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Through the open window Olaf Jenson could smell the sea and hear the occasional foghorn of a freighter; outside, rain pelted down through an August night, drumming softly upon the pavements of Copenhagen, inducing drowsiness, bringing dreamy memory, relaxing the tired muscles of his work-wracked body. He sat slumped in a swivel chair with his legs outstretched and his feet propped atop an edge of his desk. An inch of white ash tipped the end of his brown cigar and now and then he inserted the end of the stogie into his mouth and drew gently upon it, letting wisps of blue smoke eddy from the corners of his wide, thin lips. The watery gray irises behind the thick lenses of his eyeglasses gave him a look of abstraction, of absent-mindedness, of an almost genial idiocy. He sighed, reached for his half-empty bottle of beer, and drained it into his glass and downed it with a long slow gulp, then licked his lips. Replacing the cigar, he slapped his right palm against his thigh and said half aloud:

“Well, I’ll be sixty tomorrow. I’m not rich, but I’m not poor either … Really, I can’t complain. Got good health. Traveled all over the world and had my share of the girls when I was young … And my Karen’s a good wife. I own my home. Got no debts. And I love digging in my garden in the spring … Grew the biggest carrots of anybody last year. Ain’t saved much money, but what the hell … Money ain’t everything. Got a good job. Night portering ain’t too bad.” He shook his head and yawned. “Karen and I could of had some children, though. Would of been good company … ’Specially for Karen. And I could of taught ’em languages … English, French, German, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, and Spanish …” He took the cigar out of his mouth and eyed the white ash critically. “Hell of a lot of good language learning did me … Never got anything out of it. But those ten years in New York were fun … Maybe I could of got rich if I’d stayed in America … Maybe. But I’m satisfied. You can’t have everything.”

Behind him the office door opened and a young man, a medical student occupying room number nine, entered.

“Good evening,” the student said.

“Good evening,” Olaf said, turning.

The student went to the keyboard and took hold of the round, brown knob that anchored his key.

“Rain, rain, rain,” the student said.

“That’s Denmark for you,” Olaf smiled at him.

“This dampness keeps me clogged up like a drainpipe,” the student complained.

“That’s Denmark for you,” Olaf repeated with a smile.

“Good night,” the student said.

“Good night, son,” Olaf sighed, watching the door close.

Well, my tenants are my children, Olaf told himself. Almost all of his children were in their rooms now … Only seventy-two and forty-four were missing … Seventy-two might’ve gone to Sweden … And forty-four was maybe staying at his girl’s place tonight, like he sometimes did … He studied the pear-shaped blobs of hard rubber, reddish brown like ripe fruit, that hung from the keyboard, then glanced at his watch. Only room thirty, eighty-one, and one hundred and one were empty … And it was almost midnight. In a few moments he could take a nap. Nobody hardly ever came looking for accommodations after midnight, unless a stray freighter came in, bringing thirsty, women-hungry sailors. Olaf chuckled softly. Why in hell was I ever a sailor? The whole time I was at sea I was thinking and dreaming about women. Then why didn’t I stay on land where women could be had? Hunh? Sailors are crazy …

But he liked sailors. They reminded him of his youth, and there was something so direct, simple, and childlike about them. They always said straight out what they wanted, and what they wanted was almost always women and whisky … “Well, there’s no harm in that … Nothing could be more natural,” Olaf sighed, looking thirstily at his empty beer bottle. No; he’d not drink any more tonight; he’d had enough; he’d go to sleep …

He was bending forward and loosening his shoelaces when he heard the office door crack open. He lifted his eyes, then sucked in his breath. He did not straighten; he just stared up and around at the huge black thing that filled the doorway. His reflexes refused to function; it was not fear; it was just simple astonishment. He was staring at the biggest, strangest, and blackest man he’d ever seen in all his life.

“Good evening,” the black giant said in a voice that filled the small office. “Say, you got a room?”

Olaf sat up slowly, not to answer but to look at this brooding black vision; it towered darkly some six and a half feet into the air, almost touching the ceiling; and its skin was so black that it had a bluish tint. And the sheer bulk of the man! … His chest bulged like a barrel; his rocklike and humped shoulders hinted of mountain ridges; the stomach ballooned like a threatening stone; and the legs were like telephone poles … The big black cloud of a man now lumbered into the office, bending to get its buffalolike head under the door frame, then advanced slowly upon Olaf, like a stormy sky descending.

