Extract from Trisse Gejl

Patriarken / The Patriarch

 

Translated by Steve Schein
 

HARALD
They’ve set out the cream-filled chocolates and cognac. And a couple of cases of beer. It’s something they’ve assigned the trainees, the kind of thing he, too, assigned the trainees over the years. Can’t you just pop out and rustle up some goodies? And then slip them a 500- or 1,000-kroner note, depending on who’s doing the assigning.
          He hates that kind of thing. And they know it. Who doesn’t hate that kind of thing? The Last Supper. He doesn’t care to be the center of attention, not when it’s staged by others. One claims the center of attention when there’s a reason for it.
          So there they stand, the little girls, barely dry behind the ears, leaning up against the chocolate altar, before which he is meant to kneel and take one of the cream-filled Hosts and nod approvingly and say something funny. Like hell he will; they’re not getting rid of him that easy. Maybe he would no longer be a regular fixture of the editorial office, but they couldn’t chase him out of the newspaper columns altogether. Senior editors deliver their work from home, spared the nuisance of earthly intrusion.
          He straightens his back and steps past the girls standing there with devout compassion painted on their faces. The old wolf has been tamed, they’re thinking; that conclusion is going to change, he’s thinking. He crams his shirttails well down into his trousers, reaches toward the tray and takes a cream-filled chocolate, raises it in the air and swallows it in a single mouthful and then bows deeply for the assembly to the sound of scattered laughter.
          Krantz steps forward and pours him a cognac:
          ”In the midst of mourning your retirement,” he says in a loud voice with glass raised,” we mustn’t forget how happy this makes us.”
          They laugh. He laughs as well, Krantz, braying through his teeth, and runs a hand through his thin hair.
          ”Having you around has sure as hell never been easy, Hügler, but it’s never been boring, either. You’ve got class, a rare kind of class that we can only hope isn’t lost on all the young, obliging aspirants you’ve scared the life out of in the course of time. And shucks, those lawsuits against the newspaper you’ve inspired have merely raised our circulation.”
          And then a story about the young trainee who had borrowed his office one day where there was a shortage of computers, and Harald had cursed him so far down the hall that he’d asked to be transferred to another editorial department. It damn well wasn’t because the kid had borrowed his office, it was because he’d left the desk with a wad of chewing gum attached underneath that he stuck his hand in later while taking hold of the desktop to roll his chair to the keyboard.
          But he hasn’t become the focus of attention, nor can he redirect it where it belongs. Let Krantz have his moment of glory, he’s thinking, it will be his time soon enough.
          Nor is it particularly difficult to stand there and accept it all with a little smile, knowing that just that morning he had again altered Krantz’s screen-saver motif. He’d written Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo, to glide slowly across the screen over and over again.
          He’s no genius, Krantz. He’ll have no idea what it means, nor the imagination to look it up. Vanity will win out. It will suit him fine, having a quote in Latin on his screen. The others had screen backgrounds of the foreign minister caught picking his nose during a parliamentary debate or the winning goal from the last European Cup finals. But this, Krantz will figure, this has class. And he’ll have no idea how to get rid of it, either.
          They empty the two crates of beer and Pallesen presents him with a fat book – Criticism of the Welfare State – for which a review must be ready in two weeks. Sure, he ought to be able to formulate some kind of opinion.
          People begin drifting slowly back to their computers or into town and he remains sitting awhile with the old guard.
          Go fishing? Like hell. He’s going to play golf. See the grandchildren a bit more? Who knows? Maybe. He’s going to watch television – tons of satellite TV – and choose his channels and his deadlines himself.
          “Yes, some people say a pension replaces passion, you know,” Krantz brays.
          “How would you know?” answers Harald. “Passion sure as hell has never been one of your main attributes.”
          “You’ve got to come by if you’re bored,” says Pallesen, and claps him sportingly on the shoulder.
          “Same to you,” laughs Harald. “I’ve always got a spare beer and some good match on TV.

He goes into his office, packs his briefcase and takes his coat off the hook behind the door. No complaints. Can’t stay here forever.
          As he opens the glass door into a swarm of people, Krantz is heading for him with a beer in his hand, leaning towards him confidentially.
          “Say, Hügler, uhh … What’s that you wrote on my screen?” he asks, proud to have figured out who’d been fooling with it.
          Harald studies him a moment.
          “You’ve got to find that one out yourself,” he says.
          Krantz gives him a little smile, he’s not letting him go.
          “Alright, then,” Harald sighs, “you get a clue: It’s a quote from the Bible, it’s up to you to find it.”
          Krantz nods slowly. Then he grins.
          “That’s okay, Harald,” he smiles. “No problem. A quote from the Bible.”

He does some shopping on the way home. Frozen dinners to pop in the oven and two crates of beer. He knows some of them at work are glad to be rid of him. And so what? It matters very little, there’s no news that’s new anymore, anyway.
          Skimming the columns, he doesn’t see much he hasn’t written himself at some point, twenty, thirty or more years ago. But apparently it needs repeating, the paper getting new readers and all.
          From now on he can get up and go to bed when it suits him. And he’ll have more time for golf. Having all this time on his hands won’t be a problem. He has stacks of books he wants to read, hours and hours he wants to spend in front of the TV and on football-pool betting. And he’ll still have his weekly column in the second section, just to keep himself in shape.

He calls Finn and makes a golf date for the following week. Then he unbuttons another beer and seats himself in his easy chair.