Copenhagen Noir

First I’ll drive out and buy some new tools. Then to work. Be on time. Old Nielsen will be waiting with a new record player or transistor radio that should have been thrown out but some old lady has insisted it be repaired. The next few weeks I’ll jump up whenever the doorbell rings. Every time I’ll think it’s the police. Whenever I’m about to forget what happened, my sore muscles will remind me. But that’s not the hard part. Not at all. Time will pass. A new day will begin. New days always begin. The hard part will be forgetting how good it felt. To be alive again. To be the boys from Swallow Street, the boys from the block. Us.

AUSTRALIA BY CHRISTIAN DORPH & SIMON PASTERNAK

Vesterbro

MThursday, 6:05 p.m. E65 to Swinouscie, Reza’s Bistro arek opened the camper door. Reza stood on a stool with her back to him and both hands in a tub. She had rolled up her puffed sleeves, and her elbows were pumping. The camper smelled like fish. She turned, stood with a large cooked roach in her gloved hand.

“I’m too old for this, Marek. I had to send Zbigniew out for gelatin for the aspic. And now I need shallots and coriander.”

The rubber glove slid off with a snap. She stepped down from the stool, left the fish on the kitchen counter, and walked over to the laminated table at the back of camper, took out a cigarette from a silver case, lit up, and inhaled the smoke deep into her lungs. Then she came back, stood with her face inches from his. She had been drinking slivovitz again and had eaten something spicy. She lifted her forearm and showed him the z and the small green numbers of the tattoo.

“They’ve tried to kill us off, Marek. They injected phenol in the hearts of my younger brothers. They shot color in Sonja’s green, green eyes and they got infected, but they didn’t let her die, not before she got gangrene. But we will never die, Marek.”

Marek lowered his head, he always felt uneasy here. Glanced around at the screaming-red sashed curtains, the brown laminate, the green, red, yellow lamps, the picture of the brothers and sisters, the cousins, and the mother and father in a frame beside the television, the press photo for Zigeuner-Zirkus 1939, the entire tiny band with a Great Dane to establish proportions-the violinist to the right holding the toy violin reached the dog’s shoulders: Reza at nine years of age.

“Irina says that you pull out. And you’re doing it less and less.” She pinched his arm with her small, hard claws. “Look at me, Marek.”

He turned to her, stared down at her wrinkled cleavage, the ample makeup.

“You fucking Polacks. Big men, but what are you shooting? Blanks? I want grandchildren, Marek.”

She looked him hatefully in the eyes, but then broke off and walked over to the dresser, put on her large glasses. She brought out a folder. Marek glimpsed a passport and a pile of other papers.

“We have a job for you in Copenhagen. One of our Polish girls has run away. Adina something or other. Olek will tell you everything. Zbigniew has arranged another car.”

“Can’t I take my own car?”

“No. You are escorting another girl. Here are her papers, straight from Moldavia.”

Marek walked past the well-lit bistro. Another hooker job. Do they think I’m worthless? He looked in through the glass. His wife, Irina, stood inside, flushed, red blisters on her body. Five years and nowhere. She was giving orders to a girl who stood trying to keep a tub from spilling. He could feel Reza’s fingernails all the way into his soul.

He walked over to his own car, grabbed the spare tire, 100,000 euros stowed under the rim.

He’d reached 100,000 yesterday. Enough for a new life.

The girl, pale and silent, was already in the car when he plopped down in the driver’s seat.

“Marek,” he said. “I’m Marek.”

The girl began crying.

Thursday, 7:10 p.m. Abel Cathrines Gade 5, Fifth Floor, 1654 Copenhagen V

Henry og Connie Jensen was the name on the oval copper nameplate on the fifth floor. Adina had run and run and run like a deer in a cone of light, she was all in, and it wasn’t until now that she felt how cold she’d been, how scared. She had stood on the bridge above Dybbølsbro Station, wanting to throw herself in front of the train. Better to die than go back to Olek, better to do it herself. But then suddenly she didn’t dare do it, and she remembered Henry. You can come anytime, and I mean it, he had said. He always repeated it: Anytime. It was stupid to hide at a client’s place, impossible, but now he opened the door, welcomed her, stood there with his big furrowed face, the worried eyes, and she fell into his apartment, was sucked into the warm hallway. Henry helped her over the thick wool rug, over to the sofa.