THE GREAT ACTOR

BY BENN Q. HOLM
Frederiksberg Allé

I walked down the stairs. It was over. Utterly and completely over. I was tired. The red carpet muffled the sound of my footsteps. He lived on the fourth floor, and I finally made it all the way down and out to the portal, dark and cold as a sepulchre. You could hear the wind whistling outside on Frederiksberg Allé.

The old allé was completely deserted, it was four, four-thirty in the morning. I walked through the ironlike cold under the naked trees, past the cars covered with frost, got in the Mercedes, grabbed the thermos from the glove compartment. Dregs of lukewarm coffee with a few drops of aquavit. What the hell, I could still feel the shots of whiskey. I fished a cigarette out of his pack, only two left, shit. I could smoke a whole tobacco farm, drink an entire barroom. My hands shook, my body. The brief, blazing explosion of fire and light, smoke deep in my lungs. Soon I’ll start the car, disappear.

Normally I wouldn’t dream of taking a shift on that particular Sunday in February, when the film industry holds its big annual awards program. But I was broke, and several of the other drivers were down with the flu. All evening I had avoided the area around Vesterport Station and the Imperial Theater, stayed near the airport. Fortune smiled upon me: I picked up an elderly suntanned couple just in from the Grand Canaries, dropped them off in Helsingør, about as far from the awards gala as I could get. After I’d driven for over nine hours, my back ached, and it was a little past midnight when I dropped two stewed Chinese off at the SAS Hotel. Time to call it a day, at last. The red, castlelike main station, Hovedbanegård, hugged itself behind the sooted moat of railway cutting. It was as if the city was coated with a thin membrane of gray-white frost; a few frozen souls hurried by. The neon ads blinked uselessly. In twenty minutes I would be back home in Rødovre, popping open a beer, smoking a cigarette, watching some TV. I’d go to bed, sleep. I switched the meter off and felt deeply relieved.

Because of some late-night streetwork on Vesterbrogade I spotted too late, I had to turn up Trommesalen. Suddenly I was perilously close to Imperial. Damn. And sure enough: the rest of the city was empty, but here the slick sidewalks looked like a veritable penguin march on inland ice. The big party had just ended. Cars and people shot out. Couples in evening dress waved in the bitter cold; had my taxi been stuffed with customers, with a pink elephant tied to the top, they would have hailed me anyway, that’s how it goes. I ignored the no-left-turn sign, found a nonexistent gap in the traffic, bounded over an island, and swung past the crowded slipstream, away from Imperial, continuing at a snail’s pace past Hotel Scandic, which the old Sheraton was now called, and there in the windswept space between the concrete high-rise and Sct. Jørgens Lake, I saw him.

Involuntarily I slowed down even more, my curiosity simply overwhelmed me. Was it really him? Erik Rützou himself, the pompous ass? My archenemy. Yes, it was.

He walked slightly stooped, fighting off the gale that tugged open his black overcoat, exposing his tux underneath. It looked as if he was poling his way forward in a boat. The moment he caught sight of my taxi he eagerly began flagging me. A long whitish thingy shimmered at the end of his raised arm; a torch, it looked like, but it had to be a Bodil statuette. It could hardly be less, in Erik Rützou’s case. I cursed the streetwork, my curiosity, and was about to floor it when a bicycler without lights swung out on the street. Against my will I stomped on the brakes.

Knock-knock.

Rützou pounded on the window, chalk-white knuckles, a cuff link blinked, he stared inside the taxi, his clenched fist reminding me of a baby’s skull impatiently banging the glass; his slight overbite, which in some odd way served only to reinforce his beautiful, aristocratic face, and his black overcoat made him look like a drunken Count Dracula. Our eyes met, and time stood still. Erik Rützou’s gaze wandered, but he didn’t seem surprised to see me. In fact, he showed no sign of recognizing me. All he showed was that during the course of the evening he had consumed a considerable amount of alcohol, which in all likelihood he hadn’t been obliged to pay for. Champagne and tall drinks in steady streams, served by stunning, blue-eyed blondes. He had sat there in the enormous warm-hearted movie theater in one of the first rows, together with the other luminaries from the film’s cast and their spouses or “good friends,” clips from the nominees had been shown, the entire theater had applauded, the entire theater had held its collective breath while some highly paid stand-up comic convincingly fumbled with the envelope and finally screamed “ERIK RÜTZOU!!” and an avalanche of enthusiastic applause rang throughout the theater, Scandinavia’s largest, it felt as if the roof lifted like some gigantic manhole cover and he rose in feigned surprise, walked up on stage, gave a brief, incisive thank-you speech with a few jokes and wisecracks worked in, thanked the director and the rest of the crew, thanked his old private tutor who was sitting up in heaven drinking port, walked down off the stage, was cheek-kissed along the way by divine women and hugged by male colleagues, and sat down, beaming. Some people are simply born lucky.

