The Copenhagen Zoo
Gerd, a psychologist, knew that I wasn’t listening to her at the kitchen table. Her lover, Witsel, picked me up on the highway outside Copenhagen and offered me a place to stay in their commune. Not listening wasn’t a shortcoming that would deny me the use of an empty bedroom in their rambling communal house. She may well have seen me as a mark who would take Witsel, her arrogant suicide manqué, off her hands and travel to India, where I could support him in a moving commune. Witsel had already made the proposition, and Gerd encouraged him to get out of Denmark and see the world.
We waited for Jeppe, Gerd’s husband and theologian, to finish walking their dog. Gerd waited by their Volvo station wagon in a knee-length sweater woven like a net. Witsel sat in the driver’s seat impatiently rolling a hash-filled cigarette. He squinted through impossibly small wire-framed glasses at the rolling paper. Gerd had a vacant gaze distorted by a pair of impossibly large glasses. What they saw when they looked at each other was an optical mystery.
Jeppe returned with the dog and got in the back seat with me. Their three wild and nameless children played in the back, long blonde hair flying about.
At the zoo, Witzel announced that he would make love to Gerd at an undisclosed location as if there were a prize for anyone who found them. Gerd turned away as the smirking Witzel waited for a reaction. None was forthcoming, so they left for their tryst.
The children set off running, ignoring Jeppe’s rambling instructions concerning their unattended freedom. I was left to walk Jeppe around the zoo, a cuckold and his minder.
Jeppe lurched around inside a large sports coat, swatting at his fallen combover. He prayed and preached in Danish as if reciting a transcribed sermon, pausing to regain his breath and allow God to keep pace, which exposed his big watery eyes. In front of the anteater, Jeppe began a shrill attack on colonialism and the Vietnam War as if the animal’s habitat were a miniature front with a network of tunnels. He went after racism outside the reptile house. Finally, he denounced infidelity at an ice cream stand, chastising an unnamed “whore.”
No sooner had Jeppe finished his ice cream than he was holding, ex nihilo, a loaf of bread, and several fish. Wading into the pond, he left them as an offering to float on the water until they were quickly sucked under. He claimed that God lived in shame in the earth’s shallow waters, having ceded his mission, willing himself into submission where he would wait to wash up on some beach. Then he would begin again in some unimaginable future. Jeppe’s performance was preferred, I thought, to stumbling into Witsel and Gerd going at it in the bushes.
When Jeppe shouted “Superman,” I imagined a theologian who could not get out of a phone booth without help, let alone explain himself. But Jeppe was mocking the arrival of Witsel who flaunted an upturned bottle of wine, which he did not put down until it was empty. Gerd stood near him with leaves clinging to the back of her sweater.
The children also returned and ran toward the apes hurling rocks. Not to be outdone, the excited apes threw feces in return. Jeppe took a direct hit by a wet missile. He removed his shirt, exposing his flabby torso, reinforcing his status as a cuckold, one too many transformations in such a short time. His children laughed and thought it was great fun,
Angered at the laughing, Jeppe grabbed a rock from one of his children and threw it at the apes. He shouted and grabbed more rocks, but a zoo official spotted him and demanded that he leave, marching him toward the entrance, his family trailing behind.
With Witsel passed out on the couch, I grabbed my rucksack and left the house to catch a bus at the end of the street. Jeppe followed me in the station wagon and offered me a ride to the train station. He was on his way to pray in a small church God, he said, often used as a sanctuary. He parked in front of the station where he would almost certainly be towed. He told me that we were going to Istanbul together. Then he would move on to the Pasabag Valley, he said with agitation, and find a column where he could reside in prayer as a hermit. Would I be his attendant and bring him bread and water? I declined but thanked him. He wandered off confused and derelict.
The train departure allowed time for a beer and sausages. I reread an aerogram from a friend detailing the cheap hotels along the overland passage to India. I could almost smell the hashish burning along the route. I did not plan on going to any zoos on the subcontinent.
Jeppe returned to the bar to tell me it was time to board the train. We settled in an empty car where he proceeded to hold a newspaper close to his mouth so no one could read his lips. Would you pray for me? he said. Atheist prayers are of the highest value, almost priceless. He lay on the opposite bench and slept until we got to the ferry. Not having a ticket, he was put off the train without protest.
In the bar on the ferry, I prayed that Jeppe would find the top of a pillar to kneel and pray. I sensed the expense, but not the value of prayer. If wrathful water rose then receded, I prayed that Jeppe would be spared and that his God would appear at the base of the pillar where they would benefit from their mutual council. This is what I remember.
