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Blue Night, Blue City

Bertil Falk

It was after midnight and the flakes fell slowly while the blue full moon spread a pale color across the snow of the Great Square. It was the smallest square in the city, but it was also the oldest. That was why it had been permitted to keep its old name. Some hundred years ago, the spot had been used as a place of execution. About one hundred people of the male sex, even children, had been beheaded. The atrocious deed went down into history as The Bloodbath. Since then, the most exciting events were the bloodless annual Christmas fairs held where once the blood had covered the cobblestones.

Temperature was well below the freezing point. A lonesome shape, tall and stout, stalked the blue square. It kneeled at the corner of the old exchange building and picked up a refundable bottle, putting the returnable thing into the knapsack it carried on its back. Abruptly, the shape turned down into one of the by-lanes. It stopped at the backstage of a luxurious seafood restaurant, where a brilliant cook from Vietnam, evening after evening, year after year, on the stage of dinner tables performed the most dramatic fish dishes well on into the small hours.

A lady’s cycle stood aslant against the wall. It was a rusty one, single speed, furnished with an old Bosch dynamo that had seen its best days. The flex was gone, as was the attached original cycle lamp. It had been replaced with a battery-powered lamp, actually a pretty small thing.

In the light of an old-fashioned street-lamp, kept to keep the medieval appearance of the alley alive, the man, for the shape was that of a man, seemed to be stuffed. The reason was that he wore three pairs of trousers and three jackets under two overcoats and underneath all that were three pairs of long Johns and three undershirts. Inside a pair of strong boots, he wore three pairs of socks. His headgear would have been appreciated in Lapland or Siberia and his Aston Villa bar scarf was muffled a couple of rounds about his neck, covering most of the face, except his eyes. He never ceased wondering at people throwing away more or less new clothes, but he was pleased that they did.

His eyes were electric blue, somewhat hazy but at the same time observant. He was obviously aware of everything that happened around him, or, as at this moment, everything not at all happening around him. He knocked at the kitchen back door of the fish restaurant. A woman opened the door slightly and peeped out, routinely surveying the lane. When she saw the man, she smiled and opened the door.

"The night stalker coming in from the cold," she said.

Without a word the man entered the kitchen.

"I’ve a nice doggy bag for you tonight, Harry" she said and handed over an ice cream box of plastic. "It contains three kinds of herrings, boiled potatoes, dill and two tomatoes."

"It’s cold, but I’m not freezing," Harry answered her welcoming words, and then he caught up with her verbal lead by stating, "Thanks, Laura. You know I love herrings."

He unmuffled his face. It turned out to be weather-beaten. But even though he most certainly had passed the border line to the other side of forty, his was to some degree a young man’s face, the countenance of someone who had been through purgatory but survived while still able to smile. Few but strongly emphasized furrows signaled experience.

Laura wiped her hands on her apron. She was about thirty-five going on fifty. She had worked all her life, a working-class lady, who after many years reached some kind of goal, when she got the job as part of the nightshift kitchen staff. Her working years had carved lines in her once so smooth face, but she was a happy woman, unmarried with a twelve years old son, who did well in school.

She was the one who stayed on until late in the morning and when she left on her bike, the whole kitchen was shining new. Her strong hands could easily open a reluctant bottle of wine or carefully put out a saucer with milk to a stray cat in the by-lane.

"You can’t bike home tonight, " Harry said. "Too much snow on the streets, slippery at some places."

Laura shook her head and poured out a cup of coffee for him, while she downed a glass of sherry, left over by some customer in the restaurant. She knew well that Harry never touched spirits, not even a pint of beer.

"Have you been successful tonight?" she asked.

"A few refundable bottles and some tins, that’s all, but I’ve not been everywhere yet."

"Will many people die tonight?"

He knew what she meant.

"If we get a sudden cold spell combined with a blizzard, the welfare workers will lose their jobs, for then many hobos on the verge will go down the drain."

"How about your friend?"

"She’s not my friend. Just a fellow-creature going downhill. I guess she’s out there right now earning so she can buy something for her syringe."

He smiled at her.

"How is Bob?" he asked.

"Fine," she said. "He got a diploma yesterday."

"Good!"

He took off his rucksack, put down the doggy bag into it and put the rucksack on again.

"Thanks, Laura, and remember, don’t bike tonight," he said, muffled Aston Villa around his neck and went out into the night again.

She would not take his advice, he knew.

Slowly, Harry walked down the by-lane. The snow fell no longer and the moonlight did not penetrate the narrow slit between the old four-storied houses. The by-lane led to another square and he was surprised to see Ingemar with his magazines talking to the hot dog man in his stall on wheel.

"I thought that you only sold that down-and-out magazine in daylight?" Harry said.

