Kerrigan in Copenhagen by Thomas E. Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page B

feels heavy as they enter the labyrinthine, cavelike dimness of Hviid’s Vinstue (Hviid’s Wine Room), established in 1723, the same year as the Duke pub in Dublin, older by fifty-three years than the U.S. itself, although there is the White Horse Tavern on Marlborough Street in Newport, Rhode Island, which is older, established in 1673. Hviid’s survived the great fires of 1728, 1794, and 1795 and the British attacks on Copenhagen of 1801 and 1807, just as his father escaped the British occupation of Ireland and his mother the German occupation of Denmark.
    They move past the bar to one of the cubbyhole tables to the side. There are many pictures on the walls, photographs, cutout articles, caricatures. She has her Moleskine book out again, and he has to concentrate on her words.
    â€œUpstairs here,” she tells him, “used to be the Blue Note and the Grand Café, and these three together were the outer rim of the Mine-field that started around Nikolai Church that I told you about before. In the 1950s and ’60s.”
    The waiter comes to take their orders, and Kerrigan asks for a pint of Carlsberg. “I can’t drink any more beer,” she says, and Kerrigan suggests a Campari. As the waiter crosses back to the bar, Kerrigan says, “He looks like a pug.”
    â€œThat’s Jørgen ‘Gamle’ Hansen,” she tells him. “Old Hansen, they call him, because he fought until he was forty. He used to be welter-weight boxing champion of Europe about twenty years ago. He also was an actor on TV—played a small part in a crime series in the eighties.”
    Kerrigan recognizes him then, and as he returns with their drinks, Kerrigan stands. “May I shake your hand, Mr. Hansen? You look like you’re in just as good shape as when you were champ.”
    Hansen smiles wryly with his broad jaw and hooked, broken nose, and his hand in Kerrigan’s feels like a block of wood. “Appearances deceive,” the old pugilist says.
    Kerrigan watches him list off. He can still remember Hansen’s right that felled Dave Green in the seventies and won him the title. Suddenly, then, he notices her glass and says, “Campari red as breathless kisses.” Her eyes meet his. He can’t read them, but he goes on nonetheless. “Jens August Schade again. The poem is called ‘In Hviid’s Wine Room.’ From 1963.”
    â€œCan you say it for me?”
    â€œNight has a thousand ears, remember. Might get sued for reciting it in public. I can tell you this much—it has to do with frog-green absinthe and Campari-red kisses.” He slurs a bit. Her eyes friendly, she asks, “How drunk are you?”
    â€œJust a wee twisted,” he says. “But not on beer alone.”
    â€œMeaning?”
    He is picturing her in red panties and nothing else and drinking Campari and kissing him with her tongue, but he says, “Did anyone ever tell you your eyes are green as the woods?”
    â€œFrequently,” she says, but the subtext he thinks he hears is,
Never, I like it, but say it again when you’re sober
. Then she writes something in her Moleskine and says, “I really must read Schade. I’ve heard of him but never actually read him.” She closes the book and he glimpses the star-fish stickers on it as she slips it into her black leather bag, and he recites:
    The starfish crawl upon the wall
    upon the floor and through the door
    the starfish with their many legs
    and not so many eyes
    the starfish that can hug and crush
    never seeing why.
    She sips her red Campari. “You must spend a great deal of time memorizing verses.”
    â€œHey, that was my own! I just wrote it right now this minute.” In his own ears, his voice is hoarse from beer and cigars.
    â€œ
Sludder
,” she says, which means
nonsense
in Danish, but somehow more effectively, with the double soft
d
sound of garbage, slush.
    â€œNot
sludder
.