No Names, page 27
Isaac wraps his arms around himself, like an Egyptian mummy.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me.” My voice sounds so full it startles me.
“You left the Island,” he repeats, though not as a question this time. The grin has now disappeared. He presses his face into my shoulder, like he’s the one who should be sorry.
My instinct is to pull away. I fight it. “Doesn’t matter. Important thing is, I’m here. Here to say I’m sorry.” Then I add, less abstractly, “For what I did. For attacking you like I did. There’s no excuse.”
He steps away, head shaking. “No, not true. I made the first move. I was out of line. Sometimes I come on too strong. I do.”
“That’s not it. I was good with that, really, I was.” I lower myself to the cave floor, motioning him to come sit down beside me. He does. “In any case,” I continue, “what I did to you aside, I’m almost glad it’s come down the way it has.” I’m about to rest my hand on his shoulder, then pull back. I fake cough. “It’s just that I’m the kind of guy who hates surprises. I’m guessing you and Daniel thought it would be cool for me to find out for myself?”
He looks confused.
I laugh. It’s so unlike me to find anything funny about anything, let alone something as life-altering as this, but I can’t help it. “It was right out of one of those Greek tragedies Pete loved so much: without knowing it, man sleeps with brother’s son. Guess I was supposed to gouge my eyes out or something.”
Isaac sits upright, eyes strafing me.
“What?” This time I fake laugh. “It’s a metaphor. Pete’s not my brother! I’m not your uncle!”
“Are you messing with me?”
“Messing with you?”
He shakes his head. “You’re telling me Pete—your Pete—is—”
Now I’m the one who’s confused. Completely confused. If someone can both nod and shake their head at the same time, I’m doing just that.
“—is my dad?” His body starts trembling.
This makes no sense at all. Him tracking me down to find some connection with the father he never knew is what this whole debacle is about. Part of me wants to yell at him to cut the head games, but the torment in his voice, in his body, comes off as too real.
He’s barely whispering now. “Pete … Peter Lac … Pete is my dad?”
A paranoid thought comes to me: that Isaac and I are Daniel’s marionettes. I steady my bobbling head to a nod, even though now I’m not sure about anything at all. I inspect his face, wondering if that canine tooth is not, in fact, like a lot of other people’s. Maybe we humans find resemblances because we want to find them? Like when everyone used to think Pete and I were brothers. No, it’s got to be true. I was there. I was there when Isaac was conceived. His age is pretty much right. He’s said his mother went to high school with us. I nod to him again. “You didn’t … you really didn’t know?”
It sounds like he’s hyperventilating or about to have a seizure. He shakes his head fast, then asks, “So, you knew her, my mom? Lynn Burns?”
The name sounds familiar. Not sure, yet I nod anyway, I nod before going all vertigo. I have to close my eyes. I somehow manage to tell him, “I didn’t know, I didn’t know it myself, didn’t know Pete had a kid. And I’m positive he didn’t know.” I close my eyes to steady myself. “I didn’t know till the night you and I were by the fire. It hit me like lightning. I swear, I had no idea.” I give him the story. Not the whole story, just a brief outline. I lean down to kiss his forehead because I think that’s what a human being would do, an avuncular human being, but then, right before my lips make contact, I pull up short.
“Where is he? Where’s my father?”
AUGUST 1978, MIKE
One of the monitors is glowing 7:27 a.m. when the machines hooked up to Pete start going berserk, breaking my trance. A platoon of nurses and doctors slips into the room. One NBA-tall doctor starts pounding on Pete’s chest. The rest of the crew stand at the ready. A lady doctor leans over and starts performing mouth-to-mouth. I can’t help thinking of a scene from one of the Greek myths Pete told me about, where a god molds a person out of clay and a goddess breathes life into him. An orderly rolls a portable machine into the room. They hook it up to Pete. His body convulses. They’re shocking him. They shock him two more times, and I believe he’s going to rise out of the bed because don’t they say magic happens in threes? There’s more mouth-to-mouth. Then the goddess doctor stops. The intense focus on Pete lets up, the whole space seems to collapse, and I know he is dead. The myth turns out to be a lie. I stand up. I need to be standing.
