Why doesn’t the husband tell the truth? He was fired and hasn’t received a salary in two months. She is going to find out anyway when the bank notifies them that their account is empty and the mortgage wasn’t paid. But still he makes his lunch and acts as if he is in a hurry. He stands there with one arm in his coat, tossing back his coffee. See you, honey.
Others in the same situation can’t live with the shame of it, and shoot themselves in the head. There aren’t that many men who do it with pills or arteries sliced open in a bathtub. Men shoot or hang themselves. But that’s not how Georg feels at all. He is terrified at the thought of death. Intelligent people would say that he actually is afraid of living. Yeah, that too. He can’t live with life or death.
*
Georg is finished, though his heart is still beating and his lungs still breathing. He has a roof over his head and a bed to sleep in. There is no war, no water shortage. His most basic needs are met. It makes him want to look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to get a picture of how bad it isn’t.
At the bottom, the first level, he can cross everything off. He has food, water, sleep, and freedom of movement.
At the second level, he is sheltered from wind and weather; he has sweaters, rain gear, and a home with heat, a society with doctors, schools, and police.
At the third level, his social needs are covered by community, love, and friendship. Georg has a wife and good friends. He feels as if he belongs in his surroundings, and as a citizen in society.
Up at the fourth level, it gets tricky. Here he ought to have his needs met for respect, dignity, self-esteem, and success.
But he doesn’t. Something terrible has happened. He has been thrown out of the fifth level at the top of the pyramid, where only people who are creative and strive to surpass their own mortality—by writing books, for example—are permitted. Just as Georg did. He was an outstanding author. When he was about to have his first book published, his publisher said, It’s wild and provocative, but it will get the old men to wag their cigars.
Since then, he has never written anything without seeing the good old boys with fire in the fireplace and cognac in their glasses, puffing on their Cuban cigars and nodding to one another: He’s a good boy. Original. Just what we need; someone charming and cheeky, who sees right through the world’s folly.
For thirty years, Georg drew on his talent to entertain the masses. It was only natural, but now it’s all over. He can neither write nor read, and he has been asked to leave the field. Goodbye and thanks and never come back.
*
He has to get outside, he’s feeling suffocated. His lungs are collapsing, his head is exploding, it is about to blow. He’s hurrying, forcing his way down the sidewalk. Pedestrians in his way, he weaves in and out between them like an eel to make headway. He says garbage can when he sees a garbage can, shopping bag when he sees a shopping bag, umbrella, Asians. Breathe in crane, breathe out T-shirt, breathe in baseball cap, breathe out red car. Keep going, bicycle, down jacket, blue car, statue, contrails, traffic light, boy, flag, ornament, pregnant woman, streetlight, car tire, coffee cup. Keep going, Georg, don’t think, hang on, step from stone to stone, distract yourself, push it away, don’t think, interrupt every thought association with a neutral word, say it again: streetlight, boy, coat. Keep going, stay upright, say ice cream cone, say shoe store, blue house. They are stones to walk on across the river: scarf, shopping bag. Buoys on the open sea, ropes across the abyss: burger joint, statue, jewelry store.
*
Hi, Georg.
Hi, Søren.
Long time no see.
Slap on the shoulder.
Things okay?
Yeah, sure.
Getting some books written?
Yeah. Trying anyway. Haha. How about you.
Going like gangbusters. I opened two new restaurants.
Awesome.
Who would have believed that five years ago.
Oh, I think it was in the cards.
Yeah, okay.
You betcha. Smile. Smile.
Well, I’ve gotta go. Great to see you.
Same here.
Keep up the good work.
Fifteen feet down the sidewalk, the power goes out, the smile is punctured, no movement.
*
Can’t Georg have a nervous breakdown and become a new person?
At regular intervals celebrities come forth and tell about their breakdowns. They can always remember the fateful date.
It was the day my wife said, Either you go to treatment or I’m leaving and taking the children.
I had a car accident with cocaine in my bloodstream.
My doctor told me if I didn’t stop drinking I would die within six months.
I was in a meeting and I started talking nonsensically and had terrible pains in my chest.
I couldn’t go out on the stage. I just stood there crying and screaming.
They knew the whole time that they were drinking too much, wasting too much money on poker, bringing their work home at night, numbing their problems with pills, preferring to watch porn rather than having sex with their spouse, but they did their jobs—CEO of a large corporation, standing at the podium in parliament, in the television studio, on the stage for twenty years without a single cancellation.
