow glow of pathways, sculptures looming like pale spirits in the agreeable gloom. The drug of his run stilled the pressure of his blood, suffused his body with a glowing calm.

This was his. The best hour of his day. Before any of the others were here. He peeled a banana and ate it slowly, quartered a grapefruit with the Swiss Army knife in his desk drawer, sucked out the juice, and chewed the fruit to the white underside of the peel. He ate two tangerines, orange skin loose and easy to tear with his fingers from the fruit inside, popping the agreeably dryish segments into his mouth.

On the pad beside his B&O telephone, he jotted, “Sweden. Anders Sachost. Finsen. Plutonium. Barsebäck. Early carnival.”

Then, from the cabinet beneath the shelves, he took a clean folded shirt—a charcoal Boss turtleneck—from the pile there, clean folded CK shorts and sleeveless T-shirt, Boss socks, black. Clean slacks hung neatly in a clear plastic sheath from the dry cleaner’s on his walnut butler, along with a selection of cleaned and pressed jackets of beige, gray, and black suede. He stripped off his sweated joggers and jockeys and dumped them in the wicker hamper in his bathroom, flicked on the light, and paused. Something was off.

Someone had used his bathroom.

His gaze scanned the room to identify what had signaled him, and sure enough, he could see that one of the two plush white towels on the rack between the shower cabin and toilet had been used. He could see it at once by the drape. Someone had tried to be discreet about it, drying fingers in the fold without lifting the towel from the rack, but he could see it.

Sneaky. He didn’t like sneaks. Who?

He lifted the lid of the toilet seat. A pale streak of red along the inside of the porcelain. He toed the pedal of the chromium wastebasket so the lid popped up, saw something wrapped in paper inside the plastic sack, bent closer. It was a bloody tampon. Must have been Bente, his secretary. Maybe that explained her curtness two days before. PMS. He let the lid of the pail drop back into place. (Another thought: maintenance crew getting careless.) Bente was a smoker, too. He had seen her on the sidewalk outside at lunchtime with Fred Breathwaite, who also smoked—cigars—and drank, too. Smelled it on him sometimes. Once had the effrontery to ask if he could light up in this office when they had been going over a budget together. Long session. Took out a little green box of Nobel Petits.