The goddess doctor is no longer a goddess doctor but only a woman bending toward me—trying not to appear awkward—to tell me she’s sorry, she’s so sorry. Two of the nurses say the same. I don’t hate them for this convention, for being unable to transcend the scene. I don’t, I can’t. All my attempts at transcendence have come to nothing, have ended in the misery of this: Pete’s body, dead, lying on this bed, in this hospital room. The nurses methodically liberate Pete from the machines. He lies there, unadorned, but in the kaleidoscope of memory arranging and disarranging inside my head he is magnificent. He’s laughing and shaking his head at me because I don’t know anything about anything. He’s doing a three sixty off a picnic table at Dreamland while laying out some arabesque riff on his guitar. He’s diving into the sun-shattered lake from the salt caves. He’s putting his face close to mine, under starlight, saying, “Promise?”
A young nurse comes in and asks, “Would you like to be alone with your friend?” I barely nod.
She leaves, closing the door gently behind her. I press my left ear against Pete’s chest, checking to make sure there really is no life. I stay like this for I don’t know how long, paralyzed by regret. If only I had kept following him after the concert or agreed to rent a barge here where we two could live, or to buy a beat-up van and headed east for Katmandu together. If only I had let him quit the band in San Francisco or not sabotaged his attempt to join the Army. When I finally lift my head, I’m blind. Dense colors fill the center of my field of vision. I can see only peripherally. This doesn’t freak me out. I take it as punishment from the gods up there on Pete’s Olympus, as punishment deserved. I sit down, put my face on the edge of the bed. I want to howl into the sheets but can’t.
I wake to voices coming near. I can see normal again. The baby-faced doctor is entering the room and with him Mrs. Lac! I desperately wish I could switch places with Pete. The doctor is guiding her, his hand on her bare upper arm. Time and space get mixed up. She stops short when she sees the body. Then, swift as a bird, she’s at the bed, arms outstretched. She falls and covers her son with her body, as if to protect him, her head turned to the side. A deep stillness occupies every square millimeter of her face, and yet this lack of expression expresses the tragedy more profoundly than any expression ever could. I’m as sure as I’ve ever been of anything: that her feelings are way, way deeper than any I have ever felt or could ever feel. It seems as if she had no idea he was already dead when she arrived at the hospital. She must have gotten the first flight possible from Hallein after hearing he was in a coma. She likely thought she would be at her only child’s bedside as he recuperated. She looks at me briefly—less than briefly—and doesn’t say a word. Her eyes flash and it’s the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen. The most terrible, and yet, the look contains not a trace of malice, or at least I pray it doesn’t. Maybe it holds something like pity? Pity not for me, or not for me only, but pity radiating out for the whole world because a son is dead. Not simply her son but a son for everyone. It’s maybe also the look of one betrayed, though she isn’t, I think (or hope?) directing it towards me, or not me alone but outwardly, out into the world. That expression—without any intention or any will at all on her part, or so it seems—dismisses me, sends me falling from on high. In that momentless moment, I know for certain that I no longer exist for her. She and Pete are the only two people who have ever even come close to knowing me, and now I’ve got to face the fact that I have lost them both. I open my mouth. Not a word will form. What does it matter? What could any word do, especially coming from me? She must hear the one cracking sound—barely a syllable—that does fall from my mouth, but she doesn’t acknowledge it. I slip out of the room, as one cast out.
AUGUST 1978, DANIEL
After my regular coaching session with the maestro at Symphony Hall, I was heading to the platform for the train home when in an instant my mind short-circuited. There before me, splashed across the evening papers at the kiosk, was a body my eye knew yet my brain refused to acknowledge. It was a grainy news photo, and yet one filled with beauty, with pathos. As my gaze dwelt there, my mind was at last forced to register the image was of Peter, his body—limp, pale, naked—being lifted from a fishing boat.
