The Quiet Girl (26 page)

Then Kasper had understood. Richter had tuned the grand piano up to compensate.

That had deeply moved him. Not that age corrodes a person's hearing; age corrodes everything--think only of Beethoven. But that a man can possess such great willfulness that he raises all classical music half a tone in order to accommodate his own system.

He remained on all fours until he was around the corner. He let himself in by the little door on the south side of the courtyard. Stood up, wanted to run; it was impossible. Hunched over, moving with difficulty, he went around behind the corral and the riding house. In the stable only Roselil heard him. He stroked the horse soothingly, leaving blood on the horse's coat; then he felt around in the hay. The violin and his papers were gone.

He made it through the courtyard in the shadow of the wall, tried the door to the office; it was not locked.

The room looked the same, but its tone was too resonant. He felt along the shelf under the desk; the three-legged stand was gone, as well as the Bunsen burner and the nightstick.

The shelves looked just as always. In the faint light he spelled his way along the ring binders to K; he took the volume from the shelf and opened it. It was empty.

He put the binder back in its place, tried the door to the private office. It was unlocked, and he went in. The room was too quiet. He opened the door of the refrigerator; it was turned off. The door of the freezer; it was defrosted.

He went back to the outer office. Sat down in the desk chair. Lifted the telephone receiver. It was still connected.

He dialed Sonja's number; she answered immediately. He lifted the turban of tea towels and napkins on his head. He could hear she was lying down. The voice becomes deeper when the anti-gravity muscles don't press against the lungs and decrease the spatial tone. A man was lying beside her; Kasper could sense his breathing.

"The trailer space," he said, "at Daffy's. How did you find it for me?"

"I got a special offer. As far as I recall. An insert. In the Scandinavian issue of
Circus Zeitung
."

"Your office gets thirty special offers a day. You don't even look at them. Why this one?"

She was quiet at first.

"It was addressed to me," she said. "It was half price. I should have wondered about those two things."

He paused, tried to collect himself.

"Have I done anything wrong?" she asked. "Have I hurt you somehow?"

"A guardian angel," he said, "can only do good."

"Is there anybody with you? You shouldn't be alone."

"I have company," he said. "SheAlmighty's piano tuners. I'm about to be taken down a half tone."

He hung up.

* * *

He approached the trailer cautiously, and stood listening; there was nothing to hear. He felt around for the little piece of cardboard, which was still just the way he had left it. Then he walked in.

He didn't dare turn on the light. He sat down for a moment in the easy chair. The lighting on the grounds streamed in through the windows.

He could have had a castle, like Grock's in Oneglia. He could have owned a housing complex outside Paris, like Rivel. He could have had a nine-thousand-square-foot penthouse overlooking Kongens Nytorv Square, like the place Oleg Popov had in Moscow overlooking MKhAT, Chekhov's old theater. Instead, for twenty years he'd had only this trailer. Two hundred square feet plus a small entry, minus the space taken up by the prop cabinet, the costume closet, the piano, and the bookshelves.

He looked at the sheet music. The little potbellied stove. The washbasin. The electric kettle. The firewood. The hot plates. The small stainless-steel refrigerator, condenser-cooled without a compressor; he had never been able to stand the sound of compressors. He looked at the toilet. The Fazioli. He looked over at the sofa.

The winter after they met each other, Stina had sometimes been waiting for him when he returned from the performance. Often, but not always. And never planned. It had been difficult or impossible to make an appointment with her. She could lay out a work schedule and an on-duty plan six months in advance. But when it came to planning to meet in the evening, she couldn't make up her mind about it the same afternoon. He'd never been able to understand that.

He'd arrived at midnight. It had snowed. He saw her tracks lead ing to the trailer.

He was supposed to leave the country, but never had. That winter changed his relationship to the seasons. Before, he had wished that Denmark would be closed and evacuated five months of the year, from November to March. For ten years he had not accepted any winter contracts farther north than Cannes. Her footprints in the snow changed everything. The outer seasons became irrelevant.

