Excerpts from
Guests of Each Other - in the 90s
By Marianne Larsen
A scream? She interrupted the answering machine in alarm. Who was it?
In alarm she stared at the light on the machine, the red glowing dot. Who was it?
`An anonymous madman who subjects randomly chosen subscribers to telephone terrorism; one of the summer´s lonely schizophrenic existences, a suffering human being,´ was her first thought.
A complete stranger who wanted to involve another complete stranger in his desperation.
Or, `Hello, aren´t you coming soon?´ Jeff´s call to her from long ago, when the grasshoppers sang at full volume and they made love in a newly planted forest somewhere in Sjælland, on one of their trips round the country in a rented car, his whispering call. Had Jeff´s call from that time become the scream on her answering machine? The red glowing dot? Her right hand hung indecisively over it. She felt empty and faithless. She let him continue in uncertainty, for that was what she herself was doing. The glowing red dot. Jeff. Slowly she lowered her hand, pressed the button. The scream came again. It went on and on, until the receiver at the other end was slammed down. Not a word. No one announced his identity.
She sat down with the telephone scream ringing in her head and her stomach. It rattled as though it had overloaded the cables and digital network, flayed all the subterranean and superterrestrial lines of connection on its way to her. It was a helplessness or a relief that had not brought anything but distorted howling noises to her inner ear; she sat back with those howling noises in her inner ear. She was in no doubt any longer, the telephone scream fitted perfectly with her own silent scream, the unreleased one, the one she carried with her wherever she went or was. The red glowing dot. Jeff´s body rose up from it. Ghostlike and at the same time clear to the last detail. As she remembered it, its fitting together with hers. No marvel of a body at the age of fifty. His body was right in front of her, from in front and behind at one and the same time. The large birthmark on the left shoulder-blade was there. The chest´s thin, reddish-grey fur, the nipples and the broad shoulders were there. The numerous transverse wrinkles of the stomach skin, after some successful slimming course or other, they were there, all of them; she could begin to count them, if she could focus on it; but she could not touch them or his skin here in his absence; it was virtual reality like the rest of Jeff from head to toe, hanging over the red glowing dot. His thighs around his erect penis, his feet set close together as though he had just jumped off a springboard down on top of her. But he did not come. His fata morgana body caught in and was held up by his face´s wide open mouth and his closed eyes, the scream, a dark pull that drew him upwards with it, away from her, she could not reach him and the receiver was slammed down.
She started. Got up and feverishly began to look in a writing desk drawer for her address book. Jeff. She found his phone number and called him.
No one answered. She tried again a bit later. Still no answer.
She tried many times. Went on, rang and rang. Drank red wine and rang again. Drank more red wine and rang again. She rang and drank and rang and drank red wine and rang into infinity until she fell on the sofa and slept.
Translated by David McDuff
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