I grab ahold of a pillar. This image collides with the one of Peter in my head, of him swimming in the Øresund. There, he was so vital, so strong, pulling me into the cold waves with him and afterwards holding onto me for warmth as we lay on the sun-soaked sand. One headline announces an overdose. The lead-in states that he died three days after a fisherman found him unconscious and rescued him from the water. I go up to the counter, buy the paper, then sit down on a bench amid the swirl of commuters. Trains come and go in rapid succession. From this moment on, I know for certain my life is changed. The front-page news is of course not simply an incident (an accident?) to which I have only a loose connection. I am, after all, the one who told Peter the best way to swim the sound (advice he apparently did not take, as this happened right outside the city harbor). I turn the black-and-white image face down on the bench, stand up, but cannot move. I am frozen here, studying a flock of pigeons spiraling high above, amid the lacework of glass and iron. The mutual anonymity holding any crowd together anywhere breaks apart as I become the Man of Tears. People rush past, glancing at me, disturbed to varying (though all subtle) degrees by an emotional display in our shared societal space, a space that is, by unspoken agreement, meant to be neutral, uninflected by deep feeling. They are certainly unaware of the cause, or of any connection between me and the tabloids they have also likely seen in passing.
Michael. I need to find Michael. I go to the telephone stalls at the post office on the other side of the station in order to call the airlines. There is not another flight to Hallein until morning, which likely means he is still here. I phone Gwen’s hotel, but she has already checked out. I hurry to the taxi queue and ask to be taken out to Christiania.
The driver lets me off at the ruined archway. People avoid me, a bourgeois figure intruding on their counterculture haven. Or, quite possibly, I look like an undercover police officer? Regardless, I ask around. Everyone seems on edge. No one will say much. They want nothing to do with the case of a foreigner overdosing. The incident has brought trouble, a wild-eyed young fellow tells me. “There have,” he whispers, “been raids on several squats after they found out it was heroin.” Hash is one thing, heroin quite another. Two of the Americans, he informs me, disappeared after their band member was pulled from the water. The poor fellow talking to me suddenly becomes frenzied. He grabs me by the elbow and leads me inside the building. He hands me a guitar left behind, as if it is evidence he wants removed. It is Michael’s, not Peter’s.
Morning comes on slow, ponderous. I make my way out to the airport. Michael is not on the passenger list. However, one Mariko Lac is. I would not presume to speak with her. I simply want to see her, to see Peter’s mother. There is only one Asian woman in the boarding queue. She stands there, pale, silent, though no more so than other passengers. No one in the crowd would be able to tell she is grieving. I wait until every passenger has boarded and the gate is shut before turning to leave. Out the great wall of glass, a coffin is being loaded into the hold. I slump down in a seat in the departure area and stare. Sleep comes quickly, deeply, as if I have been given a sedative.
I awaken, still in the airport terminal. I am completely disoriented. Never before have I fallen asleep in any public place. I pull myself together and head out from the airport by taxi in search of Michael. I ask the driver to stop at the conservatory so I can store the guitar in my studio and then to take me back to Christiania. I need to try again to get information. The ride gives me time to think.
I have the driver wait at the entrance. I get out and approach people randomly, asking if they have any information at all. Most of them still won’t speak with me, although a frighteningly thin girl does tell me she might have seen Michael in the red-light district. I thank her and get back in the taxi. It’s a vague lead but nonetheless a lead. On the way, I ask the driver to head to the French fellows’ place in Nyhavn, where I last saw Peter.
Like any other nightclub would be during the day, it stands empty, dim. One of the Frenchmen is seated at the bar, bent over stacks of what appear to be bills or receipts. I greet him. He lifts his head. His thin face is barely recognizable, swollen and bruised. When he sees me, he appears angry.
He looks back down at the pieces of paper. “What do you want?”
“My friends I came in with the other night—”
He interrupts, practically spitting, “Those Americans are trouble.”
He obviously hasn’t heard the news. I tell him what has happened. He is not surprised that one of them is dead and mutters, “As far as I’m concerned, the other one can go to hell too.” He stands up, gathers his work and stalks away.