All these stupid thoughts led to my not activating the central lock—he had already flung the door open, sunk down in the passenger seat, and said: “Frederiksberg Allé.”

I mumbled lamely: “I’m not working.”

“It will only take five minutes,” he growled arrogantly. “Are you aware of just how goddamn cold it is!? We’ll do it off the meter.”

A car behind me honked. I took off automatically, as if I was in a trance, and wheeled past the thick cylinders of the Planetarium.

Erik Rützou sat preoccupied, fingering his Bodil, presumably received for Best Male Actor. During the Christmas season the entire metropolitan area had been plastered with billboards and posters for the film. We hadn’t seen each other for at least fifteen years, maybe more—when time starts flying nothing can stop it—but I saw him constantly: on TV, on the front pages. On the side of a bus at a red light somewhere. He looked like himself, apparently I didn’t. Otherwise he would have recognized me immediately. I mean, we’d acted together, goddamnit. Had been in the same circles for a while.

We drove in silence, or so I thought, but then, through the buzz of my humiliation, I realized that Rützou was sitting there humming. Was he completely sloshed?

Down narrow Værnedamsvej to Osbornehjørnet and the knife-sharp border of Vesterbro, then I blasted up majestic Frederiksberg Allé as if my ass was on fire, Rützou still saying nothing, just humming low, the heavy German cab steamrolling the paving stones on Skt. Thomas Plads, the large, round, eerily deserted square. The grand old buildings slumbered, unworried behind the double row of lindens and the allé’s outer lanes, crowded with parked cars. We passed Café Promenaden, where I hadn’t dared show my face for years; it was still illuminated inside with a yellowish light, a few customers hanging on the bar, I noticed thirstily, and then we were already there: Rützou silently pointed out his destination. I turned and slowly rolled down the narrow lane between the broad sidewalk and the allé itself. We had just glanced off the corner of Vesterbro and all of its pushers, kebab shops, rowdy late-night bars, and porn shops: here, everything radiated peace and quiet and safety. Cars were bigger in this neighborhood, the apartments too, not to mention the gigantic old villas on the side streets, hidden behind high walls. But it was also a lie. A myth. Because suddenly you’d see auto garages, dreary apartment buildings. And though I tried to appear calm and unaffected by the situation, I was a smoldering, gloomy apartment building myself, an ocean of domestic disturbances. I was a lie too. Because I was scared. Scared, yes. Not of him, but of myself.

Take it easy, Klaus, I told myself, it will be over in a few moments, you’re not going to prison for murder here, you’ll drive home to Rødovre and drink a beer, maybe two, have a goodnight smoke, maybe two, and then you’ll go to bed. And if you can’t sleep, no matter how tired and burned out you are, you’ll take a sleeping pill, maybe two. If that doesn’t help, you’ll put on a movie, or call for some company. Most of all I wanted to sleep, drive out into a new day tomorrow evening. The only thing I was any good at. Driving. Up and down deserted roads, snaking in and out of traffic jams, flying across side streets while blind-drunk students disgorged alcohol in the backseat, drive and drive, pick people up, drive far and long, through the city, day after day, but mostly at night. I had become a night person, and I liked winters, the long dense dark. Autumn was my spring, the sublime overture of darkness.

Meanwhile, Rützou had begun frisking himself, hesitatingly, halfheartedly. The bum. Turned his pockets inside out, but all he found was a silver Dunhill lighter and a small set of keys. The damp, well-tailored smile almost turned serious. He was and is hopeless. He was and is a great performer. Our greatest living actor, according to the papers I tried not to read.

“Damnit, I left without my wallet.”