“You got a room?” the big black man asked again in a resounding voice.

Olaf now noticed that the ebony giant was well dressed, carried a wonderful new suitcase, and wore black shoes that gleamed despite the raindrops that peppered their toes.

“You’re American?” Olaf asked him.

“Yeah, man; sure,” the black giant answered.

“Sailor?”

“Yeah. American Continental Lines.”

Olaf had not answered the black man’s question. It was not that the hotel did not admit men of color; Olaf took in all comers—blacks, yellows, whites, and browns … To Olaf, men were men, and, in his day, he’d worked and eaten and slept and fought with all kinds of men. But this particular black man … Well, he didn’t seem human. Too big, too black, too loud, too direct, and probably too violent to boot … Olaf’s five feet seven inches scarcely reached the black giant’s shoulder and his frail body weighed less, perhaps, than one of the man’s gigantic legs … There was something about the man’s intense blackness and ungamely bigness that frightened and insulted Olaf; he felt as though this man had come here expressly to remind him how puny, how tiny, and how weak and how white he was. Olaf knew, while registering his reactions, that he was being irrational and foolish; yet, for the first time in his life, he was emotionally determined to refuse a man a room solely on the basis of the man’s size and color … Olaf’s lips parted as he groped for the right words in which to couch his refusal, but the black giant bent forward and boomed:

“I asked you if you got a room. I got to put up somewhere tonight, man.”

“Yes, we got a room,” Olaf murmured.

And at once he was ashamed and confused. Sheer fear had made him yield. And he seethed against himself for his involuntary weakness. Well, he’d look over his book and pretend that he’d made a mistake; he’d tell this hunk of blackness that there was really no free room in the hotel, and that he was so sorry … Then, just as he took out the hotel register to make believe that he was poring over it, a thick roll of American bank notes, crisp and green, was thrust under his nose.

“Keep this for me, will you?” the black giant commanded.

“ ’Cause I’m gonna get drunk tonight and I don’t wanna lose it.”

Olaf stared at the roll; it was huge, in denominations of fifties and hundreds. Olaf’s eyes widened.

“How much is there?” he asked.

“Two thousand six hundred,” the giant said. “Just put it into an envelope and write ‘Jim’ on it and lock it in your safe, hunh?”

The black mass of man had spoken in a manner that indicated that it was taking it for granted that Olaf would obey. Olaf was licked. Resentment clogged the pores of his wrinkled white skin. His hands trembled as he picked up the money. No; he couldn’t refuse this man … The impulse to deny him was strong, but each time he was about to act upon it something thwarted him, made him shy off. He clutched about desperately for an idea. Oh, yes, he could say that if he planned to stay for only one night, then he could not have the room, for it was against the policy of the hotel to rent rooms for only one night …

“How long are you staying? Just tonight?” Olaf asked.

“Naw. I’ll be here for five or six days, I reckon,” the giant answered offhandedly.

“You take room number thirty,” Olaf heard himself saying. “It’s forty kronor a day.”

“That’s all right with me,” the giant said.

With slow, stiff movements, Olaf put the money in the safe and then turned and stared helplessly up into the living, breathing blackness looming above him. Suddenly he became conscious of the outstretched palm of the black giant; he was silently demanding the key to the room. His eyes downcast, Olaf surrendered the key, marveling at the black man’s tremendous hands … He could kill me with one blow, Olaf told himself in fear.

Feeling himself beaten, Olaf reached for the suitcase, but the black hand of the giant whisked it out of his grasp.

“That’s too heavy for you, big boy; I’ll take it,” the giant said.

Olaf let him. He thinks I’m nothing … He led the way down the corridor, sensing the giant’s lumbering presence behind him. Olaf opened the door of number thirty and stood politely to one side, allowing the black giant to enter. At once the room seemed like a doll’s house, so dwarfed and filled and tiny it was with a great living blackness … Flinging his suitcase upon a chair, the giant turned. The two men looked directly at each other now. Olaf saw that the giant’s eyes were tiny and red, buried, it seemed, in muscle and fat. Black cheeks spread, flat and broad, topping the wide and flaring nostrils. The mouth was the biggest that Olaf had ever seen on a human face; the lips were thick, pursed, parted, showing snow-white teeth. The black neck was like a bull’s … The giant advanced upon Olaf and stood over him.