This interaction shakes me. The driver next takes me over to the red-light district. I push my way through the crowd of tourists in search of pornography and sex along the main thoroughfare. Not surprisingly, I don’t find Michael, so I wend my way down shadowy side streets, where one could become invisible if one so wished. I show several of the corner grocers a picture of Michael onstage that I tore from the newspaper. None of them claims to have seen him. I have no luck at the mission shelter either. Most of the men huddled in alcoves and entryways along these streets are too far gone to answer my questions, even after I place some coins in their hands. An oddly cherubic bouncer at a strip club merely shrugs. One of the hustlers pacing the sidewalk—a very tall fellow, around my age—appears alert and watchful. I approach him. His eyes shine amber under the streetlight. When I start asking questions, he seems disappointed that I am not a john. Eventually, he brightens.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he says with a Færoese accent, “don’t I know you from somewhere? From TV or something?”
“Perhaps,” I answer in Færoese, showing the picture of Michael. “Have you seen this fellow?”
“You’re from the Færoes?” He seems surprised and switches languages.
“No, my mother.”
“That makes more sense. Otherwise, I would have known you.” Our connection seems to relax him. He takes the black-and-white image from me. His fingernails are worn down, dirty. We move into a well-lit passageway. After examining it for a moment, he says, “Sure. Seen him hanging around the past few days. He’s been kicked out of the sauna twice.” He laughs sharply. Then, mocking an official-sounding voice, he adds, “No sleeping allowed!” He thinks it likely that Michael now spends the night in the park, under the bushes behind the equestrian statue. “A lot of us sleep there.”
I’m not sure exactly who he means by us. I thank him, handing over more money than I probably need to, simply because I am relieved to know Michael is—or at least recently was—in the vicinity.
“Anytime,” he says, running a hand through his long, tawny hair. “If you need me, just ask around. Ask for Albert.”
Though the red-light district effectively begins directly out the back entrance of Central Station, I’ve never been here before, nor have I been to the park that borders it on the other side. The park is renowned, not only for its romantic design but also for being the main drug market for anything harder than hashish. I walk along the wrought iron fence that encloses the park, running my fingers over the spikes in the shape of lilies. Entering through the ornate gateway, I am greeted with a shuffle or a nod by a handful of dealers. It is nearly three in the morning, yet business appears brisk. The small, amorphous lake at the heart of the park shimmers in moonlight. Bronze statues of classical gods and goddesses shine, those of marble glow. At the far end of the water rises a grand equestrian statue of one of our less noble kings. I walk toward the rearing horse, skirting the bank of the lake. A white cat streaks across my path, then stops, looking at me first curiously, then indignantly, eyes flashing amber quite like Albert’s. The little ghost raises its right forepaw before carrying on and soon disappears into the shadows. I have to duck low to get underneath the shrubbery. Once in, I find myself in an astonishing labyrinth, where indeed, as I crawl through, men are sleeping, some soundly, others restlessly, in dens, amid used condoms and syringes, empty bottles of beer and spirits. The close air smells of decay. No Michael to be found. I emerge from this miniature underworld and continue around the shore, discouraged.
After walking a short while, I see at the north end of the lake what appears to be a human form lying curled around the plinth of a marble Apollo. How strange, the sun god glowing so brightly in moonlight. When I get within a few feet, I can see that, yes, it is Michael! I am so relieved. I call his name quietly. He doesn’t respond. I call twice more. He doesn’t so much as stir. I kneel beside him. The moonlight reveals bruises and scabs along his left arm. I lean over, touching him lightly on the shoulder. He slowly turns his face toward me. The emptiness of his expression startles me. In these few days, his features have become hard, drained of vitality, not quite human. His head nods involuntarily. He doesn’t recognize me. He turns away.
“It’s me, Daniel.” He folds in on himself. Mosquitoes halo his head. At this time, there is no use saying how sad or sorry I am about Peter, or how, at this very moment, I apprehend how tightly our fates have been bound together. “Come on,” I urge, “we should really get out of this place.” I pull him gently by the arm. “You can stay with me until things get sorted.”
