Red September

By Anders Bodelsen

A radar reflector was swinging round and round just behind the greenhouses, and Jens listened to a plane warming up its engines. He tore himself away and walked over to the nearest greenhouse. The whining from the unseen plane was making the glass vibrate and rattle.
    The greenhouse was all overgrown, and the panes broken. Jens walked on tiptoe, noiselessly, the din of the plane muffling the crunch of his footsteps.
    Of course, it hadn´t been Søren. The sense of recognition, that fleeting moment of eye contact had all been in the imagination. What had looked like flight had not been flight, the man had merely glanced quite indifferently at a car whose engine had stalled - and had then got on with what he had been doing.
    Jens could hear the plane moving off now. He stood and drew air deep into his lungs, wet air with a bitter scent of failed crops and rust.
    He couldn´t see whether there was a door in the other end of the greenhouse. There probably was. And there were several greenhouses, and behind him there was a building of which he had only seen a very small part.
    He turned round and went out of the greenhouse again. Just as he emerged, he was struck by something from above. Not a blow, but a gigantic shadow.
    He looked up and had a sense of the enormous body of the plane, already being swallowed up in the glistening grey clouds.
    Older, he thought as he stood there. But that was logical enough, of course. What about him himself?
The time that had passed was so short that it was still the same piece of unbelievably familiar music issuing from the back door of the pub. Jens took one last look around, shook his head and then went through the little kitchen back into the empty pub.
    At last it dawned on him who he was listening to: John Lennon. The husky, conjuring voice, the dead man stubbornly insisting on going on living and wanting to make the impossible possible.
    Imagine there´s no heaven ... it´s easy if you try ...
    And beneath the voice a monotonous little motif on the badly tuned piano, over and over again -
Nothing to kill or die for ... no religion too ...
A momentary feeling of the past. Expectation and uncertainty. Other routes he could have taken. A different love. Defeats he might have avoided. Chaos. Hope of change. He tore himself away, went straight through the room and out on to the triangular patch of ground where his car was standing with its door open. Even when he had settled behind the wheel the old song pursued him.
    Imagine!
    Nothing to kill or die for -
    The plants were all right now, and there was a fine view out of the mirror. Jens started the engine, but even so he waited a moment longer, glancing absent-mindedly at the pickup near the tank, with the plaintive WOSH ME written across the dusty tailgate. Trying to persuade himself of what it was so difficult to be persuaded of.
    Of course it hadnt been Søren. It had been some random man who chanced to have some similarity with him. The man hadn´t fled, he had simply been busy.
    Of course it hadn´t been Søren. For Søren had been dead for five years.

Translated by W. Glyn Jones