“Old habits … ?” I couldn’t help it. So often in the past I had seen him bumming cigarettes off unpaid gofers or underpaid stagehands. He wasn’t actually stingy, he was just thoughtless. One time, many years ago, he’d asked if I had a smoke on me. “I’ve only got one left,” I answered, and showed him the pack to prove I wasn’t lying. “That’s all right.” He grabbed the pack out of my hand, asked for a light, slapped me on the shoulder, and went back to the shot. Strange, the memories you drag around with you.

He hadn’t heard me, it looked as though he was struggling to remember something. He was several years older than me, fast closing in on fifty, the bohemian, longish dark hair was salt-and-pepper in spots. A handsome man, as I’ve said, but much smaller in person. In photos he always looked like some tall, half-decadent aristocrat, but he was only five-seven. At least I had him there, I was almost six-three.

“Give me the lighter while you run up.”

Erik Rützou gaped at me, lifted the marble-white Bodil statuette. “You think I’ll run off on you? Do you not have any idea who I am!?” He fell over, laughing. “You can have this fucking statuette, I already have at least ten others. What do you say?” Light from the streetlamp fell across his face, cutting it in half to resemble a black-and-white mask. He was actually quite pale, I noticed. As if he had seen a ghost. But apparently he hadn’t. “Then you could brag that you won a Bodil. Tell the kids about the time you won the Bodil. Ha!”

As far as my children went, they’d probably prefer that their mother got the child support I owed her. It kept adding up.

“The lighter,” I repeated.

“How do I know you won’t run off!?”

“So a stupid lighter means more than this …” I couldn’t bring myself to utter the word “Bodil.” It was ridiculous, but I was a bit sensitive about the matter.

“Why don’t you come up with me? Have a shot. And get your money.” He already had the door open, his patent-leather shoes dangling out of the car, as if he was carefully testing the water’s temperature. We could drown in this dark, cold river.

“I can’t park here.” I rolled on further; the side door was still open, the cold rushed in, the parked cars were bumper to bumper, I ended up parking halfway up on the sidewalk in front of a classy little shop that sold homemade chocolate.

We walked back through a large passageway and up a neat, well-kept, red-carpeted stairway.

On one floor Rützou cast a knowing glance at the nameplate. “The old prime minister, you know.”

I didn’t answer, for I was wondering why he hadn’t brought some little sweet thing home with him. That wasn’t like him, but maybe someone was up there warming his bed. Moreover, he looked even smaller than what I remembered, as if he had shrunk. He gasped for breath. Finally we reached his floor. My breathing wasn’t normal, either. Winded, he pushed the door open and showed me into his entry, or hallway, where the ceiling was high, stuccoed everywhere. Rützou set his Bodil down distractedly on an antique bureau, as if it were his daily mail, ads. An umbrella stand lay overturned, a large gold-framed mirror hung crooked, and a massive floor vase had been knocked over in the next room; the tall, shriveled, reedlike flowers looked like spears or enormous pickup sticks, and I spotted something on the wall that looked like blood but was just red wine, of course, a flowing stain with a delta of thin blue-red vessels. Lights on everywhere, as if he’d left abruptly. On a low table between two mahogany chairs, though most of the pieces had fallen on the floor, a few pawns and a bishop still stood, lonely and confused on a chessboard.

“A damn mess in here.” Instead of lifting the floor vase back up, he stepped over it and crossed immediately to the bar, also dark mahogany. I had been expecting that he’d surrounded himself with Arne Jacobsen furniture and contemporary design, that cool, consistent Scandinavian style, but the rooms mostly resembled some English manor; all they lacked was a pair of cocker spaniels and a portrait of the family patriarch, the old major, above the mantel. Maybe that’s what living in conservative Frederiksberg does to you. Back then he was a real left-winger.

“Whiskey? Cognac? Or … ?”

“Just whiskey, straight, thanks.”

He pushed a thick little glass over to me, flung his arms out, irritated.

“Stupid bitch. Well, it’s over now.” Oddly enough, he looked thoroughly happy at the thought. “Are you married, uh … ?”

I hesitated, it was as if he’d been about to say something more. My name, maybe.

“I have a girlfriend.” Yes, I did. The problem was that she’d just gotten a job in Greenland as a social worker. They were badly needed up there. But I needed her too.

