Suzanne Brogger - The Jade Cat

CONTENTS

Translated from the Danish by

Anne Born

About the Author

Suzanne Brgger was born in Copenhagen in 1944 and published her first book, Deliver Us from Love, in 1973. Over a number of works that draw largely on her own experience of life she has established herself as one of Denmark's most controversial and best-loved writers.

THE MEZZANINE

TOBIAS WAS THE man of the world and Otto the stay-at-home. Thats what Otto had believed all of his life, and he still believed it on New Years Eve in 1940. The table at Gammel Mnt 14 was laid with the gold-edged plates from the sideboard. Marie, short in the leg and large of bosom, had followed two generations of the family from Rosenvnget to Gammel Mnt. She took charge of the preparations as usual. Or almost. The Director had in spite of her resistance insisted on making the mayonnaise for the lobster himself, his feet up on a stool on account of his thrombosis. Marie had known the Director since he was a boy and she was a slip of a girl.

Tobias and Katze were giving a New Years Eve party, a white-tie affair. Only the petit bourgeois expected guests in white tie and tails. Dinner jackets were worn only at everyday gatherings. It should be noted, however, that it wasnt that Tobias minded what one did or said. He did only what suited him. It was Katze, who had married into the Lvin family, who upheld the formalities, hectored the family into line, and who suffered.

Tobias, like every other Lvin, was a born after-dinner speaker, but he surpassed them all in wit. The unvoiced conviction of the family was that Lvin always spelled with an was a particularly fine name because it followed the pronunciation of the French e, and thereby the Lvins were loftier than mere Levins. It should surprise no-one that the Lvins were born speakers, for named after Lion they were bound to roar. Conversation at dinner was always carried on at full volume, whether about politics, social matters, business or gossip. The Lvin family put ordinary gentiles to silent flight.

To outsiders there was something threatening about the way they bellowed at each other. It was as if they were concealing some terrible secret. Katze regarded this shouting as uncouth. The Lvins were well aware of their gift for eloquence. This was not a family which, when it came time for a toast, drew scripts from their inside pockets or their handbags. With a Lvin, it was always improvisation and esprit. And that was especially Tobias talent.

The Lvin family was as assimilated as one could imagine. They considered the ghetto Jews to be humble in the wrong manner. Ghetto dwellers were the sort who said quietly: Well, theres nothing to be done. But there was always something to be done about it as Li, the eldest daughter, maintained and the Lvins knew what. To the day of their deaths, the Lvins all insisted that it was simply unthinkable for one of them to be victimised or carted off to a concentration camp. The idea of a Lvin in striped concentration camp uniform would be as absurd as a tiger in pyjamas. A Lvin would rather kill himself after first shooting a German! said Tobias daughters with one voice or rather, they will be saying it soon.

On the New Years Eve in question, Tobias rose to his feet, attracting his guests attention with a discreet tap on his hand-cut Russian glass. He had set the table himself, for Tobias was the connoisseur of celebrations. Earlier in the evening, at about eight oclock, the air-raid sirens had begun. The bell of the old Copenhagen Town Hall clock had just struck twelve. Tobias pulled out the gold pocket watch he had inherited from Papa and put it on the table; then he picked up a pile of gramophone records. The guests expected them to be old favourites significant in ways that Tobias would explain, but instead, to the general astonishment, he dropped them in a shattered heap behind his chair. His game was that each guest had to find in someone elses broken shard a piece that belonged with his own. This was how they would identify the partner they were to kiss at the stroke of midnight, the New Year. Very witty and very elegant. Very Tobias!

Meanwhile Katze sat at the opposite head of the table, in her long mustard-coloured crpe de Chine, seething. She smoked too many Craven As, but she had good teeth and good legs. She had sex appeal too, unlike that common cow fru Fonnesbeck, soon to be kissed by Tobias a racing certainty. Glenda Fonnesbeck was a fleshy woman with white skin and freckles, set hair and buckteeth. She even rinsed her hair copper since that was supposed to be more refined than dyeing it. She was married to Buller, a small, round, bald fellow whose only interest in life was the price of coal and coke and who was indifferent to his wifes escapades. Katze often and bitterly remarked that they could by now surely stop inviting those dreary people, couldnt they? But Tobias, who had been forced to give up his position as Director General of Vacuum Oil in the Baltic countries when the Russians arrived, planned to start afresh from Gammel Mnt. He might set up a sales agency; he had already had his letterhead printed, THE VULKAN CO. LTD . Tobias calculated that Buller, with his knowledge of the Danish market, might be a great help. When the war began, there would unquestionably be a demand for fuel. Besides, wasnt Glenda Katzes best friend?

Katze always pronounced the I in Glenda with scornful emphasis so that everyone could hear how degrading it was to know her. Although they were naturally on first-name terms after a friendship of more than 20 years, Katze could never be a close friend of anyone who boasted of having a sensual disposition. Good God, the woman was simply wanton. A street girl. Katze had never been like that. She came from a good family and she had been christened Katarina after the Russian empress.

Katze surveyed the guests with condescension. Her blue eyes were clear, no hint of bloodshot. She hadnt drunk too much yet, and she smiled sweetly at one and all. Her perfume was Guerlains new Mitsouko and she wore Helena Rubinsteins vermilion Dark Diva lipstick, which left blood-red marks on her Craven A butts. When she saw Glenda taking a cigarette from her pearl handbag, Katze offered her a Craven A from the silver mug on the table.

There was Otto, the nitwit, searching for a sliver of song. He was very sweet, the only Lvin who had accepted Katze with real kindness, even siding with her against Tobias. Otto had supported Katzes decision to buy tea towels when Tobias favoured investing in lobsters and prawns. It wasnt that Katze took any particular interest in tea towels as such, but when it came to maintaining Gammel Mnt 14 in unstable times, she knew where her duty lay. And what store could she set by Tobias? At the end of the day, what was he really worth? What use was he when the Buick broke down on a gravel highway in Lithuania? How much use was he altogether with his long, manicured fingers that could manage nothing more intricate than a Havana cigar or deck of cards?

Ottos wife Titta, a Monies before she married, searched in her well-bred way for a matching fragment of gramophone record for her own. She was no wet blanket, even in her dinky collars and puff sleeves. With her neat black curls, ivory profile and long red, claw-like nails, it was as if heaven help us she had just been painted in miniature by Fanny Falkner, last wife of Strindberg. With her masses of money and sugary smile, Titta had gone to finishing school in Switzerland and won a beauty contest in Hornbk, where she was also the tennis champion. How boring and predictable it all was! It had taken her years to land the easy-going Otto. She had been a visitor at Rosenvnget since she was a girl and she had set her cap at him, but somehow she had failed to penetrate his defences. Finally she threatened to marry someone else. And she did! This marriage which had at least borne fruit in the person of her son Ib had of course been a mere misunderstanding. As soon as Otto caved in, she ran away even from Ib whom she deeply loved but was forced to sacrifice so as to be able to marry Otto, who wouldnt tolerate competition in the form of children. After their marriage Otto changed not at all. He conversed only in brief, clipped utterances: 1: Whisky with ice? without ice? 2: Will we be bombed, or not bombed? 3: Shall we play seven or