"At this time I only buy hot dogs. Are you making your round?"

"Sure."

"Avoid the nightclub. The doorkeeper was stabbed half an hour ago. It’s still a lot of action over there."

"Thanks for telling me."

Harry nodded at Ingemar and the hot dog man and went on. He walked in darkness until he reached the embankment, illuminated by the power of the full moon. The water, warmer than the air, was steaming and a film of thin ice was rapidly turned into a thicker and safer coating of ice. He saw all the birds relaxing down there. In the morning some swans and wild ducks would be found frozen fast in the ice. People, many of whom did not care for their fellow-beings, would run to their rescue.

On the bridge, two drunken men were fighting. The front of Grand Hotel on the other side of the water was floodlit and a limousine stopped outside the broad entrance. The neon lights of the nearby hamburger restaurant were reflected in the water. Traffic was low and slow.

Harry went along the embankment to the bridge, where he walked down the stone steps and disappeared out of sight. Her sleeping bag was empty. Of course, Liza had failed to comply with his suggestion to hide the bag. The usual signs of drug abuse littered the place.

Harry shrugged his shoulders, returned to the embankment and walked across the bridge. The drunkards were gone. He quickened his steps and hastened to one of his hunting grounds for collecting valuables. He took out his gloves and donned them. He had to climb a stone wall to get inside, but he was accustomed to it and vaulted like a Tarzan over the top of the wall dotted with pieces of broken glass.

There was a big container, where the well-to-do inhabitants of the house threw their useful, useless things, useful to him, useless to them.

A dog began barking in one of the apartments and Harry sunk into the shadows of the big oak tree in the midst of the backyard. He stood there until the dog ceased barking. As slow and as careful as possible he went to the container and crept into it. Inside it, he took out his flashlight for the first time that night. The ray of light traveled into every corner of the container. He was just on the point of digging into all the trash, as the beam caught a glimpse of something that definitely should not be where it was.

Out of the rags and papers and shoes and rubbish a hand protruded. Harry stood still for a moment. Then he approached the unexpected find and with his hands he brushed away the covering trash. A maltreated face! Calmly, he regarded the victim of rough treatment. He did not recognize the man. The face was too grotesque and distorted, too battered and contorted.

It was contradictory: Harry realized that he should leave as fast as possible, but without hurry. Fast without hurry! He was on the verge of leaving, when he saw a movement. What if the man was alive? Yes, he breathed, vaguely, but he breathed. For a moment comparable with an eternity, Harry considered what to do.

He left the container. He vaulted over the wall back to the street, took out his cell phone, which he only used in an emergency, called the paramedics, gave them the facts and ended the call. He did not wait for them coming.

He slipped into the shadows of the city. To him, from now and on, the container was a contaminated place to avoid. It was a pity, for he had made many a find in that container. As far as the ill-treated man was concerned, he could not care less. The man and his fate were none of his business. He had done his duty as a fellowman.

He heard a church clock striking one o’clock and mixed with that the sirens of the paramedics and the police. The night was still young on its inexorable way into the dawn and he had not yet achieved the night’s aim. At least ten bottles, fifteen refundable tins and some extra kind of thing, whatever that could be, but it was almost always something that most nights supplied him with. There was no money in battered men in containers and right now there were just a few tins and bottles in his knapsack. He walked back to embankment.

"Harry", a voice called out and he recognized George. He was badly dressed and had probably no place to go.

"What is it, George?"

"I’m freezing. I want to buy one of you overcoats."

"Can you afford it?"

George fumbled in his pockets. His right hand came up with something that looked like a bundle of banknotes.

"Robbed a bank?"

As George got closer, Harry saw that only the top of the bundle consisted of banknotes.

"I give you fifty," George said and breathed a hot air of alcohol into the face of Harry.

"It’s a deal, George," Harry said, pulled off his knapsack and wriggled out of one of his overcoats.

The business transaction was over within a few seconds and George put on his new acquisition.

"I don’t believe in God," George murmured, "someone may bless you anyhow. I wouldn’t have stood the rest of the night without an overcoat. But you," he said almost accusingly to Harry, "you’re always loaded with things needed."

"And you’re the one always loaded up with spirits," Harry said with a thin smile.

Harry watched the godforsaken old inebriate lumbering away along the embankment. Harry was pleased. Even this night, he had hit that extra kind of a thing like a jackpot. He looked forward to another afternoon at the bank next day. He felt elated and walked towards the quay in front of Grand Hotel, where the ferryboats were berthed.

The litterbins along the quay had not yet been plundered. So when he returned the same way and passed by the hotel, seven more bottles and eleven more tins rattled in his knapsack. He exchanged a few words about the weather with the uniformed doorkeeper outside the hotel until a taxi from the airport brought new customers, customers who could afford.