“I’m finished with women.” Rützou finally righted the floor vase, and with a simple, delicate operation arranged the dried flowers or whatever they were, took a pillow that for reasons unknown had ended up on a windowsill, and tossed it over on one of the large, plush sofas. I sipped my whiskey, stood over in the window bay, glanced down at the boulevard, the leafless trees. A single car lurched off, moments later a taxi shot by.

“This is a nice place here,” I said, not even trying to hide my sarcasm, “with the theaters and the cafés and the park up the street. Quiet. The perfect place for the perfect solitary life.”

“You think? Well.”

“And it’s only a ten-minute walk to Vesterbro. If a person needs drugs or sex.”

He laughed shortly. Drank. “Are you insinuating that I’m the type who beats off in a booth at the Hawaii Bio?”

“They have booths in there?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Really? Because we were in there together once, Erik.” Short pause, the famous theatrical pause. “After filming a scene.”

Boozily, half-focused, he stared at me.

I swore silently. The words had just jumped out of my mouth. I hadn’t meant to reveal myself, but the situation had gripped me, it was almost like standing on stage again, or in front of the whirring cameras. With a firm grip on the role. But the feeling was short-lived and empty. I drank greedily, as if I could somehow swallow the words back again.

“We were? Sorry, but I know a million people. And vice versa,” he added, not without a certain satisfaction.

I seethed.

“After filming, you say? Are you a soundman or something? Give me a hint …”

“Forget it,” I mumble.

“Okay, let’s forget it. Such are the times, and the people. Forgetful, and I must pee.” He stood up, brushed back his dark mane, more from old habit, I thought, sent me one of his impish smiles, and then I heard his steps dwindling down an apparently endless hallway.

I don’t know. I could have taken off. He was gone a long time. I could have grabbed his Bodil and smashed everything in sight and continued through the double doors into the dining room, I could … Instead I finished off the whiskey and poured another. I spotted a pack of Marlboros on the coffee table, mine were all gone, I fished one out, stuck the pack in my inside pocket; when I thought about how many he had bummed from me in his time, he’d survive …

Finally I heard the thin sound of a toilet flushing far away, a door slamming open, steps approaching. More steps.

I stuck my head out in the long hallway.

“Did you see where I put that idiotic Bodil?” he blustered, from somewhere. The kitchen, I thought.

“Out in the entryway. The hallway.”

“That’s right.”

He tottered out from a doorway, floundered past me, came back.

I sat down in the living room in a wing-back chair, sniffed the whiskey, drank. Could already make out the bottom.

“It could be I do remember you. Faintly. Søren, isn’t it? I remember being out on a drinking binge with a soundman once after a shoot. Think we ended up at a hooker bar in Vesterbro. Was that you?”

“Yeah, let’s say that.”

“And now you drive a cab?”

“You got it.”

“Do you recall us fucking any women that night, Søren?”

“Till they couldn’t walk.”

“Which is how it should be. Let’s drink to that.”

“But … now you’re finished with women?”

Rützou hesitated a moment, then smiled modestly. “Absolutely finished, you can never be; they’re standing in line. But this woman here,” he cast one of his knowing glances around the room, “I am thoroughly finished with.”

“Yeah,” I said, “luckily new women keep showing up, new roles. I mean, for someone like you …”

He coughed. “Sorry?”

I repeated what I had said, word for word. As if I were learning it again. Acting. For it may have been half an eternity since we had seen each other, since we, well, had acted together. Together from morning to night at rehearsals. Hit the town together, bent some arms, chased women. All of that. But if he really couldn’t remember me, he’d have had to be suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s. And despite everything, that didn’t appear to be the case. But something was wrong. He seemed to be a shadow of himself. We actually resembled each other. Again.

“Pouring in,” came the delayed response, as if he didn’t really care to tune into the conversation’s wavelength.

“But maybe it’s dangerous when a guy thinks he can walk on water,” I said softly.

“What do you mean by that, Søren?”

“Cut the Søren shit. I nearly fell for it, but … how stupid do you think I am?”

“I wouldn’t know. But you look like a half-brained overweight cab driver, I can see that much.”

“And you look like a sick cream puff. But I’m disappointed in you, Erik. Overplaying this way. Even if I’ve put on a few pounds since back then.”