Until the day they had to make a decision. Will I live like this the rest of my life, or will I admit I need help? Then they went public with it, told the truth about their abuse of alcohol, drugs, porn. They remember that it was such a relief. Now there would be no more lying, and maybe they could help others in the same situation.
My breakdown was a gift. I entered rehab and was peeled like an onion and put back together again. Now I feed the ducks and make sure I get a good night’s sleep.
But Georg is unable to have a breakdown.
He can’t even take up drinking.
*
He needs something big to happen. Like a general strike, so schools close, only serious patients get treatment at the hospitals, and all of society has to pull together. Like during the oil crisis, when we had to save on heat and shut the lights. Or how about a terrorist attack, God forbid, but then Georg could forget about himself and stand united with the country. He hears a few shouts coming from the park. Just think if there were shots too. He knows how they sound, because after a terrorist attack, the witnesses always say they thought it was fireworks.
Georg is ready to run and shout to everyone that they should hide. No time to waste.
*
Hi, Georg.
Hi, Jens.
Long time no see. Things going well?
I think so. Some tough years, but now things are looking up again.
Are you still writing books?
Speechless.
Did Georg’s editor for thirty years just ask if he is still a writer?
I have started writing a bit again.
Awesome.
How are things at the press?
Better than ever. We are launching one bestseller after the other. Did you read Jacob’s new book?
No, not yet.
You absolutely have to. It is fantastic.
Awesome.
You never know what can happen. Take a little writer like him. He’s been incubating for all those years and then bang, he makes a huge splash. We’ve sold ninety thousand.
How great. Congratulations.
Smile. Smile.
I am actually kind of in a hurry. We have an editorial meeting at two. But it was great to see you.
Same here.
Keep up the good work.
Throat clutching
inner strangulation
gasping for breath, in the park
behind the trees, cold shivers, scalding tears.
*
Georg spins around six times with the maul on a chain over his head and lets it fly into the museum. The centrifugal force is shockingly violent, and he surpasses his personal best with considerable damage to the entrance.
It is good for him to let out his anger.
If he had done this ten years ago, it would have been performance art, which the museum would have earned money on. Visitors would have had to buy a ticket to be able to see the entry, and another to enter the museum itself, if they also wanted to go inside and see some landscape paintings from The Golden Age.
He has to strike out when anger wells up in him. It has to be vented; a person shouldn’t repress their feelings. It could cause cancer, or, at the very least, a stomachache and stress-related illness.
Do it again, Georg, just let it out.
*
For god’s sake, no. Georg has smashed the entryway to the National Gallery of Denmark.
No, no. Why?
Because he couldn’t go in and hang there for all eternity.
But he can’t even paint.
No, it is craziness. But he would do anything to be famous. He has also been down to the King’s Garden to tip Hans Christian Andersen off his base, because Georg wants to be the one sitting there in bronze with a book in one hand and the other hand gesticulating, while telling a story.
Some people say Georg has grown psychotic and has megalomaniac delusions. He thinks he’s a world-famous author, and he has gone off the rails because no one is giving his work recognition.
Can’t he be institutionalized?
They called the police already.
*
Poor Georg, he is finally finished. He has become invisible. Others sit with him around the table, talking behind his back. They pour for one another, send the serving dishes around without offering him any. It’s not that he has sat in the wrong place, it’s the others who are being inappropriate. They paste up invitations on his windows to events he can’t come to. They sit in his living room punching at the keyboard. Listen to us writing books. By the time he opens his computer, they have already reached the top of the bestseller list, competing for who has had the worst childhood and has written a powerful and moving book about it.
The number one bestseller had a mentally ill father. Number two was abused as a child. Number three tells about coming out as gay and being Muslim, having cancer, and becoming a mother. That’s the way to write today, just what the readers want. Stories from real life that they can relate to. When their favorite writer is laying all their cards on the table, it’s not the same as reality TV, where you can go all the way into the bedroom and the refrigerator, which is also fine; but here we have all the traumas, the fuel that has kept the artistic fire of their favorite authors burning.
Last week’s number eight, about a sister’s suicide, has just dropped off the bestseller list, because an auto-fiction novel about growing up in the ghetto has hit the streets. So readers must return to the bookstore to buy a signed copy and stand in long lines for a personal greeting. But no news is bigger than being passed by another, and the fingers are tapping on a keyboard behind Georg. A TV crew enters the house to follow a new author. They push Georg’s desk aside to make room for the man with the boom, the line producer, the first and second photographer, and the scriptwriter. Actually, it would be best if you leave and come back in an hour.