“I don’t expect you to forgive me.” My voice sounds so full it startles me.
“You left the Island,” he repeats, though not as a question this time. The grin has now disappeared. He presses his face into my shoulder, like he’s the one who should be sorry.
My instinct is to pull away. I fight it. “Doesn’t matter. Important thing is, I’m here. Here to say I’m sorry.” Then I add, less abstractly, “For what I did. For attacking you like I did. There’s no excuse.”
He steps away, head shaking. “No, not true. I made the first move. I was out of line. Sometimes I come on too strong. I do.”
“That’s not it. I was good with that, really, I was.” I lower myself to the cave floor, motioning him to come sit down beside me. He does. “In any case,” I continue, “what I did to you aside, I’m almost glad it’s come down the way it has.” I’m about to rest my hand on his shoulder, then pull back. I fake cough. “It’s just that I’m the kind of guy who hates surprises. I’m guessing you and Daniel thought it would be cool for me to find out for myself?”
He looks confused.
I laugh. It’s so unlike me to find anything funny about anything, let alone something as life-altering as this, but I can’t help it. “It was right out of one of those Greek tragedies Pete loved so much: without knowing it, man sleeps with brother’s son. Guess I was supposed to gouge my eyes out or something.”
Isaac sits upright, eyes strafing me.
“What?” This time I fake laugh. “It’s a metaphor. Pete’s not my brother! I’m not your uncle!”
“Are you messing with me?”
“Messing with you?”
He shakes his head. “You’re telling me Pete—your Pete—is—”
Now I’m the one who’s confused. Completely confused. If someone can both nod and shake their head at the same time, I’m doing just that.
“—is my dad?” His body starts trembling.
This makes no sense at all. Him tracking me down to find some connection with the father he never knew is what this whole debacle is about. Part of me wants to yell at him to cut the head games, but the torment in his voice, in his body, comes off as too real.
He’s barely whispering now. “Pete … Peter Lac … Pete is my dad?”
A paranoid thought comes to me: that Isaac and I are Daniel’s marionettes. I steady my bobbling head to a nod, even though now I’m not sure about anything at all. I inspect his face, wondering if that canine tooth is not, in fact, like a lot of other people’s. Maybe we humans find resemblances because we want to find them? Like when everyone used to think Pete and I were brothers. No, it’s got to be true. I was there. I was there when Isaac was conceived. His age is pretty much right. He’s said his mother went to high school with us. I nod to him again. “You didn’t … you really didn’t know?”
It sounds like he’s hyperventilating or about to have a seizure. He shakes his head fast, then asks, “So, you knew her, my mom? Lynn Burns?”
The name sounds familiar. Not sure, yet I nod anyway, I nod before going all vertigo. I have to close my eyes. I somehow manage to tell him, “I didn’t know, I didn’t know it myself, didn’t know Pete had a kid. And I’m positive he didn’t know.” I close my eyes to steady myself. “I didn’t know till the night you and I were by the fire. It hit me like lightning. I swear, I had no idea.” I give him the story. Not the whole story, just a brief outline. I lean down to kiss his forehead because I think that’s what a human being would do, an avuncular human being, but then, right before my lips make contact, I pull up short.
“Where is he? Where’s my father?”
AUGUST 1978, MIKE
One of the monitors is glowing 7:27 a.m. when the machines hooked up to Pete start going berserk, breaking my trance. A platoon of nurses and doctors slips into the room. One NBA-tall doctor starts pounding on Pete’s chest. The rest of the crew stand at the ready. A lady doctor leans over and starts performing mouth-to-mouth. I can’t help thinking of a scene from one of the Greek myths Pete told me about, where a god molds a person out of clay and a goddess breathes life into him. An orderly rolls a portable machine into the room. They hook it up to Pete. His body convulses. They’re shocking him. They shock him two more times, and I believe he’s going to rise out of the bed because don’t they say magic happens in threes? There’s more mouth-to-mouth. Then the goddess doctor stops. The intense focus on Pete lets up, the whole space seems to collapse, and I know he is dead. The myth turns out to be a lie. I stand up. I need to be standing.