“I want a bottle of whisky and a woman,” he said. “Can you fix me up?”

“Yes,” Olaf whispered, wild with anger and insult.

But what was he angry about? He’d had requests like this every night from all sorts of men and he was used to fulfilling them; he was a night porter in a cheap, water-front Copenhagen hotel that catered to sailors and students. Yes, men needed women, but this man, Olaf felt, ought to have a special sort of woman. He felt a deep and strange reluctance to phone any of the women whom he habitually sent to men. Yet he had promised. Could he lie and say that none was available? No. That sounded too fishy. The black giant sat upon the bed, staring straight before him. Olaf moved about quickly, pulling down the window shades, taking the pink coverlet off the bed, nudging the giant with his elbow to make him move as he did so … That’s the way to treat ’im … Show ’im I ain’t scared of ’im … But he was still seeking for an excuse to refuse. And he could think of nothing. He felt hypnotized, mentally immobilized. He stood hesitantly at the door.

“You send the whisky and the woman quick, pal?” the black giant asked, rousing himself from a brooding stare.

“Yes,” Olaf grunted, shutting the door.

Goddamn, Olaf sighed. He sat in his office at his desk before the phone. Why did he have to come here? … I’m not prejudiced … No, not at all … But … He couldn’t think any more. God oughtn’t make men as big and black as that … But what the hell was he worrying about? He’d sent women of all races to men of all colors … So why not a woman to the black giant? Oh, only if the man were small, brown, and intelligent-looking … Olaf felt trapped.

With a reflex movement of his hand, he picked up the phone and dialed Lena. She was big and strong and always cut him in for fifteen per cent instead of the usual ten per cent. Lena had four small children to feed and clothe. Lena was willing; she was, she said, coming over right now. She didn’t give a good goddamn about how big and black the man was …

“Why you ask me that?” Lena wanted to know over the phone. “You never asked that before …”

“But this one is big,” Olaf found himself saying.

“He’s just a man,” Lena told him, her voice singing stridently, laughingly over the wire. “You just leave that to me. You don’t have to do anything. I’ll handle ’im.”

Lena had a key to the hotel door downstairs, but tonight Olaf stayed awake. He wanted to see her. Why? He didn’t know. He stretched out on the sofa in his office, but sleep was far from him. When Lena arrived, he told her again how big and black the man was.

“You told me that over the phone,” Lena reminded him.

Olaf said nothing. Lena flounced off on her errand of mercy. Olaf shut the office door, then opened it and left it ajar. But why? He didn’t know. He lay upon the sofa and stared at the ceiling. He glanced at his watch; it was almost two o’clock … She’s staying in there a long time … Ah, God, but he could do with a drink … Why was he so damned worked up and nervous about a nigger and a white whore? … He’d never been so upset in all his life. Before he knew it, he had drifted off to sleep. Then he heard the office door swinging creakingly open on its rusty hinges. Lena stood in it, grim and businesslike, her face scrubbed free of powder and rouge. Olaf scrambled to his feet, adjusting his eyeglasses, blinking.

“How was it?” he asked her in a confidential whisper.

Lena’s eyes blazed.

“What the hell’s that to you?” she snapped. “There’s your cut,” she said, flinging him his money, tossing it upon the covers of the sofa. “You’re sure nosy tonight. You wanna take over my work?”

Olaf’s pasty cheeks burned red.

“You go to hell,” he said, slamming the door.

“I’ll meet you there!” Lena’s shouting voice reached him dimly.

He was being a fool; there was no doubt about it. But, try as he might, he could not shake off a primitive hate for that black mountain of energy, of muscle, of bone; he envied the easy manner in which it moved with such a creeping and powerful motion; he winced at the booming and commanding voice that came to him when the tiny little eyes were not even looking at him; he shivered at the sight of those vast and clawlike hands that seemed always to hint of death …

Olaf kept his counsel. He never spoke to Karen about the sordid doings at the hotel. Such things were not for women like Karen. He knew instinctively that Karen would have been amazed had he told her that he was worried sick about a nigger and a blonde whore … No; he couldn’t talk to anybody about it, not even the hard-bitten old bitch who owned the hotel. She was concerned only about money; she didn’t give a damn about how big and black a client was as long as he paid his room rent.

