Copenhagen Noir - Bo Tao Michaelis [50]
Someone had thrown a few snipped-up Christmas trees on the bare ground by the depot. Their limbs shook hysterically in the wind gusts and were mirrored in the large puddles formed by the rain. Disgruntled, Aage Baldersen blew out through his nose. Right now there was only mud and slush, but occasionally during the summer a circus slapped its tents up on the lot, and once, having nothing to do that day, he’d been stupid enough to buy a ticket for a show that should have had to pay its audience, that’s how bad it was. One of the clowns was an obese former half of a comedy duo who’d had some success in film. Now he looked like a worn-out punching bag and was just as funny as one.
Parmagade stretched out before him into the horizon. The blocks towered up on both sides of the street, and the vanishing point was anybody’s guess in the drizzly mist. But Baldersen knew very well what was hidden out east; back when the five-room apartment had a porcelain washbasin (women painted on it) and real booze and wasn’t a dump like now, he had bicycled the route many times, past the hospital and along Italiensvej and down to the beach and public baths that had proven to be a convenient meeting place when the bosses decided how the work should be divided. Nobody was going to frisk someone in their birthday suit!
Those days had been great in a lot of ways, and he didn’t even have to close his eyes to picture them. There had been a shortage of everything, but if you could get hold of a product in short supply it could be sold at a high price. Actually, he was very proud that he’d been part of what had to be called a major economy. True, it had developed underground, even though the retailing was done out in the open. But in front of the Lido by the Liberty Memorial and on Suhmsgade, it had naturally been only small stuff: single cigarettes, butter and sugar ration coupons, some 60 percent soap, and bike tubes with no holes. Baldersen’s level was more wholesale, but it made him happy anyway to see all the activity when he occasionally—and mostly for pleasure—inspected the troops.
He blew rainwater out between his lips and stepped into the hallway, where a weak, sour odor met him. The place needed painting, and there wasn’t much varnish left on the steps. While hauling himself slowly upstairs he felt the moisture that had seeped through the soles of his shoes.
Naturally, Aage Baldersen had understood that things wouldn’t be the same after the Liberation, but the first few years went very well. People still lacked everything that made life a bit more fun; the promised boatloads of bananas arrived a lot later than most had expected. But now he’d hit bottom, and while others saw light ahead, he stared into a growing darkness. And that’s really what surprised him the most: he’d lost his zing. It was as if all the fun had gone out of life. Once he’d been cheerful and energetic, now he was mostly surly, if not depressed.
Deep inside he knew what it was about: a lack of excitement. If he wanted he could get work—honest work—but he didn’t seem to have it in him, his slide had been too severe, and when it was all said and done, he had been the one left holding the bag. They bought him out with cash, and he’d been dumb enough to take it (who says no to a truckload of C-notes?), but when the paper money exchange came after the war, he was sunk—there was no way he could explain where all that money came from. He was so depressed that he couldn’t even enjoy the flames when all the bundles ended up in the furnace.
And this is where he’d ended up. Aage Baldersen opened the door to his apartment—room—that you walked directly into because it had no entryway, with the bathroom out in the hall. His shoes had dried enough from the climb up to the fifth floor that they left only small tracks on the floorboards when he walked in, yet he didn’t know