*
Georg is nauseous.
He has sycosis.
He bit his cheek by accident yesterday, and it swelled up. He bit it again, hard, chewing a piece of rye bread.
He is all choked up.
He has gas.
The weather is getting bad.
*
Georg’s wife is being too friendly.
Did Georg sleep well last night?
He has no idea. How is he supposed to know, when he’s asleep?
He must have gotten out on the wrong side of the bed.
No, it’s the same every day, the right side, so cut it out.
Maybe it would help to talk with a psychologist. Tina’s husband goes and likes it, and it’s not all touchy-feely, but he found out some things about himself and got some tools he can use.
Georg turns the radio up.
Couldn’t you just try it out, and if it isn’t your thing, you don’t have to go back.
Puts his hands over his ears.
You know, I’m the one who suffers when you’re like this.
*
Georg is asked to sit on the low four-legged chair, while his agent sits on the five-wheeled one with the executive tilt and the gas cartridge under the seat.
There is coffee on the table between them, sugar cubes, cream, and small chocolates in a bowl.
They are talking about the news in the literary world. One publisher went under, a married couple are waging war on one another in their respective autobiographical novels, and an elderly author died.
The agent has a new grandchild and has to show some pictures. Isn’t she sweet? Now I know what true love is.
But then they have to get to it. They approach the topic by stirring aimlessly in their coffee. Who will break the silence first?
I have done everything in my power, says the agent, but there is no one who will buy the book.
How can that be. It’s one of my best books!
Yes, it’s an amazing book, but bad times for the entire branch. Competition is sharp, you can only publish something that is sure to sell. The publishers can’t afford to take chances anymore.
What? I’ve sold almost a hundred thousand in France.
I don’t understand it either.
What about my German publisher?
They said no thanks this time.
Did you try any of the smaller publishers?
No one wants it. I am really sorry about this.
It doesn’t make any sense. I am a name.
I know, you have amazing talent.
There must be something wrong with the marketing.
We can’t plan out a bestseller.
If people read my book they would see how good it is.
There are so many factors. You have to be in the right place at the right time. The biggest load of crap can sell a hundred thousand copies and get translated into twenty languages while a gem of a book doesn’t make it past five thousand. The foreign markets are hard-pressed.
Then you haven’t done enough to sell my work. Can I see the sales materials?
We have done exactly what we always do, but we have a lot of titles to manage.
Now his eyes are welling up. Get a grip on yourself, Georg. But the water is rising. Now don’t start blinking, Georg, or your tears will fall out. But it’s already too late. He peed a little in his pants, and the other boys are laughing and calling him a baby, and he can’t do a thing about it, now they’ve got him where they want him.
The agent has sweat on his upper lip, eyes darting around. If only his secretary would come in with more coffee. If only he could call for an ambulance, but Georg hasn’t fallen apart in a seizure lying on the floor. He’s just crying, sniffling. There is nothing worse than sitting across from a man who has lost control and can’t steer his emotions. If only he had pounded on the table and cursed, had become threatening. Couldn’t he have taken the laptop and thrown it against the wall, and up and left, slamming the door?
Pull yourself together, Georg. Don’t put another man through this.
It will all work out, says the agent. Maybe your next book will break through.
There won’t be a next book. I’m done.
Now he leaves. Goodbye, he says with a raspy voice. Yes, now you see me go down the steps into the abyss. So long. We will probably never meet again.
Out on the street and then behind a building to finish crying.
But then he feels energy rising, anger. No one is going to make a loser out of him. He’ll show them, just wait. Napoleon will return with authority and vehemence. In his splendid uniform, heavy with medals, his hat on sideways, saber rattling in his belt.
Watch him make a great comeback.
He just has to recover. Napoleon has a stomachache and keeps it under his jacket. But just wait. Just wait.
*
In the same way that others enjoy their a cake with their coffee, Georg reads a book about rejected manuscripts and negative reviews.
The Tin Drum “can never be translated.” Ha-ha. Gloat. So there!
Nabokov’s Lolita: “We recommend it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.”