The Church Roof
Dale finished his lunch prayer and Troy said Amen. They were church members and roofing contractors standing on the church roof. Their ideas about shingles differed. If Jesus was returning soon, asked Dale, why use hurricane-rated shingles? Let the Lord return when he’s ready, said Troy. Until then, we can honor his house with the right materials. Pastor Wrigley sided with Troy. He didn’t want cheap shingles flying around his head should the Rapture occur while he was preaching.
They did agree that the young and agile Troy would staple the first three courses along the roof’s edge. Dale was older, beefy, and depended entirely on his transient crews to work the poor neighborhoods and projects west of the old state highway. He had balance issues since he’d stopped drinking and was grateful for Troy’s accommodation.
The real point of contention between the two roofers was that Troy drank wine. His drinking started when he began working in the neighborhoods around the country club where the spacious houses had dormers and the clients wanted slate roofs, copper flashing, and jacks. Troy could talk to the upwardly mobile without having to offer a cringy witness. His wine-drinking began with a gift from a client, a bottle of French wine. The client presented the bottle like he was offering meat to a mean dog.
In recovery, Dale couldn’t abide Christians drinking, even if wine made many appearances in the Bible. He told Troy he had prayed, gained guidance from the Lord, and needed to share a few words, his story, which Troy had heard many times. Troy gave him a few minutes, then told him he appreciated his concern before he climbed the ladder, leaving Dale in the parking lot with an unfinished narration he needed to share with someone.
After work, Troy stopped at Trader Joe’s and bought a case of Charles Shaw Merlot. Pastor Wrigley rolled in behind him with several bottles of wine in his cart. They laughed at being caught like thieves arriving at the same safe. Pastor Wrigley was young, and the rumor was that he had spent time as a youth pastor in a scandal-plagued mega-church, not something older congregants would want to hear. He invited Troy and his wife over for a drink after the roof project was complete.
The encounter with pastor Wrigley gave Troy permission to continue drinking wine. His wife Beth, an aerobics instructor, liked the story but not the pastor. After two glasses of wine, she blurted out that he’d been eyeballing her ass like a John at a strip club, and he’d been talking about how fit she was. I don’t want to be part of a scandal, she said. I want to try out that praise church up the interstate and just sing with everyone else. She let her towel drop and told Troy to join her after his shower.
The wind was blowing as if to prove a point. Troy leaned into the cab of Dale’s truck that smelled of gas-station coffee. No way I’m going up there today, said Dale. I’m on some new medication and it’s affecting my balance and my mood. If I’ve been hard to deal with, take it as an example of somebody you don’t want to become, aside from the fact that we’re both roofers.
Troy thanked him. He wished the lord had told him to tell Dale to retire, but he hadn’t. Troy climbed the ladder and sat on the bundles of shingles. It was too windy to work. With the new roof, Pastor Wrigley could preach without the fear of nature in the hands of a God who was turning the region into a scrap heap of failed roofs. If the Lord wanted to discipline the congregation, he could ask them to leave the church in an orderly fashion and stand in the parking lot where triage could be used if necessary.
Security milled around outside the down-scale supermarket. Troy stopped for rotisserie chicken. An old guy waiting in a long line in front of Troy said, “This is taking longer than the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.” He was waiting it out with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and vodka, Vienna sausages, Sara Lee cinnamon rolls, and fatty hamburger in his basket. He’d passed through the stages of grief, concluding that waiting makes people crazy. There’s nothing there and it’s not personal, he might conclude loudly to goad the checkers into moving faster as happy hour approached.
Troy’s brother, a musician, held beliefs in common with the old guy. His band was profane and had to move to the West Coast to get safe gigs. Beth was the lead singer, believing she was another Joan Jett. But she didn’t want to live in Oakland. She had only so much bad girl in her and she’d used it up. She married Troy and they eventually joined the church.
The roof was almost done when Dale showed up, staggering around the bottom of the ladder, waving brackets that needed to be installed to support the cross. He announced loudly that he’d been drinking Christian wine and Jesus had poured it for him, a miracle. He rambled on about the cross as Troy drove him home. It is not idolatry to think of Jesus on it.
Dale church-shouted all the way home until he knelt by his bed and succumbed to prayer apnea. Troy dragged him onto the bed and covered him with his late wife’s floral dressing gown. He asked Dale about his breathing mask. Dale mumbled. The mask was dirty, probably clogged, not something Troy would strap on Dale’s face.
Troy returned to the church to install the brackets and secure the cross to the roof.