Smoke was coming from the chimney. Her down jacket and boots filled the entire entry; she didn't want to get cold. Since the beginning of November she had been dressed for Nanga Parbat.

The windows were white with steam; she had cooked food. She had a lifetime contract with the physical world. All she had to work with were two hot plates and an iron ring on the potbellied stove. Nevertheless, she had made something straight out of Leisemeer's vegetarian cookbook.

She sat on the sofa, across from where he now sat. Wearing ski socks. With her legs drawn up under her. With her papers, or her computer. Or with empty hands.

He stood just inside the door.

Femininity does not have a specific sound. Nor a specific musical key. Nor a specific color. Femininity is a process. The moment a dominant seventh chord rings out in the subdominant major key, one hears femininity.

Until then he had lived in dissonance. Now his trailer was no longer a trailer. No longer a woodshed on wheels. It was a home.

Her presence brought out colors he had never seen before. It rounded sharp corners; it created surfaces that hadn't been there. It altered the contents of his books. Of his sheet music. Bach would have sounded different without women. Obviously, he would not have sounded at all. And the only thing she had done was be there.

Now the space around him was hard. Square. Dead. He knew he was seeing it for the last time. He noticed how his thoughts roamed around in his body, like a caged beast unable to find a way out.

He opened the door to the driver's cabin and slid behind the wheel. They were searching for the van now. But not for the trailer. It was seized but not sought by the police. While the police stormed Konon he could visit Maximillian one last time. And then turn himself in. Get medical treatment. Start the repatriation process with the police. His mind could go no further.

He turned the ignition key. Nothing happened.

"They had a mechanic with them," said Daffy.

He was wearing the camel-hair coat; it appeared to be woven from rock wool that had smothered all sounds, which was why Kasper hadn't heard him.

Something was placed in his lap; it was the violin case. On top of it was the envelope with his papers, birth certificate, Spanish passport, insurance policies. The Swiss bank account, his temporary health-insurance card.

He opened the case and ran his hand along the instrument's curves--his right hand; he couldn't move the left one.

Guarneri and Stradivari had something in common. They had always incorporated a small variation. Like a type of research. In the midst of the bankruptcies. In the midst of the turmoil of the Spanish War of Succession. Never an exact replica. Never monotony. The small, continual experiment. To see if one could create just a minimal improvement.

"My last season during the court hearings," said Daffy, "was at the Retz in Hamburg. There was a young clown. He had a forty-five-minute appearance. At that time Carl was the only clown in Europe whose solo act could hold people's attention for more than twenty minutes. This clown hadn't even opened his violin case after twenty minutes. Some nights we had to get the firemen into the ring. To prevent the audience from devouring him. There could be eighteen hundred people at the Retz. After I was convicted and left, they kept him on for three months. I said to myself: In ten years he will have his own circus. In twenty years he will have an empire. That was twenty years ago. And you owe me six months' rent."

Now Kasper remembered. A dark-haired man in a tuxedo. Boras's heir. Just as Daffy must remember a much younger clown. He placed the ignition key on the dashboard in front of the watchman.

"This trailer here. Have it towed away tonight. You'll get seven hundred thousand for it. At Classic Vintages in Helsingør." Daffy did not touch the key.

"I looked in the private office. The refrigerator is turned off and defrosted."

"I'm about to leave on vacation."

Kasper opened the door. They got out. The night was quiet. Daffy held a set of car keys in his hand; they were keys to the company pickup.

"I'll drive you to the hospital."

One could hear the southern highway. Traffic noise is strange. It isn't stopped by sound barriers, just lifted. And comes down somewhere else. Like fallout from a chemical disaster.

"I was maneuvered here," said Kasper. "To this place. You sent a message. To Sonja at Circus Blaff. Who arranges things for me. A year ago. So we're involved in something far-reaching."

The other man did not say anything. Kasper scanned the surroundings. Everything was half a tone too dead. There should have been the call of a heron from down in the wetlands. Around eighty decibels, a deep glottal sound like a kettledrum. And a night owl hooting in the gardens near Glostrup. Instead, everything was quiet.