It’s totally understandable. When the Earth was declared round, there were plenty who bristled. When Georg had his first book published, there was a reviewer who thought it would be excellent, if only it were written in another way. The words themselves were fine, but the formulation was strange, and the chapters didn’t fit together.
It is easy to understand that Van Gogh cut off his ear and committed suicide in the end. No one understood him.
He couldn’t even figure out how to paint a sunflower so it looked like one; plus the vase was crooked. He didn’t sell a single work while he lived. They say he was ahead of his time. Just like Georg.
*
Breathe in rain-tarp on motorcycle.
Breathe out students in front of a castle, their teacher yelling to the ones in the back to listen.
Breathe in a sandwich shop with a large artificial loaf of bread in the window.
Breathe out four Asians with umbrellas, two wearing masks.
Breathe in it looks so hilarious when muscle-bound men totter around and can’t bring their arms in to their bodies.
Breathe out a crane with a concrete block on a chain swaying above the sidewalk.
The words are becoming sentences, and that is a kind of progress, anyway.
*
The old men sit on the benches and follow him with their eyes as he passes by. They had good legs like him when they were fifty-five. Those were the days. Georg can still get a fine erection, but he admits it takes a long time to pee. He has to press it out in short spurts, and it is demoralizing to listen to a young man hosing down the toilet behind a closed door in an adjacent urinal.
His hair is almost completely gray, and he has spots on his arms and hands. When he gets out of the shower he can see that he will eventually be like the old men in the swim hall—thin legs with saggy skin, emaciated chest, no rear end, just two little bumps with scraps of flesh left on.
His body is shrinking, getting worn and dried out. He understands for the first time that he has a skeleton inside. And a brain that is changing. His behavior cannot be controlled automatically as before. He has to keep an eye on it.
Several wild things, which he does not do, occur to him every day. He could jump out in front of a train. He could have done that anytime, but never did. Now he considers it. The thought forms.
There is something in Georg’s brain that has given in. His frontal lobes are not linked up properly. His impulses slip out and have to be consciously controlled, as opposed to before, when he was not even aware of them.
He can take his wife’s beloved family heirloom, a royal porcelain lady figurine, and smash it on the table, so the head falls off. Wait, he can’t do that. Smear banana on the light fixture, then.
He can sit at the dinner table and stick a fork in his eye. Whether it’s his own or someone else’s is not important. It’s the impulse that is dangerous. Stop, no, cut it out, you can’t do that, Georg.
*
Georg is so depressed. He cries; he’s finished. We can hope that the publisher relents and changes course; enough is enough.
With an arthritic dog who can’t get up, can’t see or smell, you have to be merciful and take it to the veterinarian and put it to sleep. It shouldn’t suffer, it shouldn’t leave stains on the floor, or walk into the door jamb, or have so much pain, when everything points in one direction. You have to put it down out of love, pure and simple. We are sorry about this, Georg, but we think it is time to stop. You should rest, not push yourself anymore. We can see this is hard for you. You want to reclaim your position, but there are others who have taken it. The young are storming ahead, and your contemporaries are only getting better and better. You have not sold anything in several years, your royalties are actually below zero, you actually owe us money. We show a loss on your books, but don’t worry about it. We’ll cover it.
Shall we say that’s enough for today? We have a meeting here at 1:00. And remember, you are always welcome for a cup of coffee. Only write first; don’t just show up. It’s not like it used to be, back when when we put down everything when you showed up, and we took your coat and it wasn’t enough to just offer you coffee. Beer? Chocolate? Some books?
*
And it’s no help that drunks are sitting on the benches with their booze.
No, you can’t put Georg in the same category as those people!
He is the inventor of the soup bowl, of the wheel, and don’t forget that his books have been published all over the world. What good is it to him that smelly alcoholics sitting on benches are worse off than him?
*
Georg’s wife has started writing a novel!
She can’t do that.
Take it easy. It’s just something she says. Everybody wants to write a book.
She has been at it for six months, but she doesn’t mention it to Georg until now.
Just wait until she finds out how hard it is.
No way is Georg going to help her.
She’ll have to figure it out on her own.
It’s going to be very embarrassing.
This is not what Georg needs right now, for his wife to publish a hopelessly amateurish novel. It’s going to make him look bad. Just like when you’re in town, and your wife gets drunk and wants to kiss everyone and reveal things and jump up on a table and shout: Dick! People like that do exist actually, and when you say it’s time to go home, it only encourages her. And your friends send you empathetic expressions. It’s not his fault, but why is he married to someone like that? How can he stand it? Why doesn’t she have more respect for him?