Next evening, when Olaf arrived for duty, there was no sight or sound of the black giant. A little later after one o’clock in the morning he appeared, left his key, and went out wordlessly. A few moments past two the giant returned, took his key from the board, and paused.

“I want that Lena again tonight. And another bottle of whisky,” he said boomingly.

“I’ll call her and see if she’s in,” Olaf said.

“Do that,” the black giant said and was gone.

He thinks he’s God, Olaf fumed. He picked up the phone and ordered Lena and a bottle of whisky, and there was a taste of ashes in his mouth. On the third night came the same request: Lena and whisky. When the black giant appeared on the fifth night, Olaf was about to make a sarcastic remark to the effect that maybe he ought to marry Lena, but he checked it in time … After all, he could kill me with one hand, he told himself.

Olaf was nervous and angry with himself for being nervous. Other black sailors came and asked for girls and Olaf sent them, but with none of the fear and loathing that he sent Lena and a bottle of whisky to the giant … All right, the black giant’s stay was almost up. He’d said that he was staying for five or six nights; tomorrow night was the sixth night and that ought to be the end of this nameless terror.

On the sixth night Olaf sat in his swivel chair with his bottle of beer and waited, his teeth on edge, his fingers drumming the desk. But what the hell am I fretting for? … The hell with ’im … Olaf sat and dozed. Occasionally he’d awaken and listen to the foghorns of freighters sounding as ships came and went in the misty Copenhagen harbor. He was half asleep when he felt a rough hand on his shoulder. He blinked his eyes open. The giant, black and vast and powerful, all but blotted out his vision.

“What I owe you, man?” the giant demanded. “And I want my money.”

“Sure,” Olaf said, relieved, but filled as always with fear of this living wall of black flesh.

With fumbling hands, he made out the bill and received payment, then gave the giant his roll of money, laying it on the desk so as not to let his hands touch the flesh of the black mountain. Well, his ordeal was over. It was past two o’clock in the morning. Olaf even managed a wry smile and muttered a guttural “Thanks” for the generous tip that the giant tossed him.

Then a strange tension entered the office. The office door was shut and Olaf was alone with the black mass of power, yearning for it to leave. But the black mass of power stood still, immobile, looking down at Olaf. And Olaf could not, for the life of him, guess at what was transpiring in that mysterious black mind. The two of them simply stared at each other for a full two minutes, the giant’s tiny little beady eyes blinking slowly as they seemed to measure and search Olaf’s face. Olaf’s vision dimmed for a second as terror seized him and he could feel a flush of heat overspread his body. Then Olaf sucked in his breath as the devil of blackness commanded:

“Stand up!”

Olaf was paralyzed. Sweat broke on his face. His worst premonitions about this black beast were coming true. This evil blackness was about to attack him, maybe kill him … Slowly Olaf shook his head, his terror permitting him to breathe:

“What’re you talking about?”

“Stand up, I say!” the black giant bellowed.

As though hypnotized, Olaf tried to rise; then he felt the black paw of the beast helping him roughly to his feet.

They stood an inch apart. Olaf’s pasty-white features were lifted to the giant’s swollen black face. The ebony ensemble of eyes and nose and mouth and cheeks looked down at Olaf, silently; then, with a slow and deliberate movement of his gorillalike arms, he lifted his mammoth hands to Olaf’s throat. Olaf had long known and felt that this dreadful moment was coming; he felt trapped in a nightmare. He could not move. He wanted to scream, but could find no words. His lips refused to open; his tongue felt icy and inert. Then he knew that his end had come when the giant’s black fingers slowly, softly encircled his throat while a horrible grin of delight broke out on the sooty face … Olaf lost control of the reflexes of his body and he felt a hot stickiness flooding his underwear … He stared without breathing, gazing into the grinning blackness of the face that was bent over him, feeling the black fingers caressing his throat and waiting to feel the sharp, stinging ache and pain of the bones in his neck being snapped, crushed … He knew all along that I hated ’im … Yes, and now he’s going to kill me for it, Olaf told himself with despair.