"There's a Renault parked in front of those poplars, with two men inside," he said.

The circus is a piece of the Middle Ages that has survived on the fringes of the modern world. Artists are outdated, like foxes that have adapted themselves to the city and garbage cans. But not simply as lonely wanderers, also as a brotherhood, a brotherhood of half-wild animals. Outside the system of grants and awards. Outside ARTE cultural subsidies. Outside Customs and Tax Administration control. With very few rules, one of which is: You always support one another in life's hide-and-seek with the public authorities.

Daffy rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet.

Kasper put out his hand.

Daffy handed him the car keys. Walked with him to the gate. Opened it.

* * *

They were waiting for Kasper; he didn't hear them. Even if he had, it would not have helped.

They got out of a car that was parked fifty yards farther ahead; it was the two monks. A door opened behind him also, outside the yard. He had the wire fence behind him and Snow White's hawthorn hedge on the other side of the road. And he was having a hard time holding himself upright. He walked over to the monks and got into the car.
 

14

The open area in front of the police station was blocked off all the way down to the Aria administration building. A gate had been set up facing Bernstorff Street; one of the monks put an ID card in the front window, and the gate went up.

They passed military vehicles, civil-defense trailer trucks, ambulances. The monks parked on the sidewalk near the driving-test examiners' red barracks. They took Kasper under his arms and half led, half carried him. Across the street, through a door that faced the harbor, into an elevator.

The elevator opened to a narrow corridor; the first thing he heard was music. It was faint, came from a distance away, yet was very clear. It was a Bach cantata, BWV 106, sung by the Copenhagen Police Women's Chorus. He remembered the recording; on that CD the soloist was the patroness of the chorus, Police Chief Hanne Bech Hansen. Kasper recognized her lovely soprano voice, which had almost no vibrato.

An open door led into a rectangular room with a high ceiling, like a school gymnasium. Along the back wall were desks where four officers were sorting papers. At the other end of the room, in front of shelves filled with binders, two female officers sat at what appeared to be a switchboard.

The room had six large windows facing the harbor. Next to one of them sat a heavy, motionless old man who looked as if he had been dressed by the Men's Fashion Council and then lowered into the chair by a crane. Moerk stood by another window; beside him was a little boom box, which was the source of the music.

Moerk turned and looked at Kasper. At the bloody bandages.

He took some newspapers from a table and placed them on the chair beside him. Kasper sat down on the newspapers.

"Weidebühl," said Moerk, nodding toward the older man. "He represents the Church Ministry. And is our contact with the Institute."

The CD case lay on the boom box; pictured on the front was the golden lyre that all police bands carry. Blood dripped onto the plastic case. Moerk moved it and turned off the music.

"We need Kejsa up here," he said. "And Cokes. Coffee."

"A brandy," said Kasper.

The monks disappeared. Moerk looked out again across the barricaded area.

"We've got Konon surrounded," he said. "Two hundred men from the anti-terror unit. Four motorboats. Navy combat swimmers. Two military helicopters in case they should try to fly out the children. Thirty men to check doorbells at the administrators' home addresses and get statements from witnesses. They went in ten minutes ago."

Kasper tried to listen to Moerk, but couldn't; his hearing was unstable; it seemed to be falling out.

"Total Defense Concept," said Moerk. "That's the official name. It's a nice concept, very Danish. It covers unlimited collaboration. When a catastrophe occurs, like this here, everyone works together. The police, emergency services, civil defense, firefighters. The military. In Denmark we're afraid to declare any situation an exception. The politicians think they can legislate themselves out of everything, including a coup d'etat. So what we have is a civil emergency. The police head up the investigation at the core. The National Guard sets up blockades. Civil defense cleans up. The military provides muscle power. And on top of all that, we have the Church Ministry with us. That's a nice idea. They don't have radio equipment, of course, so they can't communicate with one another. And they haven't linked their IT, so they can't exchange information in writing either. And they're bound by seven thousand laws and statutes that must be obeyed. But still, after a week at most, the connections are somewhat established. That was the time it took. One week. After the first earthquake."