The goddess doctor is no longer a goddess doctor but only a woman bending toward me—trying not to appear awkward—to tell me she’s sorry, she’s so sorry. Two of the nurses say the same. I don’t hate them for this convention, for being unable to transcend the scene. I don’t, I can’t. All my attempts at transcendence have come to nothing, have ended in the misery of this: Pete’s body, dead, lying on this bed, in this hospital room. The nurses methodically liberate Pete from the machines. He lies there, unadorned, but in the kaleidoscope of memory arranging and disarranging inside my head he is magnificent. He’s laughing and shaking his head at me because I don’t know anything about anything. He’s doing a three sixty off a picnic table at Dreamland while laying out some arabesque riff on his guitar. He’s diving into the sun-shattered lake from the salt caves. He’s putting his face close to mine, under starlight, saying, “Promise?”
A young nurse comes in and asks, “Would you like to be alone with your friend?” I barely nod.
She leaves, closing the door gently behind her. I press my left ear against Pete’s chest, checking to make sure there really is no life. I stay like this for I don’t know how long, paralyzed by regret. If only I had kept following him after the concert or agreed to rent a barge here where we two could live, or to buy a beat-up van and headed east for Katmandu together. If only I had let him quit the band in San Francisco or not sabotaged his attempt to join the Army. When I finally lift my head, I’m blind. Dense colors fill the center of my field of vision. I can see only peripherally. This doesn’t freak me out. I take it as punishment from the gods up there on Pete’s Olympus, as punishment deserved. I sit down, put my face on the edge of the bed. I want to howl into the sheets but can’t.
I wake to voices coming near. I can see normal again. The baby-faced doctor is entering the room and with him Mrs. Lac! I desperately wish I could switch places with Pete. The doctor is guiding her, his hand on her bare upper arm. Time and space get mixed up. She stops short when she sees the body. Then, swift as a bird, she’s at the bed, arms outstretched. She falls and covers her son with her body, as if to protect him, her head turned to the side. A deep stillness occupies every square millimeter of her face, and yet this lack of expression expresses the tragedy more profoundly than any expression ever could. I’m as sure as I’ve ever been of anything: that her feelings are way, way deeper than any I have ever felt or could ever feel. It seems as if she had no idea he was already dead when she arrived at the hospital. She must have gotten the first flight possible from Hallein after hearing he was in a coma. She likely thought she would be at her only child’s bedside as he recuperated. She looks at me briefly—less than briefly—and doesn’t say a word. Her eyes flash and it’s the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen. The most terrible, and yet, the look contains not a trace of malice, or at least I pray it doesn’t. Maybe it holds something like pity? Pity not for me, or not for me only, but pity radiating out for the whole world because a son is dead. Not simply her son but a son for everyone. It’s maybe also the look of one betrayed, though she isn’t, I think (or hope?) directing it towards me, or not me alone but outwardly, out into the world. That expression—without any intention or any will at all on her part, or so it seems—dismisses me, sends me falling from on high. In that momentless moment, I know for certain that I no longer exist for her. She and Pete are the only two people who have ever even come close to knowing me, and now I’ve got to face the fact that I have lost them both. I open my mouth. Not a word will form. What does it matter? What could any word do, especially coming from me? She must hear the one cracking sound—barely a syllable—that does fall from my mouth, but she doesn’t acknowledge it. I slip out of the room, as one cast out.
AUGUST 1978, DANIEL
After my regular coaching session with the maestro at Symphony Hall, I was heading to the platform for the train home when in an instant my mind short-circuited. There before me, splashed across the evening papers at the kiosk, was a body my eye knew yet my brain refused to acknowledge. It was a grainy news photo, and yet one filled with beauty, with pathos. As my gaze dwelt there, my mind was at last forced to register the image was of Peter, his body—limp, pale, naked—being lifted from a fishing boat.
