“All right, don’t shout,” she said with annoyance.
Luther grabbed Harald by the shirt front and pulled him forward. His grip was strong, and Harald staggered. “I know you educated types,” Luther spat. “You think this kind of thing is funny.”
Harald smelled the man’s bad breath. “Don’t get upset,” he said. “I just wanted to talk to her.”
A barman with a rag around his head leaned over the bar and said, “No trouble, please, Lou. The lad means no harm.”
“Doesn’t he? I think he’s laughing at me.”
Harald was beginning to wonder anxiously whether Luther had a knife, when the club manager picked up the microphone and announced Memphis Johnny Madison, and there was a burst of applause.
Luther pushed Harald away. “Get out of my sight, before I slit your fool throat,” he said.
Harald went back to the others. He knew he had been humiliated, but he was too drunk to care. “I made an error of etiquette,” he said.
Memphis Johnny walked on stage, and Harald instantly forgot Luther.
Johnny sat at the piano and leaned toward the microphone. Speaking perfect Danish with no trace of an accent, he said, “Thank you. I’d like to open with a composition by the greatest boogie-woogie pianist of them all, Clarence Pine Top Smith.”
There was renewed applause, and Harald shouted in English, “Play it, Johnny!”
Some kind of disturbance broke out near the door, but Harald took no notice. Johnny played four bars of introduction then stopped abruptly and said into the microphone, “Heil Hitler, baby.”
A German officer walked on stage.
Harald looked around, bewildered. A group of military police had come into the club. They were arresting the German soldiers, but not the Danish civilians.
The officer snatched the microphone from Johnny and said in Danish, “Entertainers of inferior race are not permitted. This club is closed.”
“No!” cried Harald in dismay. “You can’t do that, you Nazi peasant!”
Fortunately, his voice was drowned in the general hubbub of protest.
“Let’s get out before you make any more errors of etiquette,” said Tik. He took Harald’s arm.
Harald resisted. “Come on!” he yelled. “Let Johnny play!”
The officer handcuffed Johnny and walked him out.
Harald was heartbroken. It had been his first chance to hear a real boogie pianist, and the Nazis had stopped the show after a few bars. “They have no right!” he shouted.
“Of course not,” Tik said soothingly, and steered him to the door.
The three young men made their way up the steps to the street. It was midsummer, and the short Scandinavian night was already over. Dawn had broken. The club was on the waterfront, and the broad channel of water gleamed in the half-light. Sleeping ships floated motionless at their moorings. A cool, salty breeze blew in from the sea. Harald breathed deeply then felt momentarily dizzy.
“We might as well go to the railway station and wait for the first train home,” Tik said. Their plan was to be in bed, pretending to sleep, before anyone at school got up.
They headed for the town center. At the main intersections, the Germans had erected concrete guard posts, octagonal in plan and about four feet high, with room in the middle for a soldier to stand, visible from the chest up. They were not manned at night. Harald was still furious about the closure of the club, and he was further enraged by these ugly symbols of Nazi domination. Passing one, he gave it a futile kick.
Mads said, “They say the sentries at these posts wear lederhosen, because no one can see their legs.” Harald and Tik laughed.
A moment later, they passed a pile of builder’s rubble outside a shop that had been newly refitted, and Harald happened to notice a cluster of paint cans on top of the pile-whereupon he was struck by an idea. He leaned across the rubbish and picked up a can.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tik said.
There was a little black paint left in the bottom, still liquid. From among the odd bits of timber on the pile, Harald selected a piece of wooden slat an inch wide that would serve as a brush.
Ignoring bemused questions from Tik and Mads, he walked back to the guard post. He knelt in front of it with the paint and the stick. He heard Tik say something in a warning voice, but ignored him. With great care, he wrote in black paint on the concrete walclass="underline"
THIS NAZI
HAS NO
TROUSERS
ON
He stepped back to admire his work. The letters were large and the words could be read at a distance. Later this morning, thousands of Copenhageners on their way to work would see the joke and smile.
“What do you think of that?” he said. He looked around. Tik and Mads were nowhere to be seen, but two uniformed Danish policemen stood immediately behind him.
“Very amusing,” said one of them. “You’re under arrest.”
He spent the rest of the night in the Politigaarden, in the drunk tank with an old man who had urinated in his trousers and a boy his own age who vomited on the floor. He was too disgusted with them and himself to sleep. As the hours went by, he developed a headache and a raging thirst.
But the hangover and the filth were not his worst worries. He was more concerned about being interrogated about the Resistance. What if he were turned over to the Gestapo and tortured? He did not know how much pain he could stand. Eventually he might betray Poul Kirke. And all for a stupid joke! He could not believe how childish he had been. He was bitterly ashamed.
At eight o’clock in the morning, a uniformed policeman brought a tray with three mugs of ersatz tea and a plate of black bread, thinly smeared with a butter substitute. Harald ignored the bread-he could not eat in a place like a toilet-but he drank the tea greedily.
Shortly afterward, he was taken from the cell to an interview room. He waited a few minutes, then a sergeant came in carrying a folder and a typed sheet of paper. “Stand up!” the sergeant barked, and Harald leaped to his feet.
The sergeant sat at the table and read the report. “A Jansborg schoolboy, eh?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You ought to know better, lad.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where did you get the liquor?”
“At a jazz club.”
He looked up from the typed sheet. “The Danish Institute?”
“Yes.”
“You must have been there when the Krauts closed it down.”
“Yes.” Harald was confused by his use of the mildly derogatory slang word “Kraut” for “German.” It jarred with his formal tone.
“Do you often get drunk?”
“No, sir. First time.”
“And then you saw the guard post, and you happened to come across a can of paint. .”
“I’m very sorry.”
The cop grinned suddenly. “Well, don’t be too sorry. I thought it was pretty funny, myself. No trousers!” He laughed.
Harald was bewildered. The man had seemed hostile, but now he was enjoying the joke. Harald said, “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Nothing. We’re the police, not the joke patrol.” The sergeant tore the report in half and dropped it in the wastepaper basket.
Harald could hardly believe his luck. Was he really going to be let off? “What. . what should I do?”
“Go back to Jansborg.”
“Thank you!” Harald wondered if he could sneak back into school unnoticed, even at this late stage. He would have some time, on the train, to think of a story. Perhaps no would need ever find out about this.
The sergeant stood up. “But take a word of advice. Keep off the booze.”
“I will,” Harald said fervently. If he could get out of this scrape, he would never drink alcohol again.
The sergeant opened the door, and Harald suffered a dreadful shock.
Standing outside was Peter Flemming.
Harald and Peter stared at one another for a long moment.
The sergeant said, “Can I help you, Inspector?”