The black fingers still circled Olaf’s neck, not closing, but gently massaging it, as it were, moving to and fro, while the obscene face grinned into his. Olaf could feel the giant’s warm breath blowing on his eyelashes and he felt like a chicken about to have its neck wrung and its body tossed to flip and flap dyingly in the dust of the barnyard … Then suddenly the black giant withdrew his fingers from Olaf’s neck and stepped back a pace, still grinning. Olaf sighed, trembling, his body seeming to shrink; he waited. Shame sheeted him for the hot wetness that was in his trousers. Oh, God, he’s teasing me … He’s showing me how easily he can kill me … He swallowed, waiting, his eyes stones of gray.

The giant’s barrel-like chest gave forth a low, rumbling chuckle of delight.

“You laugh?” Olaf asked whimperingly.

“Sure I laugh,” the giant shouted.

“Please don’t hurt me,” Olaf managed to say.

“I wouldn’t hurt you, boy,” the giant said in a tone of mockery. “So long.”

And he was gone. Olaf fell limply into the swivel chair and fought off losing consciousness. Then he wept. He was showing me how easily he could kill me … He made me shake with terror and then laughed and left … Slowly, Olaf recovered, stood, then gave vent to a string of curses:

“Goddamn ’im! My gun’s right there in the desk drawer; I should of shot ’im. Jesus, I hope the ship he’s on sinks … I hope he drowns and the sharks eat ’im …”

Later, he thought of going to the police, but sheer shame kept him back; and, anyway, the giant was probably on board his ship by now. And he had to get home and clean himself. Oh, Lord, what could he tell Karen? Yes, he would say that his stomach had been upset … He’d change clothes and return to work. He phoned the hotel owner that he was ill and wanted an hour off; the old bitch said that she was coming right over and that poor Olaf could have the evening off.

Olaf went home and lied to Karen. Then he lay awake the rest of the night dreaming of revenge. He saw that freighter on which the giant was sailing; he saw it springing a dangerous leak and saw a torrent of sea water flooding, gushing into all the compartments of the ship until it found the bunk in which the black giant slept. Ah, yes, the foamy, surging waters would surprise that sleeping black bastard of a giant and he would drown, gasping and choking like a trapped rat, his tiny eyes bulging until they glittered red, the bitter water of the sea pounding his lungs until they ached and finally burst … The ship would sink slowly to the bottom of the cold, black, silent depths of the sea and a shark, a white one, would glide aimlessly about the shut portholes until it found an open one and it would slither inside and nose about until it found that swollen, rotting, stinking carcass of the black beast and it would then begin to nibble at the decomposing mass of tarlike flesh, eating the bones clean … Olaf always pictured the giant’s bones as being jet black and shining.

Once or twice, during these fantasies of cannibalistic revenge, Olaf felt a little guilty about all the many innocent people, women and children, all white and blonde, who would have to go down into watery graves in order that that white shark could devour the evil giant’s black flesh … But, despite feelings of remorse, the fantasy lived persistently on, and when Olaf found himself alone, it would crowd and cloud his mind to the exclusion of all else, affording him the only revenge he knew. To make me suffer just for the pleasure of it, he fumed. Just to show me how strong he was … Olaf learned how to hate, and got pleasure out of it.

Summer fled on wings of rain. Autumn flooded Denmark with color. Winter made rain and snow fall on Copenhagen. Finally spring came, bringing violets and roses. Olaf kept to his job. For many months he feared the return of the black giant. But when a year had passed and the giant had not put in an appearance, Olaf allowed his revenge fantasy to peter out, indulging in it only when recalling the shame that the black monster had made him feel.

Then one rainy August night, a year later, Olaf sat drowsing at his desk, his bottle of beer before him, tilting back in his swivel chair, his feet resting atop a corner of his desk, his mind mulling over the more pleasant aspects of his life. The office door cracked open. Olaf glanced boredly up and around. His heart jumped and skipped a beat. The black nightmare of terror and shame that he had hoped that he had lost forever was again upon him … Resplendently dressed, suitcase in hand, the black looming mountain filled the doorway. Olaf’s thin lips parted and a silent moan, half a curse, escaped them.

“Hy,” the black giant boomed from the doorway.

Olaf could not reply. But a sudden resolve swept him: this time he would even the score. If this black beast came within so much as three feet of him, he would snatch his gun out of the drawer and shoot him dead, so help him God …

“No rooms tonight,” Olaf heard himself announcing in a determined voice.