I grab ahold of a pillar. This image collides with the one of Peter in my head, of him swimming in the Øresund. There, he was so vital, so strong, pulling me into the cold waves with him and afterwards holding onto me for warmth as we lay on the sun-soaked sand. One headline announces an overdose. The lead-in states that he died three days after a fisherman found him unconscious and rescued him from the water. I go up to the counter, buy the paper, then sit down on a bench amid the swirl of commuters. Trains come and go in rapid succession. From this moment on, I know for certain my life is changed. The front-page news is of course not simply an incident (an accident?) to which I have only a loose connection. I am, after all, the one who told Peter the best way to swim the sound (advice he apparently did not take, as this happened right outside the city harbor). I turn the black-and-white image face down on the bench, stand up, but cannot move. I am frozen here, studying a flock of pigeons spiraling high above, amid the lacework of glass and iron. The mutual anonymity holding any crowd together anywhere breaks apart as I become the Man of Tears. People rush past, glancing at me, disturbed to varying (though all subtle) degrees by an emotional display in our shared societal space, a space that is, by unspoken agreement, meant to be neutral, uninflected by deep feeling. They are certainly unaware of the cause, or of any connection between me and the tabloids they have also likely seen in passing.
Michael. I need to find Michael. I go to the telephone stalls at the post office on the other side of the station in order to call the airlines. There is not another flight to Hallein until morning, which likely means he is still here. I phone Gwen’s hotel, but she has already checked out. I hurry to the taxi queue and ask to be taken out to Christiania.
The driver lets me off at the ruined archway. People avoid me, a bourgeois figure intruding on their counterculture haven. Or, quite possibly, I look like an undercover police officer? Regardless, I ask around. Everyone seems on edge. No one will say much. They want nothing to do with the case of a foreigner overdosing. The incident has brought trouble, a wild-eyed young fellow tells me. “There have,” he whispers, “been raids on several squats after they found out it was heroin.” Hash is one thing, heroin quite another. Two of the Americans, he informs me, disappeared after their band member was pulled from the water. The poor fellow talking to me suddenly becomes frenzied. He grabs me by the elbow and leads me inside the building. He hands me a guitar left behind, as if it is evidence he wants removed. It is Michael’s, not Peter’s.
Morning comes on slow, ponderous. I make my way out to the airport. Michael is not on the passenger list. However, one Mariko Lac is. I would not presume to speak with her. I simply want to see her, to see Peter’s mother. There is only one Asian woman in the boarding queue. She stands there, pale, silent, though no more so than other passengers. No one in the crowd would be able to tell she is grieving. I wait until every passenger has boarded and the gate is shut before turning to leave. Out the great wall of glass, a coffin is being loaded into the hold. I slump down in a seat in the departure area and stare. Sleep comes quickly, deeply, as if I have been given a sedative.
I awaken, still in the airport terminal. I am completely disoriented. Never before have I fallen asleep in any public place. I pull myself together and head out from the airport by taxi in search of Michael. I ask the driver to stop at the conservatory so I can store the guitar in my studio and then to take me back to Christiania. I need to try again to get information. The ride gives me time to think.
I have the driver wait at the entrance. I get out and approach people randomly, asking if they have any information at all. Most of them still won’t speak with me, although a frighteningly thin girl does tell me she might have seen Michael in the red-light district. I thank her and get back in the taxi. It’s a vague lead but nonetheless a lead. On the way, I ask the driver to head to the French fellows’ place in Nyhavn, where I last saw Peter.
Like any other nightclub would be during the day, it stands empty, dim. One of the Frenchmen is seated at the bar, bent over stacks of what appear to be bills or receipts. I greet him. He lifts his head. His thin face is barely recognizable, swollen and bruised. When he sees me, he appears angry.
He looks back down at the pieces of paper. “What do you want?”
“My friends I came in with the other night—”
He interrupts, practically spitting, “Those Americans are trouble.”
He obviously hasn’t heard the news. I tell him what has happened. He is not surprised that one of them is dead and mutters, “As far as I’m concerned, the other one can go to hell too.” He stands up, gathers his work and stalks away.
