Kerrigan in Copenhagen Read Online Free

be the voice of our time.”
    When she says nothing, he asks politely, “You say you have daughters?”
    â€œThree. And five grandchildren. Two of the girls live in the U.S., the third in Canada. Once a year one or the other visits me. Or I visit them.”
    He sees a shadow in her gaze. “It really is incredible to think that in my lifetime, only like thirty, forty years ago, women were mocked, cheated of their rights, even had to use titles that revealed whether or not they were married, for Christ’s sake!” And thinks of Licia—the new woman. He slides down from the barstool. “Shall we move on?”
    â€œDon’t forget your little briefcase now.”
    The thick novel bulges in the satchel. She asks what he is reading, and he finds himself telling her a little about Joyce and Dublin as they step out into Reventlowsgade.
    â€œLot of connections between Dublin and Scandinavia,” he says. “Dublin was settled by Vikings, especially the Danes. Joyce believed he had Danish blood in him.”
    â€œHow is the book?” she asks.
    â€œA rough trudge. But it has its merry moments.”
    Across Reventlowsgade, his Associate points at the back of the Astoria Hotel. She has her Moleskine open in her hands. “When that was built in 1935, they nicknamed it
Penalhuset
—the Penal House. For obvious reasons.”
    â€œGood illustration for Kafka’s ‘Penal Colony,’ ” says Kerrigan. “Moody art. You paint, yourself? I hope I can get to see your paintings?”
    â€œA little,” she says.
    Passing the Central Station, he glances down from the sidewalkbridge to the tracks below. He thinks of the poet Dan Turèll, the long poem he wrote in his thirties, the scene set in this station, imagining his last walk through the city; Turèll could not have known, in his thirties, the poem was predicting his early death at forty-six of throat cancer.
    They cross Vesterbrogade—West Bridge Street—past Fridhedsstøtten , the Liberty Pillar, erected between 1792 and 1797. “It is to commemorate the liberation of the serfs,” she says, “with the repeal in 1788 of adscription; before this, the peasants were the property of the person who owned the land they worked. The pillar is mentioned many times in Tom Kristensen’s 1930
Havoc
. You know, Ole ‘Jazz’ Jastrau in
Havoc
lived just around the corner from the Railway Café where we just were,” she says. “He walks past this monument numerous times in the novel—I think that is saying he belongs in a way to the newspaper he works for.”
    They are passing Tivoli on the other side of the street. “Look at the trees!” she exclaims. They pause to gaze across Vesterbrogade at the front of the Tivoli Park. “The park is more than a hundred and fifty years old now,” she tells him, “and the trees are just that shade of green only once a year.”
    She leads the way to Axeltorv—Axel Square—bounded by the broad front of the Scala Building, the Circus Building across the other end, and the many colors of the Palace Theater, which looks like a birthday cake.
    She says, “Those rainbow pastels in the Palace Theater were done by Paul Gernes, the painter who overturned the idea that hospital rooms have to be sterile white. Which is especially nice for sick kids, to be surrounded by a rainbow of colors. Do you have children, yourself?” she asks, and he feels his face harden.
    â€œLet’s not go there,” he mutters, caught unawares by the question at a moment when he felt he was expanding, being filled with a sense of place. To know facts is to have a handle.
    She says, “I just thought … you’d make a good father. You’re gentle. And enthusiastic.”
    They stand over the sheer vast pool of the shimmering fountain, sofull it seems convex, always about to spill over, but it never does. He is battling