Copenhagen Noir

hell are you doing?” And there’s no way to explain. I say I’m sorry, again and again. I say: “But I thought… that you…” Her eyes flash. She says: “You! You’re like a father! That’s how I remember you, like a… an adult. And you think it’s okay to kiss me? Is that really all you’re after? To get at me? I thought this might be the start of some kind of friendship. I thought this was about Lucille!” Now she shouts: “You are just a stupid old man!” And she moves off. Rushing and raging across the faded lawns with her shiny auburn hair swinging behind her head in the sunlight. And I know I’ve ruined it, I will never see her again. I misunderstood everything. I couldn’t control myself, she’s right, I am a stupid old man. I flop down on a bench and toss what’s left of the morning’s croissants to the ducks. Exactly like old men do. Feed the ducks, sit and stare.

All I need is a cane. And a goddamn set of false teeth.

The rest of the day depressed in the hotel room. I’m on the brink of going back home to Brooklyn, the hell with all this. First I get boiling mad (at Kirsten and at myself), then I’m resigned, apathetic. Then I yell: “Why am I running around here like an idiot playing goddamn DETECTIVE?” I alternate between lying on my side in bed and pacing around the room, punching the wall. Later I’m just plain exhausted. I step out to get something to eat. After wandering around for a half hour, unable to decide, I end up with a slice from the Sicilian pizzeria on the corner of Nansensgade and Ahlefeldtsgade. My pizza is thin and crispy like it should be. I eat at a high table by the window and look out in the dark while listening absent-mindedly to background conversations in Italian. I leaf through the local paper. I stop, then read: The man who was abandoned Thursday outside the emergency room at Bispebjerg Hospital died late yesterday. The deceased has not yet been identified. He was in his late thirties, white but dark-complected, with a distinctive scar twenty centimeters long on his upper chest. Family of the deceased are requested to contact the police. The cooks laugh loudly at something in the kitchen. I look out at the street where a few boys practice wheelies on their bikes. I leave the rest of my pizza behind and stroll down toward Turesensgade. The second-floor windows are dark. But someone has hooked the front door wide open. I can’t stop myself, I walk cautiously up the stairs.

No sound comes from the apartment. After a while I open the mail slot a crack, still no sound, nothing to see, no snoring men, no water running from a faucet; it’s deadly quiet. I pull out my knife from my inside pocket. But the door is unlocked. I hold my breath. It creaks when I push it with my foot. Still nothing happens. I step into the hall. Pitch dark. First I check the living room and bedroom to make sure I’m alone. The light from the street makes it possible to scan the two rooms, both are barren, the furniture cleared out. The kitchen is the same way. All that’s left are dirty dishes, they smell horrendous. The refrigerator door is open, it’s empty too. A small pool of water on the floor from the thawed freezer. In the living room, the stench from the corpse still hangs in the air, even though they have left the window open. But the sack is gone. I can just make out a stain on the floor where it was lying. I think: This was Lucille’s home. She lived here. Here is where she got up and put her clothes on, here is where she went to bed at night.

Back in the dark hall, I fumble around for the frame. It’s there. I take the drawing down and leave the apartment with the door open.

It seems as if there is nothing more to do. A few days go by rambling around erratically: another night in Vesterbro, a glimpse of the young prostitutes huddled together again, talking eagerly on a corner, a beer or three at various bars, shawarma and bad fast food, I visit the Russian restaurant in a basement on Israels Plads just one time, in hopes of something happening. I eat a fine bowl of borscht that tastes of more than boiled beets, but otherwise it’s just tables of families with young kids. Daytime I aimlessly follow the stream of light, blond people on the streets, homogenous in contrast to the motley street crowds I’m used to in New York. Suddenly I’m desperately homesick. I want to go home. And I discover I have already buried Lucille, I’ve passed the point of acknowledging that she is dead, that I will never find her. I don’t think anyone will find her. I think the Russians have shut her up for good, because she discovered that they were trafficking girls from Gambia. I think they’ve stowed her away forever. Buried her in a forest or dumped her in the sea, far from the Danish coast. Maybe they even murdered her in another land far away. The earth has swallowed Lucille. She called out to me and I was incapable of answering her. I didn’t grab her hand. I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope. Eliot again, Four Quartets. Wish I could. Wait calmly without hope. Once, at a distance, I see Kirsten bicycling up Vendersgade with Mia in her child’s seat. Another time I think I recognize Lucille in a packed bus at Norreport Station. But it’s just my imagination. Finally, I call the airline and ask them to reserve a flight on my open ticket. I pack the framed drawing in with the few clothes I brought and put it all in the suitcase. I pay the sleepy man at the hotel reception desk. He hands me a brown package with clean clothes. The vomit clothes. The 28th of December, around ten a.m., I walk down to the metro that runs out to the airport, and I sense how relieved I am to leave this city that, for one reason or another, always ends up huddling in on itself, shutting out the world right in front of my eyes. It snows lightly. There is ice on the roofs. Sleet and salt on the sidewalks. I walk past the flower booths on the square where the vegetable market once stood, red-cheeked women and young girls with stocking caps pulled down over their foreheads. Buy a cup of coffee at Cafe Dolores, set my suitcase down in the slush, and light a cigarette. Once again, this is how I take leave of Copenhagen. And again I swear to never come back. But it’s not until after checking in, as I sit calmly at the gate, waiting to board, that Kirsten forwards a text message to me. Hi K. Sorry I haven’t called until now, have a new #;) Living in ?rhus with Johan. D threatened me and beat me 2 times when he found out about J. Bastard. So I got out of there. Am totally in love. Do you know anybody who wants to buy a cheap apartment in Turesensgade? Hehe. A bientot, L.

L. for Lucille. I swallow several times. The world swims in front of my eyes. And it’s as if everything inside me plunges down, down, down, everything gets swept along, broken. I squeeze my eyes shut and all I see is a chasm, a wild gorge of darkness. I see precisely how I lose my grip, fall, and disappear. I ask out loud: “Why?” Open my eyes. Look out at the gray, snow-laden sky the planes lift off into, land from.

I should be happy. I should be so happy.

ONE OF THE ROUGH ONES BY JONAS T. BENGTSSON

Northwest

I’d thought these images would be less chilling without the sound. Nothing much happens the first few minutes. The screen flickers. Slack, they call it. You should always forward a new tape a little bit before you begin recording. Count one, two, three, four…

Then a girl on a bed. Somebody lives here, the walls are a faded yellow. Daylight streams onto her from a window that must be to the left of the camera.

The metal tool in the girl’s hand looks cold. Like something a gynecologist would use. Surgical steel. I fumble for the word. What is it, it’s on the tip of my tongue. She’s lying on her back on an unmade bed, slowly spreading her legs while she smiles at the camera.

I don’t think I know her. It’s not Maria, definitely not. Though I can’t help thinking I’ve seen her before. Maybe on a bus or sometime in town. Maybe I’ve seen her in another film like this one. But she doesn’t have the look of a pro. Her movements are clumsy. It could very well be her first time in front of a camera.

She parts her labia with her first and middle fingers. When the point of the surgical instrument enters, it’s hard for her to keep smiling.

Then I remember. A speculum.

That’s what it’s called, the instrument in the girl’s hands.

I know this because I’ve been in prison. While others inside were getting an education or learning a trade-if nothing else, they got better at stealing cars or breaking into summer houses-I acquired a vast knowledge of pornography.

I shared a cell with a long-term inmate who had kicked his wife down a stairway while they’d both been drunk. A long stairway. When he wasn’t crying and looking at photos of her, he was going through his collection of