This interaction shakes me. The driver next takes me over to the red-light district. I push my way through the crowd of tourists in search of pornography and sex along the main thoroughfare. Not surprisingly, I don’t find Michael, so I wend my way down shadowy side streets, where one could become invisible if one so wished. I show several of the corner grocers a picture of Michael onstage that I tore from the newspaper. None of them claims to have seen him. I have no luck at the mission shelter either. Most of the men huddled in alcoves and entryways along these streets are too far gone to answer my questions, even after I place some coins in their hands. An oddly cherubic bouncer at a strip club merely shrugs. One of the hustlers pacing the sidewalk—a very tall fellow, around my age—appears alert and watchful. I approach him. His eyes shine amber under the streetlight. When I start asking questions, he seems disappointed that I am not a john. Eventually, he brightens.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he says with a Færoese accent, “don’t I know you from somewhere? From TV or something?”
“Perhaps,” I answer in Færoese, showing the picture of Michael. “Have you seen this fellow?”
“You’re from the Færoes?” He seems surprised and switches languages.
“No, my mother.”
“That makes more sense. Otherwise, I would have known you.” Our connection seems to relax him. He takes the black-and-white image from me. His fingernails are worn down, dirty. We move into a well-lit passageway. After examining it for a moment, he says, “Sure. Seen him hanging around the past few days. He’s been kicked out of the sauna twice.” He laughs sharply. Then, mocking an official-sounding voice, he adds, “No sleeping allowed!” He thinks it likely that Michael now spends the night in the park, under the bushes behind the equestrian statue. “A lot of us sleep there.”
I’m not sure exactly who he means by us. I thank him, handing over more money than I probably need to, simply because I am relieved to know Michael is—or at least recently was—in the vicinity.
“Anytime,” he says, running a hand through his long, tawny hair. “If you need me, just ask around. Ask for Albert.”
Though the red-light district effectively begins directly out the back entrance of Central Station, I’ve never been here before, nor have I been to the park that borders it on the other side. The park is renowned, not only for its romantic design but also for being the main drug market for anything harder than hashish. I walk along the wrought iron fence that encloses the park, running my fingers over the spikes in the shape of lilies. Entering through the ornate gateway, I am greeted with a shuffle or a nod by a handful of dealers. It is nearly three in the morning, yet business appears brisk. The small, amorphous lake at the heart of the park shimmers in moonlight. Bronze statues of classical gods and goddesses shine, those of marble glow. At the far end of the water rises a grand equestrian statue of one of our less noble kings. I walk toward the rearing horse, skirting the bank of the lake. A white cat streaks across my path, then stops, looking at me first curiously, then indignantly, eyes flashing amber quite like Albert’s. The little ghost raises its right forepaw before carrying on and soon disappears into the shadows. I have to duck low to get underneath the shrubbery. Once in, I find myself in an astonishing labyrinth, where indeed, as I crawl through, men are sleeping, some soundly, others restlessly, in dens, amid used condoms and syringes, empty bottles of beer and spirits. The close air smells of decay. No Michael to be found. I emerge from this miniature underworld and continue around the shore, discouraged.
After walking a short while, I see at the north end of the lake what appears to be a human form lying curled around the plinth of a marble Apollo. How strange, the sun god glowing so brightly in moonlight. When I get within a few feet, I can see that, yes, it is Michael! I am so relieved. I call his name quietly. He doesn’t respond. I call twice more. He doesn’t so much as stir. I kneel beside him. The moonlight reveals bruises and scabs along his left arm. I lean over, touching him lightly on the shoulder. He slowly turns his face toward me. The emptiness of his expression startles me. In these few days, his features have become hard, drained of vitality, not quite human. His head nods involuntarily. He doesn’t recognize me. He turns away.
“It’s me, Daniel.” He folds in on himself. Mosquitoes halo his head. At this time, there is no use saying how sad or sorry I am about Peter, or how, at this very moment, I apprehend how tightly our fates have been bound together. “Come on,” I urge, “we should really get out of this place.” I pull him gently by the arm. “You can stay with me until things get sorted.”