“What could he be babbling about?” he emoted, speaking to the stucco rosette on the ceiling, hamming it up. Then breaking out in a horse laugh, bending over, slapping his knee. “Of course, Klaus, damnit. It’s you. Now I remember you! But I thought you were dead and gone …”

“You recognized me the first second. And you still didn’t say a thing …”

“Let’s say that, then.”

“Yeah, let’s.”

“Listen, my friend. That girl who biked right in front of you. I just wanted to get home. I couldn’t get a cab, I didn’t want to go into town with the others. Tap on the window, see a middle-aged fat guy who looks familiar. What’s his name? I’m thinking. But I meet people all the goddamn time. I’m sorry, Klaus, but you’ve been out of the picture for fucking twenty years!”

“Fifteen,” I replied childishly. “And now I’m the one who has to piss.”

Along the way I took the opportunity to explore the apartment, the rooms. The bedroom was no exception to the strange sense of disintegration that filled the apartment: clothes were scattered all over, shirts, suit jackets, wardrobe doors stood wide open revealing rows of suits, the big double bed was unmade. A large ceiling fan whirled around for no reason, weekly magazines and pages of dialogue lay on the floor. The office was a cave of relics from a long, successful life. A big framed film poster from one of his most famous roles, a few small paintings from a wild, well-known Danish artist, and high shelves, completely filled up. But the shelves held more than books: photo albums, piles of gossip mags, scrapbooks, a pith helmet, bits of kinky eroticism, including an enormous phallus. In one corner, a southern French village of wine in unopened gift boxes and solid wooden crates. A desk globe inside of which I envisioned a cosmos of liquor bottles, a brand-new set of golf clubs parked against an easy chair. A couple more Bodils stood in a windowsill. Despite everything, it hadn’t amounted to more than that. A gigantic desk with a laptop. Along with a horde of photos framed behind glass of Rützou alongside diverse beauties and famous colleagues, the desk was flooded with manuscripts, invitations, bank statements. I picked up a random letter from the bank—he was loaded, the bastard. Then I found another letter. The sender’s official name and logo was up in the corner. I picked it up …

When I returned, he abruptly said: “It’s your fault that I’m sitting here. In a tux and bow tie.”

“Really?”

“I preferred the stage. Sensing the audience in the theater, sitting in the dressing room, going out for a beer afterward with everyone. Film felt very lonesome to me. No, not lonesome, fragmented, you might say. You know: you show up, say your lines, walk off, and that’s it. You might meet with the actors at the premiere.” He inspected his well-groomed hands, the whiskey glass he had set down the chess table, a short and stout rook, golden brown. “But then you simply vanished that time, called in sick or whatever it was that happened …”

“When?”

“Playing the innocent, are we? That leading role in the Carlsen film was yours. Have you repressed that, man? You must think I’m senile. You disappeared off the face of the earth, so they called me instead.” Rützou flung out his arms again, theatrically, and there was nothing else he needed to say: that film was his breakthrough, the roles started pouring in afterward.

“You’ve performed at the Royal Theater between all the films, I know that much, Erik. Even at Kronborg! I think I’ve seen you in commercials too. And some really bad family films.” The kids loved them.

“Everything except the old bawdy films,” he laughed. “They were before my time. But you’re right.” He stifled a belch. “But anyway.”

“You raked in the roles and the money, man.”

“I have.” He nodded solemnly. “I have,” he repeated. “And ladies.” He tasted the word, stretched it out, lay-deeze. “But … what happened, really, back then?”

“Uh … yeah.” Another cigarette. “It was … it was nerves,” I admitted, after a second. I had nothing to lose. Maybe I even needed to talk about it; I had never told this to anyone, not even my wife back then, definitely not the kids. “The pressure was too much. I couldn’t handle it. The thought of playing that part, I couldn’t wait for it to start, I was so happy, and I was dying of fright. Not just performance anxiety, but real anxiety. The long and short of it is, I crashed.”

“And when you finally got up again, it wasn’t so easy to find parts,” he added sympathetically; that is, malevolently.

“No, it was easy enough, at first. Certain bit parts. Like the deranged bar type, and the disgusting apartment caretaker. Always halfway drunk. The guy nobody likes.”

“Oh yeah,” Rützou said. “It’s so tiresome playing yourself all the time. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s why I have always taken various parts. Hamlet one day, beer commercials the next. But listen, Klaus. You could have worked your way back, slowly. But you gave up.”