Who wants to be seen with a plastered wife, red wine in a cracked layer on her lips, snuffling, lost in the weeds of drunkenness, shouting, “Hey everyone, where are you? Let’s partyyy . . . !”
Take it easy. It won’t amount to anything. She will find out soon enough how difficult it is.
*
Georg’s wife broadcasts her keyboard strokes all through the apartment with a microphone and a bluetooth speaker. She learned touch typing in school, and she can use all ten fingers at lightning speed. And the sound of her laugh, oh, she wrote something again that is so funny, she can’t stop laughing.
Once a week her editor comes over and screeches with laughter, salivating over all the money and prizes this work is going to bring in. She uses a red pen to write exclamation points in the margins: “cool,” “great,” “ingenious,” red chicken scratch, and under that, gold star stickers like the ones from school, when the teacher was really pleased.
*
This plot is really amazing, says the editor. You know how to create some heavenly cliffhangers. And your language!
I am so happy, says his wife.
They go into the adjoining room, but they forgot to turn off the microphone, so he can hear them whispering.
You write a hundred times better than Georg.
I know, says his wife.
The expression “going to bed with the enemy” takes on a whole new meaning.
Uh oh. Now Georg is seeing ghosts. Why is his wife writing a book? And an editor would never visit an author at their house every week. This must be something he dreamed. A nightmare, or maybe a stress-induced paranoid vision. Hearing voices of people who aren’t there, imagining hidden microphones. This is not good.
Now Georg has to breathe all the way down to his belly and go out to the bathroom and look in the mirror and slap himself on the cheeks. Hello! Reality calling!
Now they are standing in the entry, and the editor is looking forward to coming back. This is going to be a celebration, a victory party. The publisher can barely wait.
*
It was nice when he stayed home writing books. In the morning he read what he had written the day before, and added half a page or a whole page to it. Then he was really cooking, and he could start doing the things he was putting off, but were needed, to give a manuscript its greatest potential. Take walks, go shopping, drink coffee with a friend. Meanwhile, the text simmered, percolated, and when he came home and lifted the lid, the material was tender, aromatic, mellowed, ready to add on to.
*
Georg’s wife received an email from a friend who had read the first fifty pages of her manuscript.
“This is the great contemporary novel we have been needing since Pontoppidan. It’s A Fortunate Man in a modern version, that takes the reader by the hand without compromising in quality. Buoyant prose and recognizable milieu. You have bowled me over completely.”
Isn’t that amazing? says his wife.
It is, says Georg. How wonderful for you. Congratulations.
I am so incredibly happy. Dorthe is a fantastic reader.
What a huge pat on the back.
I have dreamed about this my entire life.
Her entire life! Why couldn’t she have said that from the start. He would never have married her if he knew she was going to write a novel. He has never had an author as a girlfriend. He’s always kept his distance from them.
She tricked him. Kept him in the dark. Hid a horrible secret.
If only she had walked around in his clothes for fifteen years when he wasn’t home. Worn his white shirts with stiff collars and tight ties, the blazer with shoulder pads, briefs with bulges that she could fill with a sock. If only she had been brave and said that her name was Torben and she was not going to stay in the closet any longer. Torben wanted to walk the streets, go into shops, meet his friends as he truly was. Georg would be shocked of course, but after getting used to the idea, he would support her a hundred percent.
He would be proud of her, congratulate her for taking her dreams and longings seriously and manifesting them.
In any case, she should not say that she’s married to him. When she gets interviewed, she will have to do it at the publisher’s or in town. There will be no journalists in their apartment, no photographers or TV crews.
She might not be able to promise that.
Well, then he will remove the signs from the mailbox and the doorbell.
Well . . .
No media in their home unless they are coming to talk to him.
Oh, shouldn’t Georg calm down? He is so dramatic.
No, Georg will not calm down.
It’s not like someone has died.
Yes, someone has.
Georg has been stabbed in the back. She has killed him. His life as a writer for thirty years. But no, of course no one can understand that. This sweet woman is not writing a book to do him harm.
Why can’t he be glad on her account or at least abandon his immature behavior?
Because she is hanging him up in the town square and stomping on him, and people are clapping enthusiastically.
He hates her.
They ought to be able to discuss this like adults.
But no, they can’t.
He cannot think of anything worse than what she has done to him.
