The Stages: A Novel by Thom Satterlee

Author:Thom Satterlee
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Den Sorte Hest, or The Black Horse, has been one of my favorite cafés ever since I moved to Copenhagen. They have a single-portion layer cake called “The Mozart” that may be my all-time favorite: it’s a four-inch-high square of sugary decadence featuring almond cream and three kinds of chocolate, and they serve it to you with slices of glazed kiwi and strawberries piled on top and some kind of mint-colored confectionary paste drizzled in each corner of the plate. As soon as you set your fork into the cake, one or more of the layers slides out of place and creates a sad, sweet wreckage that encourages you to eat faster, to gobble it down now that it’s lost its outer beauty but promises oh such goodness once it reaches your mouth and fulfills its true purpose in life. It’s a shame that The Black Horse lies so far from the center of town, but even so I make it a regular stop on my pastry-eating circuit.

Outside the café I find Lona’s bike standing in a rack with several others, and parked nearby in a gravel driveway is a shiny, sporty Jaguar that used to have a permanent spot at Vartov. That was when Peter Rasmussen drove it to work every day—and I mean every day, including Saturdays and Sundays—for over fifteen years. Somehow the car always looked new. Who knows, maybe Peter bought new ones and I didn’t notice. Cars, in general, don’t interest me. But I know from seeing this one here today that Carsten Rasmussen is the person Lona is meeting for coffee.

I find the two of them in the back, seated at a table next to a wall with a saxophone mounted on it. Other jazz instruments hang from the ceiling, old retired trumpets mostly, and I am reminded of the only time I did not enjoy my visit to The Black Horse. It happened in July, around the time of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, and I’d walked the nearly two miles on a Saturday afternoon sweating my head off but dreaming of an air-conditioned room and my first bite of cake. But as I neared the café, I heard that twangy, rubberband sound of a bass, the hammering of piano keys, and the wail of a saxophone. The noise was almost enough to make me turn around empty-stomached; instead I took my “Mozart” to go and ate it with my hands while I walked back to my apartment. When I took the wax paper out of the box to lick off some melted chocolate, the people I passed on the sidewalk looked at me as though I was a barbarian. But it was the loud music that drove me to such savage etiquette. Today, fortunately, the café is not featuring live music. ABBA plays from speakers in the ceiling, but the music isn’t turned up loud and there’s something about ‘70s lyrics that go along with the café’s atmosphere of mindless, sugar-sweet self-indulgence.

Lona and Carsten are laughing together when I reach their table.

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