“Yeah, I did. It wasn’t fun anymore. And I couldn’t bring in enough to make a go of it, financially.”

“Financially! Bah! I have a good friend, a well-known writer. He’s not exactly swimming in money but he writes anyway. Because he can, won’t do anything else.”

“Does he have a rich wife?”

“No, Klaus. He’s got balls!”

I finished off the whiskey, hissed: “I’m groveling at your feet, Erik. You are the greatest. And the ride’s on me.” I got ready to stand up. “Thanks for the drink.”

“Plural, if I may say. You have put away two very serious drinks. Downed them. Doubt you can drive. You want to destroy your glorious taxi career too?”

“I was close to a Bodil for best off-meter driving, right?”

“Ooh, I had forgotten how screamingly funny you can be. Listen: you can still get it, Klaus.” He reached for the bottle of whiskey on the chess table between us, some expensive brand I’d never heard of. The Bodil stood there too, tall and elegant, as if it was silently listening. “Stay for a while, let’s have a nightcap.”

I sank down in the chair, held my empty glass out like some beggar. He had hit my weak spot. I’ve never been good at saying no. If I lost my driver’s license, then … Usually I drank only after work and on off-days. Except for the few drops of aquavit in my thermos.

“What can I still get?” I said, mad at myself.

“The lady here.” He stuck the statuette up in my face. I pushed his hand away, but he kept sitting there waving it around. “A special-award Bodil. For all you could have accomplished …”

Of course I wanted to smack him, but I had driven a cab for so long and met so many extremely drunk people or just plain brain-dead types that I had learned to control myself. People had vomited all over my gearshift and my clothes, they had put a stranglehold on me from the backseat, they had tried to run from the fare, even that stoned-out floozy from Skovlunde without any money who invited me up, yeah, I hadn’t even smacked her when she screamed that I’d raped her when her boyfriend suddenly appeared in the apartment, a big dude. I hit him, sure, but in self-defense. The judge couldn’t understand what I was doing in her apartment, and my wife couldn’t either.

Rützou fenced with the Bodil as if it were a sword or a scepter, right at the tip of my nose. I grabbed it and held it threateningly above him.

“What the hell are you doing, Erik?” Now it was me doing the acting.

“Getting you to wake up. You still have it in you. You are not a big zero. All this could have been yours. But you were an amateur. You blew it all. And look at yourself now, what you’ve become: a beer gut in a cheap leather jacket. It looks like something you bought on the black market in Moldavia. All that’s missing is the mustache. And by the way,” he added off-handedly, “you should do something about your eyebrows, they look like two goddamn bushes.”

He sat close to me now, leaning forward, a scruffy birdlike figure in a tux.

“What happened with your girlfriend?” I asked.

“Fuck her.”

“You threw her out, didn’t you? You’re throwing everything out, aren’t you? Cleaning house.” I laughed, pointed to the chaos in the room. “If you can call this cleaning house.”

“You blew it all, Klaus. When you pull out of here, I’m calling the police, you’ll be nailed for drunk driving. Fired, out of work. Maybe you can find a cleaning job.”

I sat the glass down carefully. I didn’t pity him, or only very little.

“It’s terminal, isn’t it? Where at? Lungs? Throat? Lymph nodes?”

“Life is terminal. Did you read the profile of me they published? Nobody will write about you, will they? You’re dead and buried. The papers haven’t been interested in you for a hundred years. I’ve even looked once in a while. Usually people show up in these ‘Where are they now’ type columns, but no. You are just a goddamn moving man driving humans around in an old diesel car. Meaningful work, eh? Challenging.”

“How long do you have left? Three months, six months?”

“I have a full calendar, Klaus. Lars von Trier calls me constantly, begging me. They call from Hollywood, goddamnit!”

“Yeah, I’m sure. But before long you won’t be able to answer the phone. You’re sick. You’re dying.” I threw the letter from the hospital in front of him, but he ignored it.

“Who calls you, eh? They call from offices and bars, say, ‘Yeah, hello, can we get a cab to Amagerbrogade, name’s Jensen.’”

I had put my glass down, but I still sat there with his Bodil. His idea was that I would use it to smash in his skull. That was his plan, however and whenever it had come to him. Invite me up, provoke me, humiliate me. Something like that. I set it on the chess table, and yes, he was still a great actor, for he didn’t bat an eye.