The black giant grinned; it was the same infernal grimace of delight and triumph that he had had when his damnable black fingers had been around his throat …

“Don’t want no room tonight,” the giant announced.

“Then what are you doing here?” Olaf asked in a loud but tremulous voice.

The giant swept toward Olaf and stood over him; and Olaf could not move, despite his oath to kill him …

“What do you want then?” Olaf demanded once more, ashamed that he could not lift his voice above a whisper.

The giant still grinned, then tossed what seemed the same suitcase upon Olaf’s sofa and bent over it; he zippered it open with a sweep of his clawlike hand and rummaged in it, drawing forth a flat, gleaming white object done up in glowing cellophane. Olaf watched with lowered lids, wondering what trick was now being played on him. Then, before he could defend himself, the giant had whirled and again long, black, snakelike fingers were encircling Olaf’s throat … Olaf stiffened, his right hand clawing blindly for the drawer where the gun was kept. But the giant was quick.

“Wait,” he bellowed, pushing Olaf back from the desk.

The giant turned quickly to the sofa and, still holding his fingers in a wide circle that seemed a noose for Olaf’s neck, he inserted the rounded fingers into the top of the flat, gleaming object. Olaf had the drawer open and his sweaty fingers were now touching his gun, but something made him freeze. The flat, gleaming object was a shirt and the black giant’s circled fingers were fitting themselves into its neck …

“A perfect fit!” the giant shouted.

Olaf stared, trying to understand. His fingers loosened about the gun. A mixture of a laugh and a curse struggled in him. He watched the giant plunge his hands into the suitcase and pull out other flat, gleaming shirts.

“One, two, three, four, five, six,” the black giant intoned, his voice crisp and businesslike. “Six nylon shirts. And they’re all yours. One shirt for each time Lena came … See, Daddy-O?”

The black, cupped hands, filled with billowing nylon whiteness, were extended under Olaf’s nose. Olaf eased his damp fingers from his gun and pushed the drawer closed, staring at the shirts and then at the black giant’s grinning face.

“Don’t you like ’em?” the giant asked.

Olaf began to laugh hysterically, then suddenly he was crying, his eyes so flooded with tears that the pile of dazzling nylon looked like snow in the dead of winter. Was this true? Could he believe it? Maybe this too was a trick? But, no. There were six shirts, all nylon, and the black giant had had Lena six nights.

“What’s the matter with you, Daddy-O?” the giant asked. “You blowing your top? Laughing and crying …”

Olaf swallowed, dabbed his withered fists at his dimmed eyes; then he realized that he had his glasses on. He took them off and dried his eyes and sat up. He sighed, the tension and shame and fear and haunting dread of his fantasy went from him, and he leaned limply back in his chair.

“Try one on,” the giant ordered.

Olaf fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, let down his suspenders, and pulled the shirt off. He donned a gleaming nylon one and the giant began buttoning it for him.

“Perfect, Daddy-O,” the giant said.

His spectacled face framed in sparkling nylon, Olaf sat with trembling lips. So he’d not been trying to kill me after all.

“You want Lena, don’t you?” he asked the giant in a soft whisper. “But I don’t know where she is. She never came back here after you left—”

“I know where Lena is,” the giant told him. “We been writing to each other. I’m going to her house. And, Daddy-O, I’m late.” The giant zippered the suitcase shut and stood a moment gazing down at Olaf, his tiny little red eyes blinking slowly. Then Olaf realized that there was a compassion in that stare that he had never seen before.

“And I thought you wanted to kill me,” Olaf told him. “I was scared of you …”

“Me? Kill you?” the giant blinked. “When?”

“That night when you put your fingers about my throat—”

“What?” the giant asked, then roared with laughter. “Daddy-O, you’re a funny little man. I wouldn’t hurt you. I like you. You a good man. You helped me.”

Olaf smiled, clutching the pile of nylon shirts in his arms.

“You’re a good man too,” Olaf murmured. Then loudly: “You’re a big black good man.”

“Daddy-O, you’re crazy,” the giant said.

He swept his suitcase from the sofa, spun on his heel, and was at the door in one stride.

“Thanks!” Olaf cried after him.

The black giant paused, turned his vast black head, and flashed a grin.

“Daddy-O, drop dead,” he said and was gone.