Then he walked back along the embankment to the bridge and went down the stone steps. She was there now, huddled up like a fetus inside her sleeping bag, her face hidden. A freshly used syringe revealed that she had obtained what she wanted. Harry guessed that she had gone with a customer and then the pimp had supplied her. Around her sleeping bag were things, a cola bottle, a lamp, a matchbox, a used condom, things that had not been there more than an hour before. From the small movements of the sleeping bag, he knew that she breathed. He took out the doggy bag from his knapsack and put some of the food in a carry bag he put beside her. Poor Liza, her days were most probably numbered.

With a strange feeling of alarm, he looked about, but nothing seemed to be wrong. He walked up to the embankment, where the newspaperwoman stood with her kick-sled. There was a fresh bruise on her left temple. Her husband had beaten her again. The newspapers had not arrived yet, so they talked, about the weather, the cold, every day things, the world, the disasters, about everything except what they both thought of. After twenty minutes, the lorry with the newspapers came. Harry got his copy, the lorry went on and the paper-woman began her well defined round.

It was about time that Harry went to his own place. He walked to the other side of the bridge, went behind an old maple-tree by the wall and climbed up a few meters till he reached an opening in the stone wall. He crept inside and was in his den. He ate his herrings with great relish. He read the newspaper, another catastrophe on the other side of the world, disasters in Asia, a greedy CEO in court, murders, and so on, no news, just the same things as usual. The strange feeling of alarm still lingered on. Something he had seen at Liza’s place. He drank a cup of lukewarm coffee from his vacuum flask and he thought of his former life and his former wife. Then, he turned to the best thing of the night, reading.

When he heard the church clock striking five, he put aside  Tales of Yoruba Gods and Heroes. Before he fell asleep, he once more had that feeling of alarm.

He was still asleep when the winter sun stuck up above the horizon and the shops and the banks opened. When he got up, it was almost noon. He fried two eggs and a few slices of bacon on his portable spirit stove. He looked down and since the coast was clear, he climbed down the tree-trunk. He went over to her place. Her sleeping bag was empty. The food he had given her was gone. The bottle and the matchbox were gone. The lamp and the used condom were still there. The alarm screamed in his head.

The traffic was hectic on the embankment. He got money for his return bottles and refundable tins. He went to the branch of his bank and deposited the night’s income as he had done every day for the past fifteen years, ever since his wife had left him for his chief at the publishing house and he had lost his job. Everything they had owned had been in her name. He had vowed that he would have his revenge. Now, fifteen years later, when he was a rich man, he had gotten accustomed and was not able to leave the life he led. And when it came to revenge, he could not care less.

The news-bills of the evening tabloids screamed the usual sensations. Woman found murdered. What had that got to do with him? Nothing! And the bird-lovers cared for the ice-bound swans, none of his business. He had lost the motivation for just about anything and everything. But the alarming sense was still there.

At 5 PM, he had a meal at the Salvation Army. At 6 PM he went back to his den and slept until 10 PM. Round about 11.30 PM, he began the usual search.

Just after midnight, he crossed the moon lit square and went down into the by-lane. He saw it immediately, or he rather did not see it at all. There was no rusty lady’s cycle standing aslant against the wall.

His alarm rang worse than ever!

He knocked at the door. An old woman he never before had seen opened and looked disapprovingly at him.

"Where’s Laura," he asked.

"Who are you?"

"I’m Harry, a friend of Laura. Where’s she?"

"H’m! So you don’t know. She’s dead. She was killed last night. Found dead beside her bike. It’s all in the evening tabloids."

She went back into the kitchen and returned with a tabloid.

"You can have it," she said and closed the door.

Harry read the story and to his mind came recollections: a cola bottle, a lamp, a matchbox, a condom, of course, unconsciously, he had recognized the small lamp, for it had been a cycle lamp, battery-powered.

He found Liza. She was dead too. And by her side, the cycle lamp and the empty syringe, the content of which had killed her, the content she had bought for Laura’s money. The used condom was gone. Strange.

Dutiful as always, Harry took out his emergency cell phone. Then he walked away along the embankment. He kicked the first empty bottle he found and saw it describing a curve in the air and missing a swan on the ice. Harry knew for certain that he would not earn a single coin this night.

"So what?" he said aloud.

A policeman came over to him.

"Hello, Harry, did you call the paramedics?"

"Who else does decent things in this big city?" Harry replied.

It had taken him many years to find a kitchen back door, where he was welcomed and given a doggy bag. In that sense as in every sense he was back on square … was it one or two? Harry was not sure.

At that, the moon passed into the clouds and suddenly the lights of the just a moment ago blue city sparkled like multicolored jewels.

Copyright(c) 2005 by Bertil Falk

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