you want a peace of me

Written by Cathoel Jorss, published 12 years ago

Tonight I intervened in somebody’s love mess and may well have made things worse. I had cycled through the lit tunnel under the bridge four times for the sheer joy and came out blinking into the stormy-seeming piled sky, alongside the frozen-over river. I heard a shout. A tall man was dragging his much smaller girlfriend by the collar of her coat, shaking her like a puppy, while she cowered and pled. It took a second with her face hidden and in the dark to ascertain this wasn’t mutual horseplay. Hey, I shouted, then really bellowed HEY! Leave her alone!

She was shrinking inside her clothes and he was a shrunken king, big in the body but small in the soul. Hey! I cried again, and he paused in his torment to shake a big fist at me. I don’t know what “You wanna piece of me?” sounds like in Danish, but then again, I think now I do. I was yelling to her, trying to speak slow and clear, praying all Danes understand English: Walk away! You, girl, please! Just walk away. Two other women huddled in the bus stop asked, what was going on. By now the fraught couple had retreated (first rule of evading attack: do not go where he leads you) behind a big tree and she was crouching on the ground like a servant, in her fur-lined parka, her supplicant head bent as he yelled down at her and she took it. After a while seeing he was being watched the coward started gentling and soothing, he crouched opposite and the young woman in the bus stop said, naively, It’s alright now.

We daren’t go any closer. Their stronger-minded friend walked past, I didn’t catch her name but the other two girls called out to her and she said, Well, we don’t know what kind of guy he is. I said, I think I know exactly what kind of guy he is. Well, she said, but if he has a gun – or a knife –

They must have called the police because the three of them climbed on their bus when it arrived and moments later a police officer with a piercing flashlight lept out of a car. He talked to the ‘man’ and his female colleague talked to the woman, who had her back turned from shame, and the upshot was the couple climbed into his big black SUV and roared away. We can do nothing, the policeman said, if she stays. People are grown-ups. Yes, I said; she has to want to walk away. Exchanged cards with the lovely-faced Persian guy who had climbed off his bicycle and he said, Next time you come to Copenhagen, you don’t have to stay in a hotel. Nonetheless… I think I will. I think of that girl, home with him now, cowering and pleading. May she find the strength that’s inside us all. May he. And stop your bullying.