“I don’t know, Erik,” I drawled, because an idea had come to me. I stood up. My head buzzed a bit, too much whiskey in too short a time. But I was used to it. It would be all right. If he went for it, the revenge would be more than sweet. “Do you really want me to kill you, Erik? Just like that, without getting anything in return?”

For a long time he said nothing.

Then he cleared his throat and spoke with a surprisingly calm voice: “All right. I have a lot of cash on me. You can take some of the antiques. All the silver. Nobody saw us. You drove with the meter off. Nobody needs to know a thing. All you have to do is do it.” A crooked smile. “For once in your life just do it, Klaus.”

“Okay,” I said.

Surprised, Rützou stared at me.

After another moment of silence, I was afraid he was getting cold feet, but then, in the same composed, toneless voice as before, he said: “Do what you will, just do it quick. Goddamn quick. Understood?”

I nodded politely.

“One second.” He disappeared down the hall, rustled around in his office, and came back with a thick envelope that, excited now, he handed to me.

I looked. Nothing but large bills, lots of them. I stuck the envelope in my pocket and put the gloves on that I’d pulled out of my leather jacket.

Rützou had poured himself an extra large whiskey, and he drank so it ran down his chin and throat and stained the elegant white shirt under his tux.

“Let’s get it over with, goddamnit,” he gasped.

I started right in. Before any regrets came along. It’s not nearly as easy to strangle someone as you might think. It requires a lot of strength and grisly patience. But that I had! Rützou’s eyes started to bulge, the whites popped out, he gurgled and, I couldn’t believe it, turned an even more ghostly white than before. He put up a little resistance, but most likely that was a natural reflex. For the bastard really wanted to die. Though he wouldn’t be getting his wish, not yet.

“Shhoke harr-er, gaw-dammuh!” he babbled.

“Can you say please?”

“Puh-eeeze.”

His blue tongue hung halfway out of the preposterous, already putrefied chasm of his mouth, his eyes had shifted from white to violently bloodshot, life slowly faded from them; it was a fantastic sight, he hissed and gasped and drooled like a goddamn snake, and then I abruptly dropped my stranglehold.

“Did you really think I’d do it, you idiot?”

Rützou tumbled backward, grabbed his throat, and gasped deeply for breath. He stood and swayed in his ridiculous patent-leather shoes, completely groggy; he’d pissed his pants, I noticed, and I was already celebrating my little stunt when he suddenly threw himself upon me in a rage and bombarded my face with rock-hard punches, his anger apparently increasing his strength because I was starting to see black. Now it was me on the edge of being knocked unconscious. I had no choice but to hit back. I slugged him straight on the chin.

Rützou fell his entire length and banged his head on the sharp corner of the coffee table. It sounded ugly. My knuckles ached in my gloves. Rützou was on the floor, lifeless. I prayed that he was only unconscious, when I saw a thin trickle of blood appear. More of it came, and more, until it was a small, dark lake.

Desperate, I fell to my knees and shook him, but there was no doubt.

Rützou was dead.

The asshole had tricked me after all.

For several minutes I sat and stared into space, unable to think or act. Then I downed a shot and began removing all traces of my fingerprints: I was on file. One of the last things I did before leaving the apartment was to empty my glass and wash it carefully. It was like being in a film, or no, a grainy documentary …

Then I left.

Down the stairs, the wide, red stairs.

And there I sat. It was still pitch dark and incredibly cold. I took my gloves off and fumbled around for the pack of cigarettes, only two left. The moment the flame rose from the lighter, I saw a flash of my gaunt and battered face in the rearview mirror. It was the stupidest possible thing I could do, to sit here smoking; someone might see me. But I really needed that cigarette. The money in the envelope, I’d completely forgotten about it. What had I done with it? Yeah, the money was safe and sound in my pocket, and in a moment I would be gone, headed for the hills, nobody would connect me with his death. I stuck the key in the ignition.

But then another thought hit me, harder than Rützou’s fist. His girlfriend! They’d had a fierce fight earlier that evening. There were conspicuous signs of strangulation on his neck, anyone could see that he hadn’t just fallen down drunk. Suspicion would immediately fall on her. Maybe she had an alibi, maybe not. And if she didn’t, what would I do?

It was her or me. This would never end. Except for the one who was dead.