~ Misplaced Persons ~

By

Harley L. Sachs

A Danish Fairy Tale

Foreword

Nineteen fifty-eight. Though the Korean “police action” had been settled without a clear victory, the U.S.A. had never lost a war. The U.S.A. was not at war with anyone. Few Americans had heard of Ho Chi Minh. The fall of Dien Bien Phu to general Giap was a remote curiosity hardly noticed and already forgotten. Indochina was a distant place where French colonialists clung to rubber plantations. The Hungarian revolution was over. In nineteen fifty-seven the Russians had stirred America out of its complacency as the leader of everything by launching Sputnik. The space age had begun. Anything was possible, even, some day, sending men to the moon.

In Southern California kids drove hot rods with chop tops, channeled and lowered frames, and chromium-plated heads. Elvis Presley’s rock and roll rocked and rolled American youth. The picture of the year was “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” The American fast food chains were Wimpy’s and White Castle. In downtown Copenhagen an American Ex-G.I. who had fallen in love with Europe had opened a hangout on Voldgade called Jake’s American Ice Cream Bar, known to its regulars simply as Jake’s Place. Except for being on the second floor, the location was ideal, between the student union and the university and within sight of Raadhus Pladsen, the town square hub of the city. Jake installed a gaudy Wurlitzer juke box with tubes of changing colors. He refused to play Elvis Presley’s rock and roll. He hated “The Purple People Eater.” Jake insisted on American “evergreens.” At a G.I. Service Club in Germany he had “requisitioned” three tired pinball machines and reconditioned them. Thanks to Jake, Danish students used to hakkebøf, red cabbage, open-faced sandwiches and Tuborg Green could experience America in the form of a milk shake and a greasy hamburger on a bun. For Danish students it was a cheap way to get a taste of America without taking an eighteen hour discount flight on a propeller-driven Icelandic airline, refueling in Reykjavik. To American expatriates, Jake’s Place was a refuge for the homesick and culturally misfit, a taste of home without going home. It was also a nice place to meet Danish girls.

For Wayne and Alek, American expatriates who had fled the USA but fed on the G.I. Bill, Jake’s was also a place to hang out and play chess.

A Danish Fairy Tale

A ray of sunlight broke for a fleeting moment between the buildings across the street and lit up the chess board and the players. In the brightness, uncommon in a Danish winter, Alek looked up at the face across the board and was surprised. Wayne’s face had changed. Strange he hadn’t seen it until this moment. He couldn’t say exactly what had changed, but in the impressionable stuff that faces are made of, something had left a mark.

Wayne had shaved off his beard. After twenty-four months of G.I. haircuts and obligatory shaves, the beard had been an expression of independence and a sign of self-inflicted exile. Beards had not been in fashion in the States. In Denmark a beard was OK. Unfortunately, to Wayne’s surprise, the beard had been red. Though the hair on his head was a tawny, lion color, the hair on his chin and cheeks was red and always looked out of place.

Alek had teased him about it until Wayne, deciding that he had made his point and no longer needed to make a political statement with a beard, shaved it off.

We get so used to looking at one another that we stop seeing. When the beard comes off, we take a fresh look. In the time between the growing and the shaving, something had happened.

What was it? A line around the mouth? Was it a line of confusion, bewilderment, disappointment?

That Wayne’s face could change without Alek’s knowing how or why bothered him. It disturbed a sense of irrational possessiveness. Weren’t they best buddies? Didn’t they share the same bottle of Gammal Dansk bitters and sometimes the same girl?

Bishop to king’s rook four.

Wayne made a slight nod in the direction of the disturbed piece. “Your move.”

Alek continued to study Wayne’s face. There was a dry dullness around the eyes. Battle fatigue? They had escaped the Korean combat and served in different, but safe bases of occupation in Germany. Instead of Korean slicky boys that stole watches off your wrist, in Germany there were local orderlies who cleaned the toilets and oil mopped the floors. It was an easy way to pass through a nasty war. Now, in Copenhagen, their only battles were reenactments of medieval struggles on a chess board.

Alek made his move. “Check.” Knight under cover of bishop’s fire.

Wayne took the knight. “You’re getting overconfident. Just because you usually win doesn’t mean you can get sloppy today.”

Alek saw the mistake. “I was thinking about your beard.”

“I should have saved the hairs for you in a little envelope.”

“Not for me. Maybe for some girl.” Alex motioned across the room.

Wayne glanced at the beauties at the table with the Danes near the telephone on the wall. Tomatos with a flush of baby plumpness still in the cheeks, self-aware womanliness in the rising roundness of their bodies. Empty eyes with no thoughts, quick tongues with nothing to say, and the eagerness for the stimulation of just the country that their present vacuum habitat reminded them of. “Jake’s Place.” Coca-cola. Hamburgers. To cop a feel of Americans abroad. For Wayne and Alex it meant quiet chess, noisy conversation. But Wayne saw in the Danish girls an eagerness to leave what he had come for, to take his old place in what he had left—a half-adult game of musical chairs, with him and Alek deriding the others’ excitement about America, sure that the girls were mistaken, then suddenly not so sure, for why were the girls so eager to leave? Denmark was perfect, wasn’t it?

America was a vast cage whose closed maze of highways Jack Kerouac in On the Road would run through like a frantic gerbil in a giant wheel, on a road leading on and on to nowhere, unable to escape. Unlike the characters in Kerouac’s book, Wayne and Alek had escaped, to Europe, to Denmark, to Copenhagen, only to hang around Jake’s place. Jake’s Place. Touchstone for homesick Americans abroad and tasting place for Danes without the money for a ticket to America, as if mealy, greasy hamburgers could be a cure or a substitute for a trip to America.

“You win the coke this time,” Alek said. “I’ll concede. I feel charitable. Didn’t want to play, anyway. I think I’ll write a poem and give it to Shakespeare.”

“Our private poet?” Wayne smiled. “He might get mad.”

“He’s mad already. Quite mad.”

“No. He’s sort of encapsulated in a world of his own making. It’s just that his world is different from ours.”

“I wonder how he’d look in a red beard.”

“Always cutting me about my beard. It’s gone. Be satisfied.”

But Alek was not satisfied. “Red hair is good—on some people. On Dorte, for example.” Time to grind an old axe. What’s one girl between friends who usually share everything? “Of course, her red hair is on her head.”

There it is, Alek thought. The echo of emotion rippling through the drawn muscles between dimple and lower lip. Wayne had a poker face for chess, but not this. Alek recognized now the element he had been unable to identify in studying Wayne’s shaven face. It was doubt.

Press on. “Everything looks good on Dorte.”

Alek knew something had happened with Dorte, but Wayne refused to talk about it. Alek usually let the matter lie. Even a best buddy is entitled to a secret, but should there be any secrets between best buddies? Alex could leave it alone, but he was provoked by curiosity and jealousy enough to risk a rent in their friendship.

“She sure looks good,” Wayne conceded. Reached for a cigarette. Took a match from the pocket of his Ike jacket that still showed where the corporal stripes had been carefully razored off. “She should. She’s a fashion model.”

Alek spoke now with studied indifference between handfuls of chessmen on their way to the battered box. “Whatever happened to her?”

Wayne didn’t answer. Struck a match and lit the cigarette.

Another handful of playing pieces, powerless once removed from the playing field, like people out of mind, out of sight. “Do you ever see her any more?”

“I ran into her on the street the other day.” Wayne’s eyes were veiled. “With some guy.” He blew out the match.

“Oh? Did she say anything?”